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She hesitated momentarily, eyeing the two expectant scientists. “If Bran and Tru think it's safe, then I guess we ought to try it. I don't like the idea of you making contact with any kind of device from any ancient alien civilization. Much less via an interface that might take you away from the ship.” She looked reconciled. “But that's what we're here to try and do.”

Smiling, he reached over and lightly tousled her hair. She responded by making a face. “Don't worry. I won't do anything stupid. And I'll be thinking of you the whole time.”

Truzenzuzex shook his head sadly. “Unhelpful. While you're outside you should be trying to think like a Xunca.”

Flinx would have been happy to comply—except that no one knew how the Xunca thought, and had not done so for hundreds of millions of years.

Stepping outside the ship was more interesting than he had anticipated. While over the years he had viewed the Teacher's exterior from every conceivable angle, he had nearly always done so from the comfortable confines of one of its two shuttles. He could not remember the last time he had ventured outside in deep space in nothing but a survival suit.

The stars were very bright, and the looming striped mass of the system's outermost gas giant was brilliant and colorful.

“Everything all right, Flinx?” Tse-Mallory's voice emerged muted and modulated from the survival suit's cranial speaker.

“I'm fine. Let's get this over with. Ship?”

“Flinx?” the Teacher responded promptly.

“Withdraw to distance. Follow the honored Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex's instructions unless contradicted by me.”

“I will continue monitoring your vitals for any evidence of abnormality,” the shipmind replied. “For example, your blood pressure currently is …”

Flinx cut it off. He knew how the Teacher could go on. Especially when it was concerned about him. “You can recite all the statistics when I'm back on board. In order to conduct the philosoph's experiment appropriately, I should be left in silence.”

Another voice reached him: Clarity. “I know you're supposed to be reaching out for a Tar-Aiym contact or something like that, Flinx, but—just watch what you wish for.”

“I'm wishing I was back on the ship,” he offered by way of reply. “I'm wishing I…”

“Flinx …” Truzenzuzex's perfectly modulated terranglo was both stern and suggestive.

“I know, I know. Try to think like a Xunca. Going to silence,” he muttered.

The Teacher began, very carefully, to move away. The acceleration was extremely measured. Activating his suit's propulsion unit, Flinx headed off in the opposite direction. The sensation of weight dropped off quickly until, once clear of the ship's artificial gravity field, he felt himself floating, falling, adrift among the asteroid belt.

He chugged past his first planetoid some ten minutes later. It was about the size of the chair he had been sitting on during the early meal. The lump of dark flinty material looked comparatively solid. Not an aggregate, then, he decided. Utilizing the suit's propulsion system, he pivoted—and experienced a moment of mild panic. The Teacher was nowhere to be seen.

It took him a moment to find it—a point of light moving away at an angle to all the other drifting shapes. How much distance would Truzenzuzex think was necessary to put between it and him? He had not been boasting when he had told the philosoph that he was not afraid of being out in deep space by himself. The Teacher knew where he was every nanosecond. It would not, could not, lose track of his position.

Could it?

Could he, despite every precaution, end up lost and alone, doomed to drift forever among the shattered shards of an alien planetary system, floating free until his suit's air could no longer be satisfactorily recycled, dying forgotten among …

Stop it, he scolded himself. The Teacher knows where you are at all times. It's right over there, just over that way. Distant now yet continuously aware of your presence, your location. You are not isolated. You are not abandoned.