She shrugged and, after a moment, Kare nodded. He was still unhappy, not least because a part of him thought he should have been the one to slap Makris down. But there wasn’t much he could do about that now, so he returned to the matter in hand, instead.

“In answer to your original question, Captain, TJ and the rest of our Agency people may not have the exact vector information we need yet, but our preliminary readings have managed to nail down the terminus locus. In fact, we’ve managed to derive a much tighter initial approximation than anyone anticipated.” He chuckled. “It’s almost as if all the things that made our end of the terminus so hard to spot for so long were reversed at this end.”

“So you’re confident that at least we’ll be able to go home again?” Zachary asked with a smile.

“Oh, yes. Of course, TJ and I were always confident of that, or we’d never have volunteered to come along in the first place!”

“Of course you wouldn’t have,” Zachary agreed. “But confidence aside, do you have any sort of estimate on how long it will take you to derive the approach vector?”

“That’s harder to say, but I shouldn’t think it will take a great deal of time. As I say, our instruments are doing a much better job with this terminus. And we have a great deal more information about its strength and tidal stresses now that we’ve been through it once from the other side than we had when we began calculating for the trip here. If you want my best guess, bearing in mind that a guess is mostly what it would be, I’d say that we ought to have the numbers we need within the next two weeks—possibly three. I’ll be surprised, frankly, if we can pull them together much more rapidly than that. On the other hand, we’ve rather persistently surprised ourselves with how quickly things came together ever since we finally found this terminus.”

“So I understand.” Zachary nodded pensively, then pursed her lips as she considered the time estimate. It was considerably better than she’d anticipated, she reflected. Which ought to make everyone—with the possible exception of Dame Melina—happy. She suppressed a sour smile at the thought and turned her attention to Jefferson and Thatcher.

“Well, Wilson. The boffins seem to be holding up their end. Are we holding up ours?”

“Actually,” the exec replied with what she suddenly realized was studied calm, “I believe we might reasonably say that we are, Skipper.”

“Ah?” Zachary arched both eyebrows, and Jefferson grinned. He was obviously pleased about something, but Zachary had known him for quite some time. It was equally apparent to her that his pleasure was less than complete. In fact, she seemed to sense an undertone of what could almost be anxiety.

“You’re the one who put it together, Rochelle,” he told Thatcher. “Suppose you break it to her?”

“Yes, Sir,” Thatcher said with a smile of her own, then seemed to sober slightly as she turned to her captain.