“We’re not getting the work,” she said. “We’re not getting the shows.” There was no sense in staying under those circumstances. “I can get a connection from here down to the Core,” she said.

“Take care,” Ed said.

He looked around him the next day and the circus was gone: Alice had been the last of it. Had she stayed for him? More out of nerves, he thought. It was a long way to the Core.

Madam Shen’s exhibits still filled one hold. Everything else was gone. Ed stood in front of “Michael Kearney & Brian Tate Looking Into a Monitor, 1999.” There was something feral and frightened in their expressions, as if they had used up all their effort to get the genie out of the bottle and were beginning to wonder if they would ever persuade it to go back in again. Ed shivered. In the other holds he found: a spangled Lycra bodysuit; a child’s sock. The companionways still smelled of food, sweat, Black Heart rum. Ed’s footsteps seemed to fill the hull, then echo out past it and into empty space.

Like any ship, The Perfect Low had her shadow operators.

They hung in corners like dusty spiderwebs: seemed less disused than cowed and anxious. Once or twice, as Ed roamed the empty ship, they detached themselves and flew about in shoals as if something was pursuing them. They clustered round the portholes, whispering and touching one another, then looking back at Ed as if he was going to betray them. They fled before him as he entered the control room, and flattened themselves against the walls.

“Hello?” called Ed.

The equipment dialled itself up at the sound of his voice.

Three hologram windows opened onto the dynaflow, featureless and grey. Recognising a pilot, direct connections offered themselves, to the drivers, the external coms, the Tate-Kearney mathematics.

Ed said: “No.”

He sat in the pilot seat and watched thin ribbons of photinos stream past. There was no sign of a destination. There was no sign of Sandra Shen. Down by the side of the seat he found her fishtank, familiar but uncomforting, faint with the residues of memory, prophecy, applause. He was careful not to touch it: nevertheless, it knew he was there. Something seemed to shift inside it. At the same time, he felt changes in the dynaflow medium. A course correction had been made. He got out of the seat as if it had bitten him.

He called: “Madam Shen? Hello?”

Nothing. Then alarm bells went off all over the ship and she popped out of the dynaflow very suddenly and the Kefahuchi Tract filled all three screens like a bad eye. It was very close.

“Shit,” said Ed.

He got back in the pilot seat. “Direct connect,” he ordered. “And give me the fakebooks.” He stared up at the screens. Light poured out of them. “I’ve been here,” he said, “but I can’t—There! Rotate that. Again. Jesus, it’s Radio Bay!”