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the Norway incapacitated? Could she be saved? Was she so badly contaminated that she should not be saved? If they were to make the attempt to save her, would they have time to decontaminate the ship? Assuming the contamination was of a controllable nature. Nothing was known. Everything was assumption.
    The procedure books provided some useful guidelines to follow, but every situation was unique. And this one was probably off the map, out of the manuals and deep into unknown territory. Captain Parsons wasn’t afraid of the challenge; on the contrary, it both intrigued and excited her—but she was also aware that a high-risk situation meant the possibility of fatalities and that was the one part of the job she could never be
comfortable with. The human cost. No matter how careful the precautions they took, there were always possibilities.
    Her coffee had gone cold again. She replaced the top on her mug and put it back in its holder on her chair arm.
    She turned her attention back to her display. The probes continued to accelerate, racing ahead, sacrificing themselves in a high-speed interception, crossing the path of the Norway as close as possible, scanning her in a series of high-speed flybys, and then shooting off irretrievably into flame and distance. The signals from the probes would tell them if there was still life aboard the Norway .
    If there was, they would continue their interception. If not, then Parsons had the option of breaking off and heading back out to space. In this case, it would mean shutting down the plasma drives, ceasing to decelerate and continuing up and out past the course of the Norway , away from the red giant and out beyond the gravitational corona where they could safely jump back into hyperstate—and continue on to their next rendezvous.
    Parsons bent to her personal display and watched as the tracks of the probes approached the orbit of the Norway . There were two blips on each line—the first blip was the projection of the real-time position of the torpedo, the second blip was the time-delayed information received from the missile. At this distance, the blips on each line were less than a half-second apart.
    â€œReceiving five by five. Thirty seconds ...”
    â€œPut it on the main display.”
    The forward view opened up, became the view from the leading torpedo. To one side was a dim pink glare; the corona of the red star. To the other side, darkness. The glare washed out everything else—all except a single pinpoint of light, moving slowly downward toward the center of the image, growing brighter ...
    â€œTwenty seconds.”
    A green target circle appeared around the moving object. Down the left side of the image, acquisition numbers scrolled up in a blur too fast to read. A telescopic lens shifted into place and the shape of the distant vessel became clear.
    â€œTen seconds ... nine ... eight ...” Tor counted methodically. “Five ... four ... three ...”
    The flyby itself proved to be anticlimactic. The probes were traveling so fast in relation to the Norway that the starship flashed past almost too quickly to see. The display showed a quick flare of reflected
light—the probe-torpedoes had aimed pseudo-white lasers as they’d passed. The three probes had bracketed the starship in an equilateral triangle. Their combined scans would provide the Star Wolf with a three-dimensional view of the ship, in case there was visible damage or other conditions that might affect the rescue operation. Their internal scans should also show if there was any evidence of life still aboard the vessel.
    â€œAll right,” said Parsons. “Let’s look at the visual first. HARLIE?”
    The forward display flickered to show the probe-torpedo flyby again, this time in slow-motion. The torpedoes had passed within a kilometer of the crippled vessel, close enough to light it up as bright as daylight with their spotlights. Three separate views of the