«I came to say sorry,» she said. «I shouldn't have doubted.»

He waved limply. «Lady Mac was built for combat, her nodes are powerful enough to jump us out of some gravitonic field distortions. Not that I had a lot of choice. Still, we only reduced three nodes to slag, plus the one dear old Jorge damaged.»

«She's a hell of ship, and you're the perfect captain for her. I'll keep flying with you, Marcus.»

«Thanks. But I'm not sure what I'm going to do after we dock. Replacing three nodes will cost a fortune. I'll be in debt to the banks again.»

She pointed at the row of transparent bubbles which all held identical antique electronic circuit boards. «You can always sell some more Apollo command module guidance computers.»

«I think that scam's just about run its course. Don't worry, when we get back to Tranquillity I know a captain who'll buy them from me. At least that way I'll be able to settle the flight pay I owe all of you.»

«For Heaven's sake, Marcus, the whole astronautics industry is in debt to the banks. I swear I never could understand the economics behind starflight.»

He closed his eyes, a wry smile quirking his lips. «We very nearly solved human economics for good, didn't we?»

«Yeah. Very nearly.»

«The wormhole would have let me change the past. Their technology was going to change the future. We could have rebuilt our entire history.»

«I don't think that's a very good idea. What about the grandfather paradox for a start? How come you didn't warn us about Jorge as soon as you emerged from the wormhole?»

«Scared, I guess. I don't know nearly enough about quantum temporal displacement theory to start risking paradoxes. I'm not even sure I'm the Marcus Calvert that brought this particular Lady Macbeth to the xenoc wreck. Suppose you really can't travel between times, only parallel realities? That would mean I didn't escape into the past, I just shifted sideways.»

«You look and sound pretty familiar to me.»

«So do you. But is my crew still stuck back at their version of the wreck waiting for me to deal with Jorge?»

«Stop it,» she said softly. «You're Marcus Calvert, and you're back where you belong, flying Lady Mac .»

«Yeah, sure.»

«The xenocs wouldn't have built the wormhole unless they were sure it would help them get home, their true home. They were smart people.»

«And no mistake.»

«I wonder where they did come from?»

«We'll never know, now.» Marcus lifted his head, some of the old humour emerging through his melancholia. «But I hope they got back safe.»