“You’re being deliberately obtuse.”

Justinian ignored this. “Very well,” he said, “freeze dried it is.” He lifted the baby into the high chair, then sat down next to him.

Leslie headed to the forward section and, after a moment, came back carrying a tray on which lay two plastic bowls, steam curling upwards. The robot seemed to be moving erratically.

“I think this is yellow leather,” he said, placing the tray before Justinian.

“What?” Justinian looked at the robot in disbelief, then prodded a piece of meat with a fork. “It’s chicken passanda. What’s the matter with you, Leslie?” For a moment, something almost like compassion flickered through him. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t know, Justinian. The continual lowering of my intelligence is getting to me. I’m not what I was. I’m not acting rationally. I can’t connect to the world properly in this skin. I can’t check what is real and what isn’t.”

“Wak!” the baby said, reaching out for his dinner, little fingers gripping at nothing.

“Too hot,” Justinian said. “Ship! Can you cool the baby’s dinner?”

“Sorry, I’ve lost that capability. Spread some chicken on the side of the tray and let the second law of thermodynamics take effect.”

“You mean let it cool down?” Justinian said in disbelief.

“That’s the expression, I think,” agreed Leslie.

“I’ve got to get off this ship,” Justinian muttered.

He took a forkful of the freeze-dried meal. It didn’t taste that bad, though it was possibly a little spicy for the baby. He scraped some of the yellow sauce off the vegetable constitute that represented chicken and cut it into pieces with his fork, then left it to cool. A second pack held sweet corn: little yellow nuggets of maize. Justinian studied it thoughtfully until a voice interrupted his reverie.

“Hey, Justinian.” The voice came from behind the dinner table.

“Who is that?”

“Justinian, it’s me, David Schummel.”

“The pilot of the shuttle. Where on earth are you?”

“We’re not on Earth. Look out of the windows to your left.”

Justinian did so, surprised to see it was nighttime again; obviously the flier’s constant criss-crossing of the planet had scrambled his body clock. Munro, Gateway’s overlarge moon, was shining palely over the dark snowscape of the Williams Fells. A lime-green spot of light was approaching from the distance.

“Can you see me?” Schummel called.

“Yes, I see you. What do you want?”

“Set the flier down. We need to talk.”

“About what? I’m heading for something called the secondary infection. And the sooner I get there, the sooner I can leave this planet for good.”

The spot of light resolved itself into the lime-green shuttle Justinian had seen earlier that day on the landing field.

“You’re not going anywhere unless it’s on my shuttle. Set down, Justinian; this is important.”

“The baby and I are having our dinner. That’s important, too.”

“Just do this as a favor to me, Justinian.”

“You, too, David? I did you a favor back at the spaceport, when I didn’t get on your shuttle, and now it’s like I somehow owe you. I’m not going to be deflected from what I intend to do this time.”

The shuttle had flown closer, and Justinian could now see David Schummel seated in a polarized glass bubble near the front of the craft. The wings and tail were flexed into atmospheric flying position, giving the craft the appearance of a paper dart. David gave Justinian a lazy wave, moving even closer, now flying only a few meters away from the window. Justinian remembered that Schummel was piloting the shuttle alone, without any AIs to help him. He was impressed by that, despite himself.

“Justinian?” Seeing Schummel’s lips move across that icy supersonic gap between the windows gave Justinian an odd feeling. So near and yet so far away. “Justinian,” he said again, “all we’re asking is that you don’t fly too close to the secondary infection. You’ve got a Turing machine piloting that ship and an advanced AI there in that robot.”

“The advanced AI is currently having trouble telling chicken from leather. It’s so cut off from reality it doesn’t even know what day it is.”

“That’s my point exactly: they’re cracking up. There’s no telling what they will do if they get too close to that location. I’ve come to make you an offer. Just land, and we can fly the rest of the way in this shuttle. I’m the most intelligent thing aboard this ship. I’m not going to turn myself off when things get tough. You should be safe with me. You could leave the baby with the robot.”

“I wouldn’t leave that robot in charge of a rock.”

“Fine. We’ll take the baby with us and leave the robot behind.”

“I’m coming, too,” Leslie said. “Orders.”

“No, you’re not,” Justinian said. The robot had just helped make his mind up. “Ship! Take us down. David, I need to finish feeding the baby. Come on board and we can talk.”

The flier’s exit ramp dropped onto snow. Cold sighed into the craft’s interior. Justinian shivered and wondered why for a moment, then realized that the temperature gradient mechanism at the rear door had gone the way of the food synthesizer. Justinian had lived his entire life with such devices; he took their function so much for granted he realized now that he wasn’t even aware of their existence until they ceased operating.

He peered out of the open hatchway, feeling the cold nipping at his lips and ears. Schummel was a dark shape about thirty meters away, struggling towards him, waist deep in the snow.

“Do you need help?” Justinian called out, his voice sounding strangely dead in the cold air.

“I’m okay,” Schummel gasped, pushing ahead. His craft lay about fifty meters away, half illuminated by the wash of the flier’s interior lights, which shone in a wedge across the snow. Justinian made his way down to the base of the ramp, fascinated by the cold blackness that surrounded him. Stepping sideways from the cone of light into the snow and the darkness, he blinked as his eyes grew accustomed to the night, and then gave a gasp of astonishment at what he could see. The black sky seemed to rise forever, the stars tumbling down into one corner of the night as he observed the edge of galaxy M32. The arcs of the contrails left by the two craft glowed in the moonlight; they dipped down through this brilliant expanse to the points where they had landed, and Justinian followed the lines they made back along their paths through the sky.

“Amazing sight, isn’t it?” Schummel said, gasping cold clouds of steam as he came up beside Justinian. Powdered snow fell from his passive suit.

“I suppose it is,” Justinian grudgingly admitted.

“Come on, Justinian. Don’t let your frustration with the EA spoil this moment. Who could have imagined that a species with a sense of vision evolved to help them swing through trees would someday use that same sense to appreciate this sight?”

Justinian looked up into the sky and felt just a little of the tension relax that had been building up in him over the past few weeks. But the sound of his son crying brought it straight back.

“Come inside. I was halfway through feeding the baby.”

They found Leslie trying to wrestle the spoon from the baby so that he could feed him. Niblets of sweet corn skittered across the tray.

“Let him try to feed himself,” Justinian suggested. “He’s getting old enough to try.”

Leslie glanced in their direction. “Hello, David,” he said.

“Hi, Leslie. I want Justinian and the baby to fly on my shuttle to the location of the secondary infection.”

“Sorry, I can’t allow that, David. I am responsible for this mission, so I must stay with them. Anyway, I can’t place my fate in the hands of a human intelligence. No offense, but you’re too erratic.”

“Humans are too erratic! You say that after the way you have just been behaving? I’m going with David.”