For the search had narrowed: The Man was traveling alone, a vague blur of multiple identities, a chain of one-shot jobs on minor trading vessels, but always moving back and back into this end of Human Space. They were rich enough, and this search was important enough, that it scarcely mattered. Fortunes were lost because of the detours and delays, but the losses were to a few of the largest trading Families, and went unacknowledged. The evidence was solid enough that certain ships changed schedules and burned decades of time to look for more clues.
With time, there was some consistency to the most credible stories. There were clues, interviews with The Man’s fellow-travelers, pointers in a half-dozen contradictory directions: The Man was alone now and heading still farther away The Man had died before the search ever began The Man had a war fleet and was coming back upon them. In the early years, it had simply been encrypted queries hidden in radio broadcasts. It had always been a secret search, unacknowledged even among some of the participants. The manhunt extended across more than one hundred light-years and eight centuries.
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