"They'll be after us soon enough," said Joris. "We need all the edge we can get."
Trehearne demanded, "Why are we going to Thuvis?"
"Partly," said Edri soberly, "to rescue the men who are rotting away out there. But chiefly because we must have Arrin. You see, Trehearne, he was arrested before he could finish his calculations. When I tried to carry on I added a good bit of my own material—but the missing factor isn't there. Arrin knows it. He must or he couldn't have gone as far as he did. Now if we put our knowledge together—" Edri sighed. "It's been a long, long fight. A thousand years of piecing together lie and legend and hearsay, of hunting down scraps of letters and secret reports, of dredging through tons of irrelevant nonsense in search of one little bit of truth. The Vardda authorities of that day suppressed or destroyed all evidence connected with that last voyage of Orthis. They did their work well. Until now no one has even known in what general sector of the Galaxy that last pursuit took place."
He brooded. "Yes, a long fight. And if we're wrong it means the end of hope in our generation. Others will have to begin the search all over again."
It seemed a cruel question to ask but Trehearne could not keep from it.
"Is there any proof that Orthis' ship still exists at all?"
"No. We only know that it was not destroyed at the time that Orthis outran his pursuers and disappeared. For as I told you, long afterward one of the life-skiffs of his ship was picked up in space, with his defiant last message to the Galaxy in it."
Edri paused, then added, "Do you wonder that we venerate such a man?"
"I think," said Trehearne slowly, "that you have his kind of courage."
"Maybe." Edri laughed. "I do know that I have a most colossal thirst. You didn't forget the wine stores, Joris?"