“Threshold!” Thatcher announced.

“Rig foresail for transit,” Zachary commanded.

“Rigging foresail, aye.”

To a visual observer, nothing about Harvest Joy changed in any respect as Hooja threw the switch down in Main Engineering, but Zachary’s instruments were another matter entirely. Harvest Joy’s impeller wedge dropped instantly to half strength as her forward beta nodes shut down and the matching alpha nodes reconfigured. They no longer generated their portion of the survey ship’s normal-space stress bands; instead, they projected a Warshawski sail, a circular disk of focused gravitational energy, perpendicular to Harvest Joy’s long axis and extending for over three hundred kilometers in every direction.

“Standby to rig aftersail on my mark,” Zachary murmured, and Hooja acknowledged once again as Harvest Joy continued to creep forward under the power of her after impellers alone and another readout flickered to life. Zachary watched its flashing numerals climb steadily as the foresail moved deeper and deeper into the Junction. The normal safety margin was considerably wider than usual because of the survey ship’s relatively low acceleration and velocity, but that didn’t make Zachary feel any less tense.

The numbers suddenly stopped flashing. They continued to climb, but their steady glow told her that the foresail was now drawing sufficient power from the grav waves twisting down the invisible pathway of the Junction to provide movement, and she nodded sharply.

“Rig aftersail now,” she said crisply.

“Rigging aftersail, aye,” Hooja replied, and Harvest Joy twitched as her impeller wedge disappeared entirely and a second Warshawski sail flicked into life at the far end of her hull from the first.

Zachary looked up from her displays to watch Chief Tobias take the ship through the transition from impeller to hyper sail. The maneuver was trickier than the experienced petty officer made it look, but there was a reason Tobias had been chosen for this mission. His hands moved smoothly, confidently, and Harvest Joy slid through the interface into the terminus without so much as a quiver. He held the survey ship rock-steady, and Zachary grimaced around a familiar wave of queasiness.

No one ever really adjusted to the indescribable sensation of crossing the wall between n-space and hyper-space. Precisely what physical sense reported that sensation was debated. Everyone seemed to have his or her own opinion as to which one it was, but however much they might disagree about that, everyone agreed about the ripple of nausea that accompanied the transition. It wasn’t particularly severe in a normal transit, but the gradient was far steeper in a Junction transit, and Zachary swallowed hard.

But if the nausea was sharper, it would also be over sooner, she reminded herself. The familiar thought wound its way through the groove decades of naval experience had worn in her mental processes, and then the maneuvering display blinked again.

For an instant, a fleeting interval no chronometer had ever been able to measure, HMS Harvest Joy ceased to exist. One moment she was where she had been, seven light-hours from Manticore-A; the next she was… somewhere else, and Zachary swallowed again, this time in relief. Her nausea vanished along with the brilliant blue transit energy radiating from Harvest Joy’s sails, and she inhaled deeply.