‘All right,’ she said, eyeing him with wary respect. ‘But if that does turn out to be the case, doesn’t it lend itself rather strongly to the notion that if the Mos Hadroch was ever here, it’s gone now? And you told me yourself the Atn clades used to go to war with each other. Maybe the ones in this asteroid just happened to lose a fight.’

Ty shook his head violently. ‘No, the assumption used to be that the Atn must have fought amongst themselves, but the data we got from Merrick makes a strong case for the swarm being responsible for all the damage to clade-worlds we’ve found in the past.’ He stared thoughtfully at the stack-discs for several seconds.

‘But? I can tell there’s a but.’

‘There are clade-worlds in even worse condition than this one, back home, but I’ve never come across stack-discs that looked like they’d been as carefully and deliberately smashed as these.’

She glanced at the melted remains of the Atn, and then back at Ty. ‘You think this one smashed them himself, before he got killed?’

‘I think it’s a fair conjecture. There was something in those discs he didn’t want found. Maybe even the exact location of the Mos Hadroch.’

She stared at him like he was an imbecile. ‘But if the stacks-discs have been destroyed, how the hell are you going to find out?’

‘By looking at things differently. For a start, we’ve mapped out every inch of this asteroid, but there’s one passageway off Shaft A that’s a hundred metres too short.’

She looked at him blankly, and he explained further. ‘Look, every single Atn clade in existence follows the exact same internal architecture. It’s like they have a blueprint they never deviate from. They only go for bodies of a certain size, between seventy and one hundred kilometres across. Then there are always two central shafts, and exactly the same number of branching passageways and chambers, all in the same place and according to a ratio relative to a particular asteroid’s dimensions.’

He grabbed her by the shoulders and grinned. ‘When Cesar called in, I’d already gone to check out that passageway – and I’d bet my life it’s capped with a false wall.’

‘You think there’s something hidden behind it?’

‘Why not? There’s gear back on the frigate that can tell us if I’m right.’

Nancy carefully extracted herself from his grasp. ‘Well, that’s great. We can have Martinez send over some explosives so we can blow it open.’