The C-Space alarm startled Serran so much his entire body jolted. He dropped the data work pad and knocked his elbow against the scanner control board hard enough to make him wince with the pain. “Damned stupid of me,” he said aloud to the solitude of his control centre. “Careless”. It hadn’t occurred to him that the audio alert for the new sensor suite he’d just purchased would be different from, and much louder than the old one. More to the point, he didn’t expect to be hearing it indicate a positive find so soon after turning it on here in the deep dark edges of the Bedalov system. He had spent the last of his cash reserves and even borrowed to get the upgrade hoping it would give him that competitive edge over Davies and her crew. She had beaten him to the last three viable Lagrange point registrations he’d been investigating this year, and now she had taken to sniffing around the same sector he was exploring in her quest for that next big find. He definitely needed a competitive edge, even if it was a thin competitive edge. Otherwise he would be out of business in a few months.