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Tesh piloted it around the immense galactic pocket, alternately speeding up and slowing down as Noah required. By touching the skin of the sentient vessel, Eshaz was able to link with its consciousness, a variation on the truthing touch. In turn, this connected the Tulyan with Tesh, who clung in her tiny humanoid form to a wall of the sectoid chamber, guiding the craft. Thus, Tesh and Eshaz could communicate directly—transmitting to each other through the podship’s flesh.
    “She is describing details of the fold,” Eshaz said to Noah. The reptilian man held one hand against the rough, gray podship skin on the interior of the passenger compartment. “Every crease and basin in the fold has a name, a purpose, and a history behind it.” He pointed out the window. The Parviis say that the long scar on that membrane is where the Universal Creator put the finishing touches on the galaxy and stitched everything together.”
    “Interesting,” Noah said. “How does the Parvii concept of a Universal Creator compare with your Sublime Creator, and with our Supreme Being?”
    “Some of my people would be surprised to hear you ask such a question,” Eshaz said with a toothy smile. “They believe you are a messiah.”
    “So, you think I should know all the answers?”
    “I wasn’t necessarily speaking for myself. Tell me, my friend. Are you saying, then, that you are not a messiah?”
    “If I am one, I have a lot to learn.” Noah paused. “I don’t know what I am, or why special things have happened to me. My life changed dramatically after you healed me the way you did, touching my skin to the web, causing its nutrients to flow into my wound.”
    “Do you regret any of it?”
    Noah hesitated. “No. I don’t think I do.” He stared at the place on the wall where Eshaz continued to touch the podship.
    “Try connecting with Tesh yourself,” Eshaz said. “You’ve had a special relationship with podships, and with her. Touch the skin and communicate with her, as I am doing.”
    “I don’t know. My … I hesitate to call them powers … come and go. I never know when I’m going to be able journey through the web, and when it will keep me at bay.”
    “Give it a try now.”
    Instead, Noah looked out the window. The podship had come to a stop very close to the gray-green membrane of the fold, near the long scar that Tesh had spoken of. The sentient craft nudged against the membrane, like a ship bumping up against a dock.
    Over the last four days, Noah, Anton, and the Tulyans had been consolidating the immense podship fleet at the Parvii Fold. Instead of nine hundred ships in the Liberator fleet, they now had a vastly larger number of vessels—and all of them had morphed to produce gun port feature on their hulls, controllable by the various pilots in the battle group.
    With their increased assets, the Liberators had a new mission: Use the podships to transport Tulyan teams all over the galaxy, so that they could perform the infrastructure repairs on an emergency basis, staving off the damage that was occurring to the fabric of the universe.…
    * * * * *
    But before leaving, Tulyan hunting crews needed to round up all of the podships that had drifted around inside the Parvii Fold, away from the moorage basin. Acey Zelk, always anxious to pilot the arcane vessels, had been permitted to join one of the crews. Already they had found more ships than the one hundred thousand Tulyan pilots they had brought with them, so the Liberators would need to send some of their original fleet back to their starcloud to pick up thousands of more pilots. The exact number was unclear, because they kept finding more podships, in hidden places.
    “A nice problem to have,” Doge Anton had said that morning, when he and the others began to realize the enormity of the prize they had captured from the Parviis.
    Through the web, Eshaz had sent a message back to the Tulyan Starcloud, notifying the Council of the logistical challenge. They