Irene  the  Mona,  though  she loved space, would  often wonder what caused people to want to be out in it. If you asked her, it was almost entirely a visual experience anyway. Sometimes those billowing towers of gas, infused with hyacinthine light, ripped by shockfronts from, whatever, exploding quasars and like that, were beautiful; sometimes they only seemed monstrous. Irene preferred warm, solid-earth cities, where on a rainy day the windows of each retro-shop  and tailor parlour  glowed with personal options. She preferred the lights, the saxophone music, the pink and purple ads like moths, the souls which sprang so readily to meet your own. All phony, all gorgeous. But it was also a fact that she could not be entirely a stay-home girl. Because someone had to handle the fiscal and aspirational sides of the enterprise that was Saudade Bulk Haulage, not to mention human resources!

‘So here I am,’ she told herself aloud, ‘out among the stars and galaxies, which I have to say look almost as remarkable as a new pair of Minnie Sittelman fuck-me pumps.’ Around that time her name was called on the ship speakers: ‘Irene, Irene,’ followed by a noise of gak gak gak.

She found Antoyne lying on the control room couch in a puddle of sick, both hands clutching the bundle of coloured pilot wires as if he had been trying to rip a snake out of his mouth. His knees were drawn up to his chest and he was shaking. If Antoyne had a secret, Irene believed, it was that he didn’t do well alone; but there were days, too, when he didn’t seem to do well even when he had people to look after him. ‘Honey,’ she said, lifting his head and tenderly detaching the wires, on the gold tips of which she was able to discern tiny specks of brain matter, ‘this is not your job, and you really need a shave too.’ Antoyne threw up again and rolled off the acceleration couch.

‘Am I here?’ he said.

‘Yes Antoyne, you are here all right.’

The control-room displays came to life suddenly. In them Irene could see: jerky fragments  of light bobbing  along ribbed  slick-looking tunnels;  shadows caught  by a panicky glimpse behind; misleading images from the gas of nanocameras  now investing the wreck. Everything was processed to look ‘real’, arriving preassembled as a narrative from selected points of view, a software psychodrama in which Liv Hula dragged herself along, surrounded by a slow explosion of cable ripped off the walls during the salvage attempt. Through the eva faceplate her lips could be seen opening and closing, though nothing came out. Behind her, clearly imaged and yet difficult to understand,  something was emerging from the tunnel wall.

Irene, who had no intention of allowing the ship any time inside her, took a moment  to study the manual filter options. Then she shook Fat Antoyne awake.

‘Honey, I need you.’