“That’s an imponderable, of course,” Reynaud told her patiently. “As all of you are no doubt aware, there simply aren’t that many junctions, even today, which means our comparative information base is limited. We can describe the observed properties of the phenomenon mathematically, but our grasp of the underlying theory lags behind our ability to model. All I can tell you for certain is that we know what data it is that we need, but until we actually insert the first probes, we don’t have any idea how long it’s going to take us to acquire it.”

“But—” the reporter began stubbornly, and Reynaud gritted his teeth behind a pleasant smile. He could feel Sir Clarence Oglesby standing beside him, and that didn’t help his mood at all. He didn’t much like Oglesby at the best of times, and the Government spokesman’s blandly optimistic comments about the vast possibilities the new terminus created were largely to blame for the press pool’s demands that Reynaud somehow provide them with an exact timetable for the cornucopia’s arrival.

I’ve never been at my best dealing with situations like this, he thought. And if I told this airhead what I really think of her obvious inability to understand simple English…

“If I may, Admiral?” Jordin Kare, on his very best behavior here in the public eye, asked diffidently, and Reynaud managed to conceal his relief somehow and nodded.

“As Admiral Reynaud just suggested,” the astrophysicist told the reporter in his best, authoritative professorial mode, “each wormhole junction with which we’re familiar has been a distinct and unique case. Our own Junction isn’t quite like any of the others which have been explored, and none of the others are identical to one another, either. I’ve spent the better part of my adult life studying this particular field, and while I can speak with authority about the known junctions, that doesn’t apply to new ones. Or even to previously unexplored termini of known ones. We’re largely in the position of, say, the last century or so Ante Diaspora where gravity was concerned. They could describe, model, and predict it in considerable detail, but no one had a clue how to generate and manipulate it the way we can today. All of which means that while we’ve made certain working assumptions about this terminus based on the Junction’s other termini and what we know about other junctions, they remain just that: assumptions. Until we can positively confirm their accuracy, the notion of sending a manned vessel through is out of the question.”

He smiled with easy authority, wrapped in the mantle of his academic credentials, and the reporter nodded with profound respect, as if he hadn’t just told her exactly what Reynaud had already said. The RMAIA director was grateful for Kare’s intervention, but that didn’t prevent him from thinking slightly homicidal thoughts about the reporter as she finally sat down.

The rest of the newsies instantly stabbed at their attention buttons, and Reynaud nodded to a slightly built, dark-haired man as a holographically projected green light appeared above him to indicate he’d won the competition.