“You want to come back?”

Iona shook her head. “Not me, no. I just want them to send someone to deal with it. Of course, if it’s in human form the figures will obey it, and it’ll use that to its advantage . . . it’s not going to be easy.”

Steve nodded. “At least it’s not our problem anymore.”

* * *

The suspension system’s default programming was to wake its inhabitants once a year. This was a sensible precaution both for health reasons and to enable them to check the craft was running as it should. Of course, if there was an emergency the systems would wake them sooner.

Steve’s suspension system woke him after two days. He rushed from the bay and into the empty cockpit.

The monitor was alive with what looked like analog static. In the midst of the static a cone seemed to be pointing directly at the viewer. In fact this was an illusion: the center of the image seemed to be the nearest point, when in fact it was the farthest away. It was a side effect of traveling through the wormhole.

But they weren’t supposed to be in the wormhole at all. After their previous journey the humans had accepted they couldn’t travel through the wormhole again. Accordingly the craft was not designed to be able to travel this way. This was what had generated the emergency.

Steve went to turn off the autopilot, only to find it was turned off already. The nature of the wormhole was that you didn’t need to steer—it was like being on rails. But it also meant you couldn’t turn around: once you started a journey you had to finish it. He investigated whether there was any way of minimizing the damage the wormhole was doing to the craft, enough for it to survive until the other end. But he could already feel a tremor rising from the floor.

That was when he started to panic.

“I tried to stop it from waking you up,” said Iona’s voice from behind him.

He turned to see her leaning against the frame of the door to her suspension bay. She looked very calm, and that told him everything he needed to know.

“I was just going to let you sleep through the whole thing,” she went on, “it seemed easier.”

He strode over to Iona, grasped her around the throat with one hand, and pinned her to the wall. “Get the ship out of this or—”

“Or what?” She still seemed calm. “You’ll steal my body like you stole Steve’s? It’s not going to be much good to either of us in a few minutes.”

He glared back at her. He started to tell her she’d gotten it wrong, but she seemed to anticipate it and spoke over him.

“You didn’t know the journey time to Earth. Steve wouldn’t make a mistake about that.”

He laughed. “What, that’s all you’re basing this on?”

“Oh no, that was just the start. We talked for a long time after that. You made a lot of mistakes.”