“That’s the theory. Assuming you make it into the froth—hard enough—you’re afloat in an endless sea of interference. Lost in a place where distance doesn’t mean as much as you think it does, and where you can’t see your way home.” She tries another switch, but still nothing happens. She slams a fist on the panel hard enough to echo, and tries the switch again. More nothing; she flicks it back and forth between her fingers. “Dammit.” She tries a kick. Something sparks near the ceiling.

“What does it look like?”

She looks up at me. “What does what look like?”

“The dust.”

“Up close? A bit like broken glass, I guess. You’d think being in a place like this would wear it all down, grind it smooth, but it’s full of sharp edges. Full of teeth.” She tries the switch again, and this time something stirs. For a few seconds, there’s a humming sound above us, and then it’s gone. She glares at the ceiling. “So close.”

“It’s made for chewing signals, then.”

She drops behind the console and starts tugging at something I can’t see. “Made for chewing most things. That’s why patrols can’t call home. Why the companies can’t just sink each other from opposite sides of the Eye.”

“So what are we doing here, then?”

Hail sends a hand over the top, points. “Flick that switch.”

I lean over to see her holding a pair of live wires between her fingers.

“You sure about that?”

She presses them together. “No. Does it matter?”

“Guess not.” I try it, and the line sparks, cracks like a gunshot.

Hail starts and yelps.

“Are you all right?”

“Fine.” She comes back up, glares at the panel. “We’re here because this is our best option.”

“How do you figure that? This thing is driftwood, you said it yourself.”

“You’re right. Sigurd worked out pretty quickly that the project was a waste.” She turns, arm extended, following another line of cabling across the floor. “But not for the reason you’d think.”

“I don’t know what to think.”

“That’s fair, I suppose.” She squats down next to a display, digs her fingers into a panel below it, yanks it clear. “This place is a waste, but that’s because it’s only good at the obvious stuff. Like the giant ring of fire out there,” she says, flapping a hand at the wall.

“It’s really good at things you don’t need a listening station to tell you?”

She clicks a finger at me. “Exactly. The froth tears into anything you try and send—anything direct, that is. Spits it out in a million directions.”

“But if you take the time, you can still hear an echo?”

“It depends, but yes. For the most part, anyway. Echoes aren’t much good when you’re trying to send a message.”