Oneness

The narrative centers on a high-level tribunal that interrogates Rainbolt, a returned member of fugitive Mars Convicts who claims to be a missionary of Oneness while refusing to reveal the workings of an interstellar drive used in a mass escape. As officials probe the capture, anomalies such as the prisoner's apparent immunity to paralysis and lifelong sleeplessness deepen suspicion. The proceedings expose institutional insecurity within the Machine that governs Earth, the political stakes of controlling advanced propulsion, and a clash between bureaucratic power and a cryptic ideology, unfolding through investigation, interrogation, and pieced-together history of the convicts' flight.