“Sure.” McAndrew was already moving across to the locker. By the time that I had sent word back to the Institute giving our current location and status, he was suited up and in the air lock.

“Go slow, Mac,” I said. “There’s no hurry. Don’t go outside without me!”

He took no notice. As I say, he has never learned the meaning of the word restraint. The air lock was cycling before I had my suit out of the locker.

I watched McAndrew as I removed my loose outer clothing and slipped the suit over my legs and lower body. He was outside, and moving toward the Ark. I was glad to see how slowly he was taking it. I could be in my own suit, through the lock, and catch up with him well before he reached the Ark.

In the final moment before I placed my suit helmet in position, I noticed something off toward the left-hand limb of the Ark. It was shaped like a crumpled and deformed space pinnace. Instead of hanging in the usual davits it sat between the metal jaws of a cargo manipulator.

“Mac, take a look on the Ark at about ten o’clock.” I spoke over my suit’s radio link. “See it? Looks like a lifeboat. Head over there, and I’ll follow you.”

I set the Merganser to hold position a steady two kilometers from the Ark and headed for the air lock. It was long experience, not intelligence or sense of foreboding, that led me to tuck a power laser into a pocket on my suit. Once outside, I found myself doing what I had told McAndrew not to do — hurrying.

As I thought, it was a lifeboat. McAndrew turned as I came closer. I could not see his face behind the visor, but his voice was unsteady.

“Take a look through the ports, Jeanie. There’s been a terrible accident here.”

Rather than doing what he suggested I moved along to the middle of the lifeboat. It had been torn open by the jaws of the cargo manipulator, which still held it. I could enter the little ship through a great two-meter gash in the hull.

The bodies had been there for a long time; twenty-eight of them, dry corpses desiccated by years of exposure to vacuum. Not one had on a space suit.

“They must have been trying to go and get help,” McAndrew muttered. He had entered the lifeboat right behind me. “They lost control before they were even on their way, and ran into the cargo manipulator.”

“It looks that way.” I was puzzled and disturbed. Even an inexperienced pilot would know not to turn on the engines until the lifeboat had drifted well clear of the Ark. Otherwise, you would endanger the Ark as well as yourselves. Only the Amish, after a lifetime of shunning all modern mechanical devices, would make such a basic and fatal blunder.

But the Amish, more than anyone else, would not have abandoned the bodies of their dead. They would have recovered them and provided appropriate space burial. If they had not, that meant they could not. For many years — how old were those freeze-dried corpses? — the surviving Amish must have been confined to the body of the Ark and unable to venture into space.

That had me equally confused. Every Ark carried hundreds of space suits. If the Amish were not able to come outside, then how could McAndrew and I go in? Approach, the woman said, and come aboard. An entry port is already open. And it was. We had seen it, standing wide next to another of the manipulators.

McAndrew went on, “The accident was unlucky, and not just for them. It was unlucky for everyone else on the Ark, too.”

He was leaving the lifeboat and heading on toward the gaping lock. I followed, more slowly. A lifeboat was meant for use close to a planet. What dreadful danger would make you launch one so far away from any world, where the chance of survival was negligible? One basic question was unanswered, despite our questions to our female contact: What had gone wrong?

The Amish disdained some forms of technology, but they were hard-working and hard-headed people. Their Ark, more than any other, had been designed to survive and operate using minimal resources. But more and more I had the feeling — a ridiculous feeling, given that I had talked to someone on the Ark within the past hour — that the structure in front of me was a dead hulk.

McAndrew was already inside the lock, using his suit lights because the Cassiopeia supernova no longer provided illumination. Following, I saw that the inner door was also open. It suggested that the whole corridor beyond was airless.

I was watching McAndrew, otherwise I might not have caught it. On the wall of the corridor, above him and to his right, a small monitor camera began turning to track his movements. I switched my suit from local to general circuit. What I said would be picked up at the Merganser, and rebroadcast back to the Ark.

“I see that you are following our progress. Where are you inside the Ark? And what kind of trouble are you in?”

A moment of silence, and then the woman’s voice again. “We need — assistance. Proceed as — you are — doing. The corridor will lead — you — to us.”

No fluency. Instead, the strained precision and hesitations of someone speaking a foreign language. I looked around and up. I had noticed only one monitor camera, but now that I was seeking them I saw that they were everywhere on the walls and ceiling. Floor, walls, and ceiling also held pressure pads every few yards, to register any slight contact that might take place in the negligible gravity of the Ark. Ahead of McAndrew, another door stood cracked open just a fraction. As he moved toward it, the hatch smoothly slid wide to reveal a chamber beyond as dark, airless and empty as space itself.

Monitors everywhere; sophisticated sensors; doors keyed to open upon the detection of human presence. This was the very antithesis of an Amish world.

McAndrew had moved on, through into the next room. He turned, waiting for me to come through the hatch and join him.

I switched to local communication mode, hoping that the circuit would not easily be overheard and unscrambled.

“Mac,” I said softly. “Don’t take another step. I was wrong. This isn’t the Amish Ark. It’s the Cyber Ark. They created their AI, and the damned thing is running the show.”

McAndrew stood dead still. I knew that he had understood exactly what I said — he’s quicker than me on the uptake on any scale that I can devise — but he seemed unsure what to do next.

I said, more urgently, “Don’t act alarmed. Just come back this way. As slowly as you can stand to.”

It was too late. Either the AI read the significance of his movement toward me, or a massive intelligence had received our first transmissions and cracked the compression code used in suit communications. The reason did not matter. What did matter was that the hatch began to slide closed as McAndrew hurried toward it.

There was a control panel on my side of the hatch, but I didn’t trust it. The AI might have an override. I dragged the power laser from my pocket and aimed high, where the upper edge of the hatch met the wall.

There was a lurid sputter of sparks and a vibration that I felt in the soles of my suited feet. The hatch, welded to the wall, ground to a stop and McAndrew ducked his head and hurried through to my side.

“We’ve got to get outside,” I said. “We’ll be safe there.”

I led the way. As I headed for the outer port I experienced an odd sensation that the whole Ark was coming alive around me. I could feel vibrations under my feet, and golden lights in walls and ceiling were winking to life. I ignored the lights, but I used the power laser to burn out every monitor that I saw. A cleaning robot, all arms and legs and vicious scraping blades, rumbled out to block the corridor. I fried its video sensors and soared on over the top of it without missing a step.

Twenty meters in front of me the door of the outer lock was starting to close. I halted, set the laser to tight beam, and aimed carefully. The wall above the top of the door turned orange-white. The door froze in its tracks. Three seconds later I was outside and moving under the baleful light of the Cassiopeia supernova.