“Perhaps you understand hatred then?”
“Hatred,” it said, “is a thing I know about.”
Lathrop watched the creature narrowly as it labored over the control board, adjusting dials, thumbing over trips, punching studs. His hands opened and closed — hands that were withered with approaching age, but hands that still had brutal strength left in them.
Finally the thing swung away from the board, chuckled faintly at him.
“We’re going home,” it said.
“Home to Mars?”
“That’s right.”
Lathrop laughed, a laugh that came between his teeth without curling his lips.
“The trip has been too long,” he said. “You’ll never get me back in time to do any preaching for you. We’re millions of light-years from Mars. I’ll die before we get there.”
The thing flipped slithery tentacles. “We’re close to Mars,” it said. “Millions of light-years the long way around, of course, but close by the way I set the co-ordinates.”