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No, he wasn't buying all that just yet but if Maulbow was not lying, then the unseen stars were racing past, the mass of the galaxy beginning to slide by, eventually to be lost forever beyond a black distance no space drive could span. The matter simply had to be settled quickly.

There might have been sufficient opportunity for Maulbow to study them and alter them, for some purpose of his own, since he'd come aboard.... "I've got the ship compartments and decks sealed off from each other now," Gefty said slowly. "The only connecting points from one to the other are personnel hatches they're small air locks. So the janandra's confined to the storage deck.

Maulbow brought out from the Hub with him had some very expensive instruments in them. That's all I know. He's always trusted me not to pry into his business any more than my secretarial duties required, and of course I haven't." "You don't know then what it was he brought up from that moon a few hours ago those two big cases he stowed away in the vault?" "No, I don't, Gefty.

He positioned the autosurgeon behind the head of the bed to allow the device to begin its analysis, stood back at its controls where he could both follow the progress it made and watch Maulbow without exciting him further by remaining within his range of vision. After a moment, the surgeon shut off the first-aid instruments and made unobtrusive use of a heavy tranquilizing drug. Then it waited.

Unless, he told himself silently, they'd wound up in a distant cluster never penetrated by the Federation's mapping teams. And there was the other little question of where they now were in time. But Kerim looked rosy with relief, and those details could wait. He took up another emergency light, switched it on and said, "I'll see how Maulbow is doing while we're waiting for power.

If it's come out of the vault, it might be a nuisance until I can get equipment to handle it. But that isn't too serious. The spacesuits are on the second deck, and I'll get into one before I go on to the storage. You wait here a moment, I'll look in on Maulbow again before I start." If Maulbow wasn't still unconscious, he was doing a good job of feigning it.

And we want it to happen as soon as possible because, if Maulbow was telling the truth on that point, every minute that passes here is taking us farther away from the Hub, and farther from our own time towards his." Kerim nodded, eyes intent on his face. "Now I can't just go down there and start slapping switches around on the thing," Gefty went on.

His gaze rested for a moment on the wall table, shifted back to Gefty. Maulbow came on into the room, turning towards Gefty, mouth twisting. He said softly, "It is not our practice, Rammer, to share the secrets of the Great Current with other races. I hadn't foreseen that you might become a dangerous nuisance. But now " His right hand began to lift, half closed about some small golden instrument.

But no sound came from the sack. Gefty called angrily, "Maulbow " "Don't excite yourself, Rammer." There was a suggestion of what might be contempt in Maulbow's tone now. "The girl hasn't been harmed. She can breathe easily through the restrainer. And you can remove it by pulling at the material from outside." Gefty's mouth tightened. "I'll keep my gun on the passage while I do it "

Also according to Maulbow, there was a race of the future, human in appearance, with machines to sail the current of time through the universe to run and tack with the winds of time, dipping in and out of the normspace of distant periods and galaxies as they chose.