Before long, the whole crew were ordered to climb into acceleration couches, in advance of the Ingersolls slingshot manoeuvre around the star. Schelling was desperate to catch up with the Ship of the Covenant, which was well ahead of them by now and already approaching a final rendezvous with the moon and the Wanderer itself. He had already ordered their nova mine to be launched into a solar orbit during the moment of their closest proximity with the star.

One of the Ingersolls security staff then came to fetch her and Bash to one of several suites specially designed with such high-g manoeuvres in mind. Tarrant and Sifra were already present and strapped into their own couches, along with several others she did not recognize, and none of whom so much as acknowledged her presence. She wondered if they had been instructed to ignore her.

For a few hours, Gabrielles body weight grew and grew, pressing her deeper and deeper down into her couch. The ships external sensors presented her with the heavily filtered image of the stars surface, mottled and twisted and ugly and floating against a perfect black void. The Ingersolls bulkheads sang and creaked under the stress.

Then, finally, the pressure lifted, before fading away entirely. They were now coasting on their way back out from the star.

Back in their shared quarters, Gabrielle guided Bash over to his bunk, then listened carefully for the sound of footsteps outside.

Once she felt reasonably sure they would not be disturbed any time soon, she kneeled by her own bunk and carefully lifted up one side of the mattress, feeling around beneath it with her fingers until she found the small roll of stained fabric she had long ago torn from the edge of a bedsheet.

She glanced once more towards the door, then headed over to a set of drawers fitted into a recess. She slid the lowest one out and dumped its contents on the floor, then carefully unrolled a pair of Bashs socks to reveal a narrow strip of metal, about ten centimetres in length. It had formerly been a side-runner attached to the drawer itself, and one end had been sharpened to a razor-edged point.

Removing the screws had taken her an eternity, since she had little choice but to work at them with nothing more than her fingernails. She had spent literally weeks gently prising out each of the tiny screws, one after another, until they became loose enough to remove.

With fingertips torn and raw, she had worked with the constant awareness that she might be interrupted at any moment, and more than once she had needed to slide the drawer hurriedly back into place, before making a pretence of tidying up its contents. She would then publicly chew at her fingernails in case anyone noticed the damaged tips and asked questions.