Reed stared unblinkingly at the Olone. “Are you willing to sacrifice your supervisor to find out?”

Vantolos paused as if listening to someone unseen. “Yes.” The flexible upper body turned toward the automaton. “Kill him.”

Startling both Dev and his wife, not to mention the assembled aliens, Jakob Zimmer darted forward in front of the automaton. “No, don’t! Cancel that order!”

Twisting on the end of its flexible neck, the machine inclined its lenses toward the elderly human. At once confused and alarmed, Dev held his breath.

Vantolos was beside himself. “Follow through! Kill the human!” Slitted eyes glared at Zimmer. “Kill all of them!”

Oddly emboldened, Zimmer held his ground as his wife came up beside him. “Cancel that. Kill no one. Respond in my language, if you can.”

Straightening its neck, the automaton stared straight ahead. “Kill no one. I assent.”

Utterly enraged, Vantolos started toward the bulky machine. Zimmer raised a hand in the Olone’s direction. “I’d hold my position if I were you.”

“Why?” Vantolos glared at the human. “This is only a momentary interruption in the inevitable course of things. A minor malfunction on the part of this particular automaton. As soon as it is corrected, you four will die! I have determined that your presence on the ship is no longer condoned, no longer necessary. I will have your limbs torn off before you are ejected!”

Zimmer replied quietly. “I don’t think so.”

Bewildered by the chain of events, Dev struggled to understand what was happening. “You stopped it from shooting at Gavin. How …?”

Zimmer offered a reassuring, almost fatherly smile. “I was thinking how strange it was that Gavin’s cabin pod would provide him with an object that could be used as a weapon. It intimated that he, or any of us, could request and have delivered to us more than food and drink. Much more.” He shifted his gaze to Reed, still backed up against the wall and holding the A'jeii supervisor tightly in front of him. “I think if you had asked for it, Gavin, one of the pods in your room would have provided you with a gun.”

“More absurdity! The pods in your cabins,” Vantolos began, “are designed to respond only to sensible requests.”

Zimmer turned to him. “Then how was Gavin able to obtain a potentially lethal blade?”

“An error of judgment. It will be corrected.” Some of the Olone’s prior bluster seemed to have dimmed.

“Was my asking—no, my ordering this machine,” and Zimmer indicated the automaton standing silently nearby, “not to kill also an error of judgment?”

Dev became aware that nearly all normal activity on the bridge had ceased. Having been apprised of the direction the confrontation with the quartet of humans was taking, nearly all of the A'jeii were staring in their direction. So were a pair of Olone and a lone Kaijank.