At 4am the morning after he met with Toni Reno, Antoyne made some FTL calls, as a result of which he found himself down in the Nova Swing number one hold, re-examining the payload Toni left behind. On the bills of lading it was described, ‘Delivery, insurance, freight, documents on sight’, which is not to say much. Because of his previous career, Antoyne experienced a natural anxiety when it came to Port Authority paper. About the payload itself, technology had told him all it could. He concentrated instead on its viewport, situated at the front end and constructed of three inch quartz glass, opal in colour, elliptical in shape. To obviate reflections, Antoyne had switched off the halogen lights. Every so often he was forced to wipe condensation from the glass with a piece of rag.

If he cupped his hands round his face, he could make out a greenish object, like something alive viewed under low-power photomultiplication. This object moved about, or maybe not. Antoyne didn’t like what he saw. He didn’t like being in the dark with it, or the way the Nova Swing main hold seemed warmer than usual, or the carmine LEDs that occasionally flickered into life up and down the mortsafe’s lateral line.

Two years before, Antoyne’s company – Bulk Haulage, aka Dynadrive-DF – had won a six month contract to tow hulks in the Vera Rubin’s World quarantine orbit. Antoyne left the Nova Swing at home, hired an 18/42 series Weber tug – the Pocket Rocket, old but serviceable – and ran the job out of a landing-field bar known to its habitués as ‘The East Ural Nature Reserve’. He took a room for the duration, not far down Gravuley Street from the field, and ate with all the other quarantine dogs at the Faint Dime diner, where he liked the way the light reflected off the chromed faux-Deco panels behind the counter. Early evening would find him at the window of his room, eyeballing the Neapolitan layers of a late sunset while he waited for the neon to come on. It was a two-storey town on a one-issue planet. Their idea of style was yellow Argylls and black loafers. Gravuley Street seemed to go on forever, especially at night.