So instead he sat and reflected, and wondered if that strange intelligence might manifest itself a second time. He settled back, aware that his adrenalin rush of the past few days was finally beginning to tail off.

He only realized he’d fallen asleep, when, several hours later, he woke to the insistent buzz of a comms panel.

The lab complex had a small kitchenette, which Ty had stocked with self-heating ready meals from one of the frigate’s vast and echoing mess halls. He drank water while he waited for one of them to heat, then swallowed it in a hurry before making his way to the airlock bay where Nancy Schiller and Ray Willis were already getting suited up.

‘You’re late,’ said Nancy, who looked like she hadn’t slept since they had left orbit around Redstone. He also noticed she was careful not to meet his eye. ‘Where’ve you been, the last couple of days? Haven’t seen you anywhere on the centrifuge at all.’

Ty had been wondering when a moment like this might arrive. He had expected the lifespan of their affair to last only as long as their previous voyage together. It was a matter of some consternation when he had come face to face with her inside the safe-house, after expecting never to see her again.

‘In the labs,’ he replied, heading for one of the racked suits and lifting it down. ‘I had a lot of work to do.’

Nancy and Ray were soon ready, and they stood there with helmets in hand while Ty struggled with the lower half of his suit.

‘So what exactly is there to do?’ Ray asked him. ‘If you’re talking about the Mos Hadroch, that is.’

As it recognized that someone was wearing it, Ty’s suit automatically began to adjust itself to his body, the shoulders tightening here, the legs growing a few inches longer there.

‘Well,’ Ty replied, ‘for all we know, it might be giving out some kind of signal. Or it might contain readable data, if only I can figure out how it’s encoded. But it’s definitely not inert: it came to life, just briefly, when we pulled it out of the Atn’s body.’

‘I remember you said so at the meeting,’ Nancy commented, ‘but you didn’t tell us exactly what happened.’

He shrugged. ‘Mostly it just . . . glowed a bit. And Merrick seemed to be able to pick up some kind of signal coming from it through her implants.’

Nancy and Ray eyed at each other at the mention of Merrick. ‘Now there’s a weird fish,’ commented Ray. ‘How much do you know about her?’

‘I know she was implicated in that whole, ah, thing that happened on Redstone,’ he replied, trying hard to sound casual. ‘But shouldn’t we be heading out?’ he asked, nodding towards the nearby row of pressure doors.

‘Not just yet,’ said Nancy. ‘We’re going to be—’