He had no body, no belly, no heart; he had no need of people at all. His memories were scattered in emptiness, like the faint smudges that were the remote galaxies all around the Ship. And like the Ship he forged on into the future, steadily, pointlessly, his life empty of meaning. The last thing he wanted was voices.

But they wouldn’t go away. With deep reluctance, he forced his scattered attention to gather.

The voices were coming from Diluc’s corridor-village. Vaguely, he saw people there, near a door - the door where he had once been barrelled into by little Tomi, he remembered, in a shard of bright warm memory blown from the past - two people, by that same door.

People standing upright. People wearing clothes.

They were not transients. And they were calling his name into the air. With a mighty effort he pulled himself to full awareness.

They stood side by side, a man and a woman - both young, in their twenties, perhaps. They wore smart orange uniforms and boots. The man was clean-shaven, and the woman bore a baby in her arms.

Transients had clustered around them. Naked, pale, eyes wide with curiosity, they squatted on their haunches and reached up with their long arms to the smiling newcomers. Some of them were scrubbing frantically at the floor and walls, teeth bared in rictus grins. They were trying to impress the newcomers with their prowess at cleaning, the only way they knew how. The woman allowed the transients to stroke her child. But she watched them with hard eyes and a fixed smile. And the man’s hand was never far away from the weapon at his belt.

It took Rusel a great deal of effort to find the circuits that would allow him to speak. He said, ‘Rusel. I am Rusel.’

As the disembodied voice boomed out of the air the man and woman looked up, startled, and the transients cowered. The newcomers looked at each other with delight. ‘It’s true,’ said the man. ‘It really is the Mayflower!’ A translation whispered to Rusel.

The woman scoffed. ‘Of course it’s the Mayflower. What else could it be?’

Rusel said, ‘Who are you?’

The man’s name was Pirius, the woman’s Torec.

‘Are we at Canis Major?’

‘No,’ Pirius said gently.

These two had come from the home Galaxy - from Sol system itself, they said. They had come in a faster-than-light ship; it had overtaken the Mayflower’s painful crawl in a few weeks. ‘You have come thirteen thousand light years from Port Sol,’ Pirius said. ‘And it took you more than twenty-five thousand years. It is a record for a generation starship! An astonishing feat.’

Thirteen thousand light years? Even now, the Ship had come only halfway to its intended destination.

Torec cupped the face of a transient girl in her hand - Lora’s face. ‘And,’ Torec said, ‘we came to find you.’