Later, strolling among the teeming mobs of Imperial City, Casperdan ventured a hesitant opinion.
“I take it this means it’s not time for me to receive my part of the dream again?”
“Sadly, no, my friend.”
Her tone turned sharp. “Well, what do you intend to do now? We’ve just paid quite an enormous number of credits for a world located in obscurity, around the corner from no place.”
“We shall return to Calder,” said the horse with finality, “and continue to expand and develop the company.” He pulled back thick lips in an equine smile.
“In all the research I did, in all my careful planning and preparation, never once did I consider that the location of the home world might have been lost.
“So now we must go back and hire researchers to research, historians to historize, and ships to search
131
WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE …
and scour the skies in sanguine directions. And wait.”
A year passed, and another, and then they came in small multiples. Dream Enterprises burgeoned and grew, grew and thrived. It moved out of the Stone Crescent and extended its influence into other quadrants. It went into power generation and multiple metallurgy, into core mining and high fashion.
And finally, of necessity, into interstellar shipping.
There came the day when the captain with the stripped-down scoutship was presented to Casperdan and the horse Pericles in their executive office on the two hundred and twentieth floor of the Dream building.
Despite a long, long, lonely journey the captain was alert and smiling. Smiling because the endless trips of dull searching were over. Smiling because he knew the company reward for whoever found a certain aged planet.