“He’s trying to say they tend to survive better, sir,” First Sergeant Powell interjected. “Not that any of them made it last time. I’d suggest taking Miss Moon. Keeping her occupied without the usual science teams will be interesting, but we may need a translator. Especially if it’s a species other than the Dreen.”

“And the Marines are going, obviously,” the admiral said, nodding. “How far away is this star, son?”

“About five hundred and fourteen light-years, sir.”

“Astro?” Blankemeier said.

“Twenty days, sir,” Bill said, doing the math fast in his head. “If we were going straight line. But we’ll have to jink around a bit to avoid gravity bubbles. And more with cool downs. But the real problem will be relative adjustment.”

“Say, again?” Admiral Townsend said, then nodded. “The star’s going to be moving differently than Sol. Got it. This deep space stuff is taking a little while to sink in on this old sailor. Continents and islands don’t move. Not so you can notice.”

“A lot differently, sir,” Bill said. “Every star moves at a different rate relatively speaking. Nearby stars generally move at about the same rate as Sol, but even there we’re talking about a relative velocity higher than any human spaceship ever produced until we made the Blade. And in this case, we’re talking about outside of the local cluster. When the Blade exits warp it has the same inertial constant as when it entered. Basically, how Sol is moving. We’re going to be doing a lot of adjustment when we get there. Less when we take a look around, though. But I’d block out a day for adjustment, given cool down time. And most of it at max thrust.”

“Not to digress terribly,” the admiral said, frowning. “But why don’t those different movement rates affect the people transferring through the gate?”