Behind him, Du Bellay whistled softly. "Talk about your basic Juggernaut! Where'd it come from?"
"We've backtracked him to the 1228 Circini system," Mahendra said, referring to one of his sheets. "He didn't originate there, though—it's a dead system. We're trying to track him further back."
Carey looked up at the main screen. "Why isn't the Intruder's course projected beyond Sol?"
Mahendra frowned. "I don't know, sir." He swung a keyboard over and typed something. "The projection stopped when the course intersected the sun," he reported, frowning a bit harder.
"What?" Du Bellay said.
"Show us the inner system," Carey ordered.
Mahendra punched a key and the screen changed, now showing only out to Mars. Sure enough, the dotted line intersected the edge of the dime-sized image of the sun. Without being told to, Mahendra jumped the scale again, and the sun filled the screen.
Carey squinted at it. "Almost misses. How dense is the stuff he'll hit?"
"The computer says about ten to the minus seventh grams per cc. Not much by Earth standards, but that's almost a hundred trillion times anything in the interstellar medium. And he'll pass through several thousand kilometers of it."
"Like hell he will," Carey winced. "He'll burn to a crisp long before that. I was right after all, Doctor—he hasn't noticed the solar system's in his path."
He glanced at Du Bellay, then paused for a longer look. The archaeologist was frowning into space. "Doctor?"
"Captain, does that console have DatRetNet capability?" Du Bellay asked. "Please look up data on that star you mentioned—1228 Circini. Cross-reference with unusual stellar activity."
Mahendra nodded and turned to the console. "Something wrong?" Carey asked Du Bellay. The other's expression worried him.