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to be made? No experience or Family lore
     told him how to decide, or even when.
    He left the control vault and walked through the
Argo’
s tight-wound spiral corridors. Inspections awaited, and he took his time with them. He kept his pace measured, not letting
     his interior fever of speculation and doubt reveal itself, so that passing crew would see their Cap’n moving with an unconcerned
     air.
    There was a gathering, humming expectancy in the air as they plunged toward their target star. Soon they would learn whether
     they came to a paradise or to another mech-run world. The planet’s strange, discolored face had given him no answers, and
     he would have to deflect questions from Family members who so desperately wanted assurances.
    Walking through a side corridor, he heard a faint scrabbling noise from an air duct. Instantly he sprang up, un-slipped the
     grille, and peered inside. Nothing.
    The sound, like small feet scrambling away, faded. A micromech, certainly.
    Try as they might, the crew had never destroyed all the small mechs left in the
Argo
by the Mantis. The remaining machines were almost certainly unimportant, delegated to do small repairs and cleaning. Still,
     their presence bothered Killeen. He knew how much intelligence could be carried in a fingernail’s width; after all, the chips
     lodged along his spine held whole personalities. What were even such small mechs capable of doing?
    He had no way of knowing. There had been disturbing incidentsduring the voyage, when problems mysteriously cleared up. Killeen had never known whether the ship had repaired itself with
     deep, hidden subsystems, or whether the micromechs were at work, following their own purposes.
    No Cap’n liked to have his ship at the control of anyone but himself, and Killeen could never rest comfortably until all the
     micromechs were gone. But short of some drastic remedy, he saw no way to rid himself of these nuisances.
    Vexed, he took a moment for himself and stopped at a small side pocket just off the spiral corridor. Here was the only room
     in
Argo
devoted solely to honoring their link to antiquity. It was large enough for ceremonies such as marriages or deaths, which
     Killeen had duly performed in the last two years, and dominated by two iron-dark slabs on two walls.
    These were the Legacies,
Argo’
s computer memories said. They were inscribed with spidery impressions that glinted in all colors if a light shone upon them.
     A digital language, clearly, though couched in terms even the
Argo
programs could not unravel. The ship had severe instructions to preserve these tablets, embedded in the ceramo-walls, against
     all depredations. Clearly here was some incomprehensible clue to the origin of humans at the Center, and perhaps much else—but
     Killeen had no idea how to pursue this avenue.
    He came here, instead, to sit on a simple bench and think. The looming, somber presence of the twin-slab Legacies gave him
     a curiously calming sensation of a firm link to a human past unknown and yet magnificent. In ancient days humans had built
     ships like this, plied the thin currents between suns, and lived well, free of the grinding presence of vastly superior beings.
    Killeen envied the people of that time. He paused now to run his palms over the smooth surface of the Legacies, as ifsome fragment of ageold vision and wisdom could seep into him.
    Now that the problems of Cap’ncy beset him, he thought often of Abraham and all those from times before. They had led the
     grudging retreat before the mechs. They had given everything.
    To Killeen and the Bishops fate had granted a shred of hope. A fresh world, new visions. He could liberate his people or he
     could lose their last gamble.
    And this opportunity had come just one bare generation late. Abraham would have known what to do now. Abraham had been a natural
     leader. His sunbrowned, easy air had commanded without visible effort. Killeen missed his father far more than he had