"Status," snapped Saturn, striding onto the bridge.

     Prup Chull and Tana Antallan glanced at each other, each looking for a clue from the other as to how to respond. The conflict of wills between the wizard and the Captain had been a matter of hot debate and some amusement among the lower ranks for months now.

     Saturn insisted on acting as though he were really the commanding officer. So far as he was concerned, Phil Strong, the appointed Captain, was only a figurehead, placed there for political reasons to keep the Beltharans happy. For the most part the lower ranks could watch with amusement as they butted heads, but what did they do when Saturn began giving orders as though he were in command?

     'Report!' he'd said. Not 'What's going on, guys?'. 'Report. The imperious command of a superior to a subordinate when, in fact, the three of them were supposed to be equals. All civilians under military command. Ah well, the moon trog thought with a mental shrug. He's only asked for a status report. It's not as if he's ordered us to turn back home or something. Until he does something openly mutinous, best to humour him by doing as he asks.

     "We are continuing to decelerate," he said, therefore. "We are about half an hour from coming to a standstill, so far as we can tell."

     How could you tell how fast you were moving when there was nothing outside the ship to measure your speed against? All they could do was turn the ship around in mid flight, spend as long slowing down as they'd spent speeding up and hope for the best. They'd discussed all this many times before, there was no need to bring it up again.

     The wizard nodded, understanding the dilemma. "See anything in the helmets?" he demanded.

     Tana Antallan was wearing one of the Helmets of Farsensing, with the visor up, and now he lowered the visor to concentrate on the images it was feeding directly into his brain. "Nothing, my friend," he said, "but these artifacts have only a limited range. We are surrounded by hundreds of millions of miles of emptiness. Without guidance, we might search forever and not find the portal."

     "Then it's as well we have a guide," said the Captain as he entered the bridge, casting the wizard a withering glance as he headed for the centre seat. Haskar entered behind him, one of the two felisians captured in Lexandria Valley. The Captain waved him to one of the side seats and the felisian sat with a wary glance at the other men, clearly wondering how he, a captured enemy, would be received by them. Saturn had met him already, of course, but the shae and the moon trog merely regarded him with curiosity.

     Tana Antallan noted with interest that he'd been made to wear tight fitting clothes with lots of buttons and buckles. If he wanted to turn into his cat form, it would take him some time to undress first. It was a way of keeping him under control that avoided the necessity for cumbersome and shameful manacles. Both he and they could pretend that he was just another member of the crew. Plus, of course, manacles would have aroused the interest and curiosity of the crew.

     The door opened again and the last member of the bridge crew entered. Karog Gunlubber, the trog priest of Caratheodory. He had been chosen to be the ship's clerical bridge officer. Not because he was the most senior cleric aboard, that honour went to Drenn Pietar, the priest of Samnos, a veteran of many battles and campaigns. It was because Karog was the one with the most space experience. Also, as a follower of the God of Numbers, and therefore a supremely able mental arithmetician, he was the ship's navigator, responsible for calculating the ship's position and motion and working out any course corrections that might be necessary.

     Prup Chull repeated the status report for the benefit of the new arrivals, and all five of the bridge officers donned their Helmets of Farsensing to verify the moon trog's statement that there was nothing in the immediate area. "Alright," said Strong, removing his helmet again and turning to the felisian. "So where's the portal?"

     "I was told that there is a ship lying alongside it, transmitting a beacon signal," replied Haskar. "You should be able to see it once you get close enough."

     "How close is close enough?" demanded Saturn. "Our Helms of Farsensing have a maximum range of a hundred thousand miles, but any object has to be pretty big to show up at that distance. How big is your ship?"

     "About twenty yards long," replied the felisian, "but the flashing light it carries should be visible for some considerable distance. If you lack the equipment to detect the signal, I suggest you post men topside to watch out for the light."

     "We don't even know if we're within a billion miles of the portal, let alone a hundred thousand," complained Prup Chull. "This is worse than looking for a needle in a haystack!"

     "If you have followed the instructions I passed on from my people, you should be within a few thousand miles of the portal when your ship comes to rest," said Haskar, glaring at him irritably. "I did warn you that any deviation from those instructions, no matter how minor, might result in our going way off course. Don't blame me if you can't navigate."

     "The agreement was that you would guide us to the edge of the portal," pointed out Saturn flatly. "You will remain our 'guest' until you have fulfilled your obligations."

