The Valiant came under immediate scrutiny. After the initial wave of euphoria, some members concluded that Kim had dragged them along on a frivolous—and deranged—mission. But Flexner’s reputation held the day. Matt was solid, down-to-earth, not one to be swept off his feet. There might therefore be something to the story.

Eventually, after everyone had had a chance to look at the microship, she cautioned them against attempting to take it apart, and secured it inside a glass case in one of the unused rooms on the top floor. Reluctantly, she activated an alarm system.

“Not a good idea,” Matt told her, “to signal that you don’t trust your people.”

She knew that. She apologized to them but explained that she knew they were scientists and that the temptation might be overwhelming. “We need it intact,” she said. And then she explained the real purpose of the mission. “We’re going to give it back to them.”

Eyes widened and people started to argue. Tesla Duchard, the biologist, looked as if she were going into shock.

But Kim defended her view, and to his credit, Matt supported her. “The Hunter mission did a lot of damage,” he said. “If we can rectify that, and establish a constructive relationship, we’ll come away with far more than a busted ship.”

There was some grumbling, but in the end they bought it.

Sandra Leasing, who designed and built star drives, concluded that the Valiant used a transdimensional entry system that was in no way different from their own. “Probably,” she said, “there is no other way to manage things.”

“The real question for me,” said Mona Vasquez, a psychologist, “is the missing propulsion tubes. How does it travel in normal space?”

“Only one way I can think of,” said Terri Taranaka, a physicist, “if you’re not throwing something out the rear, you have to throw something out the front, something to pull you along.”

“And what would that be?” asked Maurie.

“A gravity field. You create a gravity field along the intended course, just as we create one in here. And you fall forward into it.”

“Do we have that kind of capability?” asked Tesla.

“We do,” said Matt. “But we couldn’t generate a strong enough field to make it practical. In time, though, it’d be a good way to go. If only because you wouldn’t have to take along a load of reaction mass.”

Kim ran the Hunter logs for the team and enjoyed hearing them gasp when the celestial pilot appeared. “Cho-cho-san,” said Terri. “Butterfly.”

They discussed the Hunter’s reaction to its unexpected find and began considering what might await them, and how best to respond.

She decided also that it would be necessary to tell them about Woodbridge’s effort to seize the Valiant. When they reemerged into realspace in the vicinity of Alnitak, they’d undoubtedly receive an official message demanding return of the artifact. And she had to inoculate them against that. Especially, she had to win Ali over.

But she waited for the right time. They passed the midway point of the journey on a Thursday, and marked the event by throwing a party. This group turned out to be big on parties, and Kim liked that. The atmosphere in the ship remained festive and there was a lot of talk about being at the intersection of epochs. That was Gil’s terminology. Gil was aloof and formal, and quickly earned a reputation for being cooler than the AIs he created and serviced. Kim had known him for years, and he seemed to her to be a particularly selfish man, dedicated exclusively to advancing his own priorities. But it happened, on this occasion, that his priorities were in sync with hers.

Toward the end of the party, Paul McKeep commented that it was a good thing the Institute had kept the existence of the ship quiet. “The government’s too conservative,” he said. “They’d never have allowed us away from the dock.” Paul was their mathematician.

Kim threw a sidelong glance at Ali to make sure he was listening. Then she raised her voice slightly: “There’s something you folks ought to know.”

“Something else?” laughed Mona.

“Yes,” she said. “We didn’t quite succeed in keeping a lid on the Valiant. Woodbridge found out about it and tried to take it from me.”

“How’d you manage to keep it out of his hands?” asked Ali.

“I gave him a duplicate.”

That brought a round of laughter.

But Ali never cracked a smile. “You know what that means,” he said.

“Yes.” Kim looked directly into his dark eyes. “When we make the jump, we’ll find a recall waiting for us.”

He frowned, turned, and left the room. The others fell silent. Kim looked at Matt, intending to follow him, and make sure he would resist pressure from home.

But Matt shook his head. No, he was saying. This is not the time.

There was an echo to the voyage. Kim could not repress memories of the flight with Solly. The distances tended to collapse, as if she were on a train running through dark but familiar countryside, and the landmarks were all abstract, temporal, racing by. Places she’d been before. Here we were playing chess and Solly kept winning so I got annoyed. And there was where we finally beat Veronica King to the solution, in the case of “The Haunted Balcony.”

She knew when they arrived at the place where Kim’s image, as Clea, had performed the torchlight dance.

Stupid. Somewhere she had been incredibly stupid and had let it all slip through her fingers.

They spent most of their time devising their contact strategy. They intended to begin broadcasting as soon as they arrived, to ensure they couldn’t be missed. A new kind of Beacon Project, Kim thought.

They debated endlessly how best to establish a syntax and vocabulary. “We don’t want to play more number games,” Gil Chase reminded them.

They knew the two technologies had a common system for exchanging audio and visual signals. “We can use pictures in the beginning,” Eric Climer said. He was a linguist. “But it would have been helpful,” he complained to Kim, “if I had known in advance what this was about. I could have brought the proper software.”

They formulated lists of questions to ask once a common language had been devised. How far back can you trace your history? To even begin to phrase that question they’d have to work out a joint system for measuring time.

Where are you from?

“No,” said Maurie, “don’t ask that. It sounds too much like intelligence-gathering.”

“What do we do,” asked Sandra, “if they put that kind of question to us?”

“Considering what’s already happened,” said Paul, “we’d better avoid giving them any information of that nature.”

Kim nodded. “I agree.” She didn’t want to be responsible for the arrival of an invasion fleet if they encountered a worst-case scenario.

“But if they get the idea we don’t trust them,” said Matt, “how can we expect them to trust us?”

“We can’t,” said Mona. “But we don’t need a great deal of mutual trust. At least not in the beginning. They’ll certainly understand our reluctance to divulge that kind of information. I think our best approach to this is to be honest.”

“So what other questions,” asked Terri, “do we want answered?”

“Is there anyone else?” said Ali. “Have they found anybody else out there?”

“Your ships seem to have armaments. Why?”

“What’s your explanation for order in the universe? For the existence of the universe itself? Why isn’t there nothing?”

“Have you been able to establish the existence of alternate universes? If so, have you been able to learn anything about them?”

“Do you believe life has a spiritual dimension?”

“How are you going to define ‘spiritual?’” asked Mona. No one had any idea.

“What do you do with your leisure time?”