His fingers tapped out a firing pattern. He hesitated for a moment, his thumb poised over the firing lever.
"Listen, Caroline," be asked, "how much chance have we got?”
"We'll get there," she said.
"No," he snapped, "don't tell me that. Tell me the truth. Have we any chance at all?”
Her eyes met his and her mouth sobered into a thin, straight line.
"Yes, some," she said. "Not quite fifty-fifty. There are so many factors of error, so many factors of accident. Mathematics can't foresee them, can't take care of them, and mathematics are the only signposts that we have.”
He laughed harshly.
"We're shooting at a target, don't you see?" she said. "A target millions of light-years away, and millions of years away as well, and you have to have a different set of co-ordinates for both the time and distance. The same set won't do for both. It's difficult.”
He looked at her soberly. She said it was difficult. He could only faintly imagine how difficult it might be. Only someone who was a master at the mathematics of both time and space could even faintly understand — someone, say, who had thought for forty lifetimes.
"And even if we do hit the place," he said, "it may not be there.”