Audacity paused before its next jump, giving those external feelers, those entangled ray-traces, a chance to adjust to our intrusion. To reconcile. We had all heard stories of bold journeys ending badly. Space-time, we’ve been reliably informed, forms something like a bruise or clot around ships that consistently outrace their own reality. We were certainly in that category. We dared not even attempt to communicate our success—that might have tipped the scales.

For that and other reasons, objectively—within our frame—the journey would take far longer than one might think, considering our jumps could in theory have been instantaneous. We were at the mercy of healing space-time.

We would not know how long we had been gone, from our old frame’s reference, until we returned.

Months. A year.

Longer.

The last half of the journey I spent in slumber, wrapped in a slowly rotating cocoon of loose sheets. Occasionally I would rise from this dreamless sleep and try to remember my husband’s face. Then the faces of our children. I would fail on both counts.

An ancilla could have refreshed that memory. Armor could have supplied me with all our time spent together. I availed myself of neither.

My crew wisely set their slumbers to last until near the end of the journey.

* * *

A chiming sound.

Time to come to full alertness.

I ignored the alarm for as long as Audacity allowed. Then, small monitors entered my cabin and snipped away the silken layers of my cocoon.

We had not yet arrived. One more jump would be made.

My fellow travelers were making themselves useful in an antechamber to the bridge. I stepped between darting sounds and flowing images, a bird swarm of diagnostics and discoveries, revealing the ship’s relief at surviving so far, over so few long jumps.

The crew also celebrated, threw aside their armor, embraced, slapped flesh awake, confounding the little monitors trying to assess their health.

The seven slowly became aware of me and grew quiet as I moved forward.

Keeper-of-Tools, an arrogant young Builder, came up to assure me all was well. Clearance-of-Old-Forests, a Miner of one of our most ancient clades, passed out cups of celebratory nectar dosed with restoratives. He doubled the dose for my two Lifeworkers, Chant-to-Green and Birth-to-Light. Somehow, they looked less fit than either the Builders or the Miner. No surprise. I felt it, too. Out here, the aura of Living Time—the sea within which Lifeworkers swim like fish—was very thin indeed.

“Apologies, Lifeshaper,” Clearance said. “You’ve had a hard journey.”

I accepted my own double dose of restorative. “Do I look sickly?” I asked.

“You do,” Clearance said with that blunt lack of decorum common among Miners.

“No apologies,” I said. “You must feel lost as well, out here.”

“I do,” Clearance admitted. “No planets, no stone or magma—nothing! Watched by a trillion tiny eyes in the dark.” He shuddered.

We sipped until all seemed well enough, though exhausted.