"A thousand suns—and only a handful of usable worlds in the whole lot of them. Not much for a race that's grown as fast as ours has. And to some of us, I guess, subspace will never be quite the same as the one we grew up in—and came to know and love." Hawkins shook his head sadly.
"But if they find us?" Broussard insisted.
"Well, at least we'll have had time to prepare. Perhaps a year, perhaps ten, perhaps a thousand. But we beat them this time, and maybe we can do it again."
For a long time he continued to stare quietly into the blackness. "I just don't know...."