In the case of one of the researchers, the wife had come out of a classroom, where she was conducting a seminar of some sort. She came close to cardiac arrest as Hutch explained, as gently as she could, then had to connect with the front office to get help for her.

Among the four passengers, three had never before been in Academy ships. One near-adult child told her that he knew something like this would happen, that he’d pleaded with his father to stay home.

When at last it was over, she sat exhausted.

THE SUN WAS well over the horizon when she cornered Asquith in his office. “Do we have any news yet, Priscilla?” he asked.

“Not a word.”

He took a deep breath. “Not good.” Asquith was a middle-aged guy who was always battling his weight, and whose primary objective in running the Academy was to stay out of trouble. Keep the politicians happy and continue to collect his paycheck. His doctorate was in political science, although he never disabused people of the notion he was a physicist or a mathematician.

The first thing Abdul should have done after the jump would have been to send a message. Let everybody know he was okay. And where he was. The silence, as the saying goes, was deafening.

Asquith was behind his desk, keeping it between them. “The Colby-class ships,” she said, “are no longer safe. We need to scrap them.”

He reacted as if she’d suggested they walk on the ceiling. “Priscilla,” he said, “we’ve had this conversation before. We can’t do that. You’re talking about half the operational fleet.”

“Do it or cut the missions. One or the other.”

“Look. We’re under a lot of pressure right now. Can we talk about this later?”

“Later might get somebody killed. Look, Michael, we don’t really have a third alternative. We either have to scale things back or replace the ships.”