Tentatively, she tried to raise her head. Nothing happened. Slowly, the sky brightened and obscured. Gretchen tried to focus, to bring forth the clarity Hummingbird had promised her, but as she did the colorless gray returned, damping out the stars and the night sky. In the formless void, shapes and phantasms flickered – emerging from nothing, nearly reaching definable shapes or scenes – then vanishing again. Everything was so indistinct, so faint, her mind failed to grasp reason or purpose among the shifting gleams and tremors.

These are hungry memories, Gretchen heard Hummingbird say, his voice a weak thread amid the roiling nothingness. They seek shape and purpose.

I can be formless, Anderssen realized, and I will not die.

She let go, letting herself – sore muscles, bruised ribs and weary mind – fall into stillness.

Once more the gray faded away, leaving only crystalline night. Gretchen had a sensation of floating upon a limpid, dark lake without a visible shore. The water was heavy, holding her up, her body freed from the tyranny of gravity, in some balance where the rubbery tension of the lake surface could hold her weight. She could not see the lake – only the constant, unwinking stars – but was certain of its presence. All sense of frigid cold and weariness were absent. Even her thoughts – which had begun to feel attenuated, drained, parched by the relentless events of the day – were at peace. They did not hurry, but moved languidly, finding their own proper pace and rhythm.

I am finally still, she realized. This is what Hummingbird meant.

The nightmares and frantic memories of the gray seemed far away, reduced to insignificance. Gretchen perceived – as though she stood on a great height and stared down, finding a tiny dark speck in a field of gravel beneath a looming cliff of basalt – her body was alone in the darkness. There were no furious, malefic clouds of not-color swirling around her, no half-seen shapes drawn from the ruins of an ancient world, only stone and crumbled shale and dust.

Am I really alone? she wondered, though the thought had no urgency. Was the gray merely hallucination? A phantom drawn up into a bewildered, confused mind?

Something moved – a human shape – and entered her field of view. Gretchen felt the lake tremble and shift, unseen waves rolling her up and down. Gently, with no more than the sensation of sand and grit pressing into her back, she found herself on the shore of a vast, dry ocean. The figure – cloaked and hooded, z- suit half-visible in the pale starlight – leaned over her, one hand resting on a padded knee. The thin aerial of a comm pack arced up against the stars.

Was the gray only something I saw in a moment of clarity? The thought struck her hard, rousing a placid mind to hurried thought. Certainty gathered beneath her breastbone, solid and unmistakable. Like the glow around the ultralights? Around the cable? The witch-fire of the dunes shedding their day-heat into the implacable night?

"Hello." Gretchen's voice felt rusty, deep and scratchy, as though she'd woken from a long, deep sleep. "Give me a hand, huh?"

A glove clasped hers, drawing Gretchen to her feet. The motion roused to life all of her aches and hurts, drawing a hiss of pain and a wry grimace. The figure's kaffiyeh fell aside, revealing battered, scored goggles and a rust-etched rebreather. Anderssen squinted, surprised. Hummingbird's equipment isn't so badly used… She stopped, frankly goggling, eyes widening in surprise.

A woman stared back at her from the depths of the hood, brushstroke-pale eyebrows narrowed over half-seen pale blue eyes. Gretchen felt calm flee, brushed aside by a shock of realization and confusion.

"Doctor Russovsky?" she managed to choke out.

Deck Six Starboard, the Cornuelle

Susan Kosho slid down a gangway ladder at speed, the instep of her boots straddling the rails on either side of the steps. She hopped off nimbly just before the end, letting her hands guide her to thump down on a nonskid deckplate. Straightening her uniform jacket and pants, the sho-sa turned in the tiny intersection and strode off down the right-hand hallway. A line of cargo staples ran down the center of the passage, offering a secure anchor for heavy straps holding cargo billets against the wall. Stenciled labels identified the pods as holding flash-frozen food supplies – potatoes, chiles, rice, onions, wasabi paste, buffalo meat, mutton, carrots, peas, mangoes – everything the kitchens would need to keep three hundred men and women from rioting over an unvarying diet of vanilla-flavored three-squares, recycled bodywater and vitamin supplements.

She reached a pressure door with a small sign reading JUNIOR OFFICERS' QUARTERS taped to the bulkhead. The crates stacked to the low overhead on either side of the hatch were labeled MEDICAL SUPPLIES. Stonefaced – though there was no one to see her – Kosho examined the seals on the cargo pods and found them intact. Pursing her lips slightly, she plugged her duty-officer's comp into the bottom crate's dataport and watched for a moment as the two systems conversed. The inventory request registered thirty-six full bottles of Usunomiya-city-brewed sake, in ceramic bottles.

Kosho considered opening the case, which had been placed in such perilous proximity to the JOQ by the ship's supply officer – a man widely regarded as being without pity or remorse or any human sense of mercy or decency by the crew – to see if the bottles were truly inside, or if they even retained any rice wine, but did not. The hour was deep into second watch and she had her own business to finish.

The pressure door yielded to her command insignia and levered up into the overhead with a hiss. Kosho schooled her face to perfect stillness and stepped through the hatchway into a thick miasma composed of human sweat, the acrid taste of metal oil, drying laundry and half-cooked food. A clamor of sound enveloped her as the hatch closed; music blaring from personal players, the clatter of two midshipmen fencing with rattan swords at the far end of the deck, people shouting encouragement to the duelists, an ensign arguing passionately with a bored-looking second lieutenant, the beep and whir of electronics, someone singing a Noh ballad off-key… The sho-sa's nostrils flared slightly, then settled. Dark brown eyes surveyed the rows of bunks sitting over tiny desks and lockers with interest. Every square inch of the long, slightly curving room was covered with people, equipment, posters, 3v postcards or zenball schedules.

Forty-seven violations of shipboard regulations, she thought as her eyes returned to look down the long, crowded hallway. A very faint, calculating smile touched her lips. Though none needful of real punishment. Not today, at least.

A middle-grade lieutenant standing in front of the nearest desk, shirt off – revealing a jawless skull tattooed on a powerfully muscled cocoa-colored back – happened to turn at just that moment. He was dressing for third-watch duty, his tunic, uniform jacket and soft, kepi-style cap laid out on a neatly made bed. The Mixtec froze, seeing her, then his brain restarted with admirable speed and he stiffened to attention.

"Senior officer Kosho," he bawled in a voice worthy of a Jaguar Knight gunso, "on DECK!"

His voice echoed back from the far end of the JOQ in abrupt silence. The Noh singer's caterwauling aria flew in counterpoint, but was immediately silenced. There was a commotion as men and women swarmed down off the bunks and leapt up from their chairs or the deck and formed two rows facing into the central walkway. Kosho nodded politely to the thai-i.

"You will be late for your duty station, Eight-Deer. Please continue."