“Ragtime, this is the shuttle Decisive. Michelle, is that you?” A familiar voice.

“Uncle Larry?” says Shell.

“Shelley! Hey, send me the docking protocol. I’ll see you in a second.”

Fin is signalling for speech.

“Stand by, Decisive.” Shell turns to Fin. “What?”

“You can’t let him on board.”

“Do we have to go through this authority thing again? Because I am tired of it.”

“Captain, the Ragtime is a crime scene. You can’t just invite anybody in before Salvo and I have cleared it. It’s contamination.” Damn it if Fin doesn’t sound reasonable this time.

“Fin. Rasheed. No disrespect, but you’re a shitty spaceman. I need help with the ship and you and your shiny Artificial are not pulling your weight. Uncle Larry—”

“‘Uncle Larry’?”

“Lawrence Biz. He was my father’s friend. The point is, he’s an experienced astronaut. I need someone else who can carry water when we can’t trust the robots, and you don’t look like space is your natural habitat. I need him, all right? So we all don’t die of something routine like carbon monoxide poisoning.”

Leaving unspoken what both of them know, the fact that an ally balances things out. Fin has Salvo; Shell now has Uncle Larry.

“Is this your girl?” asks Larry. “Wow.”

He is a huge, muscular man taking up space to the side of Shell’s father.

“This is Michelle, yes,” says Haldene.

Larry settles into a crouch, one hand on the rug. Shell still has to look up at him.

“Hi,” he says. “I’m your uncle Larry.”

Shell looks to Haldene, who shakes his head. “He ain’t your uncle, baby.”

“How old are you, Michelle?”

“Nine, but ten in the fall.”

Larry laughs. “Ten in the fall. You know, your dad only talks about you when he’s not talking about flying?”

“Are you an astronaut too?”

“I am.”

“Have you ever seen aliens?”

“If I had, I wouldn’t be able to talk about it, darlin’.”

“So you have.”

Larry looks to Haldene, who just raises an eyebrow. “I told you she was smart.”

“Yeah, but everybody says that about their kids, even the ones as dumb as a rock.”

Shell’s belly warms whenever her father’s eye is on her.

“Crosshairs aligned, Ragtime. Eleven metres. All thrusters inhibited.”

“Roger that, Decisive. Target at centre,” says Shell.

The Decisive had to descend to a phasing orbit, then perform a bielliptic transfer. It caught up to the Ragtime, taking three hours and giving Shell a headache. AI would normally do this. The transfer went well, although the Ragtime changed attitude twice. At least it didn’t speed up like when the Equivalence tried to dock the first time.

“Contact. Capture.”

“Confirmed.”

The external cam shows the Decisive tacked on to the Ragtime.

“Fin, do it,” says Shell.

“Do what? I’m waiting at the hatch.”

“The manual locks. We discussed this.”

“Manual locks. Right.”