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maintained a continuous listening watch as well as putting out distress calls at regular intervals. I suppose somebody might just pick them up a few years from now."

    "Space is vast," said Grimes.

    "You're telling me, Buster! But surely Delamere was able to give accurate coordinates for the position of the derelict when we boarded her—when we tried to board her, rather—even if he didn't want to risk his own precious hide investigating . . . ."

    "We've been over all this before," said Grimes.

    "Then we'll go over it again, lover boy."

    "Nobody survives a nuclear explosion at Position Zero, as we were," said Grimes.

    "Are you trying to suggest that we're dead and in some sort of spaceman's heaven? Ha, ha. It certainly ain't no policewoman's paradise!"

    Grimes ignored this. In any case, the double negative made her meaning unclear (he told himself). He went on, "And Delamere had his schedule to maintain . . . ." Even so, Delamere must have reported the destruction of Delta Geminorum to Base. And Base must have dispatched a properly equipped vessel to the scene of the disaster to gather whatever evidence, no matter how little, remained, even though it was only radioactive dust and gases.

    But why had the boat, and its occupants, not been reduced to that condition?

    She broke into his thoughts, remarking, "As I've said before, I'm not a spaceman."

    He looked across the table at her spectacular superstructure. "Insofar as gender is concerned, how very right you are!"

    She pointedly ignored this. "I'm not a spaceman, but I do remember some of the things that you people have condescended to tell me, from time to time, about the art and science of astronautics. More than once people have nattered to me about the peculiar consequences of changing the mass of a ship while the Mannschenn Drive is in operation."

    "Old spacemen's tales!" scoffed Grimes.

    "Really? Then how is it that in every ship that I've traveled in people have regarded that cock-eyed assemblage of precessing gyroscopes with superstitious awe? You're all scared of it. And what about the odd effects when the Drive is started, and the temporal precession field builds up, not when it's stopped, and the field fades? The feeling of déjà vu . . . The flashes of precognition . . ." She started to laugh. "What's so funny?"

    "I had a real beaut aboard Skink. I saw you out of uniform. When I saw you for the first time out of uniform, in actuality, it was in this boat. But I'd already seen that scar you have on your right thigh. But that isn't the funny part. In my . . . vision you were not only naked, but riding a bicycle . . ."

    " Very funny. As a matter of fact I saw you the same way. But bicycles are one article of equipment that this boat doesn't run to."

    "All right. Let's forget the bicycles. Maybe someday we'll enjoy a holiday on Arcadia together. I suppose the Arcadians ride bicycles as well as practicing naturalism. But Delta Geminorum . . . . She was running under interstellar drive when she blew up. So were we, maintaining temporal synchronization with her."

    "Go on."

    "I'm only a glorified cop, John, but it's obvious, even to me, that a few thousand tons of mass were suddenly converted into energy in our immediate vicinity. So, Mr. Lieutenant Commander Grimes, where are we?"

    Grimes was beginning to feel badly scared. "Or when . . .  ?" he muttered.

    "What the hell do you mean?"

    He said, "Brace yourself for yet another lecture on the Mannschenn Drive. The Mannschenn Drive warps the Continuum—the space-time continuum—about the ship that's using it. Putting it very crudely, such a ship is going astern in time while going ahead in space . . . ."

    "So . . . . So we could be anywhere. Or anywhen. But you're a navigator. You should be able to find out something from the relative positions of the stars."

    "Not so easy," he told her. "The Carlotti transceiver, which can be used for position finding as well as