Cragin laughed and laughed until he fell unconscious.
VI
It had been, as closely as he could tell, nine years.
Nine years of aimless—no, helpless, wandering from planet to planet, from sun to sun, flying tight-rope between countless dimensions, following his fantastic escape from the realm of the Owners. He should feel excitement now; should want to laugh until he deafened himself because even now, swimming palely in the field of his forward electronoscope was the solar system, his system; HOME.
Luck, chance, whatever you wanted to call it, he was home. Stumbled on it, of course, as he had stumbled his entire way the length, depth and time of all creation. He should laugh, but there was no strength for laughter. There was just a tranquil kind of acceptance, a mould of thought into which Cragin had long since forced his mind, in order to retain his sanity as he ran the never ending gamut of change which was the very fabric of the infinity in which he had plodded.
Home.
A place of torture and of slow death, but at least a place where he might die among his own kind.
Had he not been barely minutes through the Barrier with the comptometers still warm, the insistent radar signal wouldn't have been worth its interruption of his thoughts.
But anything so close to the Barrier demanded at least cursory investigation. He flicked a radar panel relay to TRACK.