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the
Seraphim
. It was a gaze that had once struck those upon whom it had fallen with awe or fear, envy or unbounded admiration or a host of other strong emotions. Nowadays it most often inspired only pity. Inwardly, Gibeon Bastrop raged. He could only do so inwardly. It had been nearly two decades since he had been physically capable of expressing extremes of emotion.
    He was not even sure how much of him was original Gibeon Bastrop anymore. So many parts had been replaced; cloned, regrown from his own reluctant tissues, or, where necessary, replaced with synthetics. The brain was still all Gibeon Bastrop, he felt, though even there the physicians and engineers had been forced to tweak and adjust and modify to keep everything functioning properly. They were very good at their work. Gibeon Bastrop could afford the best. If you couldn’t, you were unlikely to live to be 162—next April, Bastrop mused. Or was it May?
    “Mr. Bastrop?”
    “What?” It was Tyrone, badgering him again. Always wanting to give up, that Tyrone. Give up, turn around—although they were so far out now that
around
no longer had any real meaning—and go home. A fine Shipmaster, Tyrone, but easily discouraged. How long had they been searching now? Barely two years, wasn’t it? The youth of today had no patience, Bastrop reflected. None at all. Why, Tyrone was barely in his eighties, far too young to be complaining about time. Let him reach triple digits; these days, you had to earn the right to complain.
    “Mr. Bastrop.” Contrary to the owner’s belief, the Shipmaster possessed considerable patience. He was exercising some of it now. “The Chauna doesn’t exist. It’s bad enough to take us chasing after a fairy story—but an
alien
fairy story?”
    “It is not a fairy story.” Gibeon Bastrop might no longer be capable of raging, but he could still be adamant. “The Cosocagglia are insistent on that point.”
    Shipmaster Tyrone sighed. Outside, beyond the great convex port that fronted on Gibeon Bastrop’s ornate stateroom, stars and nebulae gleamed in other-than-light profusion. There wasn’t a one among them the Shipmaster recognized, and he had been journeying among the starways for more than half a century. The Old Man was taking them farther and farther into the void, closer and closer to nowhere.
    “The Cosocagglia are an ancient species existing in a state of advanced decline. Now if the Vuudd, or even the redoubtable Paquinq, had vouchsafed the existence of the mythical Chauna, I would be more inclined to grant the remote possibility of its existence.” He smiled in what he hoped was a sympathetic manner. “But the Cosocagglia?”
    Gibeon Bastrop’s voice dropped to a mutter. He was tired, even more so than usual. “The Cosocagglia were a great race.”
    “Once.” Tyrone was no longer in any mood to coddle his employer. Like the rest of the crew, he had been too long away from home, was too much in need of blue skies and unrecycled air. “That was tens of thousands of years ago.” He sniffed scornfully. “They no longer even go into space. They have forgotten how, and travel between worlds only when they can book or beg passage on a ship of one of the younger species, like the Helappo or ourselves. They have hundreds of legends from those days. The Chauna is just one of many.”
    He felt sorry for the Old Man, marooned in his motile, no longer able to stand erect even with the aid of neurorganetics. For a hundred years, the name of Gibeon Bastrop had been one to be reckoned with throughout the sapient portion of the galaxy. Inventor, engineer, industrialist, megamogul; his influence and his fame were known even on nonhuman worlds. Now he was a shadow of the self he had been, mentally debased, poor at advanced cogitation, unable to survive more than a few days at a time without an immoderate amount of medicinal attention. The medical provisions and personnel he had brought with him on the
Seraphim
could have equipped a