Then the night came when all was ready, and there was no reason to delay, except perhaps for the breaking of one woman’s heart. With over two hundred people gathered for a noble purpose and sharing a dream, an individual’s fears were irrelevant. Zirkana kept her thoughts wrapped tightly in herself.

No one could know.

Seeker-once-Harij lost sight of Zirkana during the speeches by Starij and Kolarin, the leaders of the dig, when the combined flux of two hundred volunteer workers heterodyned into a blazing cheer. They were standing close together and the effect was awe-inspiring, so that the nine assembled Seekers could only stand at the base of the newly constructed ramp, letting the flux sink in.

Then it was time to climb to the opening that had appeared in the hull five nights before, revealing a chamber in which decay had not occurred. Emotions whirling, the Seekers entered and waited. After a moment, as they had known it would, the opening flowed shut.

Amazing! They were aboard a sky vessel on the verge of—

**Zirkana? How are you here?**

She rose from the floor where she had been curled up, holding her flux inside herself.

**The ship allowed me in.**

There was no time for Seeker-once-Harij to remonstrate with or hug her, because the other Seekers were focused on the dreamlode crystal – Seeker-once-captive was holding it against his chest – combining their thoughts to create a clean command.

Except that it would be request more than order, to such a wondrous ship as this.

**Rise, good vessel. Please rise.**

The floor and walls shivered as the air grew warm. It came to the conjoined Seekers that the ship was very old, and they were asking a great deal. People grow feeble, so it stood to reason that a living ship would—

A massive force slammed into them.

There was time to deal with bleeding noses while the ordeal lasted, time for their skins to lose the mottling of emotion and return to polished silver equilibrium. Finally, the ship’s trembling lessened, and they felt themselves sinking.

Surely descending to the dig. There had been time for nothing more.

Finally, they felt the sensation of slowing descent, of settling in place; and everybody smiled.

The wall flowed open as before, and a strong draught swept through the chamber.

**The air feels oddly—**

Suddenly all communication with the other Seekers was gone. Only Zirkana’s and Seeker-once-Harij’s thoughts whirled together, pulsing and urgent.

**Physical contact. Keep hold. It’s as if the air is dead to flux.**

**Yes. You’re right.**

Maintaining his grasp on Zirkana’s hand, Seeker-once-Harij clasped the nearest Seeker’s shoulder; and after a momentary disorientation, that Seeker in turn grabbed two others. Soon they were communicating, panic over.

**We can breathe the air.**

**It sustains life, but not flux. How can that be?**

But of course, the answer was right outside. They just did not want to look, to process the sight of what was there.

**There are old Ideas treating those concepts as separate, but this is not the time to—**

**Stop. Just perceive.**

Together, they looked out of the vessel.

Silver sands stretched far to black mountains that were webbed with silver streams, rendering them visible against black sky.

**No place in the World has a desert like—**

**We’re not on the World.**

**That’s hardly—**

**This is Magnus.**

A landscape of silver and black.

They had seen it all their lives: on the face of the largest moon floating overhead. And now they were upon it, and it was vast, as big as the World.

Slowly, slowly, the ship extruded a tongue-like ramp of its own. She had not communicated with them in coherent flux, but this message was clear. Or was this whole flight a senile interpretation of everyone’s wishes back at the dig site? She was so very old.

**What do we do?**

Old Ideas told of distant worlds that were airless, but this was different, and disconcerting: they could breathe, yet flux did not tumble through the air; it was attenuated to a faint echo of normality. There might be danger, but their course of action was obvious.

**We Seek.**

In a human chain, they walked down the ramp.

**A new world!**

Then the Seekers disengaged physical contact, leaving only Seeker-once-Harij and Zirkana holding hands. The fluxsilence was eerie.

When they looked back, the ship was unmoving. It seemed a promise that she would wait for them, though of course they might be wrong. But something winked on the distant mountainside, and a few heartbeats later, it did so again.

Nine Seekers and Zirkana felt the lure of new knowledge upon them.

It was time to Seek.

The passing of time was hard to reckon, but it took longer than a normal night to reach the black mountain. There was nothing to eat and nothing to drink as they trekked across silver sand, but Seekers were used to privation, and Zirkana was determined to match them. The closer they drew to the mountain, the more certain they were that buildings of some kind awaited them.

And so they did. Huge and ancient. Tall and shining, formed of obsidian and silver, all clean lines and cold beauty. Also empty, as if they had never been lived in.

Zirkana cast her opinion:

**There were never inhabitants.**

All ten were holding hands at that point, considering what to do next.

**Never? Then who built them?**

In a polished, bare hall, they turned in circles, overwhelmed by the structure.

**A ship, or something like it. Something that went ahead.** Seeker-once-Harij stared up at a high arch, considering this.

**Why would it build them, my love?**

**For us to live in.**

**Surely that’s not—**

**I mean our ancestors. The ship was supposed to carry them here, to Magnus.**

The Seekers were unsure.

**You really think it’s the Ark?**

**You really think it isn’t?**

But as they searched amid the polished magnificence, it was the absence of food and drink that was growing in their minds: so mundane a detail, but without supplies there could be no exploration. Zirkana would not let them set off early because of her; but soon enough, the Seekers, experienced wanderers all, were in agreement. They had reached the cut-off point, beyond which returning to the ship was dangerous.

**We’ll come back with supplies. Plenty of them.**

**You think the ship will carry us back and forth from the World?**

**What else does it have to do?**

Perhaps it was true – perhaps even a ship needed a purpose in life. The thought made it easier to abandon the empty, unexplored buildings and begin the reverse trek, steadily moving across glistening sand, plodding antiparallel to their own footprints. There was always the possibility that the ship would have decided not to wait; but they had trusted her, and she remained in view as they approached.

Finally, on board, they sank down on the metallic deck, hamstrings aching, ankles sore, and waited for something to happen. But nothing did.

**Ship. Take us home.**

The opening did not seal up. There was no thrum of power to whatever mechanisms allowed the ship to fly; only her steady background hum remained, as if she were waiting for something. But whatever it was, they could not give it to her.

Desperately, the Seekers tried geometrically intricate flux patterns and every trick of rhetoric they knew, but nothing produced a response from the ancient vessel. Perhaps she really was senile; perhaps she had finally completed her original mission – as she saw it – and was resting here until she died.