Derek laughed. “You’ve got a point, Ken.” He was standing with his right hand shielding his eyes. “Barry, can we hear anything out there? Any radio transmissions?”

“There are radio waves, of course. But I’m not getting anything that would seem out of the ordinary.”

“Put it on a speaker, please,” said Derek.

It was just a chaotic batch of squeaks and squeals.

“Barry,” said Hutch, “if there were artificial signals mixed in there, would you be able to make the determination?”

“Not easily, Captain. It is seriously turbulent.”

Derek’s brow wrinkled and he looked toward Wally. “Didn’t we have a package to take care of that?”

“The package didn’t get here in time.”

“Damn.”

“I’m sorry. We were concentrating on safety issues.”

“It’s okay.” He looked frustrated. “I wonder what else didn’t get taken care of.”

“I can try to set up a program,” said Barry. “But I’ll need some help.”

“All right,” said Hutch.

Derek was looking out the window again. “How far are we from the cluster?”

“Approximately nine light-years.”

“It really does look like a galaxy,” said Ken.

Beth raised her coffee cup to it. “It would be hard to believe there aren’t a few civilizations in there somewhere.”

Derek was shaking his head. “I wish we could get a Van Entel out here. This is where we really need one.” He leaned back against the chair.

“Why,” said Ken, “don’t we go in and look around?”

Hutch looked toward Derek. “That would be outside the mission objectives,” she said. “But we should do a short jump to test the repairs. It doesn’t really make much difference what direction we go.”

•  •  •

Derek sat on the bridge with Hutch. “What’s the best way to do this?”

“There’s a fair amount of guesswork here. Let’s start with a jump of seven light-years. That’ll get us close. It’ll give us a better look at the cluster, and we can decide where we go from there.”

“Excellent, Priscilla. How long will it take?”

“A little better than a half hour.”

“Incredible,” he said.

The Locarno was still charging. It sounded okay, and Wally assured her everything was in order. They waited until it shut down and the green ready light came on. Then Hutch opened the allcomm. “Anybody need time before we start?”

Wally responded: “The chairs are locked down, Hutch. And everybody’s harnessed. We’re good when you are.”

“Okay. We’ll make our move in three minutes.” She looked over at Derek. “Good luck.”

“To you as well, Priscilla.”

The timer started its countdown. “Okay, people,” she said, “we’re on the move.” She fired the ship’s engines and began a short turn to port. The Wasserman drifted through the night until it was directly in front of them. Then she began to accelerate. A minute later she activated the Locarno and the stars vanished.

•  •  •