So Symat and Mela climbed aboard the ship once more, just the two of them. The flitter rose until the world shrank to a scrap of floor. Symat felt as if he had climbed to the top of a pole a million kilometres tall, and vertigo crowded his mind.
A Virtual of his mother’s face appeared before him, concerned. ‘We have to hand the ship over to the Mist,’ she said.
Up to this point the ship had been under the override of his parents, down on Mars. But now the lofty agencies who had summoned Symat through Mela would take control of the flitter and guide him into the darkness, out of his parents’ protection.
-Resplendent, "The Siege of Earth"