"I'm trying. I know the ship is familiar, but I've looked it over. Maybe I'm trying too hard."
"You flew her from earth until we went into suspension," he said.
"I can't remember when," I said. I held the trembling girl against me, shaking my head.
He glanced at the girl. "If the calculations are right it was more than a hundred years ago."
We assembled in the control room for a council. We were all a little better for being together. John Croft named the others for me. I searched each face without recognition. The blond man was Carl Herrick, a metallurgist. His lean face was white from his spell but he was better. Paul Sample was a biologist, John said. He was lithe and restless, with dark eyes that studied the rest of us. I looked at the girl. She was staring out of the ports, her hands pressed against the transparent break in the smooth wall. Karen Thiesen was a chemist, now frightened and trying to remember.
I wasn't in much better condition. "Look, if it comes too fast for me, for any of us, we'll stop. John, you can lead off."
"You ask the questions," he said.
I indicated the ship. "Where in creation are we going?"
"We set out from Earth for a single star in the direction of the center of our Galaxy."
"From Earth? How could we?"