A fair portion of that uncertainty, though, was illusory. True, we had only the Drymnu's departure vector to guide us, and it was true that he could theoretically break out and change his direction anywhere along a path a hundred light-years long. But in actuality, his choices were far more limited: by physics, which governed how long a ship could generate heat in hyperspace before it had to break out and dump it; and by common sense, which said that in case of breakout problems you wanted your ship reasonably close to raw materials and energy, which meant somewhere inside a solar system.

There was, it turned out, exactly one system along the Drymnu's vector that fit both those constraints.

So even while my team complained and muttered to one another about the chances this would all be a waste of time, I made sure they worked their butts off.

Somewhere in that system, I was pretty sure, we would find the Drymnu.

Four days later, we broke out into our target system, a totally unremarkable conglomeration of nondescript planets, minor chunks of rock, a dull red sun...

and one Drymnu ship.

He wasn't visible to the naked eye, of course, but by solar system standards we arrived practically on his landing ramp. He was barely three million klicks away, radiating so much infrared that Waskin had a lock on him two minutes after breakout. Captain Garrett gave the order, and we turned and drove hell for leather straight for him.

The Volga was capable of making nearly two gravs of acceleration, but even at that, the Drymnu was a good seven hours away. There was, therefore, no question of sneaking up on him, especially since half that time we would be decelerating with our main drive blasting directly toward him. There was little chance he would escape into hyperspace—not with the amount of heat he clearly had yet to get rid of—but I'd expected that he would at least make us chase him through normal, gain himself some extra time to study us.