He scrambled to his feet, his mind in a whirl. Forgotten temporarily were the emergency orders commanding them to return to Earth. If Villainowski had been right, then Saxon had actually relived an event which had transpired before he was eleven.
Then who the hell was he?
He returned to the control room, stepping over the unconscious body of Murdock, who had not yet recovered from the effects of the time field.
The dial on the control board read 1.3 parsecs!
He jumped for the scanner, clamped his eye to the aperture, and immediately jumped back!
Dead ahead was a huge blazing sun!
It looked so close that the Shooting Star appeared to be falling straight into the maw of erupting atomic energy.
But reason returned, and he knew they must still be millions of miles away. He went back to the scanner, spotting first a second sun not so close, then a third, small and red like a fiery coin.
The ternary system of Alpha Centauri! They were out of the Solar System!
"Please," said a girl's voice behind him. "Stand back from the scanner! Don't try for your gun, Saxon, or I will be forced to shoot!"