The stars disappeared all at once.
Not gradually.
Not as a consequence of acceleration.
One moment they existed.
The next, they did not.
The window darkened.
Cael waited for the familiar blackness of empty space to return.
Instead, colour appeared.
It unfolded slowly across the glass.
Not blue.
Not any colour he possessed a name for.
Something between bruising flesh and old oil spread across the surface of the void.
Then green.
Then silver.
Then a red so dark it seemed to absorb the light around it.
The colours moved without moving.
Shapes emerged.
Curves.
Depths.
Distances.
Cael understood immediately that none of them possessed the properties his eyes insisted upon assigning them.
The announcement chime sounded.
Translation successful.
The voice of the ship remained calm.
Gellar integrity confirmed.
The colours beyond the window flowed together.
Something vast passed behind them.
Or in front of them.
Or nowhere at all.
Cael closed the shutter.
The vessel changed.
Not physically.
The corridors remained narrow.
The engine vibration remained steady.
The atmosphere smelled of lubricant, hot metal and recycled air.
But every sound acquired an echo.
Not a real echo.
Something more subtle.
Footsteps seemed to arrive a fraction of a second too late.
Voices lingered.
Shadows appeared deeper than geometry permitted.
The effect was slight.
Enough to be noticed.
Not enough to be trusted.
Cael reported to Engineering Compartment Three.
Not because he had been ordered there.
Because he preferred machinery to uncertainty.
Lysette Vor looked up from a diagnostic display.
"You closed the window."
"Yes."
"Wise."
"You left yours open."
"Also wise."
"How?"
She shrugged.
"I know what I am looking at."
"And what is that?"
"Nothing."
She returned her attention to the display.
"That is the important part."
Rinna continued walking her route.
Every third cycle.
Pause.
Adjust.
Continue.
The rhythm of the engines remained unchanged.
The woman herself appeared unchanged.
Only the pressure gauges had altered.
Each bore fresh purity seals.
Each had been marked with tiny red symbols.
Protection prayers.
Cael studied them.
"Do you believe they work?"
Rinna adjusted another valve.
"Of course."
"How?"
"They remind me to pay attention."
"That isn't what I meant."
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
"I know."
She moved on.
The first incident occurred fourteen hours after translation.
The vessel's alarm sounded once.
Not the sharp tone of emergency.
A lower note.
Measured.
Controlled.
Lysette's voice emerged from the speakers.
Engineering teams report to stations. Nonessential personnel remain in assigned compartments.
Cael was already moving.
The disturbance had begun in Cargo Section Twelve.
A container restraint had failed.
Ordinarily, the event would have been trivial.
The container weighed less than two hundred kilograms.
The restraint system possessed six redundancies.
Five had functioned correctly.
The sixth had not.
The container had moved thirty centimetres.
Then the trouble had begun.
Cael arrived to find engineers surrounding the freight pallet.
No one had touched it.
That, more than anything else, alarmed him.
The container had become covered in frost.
Not ordinary frost.
The crystals formed patterns.
Circles.
Lines.
Words.
At least, they resembled words.
One engineer stood with her back against the wall.
Her lips moved continuously.
Prayer.
The apprentice beside her stared fixedly at the container.
"What happened?" Cael asked.
Lysette answered.
"It moved."
"I can see that."
"It moved farther."
"How far?"
"Thirty centimetres."
"No."
She pointed.
"The container moved thirty centimetres. The shadow moved three metres."
Cael became very still.
"That is impossible."
"Yes."
The apprentice looked up.
"It said something."
Lysette turned.
"What?"
The young man swallowed.
"I know it said something."
"What did it say?"
"I don't know."
The apprentice's face had gone pale.
"I understood it while I was hearing it."
"And now?"
"Now I don't."
Lysette nodded.
"Good."
"Good?"
"You no longer understand it."
The apprentice stared.
The chief engineer pointed toward the far end of the compartment.
"Sit down."
Then she looked at Cael.
"Observe the container."
"What are we waiting for?"
"Confirmation."
The frost continued spreading.
Not quickly.
Not slowly.
The patterns shifted as though something beneath them breathed.
Cael watched for several minutes.
Then he realized the crystals were growing toward the nearest heat sources.
The apprentice.
The engineers.
Him.
Not naturally.
Deliberately.
The thought arrived uninvited.
He rejected it immediately.
Lysette noticed.
"Good."
"You know what I thought."
"I know what everyone thinks."
The frost advanced another centimetre.
An alarm rune flashed.
GELLAR FIELD VARIANCE DETECTED.
Then another.
VARIANCE CONTAINED.
The frost stopped growing.
The patterns collapsed.
Ordinary crystals remained behind.
Water dripped onto the deck.
Silence filled the compartment.
The apprentice exhaled.
"What was it?"
Lysette turned away.
"A loose restraint."
"That isn't true."
"It is sufficiently true."
The apprentice looked at Cael.
Cael looked at the melting frost.
He thought of the transparent audit system.
Continue?
No.
Not always.
Some questions required maintenance rather than exploration.
The second incident was less subtle.
The lights failed.
Only for an instant.
When they returned, screams echoed through the lower decks.
Cael reached the habitation section to find a crowd gathered around an intersection.
Two workers held restraint poles.
