He blinked on. In his gray eminence persona. That meant he was trying to reassure Abdul everything was under control. Which scared the devil out of him. “Don’t know. I’m getting contradictory signals. Mixer’s not running properly, but it appears the entire system is misfiring. Power levels are dropping.”

Abdul opened a channel to Union, the space station. “Ops immediate,” he said. “This is the Heffernan. We are having engine problems. May have to abort flight.” He closed the channel while he thought what else he wanted to say. “I’ve been with this outfit my entire life,” he told the AI. “It’s always been smooth riding. I’d like not to blow an engine now.”

“Maybe you’re due.”

“Maybe.” He opened the channel again but was startled to see the Academy logo blink on. And then an ops officer.

Odd coincidence. From out here, at a range of almost ninety light-years, a transmission should take about eighteen minutes to reach Earth. So they couldn’t have a reply already.

“Acknowledge your last,” the ops officer said. Abdul stared, unbelieving, at his image. “Leave the channel open. We’ll stand by to assist.” The screen blanked. The lights on the hyperlink flashed and went off. “The system’s down,” said Bill. “Power surge.”

“Can you restore it?”

“Negative.”

“How’s the radio?”

“Radio’s okay.” Not that that would help if they were stranded out here. “We are getting a prejump warning, Abdul. Four minutes.”

How did the reply come back so quickly? What was going on?

The jump engines were designed, in the event of a major problem, to terminate operations and return the ship to normal space. That was what the warning was about. Jump in four minutes. Nobody wanted to break down in hyperspace. If you did, no help could reach you. If the engines blew, you couldn’t get out. Ever. He didn’t know whether it had actually happened to anyone. Two ships had vanished during the seventy years or so that the superluminals had been in operation.