After they left the collision field, it took an hour to get back to Lighthouse Station. When they arrived, they docked at their previous berth and again waited for the docking mechanisms to complete their seal. As they moved to debark, Nate traded a glance with Jesse, then said, "You should all stay here... except Jesse. We'll go see whether we're welcome anymore."

Andrew looked at him askance. "Is that wise?"

Nate read agreement with Andrew in the eyes of several of the others, but he just shook his head. "What do you think they're going to do?" Andrew didn't look convinced, but the rest of the little group didn't follow when Nate turned and pushed himself toward the airlock. As he hit the button to open it, he turned back to them, his mouth quirked wryly. "One way or another, I doubt this will take long."

When Nate emerged from the airlock into the station, there was, again, a greeting party. This time, however, it was two of the council members with no crowd or fanfare. Elders Rebus and Eden stood stiffly, their backs straight, and Nate couldn't help feeling that they were looking down their noses at him from the very instant he left the airlock. Nate also couldn't help noticing the two security guards that loomed behind them, their faces blank.

"Nate," Rebus said, stepping forward. "The council would ask that you and any of your companions who wish to come back aboard Lighthouse Station accompany us to a full session of the council."

Nate's eyebrows rose and he frowned, but then he nodded thoughtfully. "I can do that."

Immediately upon following Nate out of the airlock, Jesse saw Rebus and Eden and scowled. "Are you two making trouble again?" He looked over at Nate. "I wondered if I should have stayed here just to see that they couldn't do anything...stupid."

Rebus smirked. "The council is convened and waiting. Best come along, Jesse."

Nate spent the ten minute walk in melancholy contemplation. He had enjoyed his comparatively short stay on Lighthouse Station, and he got the distinct feeling that time would soon be coming to an end, whether he liked it or not. By contrast, Jesse was visibly fuming beside him.

As they approached the conclave, its main door now guarded by two strong-looking men, Nate laid a hand on Jesse's arm. "Let me do the talking." Jesse nodded reluctantly as they were ushered through.

"...urge you toward reason." Elder Strong was speaking as they stepped into the conclave, but she broke off at the sight of them. The podium had been removed, replaced by chairs for each member of the council...except Jesse.

Rebus and Eden led them down the main aisle toward the council, which sat in a semicircle facing them, with two empty spaces. Looking awkward, Rebus and Eden hurried down the aisle to take their places in those empty chairs, leaving Nate and Jesse to walk the last few yards by themselves. Nate glanced over at Jesse and smiled crookedly, continuing to move at a dignified pace. The auditorium around them was once again filled with the people of Lighthouse Station, though from Jesse's dark glances around, Nate wondered if the crowd had been gathered a bit selectively.

When he reached the dais, Nate stepped up onto the circular platform in the center of the room directly across from the council and promptly sat down cross-legged facing them. Most looked a bit shocked as he did, evidently having expected him to remain standing like a criminal come for justice. Elder Jaben frowned thoughtfully and Elder Strong's eyes widened and crinkled at the corners. She managed to suppress her smile, but it was a near thing.

Jesse stood for a moment, looking around at the council with a mixture of confusion and hurt, hardening into a deep anger. As Jesse took a position beside Nate, also cross-legged, Jaben spoke, "Nate, we find that there is some...question regarding your status and we wish to make a formal inquiry—"

Rebus broke in. "How rapidly do you age, boy?"

Jaben gave Rebus an annoyed look and continued as smoothly as he could. "There are allegations that you are..." He paused uncomfortably, “an 'Odd.'"

Jaben's discomfort intensified, but he soldiered on. "There has also been suggestion that you are not, as claimed, the Brightstar." He trailed off, frowning at Nate.

Nate nodded slowly, then shrugged. He looked Jaben in the eye. "I am who I am. You can call me whatever name you choose. It was the Keeper, your own leader, who gave me this." He held up the Sigil of the Mysteries, which glowed softly even in the bright light of the auditorium. "Tell me, from where do you take the name 'Brightstar?'"

Surprisingly, it was Eden who spoke in response. "From the prophecies of the Wildman, Siever Radding." His eyes were fixed on Nate as he continued. "Many know of the prophecies of Radding, given at the Telestry. We take the name Brightstar from his most famous prophecy, 'Darkness before you and chaos behind you, in hubris and weakness the bright star will blind you.'"

Eden looked at Nate hard as he continued, "What few know is that we, too, were given a sign, when Radding pierced the Vale upon his third Rejection. The words have been preserved, passed down through the council and through my own family. They are not known widely—have never been uttered before a full session of the council, even, but they have been kept as a surety against the day of Brightstar's appearance."

Eden paused, likely reciting in his own head. When he spoke again, he was obviously quoting long-rehearsed and oft-repeated memory. "Like a filing to the lodestone, the light of goodness draws him. His only home within the Vale, an elder spring of truth and lore. To the people he gives praise and to council respect and honor their due."

As Eden finished, Rebus rose to his feet. He had obviously been waiting for the cue, because he pointed accusingly at Nate. "Disrespect. Disrespect is all you have shown the council! 'Elder spring of truth'? Fah. The drivel you spread among the people is as foul as you are, Odd! Brightstar you most certainly are not!"

