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Please confirm your understanding of this declaration."
    "I—" Mannheim gulped. "I understand. No more questions."
    "Good." The number two dog sat down again, and unconcernedly set about licking the inside of its right hind leg. "The other units of this pack are not cognizant of these affairs. They're just simple secret police dogs. You are not to trouble them with unpleasant questions. This debriefing is at an end.
    I believe you have a ship to run?"
    IMPACT: T plus 1393 days, 02 hours, 01 minutes

    Wednesday watched the end of the world with her parents and half the occupants of the Rose Deck canteen. The tables and benches had been deflated and pushed back against one wall while the ship was under boost.
    Now a large screen had been drawn across the opposite wall and configured with a view piped down from the hub sensor array. She had wanted to watch on her own personal slate, but her parents had dragged her along to the canteen: it seemed like most people didn't want to be alone for the jump. Not that anybody would know it had happened—contrary to dramatic license, there was absolutely no sensation when a starship tunneled between two equipotent locations across the light years—but there was something symbolic about this one. A milestone they'd never see again.
    "Herman?" she subvocalized.
    "I'm here. Not for much longer. You'll be alone after the jump."
    "I don't understand. Why?" Jeremy was staring at her so she grimaced horribly at him. He jumped back, right into the wall, and his mother glared at him.
    "Causal channels don't work after a jump outside their original light cone: they're instantaneous communicators, but they don't violate causality. Move the entangled quantum dots apart via FTL and you break the quantum entanglement they rely on. As I speak to you through one that is wired into your access implant, and that is how you speak to me, I will be out of contact for some time after you arrive. However you are in no danger as long as you remain in the evacuation area and do nothing to attract attention."
    She rolled her eyes. As invisible friends went, Herman could do an unpleasantly good imitation of a pompous youth leader. Dark emptiness sprinkled with the jewel points of stars covered the far wall, a quiet surf of conversation rippling across the beach of heads in front of her. A familiar chill washed through her: too many questions, too little time to ask them.
    "Why did they let me go?"
    "You were not recognized as a threat. If you were, I would not have asked you to go. Forgive me. There is little time remaining. What you achieved was more important than I can tell you, and I am grateful for it."
    "So what did I accomplish? Was it really worth it for those papers?"
    "I cannot tell you yet. The first jump is due in less than two minutes. At that point we lose contact. You will be busy after that: Septagon is not like Old Newfoundland. Take care: I will be in touch when the time is right."
    "Is something wrong, Vicki?" With a start she realized her father was watching her.
    "Nothing, Dad." Instinctive dismissal: Where did he learn to be so patronizing? "What's going to happen?"
    Morris Strowger shrugged. "We, uh, have to make five jumps before we arrive where we're going. The first—" He swallowed. "Home, uh, the explosion, is off to one side. You know what a conic section is?"
    "Don't talk down to me." She nearly bit her tongue when she saw his expression. "Yes, Dad. I've done analytic geometry."
    "Okay. The explosion is expanding in a sphere centered on, on, uh, home.
    We're following a straight line—actually, a zigzag around a straight line between equipotent points in space-time—from the station, which is outside the sphere, to Septagon, which is outside the sphere of the explosion but on the other side. Our first jump takes us within the sphere of the explosion, about three light months inside it. The next jump takes us back out the other side."
    "We're going into the explosion?"
    Morris