Dano faced her, furious. ‘You don’t have the authority to make a decision like that. Granted this is an unusual situation. But these are still human colonists, and you are still a Missionary. Such a deal would be unprecedented.’

‘But,’ Pala whispered, ‘Bicansa’s people are no longer human. Are you, Bicansa?’

Bicansa averted her eyes. ‘The First were powerful. Just as they made this star-world fit for us, so they made us fit for it.’

Dano, astonished, glared at them both. Then he laughed. ‘Oh, I see. A loophole! If the colonists aren’t fully human under the law you can pass the case to the Assimilation, who won’t want to deal with it either . . . You’re an ingenious one, Pala! Well, well. All right, I’ll support your proposal at the Commission. No guarantees, though.’

‘Thank you,’ Bicansa said to Pala. She held out her Virtual hand, and it passed through Pala’s suit, breaking into pixels.

Dano had been right, Pala thought, infuriatingly right, as usual. He had seen something in her, an attraction to this woman from another world she hadn’t even recognised in herself. But Bicansa didn’t even exist in the form Pala had perceived, not if she endured this gravity. Was she, Pala, really so lonely? Well, if so, when she got out of here she would do something about her personal life.

And she would have to think again about her career choice. Dano had always warned her about an excess of empathy. It seemed she wasn’t cut out for the duties of a Missionary - and next time she might not be able to find a legal loophole to spare the victims of the Commission’s heavy charity.

With a last regretful glance, Bicansa’s Virtual sublimated into dusty light.

Dano said briskly, ‘Enough’s enough. I’ll call down the flitter to get you out of here before you choke to death.’ He turned away, and his pixels flickered as he worked.

Pala looked out through the car’s window at the colony, the sprawling, high-gravity plants, the dusty, flattened lens of shining air. She wondered how many more colonies had spread over the varying gravity latitudes of the star shell, how many more adaptations from the standard human form had been tried - how many people actually lived on this immense artificial world. There was so much here to explore.