‘That’s three drive-spines in need of immediate repair, all on this section of the hull,’ said Nancy. ‘Follow me.’

Ty used lanyards, coiled silver lines that shot out of the rear of his suit just below the air tanks and attached themselves to the hull. All he had to do was lean one way or the other and the lanyards would carry him along at a couple of kilometres an hour, rapidly retracting or reaching out to grip the hull in a steady rippling motion. As Willis and Nancy did the same, Ty was reminded of how comical the lanyards looked, as if each of their suits had suddenly grown spindly cartoon legs.

Nancy had slaved the spiders to her own suit, so that they followed a short way behind her, propelled on tiny puffs of gas.

They soon reached the first drive-spine. In that brief, barely measurable moment when a craft passed through superluminal space, electrical systems often failed and the molecular bonds of the hull began to crumble at the extremities. Nobody knew what would happen to a ship if it stayed in superluminal space for a few seconds longer, but Ty strongly suspected that it would disintegrate entirely.

At the base of the first drive-spine was a tangle of power cables leading inside the hull, ultimately terminating at one of the plasma conduits. Some of the cables had worked loose, which was easy enough to fix.

The drive-spine arching above them looked grey and dusty towards its tip, like it had become badly corroded. Ty could see where a panel had come loose about halfway up, exposing naked circuitry beneath.

‘Ray, will you go ahead and take a look at the other spines?’ suggested Nancy. ‘We only need two pairs of hands for this one, and it might speed things up if we know what else we’re going to have to deal with, okay?’

‘Uh . . . sure,’ said Willis, after a moment. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t rather—’

‘No, I wouldn’t,’ she replied, just a little bit too sharply. ‘Besides, myself and Nathan need to talk over some of the . . . some of the technicalities.’

Uh-oh, thought Ty.

‘Yeah,’ said Willis, sounding far from pleased. ‘Yeah, I’ll do that.’

‘Thanks,’ said Nancy.

‘Yeah. You kids have fun,’ Willis grumbled.

Ty watched as he moved away across the surface of the hull, dragged along by his suit’s smart lanyards, whipping in and out.

A moment later a one-to-one channel request was transmitted to Ty’s suit, and he accepted it with a sinking feeling.

‘Quite something, isn’t it?’ asked Nancy. ‘The view, I mean.’

‘Yes, quite so,’ Ty replied. ‘How have you been, Nancy?’