In the olden days, before the Expansion, there lived the Gods. Each one vied for their own part of the World, and each had their own source of power and their own source of greed. Elvenheim, whose ships were the fastest, took to the stars in search of treasure, and came back with the Light of Immortality. After some research, she declared it too dangerous, and hid it away where she believed none would find it.

Mindeham, the least powerful of the Gods, grew tired and bitter at their squabbling, and sought to seek revenge upon them. He found Elvenheim's Light of Immortality, and stole it from its hiding place. He then invited all of the Gods to a feast so lavish that they all could not help but attend.

In every bite of food, however, was a small drop of the Light of Immortality. The Gods ate, then died, then rose again, and Mindeham laughed at them.

"I have to live but one life with you, but now you will have to endure each other's company for the rest of eternity!" he cried, and with that he took a knife and stabbed himself, sending himself to his eternal rest.

Or so he thought. Aphelka, the quick-thinking, grabbed her glass and poured it down his throat. The Light of Immortality worked quickly through his system, and when he died, he rose again.

Mindeham went mad, and ran from the World, not to be seen again. The Gods are still out among us, but are scattered throughout the stars. The people of World still have a legend that says when humanity is in dire need of them, the Gods will reunite and fight in the defence of the World. Despite many hardships endured by humanity throughout the ages, the legend has never materialised as truth. Some say, however, our need has never been great enough...

***

Lae wrestled with her computer for a few more minutes, then gave up.

"Give me the data!" she yelled as it stumbled back.

"It won't do you any good!" the computer yelled back. Her computer did not have any protocols to do with the aftermath of getting lost in warp, as nobody really did that any more. Except Lae, whose junk of a rented ship had blinked back into existence in a place nobody had even charted as far as the ship's maps said. Lae knew what to do in this situation, or at least had done a few questions on it in maths class. Unfortunately, her computer was programmed to protect its company's IP, which made getting the raw data out of it... difficult.

"I will ask you one more time," she said, trying to remain calm. She looked around the cabin. It was hard to find an easy-to-reach weapon when everything was locked down for microgravity, but eventually her eyes caught on the cupboard with the crappy hinges. Attempting to appear casual, she slid over to the cupboard and wrenched the door off.

"May I remind you, this is a rented ship!" the computer said, scandalised.

"And a real piece of work it is, too," Lae said, brandishing her cupboard door. "Look. Put this in your logic circuits: do you know where we are?"

"No."

"Then you can safely say that we are lost?"

"Yes."

"And you can't get us back to the rental company, then?"

"No."

"But if we use the data you have of the voyage," Lae said, feeling as if she might be getting somewhere now, "We can average the coordinates you recorded in order to get within a first order of where we were. Then we can use the constellations to figure out where we are, and map precisely how to get home."

The computer paused.

"You can't do that."

"And why not?"

"This might be a trick. So I am deleting the files."

"Don't you--" Lae bashed her computer around the head for a while, not that it did anyone any good, then went to her sleeping quarters to cry for a bit. After a while, the slightly dented computer came up and knocked on the door.

"Leave me alone," she said. The computer paused as it filtered her command along with the news it was carrying through its workflow algorithm, then decided to tell her anyway.

"We are about to hit another ship," the computer said, and wandered back to the flight cabin.

***

The ship was so enormous, Lae couldn't even figure out how it all fit together, moving her viewscreen camera back and forth along its flank. It had an odd shape, like it was covered with pockets. While there were some strange human colonies out there, what she could see of this design offended her aesthetic sensibilities enough that she figured it was alien. She made sure all her communications channels were open (if they were on the restricted channels the radio wouldn't let her access, then she was out of luck), and waited for any sign of life.

"Maybe it's an abandoned station or something?" she said to the robot, for want of a better conversational partner.

"It was moving before," the robot said.

"And it isn't now?"

"No."

"Was it heading towards us or away from us?"

"Towards."

"Uh." Lae considered her options for a moment, then broadcast on all available channels. "Hailing the ship ahead. Sorry if I'm in your territory; we'll leave now."

