"Thank you, Alice," Adams said.
He clicked open a drawer and took out the cap, placed it on his head, adjusted it with steady fingers. Thoughts flickered through his brain, disjointed, random thoughts, all faint and faraway. Ghost thoughts drifting through the universe — residual flotsam from the minds of things in time and space that was unguessable.
Adams flinched.
I'll never get used to it, he told himself. I will always duck, like the kid who knows he deserves a cuffing.
The ghost thoughts peeped and chittered at him.
Adams closed his eyes and settled back.
"Hello, Thorne," he thought.
Thorne's thought came in, thinned and scratchy over the space of more than fifty light-years.
"That you, Adams? Pretty weak out here."
"Yes, it's me. What's up?"