: I thought about that. The problem is that we know that Durandal spent 17
: years probing the galactic core looking for Lh'owon, as in the M1 final
: screen image shown below. Now with FTL travel, Sol would have been a hop
: and a jump from Tau Ceti, but quite some distance from Lh'owon. If
: Durandal really waited until after Leela's message had arrived, that would
: imply that he either waited at least 12 years before beginning his search
: for Lh'owon, pushing the entire Marathon timeline back and risking losing
: any competitive edge he might have had, or he went back to Earth after
: finding Lh'owon.
There's a third alternative...
Durandal's plan was to locate the S'pht homeworld, but by the time he got from the spiral arm to the galactic core, he seems to have had a pretty good idea of where it was. A thousand systems is a tiny, tiny fraction of the 100 million stars in the galaxy. The only place he could have gotten this information from is the Pfhor empire, either from a Pfhor computer or a S'pht. Earth is either within the Pfhor empire or very close to its border, considering the galactic map (which begs the question of why they bothered to go to Lh'owon in the first place...). So, Durandal begins searching Pfhor planets in the general area of Tau Ceti. He remains in the area for 12 years until he gets a definite lead. At this point, he either makes or finalizes the plan to protect Earth by using the S'pht. He's close enough to Sol to drop by without wasting too much time, and to leave the fusion missiles. Then he takes off for the galactic core and locates the S'pht world in 5 years.
