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when Parviis had taken control of podships away from them, the Tulyans had descended into superstition and stories of how things used to be. They were an odd race. Oh, they had their uses. On occasion Woldn and other Parvii leaders had used them for their timeseeing abilities, for that peculiar way they had of looking through what Tulyans called the “lens of time.” Bordering on the supernatural, the ability seemed to work. But not consistently.
    Woldn wondered now if their stories of the undergalaxy could possibly contain a grain of truth. Or more than that.
    Is that where we are? The undergalaxy?
    Gazing past an opening in the huddled swarm, some of the darkness seemed to melt away, enabling him to barely make out faint and unknown star systems that seemed oddly configured. In happier times, he had led his swarms to every corner of the known galaxy, and this was not anyplace he’d ever seen before. Had he overlooked a portion of the galaxy, or could this actually be an entirely different place?
    He strongly suspected the latter.
    Woldn was terrified, but concealed it from his followers, and steeled himself. Two hundred thousand survivors didn’t amount to much, but they would have to form the nucleus of Parvii recovery. He was determined to not only survive as a galactic race, but to rise once more in power so that Parviis regained their former glory.
    According to Tulyan legend, a dark terror resided in this nether galaxy, but details were murky. Woldn did not reveal it to anyone, but he began to wonder if this legend of his enemy could possibly be true, and if Parviis had ever been to such a stygian realm. Perhaps the horrors of the undergalaxy were buried in the collective unconscious of the Parvii race, and could only be brought out in a laboratory.
    Telepathically, he probed the minds of the seven latents, and absorbed their thoughts. At the most protected center of the tiny swarm, with their brethren clustered around them to preserve their body heat, these latents—two potential war priests and five potential breeding specialists—represented the future or doom of all Parviis. Seeds of the past grew in their physical bodies, which were of varying ages. Woldn probed deeply into the minds of the seven, into their memories and racial past. Into the long tunnels of their minds he went, probing, searching for facts. The paths joined, and continued back in time. From the embryonic war priests he found circumstantial evidence that an undergalaxy really existed.
    But there were barriers to more information, to meaningful details. He found no personal accounts of the other dimension, so the two young men did not have those particulars yet. Even so, Woldn was beginning to suspect that his people had been to this place at one time, but the memories were too horrible and had been collectively repressed by his race.
    Leading the paltry swarm, Woldn skirted the edge of the undergalaxy and circled back to the tiny bolt hole, hoping that the awful danger on this side—what could it possibly be?—did not sense their presence. When things quieted down on the other side, he intended to lead the way back through, to the Parvii Fold. Then he would take precautions to seal the area off so that no intruders could ever get back in.
    But his medical personnel and his own telepathic probes were revealing disturbing information about the condition of the swarm of survivors around him. Only a small percentage of them (including Woldn) had effective neurotoxin stingers in their bodies, which explained why most of them had little effect on the podships of the military attack force.
    We are far, far from home, with no way to retake it.
    It was a private, very lonely thought.

Chapter Seven
    “I don’t see what’s still holding this galaxy together.”
    —First Elder Kre’n, comment to her Council
    While the fleet was being consolidated and organized at the Parvii Fold, Noah inspected the area. He and Eshaz rode in the flagship while