“Still, the work must continue,” the computer noted. “You are putting off the Cerberus report because you fear it That is not a healthy situation.”

“I’ll take itl” he snapped. “Just give me a little breathing room!”

“As you wish. Shutting down module.”

The man rose and walked back to his living quarters. He needed some depressant, he told himself. The pills were there, but he rejected them as not what he wanted. Human company. Civilized company from the civilized worlds, from the culture in which he’d been raised. A drink in the picket-ship bar, perhaps. Or two. Or more. And human beings…

In a system based on perfect order, uniformity, and harmony, the Warden Diamond was an insane asylum. Halden Warden, a Confederacy scout, had discovered the system well over two centuries earlier. Warden himself was a legend for the number of planets he had discovered, but was considered something of a nut, even for the sort of men and women who preferred to spend most of their time alone among uncharted stars. He loved his work, but he considered discovery his function, leaving just about everything else for those who would follow. He paused only long enough to take positions and beam back the information in as terse a form as possible. The trouble was, he was usually so terse people couldn’t figure out what he meant until they got there—and for the Warden Diamond he was in top form.

His initial signal was a seemingly simple “4AW.” The meaning of this signal was far from simple—it was impossible. It meant a single solar system with four inhabitable worlds, a statistical near impossibility in a galaxy in which only one out of four thousand solar systems contained anything remotely of use. It was Warden, though, who had found the impossible and named them. His entire report was pretty characteristic of his worst. Charon—looks like Hell.