“So it’s just coincidence we popped into real space just where and just when we could see two eclipses at once?” Mike nodded at the screen. “You don’t get a small honorarium for arranging that, after we set down?”

Hi-Vac’s navigator didn’t answer at once. She, too, was staring at the image. The two partly overlapped stellar disks didn’t quite blend with each other; an M5 sun is enough cooler than an M4 to let even the human eye detect its lower surface brightness, especially when the cooler one is closer to the viewer and partially covering its twin. The double planets’ images, similarly overlapped, were less informative; they were not quite in the same direction as the suns, and showed only thin crescents, one half erased by its twin’s shadow.

“If I’d set it up,” the navigator remarked at length, “I’d have composed the picture better. Everything is practically in a straight line. A million kilometers or so that way”—her thumb gestured toward the lower left corner of the screen—“would have made it an artistic presentation.”

Mike, who was not an artist, made no comment. Intellectually, he knew that there was no disgrace in not being an expert at practically everything, but he was still a touch neurotic about displaying his own ignorance. The navigator, after a moment’s silence, went on.

“It wouldn’t be much of a problem, of course. There’s a huge locus of positions from which you can see both pairs, sun and planets, in eclipse at once, and the periods of both are short enough, goodness knows. The chances of popping into real space and being greeted by a view like this are pretty good.”

Mike nodded, somewhat doubtfully.“I suppose so. Which of those crescents is Kainui? And where do we land?”

“I don’t know, to both questions. Kainui’s just a little bit the larger, but from here I can’t tell by eyeball. Muamoku is the only place we can set down, at least usefully, but it’ll take time to find it.”