Yet not a one of them had questioned him. They might not have a clue about what he was up to, but they were obviously prepared to go along with him even in the absence of any explanation.

He looked up as someone walked by his command chair. It was Gruber, and Bachfisch smiled and beckoned for his executive officer to step a little closer.

“Yes, Skipper?” Gruber said quietly.

“Where do you think this fellow is headed?” Bachfisch asked, waving a hand at the single icon glowing on the tactical repeater plot.

“I haven’t got the faintest idea,” Gruber admitted. “There are a lot of places he could be headed to out this way. The only problem is that I can’t think of a single reason for a Peep to be going to any of them. Or not any reasons I’d like, anyway.”

“Um.” Bachfisch rubbed his chin for a few moments, then reached out and punched a command into the touchpad on the arm of his chair. The tactical repeater reconfigured to a navigational display, and he punched another key, shifting it from maneuvering to astrographic mode.

“Look here,” he invited, and his index finger tapped the bright green line of the Havenite destroyer’s projected course. Gruber leaned over the plot, and Bachfisch tapped the course line again.

“You pointed out that there were a lot of places he could be headed,” the captain said. “But he started changing course about an hour ago, and on his new heading, there don’t seem to be any.”

“Skipper, he’s got to be going somewhere,” Gruber objected.

“Oh, he’s going somewhere, all right. Only I don’t think it’s to any of the settled systems out here.”

“What?” Gruber blinked, then looked up from the plot to meet his CO’s eyes. “Why not? And where do you think he’s headed?”

“First,” Bachfisch said reasonably, “like you, I can’t think of a single reason for a Havenite warship to be headed for any of the inhabited systems out this way. Second, he’s angling steadily across this grav wave, heading roughly southwest. If he maintains his present course, he’s going to separate from the wave in the middle of nowhere, Jinchu. He’s not headed to pick up another wave, and according to our charts, there’s not an inhabited system within a good seven or eight light-years of where he’ll leave this one. Which suggests to me that he’s probably headed right about here.”

He tapped another light code on the display. It was the small red-orange starburst that indicated a K-class main sequence star, but it lacked the green circle which denoted an inhabited system, and no name appeared beside it. Instead, there was only a catalog number.

“Why do you think he should be headed there, Skipper?” Gruber asked intently.

“I could say it’s because it lies within less than a light-year and a half of the point at which his projected course leaves the wave. But that’s not really the question you’re asking, is it Jinchu?”