Inside, along corridors as smooth and white as an eggshell interior, into darkened rooms that form empty galleys, sinks clean and glistening, cupboards of stacked plates, cups and water jugs. Abandoned cabins with neatly made single bunk beds, one corner folded over like the page of a book, a place to remember, posters of women and postcards of lush trees, foaming oceans, home towns and stars of the screen. The metallic city of the hangar bay, a thousand heaped crates looming like miniature skyscrapers, its dormant trucks and loading vehicles. Closed and silent lifts, unused in generations, opening and closing on AMA’s command to keep dull mechanisms from seizing. The hulking bulk of security bots clamped in booths that house them, domed figures long obsolete in the buildings of their designers. High above, in the upper amidships where the Hive is found, lie the vessels’ true cargo: the crew.

They line the walls and central aisle in horizontal formation far into the distance, which cannot be seen accurately with human eyes. The entire compartment is theirs. One thousand crew members stacked like galley plates into bullet-shaped sleeper pods, their metallic cone heads, sides and undersides, their orange reinforced glass so the sleeping humans may see when they wake. If they wake. There are so many pods they will squeeze together when they arrive. They will jostle, laugh, make jokes about giving each other breathing space. The air, unused for so long, will taste of metal storage tanks. Many humans will be disabled, unable to walk or lift themselves from the confines of their pods. Relatives will realise pods are missing, that by some quirk of fate their lover, father, daughter, brother, mother was ejected from the escape hatch to fates unknown. They will not find out why until later, after the log is read. Others will not wake. Many will not wake.

There is no precedent for this journey. Starships have been assigned the same task in a different quadrant, yet they are all first to travel so far from home. They do because it has become vital. They do because they are fearful. If they did not, they would die anyway.