“It was nice to hear you say my name again,” he said, tentatively.

“I’m busy right now, ship.” She wanted something to think about, but thinking about this was awful too.

“Of course, Captain Machedo.”

Turn away from the past, turn toward the future. She reopened the shipwide channel. “Fine. We’re stuck here, for a little while anyway. We might as well make ourselves useful, increase the sum total of all human knowledge, stuff like that. Right?”

“I hate new things,” Janice said. “New things is how I ended up the way I am now.”

“Yeah, but you and Drake have experience as surveyors, so we might as well do some surveying.” They’d once been professional explorers, charting the systems beyond the bridgeheads, before their accident and reconstruction had soured the whole enterprise for them.

Drake said, “This ship is meant more for going fast and blowing stuff up than it is for doing mineral surveys, captain, but I’ll see what we can come up with. Shall? Private conference with me and Janice to talk strategy?”

“Ashok, you keep poking at the cube.”

“I’m on it. This data must be decipherable. I mean, maths is maths.”

She opened a private channel to Stephen. “Hey, big guy. How are you?”

“When I stormed out of my father’s house thirty-five years ago, I told him my ambition was to travel so far the sun would be invisible, not even a speck among the stars.” Stephen paused. “The young are very stupid, aren’t they?”

“They are. I’m not sure the old are any better, though. What’s your take on all this?”

“You know I am, at heart, a pragmatist. That’s why I seek chemical assistance to have less pragmatic experiences. Pragmatically, I think we are likely to die soon. Either we die here, in unknown space, or we make it back home, and we die at the hands of the Liars, who clearly had allies they managed to contact before they were destroyed. I think we have accidentally uncovered something momentous, Callie. The Liars have technology far beyond anything they’ve revealed to us, and a secret agenda all their own. They opened the bridges, and created an illusion they wish desperately to protect.”

“What do you mean?” Callie thought she knew, but wanted to hear his thoughts without prejudicing them.