Poole laughed. ‘Boy, space travel has sure changed a lot since my day!’

Captain Tahget said, ‘Show’s over. We’ll be here two days, maybe three, before the swarming is done.’

Poole glanced at Futurity questioningly. The swarming?

Tahget said, ‘Until then we maintain our systems and wait. Let me remind you it’s the night watch; you passengers might want to get some sleep.’ He glanced at Poole. ‘Or whatever.’

Futurity returned to his cabin, and tried to sleep. But there were more encounters in the night, more subtle shudderings, more groans of stressed materials so deep they were almost subsonic.

This experience seemed to him to have nothing to do with spaceflight. I am in the belly of a fish, he thought, a huge fish of space that has come to this place of scattered stars to seek others of its kind. And it doesn’t even know I am here, embedded within it.

V

During the 3-Kilo lay-off Captain Tahget had his crew scour through the ship’s habitable areas, cleaning, refurbishing and repairing. It was make-work to keep the crew and passengers busy, but after a few hours Futurity conceded he welcomed the replacement of the ship’s accumulated pale stink of sweat, urine and adrenaline with antisepsis.

But the continuing refusal of Mara, reluctant terrorist, to come out of her cabin caused a crisis.

‘She has to leave her cabin, at least for a while,’ Tahget thundered. ‘That’s the company’s rules, not mine.’

‘Why?’ Poole asked evenly. ‘You recycle her air, provide her with water and food. Give her clean sheets and she’ll change her own bed, I’m sure.’

‘This is a starship, Michael Poole, an artificial environment. In a closed, small space like that cabin there can be build-ups of toxins, pathogens. And I remind you she is sharing her cabin with a monopole bomb, a nasty bit of crud at least two thousand years old, and Lethe knows what’s leaking out of that. We need to clean out her nest.’

Poole’s eyes narrowed. ‘What else?’

‘That woman needs exercise. You’ve seen the logs. She only gets off her bed to use the bathroom, and even that’s only a couple of times a day. What good will it do anybody if she keels over from a thrombosis even before we get to the Chandra? Especially if she’s got a dead man’s switch, as she claims.’

‘Those are all reasons for separating Mara from her bomb, despite your promises to the contrary. I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you, Captain. And if I don’t, how can Mara?’