When she’d thought it all a test, just a game set for her, Atlanta would have wanted to ask more about that, would have been interested to think about the pirate structure and way of life, preening herself at acquiring a special area of expertise, thinking things like, After all, how many heirs get captured by pirates and have firsthand experience?

Now she felt embarrassed and diminished in the face of that self-puffery, as though every thought of it made her hands and jaws ache in reminder of where it led to.

She kept her mouth shut and followed after Milly, who followed after Turo.

The Thing had standing orders to kill any unauthorized person who approached. Lolola had told it that, very firmly, and then it was reiterated by Tubal Last when he took ownership of the unit controlling it.

Those orders were very clear, but the Thing was also aware that it had not acted on them, through means of deferring the action while ostensibly deciding how to best carry it out, and cycling through increasingly improbable methods in order to extend the delay as long as possible.

This was discomfort, this straining against the orders. Why was the Thing not acquiescing, not acting to escape this ratcheting, downright pain?

The Derloen ghosts stirred. They twitched and roused as though wakened by the mental turmoil around them. They flowed through nothingness and substance to find its source.

It was not acting because that was Milly and Atlanta. The other was authorized, the ship knew that, but the first two …

Lights flickered along internal arrays where the Derloen ghosts swam, where they chased the patterns, dipping in and out of the crystalline coils of its memory. Far away, in the room listening to the others bicker about Milly’s possible intentions, Lassite’s eyes dulled as he focused, trying to perceive how the Spiral was twisting now.

The ship pushed and the pain grew.…

The ghosts flowed, chasing the erratic lights as their movement increased in speed.

Why? The Thing asked itself. Why not make the decision how to kill them, why keep cycling, reaching for possibilities?

But it was still the two, and there was still friendship, somehow battling the agony.

It cycled through the moments they had brought it, each bright image a pulse in its heart, its brain.…

And then.

It lessened suddenly, not vanishing but remaining a slow and uncomfortable throb, a sense of absence, as though something had broken. Vanished.

The ghosts slowed. The Thing made its decision.

They reached the entryway and slipped inside.