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The two old friends immediately ceased their rapid-fire dialogue.

“Of course, my boy, of course!” Turning to Flinx, Tse-Mallory whacked him enthusiastically on the back. Annoyed, Pip spread her wings in case she had to take flight. As for Flinx, it was not the first time he found himself sympathizing with Truzenzuzex. Both had suffered from Tse-Mallory's effusiveness.

“Those coordinates.” There was a glow to the old scientist's expression Flinx had not seen there in some time. “They're in the Senisran system! They aren't for that water-world itself but for the outlying asteroid belt—the system has two, one between the third and fourth planets and the other proximate to but outside the orbit of the tenth and last.” He wagged a thick finger in Flinx's direction. “It's most remarkable. Everything you learned from the Krang ties in with the recently received report I alluded to earlier.”

“How?” Sylzenzuzex wanted to know.

A little of the older human's ebullience receded. “I'm not sure. As I told Flinx, the report was—odd.” He brightened anew. “Of course,” he added facetiously, “what we hope to find could not in any way, shape, or fashion be considered ‘odd.’ Oh, no.” Turning away from the youngsters, he hurried to share the rest of his revelation with Truzenzuzex. Moments later the venerable thranx was all but turning cartwheels there in the soaring entrance to the Krang.

At least, Flinx mused thoughtfully, his mentors were encouraged. At the risk of diminishing their enthusiasm, he was compelled to point out that the Krang had prefaced everything it had passed along to Flinx by declaring it to be legend.

“It will be a good deal more than ‘legend’ if it conflates with certain aspects of that report, my boy,” Tse-Mallory assured him.

“Me, I'd like to know a little more about this mysterious report.” As always, Clarity's first concern was for Flinx's well-being. “What life-threatening, mind-tormenting exercise do you intend to get him mixed up in next?”

“This is not just about Flinx, I think,” Truzenzuzex told her. “We are all of us in this together, for certain and final, for good or ill, until the next egg.” As he reached out with a foothand, four hard-surfaced digits gently gripped her forearm. “Bran and I spent more than a year looking after you while you returned to health, Clarity. Rest assured we are not about to cast aside all that hard work casually.”

“Even if the fate of the galaxy is at stake?” she asked him. But he had already turned and skittered off to resume working on the breakdown of the camp and packing the remainder of their supplies. He had not heard her parting comment—maybe.

In the course of the tedious journey out of the Blight and back into familiar Commonwealth space they had plenty of time to discuss a range of options. Everything, of course, depended on whether there really was anything at the locality that had been provided to Flinx by the Krang or if he had merely been given the coordinates of a myth.

The report that had found its way to Science Central on Earth, however, was no fable. It had been compiled and recorded by two respected xenologists in the course of their diplomatic and anthropological work among the natives of Senisran. Full of anomalous elusions and hypotheses, it was hardly enough to justify the immediate dispatch of a larger, better-equipped, and more costly research team to that watery world. For one thing, in the event that such an expedition were to be mounted, the natives who had provided much of the information that was contained in the report had promised to destroy the important relics the xenologists had described by dispersing them across a wide area of deep ocean. It was apparent that anyone wishing to carry out a formal follow-up to the initial report would have to proceed with extreme caution.

None of which concerns troubled those aboard the Teacher, since they were not going to touch down on Senisran and had no expectation of having to deal with