The gate opens about fifty miles from Wichita, Kansas, in a wheat field. What is called a Type Six boson resonance, for those familiar with the term. Not a Dreen Type Three, in other words. There has been a small science party there for some time gathering astronomical and archaeological data. It’s quite close to the Orion Cluster and had recently gotten some upgraded equipment and personnel due to recent work on Dreen gates. Admiral, I need to elaborate.”

“Go,” the admiral said, leaning back.

“As Commander Weaver is aware, and I’m sure most of you are, gate links are somewhat traceable,” Lieutenant Fey said. “Inactive bosons that are trying to link send out a steady stream of muons in the direction of the nearest linkable gate. Once linked, the same muon stream is detectable. During the Dreen War, Commander Weaver — as a side-note to trying to close the gates — did some studies of Dreen links.”

“They were hard to track with the stuff we had at that time,” Bill said, frowning. “We never really could get a good direction on them.”

“Well, our office took your original data and crunched it… a little harder,” the lieutenant said, smiling slightly. “What we determined was that most of the Dreen gates, all the ones surveyed, seemed to point towards the Sagittarius constellation area. There is a cluster of stars, called a ‘local group,’ in that area that we now believe to be the primary center for Dreen worlds. It’s located in the Sagittarius arm, fortunately.”

“How far away… ?” the admiral started to say.

“The galaxy is divided into arms, sir,” Fey said, pulling up another picture of the local portion of the galaxy with some stars marked in on it. “We’re here, in the Orion Arm. The next arm over is the Sagittarius Arm. We’re talking, straight distance, about a thousand light-years away, possibly two thousand.”

“Two thousand hours,” Captain Blankemeier said with a wince. “At max speed. Long damned way.”