"We can't jump without coordinates," the robot said.

"And whose fault is that?" Lae muttered. She'd just have to input some random numbers, and hope for the best. Better than annoying one of the more aggressive species out there, though she couldn't identify the ship as anything but non-human. She carefully turned her ship around, and started slowly heading away from the monstrosity behind her.

A warning bell started sounding.

"Collision alert," the robot said needlessly, as Lae frantically moved the camera to point behind her. Out of the smaller pockets on the ship, large metal arms were unfurling, heading her way. She attempted to dodge the nearest one, and ended up banging into another, throwing her to the floor with the impact. More clangs on her hull indicated more arms reaching her, and she scrambled back to her seat, putting on her restraint harness. Through the camera she could see the arms tightening around her hull, and then start to curl in--

She was glad of her restraints as her ship started to spin, but wasn't too happy with the position of her chair, near the centre of the command deck, as the robot started to drift towards her.

"Hold onto something!" she snarled, spinning the chair so it collided with the backrest rather than her face. "Not me!"

The tendrils moved their prey to a larger pocket, which opened up to receive the ship. They pushed the ship into the hatch, then slowly curled up into their own pockets. The hatch closed, and the giant ship sailed on.

***

The creatures, whatever they were, didn't seem keen on talking. They did, however, take her to an incredibly creepy-looking medical bay, did lots of scans of her, took her hair and scraped under her fingernails, and made her swap her clothes with a strange metallic poncho. It came with a few magnetic clips, which she supposed were there instead of a belt.

She couldn't remember reading about these creatures, but then, she never really paid attention in biology classes. They were twice her height, and seemed doubled, or half split down the middle. Occasionally one half tried to go one way, and the other half the other. They moved by rolling and waving strange tendrils about. They tended to heave great bubbling sighs all the time, but didn't seem to speak.

She didn't know how long it had been, but they had fed her twice before they shuttled her off to a different room. They stood by the door as she stared at the strange hairy creature in the corner, then when she didn't do anything in particular, they left and shut the door.

"It's okay," Lae said to the creature, squatting down in the opposite corner. "I won't hurt you."

The creature looked up at that, and Lae squeaked. It was a human. It came towards her, and squatted next to her.

"Thou must not tell thine home points."

"W--what?" Lae asked, confused. The human spoke in a kind of garbled way, almost like the way people did in very old movies.

"Thou must not tell thine home points!"

"What are you on about?"

"Thou--"

"Thou?" The two humans stared at one another.

"Parle-toi cette langue?"

"I speak Trade."

"That thou doest not."

"Uh..." It was obvious that this human had come from some very out-of-the-way planet, with an archaic language base. Lae tried to remember the old classic books that they made them learn at school. "How longest have you beenest here?"

The human winced. "How long I do not know. If... your speech is of the normal mode, I suggest longer than I expected. But th--you must not tell your home points."

"Home points?"

"Home numbers?" the human tried.

"Coordinates?"

"Most likely."

"My robot deleted them."

"Good."

"No, not 'good' at all! How am I supposed to get home now?"

"If you canst, our capturers canst."

"These aren't friendly aliens, then?"

"Friends, no. They enjoy the kill too much. Which begs me to recollect--" to Lae's horror, the human bit hard into his own arm, blood welling from the wound.

"Great stars!" Lae shuffled back as the human held out his arm to her.

"Drink."

"Are you mad? Why?!"

"They will try to kill you soon," the human said.

"In that case, I certainly don't want blood to be my last meal!"

"It won't be. Indulge me."

"I'm not a cannibal!"

"Just--" The human grabbed Lae, and forced his arm to her mouth. Lae almost bit it out of a defensive reflex, but realised that that would have the opposite effect to the one she wanted.

"How dare--mmf!"

"See? That was not as bad as--ow!" Lae, wishing for her cupboard door, used her bare feet to hit him instead. He shuffled away from the enraged prisoner.

"What kind of lunatic are you?!"

"The one who wishes for company. I would regret it, but I did not wish to watch you die."

