On the fifteenth day Rusel achieved a small personal triumph as the first slab of edible food rolled out of his nano-banks. Captain Andres had a policy of celebrating small achievements, and she was here as Rusel ceremoniously swallowed the first mouthful of his food, and she took the second. There was much clapping and back-slapping. Diluc grinned in his usual huge way. But Rusel, numbed inside, didn’t feel much like celebrating. People understood; half the crew, it was estimated, were still in some kind of shock. He got away from the crush as quickly as he could.

On the twenty-first day the Ship was to encounter Jupiter.

Captain Andres called the crew together in the acceleration-couch amphitheatre, all two hundred of them, and she set up a Virtual display in the air above them. Few of the crew had travelled away from Port Sol before; they craned to see. The sun was just a pinpoint, though much brighter than seen from Port Sol, and Jupiter was a flattened ball of cloud, racked with storm systems like bruises - the result, it was said, of an ancient battle.

The most intriguing sight of all was four sparks of light that slid across the background of stars. They were the other Ships, numbers One, Two, Four and Five; the little fleet would come together at Jupiter for the first time since leaving Port Sol, and the last.

Andres walked though the crowd on their couches, declaiming loudly enough for all to hear, her authority easy and unforced. ‘We pharaohs have been discussing destinations,’ she said. ‘Obviously the targets had to be chosen before we reached Jupiter; we needed to plan for our angles of emergence from Jupiter’s gravity well. The Coalition is vindictive and determined, and it has faster-than-light ships. It will soon overtake us - but space is big, and five silent-running generation starships will be hard to spot. Even so it’s obviously best to separate, to give them five targets to chase, not just one.

‘So we have five destinations. And ours,’ she said, smiling, ‘is the most unique of all.’

She listed the other Ships’ targets, star systems scattered through the disc of the Galaxy - none closer than five hundred light years. ‘All well within the Ships’ design parameters,’ she said, ‘and perhaps far enough to be safe. But we are going further.’

She overlaid the image of the shining Ships with a ruddy, shapeless mass of mist. ‘This is the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy,’ she said. ‘Twenty-four thousand light years from Sol. It is the closest of the satellite galaxies - but it is beyond the main Galaxy itself, surely far outside the Coalition’s grasp for the foreseeable future.’

Rusel heard gasps throughout the amphitheatre. To sail beyond the Galaxy? . . .