Endymion died soundlessly, a man-made star that
glowed and quickly winked out of existence.
Kurt Morgan watched her until there was no more left to
see, eyes fixed to the aft scanners of the capsule. When it
was over, he cut to forward view and set his mind on
survival.
There had been eighty men and women on Endymion, seventy-nine of them now reduced to dust
and vapor with the ship, indistinguishable from its
remains. Two minutes to sunward was another cloud that had
been the enemy, another hundred individuals, the elements
that had been life from a score of worlds borne still on
collision course, destroyer and destroyed.
No report of the encounter would go back to Central.
There was no means to carry it. The Hanan planet of origin,
Aeolus, was no more than a cinder now, light-years distant;
and Endymion in pursuing the Hanan enemy had given
no reference data to Command. They had jumped on their own,
encountered, won and perished at once; their survival
capsule had no starflight capability.
A nameless star and six uncharted worlds lay under the
capsule’s scan. The second was the most likely to
support life.
