In the Engineering room, all the consoles were lit up like Christmas trees with flashing lights. Multiple warning sounds were being emitted from the computers, and all the engineers were talking, some under their breath.

Fischer was trying desperately to manage this controlled chaos. At any moment, if she felt the ship was in danger, she would order the jump to be cancelled. The Pegasus would fire all its maneuvering thrusters, turn about hard, and slingshot around the sun, ready to attempt another pass.

But there was a crucial moment, before the ship’s quantum oscillators had opened up a tear in the fabric of space-time, but after the ship had passed beyond the point where they could safely turn away. This was the drop-dead point— if anything went wrong during this time there would be no way to escape being consumed by the sun.

Four manned ships had been lost in this way, and uncounted numbers of unmanned robot probes. But they had no choice—only stars and black holes had strong enough gravity to stretch space-time to the extent that tearing a hole into hyperspace was even possible. And it was a lot safer diving into a star than a black hole.

The Pegasus was approaching that point now.

Fischer yelled out her final orders. On the bridge, Captain Rostov closed his eyes.