noon
`` Maybe if I go out to Force Command with you , I might see something you 've overlooked . And if I ca n't , I 'll try to scrape up some stuff on Koshchei for you . Deep-vein scanners , that sort of thing , from the mines . '' They took the _ Lester Dawes _ out at a little past noon and turned south and east . Everybody aboard was happy -- except Conn Maxwell . He was thinking of the years and years ahead of these trusting , hopeful old men , each year the grave of another expectation . Two hundred miles from Force Command , the _ Goblin _ met them , her sides still spalled and dented from the hits she had taken in Barathrum Spaceport .