"You--you... ugh..." Lae fell to the floor, her eyes rolling up. She convulsed a few times, then lay still.

"Die irrevocably," the human amended. He sighed, held his arm, and waited.

***

Lae woke up feeling like death, and with disgust wiped the foam from her mouth. She sat up. The other human was huddled in the other corner of the room again.

"What by the good grace of Xysphael did you just do?" Lae demanded. The human in the corner un-huddled a bit.

"I bequeathed to you the Light of Immortality," the human said.

"The what?"

"Where doest the good grace of Xysphael come from?" he asked.

"I--oh, right. Wait, that's still around? Why do you have it?"

"I am the one who gave it to them."

"Wait, you're Elvenheim?"

"No. I am Mindeham."

"I guess that makes sense," Lae said slowly. "So why did you give me the Light of Immortality?"

"I gave you it because the owners of this ship will soon come in and torture you unto death, for they do not know you would have not come back to life like I do."

"Hang on," Lae said, her adrenaline rising. She was, she believed, a calm, one might almost say serene person in the normal course of events. It had not, however, been a good day. "Do you mean to tell me that you gave me immortality so that I could be tortured. To death. Forever?!"

"I wished for the company," Mindeham said in a quiet voice.

"Well, I'm glad you're Mindeham and not Elvenheim."

"Whyever so? Elvenheim would be far more useful in a situation like this."

"Yes," Lae said, "But I've always liked Elvenheim."

"Ah. And I would be a let down?"

"Quite."

They were both quiet for a while after this, sitting in their own corners of the room. Eventually, however, Mindeham sat up, tension in every facet of his bearing.

"What is it?" Lae asked.

"It is time," he said. "Prepare yourself."

Lae didn't really know what to do, but got to her feet. Mindeham looked up at her for a moment, then did the same.

The door to their cell opened, and the aliens moved in.

***

The aliens finally left, and a while after that Lae came back to life. She crawled over to the crumpled heap that was Mindeham, and poked him until he drew a tortured breath and sat up.

"We need to escape," Lae said firmly. Mindeham spat blood, and wiped his mouth.

"That sounds like a marvellous idea," he said carefully, trying (but failing) to mimic Lae's accent. "Do you have any plans?"

"Do you have any? You've been here longer."

"Longer than you can imagine."

"So what can you tell me about this place?" Mindeham sat up straighter, as if he was about to recite to a teacher.

"Our hosts have changed their atmosphere here to suit me, but don't need any particular atmosphere, just pressure--they tried a few different ones before figuring out what would keep me alive. They multiply by growing large and then dividing themselves--the ones that aren't spheres are in the process of dividing, and I think they are given less important jobs because they have two minds and aren't very decisive. I think they are carnivores, and they have a psychological need to find and kill prey. That's where we come in."

"Sure," Lae said. "What about the architecture of this place?

"The doors are sliding, and so don't have hinges. All interior doors I think are built to be emergency airlocks, because they are very strong and can't be bent by human strength. The hallways are large, slightly curved, and unadorned. I don't think there is any way to tell them apart unless you have memorised the layout of this place."

"Is there anywhere you have memorised?"

"I think I remember most of the way to the kitchens. One of them tried to eat me once. Next door to the right is Bluebubble, and to the left is an empty room that they sometimes move me to when they're doing their spring cleaning--"

"Wait, what is Bluebubble?"

"The other permanent prisoner here," Mindeham said. "I call them Bluebubble because, well, they're a blue bubble. They like to pop them. I think they think it's funny."

"So we have at least one ally here," Lae said.

"Maybe."

"All right. How long to we have until they kill us again?"

"Uh..." Mindeham was silent for a moment. "I can't remember time spacings anymore. We have a while. We will be fed first."

"All right then." Lae leaned back on the wall, and closed her eyes. "I'll let you know when I have a plan."

"Great," Mindeham said, and evidently thought this was funny, because he giggled quietly to himself until Lae told him to shut up.

***

A little while later, Lae was getting a bit pessimistic about it all.

"So their skin is too thick to scratch," she said, ticking things off her mental list.

