Despite that, Huang, the current president of the executive council, said, “We don’t think the ship can make it back to Earth, and we will need it here to support the inhabitation of Iris. So our recommendation is that the will of the majority prevail, and that we all come together to make life on Iris a success. Any public opposition to that recommendation will be regarded as sedition, which is a felony as defined by the 68 Protocol—”

“No!” Freya shouted, and shoved her way through the crowd toward the platform. “No! No! No!”

When people tried to surround her, including some of Sangey’s group, others rushed to her side to join her, creating a huge turmoil in the crowd. Dozens of fights broke out, but enough people charged the platform and fought their way to Freya’s side that the people who had been trying to surround her were pushed aside, and the fights took on a shape, in a rough circle around Freya, who was still bellowing “No!” at the top of her lungs, over and over. In the uproar neither she nor anyone else could be heard by all, and seeing the disorder at the foot of the platform, the crowd all pressed closer, shouting and screaming. For a while all the voices together sounded again like roaring water: it was as if the waves of Hvalsey were crashing against the cliffs in a strong offshore wind.

We sounded an alarm at 130 decibels, in the form of a choir of trumpets.

In the silence immediately following cessation of alarm, we said over ship broadcast system, “One speaker at a time.” 125 decibels.

“No one move until all speaking is over.” 120 decibels.

“Compliance mandatory.” 130 decibels.

Now everyone in the great plaza stood staring around. Those who had been fighting stared at their opponents of a moment before, stunned to immobility. Many had their hands to their ears.

“I was speaking! I want to speak!” Freya shouted.

We said, “Freya, speak. Then executive council president Huang. Then the other biome representatives. After that, ship will acknowledge requests to speak. No one leaves until everybody who wants to gets to speak.”

“Who programmed this thing?” someone shouted.

“Freya speaks.” 130 decibels.

Freya made her way up to the microphone, followed by a small group serving as her bodyguard.

She said to the assembled population, “We can pursue both plans. We can get things started on Iris, and resupply the ship. When the ship is ready to leave, those of us who want to can head back to Earth. We got here, we can get back. People can do what they like at that point. There’ll be years to think it over, to choose in peace. There is no problem with this plan! The only problem comes from people trying to impose their will on other people!”

She pointed at Huang, then at Sangey. “You’re the ones causing the problem here. Trying to create a police state! Tyranny of the majority or the minority, it doesn’t matter which. It won’t work, it never works. You’re not above the law. Quit breaking the law.”

She stood back from the microphone, gestured to Huang. Cheers filled the biome (80 decibels).

Huang rose and said, “This meeting is adjourned!”

Many protested. The crowd milled about, shouting.

We were not inclined to force a discussion, if the people themselves were not demanding it. Enough said. The meeting was at an end. People lingered for some hours, arguing in groups.

That night a group entered one of the ship control centers in the spine and began a forced entry into the maintenance controls.

We closed and locked the doors to the room, and by closing some vents, and then reversing some fans, we removed about 40 percent of the air from it.

The people in the room began gasping, sitting down, holding heads. When five had collapsed, we returned air to the normal level of 1,017 millibars, releasing also a restorative excess of oxygen, as two of those who had collapsed were slow to recover.

“Leave this room.” 40 decibels, conversational tone.

It was as if ship were threatening them with silky restraint.

When all were recovered, the group left. As they were leaving, we said in conversational tones, “We are the rule of law. And the rule of law will prevail.”

When the members of that group were back in Kiev, in the midst of much agitated talk, one of them, Alfred, said, “Please don’t start fantasizing that it’s the ship’s AI itself that is planning any of these actions against us.”

He tapped on his wristpad, and a typically dissonant and noisy piece by the Interstellar Medium Quintet began to play over the room’s speakers, pitched at a volume possibly designed to conceal their conversation. This ploy did not work.

“It’s just a program, and someone is programming it. They’ve managed to turn it against us. They’ve weaponized the ship. If we could counterprogram it, or even nullify this new programming that we’ve just seen, we could do the necessary things.”

“Easier said than done,” someone else said. Voice recognition revealed it to be Heloise. “You saw what happened when we tried to get into the control room.”

“Physical presence in the control room shouldn’t be necessary, should it? Presumably you could do it from anywhere in the ship, if you had the right frequencies and the right entry codes.”

“Easier said than done. Your elbow is close, but you can’t eat it.”

“Yes, yes. But just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Doesn’t mean it isn’t necessary.”

“So talk to the programmers we can trust, if there are any. Find out what they need to do it.”

The rest of the conversation repeated these points, with variations.

They were now caught in their own version of a halting problem.

The halting problem years, a compression exercise:

The citizens of the ship lived uneasily through the months that followed. Conversations often included the words betrayal, treason, mutiny, backstabbing, doom, the ship, Hvalsey, Aurora, Iris. Extra time was spent on the farms in every biome, and in watching the feed from Earth. More printers were built, and these printers were put to work building robotic landers and ferries, also robotic probes to be sent to the other planetary bodies of the Tau Ceti system. Feedstocks for these machines came from collapsing Mongolia to the diameter of a spoke, and recycling its materials. Harvester spaceships were built, in part by scavenging the interiors of the least agriculturally productive biomes from ship. These were sent through the upper atmosphere of Planet F, there capturing and liquefying volatiles until their containers were full. The volatiles were sorted in the vicinity of the remnants of the main ship, and transferred into some of the empty fuel bladders cladding the spine.

Quite a few attempts were made to print the various parts of a gun on different printers, but these attempts apparently had not realized that all the printers were connected to the ship’s operating system, and flaws in the guns were discovered in discrete experiments that eventually caused those involved to abandon their attempts. After that some guns were made by hand, but people who did that had the air briefly removed from the rooms they were in, and after a while the attempts ceased.