She got up and pulled on her robe. The deck trembled as she started for the door. It wasn’t a jolt but more like a blip. But there shouldn’t be any palpitations or shudders of any kind. “What’s the problem, Barry? Can you tell?”

“I do not know.”

She opened the door and made for the bridge. Behind her, someone else was coming. Wally.

“You have any idea what this might be?” she asked him.

“No,” he said. “Let’s shut the drive down so I can take a look.”

“If we shut it down, are you certain we’ll be able to restart it?”

“Depends on what the problem is.”

She slipped into her seat. Wally sat down beside her. He was in his pajamas. “If we get stuck here,” she said, “we’re all dead. Let’s get back out into normal space. If things don’t go well, at least we’ll be able to send a hypercomm and get a rescue mission moving.”

“You think they’d go to that much trouble after we just walked out on them?”

“Let’s just do it the sane way, Wally.” She activated the allcomm as another shiver ran through the ship. “Everybody wake up, please. Out of bed and belt down. We’re having a minor issue. We’re going to return to normal space in a couple of minutes. Let me know when you’re secure.”

Wally didn’t look especially worried. Hopefully, that was an accurate view of his thinking and not a professional stance he’d taken to avoid alarming anyone.

Eiferman Log

0316 hours: Everybody has checked in, and we’ve just shut down the Locarno. Fortunately, whatever the problem is, it did not prevent our surfacing.

—Thursday, March 20, 2256

11.

Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, and creeds follow one another like the withered leaves of autumn; but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons and a possession for all eternity.

—Oscar Wilde, “The English Renaissance of Art, 1882,” New York lecture, January 9

This is my fault,” Derek said after Wally had disappeared belowdecks to work on the drive.

Hutch couldn’t take her eyes off the cloud of stars on their port side. “What do you mean?”

“Howard told me something like this might happen.”

“Who’s Howard?”

“The maintenance chief at the station.”

“Because they didn’t have time to finish.”

“Yes. Damn it, we didn’t have time. They were asking for another two days. He said we’d probably be all right but he couldn’t guarantee anything.”

“All right. Let’s not get excited. Wally will probably be able to fix the problem.”

“Let’s hope.” He was keeping his voice low.

Hutch pointed at the cloud. “You have any idea what that is?”

“I think it’s the Wasserman. A globular cluster.”

“How many stars are in there?”

“About thirty thousand.”

“They look jammed together.”