While the others work out the exact path of the EVA, Fin goes to the water dispenser. Larry is standing in front of it, arms crossed. As he gets closer, Fin hopes the man will move, but he does not. Fin wonders if the man knows what he was doing with Joké. Awkward.

“I need to get some water,” says Fin.

“Need,” says Larry. “Or want?”

“Need.”

Larry nods but doesn’t move. “You know water is essential… and precious.”

“I agree.”

Larry nods again and propels himself away. “I’m glad we had this talk.”

Fin dry-swallows, no longer thirsty.

Fin retreats to his pod and tries to put together what he knows, because he’s fine with Salvo doing all the space survival shit, and maybe they die in five days anyway, but he still has a case to solve, or at least a report to begin. If he dies, he wants something to survive, even if forensically. He has, in the pod, a foot clearance to his sides, less in front and back. Above, a lot more, but that’s because it’s the exit. Everything is close. And hot. The microgravity means there’s no cross vent. The spacesuit Shell mandated stands there like a bad conscience.

He daydreams about Joké pressed against him and is surprised at the longing this produces. It is strangely easy to feel close to her. She’s fey and batshit, but maybe that’s a plus.

He goes through the files that Salvo sent. The links of some passengers to Yan Maxwell are tenuous, and, to make matters worse, each one of them is still alive and in longsleep. It’s one thing to wake up and commit nefariousness; to get back to sleep is another matter. It’s impossible without external help.

Dreamstate isn’t really sleep. Passengers are anaesthetised at hypothermic temperatures. Fed nutrients, blood and urine monitored, any illness swiftly treated. Theoretically, one could wake from this state, or be woken, because that’s just a matter of changing the balance of anaesthetics, removing certain tubes and physiotherapy. Fin personalises the murderer into a silhouette. This person wakes, commandeers the medbots to apply physio, is up in two weeks, finds Maxwell, kills him. But what about the twenty-nine-odd others? Why kill them? But say that happens – how does this person get back to sleep? We know he can programme the bots. They could put him back to sleep and the crew of the Ragtime are none the wiser.