     "I gave my word and I will keep it," replied the felisian acidly. "However, navigating out here, so far from any visible landmark, is no easy matter, as you are discovering. Our first attempts to explore your universe resulted in some ships failing to find their way back. They had to take refuge on your world until the problem was solved and we were able to guide them back, but it involved signaling and detecting equipment created by the Masters which you do not possess. It may be that you are simply incapable of this feat."

     "You might be surprised what we're capable of," said Strong, with a look at Saturn that warned him that he'd better be able to fulfil that promise. The wizard set his jaw with offended determination, and it occurred to the Captain that he might be able to use this rivalry that existed between them. Saturn would now move heaven and earth to find the felisian ship, just so he could avoid the look of withering scorn he knew Strong would give him if he failed.

☆☆☆

     More time passed and the ship continued to decelerate. The five bridge officers took turns, two at a time, to examine their surroundings with the Helms of Farsensing. One set to its maximum range, the other examining a smaller area at higher resolution. The others stared into the scrying mirror, searching for a tiny point of blinking light amid the myriad blazing stars. As the time passed with painful slowness, Saturn decided to talk with the felisian. He had the suspicion that their 'guest' was keeping something back and he wanted to give him the chance to let it slip.

     "You said the first ships coming to our universe got lost and couldn't find their way back," he said. "You make it sound as though it's only in our universe that you had this problem."

     "That's right," replied Haskar. "In every other universe we visited, there's a star and planets very close. Only in your universe is the nearest star so far away."

     Saturn stared at him in sudden interest. "So our universe is special," he said. "Any idea why that might be so?"

     "Only speculation," replied the felisian. "Your sun is the only one we know of that has a neighbour so close. You have two suns. Yellow Tharsol and red Derro. All other worlds have only one. How this might affect the portal, we have no idea, but it's the only theory we have."

     Saturn nodded thoughtfully. "So finding our way back to the portal in other universes should pose no problem."

     "It posed no problem for us. There isn't such an immense volume of empty space to search, and we can observe the apparent positions of the planets to see if we're in the right area."

     "But there aren't any planets out here," said Saturn wonderingly, staring at the faraway stars in the scrying mirror. "Not the smallest mote of dust for millions of miles in any direction. It makes you think..." He suddenly realised he was revealing too much of his inner self and pulled himself together, glaring at the felisian as if daring him to comment. Haskar looked away to conceal a smirk of amusement.

     A few minutes later, the shayen orbmaster in the room above activated a Farspeaking link to inform the Captain that the time given for deceleration had elapsed and that they were therefore deactivating the Orb of Propulsion.

     "Well, gentlemen, said the Captain after acknowledging the report. "We're now at rest. Stationary in space."

     "Are we indeed?" asked Karog, eyeing him with a strange smile. "How can you tell? Any difference between the rate at which we accelerated and the rate at which we decelerated could have left us with a considerable residual velocity, either away from or back towards our home and there's no way we could know it. We have no way to measure our speed."

     "The shae folk assured me that they can control the orb with great precision," replied Strong firmly. There was a look of uncertainty on his face, though, that the others couldn't fail to notice, and that made then all tense up nervously in their seats. Even Saturn. They were so far from home. So much emptiness around them...

     "How much precision?" asked the trog.

     "They haven't given us that information, but when we told them what was required they assured me that they were capable of delivering."

     "I doubt they are able to appreciate the magnitude of the problem," Karog said, eyeing Tana Antallan doubtfully. "They have no clerics of Caratheodory. They cannot see what the numbers say. I doubt they truly understand the vastness of the emptiness that surrounds us. The very smallest error in navigation..."

     "All right, you've made your point," snapped the Captain irritably. "He activated another Farspeaking link to speak to his second in command. "Callan, put some men out on the railing. Tell them to look for a flashing light." Then he activated another link to speak to the orbmaster. "Gel, tumble the ship very slowly, top over bottom. The portal might be above or below us as easily as alongside."

     Saturn smiled with savage satisfaction at the look of surprise that appeared on the Felisians' face. Yes, that's right, he thought. We stupid humans understand the three dimensional nature of the problem. Didn't expect us to catch onto so quickly, did you?

     "And if they see nothing?" asked Prup Chull.

     "Then we think of something else," said the Captain, eyeing Saturn as he did so, his eyes clearly saying that it was he who'd better think of something if he didn't want to become a figure of scorn and ridicule aboard the ship.

     The wizard realised this and beckoned to the trog to follow him from the bridge. "We need to do some serious thinking," he said. "We need to find a way to navigate in total emptiness if, as I suspect, we are indeed nowhere near the portal."

     "My thoughts also," agreed Karog as the door closed behind them.