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"Politics may come and go,mbt sandals clearance, but Greed goes on forever" was the fleet's motto, and they had lasted longer than most of their customers. Even religious fanatics grew a little cautious when they thought about Qeng Ho retribution. But more often it was the skill and deviousness of the shipmaster that saved the day. And few were a match for the little boy in Pham Nuwen. "I was almost the perfect skipper. Almost. I always wanted to see what was beyond the space we had good records on. Every time I got really rich, so rich I could launch my own subfleet -- I'd take some crazy chance and lose everything. I was the yo-yo of the Fleet. One run I'd be captain of five, the next I'd be pulling maintenance programming on some damn container ship. Given how time stretches out with sublight commerce, there were whole generations who thought I was a legendary genius -- and others who used my name as a synonym for goofball." He paused and his eyes widened in pleased surprise. "Ha! I remember what I was doing there at the end. I was in the 'goofball' part of my cycle, but it didn't matter. There was this captain of twenty who was even crazier than I.... Can't remember her name. Her? Couldn't have been; I'd never serve under a fem captain." He was almost talking to himself. "Anyway, this guy was willing to bet everything on the sort of thing normal folks would argue about over beer. He called his ship the, um,复件 (40) air max2, it translates as something like 'wild witless bird' -- that gives you the idea about him. He figured there must be some really high-tech civilizations somewhere in the universe. The problem was to find them. In a strange way, he had almost guessed about the Zones. Only problem was, he wasn't crazy enough; he got one little thing wrong. Can you guess what?" Ravna nodded. Considering where Pham's wreck was found, it was obvious. "Yeah. I'll bet it's an idea older than spaceflight: the 'elder races' must be toward the galactic core, where stars are closer and there are black hole exotica for power. He was taking his entire fleet of twenty. They'd keep going till they found somebody or had to stop and colonize. This captain figured success was unlikely in our lifetime. But with proper planning we could end up in a close-packed region where it would be easy to found a new Qeng Ho -- and it would proceed even further. "Anyway, I was lucky to get aboard even as a programmer; this captain knew all the wrong things about me." The expedition lasted a thousand years, penetrating two hundred and fifty light-years galactic inward. The Qeng Ho volume was closer to the Bottom of the Slowness than Old Earth, and they were proceeding inwards from there. Even so, it was plain bad luck that they encountered the edge of the Deeps after only two hundred and fifty light-years. One after another,复件 (95) air max1, the Wild Witless Bird lost contact with the other ships. Sometimes it happened without warning,habari birch mbt, other times there was evidence of computer failure or gross incompetence. The survivors saw a pattern, guessed that common components were failing. Of course, no one connected the problems with the region of space they were entering. "We backed down from ram speeds,复件 (71) air max, found a solar system with a semi-habitable planet. We'd lost track of everybody else.... Just what we did then isn't real clear to me." He gave a dry laugh. "We must have been right at the edge,复件 (78) air max1, staggering around at about IQ 60. I remember fooling with the life support system. That's probably what actually killed us." For a moment he looked sad and bewildered. He shrugged.