Beside Nate, Jesse jumped to his feet. "You would defy my father openly!?! When he returns—"

Nate interrupted Jesse without seeming to raise his voice, but still driving past his outburst, "Peace, Jesse."

Nate shook his head slowly, then looked each member of the council in the eye in turn before he spoke. "'No prophet is accepted in his own country.' The Wild Man was rejected by the Telestry, not once but three times for giving them more truth than he gave to anyone else in the galaxy. Likewise, I gave you the truth more plainly than I may anywhere else, and you reject it." There were mutters from the audience behind Nate, and the council's faces grew, if possible, even more stony than they had been before.

Jaben shook his head in rejection. "You defied the council directly, Nate Brightstar, and your... history lesson... left more unrest among the people of Sanctuary than we have had in my entire lifetime."

Nate rose to his feet. Though he was still shorter than any of them, seated as they were in their tall council chairs, Nate might have towered over them. "Long after this universe is lost to memory, an unwelcome truth will still be the most potent insult it is possible for one person to offer another. Ancient lore from Earth itself tells you that wisdom loves correction, but a fool wants nothing more than to hear his own words in another's mouth."

Rebus looked on the brink of speaking again, his face growing red, but Nate continued. "The truth is that the people of Sanctuary lead the most privileged life in the galaxy. Because you are protected by the Vale, unopposed and unassailable, this council has become arrogant, even if your people are not.

"I paid you every respect you deserved. You cannot say the same about your treatment of me. Just as your prophecy says, I gave this council a come-down, exactly as you were due. It was the greatest gift I could offer you."

Apparently, Rebus could take no more. He broke in, yelling, "Take him!" With this utterance, Rebus's eyes changed, his pupils stretching into vertical slits. He stepped forward and stared into Nate's eyes, his voice dropping to a near whisper, "I know what you ARE...'Brightstar'."

Behind Nate, several people from the crowd rose up and stormed up the stairs while Nate stood frozen, his gaze locked with Rebus's, his attention shattering. Rebus knew. Nate could see it in those exsect eyes. He knew about both of Nate's worlds. He knew what Nate really was.

Then the crowd was there, seizing Nate by the arms and around the middle, hefting him easily above their heads. For a moment, Nate was afraid they were going to actually tear him apart. He instinctively tried to seize Energematrice6 to defend himself. His mind was stuck in the same paralysis that was so familiar to his body in that other reality. He could see Energematrice6 as clearly as ever, but grasping it was so far beyond him in his shattered state, he didn't even know where to begin. He could no more use the fields than he could have done a handspring or even tied his own shoes in that other, impossibly distant world. Terror and confusion enveloped him as his helplessness struck home and he thrashed uselessly.

"To the locks!" one of them yelled. There was a general roar of approval and the whole mass started moving, carrying him along. From where he was held above the crowd, as if from a world away, Nate could see Jesse's mouth drop open in shock. He also caught a glimpse of Rebus's gloating sneer. As the crowd turned, now joined by others from the surrounding amphitheater, Nate heard Jaben trying to impose his voice over their roar without success.

Nate's own shock at Rebus's revelation and a gut-wrenching feeling of failure prolonged his paralysis. The same four men held him over their heads, carrying him bodily through the station while the rest of the mob forced gawkers out of their way.

More than once as the eternity of the next minute or two wore on and a sense of unreality overcame his paralysis, Nate tried again to use Energematrice6, hoping to simply incapacitate the mob that carried him down the corridor. They were none too gentle, and the only thing he was certain of was that they were up to no good. If they were on their way to the airlock, as their words had suggested, that most likely meant another trip through the vacuum without gear. Over the time it took for the mob to reach the nearest airlock, on the opposite side of the station's hub from where Adamant was berthed, Nate struggled savagely against the wall that kept him from grasping the fields. Even as his shock wore off, something else stopped him. At first he thought it was the same paralysis that had gripped him when Rebus had caught his eyes, and the same sense of horror and failure reached up to strangle him. Slowly, he realized It wasn't. He could see Energematrice6. He had opened his senses to it, but something was stopping him from using it against these people. The realization of what that wall was came to him in a flash as they rounded the last corner and he saw the airlock ahead of them. It was the Great Schemic itself. With that realization, Nate's focus came clear and his grasp of Energematrice6 was instantaneous. His original instinct, to stop the mob that held him, was still impossible for him for reasons he couldn't quite understand, but he prepared himself for what he knew must be coming. When they reached the airlock, one of their number had run ahead to cycle it open, and they shoved him unceremoniously inside.

Well, Nate thought, a little space walk isn't going to hurt me, whatever they might want.

As the door was closing, he shaped the fields and, with his hand on the outside door, created a bubble around himself as quickly as he could, starting at his head and rapidly inflating to hold the rest of his body. This time, he didn't have to create his own air, only envelope the air already around him to hold it as the airlock depressurized.

He had barely finished when, a few seconds later, the door between him and the vacuum simply opened. Someone must have hit an emergency evacuation button, because the airlock hadn't cycled. The air was still inside the chamber, until suddenly it wasn't. The explosive decompression ripped Nate out of the airlock and tossed him into space...