“Machine, I command you to turn this bucket around and sail us back home immediately!” Zero smiled as he said it, but was meant with a silence that was probably only minutes, but could have stretched to hours in the nothing.

Humor doesn’t suit you.

“I wish—”

Wishing doesn’t suit you either. You know the impossibility of what you desire.

Zero knew full well that what he desired was an impossibility, and he knew the magnitude with which it was an impossibility. He had been forced to witness the construction of the system-sized engine that had hurled the Machine and its insignificantly microscopic prison into the Outer. He had seen the billions of labor drones harvested from countless colonies to construct the gigantic engine. He had seen the billions left outside to die when the construction was complete, as well.

You can’t go home again.

Zero frowned in the nothing. He would find a way. Somehow.

He would find a way to return to Fleur.

I contain multitudes.

Nine disengaged his hand from Fleur’s as Whistler swam back into the passenger cabin. There was a look of concern on Whistler’s shadowed face. Fleur could not tell if it was because of something he had seen in the cockpit, or if he had been watching the dance of digits that took place on the armrest between the vacuum chairs.

“Whistler?” Nine’s eyes had drawn to a concerned visage. “What?”

“We’re near… Very near to home. But there’s no signal.”

“No navigation signal?”

“No signal at all. Nothing is coming from the surface.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing at all!” Whistler snapped. He waved his hand in the air before him and a holographic display of the approaching planet appeared. Whistler grasped the globe of light and spun it around so that the dark side of the planet faced Fleur and Nine. “What do you see?”