“It should be all right,” said Trevelyan. “I think I removed the associated panic. It was due to sheer strangeness,
not to personal menace.” Then be turned away, and his features hardened with thought.
“Wbat’ve we got?” asked Joachim.
“Well,” said Trevelyan, “apparently these X beings
think on a varving band and wave-form; Ilaloa caught only such fragments as were similar to her race Is pattern. The
fact may tell us something about the thinker-I’m not sure yet. What’s more important is this star picture. It represents another region of space-presumably the home sky of X.”
“Ummm, that’s obvious.” Joachim considered the drawing. ‘We’ve got a damn good clue, then. Let’s see. The sbiningness is a bright gaseous nebula, of course, and the remote spiral is probably the Andromeda galaxy. That very bright star could only be Canopus, if you’re in the Cross region, and here’s the same dent in the Milky Way you can see from here.” He gestured to a viewscreen overhead, blackness and the ghostly bridge of stars.
“In short,” said Trevelyan with a note of triumph, “we’ve got a pretty good idea of where the enemy lives.”
“Uh-huh. I think more can be done with this. Hey,
Manuel!”
The young astrogator looked up. Joachim folded the drawing into a paper airplane and shot it over to him. “Find me this part of space as accurately as you can,” directed the captain. “Use all our star tables and computers if you have to, but identify it within a centimeter of its life.”
CHAPTER XI[
The Storm
‘nME WAS LOST.
Within the ship, there was always light, cool glow in
the halls and public rooms, someone walking by on an er-
rand or Sitting and waiting in patience. Darkness came only when switches were turned in the homes.
Outside, a night of stars, enormous and eternal.
There was no time. Clocks rounded a weary cycle, telling off the meaningless hours and days, but for man there was only waking and sleeping, eating, working, idling, waiting. The old dreamed of what had been and the young of what was to be, but the now was forever.
A few incidents were sharp in Trevelyan’s memory. There were some of the talks be had had with Nomads, Joachim before all, tales of faring in the cold Galactic splendor. There were his trips with Nickil prowling the labyrinthine corridors of the ship.
There was the time a dark young man with unhappy eyes, Abbey Roberto, had searched out the Coordinator and warned him that Ilaloa was a witch. Trevelyan remembered Sean’s account of Roberto having overheard something about telepathy. There had been mutterings and sidelong glances when Ilaloa passed by. And the mounting tension aboard ship as they plunged into mystery could unsettle stabler rninds than these.
At least the Peregiine had a fairly definite goal now. The point in space from which the sky should look as Ilaloa’s vision said could be identified within a few tens of lightyear,-. At full crusing speed, it lay about six weeks’ journey from Erulan.
A month passed. It could have been a week or a century, but the clocks said it was a month.
They were in the park, four of them together talking and wanting companionship. Nicki sat cross-legged beside Trevelyan, linldng an arm with his. Opposite them was Sean, Ilaloa leaning against his side.
The park was the largest division of the ship aside from cargo space and, after the byper-engines, the most impressive. It filled ninety degrees of hull curvature on the outermost deck, and its length reached a hundred and twenty meters from the bows. But that was necessary.
rand or sitting and waiting in patience. Darkness came only when switches were turned in the homes.
Outside, a night of stars, enormous and eternal.
There was no time. Clocks rounded a weary cycle, telling off the meaningless hours and days, but for man there was only waking and sleeping, eating, working, idling, waiting. The old dreamed of what had been and the young of what was to be, but the now was forever.
A few incidents were sharp in Trevelyan’s memory. There were some of the talks be had bad with Nomads, Joachim before all, tales of faring in the cold Galactic splendor. There were his trips with Nicki, prowling the labyrinthine corridors of the ship.