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the mute on the news just as the newscaster said, “Interrogation commences in—”
    Althea spun back around to the interface by the camera screens and hit the intercom. “Did you get him? What did he do?”
    “He’s not here,” Domitian said, and Althea looked up at the grid of videos, which was studded with empty places where the
Ananke
should have been receiving signals from cameras and wasn’t. One of the few visible displays showed the base of the ship’s spine, where Althea had seen Gale last, bent over her machine; now Domitian and Gagnon stood a few paces apart in an empty hallway.
    “That isn’t possible,” said Althea. There were no rooms that far down in the ship, no doors for him to hide behind. The hallway did not continue on or loop around itself; it simply ended.
    In the video, Althea watched Gagnon spread his arms out and look up at the camera, demonstrating the emptiness of the hallway for her benefit.
    The computer screens sizzled with static again, went black, then sharply turned back on.
    “Gagnon, what does the screen on the terminal down there say?” Althea demanded. The interface Gale had used had to show some sign of what he’d done.
    “Gale is our priority right now,” said Domitian. “Althea, are there any other ways to leave the base of the ship or places to hide?”
    She hardly listened to him. The screen before her kept flickering like murmurs in a heart. “He’s done something to the computer,” she said. “It’s bad; I need to fix it.”
    “He didn’t have enough time to do anything,” Gagnon said.
    “I’m coming down there,” Althea said, and ignored Domitian’s immediate “Althea, stay there!” as she left the control room, locked the door behind herself, and started running down the
Ananke
’s hallway.
    She passed Gagnon halfway down.
    “Domitian’s pissed,” he warned as he passed her. It was all he had time to say; Althea did not slow down. Doubtless Gagnon had been sent to take the position she’d abandoned.
    If something happened to the ship because Althea had not been fast enough to care for the computer, they would all be in trouble. She did not slow down.
    Domitian was waiting for her when she arrived, his gun out, his expression black. “What the hell were you thinking?” he demanded as she ran past him to kneel in front of the machine. “Disobeying a direct order?”
    “There’s something wrong with the ship!”
    “I don’t care; you obey!” Domitian roared, and Althea flinched. The screen before her showed nothing but the smooth blankness of an empty workspace; Gale had covered his tracks.
    “What if Gale had gotten to the control room and found it empty?” Domitian demanded.
    “He couldn’t have,” said Althea. “There’s no way…”
    “He’s not here right now,” said Domitian. “Until we know how he could have escaped, we have to assume he could be anywhere on board this ship. Leave the computer and think. Are there any other ways out of here?”
    “There’s the hallway,” Althea said, still kneeling in front of the machine but leaving it alone for the moment.
    “Gagnon and I were in the hallway. What else?”
    She tried to think past her immediate knee-jerk reaction that there was no way out. “There’s the hatch to the core.”
    She turned to look at it, a heavy hatch near the extreme end of the hallway, set into the floor. Althea could see that it was still locked from the outside.
    “What else?” Domitian asked.
    “I don’t know—”
    Domitian walked past her to the hatch and, still with his gun in his hand, undid the latches sealing the hatch shut and gripped the handle. With a grunt of exertion—the gravity this far down made the hatch very heavy—he lifted the hatch and looked down. Althea walked over to stand behind him and look over his shoulder.
    Right below them both, trying to pull them down, was the
Ananke
’s beating heart, the electromagnets that caged it humming with electricity, arcs of plasma