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shorter than before.
    Then, as he connected a small, silver and green panel to his brain, he fell backward, his limbs freezing into immobility. The panel had a defect that he had not noticed.
    While he lay there, looking upward and trying to repair the problem internally, Hibbil workers started dismantling the scrap pile with a mechanical, remote-controlled arm and claw, intending to melt the metals down and recycle them. Ipsy saw patches of daylight as pieces above him were removed. He noticed a zoomeye on the mechanical arm, and the claw hesitated over him for an instant—bathing him in orange light—before going on to other, larger pieces. But Ipsy knew it would be back.
    The little robot was like a paralyzed man, unable to move.

Chapter Six
    Once, the number of Parviis in the galaxy was far beyond our capability to measure. Now the Eye of the Swarm is in a desperate situation, fleeing with what little he has left. This is not a time for us to gloat. It is a time to be wary. Like a cornered animal, he may be at his most dangerous.
    —Tulyan report to the Council of Elders
    After all the eons of Parvii glory, the successes that went back farther than anyone could remember, Woldn couldn’t understand how things had gone so terribly wrong. Certainly, it was not due to any errors of leadership he had committed. He was far too careful for that, always using the resources of his people—and the podships under their control—prudently.
    At the moment, he and his drastically diminished swarm huddled in the darkness of an unknown place. The hole through which they had escaped had not been there previously, or it would have been noticed by his people, who had been constantly checking every square centimeter of the Parvii Fold, making certain it was absolutely safe. They had all been taught from an early age that this was their sacred nest in a dangerous galaxy, one they had to protect it at all costs. Never before had holes appeared in the fabric of the fold. It seemed an impossibility, because the immense protective pocket was at the farthest end of the known galaxy. They’d always thought that nothing lay beyond the gray-green membrane, that it marked the edge of existence.
    And yet, he and his remaining followers had gone through. Less than two hundred thousand individuals.
    Now Woldn reached telepathically into his morphic field, and opened up some of his own thoughts for his followers to read. In the process he felt the Parviis flowing to him and probing him, reading the particular thoughts he had opened up to them. In turn, all of the Parviis made the totality of their own thoughts more easily accessible to the Eye of the Swarm, so that he could read them at will himself. He did so selectively, a few at a time.
    Where are we? Woldn wondered. No one seemed to know.
    He and his swarm remained close to the tiny hole through which they had come, as if gaining some reassurance from its proximity. At least it gave them their bearings. They were very close to their beloved Parvii Fold, and yet so far from it. The galactic membrane separating them from the fold had not proven to be very thick, but it may as well have been the entire width of the universe. Woldn had stationed alternating sentries at the hole, peering through one at a time to the other side, and they continued to report extensive military activity in the fold.
    Will we ever return ? Woldn thought, or are we doomed to remain here forever?
    One of his followers transmitted weakly: I think we’re in the undergalaxy .
    Then another, equally diminished Parvii thought reached him: I agree .
    But throughout the rest of the swarm, no others ventured opinions. They shivered and huddled, and flew nearby, ever alert to dangers.
    A shudder passed through Woldn as he remembered the Tulyan legend of an “undergalaxy.” Parviis had always dismissed such a concept as just one of the harebrained ideas that their rivals, the Tulyans, had. Since their fall from glory long ago,