"And then what?" she said. "We get them back and then what?" Her hands were heavy. The silver mote overhead, shining in the light of Alpha, was implacable.
"What else is there?" said Docchi with an attempt at cheerfulness. "We'll get them back, every person, and then we'll go on. To the next star and the next, and if we have to, the one after that. Somewhere we'll find a place."
Jeriann touched him wonderingly. "I love you for saying that. I love you anyway, but particularly for saying that."
He seemed to shrink, flaming where she touched him, fiery fingertips on his face. "You know?" he said dully.
"Yes. For quite a while now. Anti suspects too. I think we all do. This was our last chance, wasn't it?"
He couldn't look at her. "We shouldn't have stopped. The next star surely would have been the place."
"Place," said Jeriann. "It wasn't your fault. Why do you suppose we were so eager to agree with you? We knew the longer we went on the more we were at a disadvantage."
It was so drearily obvious that nearly everyone had some inkling of the truth. The Star Victory was not the only ship of its class; some were rusting in the spaceyards and some were in use as interplanetary freighters. And if the Star Victory could be converted easily, why not the others?
A new drive to replace the obsolete one? Order it and with a little switching around in the manufacturing plants, diverting it from other uses, it was delivered tomorrow and completely installed the day after that. The command unit the accidentals had labored so long to alter? Every dinky little office had as good and in many cases all that was required was changing the information spools. And thousands of crews were available, already trained, used to working together. It wouldn't be hard to recruit them and add a few officers at the top and a staff of linguists and scientists.
Nona had given them the one thing they needed and now mankind was exploding into space. There was no end in sight. The whole neighboring sphere of space that enveloped the solar system was due for immediate exploration.