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The galactic patrol cruiser Parsec was coasting—as she had been for eight months. At a speed of roughly twelve to fifteen light-minutes an hour, she had been patrolling the Pass—that vast cosmic void between the II Milky Way Supergalaxy and the I Supergalaxy of Andromeda.
ParsecThe Parsec was so immense that a man could die in one end and be buried in space, and those on the other end wouldn’t know it until they read it in their daily Space Traveler. She was a 41.261 A.D. model, only four years old, and aside from fuel she was theoretically capable of sustaining herself in space for a thousand years—which is just what young Lt. Jim Braniff was afraid she was going to do.
ParsecSpace TravelerLt. Stevens, his roommate, came stamping in from the sixth watch slapping his hands.
“Col
