"They're getting stronger and bolder."
"Maybe some day they'll break through, and...." Lin Pey let the sentence hang. Everyone supplied his own ending.
"Don't be ridiculous!" snapped Brunei. "They're not real. They can't kill us!"
"Maybe we should stop taking the Omnidrene?" suggested Vera, without very much conviction.
"At this point?" said Brunei. He shuddered. "If the garden disappeared, and we had nothing but the bare ship for the next fifteen and a half years, and we knew it, and at the same time knew that we had the Omnidrene to bring it back.... How long do you think we'd hold off?"
"You're right," said Vera.
"We just have to stick it out," said Brunei. "Just remember: They can't kill us. They aren't real."
"Yes," the crew whispered in a tiny, frail voice, "they aren't real...."
Seven months out: