“So. The gentlemen made rough calculations. Their results indicate we can swing halfway around the galaxy, spiraling inward till we plunge straight through its middle and out again on this side. We’d be slow about any course change anyway. We can’t turn on a tea-öre coin at our speed! And this’ll enable us to acquire the necessary tau. Don’t forget, that’ll decrease constantly. Our transit to Beta Vee would have been a lot quicker if we hadn’t meant to stop there: if, instead of braking at mid-passage, we’d simply kept cramming on velocity.

“Navigator Boudreau estimates— estimates, mind you; we’ll have to gather data as we go; but a good, informed guess— considering the speed we already have, he thinks we can finish with this galaxy and head out beyond it in a year or two.”

“How long cosmic time?” sounded from the gathering.

“Who cares?” Reymont retorted. “You know the dimensions. The galactic disk is about a hundred thousand light-years across. At present we’re thirty thousand from the center. One or two hundred millennia altogether? Who can tell? It’ll depend on what path we take, which in turn will depend on what long-range observation can show us.”

He stabbed a finger at them. “I know. You wonder, what if we hit a cloud such as got us into this miserable situation? I have two answers for that. First, we have to take some risks. But second, as our tau gets less and less, we’ll be able to use regions which are denser and denser. We’ll have too much mass to be affected as we were this time. Do you see? The more we have, the more we can get, and the faster we can get it in ship’s time. We may conceivably leave the galaxy with an inverse tau on the order of a hundred million. In that case, by our clocks we’ll be outside this entire galactic family in days!”

“How do we get back?” Glassgold said— but vigilant and interested.

“We don’t,” Reymont admitted. “We keep on to the Virgo cluster. There we reverse the process, decelerate, enter one of the member galaxies, bring our tau up to something sensible, and start looking for a planet where we can live.

“Yes, yes, yes!” he rapped into the renewed surf of their speech. “Millions of years in the future. Millions of light-years hence. The human race most qwlikely extinct… in this corner of the universe. Well, can’t we start over, in another place and time? Or would you rather sit in a metal shell feeling sorry for yourselves, till you grow senile and die childless? Unless you can’t stand the gaff and blow out your brains. I’m for going on as long as strength lasts. I think enough of this group to believe you will agree. Will anyone who feels differently be so good as to get out of our way?”

He stalked from the stage. “Ah… Navigation Officer Boudreau, Chief Engineer Fedoroff, Professor Nilsson,” Telander said. “Will you come here? Ladies and gentlemen, the meeting is open for general discussions—”