“I’m just saying that it’s not that simple. The question you’re not asking is whether we have a moral obligation to help New New.”

“So do we?”

“I say yes.”

Eliot paused and chose his words slowly. “I wouldn’t say yes or no categorically. The decision will have to be tempered by practical matters. What would you do, for instance, if we got a weak message pleading that we turn around and come back—saying they needed our antimatter to fuel their life support systems?”

“No question. We’d have to go back.”

An engineer laughed; Eliot restrained himself. “Well, that was kind of a trick question. By the time we decelerated, then accelerated back up to speed, then flipped and decelerated again … there wouldn’t be hardly any anti-matter left. And it would be at least three years before we got back to them, blasting every inch of the way; if they could hold out that long, they could juryrig some solar energy source. That’s not even considering what I think would be the most likely scenario—that the message was a hoax, an attempt to lure us back into the arms of the people who tried to kill us. That is what they did, even if their intent was something more subtle.”

“And we’re not out of danger yet,” Viejo said, “not by a long way. Personally, I think that if New New calls, we should ignore them.” There was a low murmur of support.

“Let’s not spend too much time on hypothetical situations,” Seven said. “First we have to decide our best course of action if we don’t hear from them in the next two months.”

“What if we shut down the drive now?” O’Hara said. “That would give us more than two months’ leeway.”

“About five,” Eliot admitted. “But you gotta keep in mind this is no shuttle tug you can turn on and off. Every time we deviate from the planned program we’re inviting trouble.” He looked around. “Show of hands? How many want to turn it off now?”

Only seven raised their hands, O’Hara and one other giving the thumb-and-finger “split-vote” sign. One of them was the propulsion engineer Sato. Eliot nodded at him. “I know what you’re going to say. Go ahead and say it.”

“Yes. Eliot and I have argued about this. Several of us believe we can modify the drive; double its efficiency. This would increase our acceleration by the square root of two. Or even quadruple the efficiency, doubling our acceleration, which would save us thirty-four years of travel time. Many of you would still be young when you arrived at Epsilon.” Sato was over ninety.

“But all of your research materials are gibberish.”