"This instrument is designed to find north. It is not designed to understand why north moves."

"No," Saito said, not looking up from the manual. "It points to true north. The axis of the Earth. The spin of the planet itself. Magnets are for children's toys."

He installed it himself over a quiet Tuesday. The Third Mate, a boy named Tanaka who watched TikTok on the bridge wing, asked, "Captain, does it still point to magnetic north?"

He returned to the manual. Page 4-17: It described a phenomenon called settling error —a phantom offset caused by the gyro aligning not to true north, but to a plane of rotation influenced by the ship’s own course changes. The cure was a "latitude damping" reset. He performed it. The display flickered, reset, and returned to 271.3.