"Partly," said Edri soberly, "to rescue the men who are rotting away
out there. But chiefly because we must have Arrin. You see, Trehearne,
he was arrested before he could finish his calculations. When I tried
to carry on I added a good bit of my own material--but the missing
factor isn't there. Arrin knows it. He must or he couldn't have gone
as far as he did. Now if we put our knowledge together--" Edri sighed.
"It's been a long, long fight. A thousand years of piecing together lie
and legend and hearsay, of hunting down scraps of letters and secret
reports, of dredging through tons of irrelevant nonsense in search of
one little bit of truth. The Vardda authorities of that day suppressed
or destroyed all evidence connected with that last voyage of Orthis.
They did their work well. Until now no one has even known in what
general sector of the Galaxy that last pursuit took place."
He brooded. "Yes, a long fight. And if we're wrong it means the end of
hope in our generation. Others will have to begin the search all over
again."
It seemed a cruel question to ask but Trehearne could not keep from it.
"Is there any proof that Orthis' ship still exists at all?"
"No. We only know that it was not destroyed at the time that Orthis
outran his pursuers and disappeared. For as I told you, long afterward
one of the life-skiffs of his ship was picked up in space, with his
defiant last message to the Galaxy in it."