By the time they got to the Bridge level, the campfire group was a milling, murmuring mob. Toby could feel their muttering rise like an animal’s warning growl. This wasn’t going to be like other times, when Killeen had used a stern scowl, quick reasoning, and then a sunny smile to turn aside bands of complaining Bishops. This gang had a mean, dark streak in it.

The Lieutenants at the Bridge felt it, too. They formed a four-person block at the Bridge entrance and tried to stare down the mob. Toby looked around, but Cermo and Jocelyn had faded back. No point in them showing their faces, when the others would do their work.

Or were they that crafty? Toby wasn’t sure. The campfire ritual had seemed to just burst out with the jittery anxiety they all felt, which was the point of the age-old custom, after all.

Toby himself tried to slip quietly away from the Bridge. Even more than Cermo and Jocelyn, he was in a conflicted position. But elbows and close-packed shoulders kept him from beating a retreat. Skeptical eyes speared him, as if to say, You’re going to slide away now?

Toby wasn’t sure what he should do, and then events made up his mind for him.

The Bridge was tall enough to jut a balcony out over the corridor, meant as a place to which an officer could retreat and hold a quiet conversation. Killeen used it now, stalking into view above the heads of the buzzing throng. He wore full dress uniform with its impressive crisp blues and gold spangles. An excited babble broke out at his appearance. More Family joined the edges with every moment. Killeen stood, hands behind his back, for a long moment, letting the grumbling beast below give vent, waiting until the noise ebbed.

When he did speak his voice was solid and surprisingly mild. “You came to view our progress?”

“Progress? Ha! We’re sailing into hell!” a man called.

Killeen shook his head. “We are staying ahead of the mechs.”

“You mean they’re runnin’ us!” a woman shouted, her words soaked with derision.

“They are trying to catch us, sure—when didn’t they?” Killeen swept his gaze over the still-growing crowd, fixing individuals in turn with his gaze.

“They’re gonna’ cook us for sure!” a man accused.

“Not by a mech’s eye.” Killeen smiled confidently. “We entered the galactic jet just a few minutes ago.”

A confused stirring at this news.

“Didn’t you notice?” Killeen added mildly. “Our hull should start to cool off in a while.”

“How come? That jet looks pretty hot.”

Killeen waved a hand. “It’s not. Funny business, but turns out the gas here is blue because it’s cooled off. Fighting its way up, out from the gravity well that black hole makes, well, that takes all the zip out of the gas.”

The crowd stirred and muttered with disbelief.

“So we’ll stop heating up?” a woman called.

“Our computers say so.”

“Well, that’s fine,” a man said. “But we still—”

“We can follow the jet on out,” Killeen said amiably. “The blue clouds are condensing as they cool.”

A man said angrily, “That don’t excuse the damn fool idea of comin’ here in the first place.”

“We hold you accountable!” a woman called.

“Yeasay—and what do we get out of all this, anyway?”

“More trouble!”

“More mechs!”

“And we sure don’t need more of this Cap’n!”

That was too much for the Trumps. Abruptly individual Aces and Fivers and Jacks shouted down the doubting Bishops. Surly jibes, angry taunts. Fistfights started, but officers broke them up.

The chaos went on for minutes and Killeen stood silently, watching. His mouth twitched once and Toby guessed. He’s thinking that it’s pretty damn strange, when your own Family is against you, and Trumps stand by you.

Finally the crowd had settled down to a growing, sour-mouthed mutter. Killeen spread his hands. “I think you folks should just go back to your tasks and—”

They all felt it at the same time—a compression that boomed into a rolling pulse, as if Argo had become a great heart that beat with slow, solemn weight.

I return, enjoined to deliver instructions.

It was like God speaking in a cramped room. The mob rustled. Their eyes raked the walls, searching for the voice, showing too much white, like panicked sheep.

But Killeen reacted only with a skewed mouth and a skeptical slant to his eyebrows. He crossed his arms over his chest, as if prepared to hear out the Magnetic Mind before responding. “Yeasay, we are listening.”

It is you and the Toby creature to whom I need transfer this complex of curious meanings.

“I’m here!” Toby called.

People nearby gave him a startled glance and moved hurriedly away, as if they wanted no association with one who would call down this daunting thing that shook the walls to make speech.

My duty is imposed by encumbered obligations from my far past. I once benefited from the powers who now call on me, and so stand as messenger to motes such as you—a post requiring humility I do not come to naturally. So I be quick of it—here.

A high-pitched wail filled the ship, reverberating in agonizing harmonics. Sharp, shrill, endless. A cutting pressure, driving all thought away. For an excruciating moment it held, built—then cut off savagely. The stunned silence that followed seethed with dread.

Such was your course. Follow it well or you will suffer to be torn to atoms, and then still more.

“Our . . . course?” Killeen croaked.

The trajectory your benefactors instruct you to follow.

Regaining composure, Killeen said sternly. “And which way is that?”

You are to follow my magnetic field lines. Cling close to me, that you do not shear into fragments.

“Why? And where are you, anyway?” a burly man shouted.

Silence, small mind.

“The hell I will. Who are you, what are you, to—”

A fist of sound struck them. The colossal thump pulsed through floor, ceiling, walls. People lurched, fell, shrieked.

I do not suffer the attentions of mortals, but for my obliged task. That—and no more.

“That, that sound you sent—” Killeen held out his hands, palms down, to still the throng. “You say it was a course plan along you?”

Without me as a guide, you would come to swift wreak and ruin.

“Look, we’re going to head out along the galactic jet. I—”

Such a trajectory would inevitably intersect those who desire your end.

“Mechs? We’ve gotten away from them before.”

There are agencies and physicks here you cannot grasp.

Killeen folded his arms across his chest and scowled. Toby knew that look, had seen it form like a stone wall against opponents. But there was some other element in his father’s stance, an odd note of staged and studied performance he had not seen before. He wondered at it, caught a sliver of intuition, but then the Cap’n spoke.

“I want to know the authority by which you—or any other of your ‘agencies’—gives us orders.”

How you strut! I have dwelled here longer than your species has existed. You are as ephemeral as the passing, fraying cloud. Yet pride often accompanies such infinitesimal durations.

“Maybe it’s that long life of yours that makes you so longwinded?” Killeen winked at the crowd.

I speak to you now only out of obligation—which does not include enduring the slings and errors of toy intelligences. Very well—your benefactor is the creature Abraham, of whom we spoke.

Joy kindled in Killeen’s eyes. “He is alive.”

The warp and slide of space-time here does not allow such easy simplifications.

“But if he sent this just now—”

The very term “now “is as ephemeral as you. Here, worse than meaningless.

Toby could see curiosity overcome his father’s exasperation. Killeen chewed at his lip and called, “That course you sent. I want to know where it’ll take us.”