"Yes," says Mindeham sadly.

"And punching and kicking don't work."

"I once got lucky and hit one at its resonant frequency, which seemed to actually hurt it. It didn't disable it, though, just made it angry."

"Noises don't seem to make them upset."

"Screaming does seem to make them happy," Mindeham offered.

"What else is there? Do they dislike fire?"

"That's why they took away our clothes," Mindeham said, tugging at the metal ponchos. "They don't seem to care either way about water. I haven't tried electricity. I tried once to get behind the door frame, but there weren't any wires."

"You can get behind the door frame?" Lae asked, sitting up. With a lot of bloodied fingernails and bickering, they managed to expose the inside of the wall near the door. Lae poked around in there for twenty minutes, before finally turning to Mindeham. "This is an optical control mechanism."

"What?" Mindeham came over to peer over Lae's shoulder. There were a few depressions that he had previously poked around with, and a few darker and lighter patches on the wall, but it was all incomprehensible to him. "Where are the fibres, then?"

"Huh? No, not--see here? The collimator?"

"That does not look like a collimator..."

"And the switch, here?"

"The scratch in the wall?"

"And here, you see the power source?"

"You are literally pointing at nothing right now."

Lae stared at the upset Mindeham for a moment, then. "Ah. Human technology would have changed quite a bit since your time, wouldn't it?"

"I guess it would have, yes," Mindeham said, folding his arms.

"But with this you just--" Lae did something to the controls, and the door slid open. Mindeham's eyes went wide. They were both dead silent for a moment, then, cautiously, crept out of the cell.

***

The corridor was empty, but Mindeham and Lae instinctively crouched down as they came out of the cell, feeling very exposed.

"What now?" Lae whispered.

"Bluebubble," Mindeham said. Lae nodded, and they went over to their cell. It took what seemed like forever to get the control panel off, and they left blood and pieces of nail in the panel gap.

"Hurry up," Mindeham whispered.

"Shut up, it's not the same sequence from the outside as the inside for some reason--"

The door opened. Bluebubble lived up to its name, an opaque blue sphere sitting in a spherical cage on the floor. The cage had spikes pointing inwards, which could be retracted or set at different depths into the cage.

"They torture him until he expands into the spikes and pops," Mindeham said. "It is okay, Bluebubble, we have come to rescue you."

Bluebubble had made strange squealing noises when they first opened the door, but was silent now.

"I've found the hinges," Lae said, moving around the cell. The two humans worked to unscrew the bolts that kept the hinges together. Eventually, they got it open, and pulled the top of the cage off.

Bluebubble expanded a bit, and began floating out of the cage. Lae took a spike from the cage.

"In case we come up against them," she said. Mindeham nodded, and took one as well. They crept out of the cell. Bluebubble gave a squeak, loud enough to make them wince.

"I think he wants us to follow him," Mindeham said, as Bluebubble floated down the hallway.

"Well, I don't have a better plan," Lae said.

Following Bluebubble through the ship was a nerve-wracking experience. He seemed to know exactly where he was going, though what his destination was neither of the two humans could comprehend. Then, suddenly, they came out through the corridor into what appeared to be a mess hall.

Mindeham and Lae froze, but then, for some reason so did the ten or so aliens at their dinner plates. Bluebubble squealed, then began to inflate. One of the aliens tried to roll towards the door, and Bluebubble deflated suddenly, shooting towards the alien. They reached it, and then opened up somehow--and then swallowed the alien whole.

Lae and Mindeham watched the aliens look at the now much larger Bluebubble, and then watched them panic as the slaughter commenced.

"Should we... do something?" Lae asked.

"Like what?" Mineham replied. Lae paused for a moment, then shrugged.

"Should we, uh, leave?" she suggested, wincing as a flailing alien was taken.

"I think we're safest here," Mindeham said. He seemed to be almost enjoying Bluebubble's revenge. Lae remembered that he had been here being tortured by these beings a lot longer than she had.

