he green dot slowed, came to a stop. Gefty's finger tapped the same
button four times. The big chart flicked out of existence, and in the
plate three regional star maps appeared and vanished in quick succession
behind it. The fourth map stayed. For a few seconds, the red-circled
green spark was not visible here. Then it showed at the eastern margin
of the map, came gliding forwards and to the left, slowed again and
held steady. Now the star map began to glide through the locator plate,
carrying the fixed green dot with it. It brought the dot up to dead
center point in the locator plate and stopped.

Gefty slumped a little. He rubbed his hands slowly down his face and
muttered a few words. Then he shook his head.

"Gefty," Kerim whispered, "what is it? Where are we?"

Gefty looked at her.

"After we got hauled into that time current," he said hoarsely, "I tried
to find out which way in space we were headed. The direction indicators
over there seemed to show we were trying to go everywhere at once. You
remember Maulbow's control unit wasn't working right, needed
adjustments. Well, all those little impulses must have pretty well
canceled out because we weren't taken really far. In the last hour and a
half we've covered roughly the distance the _Queen_ could have gone on
her own in, say, thirty days."

"Then where ..."

"Home," Gefty said simply. "It's ridiculous! Other side of the Hub from
where we started." He nodded at the plate. "Eastern Hub Quadrant.
Section Six Eight. The G2 behind the green dot--that's the Evalee
system. We could be putting down at Evalee Interstellar three hours from
now if we wanted to."

Kerim was laughing and crying together. "Oh, Gefty! I knew you would ..."

"A fat lot I had to do with it!" Gefty leaned forward suddenly, switched
on the transmitter. "And now let's pick up a live newscast. There's
something else I ..."

His voice trailed off. The transmitter screen lit up with a blurred
jumble of print, colors, a muttering of voices, music and noises. Gefty
twisted a dial. The screen cleared, showed a newscast headline sheet.
Gefty blinked at it, glanced sideways at Kerim, grimaced.

"The something else," he said, his voice a little strained, "was
something I was also worried about. Looks like I was more or less
right."

"Why, what's wrong?"

"Nothing really bad," Gefty assured her. He added, "I think. But take a
look at the Federation dateline."

Kerim peered at the screen, fro