Sharls Davis Kendy had abandoned his crew as they explored the Smoke Ring. Three who remained aboard had been invited to take what they needed from Discipline and join the others. He had never given reasons; his secondary mission was CLASSIFIED. He had shut down systems aboard Discipline in a pattern that forced them to the CARMs.

Ah, that explained something: those three had not loved cats. Pure coincidence.

Then, the message from Earth. Put it back the way it was.

How? His crew was dead!

Faced with conflicting orders, he could not function at all. He would be locked in a loop of reinforcing guilt. Kendy had sequestered all data relating to the mutiny and beamed it to CARMs #2, #6, and #7, then erased it all from memory.

How had he gone wrong? Could the message itself have been garbled? Through 200 repetitions?

TO DISCIPLINE, YEAR 1435 STATE. RETRIEVE YOUR CREW AND CONTINUE YOUR MISSION.

-PANK SHIBANO, FOR THE STATE

No explanations, no elaborations. He'd been reprogrammed like a wayward computer. Why? He'd accomplished his mission!

Was the message genuine? Check the dates:

Kendy's own mission report, sent 1382 State. Message from the State dated fifty-two point two Earth years later. He was fifty-two point one light-years from Earth. This Shibano had not lingered over his decision, but ... it checked.

-Arrived fifty-two point one years after that. Check. . . . Odd. Why would the State expect any crew to remain alive? That Claire had survived was partly due to low gravity, good conservative health habits (her mind was that of an elderly corpsicle), youth (via the body of some bright, healthy criminal), and luck. The rest must have been dead decades earlier (and their descendants called him murderer and mutineer and damaged machine).

Shibano for the State. Kendy found it difficult to consider Shibano as separate from the state, but ... what could Shibano have been thinking? Rescue after one hundred and four years: it was insane.

Perhaps the State's medical resources had improved? Times change. Every generation of mankind has sought longer lives. Thousand-year lifespans might have become common . . .

Speculative.

But times change. Goals change. Kendy's route here had been circuitous. The state that had given Kendy his orders was four hundred and fifty-five years old when he reached the Smoke Ring. Five hundred and seven when Shibano spoke. Five hundred and fifty-nine when his message arrived.

Kendy did not normally question orders. Conflicting orders could throw him into a loop. But he had been round and round this loop, while some voiceless subsystem sought desperately for a way out.

Somewhere in a pattern of magnetic fields there was a change of state . . . and Kendy the man would have laughed. A change of State, yes. Sharls Davis Kendy's State was a thousand years in the past. Dead. Somehow he must serve anyway. His own goals had been spelled out in detail; he would serve those.

Humankind was to settle varied environments. So be it. What was his present situation?