***

After a number of hours, the massacre finally stopped. Bluebubble, while having spat out a number of half-digested alien carcasses by the end, was still three times the size they used to be. Lae watched, spike at the ready, while Mindeham checked the last hard-to-reach space for hiding aliens.

"All clear," he said, climbing down. They looked at Bluebubble, who was rolling around a bit now, squeaking quietly to himself.

"I think he's asleep?" Mindeham said.

"Or has horrible indigestion," Lae suggested. "Come on, let's go through my ship."

They had found out where the aliens had put Lae's ship in their check of each room, and unfortunately it had been neatly dismantled and placed piece-by-piece on the floor.

"I don't suppose you've ever built a ship from a kit, have you?" Mindeham asked, looking at the neat piles.

"Not ever. Have you?"

"Of course. But everything is very different now."

Lae found the dismantled remains of the robot, and got an inkling of the satisfaction Mindeham must have felt when they were watching Bluebubble massacre their captors. They did find Lae's clothes, undamaged, and her bathroom supplies.

"Oh thank the stars," Mindeham murmured, grabbing the soap and sponge and wandering off. He came back an hour or so later looking a lot happier and cleaner, carrying the soap and sponge in one of their old food buckets.

"This is the first time I have been clean in--what was the year?"

"Sixteen fifty two," Lae said.

"A long time," Mindeham finished, looking upset. Lae felt sorry for him.

"You can borrow some of my stuff if you want," Lae said. "Not my toothbrush, though."

Mindeham promptly claimed her fluffiest (and favourite) pyjamas, the ones with the birds on them. When she came back from her own wash, he had broken her only brush in his hair.

***

After sleeping, working out how to acquire food from the alien kitchens, and squabbling a bit, Lae and Mindeham found themselves worrying over Bluebubble.

"Maybe they're like a snake, and they've had their meal and will sleep for a week or so now," Mindeham said.

"I'm not sure that's how snakes work," Lae said.

"It might be how Bluebubble works," Mindeham said.

"Why bring up snakes?" Lae muttered. But Bluebubble didn't look particularly upset. Just... dormant.

"Have you had another look at the controls?" Mindeham asked Lae. Lae grit her teeth. Ever since she had worked out the simple door switch, Mindeham had regarded her as some kind of whiz at alien technology.

"Do you honestly think it would be a good idea to mess around with the controls?"

"How would it be worse than staying here?" Mindeham reasoned.

"We could end up spiralling into a star," Lae said, ticking reasons off on her fingers. "I might press a 'return to home' button, and put us in the middle of a very cross set of aliens. I might return the atmosphere to its normal configuration. I might press a self-destruct button. I might--"

"Okay, okay," Mindeham said. "Why don't we then--"

He saw the expression on Lae's face, and turned around. Bluebubble was awake, and puffing up to float at their head height. Lae, remembering the former owners of the ship, backed away.

"Hello," Mindeham said. Bluebubble squeaked at them, then hovered away a little down the corridor.

"I think he wants us to follow him again," Mindeham said. Lae sighed, and followed.

"What if he is trying to send us to the aliens to get his revenge?" Lae asked, as Mindeham hovered his hand over each of the buttons on a panel in the control room in turn. Bluebubble did not have the tendrils (or hands) to press the control room buttons, but did seem to know what he was doing.

"I don't think he would do that," Mindeham said. "I think he had difficulty eating everyone last time."

"It might be a suicide run," Lae said. Bluebubble squeaked, and Mindeham pressed a button.

"Well, you could spend eternity floating here with only me and an angry alien that can eat people whole for company," Mindeham reasoned, "or we could stop speculating and see exactly what Bluebubble wants."

"When you put it like that," Lae muttered. Bluebubble bumped into another panel, and Mindeham went over to it.

"Do you think, though," Lae began, as Bluebubble squeaked when Mindeham put his hand over the middle button of the panel. He pressed it. The just-not-quite instantaneous blink of warp confused their vision for just a moment, and then they were out, accelerating quickly from their warp point. Bluebubble bounced up and down a little. Lae and Mindeham slammed into the ceiling, and knew no more.