Josef Venport completes his surprise takeover of the Thonaris machine shipyards, treating the operation as an industrial consolidation rather than a conquest. With seventy armed vessels, VenHold seizes the former Celestial Transport facilities, conscripts most workers, and claims not only repairable robotic ships but a large automated manufacturing complex with extractors, smelters, fabricators, and assembly lines.

Josef praises Draigo Roget for calculating the shipyards' location and expects continued high performance from him. Draigo warns that the Butlerians would react dangerously if they learned VenHold was operating a former thinking-machine facility, especially because Draigo's former Mentat headmaster helped locate it, but Josef dismisses the Butlerians as backward savages and orders work crews to accelerate the reactivation of the complex after removing AI circuitry and sentient control chips.

Eight days into the occupation, Norma Cenva unexpectedly arrives from Kolhar in a small VenHold ship with two Navigator tanks aboard. She brings Royce Fayed, the captured spy whom Josef had placed in a conversion tank as a cruel execution, but who is now thriving as a Navigator candidate. Norma says Fayed's mind is promising and emphasizes that Navigators must retain their humanity as well as expand their minds.

Josef remains cautious about Fayed because of his past betrayal, yet he trusts Norma's prescience and judgment. When Josef and Draigo discuss the possibility of Celestial Transport retaliation, Norma confidently tells them not to worry, implying she has seen that CT is no longer a threat. Fayed then announces he will guide the ship back to Kolhar, and Josef and Draigo hurriedly leave before the ship folds space and vanishes.

With Norma's apparent approval and assurance, Josef relaxes and looks ahead to Thonaris becoming a major VenHold production base, perhaps rivaling Kolhar. He also reflects on the fate of Arjen Gates, whom he personally had spaced and mounted outside the administrative hub as a frozen, gruesome figurehead. Josef regards the trophy as fitting punishment for a rival who refused to submit, then turns back to the work of expanding his fleet.