It was Tsedi, the fat rating. He looked as if he had been shot in the stomach. The cloak over his fat belly was scorched and blackened, flaking away. Kueht bounced around the cramped tunnel, screaming, eyes bugging wide, flapping uselessly.

Jarn was struggling with one of the spare cloaks. ‘Help me.’ Together Jarn and Mari wrapped the cloak around Tsedi’s shivering form.

And when she got closer Mari saw that whatever had burned through the rating’s cloak had gone on, digging a hole right into Tsedi’s body, exposing layers of flesh and fat. Inside the hole something glistened, wet and pulsing.

She retched.

‘Hold it in,’ Jarn said, her own voice tremulous. ‘Your cloak would handle the mess, but you’d smell it for ever.’

Mari swallowed hard, and got herself under control. But her hand went to the knife tucked into her belt. ‘Did someone fire on us?’

Jarn said, ‘Nothing like that. It was the Spline.’

‘The Spline?’

Kapur was hovering above them, anchored to the wall by a fingertip touch. ‘Haven’t you noticed how hot it has become?’

Jarn said evenly, ‘I remember hearing rumours about this. It’s part of their - um, lifecycle. The Spline will dive into the surface layers of a star. Normally, of course, they drop off any human passengers first.’

Mari said, ‘We’re inside a star? Why?’

Jarn shrugged. ‘To gather energy. To feed - to refuel. Whatever. How should I know?’

‘And to cleanse,’ Kapur murmured. ‘They bathe in starstuff. Probably our Spline’s damaged outer layers have already been sloughed away, taking what was left of our emplacements with it.’

‘What about Tsedi?’

‘There was a sunbeam,’ Jarn said. ‘Focused somehow.’

‘An energy trap,’ Kapur said. ‘A way for the Spline to use the star’s heat to rid itself of internal parasites. Like us,’ he added with cold humour.

Jarn said, ‘Whatever it was, it caught this poor kid in the gut. And - oh, Lethe.’

Tsedi convulsed, blood-flecked foam showing at his mouth, limbs flapping, belly pulsing wetly. Jarn and Mari tried to pin him down, but his flailing body was filled with unreasonable strength.

It finished as quickly as it had started. With a final spasm, he went limp.

Kueht began to scream, high-pitched.

Jarn sat back, breathing hard. ‘All right. All right. Take the cloak off him, gunner.’

‘We can’t stay here,’ Kapur said gently. ‘Not while the Spline bathes in its star.’

‘No,’ Jarn said. ‘Deeper, then. Come on.’

But Kueht clung to Tsedi’s corpse. Jarn tried to be patient; in the gathering heat she drifted beside the rating, letting him jabber. ‘We grew up together,’ he was saying. ‘We looked after each other in the Conurbation, in the cadres. I was stronger than he was and I’d help him in fights. But he was clever. He helped me study. He made me laugh. I remember once . . .’

Mari listened to this distantly.