Under the temporary command of Commodore Theodore Wilson the space squadron sped out into the uncharted wastes of the sky on the true line toward Castor. Slowly, as the squadron flew, its component spacecraft diverged in a narrow cone so that the volume of space to be covered would fall within the scope of the detection equipment aboard each ship. Computers flicked complex functions in variables of the laws of probability, and came up with a long series of “and-or-if” results.
Toby Manning, Master Computer for the squadron, sympathized when Wilson showed the latest sheaf.
Wilson grunted, “This is no damn good at all. It sort of says that the lifeships will be wherever we find them.”
Manning nodded. “Like the problem of catching a lion on the Sahara Desert. You get a lion cage with an op
