“Could it have been rigged?” Wolfie asked.

Cavanaugh finished his beer. “No. I was there. It happened just like I said.”

“Jerry, how long have you been working for Orion?”

He looked at the empty glass, and Wolfie ordered more. “Sixteen years this November.”

“Just between us, what do you think of management?”

He grinned. “They’re the finest, most upstanding people I’ve ever known.”

“I’m serious, Jerry. It won’t go any further.”

“They’d stab one another for the corner office. And they don’t give a damn for the help.”

“Would they cheat?”

“You mean would they pull off something like the moonriders if they could?”

“Yes.”

He laughed. “Sure. If they thought it would help business, and they could get away with it.” The beers came. Cavanaugh picked his up, said thanks, and drank deep. “But there’s no way they could have made it happen.”

“Without your help.”

“That’s exactly right.”

LIBRARY ENTRY

…Yet there is palpable evidence for the existence of moonriders. There are visual records available to anyone who wants to look. It might be time to get serious and make an effort to find out what these objects are.

— The Washington Post, Monday, February 16, 2235

chapter 2

We have spent a half century now poking around the local stars. What we have found is a sprinkling of barbarians, one technological civilization that has never gotten past their equivalent of 1918, and the Goompahs, of whom the less said the better. Mostly what we have discovered is that the Orion Arm of the Milky Way is very big, and apparently very empty.

We have spent trillions in the effort. For what purpose, no one seems able to explain.

The primary benefit we’ve gotten from all this has been the establishment of two colonies: one for political wackos, and the other for religious hardcases. It may be that the benefits derived simply from that justify the cost of the superluminal program.