The truck rolled on through the night, while Corso slept in its rear cabin. He woke late the next morning, less than fifty kilometres from home, and ordered his truck to a halt so that he could have breakfast, mostly consisting of supplies brought down from the frigate in orbit every couple of months by the one remaining lander.

While he was eating, he saw a light like a flare burning its way down through the atmosphere, and realized it was a lander dropping down from the California.

‘Senator Corso.’ The woman who had just taken a seat next to him looked impossibly healthy as she reached across to shake his hand. Pretty, too, with short dark hair and large round eyes. The skin of her hand felt silky smooth, so much so that he only just resisted the impulse to stroke it, like some love-starved prisoner on his first day out of jail.

‘I’ve not been a senator for a very long time now, Miss . . .’

‘Zukovsky. Meredith Zukovsky. I’m the liaison officer for the California.’ The lander was clearly visible outside one of the prefab’s windows, a massive, squat boulder of a ship resting on a dozen legs.

Corso could catch a strong whiff of himself after so many long nights sleeping in his truck’s tiny cabin, so either Meredith had no sense of smell or she was doing a valiant job of pretending he didn’t stink.

Apart from himself and his fellow exiles, there were a dozen members of the California’s crew now gathered around a long table in the tiny settlement’s largest enclosed space: a mess hall where the four of them would meet for meals whenever they were all down on the surface at the same time. But now the room could barely hold all sixteen of them – four times more people than it had seen in the last half-decade.

The table was covered with dishes of a variety that Corso had almost forgotten existed. The California’s commander, a bluff, broad-shouldered man by the name of Casimir Anders, was meanwhile talking with Martinez and Lamoureaux.

‘It’s nice to meet you, Meredith. You’ll have to excuse my manners and my body odour. I don’t get to talk to people for long periods sometimes, and the bathroom facilities here still leave something to be desired.’

‘But the main thing now is that you’re able to go back to the Consortium.’

‘That depends . . .’

She raised her eyebrows, tilting her head back slightly as if to get a better look at him. ‘I’m not unaware of your circumstances, Mr Corso,’ she said. ‘The political situation on Redstone still hasn’t stabilized, and you don’t need to tell me it wouldn’t be safe for you to go home. Not for most of you, either.’