And the Companions came into being as a profession.
Men with will power, psionic abilities, strength of character. You could call it what you liked, depending on your profession, your politics, your religion. At any rate, men (and women) who could hold human personalities together on the long, instantaneous voyage through null space.
But still some personalities drifted away.
Or, some darkly superstitious people suggested, were they sucked away?
They were.
Personalities in transmission were being captured by an intelligent entity, unimaginably vast in size, which some believed used the movements of galaxies as the synapse responses of its brain.
It was a vast entity, but not a very intelligent one, due to the square of signal decay and noise over light-years. Moreover, it was psychopathic. From contact with human minds, it had decided it was, or would become (it was obviously confused on the point) the god of the humans.
It proposed to do this by eventually incorporating all intelligence into itself. But, seemingly, only intelligences in transmission were soft enough for the Mindsnake to get a hold on.
The Companions were harder-shelled.
But the Mindsnake grew stronger.