Cormac closed his eyes and he began running through things again. He knew, in the end, that the explanation would be simple, and any solution perhaps less so. Right at this moment he just couldn’t seem to get anything in order. He needed rest. The bench was padded and would have to suffice. He stretched out on it and was wondering if he would be able to get any sleep, when sleep crept up and got him instead.

* * *

The cracking of the shuttle door had Cormac sitting upright and pulling his mask across. Thorn entered with a large bag slung over one shoulder. He dropped it before Cormac as the door closed.

‘That was quick,’ Cormac said.

Thorn pulled off his mask and gave him a quizzical look. ‘It was quick,’ he said, ‘for shuttling up to Hubris and back.’

Cormac dropped his mask and looked around for some sort of time readout. He realized then that he should have acquired some sort of timepiece. While gridlinked he had always known the time, so it had never occurred to him that he might not know it.

‘Ten hours,’ said Thorn, as if reading his mind.

Cormac shook his head, trying to dispel that last fuzziness. He stood up, pointed at the bag and looked questioningly at the Sparkind.

‘Your uniform,’ said Thorn.

‘Right,’ said Cormac, taking up the bag, ‘I’ll change in the sphere. Let’s go.’

They masked up and cracked the door for a second time. Outside, vapour was rising off the CO2 slush as the machine and human activity raised the temperature. They hastened for a lock into one of the covered walkways, then on to the containment sphere. Upon reaching the sphere, Cormac found the temperature almost uncomfortable: it was above zero Celsius. Around the sphere, prefabs had been erected in some sort of analogue of embarkation lounges—and they were crowded. Technicians were setting up information consoles, laying insulated flooring, installing powerful little air heaters. Cables snaked all over the place and there was a racket of compressors, power tools, talking and shouting. When they finally got through to the sphere itself, they found it crowded as well. Thorn pointed out where Aiden, Cento and the dracomen stood. As he and Thorn headed over, Cormac saw that strangers viewed the dracomen without surprise. They probably thought they were just more adapted humans. There were plenty in the crowd already: catadapts with multicoloured fur, ophidapts with fangs, forked tongues and skin little different from that of the dracomen, tripode adaptations to heavy-gravity worlds, and others more exotic and less easy to compare. There were some who looked askance at the dracomen. They were perhaps more observant or were members of the original mission.

‘Wonder how long before we see copies,’ said Cormac, when they reached the two Golem and the two dracomen.

‘It would be a difficult adaptation,’ said Aiden.

‘Why’s that?’

‘It would require extensive rewiring of the nervous system.’