Toby had listened to his Isaac Aspect consult even older, scratchy Aspects, and then go on about the huge dark star, but it all seemed so strange, so impossible. Through ten billion years the galaxy had fed it. Stars had been swept into it by the tides of gravity and dusty friction. Once, civilizations had thrived around those lost suns. As their parent stars were swept inward, to be baked and shredded and devoured, whole alien races had been forced to flee or die.

Isaac’s history lessons were pretty sparse about those distant times. Much was imagined, but little known. Some civilizations had escaped, Isaac said. They had made strange, metallic colonies that harvested the great energy resources here. Ahead of Argo lay such refuges. Cities of the center—alien, enormous, forbidding. Greater than Chandeliers, and far older.

He shook himself and turned to his task—coaxing Quath in for the Family Bishop Gathering. The bulky alien labored with the last walls of her intricate nest, stacking the bricks in a sheltering nook where two farm domes met.

“Come on, big-bug, it’s about to start.”

Quath hefted a thick slab without apparent effort. <It is your species’ ceremony. [untranslatable] I show respect by not attending.>

“It’s more like a brawl with rules. Anyway, the Cap’n wants you there to speak.”

<An honor I must decline, eater-of-vermin.>

“Look, dung-master, this is important.”

<More important for you to return inside.>

“Huh? Why?”

<Witness with both your hindbrain and forebrain—the song of electrons.>

Toby followed Quath’s double-jointed gesture. Now that he swept his gaze around, he picked out a soft, ivory glow all around Argo. It danced and shimmered, like a mist blown by an unseen wind. “Pretty. So what?”

<Those are high-energy electrons which strike our magnetic shields. As they are brushed aside, they emit their own small howls of outrage. Photons of dismay and discomfort.>

“Yeah, life’s tough. Still, so what?”

<We encounter many more such electrons now. There are multitudes, near the galactic core. Their radiations will soon make it unsafe for you to walk this hull.>

Toby frowned. He had always thought that Argo’s magnetic fields kept all the dangerous stuff away. But such fields could not stop weightless light, and he knew that the really harmful stuff was much higher in frequency, far above what humans could sense.

“You can see the hard radiation?”

<All my species can. We did not evolve on such a comfortable world as you.>

“Ummm. I better get back inside. You’re coming too—Cap’n’s orders.”

<If it is an order, I must obey. My species knows such things as well.>

“Quath, you started tearing apart your wasp-nest and packing it away before we even knew mechs were coming. How come?”

<The tide of events is set.>

“You think so?” Quath never said anything lightly. Or else an alien sense of humor didn’t come over that way. For all Toby knew, losing a leg might be a great joke for Quath. Toby had seen her take off one of her own legs once and make a strange sucking sound. He had assumed Quath had been crying or groaning, but maybe it had been a parlor game.

<There is no way out.>

“Pretty fatalistic, ol’ crap-crafter.”

<But there is a way in.>

Toby could not extract any further explanation from Quath, and by the time he got the alien inside the Gathering had already started. Aces and Fivers arguing with Bishops—even though they shared a lot of cultural manners and even ancient tales.

Luckily, the first part was a kind of disorganized dance, and music hammered through the large hall where all Family Bishop mingled with people they had picked up from New Bishop, the last world they had fled. A happy mob. Except, of course, for the assigned watch officers—no Family could ever relax entirely.

Toby tried to fall into the mood of a Gathering. Quath wanted to stand in a corner, towering over everyone, eyes gazing into an abstract distance. Toby joined a group-gavotte, remembering the words from childhood.

Put your hand on your hip,

Let your backbone slip.

Snake it at your feet

Motion in the meat

Flip it to your vest

Shake it to the one you love best.

Not too dignified, but then Gatherings often weren’t. From watching his father Toby understood the underlying strategy.

Get people loosened up and feeling connected. Encourage them to dance and sing and call up worn memories of celebrations back on the homeworld. Play loud, boisterous music. Roll out the ceramic vats where grains and grapes lingered, making whiskeys and beer and wine. Let the Family get thoroughly into the alcohols. Even though they had enzymes swimming in their bloodstreams that would cut the effectiveness, the drinking did lift their spirits in time-honored fashion, making them more proud, confident—and reckless. Jack up the music a notch. Then confront them with a question that called on their resources, their sense of who Family Bishop was and where they should go.

Toby knew what Killeen was doing, but that was no reason not to enjoy it. He danced with Besen, had some of the crisp fresh wine, let its heady essence swarm up into his head.

Not enough to addle him, though. His own father had faced a big problem with alcohol, in the long time after the death of Toby’s mother. Then Killeen met Shibo and got the hard drinking behind him, pulled himself together and then became Cap’n. Toby knew little biology, but he understood that there could be a tendency for the son to carry a potential weakness of the father—so he watched his drinking. He couldn’t just depend on the helpful little enzyme friends.

It was a fine Gathering. He was even starting to feel real affection for Cermo. Considering how Cermo had been riding him, that had to be attributed to the alcohol.

Cermo had a creamy chocolate skin, gleaming sugar-rich in the soft lighting. One of the things Toby liked about the Family was that they kept the age-old differences in humans alive. Eyes were brown and blue and black, skins rough or smooth, yellow or pink or chocolate, noses lean and pointed or broad and commanding or perky and upturned. Something in their genes didn’t let these differences get ironed out, smoothed away through the generations. It added interest and spice, a flavor of a time when humans adapted to different places by slanting their eyes to see better, smudging their skin to ward off the sun, tapering their faces to keep warm.

He didn’t care that nature had done it for them, through slow, natural selection. Differences were like an ancient book, incomprehensible messages from an honored past, worth preserving. His own broad nose and slanted eyes seemed imminently practical. So did his swarthy skin and scratchy beard, just coming in. Inheritances. Deep history.

Then the throbbing music ebbed. Time to decide.

Killeen began to speak. He was not an ornate talker, like some Toby had heard, but his plain, flat way of putting things had a kind of simple eloquence. He told them the hard facts of their predicament. The mechs coming. Argo’s fuel reserves. Air and water and fluid balances. Fine for a while, but not enough for an extended, high-boost flight out of Galactic Center and into some possible refuge.

Quath testified to the mech’s probable plans. They would box in Argo, trap her in the whirlpool near True Center.

Then he used the Family sensorium. Every member saw in one eye the ancient engraving, with its meaning superimposed. Killeen read passages, his voice booming.

“‘Consumed the five kinds of living dead in still-glowing holy heat.’ There was a time when the mechs fell before us!”

The Family stirred, eyes staring into a dusty past.