He spoke suddenly, to release the tension. “I believe you’re right, Captain. It’s not the ship we need to understand; it’s the Flux. My Narseil colleagues and I have been working very hard to formulate answers—for all of us.” He turned to YZ/I and Tracy-Ace. “We’ll be happy to go over it all with you at your earliest convenience.” But I don’t know how you’re going to take what we have to say.
“The sooner the better,” rumbled the image of YZ/I. “Why don’t you come on down now?”
Tracy-Ace’s implants flickered with intense activity. She cocked her head and raised a hand. “Excellent idea. Lieutenant Zond, would you care to escort—?”
It was probably just as well that Tracy-Ace wasn’t with them, Legroeder thought as they approached YZ/I’s operations center. He had enough to think about right now without wondering what was going on in her mind. Freem’n was at his side, but they’d had no chance to talk privately. Behind them walked all of the Narseil except Agamem, who’d been sent to report back to Commander Fre’geel. Legroeder’s thoughts were starting to percolate with memories of the passage, and a flood of further questions, many of them coming from the implants in his skull. It was going to be hard to keep his head clear for this meeting.
A man was just leaving YZ/I’s command platform as they approached—a dark-haired, red-skinned man. It took Legroeder a moment to place him; he was the one who’d argued with YZ/I and Tracy-Ace during their previous meeting. He searched his memory for the man’s name. Lanyard/GC. Old boyfriend of Tracy-Ace’s or something. A pain in the ass. Legroeder was glad he was leaving, not arriving.
“Thank you for sharing your concerns with me,” YZ/I called after Lanyard, who seemed to give a silent snort. As he passed, Lanyard glanced at Legroeder and the Narseil with what seemed a mix of curiosity and derision.
Legroeder forgot Lanyard as YZ/I boomed out, “Wonderful to see you! All of you! Come in, come in!” The glowing man greeted Legroeder with a hearty handshake. “I was afraid I’d never see you again. And here you are! Incredible mission—just fantastic!” YZ/I’s face rippled with light as he waved them all into the command section of his operations center. He sealed the section off with an opaque force-screen. “So, Legroeder. How’s it feel to be back?”
Legroeder laughed, in spite of himself. “Glad to be here. Glad to be alive.”
“I can imagine,” said YZ/I. He studied Legroeder for a moment. “Nice haircut, by the way. Did you do that yourself?”
Legroeder sighed deeply. He thought he heard the Narseil chuckling behind him. “You could say that, I suppose.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway—we’re here, and we’re ready to report.”
“Excellent.” YZ/I rubbed his hands together expectantly. “I wish I could have been there at the docks in person. But I’m afraid that… well, certain political concerns precluded that. I do apologize. Now, tell me everything. Everything that happened. Everything you learned.” His face and body shimmered with moving patches of color. YZ/I spread his hands and looked piercingly at Legroeder.
Legroeder frowned, trying to frame words. “I can tell you what happened,” he said finally. “But telling you what we learned—that’s going to be more difficult.”
“Then let’s start with what’s easy,” YZ/I said.
Legroeder felt momentarily at a loss; he gestured helplessly to his fellow riggers.
“Come, gentlemen,” YZ/I laughed. “Impris is sitting in my docking port. You found her.” He clapped his hands together. “Don’t be bashful. Tell me how you did it.”
“Perhaps I can summarize,” said Cantha. And in a husky murmur, the Narseil gave a recap of the search for and discovery of Impris. He paused for breath, then briefly explained how the time instabilities had forced their hasty departure.
YZ/I’s eyes were intense with interest. “So the key discovery in all of this was the spacetime… ‘quantum flaw.’ Is that right?” He rummaged in his seat pockets until he found a cigar. He inspected it thoughtfully, as though by mulling over the cigar he might comprehend the meaning of the phrase, quantum flaw.
“Yes,” Legroeder said, finding his voice again. “And we can’t explain it fully, because we don’t understand it fully. We can tell you how we got into the flaw, and how we got out, but I’m not sure we can tell you why.”
YZ/I stopped in the middle of lighting his cigar. “You don’t know why you did what you did?”
“We know why we made certain decisions. But in the larger sense—it all happened so fast that by the end we were operating almost wholly on instinct.”
YZ/I puffed. “And once it was over, and you had some time to reflect back on it?”
Legroeder snorted. “Once we got out of the flaw, we had a little something else to think about—a ship named Hunter. I presume Captain Glenswarg informed you about our brush with KM/C?”
“Yes, he did,” YZ/I said. “It was exactly as we feared—Carlotta did not take kindly to having their prize lure taken out of the water.”
“No.” Legroeder reflected back on the discovery that his former captain was trying to kill him. “No, they did not.”
“Well, I’m glad our people were able to take care of it without too much trouble,” YZ/I said casually. “I understand you people were very good in the fight, too.”
“Thank you,” said Palagren with, Legroeder noted, a dry Narseil sarcasm that YZ/I almost certainly missed.
“But back to what you were saying—about your findings.”
“Well—” Legroeder drew a deep breath “—we don’t have a definitive picture of the quantum flaw yet. We do have a huge amount of information that we’re still analyzing.” And mapping? Is that what’s going to come out of all this?
YZ/I stared at him for a moment. “Still analyzing. Okay. But tell me this: are my ships in danger of disappearing into the quantum flaw the way Impris did? If you recall, that was one of the things I sent you to find out.” He rippled with white light, flicking his gaze from one rigger to the next.
Legroeder’s head hurt, buzzing with a sudden burst of activity from the implants. “I think they are,” he said at last.
“You think they are? You think they’re in danger?”
Legroeder drew another slow breath under YZ/I’s glare, and caught a slight nod from Palagren and Cantha. “Let me rephrase. The danger exists, definitely. It can happen again, and probably will. But I can’t tell you—yet—exactly where the dangers exist…” He shook his head; it suddenly felt full of cobwebs. He wasn’t purposely being vague. And yet his thoughts… what the devil was going on?
“Why not?” YZ/I demanded, puffing smoke. “Are you saying you don’t have the knowledge? Or that you aren’t planning to share it with us?” His voice was suddenly full of needles.
“Uh—”
Palagren raised a hand to interrupt. “May I be so bold as to ask a question in return?”
YZ/I cocked his head, frowning. “You may ask.”
“Thank you. I was just wondering, what would we expect in return for providing that kind of information?”
YZ/I’s eyes narrowed. He clicked his teeth together, though whether in surprise or admiration of Palagren’s bluntness wasn’t clear. “Well, I promised you the ship, and your freedom, didn’t I?”