Bechimo

In which Bechimo‘s crew assess the damage.

It occurs to me to wonder just what it means for a pocket of space to be empty. Most of space, by definition, consists of emptiness; what is it about this particular spot that makes it emptier than any other?

I’m also curious about the image Hevelin shows Win Ton of Theo dancing. That seems more like one of Win Ton’s memories than Hevelin’s; Theo wasn’t in the mood for joyous dancing the first time she met Hevelin, nor during the run to Codrescu and Velaskiz Rotundo that ended with Hevelin coming aboard. Although I suppose there’s still the trip from Velaskiz to Ynsolt’i, after Kara joined the crew; Theo might well have been in the mood to dance then.

I had been noticing that there have been more explicit mentions of the ship’s gravity in this book than is usual for the series. I suspect now it may have been leading up to this introduction of the Struven Unit which provides the ship’s gravity and is also connected somehow to the ship’s Jump ability. (I also suspect now that there’s some connection between the malfunctioning Struven Unit and the unusual behaviour of the flotsam.)