A transit officer knelt beside a fallen servitor.
The machine's upper body had been torn open.
Its augmetic limbs continued moving weakly.
Beyond it, something struck the corridor wall.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
The sound resembled metal tools dropped from a great height.
The transit officer saw Cael.
"Back."
"What happened?"
"We don't know."
Another impact.
The wall dented inward.
Not deeply.
Enough.
The crowd retreated.
A child began crying.
Cael followed the officer's gaze.
The wall.
Nothing else.
The sound came again.
Three impacts in quick succession.
Then silence.
The transit officer activated the emergency vox.
"Security response."
No answer came.
The vox emitted static.
Then a voice.
Faint.
Unfamiliar.
Open.
The officer disconnected the unit immediately.
The static ceased.
The child cried harder.
Light combat aboard Patient did not resemble battle.
No heroic charges occurred.
No banners flew.
No speeches were delivered.
Three engineers arrived carrying shock mauls.
Two transit officers followed.
Then Lysette.
Then Rinna, still holding her pressure canister.
"Why are you here?" Lysette asked.
"The rhythm changed."
The wall shuddered again.
One engineer flinched.
Another made the sign of the cog.
The child continued crying.
Cael realized the impacts had altered.
They now occurred at irregular intervals.
Closer together.
Moving.
Whatever struck the wall was approaching the intersection.
"Everyone back," Lysette said.
The workers obeyed immediately.
Years of practice transformed fear into motion.
The corridor emptied.
Only the engineers remained.
The wall buckled inward.
A hand appeared.
Not through the metal.
Within it.
A human hand.
Pale.
Trembling.
Its fingers opened and closed.
The apprentice beside Cael took one step forward.
"Emil?"
The hand vanished.
The apprentice stopped.
"Emil died last year."
The wall struck outward.
Lysette hit the emergency field control.
A shimmering barrier sealed the intersection.
The wall exploded.
Not physically.
Something simply ceased agreeing with its shape.
A dark figure emerged.
Tall.
Human.
Almost.
Its outline shifted constantly.
Its face possessed too many expressions, each appearing and disappearing before recognition became possible.
Cael understood at once why the Imperium burned incense, spoke prayers, recited names and surrounded itself with ritual.
Human perception itself had become vulnerable.
The figure moved toward the barrier.
Its hands touched the light.
The field screamed.
Not electronically.
Like an animal.
The nearest engineer stepped backward.
Rinna stepped forward.
"Not you," she said.
The thing tilted its head.
The old woman struck the barrier housing with her canister.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
The engine rhythm.
Three beats.
A pause.
Three beats.
The screaming stopped.
The field steadied.
The figure hesitated.
The engineers activated their shock mauls.
Blue light flashed.
The thing touched the barrier again.
The corridor lights shattered.
Lysette drew a compact industrial cutter.
Not a weapon.
A tool.
She adjusted the power setting.
"Everyone close your eyes."
Cael obeyed.
White light flooded the corridor.
Even through closed eyelids, it burned.
A sound followed.
Not a scream.
Disappointment.
Then silence.
When Cael opened his eyes, the intersection stood empty.
The wall had become metal once more.
The barrier remained active.
The cutter glowed red in Lysette's hand.
The apprentice sat upon the deck, weeping quietly.
Rinna adjusted her pressure canister.
"What was that?" Cael asked.
Lysette switched off the cutter.
"A variance."
"No."
"No."
She considered.
"An argument."
The answer disturbed him more.
Three crew members suffered burns.
One worker required sedation.
The damaged servitor was deactivated permanently.
No one died.
The official report classified the event as:
LOCALIZED GELLAR INSTABILITY COMPOUNDED BY UNAUTHORIZED COGNITIVE ENGAGEMENT.
The apprentice received no punishment.
The report listed contributing factors:
Fatigue.
Fear.
Electrical fluctuation.
Emotional resonance.
Weak field harmonics.
The name Emil appeared nowhere.
Later, Cael found Lysette alone in Engineering Compartment Three.
She was repairing the industrial cutter.
"The field failed."
"It weakened."
"The thing came aboard."
"No."
"It appeared."
"Yes."
"That seems similar."
She adjusted a damaged contact.
"It is an important distinction."
"Why?"
"Because if you believe such things travel as we do, you'll begin looking for motives that resemble yours."
Cael thought of the hand.
Of the apprentice stepping forward.
Of the voice from the vox.
Open.
"Then what should I believe?"
Lysette shrugged.
"Believe that your mind evolved to understand tools, faces, hunger, gravity and weather."
"And this?"
She placed the repaired cutter on the workbench.
"This is somewhere else pretending to be weather."
That night, Cael opened the shutter once more.
The colours beyond the hull still flowed.
A shape larger than a continent crossed the darkness.
Its outline resembled an eye.
Then a mountain.
Then a wound.
Then nothing.
He closed the shutter again.
For the first time in many years, he recited the Litany of Protection he had learned as a child.
Not because he believed the words held power.
Because they reminded him that other people had once been frightened too.
When he finished, the audit rune appeared.
EMOTIONAL RESPONSE RECORDED.
CONTINUE?
Cael considered the question.
"Yes," he said quietly.
Then he lay down and listened to the patient rhythm of the engines carrying them through a place that had never been built for human beings.