“Can’t we drop out and quickly jump again, before they can turn up to track us?”
“No. Sorry. It won’t work. Each jump damages the skin of real space, it can take days for the damage to vanish. Until it does it’s like a signpost pointing the direction we took. It’s like a fingerprint too. Each ship’s drive leaves a different pattern.”
“But we can stay here? They won’t find us?”
Matt smiled sadly.
“Yes. For the moment. But with no food and water we can’t stay for long. Also we don’t know which direction we jumped in, the longer we stay the further we go and the harder it will be to work out where we emerge. We might end up stranded in the void between the stars. We’ve got no star charts, no idea where to go.”
Several quiet minutes passed, each of them sunk in thought. It wa
