Poole turned and walked briskly to the big blister-window set in the hull. His head scanned back and forth systematically as he took in the crowded view. ‘So this is the centre of the Galaxy. You damn priests never even let me see the sky before.’

‘Not quite the centre. We’re inside the Core here, the Galaxy’s central bulge.’ Futurity pointed to a wall of light that fenced off half the sky. ‘That’s the Mass - the Central Star Mass, the knot of density surrounding Chandra, the supermassive black hole at the very centre.’

‘Lethe, I don’t know if I imagined people would ever come so far. And for millennia this has been a war zone?’

‘The war is over.’ Futurity forced a grin. ‘We won!’

‘And now humans are killing humans again, right? Same old story.’ Poole inspected the surface of the planet below. ‘A city-world, ’ he said dismissively. ‘Seen better days.’ He squinted around the sky. ‘So where’s the sun?’

Futurity was puzzled by the question.

Captain Tahget said, ‘Base 478 has no sun. It’s a rogue planet, a wanderer. Stars are crowded here in the Core, Michael Poole. Not like out on the rim, where you come from. Close approaches happen all the time.’

‘So planets get detached from their suns.’ Poole peered down at the farms that splashed green amid the concrete. ‘No sunlight for photosynthesis. But if the sky is on fire with Galaxy light, you don’t need the sun. Different spectrum from Sol’s light, of course, but I guess they are different plants too . . .’

Futurity was entranced by these rapid chains of speculation and deduction.

Poole pointed to a shallow crater, a dish of rubble kilometres across, gouged into the built-over surface. ‘What happened there?’

Futurity shrugged. ‘Probably a floating building fell, when the power failed.’

Poole laughed uncomfortably. ‘Layers of history! I don’t suppose I’ll ever know the half of it.’ Now he took in the Ask Politely’s bubbling organic form. ‘And what kind of starship is this?’ At random he pointed at hull features, at spines and spires and shields. ‘What is that for? An antenna, a sensor mast? And that? It could be a ramjet scoop, I guess. And that netting could be an ion drive.’

There was a stirring of discomfort. Futurity said, ‘We don’t ask such questions. It’s the business of the Captain and his crew.’

Poole raised his eyebrows, but he got only a blank stare from Captain Tahget. ‘Demarcation of knowledge? I never did like that. Gets in the way of the scientific method. But it’s your millennium.’ He clapped his hands. ‘OK, so I’m here. Maybe we should get to work before your fruitcake in steerage blows us all up.’

The Ecclesia technicians muttered among themselves, and prepared Poole’s relocation.