"For your own neck's sake, Shluh," Retief said, "you'd better hope this works." He flipped the sending key.

"2396 TR-42 G, this is the Terrestrial Consul at Groac, aboard Groac 902, vectoring on you at an MP fix of 91/54/94. Can you read me? Over."

"What forlorn gesture is this?" Shluh whispered. "You cry in the night to emptiness!"

"Button your mandibles," Retief snapped, listening. There was a faint hum of stellar background noise. Retief repeated his call, waited.

"Maybe they hear but can't answer," he muttered. He flipped the key.

"2396, you've got twenty seconds to lock a tractor beam on me, or I'll be past you like a shot of rum past a sailor's bridgework...."

"To call into the void!" Shluh said. "To—"

"Look at the DV screen."

Shluh twisted his head, looked. Against the background mist of stars, a shape loomed, dark and inert.

"It is ... a ship!" Shluh said. "A monster ship!"

"That's her," Retief said. "Nine years and a few months out of New Terra on a routine mapping mission. The missing cruiser—the IVS Terrific."

"Impossible!" Shluh hissed. "The hulk swings in a deep cometary orbit."

"Right. And now it's making its close swing past Groac."

"You think to match orbits with the derelict? Without power? Our meeting will be a violent one, if that is your intent."

"We won't hit; we'll make our pass at about five thousand yards."

"To what end, Terrestrial? You have found your lost ship. Then what? Is this glimpse worth the death we die?"

"Maybe they're not dead," Retief said.

"Not dead?" Shluh lapsed into Groacian. "To have died in the burrow of one's youth. To have burst my throat sac ere I embarked with a mad alien to call up the dead."

"2396, make it snappy," Retief called. The speaker crackled heedlessly. The dark image on the screen drifted past, dwindling 

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