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the Chief’s face, and then it let out a hearty chuckle. “Oh, no, no, you don’t understand.”
    “Don’t understand what?”
    “I’m not actually a... well, whatever you are,” the Chief said. “This is just how I’m choosing to appear right now, in the hopes of making this easier for the both of us.”
    Summerhill felt his heart sink. “Oh. I see.” He looked down into his lap and withheld a sigh of disappointment. “Well, I guess that makes my next question kind of moot, then.”
    “What were you going to ask?”
    “I was hoping you’d know what we are and where we come from,” Summerhill said. “But I guess that since we’re not really a ‘we,’ you probably wouldn’t know.”
    The Chief shook its head. “I’m afraid not. Whatever you are, you aren’t in our databases, which means we’ve never had a member of your species as a registered guest before.” It then tilted its head in a curious manner, very much in the same way Summerhill himself would have. “Why don’t you know what you are?”
    Summerhill sighed. “It’s a long story.” That was starting to become a too-familiar refrain. “I come from a place called the World of the Pale Gray Sky, except I don’t think that’s actually where I come from.”
    “How do you mean?” the Chief asked.
    Summerhill told the story of how he’d escaped his private world that made no sense. He recounted how he’d simply kept going until he’d wound up in the middle of the nowhere, found the Nusquam , and then crept aboard through a maintenance hatch when the ship hadn’t responded to his attempts to wave it down.
    The Chief folded its hands together atop the desk and smiled. “Well, we’ll put you someplace safe until we reach our next port of call,” it said. “Once we get there, we can figure out what to do with you.”
    “I see.” Summerhill swallowed dryly, and just nodded. At least they’d be keeping him in a cell instead of just throwing him overboard. “I guess I’ll go along quietly, then.”
    Pressing a button on the desk, the Chief summoned the two robot guards from before back into the room. “You’re a curious one, Summerhill,” the other dog said. “If you remember anything else useful during your stay, just give the sentries a holler and they’ll be sure to pass it along.”
    Once again, Summerhill turned himself over to the pike-wielding robots, already hoping that whatever cell he got thrown in wasn’t too far away. “Um, are you going to feed me?” he asked the Chief as he was led toward the door. “Because I’m pretty sure I do need sustenance, actually.”
    “You’ll be made quite comfortable, I assure you,” the Chief replied. “If there’s one thing the Nusquam prides itself on, it’s unparalleled comfort.”
    Four
    Sky
    Summerhill slept, and he dreamt.
    There was a sky. A real sky, a sky with weather, with colors— real colors. Magnificent bright blue faded as it got near the horizon and deepened as it extended up into space, so unlike the sky Summerhill had always known. There were clouds that floated by, pure gleaming white, puffy and delicate. A yellow sun shone with the brilliant light of late afternoon.
    Oh, Summerhill had had dreams before, but they had been abstract and indistinct. Never had his sleeping mind imagined colors as rich and beautiful as these.
    Below, so far below as to be at the very edge of vision, was the ground. The ground didn’t concern Summerhill, though. He paid it only enough attention to determine that it was not covered with the endless stretch of empty, lifeless buildings from back home, a prospect which brought with it a fleeting terror amidst the exultant jubilation he felt.
    No, the ground did not concern Summerhill. What he cared about was the sky.
    The blue of the sky paired well with the yellow sun. Blue struck Summerhill as the kind of color a world’s sky should be, though he had no idea why, nor even what world it was he was seeing. He knew for sure that