It was believed that the clan lay about three hundred million light-years from home. But no charts existed for these deeps, no standards of measurement. The probable error in the derived value of tau was huge. Factors like absorption simply were not in any reference work aboard.

Leonora Christine might have sought a less remote destination, for which more reliable data were tabulated. However— bearing in mind that at ultra-low tau she was not very steerable— that route would have taken her through less matter within the Milky Way-Andromeda-Virgo clan. She would have gained less speed; and now she was running so close to c that every increment made a significant difference. Paradoxically, shipboard time to the nearest possible target would have been more than to this one.

And it was not known, either, how long her people could endure.

The cheer brought by the repair of the decelerator was short-lived. For neither half of the Bussard module could work in interclan space. Here the primordial gas had finally gotten too thin. For weeks, therefore, the ship must go powerless on a trajectory set by the eldritch ballistics of relativity. Within her hull was weightlessness. There was some talk of using lateral ion jets to put a spin on her and thus provide centrifugal pseudo-gravity. Despite her size, it would have generated radial and Coriolis effects that were too troublesome. She had not been designed nor had her folk been trained for such.

They must bear the weeks, while the geological epochs passed by outside.

* * *

Reymont opened the door to his cabin. Weariness made him careless. Bracing himself a trifle too hard against the bulkhead, he let go the handhold and was propelled away. For a moment he cartwheeled in mid-air. Then he bumped into the opposite side of the corridor, pushed, and darted back across. Once within the cabin, he grabbed another bar before shutting the door behind him.

At this hour, he had expected Chi-Yuen Ai-Ling to be asleep. But she floated wakeful, a few centimeters off their joined beds, a single line anchoring her. As he entered, she switched off the library screen with a quickness that showed she hadn’t really been paying attention to the book projected on it.

“Not you too?” Reymont’s question seemed loud. They had been so long accustomed to the engine pulse as well as the force of acceleration that free fall still brimmed the ship with silence.

“What?” Her smile was tentative and troubled. They had had scant contact lately. He had too much work under these changed conditions, organizing, ordering, cajoling, arranging, planning. He would come here merely to snatch what slumber he might.

“Have you also become unable to rest in zero gee?” he asked.

“No. That is, I can. A strange, light sort of sleep, filled with dreams, but I seem fairly refreshed afterward.”

“Good,” he sighed. “Two more cases have developed.”

“Insomniac, you mean?”

“Yes. Verging on nervous collapse. Every time they do drift off, you know, they wake again screaming. Nightmares. I’m not sure whether weightlessness alone does it to them, or if that’s only the last thing needed for breaking stress. Neither is Urho Latvala. I was just conferring with him. He wanted my opinion on what to do, now that he’s running short of psychodrugs.”