> The manhunt extended across more than one hundred light-years and eight centuries. It had always been a secret search, unacknowledged even among some of the participants. In the early years, it had simply been encrypted queries hidden in radio broadcasts. Decades and centuries passed. 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. With time, there was some consistency to the most credible stories. The evidence was solid enough that certain ships changed schedules and burned decades of time to look for more clues. Fortunes were lost because of the detours and delays, but the losses were to a few of the largest trading Families, and went unacknowledged. They were rich enough, and this search was important enough that it scarcely mattered. 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. The hunt narrowed from a hundred light-years, to fifty, to twenty - and a half-dozen star systems. And finally, the manhunt came down to a single world at the coreward end of Human Space.
Thanks for posting that excerpt. It is a near perfect, "and then ehat happened?" Hook!
potential spoilers follow
Essentially, no spacefaring civilization is stable over long time scales, a culture (the Qeng Ho) get by through predicting which planetary system will have the economy to support refueling an interstellar craft (in the centuries-later future when they arrive). Trade advanced/secret technology development info for said refueling. The story has way more to it, but I loved it as a known-physics-following scifi story. I expect the audience of this site would also love it (and probably, many have already read it)