I heard Komov take a deep breath; a long pause followed. When Komov spoke again, his voice sounded unusual; it was sort of broken. He talked about the Wanderers; first, he was surprised that the Wanderers put in a sentry satellite and programmed it in a borderline criminal way, but then he recalled some circumstantial evidence that suggested the Wanderers always travel in convoys; any single spaceship, in their opinion, cannot be anything but an unmanned probe. He also talked about the end of a barbaric epoch; the fifty years of single-man free search flights; too many casualties, too many silly mistakes, too little gain. “Yes,” Gorbovsky agreed, “I thought about it, too.” Then, Komov recalled some cases of mysterious disappearances of automated scouts near certain planets. “We couldn’t ge
