“What are we going to do?” Lindgren cried into a sudden stillness.

“Very little, I fear.” Telander went to the viewscope. “Is anything visible in this?”

“Barely. I think. Fourth quadrant.” She shut her eyes and turned from him.

He took for granted that she meant the projection for dead ahead, and peered into that. At high magnification, space leaped at him. The scene was somewhat blurred and distorted. Optical circuits were not able to compensate perfectly for speeds like this. But he saw starpoints, diamond, amethyst, ruby, topaz, emerald, a Fafnir’s hoard. Near the center burned Beta Virginis. It should have looked very like the sun of home, but something of spectral shift got by to tinge it ice blue. And, yes, on the edge of perception… that wisp? That smoky cloudlet, to wipe out this ship and these fifty human lives?

Noise broke in on his concentration, shouts, footfalls, the sounds of fear. He straightened. “I had better go aft,” he said, flat-voiced. “I should consult Boris Fedoroff before addressing the others.” Lindgren moved to join him. “No, keep the bridge.”

“Why?” Her temper stretched thin. “Regulations?”

He nodded. “Yes. You have not been relieved.” A smile of sorts touched his lean face. “Unless you believe in God, regulations are now me only comfort we have.”

In this moment, the drapes and murals of the gymnasium-auditorium had no more significance than the basketball goals or the bright casual clothes of the people. They had not taken time to unfold chairs. Everyone stood. Every gaze locked onto Telander while he mounted the stage. Nobody stirred save to breathe. Sweat glistened on countenances and could be smelled. The ship muttered around them.

Telander rested his fingers on the lectern. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said into their silence, “I have bad news.” Quickly: “Let me say at once that our prospects of survival are far from hopeless, judging by present information. We are in trouble, though. The risk was not unforeseen, but by its nature is one that cannot be provided against, at any rate not in our early stage of Bussard drive technology—”

“Get to the point. God damn it!” Norbert Williams shouted.

“Quiet, you,” said Reymont. Unlike most of them, who stood with male and female hands clutched together, he held apart, near the stage. To a drab coverall he had pinned his badge of authority.

“You can’t—” Someone must have nudged Williams, for he spluttered into silence.

Telander’s frame grew visibly tenser. “Instruments have… have detected an obstacle. A small nebula. Extremely small, a clot of dust and gas, no more than a few billion kilometers across. It is traveling at an abnormal velocity. Maybe it’s a remnant of a larger thing cast out by a supernova, a remnant still held together by hydromagnetic forces. Or maybe it’s a protostar. I do not know.

“The fact is, we are going to strike it. In about twenty-four hours, ship’s time. What will happen then, I don’t know either. With luck, we can ride out the impact and not suffer serious damage. Otherwise… if the fields become too overloaded to protect us… well, we knew this journey would have its hazards.”