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nearby stars.
    Kingsley was atypically silent. Apparently he had decided to “hang about” for a few days out of curiosity.
    Coaxed, Kingsley said, “Admittedly, all along I had thought that it would turn out to be a relativistic jet—yes, my favorite object. Indeed, one pointed very nearly straight at us. That would neatly explain its huge luminosity. Also, we would naturally see all the jet’s variations as occurring quickly, as they would be time-squeezed by relativity. Alas”—a touch of the theatrical here, holding a pen aloft like a phony sword—“it was not to be.”
    The gamma-ray signature had surfaced as crucial, and within hours Kingsley had a new idea.
    “Let us face facts, uncomfortable as they may be to conventional views,” he began to a small band in the seminar room, including Amy and Benjamin at the front. “It makes no sense if you suppose this is an object passing through the interstellar medium, a very thin gas. It would emit radiation, then, because it was striking objects in its way. A quick calculation”—he proceeded to produce this in quick, jabbing strokes on a blackboard as he spoke—“shows that one needs to expend only a trivial amount of power to overcome the friction of the interstellar hydrogen.” He dropped the chalk dramatically. “There is simply not enough matter nearby our solar system for it to run into.”
    He turned to the audience, which agreed. Or at least nodded; Kingsley’s reputation for incisive analysis was enough to silence the timid. Several were checking his numbers and did not look up.
    Channing had heard the news and was sitting in on the impromptu seminar that had developed spontaneously down the hall from Benjamin’s office. She saw her chance and stepped into the silence. “Okay, then we have to look elsewhere. It’s reasonably nearby, or else it couldn’t possibly be so luminous. So as savvy Kingsley implies, why is it luminous? Because it’s not gliding through, it’s accelerating .”
    Benjamin had not even known that Channing was in the room. He turned to look at her, a spark of uneasy pride at herspeaking up so readily. Uneasy because Kingsley had a reputation for leaving questions hanging, only to knock them down when anyone ventured to take the next step without thinking it through. But this time the narrow, hatchet face showed only real puzzlement as it nodded. Kingsley put his hands behind his back, as if to disarm himself, and said slowly, “Perhaps, but why? There are no unusual signatures near it, nothing to be propelling it forward.”
    Benjamin got her drift. “Exactly. But what if it’s decelerating?”
    Kingsley shot back, “I just showed that the interstellar medium slows things very slowly. Nothing would naturally—”
    Channing broke in. “Suppose it’s not natural? What if it’s a starship?”
    Benjamin’s jaw dropped, but out of loyalty he tried to fill the skeptical silence that greeted her question. “P-passing near us?”
    To his amazement, she rose from her seat and stepped with fragile grace to the front, taking the chalk from Kingsley’s hand. Everyone in the room knew of her illness, but he sensed that her command of them came from the quality that had made her a successful astronaut, a presence he could never name but that he sensed every day. He felt a burst of pride for her and a smile split his face, telltale of a joy he had not felt quite this way for a very long time. Since the illness, in fact.
    This was a mere instant, for Channing did not pause to absorb the regard of the room. Quickly she did her own swift calculation. It all depended upon the source’s intrinsic luminosity. A bright source ten light-years away looked the same as one a light year away and a hundred times dimmer, so—she turned to the audience, neatly jotting L = P/R 2 , and said, “With P the ship’s power demand and R in light-years, we have—” More jotting. “How much does one need to ram a ship through the interstellar