“I still can’t tell Nightshade from Bloodroot,” says Ibidun.

“Bloodroot is flat and Nightshade is dead,” says Silas.

A rote simplification, although, like all such mental shortcuts, it contains a scaffolding of truth. The powers that be may like to dismiss it, but Lawrence would not classify Nightshade as failed. Dealt a mortal blow, yes; dying, but not dead. It follows the standard protocol for settling, an Earthnorm model: Establish safety, build habitats, mine materials, use them to build industry and structures of renown. Bloodroot came later and the first settlers were from Nightshade, not Earth. What most people don’t know, or care about, is that the main difference between Bloodroot and Nightshade is philosophical. The colonists of Bloodroot wanted to work in ecological harmony with the planet, and such a group would find Earthnorm antithetical. Bloodroot grows its habitats using biopolymer substructures and has very few high-rises, hence flat. Nightshade’s biosphere is poisoned, hence dead.

“All you need to know is that the Ragtime’s distress is our distress. I’m not saying we have to fix its problems and find out why thirty-one of its passengers are dead. We just have to get the AI to send the all-clear message, then it’s Bloodroot’s problem.”

“Isn’t it already Bloodroot’s problem? They sent a team to investigate.” Ibidun again.

“It isn’t yet Bloodroot’s problem, but they don’t know that. I’d like us to be in and out of this before any questions are asked.” Beko licks her lips, tongue darting out rapidly, like a reptile.

Silas says, “Ma’am, in and out of what? What are you saying we should do?”

“We’re sending a team to fix the AI’s Pentagram, or, failing that, to rig it so that it sends a completion message. We will do this quickly and quietly, in the Lagos way. Naija no dey carry last.”

She stands, signalling the end of the meeting. Everyone else follows suit.

Lawrence is the last person to leave the conference room. He adopts the befuddled elder expression and immediately becomes invisible. He takes fifteen minutes to think. He is so still the motion sensors think the room empty and switch the lights off. He remembers Shell. Delightful child, inquisitive, funny. The only thing her father would talk about, even though he had two older boys and one younger son. Lawrence and Haldene Campion had solidified the bridge protocols and structure in their twenties, owning the Brink. They were relativity explorers, fearful but unwavering in their belief that humanity could and should spread to the cosmos and that they should be the agents of this.

“There is nothing quite like a daughter,” Haldene was fond of saying.

Lawrence agrees with the sentiment.

Now Haldene is gone and Lawrence is an impotent bureaucrat and young Campion is in trouble on her first flight into interstellar space.

He rises and the lights come on.