She no longer sounded like a twelve-year-old girl at all. Looking into her eyes, Symat began to feel frightened. In the corner of his eye he saw his mother, distressed, cling to Hektor’s arm.

‘Where will I have to go?’

‘Far from Mars . . .’ Mela smiled, suddenly herself again. ‘Isn’t it exciting?’

III

Pelle insisted they loan her son the family flitter for his jaunt: ‘At least it will keep him safe.’ With very bad grace, Hektor agreed.

So Symat and Mela climbed aboard the ship once more, just the two of them. The flitter rose until the world shrank to a scrap of floor. Symat felt as if he had climbed to the top of a pole a million kilometres tall, and vertigo crowded his mind.

A Virtual of his mother’s face appeared before him, concerned. ‘We have to hand the ship over to the Mist,’ she said.

Up to this point the ship had been under the override of his parents, down on Mars. But now the lofty agencies who had summoned Symat through Mela would take control of the flitter and guide him into the darkness, out of his parents’ protection.

‘You don’t have to go, you know,’ Virtual Pelle said in a rush. She glanced at Mela with a trace of malevolence. ‘You don’t have to do what she says. And you won’t - oh, you won’t lose face if you turn around and come back to us.’

‘Mother, I’m caught up in some kind of mystery. I need to understand. I’m making an adult choice. I think.’

She nodded, her lips tight. ‘Then I won’t stop you. But I’ll be tracking you every step of the way.’ The Virtual shut itself down, dispersing in a cloud of pixels.

The ship flipped over, and Mars squirted away.

Mela was watching him. ‘Are you OK?’

Symat felt a pang of regret. But he had made his choice, and now he had to follow it through. ‘I’m fine. What about you?’

‘I don’t matter.’

‘Yes, you do.’

‘I’m all right.’

He tried to focus on the journey. Mars was gone, and the sun’s huge hull was receding. ‘We’re going away from the sun. Where to? Saturn?’ His knowledge of Sol system’s geography was vague, but he knew Saturn was a giant world out in the dark, far out beyond the orbit of Mars.

‘Not as far as that. Not at first.’ Her small face was creased with concentration. It was as if she was listening to a faint voice only she could hear.

‘So where? Jupiter?’

‘No. Jupiter’s on the far side of the sun right now.’

Symat was faintly disappointed. He’d have liked to see the black hole remnant and its shattered moons. ‘Then what? An asteroid? There is a belt of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter.’