“But Maya is awake now,” Ato explained. “We had time on our side before. Now, if he gets away from us he can live out his days on some obscure planet. The years will pass like a whirlwind—while we go dashing this way and that, and in a surprisingly short time our willing and unwilling fugitives will have lived out their lives. They have the vagaries of time, space, and speed upon their side.”
Nea laughed. “Even as I said before.” She gave Jack Odin a searching look, but Odin avoided her gaze—
“Then, what have you done?” Odin asked.
“All that I could do under the circumstances. I have a fix upon him. We sapped all the energy from Aldebaran that we could. We have power enough, but there are no stars nearby. As I said before, he is heading for a dust-cloud. There, both ships can replenish their energy. After that we will have to stick close by him and see what happens. After all, we are behind him. By the old Airmen’s rule of thumb, a ship with another upon its tail is a hundred percent loss.”
“Only at that moment,” Odin corrected. “If not destroyed, it has a chance to improve its percentage when the pursuer has made its pass.”
“True enough,” Ato admitted. “That is why I propose to stay close behind it. I can’t seem to find that dust cloud on any map. It must be far, far away.”
Nea laughed again. “What is far? What is near? You do not even have catch-words for Trans-Space. You are looking into the books of the advanced classes, and you have not yet opened the primers of space.”
Ato flushed in anger. “Nea, I was my father’s helper for years and years. I know as much about space as any man.”
She shrugged. “Oh, you can cover blackboards with formulas, and I don’t doubt that they will be right. But living things and living emotions demand something to cling to. A measuring stick. Grim Hagen tried to give them something substantial back there: A system of brutality and graft that worked for the last-minute Caesars. He even threw in a goddess. Did he succeed?”