The _Starsong_ forged her way onward toward the two red suns at the end of the Dragon's Throat. And Kirk thought that if he had made the wrong decision, if the _Starsong_ never came back again, Ferdias would be very angry. But that would not then make any difference to him. Looking up at the flaring, tumbling waves of the nebula, like the underside of a burning ocean, Kirk said to Garstang: "Does it seem to you the pace is speeding up? I mean, this jockeying for power between the Sectors has gone on a long time, ever since Earth lost real authority. But it seems different lately, somehow. More incidents, more feeling of something driving ahead toward a definite goal, a plan and a pattern you can't quite see. You know what I mean?" Garstang nodded "I know." The computer banks clicked and chattered. Relays kicked, compensating power, compensating course, compensating tides of gravitic force quite capable of breaking a ship apart like a piece of flawed glass. The two red binaries gave them a final glare of malice and were gone. They were clear of the Throat. A star the color of a peacock's breast lay dead ahead. "Ready for approach," said Garstang. "Stand by," said Kirk. "We'll wait until the last possible minute to shift. If they haven't picked us up already, maybe they won't." Garstang gave his orders. Kirk watched the blaze of peacock-blue grow swiftly. No ambush in the Throat, so now what? Ambush on the world of the blue star? Or nothing? A wild-goose chase, time and money wasted? Or maybe Solleremos had planted those rumors to draw Kirk's attention while a strike was made somewhere else. Suddenly Kirk felt very old and very tired. He had been in the squadron for twenty years, ever since he was sixteen, and in all these twenty years the great game of stars, the strain, the worry, had never let up. It must have been nice in a way, Kirk thought, in the old days a couple of centuries ago when Earth still governed in fact, and all the star-squadrons were part of the Galactic Navy, and the great battle was with the galaxy itself and not with one another. "We're getting close," said Garstang. Kirk shook himself and got down to business. There followed a few minutes of split-second activity, and then the _Starsong_ had shuddered out of overdrive and was plunging toward a bright world almost dangerously close to her. There was still no sign of any enemy, and the communicators remained silent. * * * * * An hour later by ship's chrono they had located the one port of entry listed for the planet and they had set the _Starsong_ down in the middle of a large piece of natural desert that served well enough for what space traffic ever came here.