‘I have only a vague idea of the signature’s position,’ Blegg said. ‘What do you have?’

Maybrem led the way into the station. ‘My solar-weather satellites use U-space com, so I ran the search through them and have located it in Dyson segment fourteen, on the other side of the sun. As instructed, I’ve not moved anything any closer to it.’

‘Good,’ replied Blegg abruptly. ‘Now I would like to speak to the forensic AI.’

Maybrem led the way into a wide chamber where, up above, a hologram of the Cassius system slowly turned. A corridor leading off to one side brought them to a drop-shaft which took them up. Several corridors later they arrived at double panelled doors.

‘Here,’ the man indicated.

Blegg turned the polished brass knob and entered.

One of the new kinds that were modelled on social insects, the forensic AI consisted of a squirming mass of robotic ants like a ball of shiny metal swarf. It rested in the centre of a lounge furnished with a scattering of low marble tables and comfortable reclining chairs—looking as incongruous there as a sack of oily tools on an Axminster rug. A heavy-worlder man with black hair and bushy eyebrows slept in one of the chairs, a palm-com in his lap and his feet up on one table, beside a cup of skinned-over coffee. Two women sat facing each other at another table, busily delving with chrome chopsticks into a selection of porcelain bowls. They glanced up, tilted their heads for a moment as if listening, then returned to their meal. Blegg walked forward, aware that Maybrem did not follow—clearly the company of forensic AIs made even haimans nervous.

‘You.’ The voice issued from within the moving ball.

‘So you would assume,’ Blegg replied. ‘Was it just a sordid little murder, then?’

‘So I was being led to believe,’ replied the AI, ‘but your presence here pushes cumulative inconsistencies beyond coincidence.’

‘Those being?’

The dozing man harrumphed awake and took his feet from the table. He sat up, his palm-com toppling to brown carpet moss patterned with green and yellow vines. He leant over to pick it up, studied Blegg for a moment, then said, ‘While we were investigating, we had a visitor who destroyed a maintenance robot out on the station skin, entering through its port. The intruder then cut inside the station, for what purpose we don’t know.’

‘The connection?’ Blegg asked.

The man glanced at the AI, which said, ‘I am still analysing the data. Perhaps you can supply more?’

Blegg moved further into the room and took a seat by the man’s table. He mentally connected to the AI and studied the file it presented, which detailed the remains of the maintenance robot and speculations on how the visitor had destroyed it, then the subversion of security systems, the holes cut through the station skin and subsequently resealed.