Gefty knew, either of them could have been manufactured in the Hub.

Then there was the janandra--the big, snakish thing in the storage which
Maulbow had brought back up from the moon along with the battered
machine. It had been, he said, his shipboard companion on another
voyage. It wasn't ordinarily aggressive--Gefty's sudden appearance in
the vault must have startled it into making an attack. It was not
exactly a pet. There was a psychological relationship between it and
Maulbow which Maulbow would not attempt to explain because Gefty and
Kerim would be unable to grasp its significance. The janandra was
essential, in this unexplained manner, to his well-being.

That item was almost curious enough to seem to substantiate his other
statements; but it didn't really prove anything. The only point Gefty
didn't question in the least was that they were in a bad spot which
might be getting worse rapidly. His gaze shifted back to the screens.
What he saw out there, surrounding the ship, was, according to Maulbow,
an illusion of space created by the time flow in which they were moving.

Also according to Maulbow, there was a race of the future, human in
appearance, with machines to sail the current of time through the
universe--to run and tack with the winds of time, dipping in and out of
the normspace of distant periods and galaxies as they chose. Maulbow,
one of the explorers, had met disaster a million light-years from the
home of his kind, centuries behind them, his vehicle wrecked on an
airless moon with damaged control unit and shattered instruments. He had
made his way to a human civilization to obtain the equipment he needed,
and returned at last with the _Silver Queen_ to where the time-sailer
lay buried.

Gefty's lip curled. No, he wasn't buying all that just yet--but if
Maulbow was _not_ lying, then the unseen stars were racing past, the
mass of the galaxy beginning to slide by, eventually to be lost forever
beyond a black distance no space drive could span. The matter simply had
to be settled quickly. But Maulbow was also strained and impatient, and
if his impatience could be increased a little more, he might start
telling the things that really mattered, the things Gefty had to know.
Gefty asked slowly, as if hesitant to commit himself, "Why did you bring
us along?"

The voice from the passage snapped, "Because my resources were nearly
exhausted, Rammer! I couldn't obtain a new ship. Therefore I chartered
y