“Think about it,” Bran said. “The pillars of gold, the birds singing — the sort of lurid detail you’d expect after three thousand years of retelling. But what about the replenished food and drink? What does that sound like, to you, but replicator technology?” He opened his hands, rested them on the back of his folded legs, and looked around the group, nodding persuasively. “Just like Star Trek. Right? And what about the women that just happened to be available for every man? Were they just hanging around, waiting for visitors? Isn’t it more likely that these were some kind of constructs — what we might call holograms, or even androids?

“Which is why, of course, we find all that sci-fi stuff so easy to accept. Because it’s not part of our future — it’s part of our past.”

Jane leaned to Mike and whispered, “Here comes Einstein.”

“What?”

“Wait and see.”

“What is this?”

“A staff meeting of Egress Hatch,” Jane hissed back. “Morning prayers.”

“Egress Hatch? That new cult?” He’d heard pub talk about this; the cult had come out of nowhere to gather, apparently, a couple of thousand adherents in a month. But then, since Venus, it seemed as if the whole human race was splintering into cults and enclaves and pressure groups… He studied his sister. “What are you doing here?”

She frowned. “I think I know him.” She pointed at Bran.

“…And, of course, the clinching element in the whole story is the time lag. A century passing on Earth for a year of the travellers” time! It’s just the twin paradox of relativity — the time dilation effect suffered by every interstellar traveller up to, but not including, Captain Kirk — foreshadowed in a story first told three thousand years before Einstein was born. Now, how can that be?…”

“I told you,” Jane whispered.

Bran’s sermon was a mish-mash. The underlying theology seemed to be Celtic, but it was mixed in with a bit of New Age, a bit of post-millennial anxiety, a lot of sci-fi stuff about UFOs.

“…Our faith is rooted in that of the Celts. But this was the native religion of Britain and Western Europe, before it was suppressed by the conquering Romans, three thousand years ago, and then absorbed by Christianity, and so emasculated. Now, we’re reclaiming it…”

Mike straightened up to speak; he could feel Jane plucking at his sleeve, but he ignored her.

“So what’s that got to do with spacemen?”

Bran smiled. “The old religion, long buried, is a memory of an even older human experience. It’s only now, in our modern age, we can make sense of it. Look — have you ever had the feeling that your conscious self is sitting somewhere inside you? Like an inner person in a vehicle, looking out on the world and controlling the actions of your body—”

“Like the Wizard of Oz?”