When using traceroute on my mac to check the path to any website, the first line is always 3 stars.

imac:~ Jerome$ traceroute google.com
traceroute: Warning: google.com has multiple addresses; using 173.194.70.113
traceroute to google.com (173.194.70.113), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
 1  * * *
 2  217-168-54-101.static.cablecom.ch (217.168.54.101)  9.515 ms  8.757 ms  10.104 ms
 3  172.31.208.73 (172.31.208.73)  14.512 ms  14.605 ms  14.264 ms
 4  ch-zrh01b-ra1-ae-1.aorta.net (84.116.134.142)  13.587 ms  12.892 ms  13.936 ms
 5  74.125.49.101 (74.125.49.101)  13.966 ms  14.850 ms  14.915 ms
 6  72.14.232.120 (72.14.232.120)  26.573 ms
    72.14.232.88 (72.14.232.88)  20.072 ms  19.758 ms
 7  72.14.236.68 (72.14.236.68)  26.913 ms
    72.14.236.20 (72.14.236.20)  26.825 ms
    72.14.239.62 (72.14.239.62)  25.381 ms
 8  209.85.254.118 (209.85.254.118)  22.240 ms  22.365 ms
    209.85.254.112 (209.85.254.112)  24.826 ms
 9  * * *
10  fa-in-f113.1e100.net (173.194.70.113)  25.715 ms  26.960 ms  25.191 ms

As far as I know, * means no answer from the router. How come I have stars at the very first line ?