"We just couldn't compete," he said. "We simply could not carry colonists that far."
"Would you have tried, without von Einem's Telpor breakthrough?"
Rachmael said, "My father — "
"Was thinking about it." She nodded. "But then he died and it was too late and now you've had to sell virtually all your ships to meet note-payment due-dates. Now, from us, Rachmael. You wanted... ?"
"I still own," he said, "our fastest, newest, biggest ship, the Omphalos; she's never been sold, no matter how great the pressure THL has put on me, within and outside the UN courts." He hesitated, then said it. "I want to go to Whale's Mouth. By ship. Not by Dr. von Einem's Telpor. And by my own ship, by what we meant to be our — " He broke off. "I want to take her all the way to Fomalhaut, on an eighteen-year voyage — alone. And when I arrive at Whale's Mouth I'll prove — "
"Yes?" Freya said. "Prove what, Rachmael?"
"That we could have done it. Had von Einem not come along with that thing, that — " He gestured, with impotent fury.
Freya said, "Telpor is one of the most vital discoveries in human history, Rachmael. Teleportation, from one star system to another, twenty-four light-years in fifteen minutes. When you reach Whale's Mouth by the Omphalos, I for instance will be — " She calculated. "Forty-three years old."
He was silent.
"What," Freya asked in a soft voice, "would you accomplish by your trip?"
He said, honestly, "I — don't know."
Presently Freya said, reading from her folio, "You have, for six months now, been thoroughly checking out the Omphalos at a concealed — even from us — launch field and maintenance dock on Luna. She is now considered ready for the inter-system flight. Trails of Hoffman has tried, through the courts, to attach her to claim her as their legal property; this you have managed to fight. So far. But now — "