By a grotesquely improbable chance, the ship passed near enough to one that he identified it—a dim, ancient red dwarf—and could show that it must have planets, from the glimpse his apparatus got before the system was swallowed anew by distance. It was an eerie thought, those icy shadowy worlds, manyfold older than Earth, perhaps one or two with life upon them, and never a star to lighten their nights. When he told Lindgren about it, she said not to pass the information any further.
