I had had no previous exposure to the organic ‘technology’ of a Spline. We truly were inside a vast body. Every time I touched a surface my hands came away sticky, and I could feel salty liquids oozing over my uniform. The passage’s walls were raw flesh, much of it burned, twisted and broken, even far beneath the ship’s epidermis.

But that was just background to my churning thoughts. Captain Dakk, for Lethe’s sake.

The captain saw me staring again. ‘Ensign, back off. We can’t get away from each other, but over the next few days life is going to get complicated for the both of us. It always does in these situations. Just take it one step at a time.’

‘Sir—’

She glared at me. ‘Don’t question me. What interest have I got in giving you bad advice? I don’t like this situation any more than you do. Remember that.’

‘Yes, sir.’

We found lines of wounded, wrapped in cloaks. Crew were labouring to bring them out to the Kard. But the passageway was too narrow. It was a traffic jam, a real mess. It might have been comical if not for the groans and cries, the stink of fear and desperation in the air.

Dakk found an officer. He wore the uniform of a damage control worker. ‘Cady, what in Lethe is going on here?’

‘It’s the passageways, sir. They’re too ripped up to get the wounded out with the grapplers. So we’re having to do it by hand.’ He looked desperate, miserable. ‘Sir, I’m responsible.’

‘You did right,’ she said grimly. ‘But let’s see if we can’t tidy this up a little. You two,’ she snapped at Tarco and me. ‘Take a place in line.’

And that was the last we saw of her for a while, as she went stomping into the interior of her ship. She quickly organised the crew, from Torch and Kard alike, into a human chain. Soon we were passing cloaked wounded from hand to hand, along the corridor and out into the Kard’s loading bay in an orderly fashion.

‘I’m impressed,’ Tarco said. ‘Sometime in the next quarter-century you’ll be grafted a brain.’

‘Shove it.’

The line before us snarled up. Tarco and I found ourselves staring down at one of the wounded - conscious, looking around, waiting to be moved out. He was just a kid, sixteen or seventeen.

If this was all true, in my segment of time he hadn’t even been born yet.

He spoke to us. ‘You from the Kard?’

‘Yeah.’

He started to thank us, but I brushed that aside. ‘Tell me what happened to you.’

Tarco whispered to me, ‘Hey. Don’t ask him about the future. You never heard of time paradoxes? I bet the Commission has a few regulations about that.’

I shrugged. ‘I already met myself. How much worse can it get?’