"Report!"
"Report slight increase in phanoradiation high in the subnuclear region. Cross semi-collateral traces indicating an increase in lower-level nuclear activity."
The squawk box clicked off and Dusty looked with puzzlement at Gant Nerley. "What was all that?" he pleaded.
"He means that Transgalactic is hard at work. The lower level of nuclear reactions has increased in intensity, meaning in simple prediction that the business of making a variable star out of Sol is under way."
The Marandanian with the filar micrometer on the barytrine detector grumbled. "It's going to be a bit rough."
"Why?" asked the pilot. "If it weren't for that barytrine we'd never find Sol out of that mess dead ahead. We'd be canvassing the stellar region around there for weeks if we didn't have a focal point—"
"I know," grunted the detector operator. "First you need a barytrine field large enough to make a homing run on, but then once you're home you'll want a tiny one so you can locate the generator precisely. Well, you can't have 'em both, Jann."
Jann Wilkor shook his head. "I wish I'd made this run before. I could make it faster."
Gant pointed at the screen and nudged Dusty. The color-scale was still high in the blue-violet and there were a couple of places on the viewpanel that were a dead black, tiny spots that did not move as Jann Wilkor's delicate touch corrected the course. Spots burned out of the substance of the panel like over-exposed film burned through.
"It takes a master pilot to make a run this fast. Even so, we're taking a rather high risk. But if the channel was free and open from Marandis to Spiral Cluster, with only a big phanobeacon at either end, we could make it with the screen burning black-violet. We may even have to develop a new supraradiant material for ultra-high velocities."