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The companion was dead.

Alexander stared out the window at the distant lights of Actor's Carnival, at the hypnotic, neon glow of the ferris wheel's rotation, and contemplated this existential fact.

The companion, his eighth to date, was dead. Apt, that, since eight was a number that folded in upon itself, two and two and two and two, sets that faced each other as in a square dance, forever crossing to the other side, circling round and crossing back. That was eight. And that had been this last companion.

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Among the Lineal Space Pirates, who called upon St. Warren as their patron, there was an apocryphal story of how St. Warren's prayer came about. The story went that, on that fateful cliffside in Alaska, as the other Saints made their speeches to the weeping survivors, St. Warren remained on the sidelines, nervously looping sailing cord into knots and cats-cradles. And that was when he first envisioned the shape of human starships, and heard in his mind the words that would become his prayer: "Delineated from our heritage, we map our linear paths by way of time and space."

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