Once again the Ship was rebuilt. The acceleration provided by the dark matter ramjet was much lower than the ice rockets, and so the Ship was spun about its axis, to provide artificial gravity through centrifugal force. It was an ancient solution and a crude one - but it worked, and ought to require little maintenance in the future.

The spin-up was itself a spectacular milestone, a great swivelling as floors became walls and walls became ceilings. The transparent floor of the acceleration-couch amphitheatre became a wall full of stars, whose cool emptiness Rusel grew to like.

Meanwhile the new ‘Elders’, the ten of them who had accepted Andres’s challenge, began their course of treatment. The procedure was administered by geneticist Ruul and a woman called Selur, the Ship’s senior doctor. The medics took the process slowly enough to catch any adverse reactions, or so they hoped. For Rusel it was painless enough, just injections and tablets, and he tried not to think about the alien nano-probes embedding themselves in his system, cleaning out ageing toxins, repairing cellular damage, rewiring his very genome.

His work continued to be absorbing, and when he had spare time he immersed himself in studies. All the crew were generalists to some degree, but the ten new Elders were expected to be a repository of memory and wisdom far beyond a human lifespan. So they all studied everything, and they learned from each other.

Rusel began with the disciplines he imagined would be most essential in the future. He studied medicine; anthropology, sociology and ethics; ecosynthesis and all aspects of the Ship’s life-support machinery; the workings of the Ship’s propulsion systems; techniques of colonisation; and the geography of the Galaxy and its satellites. He also buttonholed Andres herself and soaked up her knowledge of human history. Meanwhile, Qax-derived nano-systems were so prevalent throughout the Ship that Rusel’s own expertise was much in demand.

His days passed in a dream, as if time itself flowed differently for him now. His major goal continued to be to use up as much of his conscious time as possible with work. The studying was infinitely expandable, and very satisfying to his naturally acquisitive mind. He found he was able to immerse himself in esoteric aspects of one discipline or another for days on end, as if he was an abstract intellect, almost forgetting who he was.

The Elders’ placid lives were not without disturbance, however. The Qax biotechnology was far from perfect. In the first year of treatment one man suffered kidney failure; he survived, but had to be taken out of the programme.

And it was a great shock to all the Elders when geneticist Ruul himself succumbed to a ferocious cancer, as the technological rebuilding of his cells went awry.