“Surely, between clans, space is so close to a perfect vacuum that we won’t need protection.”

“Can we navigate there?” Reymont snapped. Sweat glistened on Boudreau’s countenance. “You see the hazard,” he said. “We will be bound into the unknown more deeply than we dreamed. Accurate sightings and placements will be unobtainable. We shall need such a tau—”

“A minute,” Reymont said. “Let me outline the situation in my layman’s language to make sure I understand you.” He paused, rubbing his chin with a sandpapery sound (under the distant music), frowning, until his thoughts were marshalled.

“We must get… not only into interfamily, but interclan space,” he said. “We must do this in a moderate shipboard time. Therefore we must run tau down to a value of a billionth or less. Can we do it? Evidently, or you wouldn’t talk as you’ve done. I imagine the method is to lay a course within this family that takes us through the nucleus of at least one other galaxy. And then likewise through the next family— be it the Virgo cluster or a different one determined by our new flight pattern— through as many individual galaxies as possible, always accelerating.

“Once the clan is well behind us, we should be able to make our repair. Afterward we’ll need a similar period of deceleration. And because our tau will be so low, and space so utterly empty, we’ll be unable to steer. Not enough material will be there for the jets to work on, nor enough navigational data to guide us. We’ll have to hope that we pass through another clan.

“We should do that. Eventually. By sheer statistics. However, we may be out yonder a long while indeed.”

“Correct,” Telander said. “You do understand.” They had begun to sing upstairs.

—But me and my true love will never meet again

On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.

“Well,” Reymont said, “there doesn’t appear to be any virtue in caution. In fact, for us it’s become a vice.”

“What do you mean?” Boudreau asked.

Reymont shrugged. “We need more than the tau for crossing space to the next clan, a hundred million light-years or however far off it is. We need the tau for a hunt which will take us past any number of them, maybe through billions of light-years, until we find one we can enter. I trust you can plot a course within this first clan that will give us that kind of speed. Don’t worry about possible collisions. We can’t afford worries. Send us through the densest gas and dust you can find.”

“You… are taking this… rather coolly,” Telander said.

“What am I supposed to do? Burst into tears?”

“That is why I thought you should also hear the news first,” Boudreau said. “You can break it to the others.”

Reymont considered both men for a moment that stretched. “I’m not the captain, you know,” he reminded them.

Telander’s smile was a spasm. “In certain respects. Constable, you are.”