"This is the Moon," Darby said. "The original satellite of Earth. It was used in some ancient assault on the Ring... abandoned here, millions of light years from home, and terraformed by the handful of survivors." He smiled. "Rodi, every glance at the night sky tells us where we are and how we got here. We live surrounded by the rubble of the past, the foolish sacrifices of war.

"We have had to come to terms with this, you see. We have made our peace with the Universe. Perhaps your Integrality has something to learn from us."

Rodi stared for long minutes at the ancient craft. Then Darby took his arm. "I'll take you back to your flitter. Your companion is already waiting for you."

Hand in hand, they flew to the grass-coated walls of Tycho Crater.

The flitter soared through hyperspace.

"Those damn kids taught me a song," Thet said. She recited: "We may with more successful hope resolve / To wage by force or guile eternal war / Irreconcilable to our grand Foe... That's all there was."

Rodi frowned. "Strange sort of kids' song."

"Sounds very old, doesn't it? The kids say they learn it from older children, and so it's passed on." Punching the controls briskly, she said, "Well, that's your first drop. Wasn't so bad, was it? Next one solo, maybe."

Sunk in depression, Rodi tapped at the data desk built into his thumbnail. "What do you know about glotto-chronology?"

Thet snorted. "What do you think?"

"It's one of our standard dating mechanisms. Starting from a common root, the languages of two human groups will diverge by a fifth every thousand years." Tiny numbers flickered over his nail. "About half of Darby's vocabulary is close to ours. That makes the colony about three thousand years old... This war has endured for millennia."

"We know that." Thet's brow furrowed as she concentrated on her piloting. "This is actually a bit tricky. The inseparability net is breaking up a little; the guidance beacons are flickering... there are ripples in hyperspace; large mass movements somewhere. A quake on a nearby neutron star?"

Rodi found himself blurting, "Is it always like that?"

"What?"

"Darby..."

"What did you expect? To convert him?"

Rodi thought it over. "Yes."

She laughed at that. She was still laughing as they passed into the warm interior of the Ark.

Holism Ark was a sphere miles wide. Its human fabric was sustained from huge chambers strung around the equator, where the Ark's spin gave the illusion of gravity. There were industrial zones, biotech tanks, sim rooms, health and exercise facilities. The weightless axis was a tunnel glowing with light. Tiled corridors branched away to riddle the Ark.