Killeen glanced back at Quath, startled. Toby had forgotten that the Bridge was tuned into Quath’s transmissions. He could not carry on a snug, private conversation with the alien any longer. The thought made him somehow sad.
Killeen said, “Argo’s ancient. Last of its kind, prob’ly. Wouldn’t find anything like that here.”
<Assumptions are not facts.>
“Humans here?” Cermo asked. “I hope to God it’s so.”
“Its color function is not smooth,” Jocelyn said crisply. No speculations for her; she kept eyes fixed on the flowing dynamics of her board.
Killeen ceased his slow pacing and walked quickly to her side, fighting the jolts of vagrant gravity. The board showed a bewildering array of numbers, graphs, scattershot diagrams. Toby could piece them out, with some help—they were like the math lessons from Isaac—but Killeen had a long-standing impatience with such pesky details. “What’s that stuff mean?”
“When the instruments scan across the image, even though it’s kinda watery, they can tell if it’s the same color. That ship has blotches on it.”
“So?” Killeen ran a hand over the displays, as if he could feel their significance. Toby knew the puzzled impatience in his father’s face. Long years of trusting his wits made abstract instruments seem untrustworthy, no matter how advanced. Toby could sympathize; he felt pretty shaky, too, relying on devices he could not possibly figure out.
“So maybe it’s damaged. Taken hits. Got holes in it, even.”
“Likely it’s a warship, then.” Jocelyn frowned.
On the screen a blue-white shape swam, shimmering and bobbing in the incessant streaking light-drops. The ship’s minds fretted over its identity and strobed UNKNOWN on the screen. Toby watched the bobbing, silvery ship and Quath said, <We plunge quickly. Already we near the thirty-day level.>
“Huh? What?”
<A day at this depth inside the time pit equals thirty normdays’ duration outside.>
“How can that be?”
<The Myriapodia have sent me a submind. I assign it these tasks. Its digital consciousness can guide us through such reaches. It understands how the curving of space-time is both a warpage of distance and a shrinkage of time, for us.>
Toby swallowed, and not just from a new lurch of his couch. Before he could take in Quath’s meaning, Killeen made a decision, smacking a palm on the board. “Can’t risk it being a warship, maybe mech. Prepare to fire on it.”
Jocelyn replied crisply. “Ready for action.”
“Wait!” Toby called. “You heard Quath. She says everything’s twisted down here. That ship could be from some different time, not following us at all.”
“What’s time matter?” Killeen snapped. “A mech’s a mech.”
“Dad, give that ship a little leeway. My Isaac Aspect, Quath, they both’re talking about how crazy it is here. Seems to me, until we understand—”
Killeen glanced at his son and nodded to Jocelyn. “Keep a sharp eye. Stand ready. Armed.”
“Armed, Cap’n.”
“Dad!”
<It is not advisable to act without knowledge.>
Killeen studied the alien’s head and feelers, which swayed with the effort of compensating for the tides of gravity that swept through the Bridge like a pressure wind. “You sure?”
<Here nothing is certain. But my submind reports that many unknown craft linger here.>
“How many?”
<Unknown. They stack up from all ages past.>
“Mech?”
<Some, it says, may be from before the age of the mechanicals.> Quath sent a rippling, fizzy sound with this, which Toby did not know how to interpret. Wasn’t the ‘age of the mechanicals’ now—their time?
Killeen seemed to understand, though, and nodded. “All right. Can you put your information on our screens?”
<Soon.> Another mysterious series of fizzy, ringing notes.
The ship on the screens waxed and waned in shimmering, heated luminosity. For a moment it sharpened. A scarred skin, once silver-smooth, now pocked and stained. Bulges that could be domes, but streaked and grimy.
Jocelyn said, “Our pattern-recognition programs say that’s old human construction.”
Killeen rubbed his chin. “Ummm, could be.”
“It is!” Toby cried. The cut and angles struck a chord in him. Before he could say more, the clarity fled. A long moment of silence followed. The Bridge officers stared openly at their Cap’n. To fire on a human craft would be a great sin, but to die from a mech bolt . . .
“Not mech, anyway,” Killeen conceded. “Stand down.”
The tension on the Bridge broke. Officers murmured, rustled. Killeen resumed pacing. Toby was still watching the screens when the other ship’s image began to dwindle away. “Hey!” Jocelyn cried, working at her instruments. But the image faded like a plucked flower sinking into a dark pond.
“Gone.” Killeen seemed relieved. “Maybe we were looking at a mirage all the time.”
<It is possible, here. Note:>
