It was the day after the day after the attack.
Pael was a wreck. Upchuck was starting to regret this part of his attack plan - instead of capturing a large, technologically sophisticated base, all he had was a lump of metal not much good for anything. Only about one-tenth of the base was still usable, the hangar and some of the control rooms. They were currently being used to repair and refuel Upchuck's fleet.
The refugee ships had long since dispersed - some heading to Chora Luna, others to neutral trading posts. Some were headed for Earth. Upchuck had left all of them alone, for now. Perhaps they should soon prepare an assault against Chora Luna, but Upchuck had other things on his mind.
Guybrush. The red rocks. He didn't have either of them.
Upchuck abruptly stopped brooding. A red light was flashing on his desk. Broqil, the head of his observations team, wanted to speak with him.
"Enter," said Upchuck. A door slid open and Broqil walked in.
Broqil, one of the few of Upchuck's crew who didn't quake with fear in his presence, wasted no time on niceties. "We've discovered something important," he said. "Relating to the disappearance of Guybrush's ship."
Upchuck leaned forward. This was what he wanted to hear. "What have you found?" he said.
"Well, we never would have discovered this at all if it hadn't been for all the ships around him. I've checked the instrumentation on all seven ships around Guybrush at the moment of disappearance, and all of them show one important reading - two seconds before disappearance, radiation at a wavelength of approximately -31 orders of magnitude was emitted from Guybrush's ship."
Upchuck nodded. "Go on."
"I examined the data banks of your ship for the time Guybrush vanished in front of your eyes, and found the same thing. Same wavelength, same timeframe."
"Why didn't you notice this the first time?" said Upchuck.
"Well," said Broqil, "we assumed it was a cosmic ray. You get those every second out here. The emission from Guybrush's ship barely showed up against the background noise. If you didn't know what you were looking for, you'd never find it. It was this set of observations, outside Pael, that allowed us to rule out cosmic rays as the cause. The only way all seven craft could have measured the same radiation is if it had come from Guybrush's ship."
Broqil paused. "The conclusion of the observation team is that every time these transportation rocks are used, radiation at this wavelength will be emitted. And for past hour, I've had the computers searching the instrument data banks, over the period from your first encounter with Guybrush, for any previously recorded instances of this wavelength."
He smiled. Broqil relished this power: Upchuck was hanging on his every word. "We found three," he said. "Two were from the same place - a small unmanned asteroid inside the Arc."
This was all Upchuck needed. Abruptly, he stood.
"Let's go," he said.