‘Oh it will,’ Gathing said, drenching his answer in sarcasm. ‘Brokers are falling over themselves to buy bits of old spacesuit that don’t work any more and that no one could wear even if they did.’

‘You said it was worth our while bringing it back,’ Strambli said, her big eye becoming even more glary and accusatory while the smaller one shrank down accordingly, like one star stealing matter from another.

‘When junk’s all you’ve got,’ Gathing said, ‘you take the best junk. Well, maybe it’ll bring in a quoin or two on Mulgracen. The brokers there have a taste for glittery rubbish, as long as it’s ancient.’

Strambli dug a broken skull out of the box. She gave it a rattle, then put it to her ear. ‘Think you can get a whisper out of this, Fura? It’s still got twinkly stuff in it.’

‘If Fura can get a whisper out of that,’ Gathing said, ‘Fura can get a whisper out of a brick.’

‘I’ll see what it can do,’ I said, taking the skull.

Trusko picked up a small slab of frosted glass, about as thick as a cut of meat. He held it to his eye and tracked it slowly around the room. ‘Lookstone,’ he said. ‘And still functional. Lookstone’s dependable. Holds its value. Always gets a good price, no matter the market.’

‘It’s a small piece of lookstone,’ Gathing quibbled.

‘Better’n none at all,’ Strambli said.

‘Let me see it,’ Prozor said, jabbing out a hand. Trusko gave her the lookstone and she held it up to her own eye. She twisted around on the bench, altering her angle of view. Then she glared at me. ‘What, Fura? You ain’t never seen lookstone before?’

I took a chance. ‘We never ran into any. Just one of those things. Sometimes you look, and you don’t find.’

‘Then now’s your lucky day.’ Prozor passed me the lookstone. It was a small gesture, but she’d calculated it well – the first tiny thawing of the relationship. ‘Hold it up. In your fleshy hand, not the tinny one. Needs flesh to work.’

‘I can’t see anything.’

‘Squeeze it nice and carefully.’

All of a sudden, instead of peering at a slab of frosted glass, I was looking through the ship, out beyond its hull, into open space. I could see the bauble, everything. I tracked my point of view, as the others had done.

‘That’s incredible.’