Captain Tahget glared; he was a bulky, angry, determined man, and his scar was livid. ‘Michael Poole, my only concern is the safety of the ship, and everybody aboard - yes, including Mara. I am an honourable man, and if you have half the intuition for which your original was famous you will understand that. I give you my word that if she is willing to leave her room, briefly, for these essential purposes, Mara’s situation will not be changed. When she is returned, everything will be as it was. I hope that we can progress this in a civilised and mutually trusting fashion.’

Poole studied him for long seconds. Then he glanced at Futurity, and shrugged. ‘After all,’ Poole said, ‘she’ll still be able to detonate her bomb whether she’s in the cabin with it or not.’

So Mara emerged from her room, for the first time since before Futurity’s first visit to the ship.

A strange procession moved around the ship, with Tahget himself in the van, and a handful of crew, mostly female, surrounding the central core of Poole, Futurity and Mara. Mara insisted that Poole and Futurity stay with her at all times, one on either side, and she brought a pillow from her cabin which she held clutched to her chest, like a shield. Futurity couldn’t think of a thing to say to this woman who was holding them all hostage, but Poole kept up a comforting murmur of mellifluous small-talk.

Futurity saw that the crew checked over Mara surreptitiously. Maybe they were searching for the devices that linked her to her bomb. But there was nothing to be seen under her shapeless grey smock. Surely any such device would be an implant, he decided.

The peculiar tour finished in the observation lounge, where the view was still half obscured by the hull of an over-friendly ship that had sidled up to the Ask Politely. Further out, nuzzling ships drifted around the sky, like bunches of misshapen balloons.

Mara showed a flicker of curiosity for the first time since leaving her cabin. ‘The ships are so strange,’ she said.

‘That they are,’ Poole said.

‘What are they doing?’

‘I don’t know. And the Captain won’t tell me.’

She pointed. ‘Look. Those two are fighting.’

Futurity and the others crowded to the window to see. It was true. Two ships had come together in an obviously unfriendly way. Both lumbering kilometre-long beasts, they weren’t about to do anything quickly, but they barged against each other, withdrew, and then went through another slow-motion collision. As they spun and ground, bits of hull ornamentation were bent and snapped off, and the ships were surrounded by a pale cloud of fragments, detached spires and shields, nozzles and antennae and scoops.

‘It’s a peculiar sort of battle,’ Futurity said. ‘They aren’t using any weapons. All they are doing is smashing up each other’s superstructure.’