No more than thirty light-years from here, Ty reflected. How easily the words tripped off Cesar’s tongue. They’d travelled a thousand light-years without any help from the Shoal, putting them on a par with the greatest explorers the human race had ever known.

‘How could they get here so soon?’ he demanded. ‘I thought the best estimates gave us at least another month before they arrived here.’

‘Nathan . . . Cesar . . . for Christ’s sake, shut up and get packing, will you?’

Ty turned his attention to Nancy. ‘Look, we can’t possibly leave here with nothing to show, not after coming all this way. Tell me exactly how much time you think we have left, to the precise minute if it’s at all possible.’

He could just make out her terse expression through the visor. ‘Nathan—’

‘Just humour me, okay?’

Nancy hesitated, and Cesar jumped in. ‘I’d say anything from ten to twenty-four hours before they’re right on our doorstep, Nathan. But I don’t rate our chances of survival very high if we aren’t ready to jump out of here before then.’

Ty thought hard for a moment. ‘Okay, but once the swarm does reach this system, exactly how long do you think we have before they pinpoint our exact location?’

‘Nathan,’ Nancy spoke as if she were talking to a slightly dim child, ‘if there was ever anything here, it’s long gone now. Give it up.’

‘Is that Martinez’s opinion too?’ he countered.

‘Of course it is, otherwise we wouldn’t be packing up, would we? Unless you’ve got any last-minute bright ideas.’

‘Maybe I do. Look, we spent a week just trying to find this rock after we arrived in this system, right?’

‘What’s your point?’ asked Cesar.

‘The swarm needs to find us first, or more specifically this one asteroid out of the huge volume of them surrounding the white dwarf. Now, clade-worlds are always found within specific distances from their stars, which is one reason we managed to find this one as quickly as we did. The swarm’s going to know that, but it still means we’re going to have at least some time to finish our work before they trace us.’

‘We really don’t have time to debate this,’ Nancy snapped, her voice getting louder. ‘You’ve worked harder than anyone else, Nathan, and there’s no reason we couldn’t come back here some other time and try looking again, after the swarm is gone.’

‘Think about what’s at stake,’ Ty insisted. ‘What’s going to happen if we return empty-handed?’

‘Jesus and Buddha, Nathan!’ Nancy finally exploded. ‘Don’t you understand? All that happens if we stay on now is we get killed, and it’s all over either way! Not unless you finally think you found the damn . . .’ She stuttered to a halt, and he realized she could see the grin almost splitting his face in half.