At the end of this time, if nothing has gone wrong, his personal memory of theperiod will be dumped and a new interval will begin, so that from his point of view, NullBoundary's transit time will seem to require only ninety seconds, though years have elapsed. Thisis Nikko's defense against boredom. Additional subminds report in. Their assessments are pleasingly dull. Reactorfunction is nominal.
Air quality is nominal.
There are only three crewmembers. Four, if Nikko counts his own rarely-used physical incarnation. Nikko scans Null Boundary with remote eyes. He discovers Urban in the library,linked to an interface that records the activity of the philosopher cells. Urban insists that withpractice and refinement, the interface can be made to translate the cell's chemical language intosomething meaningful to a human mind.