13) Ifet Venport plunged into ship construction and spice-trance education with fanatical energy, working both die exiles and their Tupdian assistants around the clock By 80 B G , twelve ships had been assembled, each with trained spice-assisted Ixians at the bridge Through the next few months, test flights of limited range accustomed both captains and navigators to the tasks thai had debilitated Cevna In 79 B G " Venport began an extended test of coordinated ship movement through The Void, the first such mission attempted The anonymous author of the Aurehan Memoirs describes the result While we in the other ships relied on a division of tabor between captains and navigators, Aurelius in the flagship Norma Cevna insisted on doing both by himself-as she had-bat better and safer, succeeding where sfae bad failed Since we were caught up m hu fervor, there was no dissent We dropped into The Void and lost radio contact, but when we reached our des nnanon only eleven ships emerged We spi raled outward from Kovenek for three standard days, searching for the Norma Cevna but we found nothing, neither at Kovenek nor at Tupile when we returned A few superstitious Tupile technicians muttered about Ampohros I can t picture Venport as ' the Wanderer of Space, but he might as well be we Ixians are finished here Now cenjes the day of the lunihans (p 408) Although Venport was gone, the Ixians had indeed completed their work Like the dyna mos of Old Richese Venport had powered his Duan colleagues and Tupthan worshipers alike toward the vision that lured him-the rebirth of fast, safe interstellar travel S T Further references SPACING GUILD FOIJNDATION SPAC ING GUILD OPERATIONS INTERSTELLAR NAVIGATION PRE-GUILD CEVNA NORMA Arkiid Sidak Fragments of an Odyssey tr Shosta Graun (Topaz Gnmoire) Anon Aurelian Memoirs Lib Conf Temp Series 684 VOICE.