Trusko ruminated on what I’d told him. He was quiet for longer than I was expecting. It gave me a better chance to drift my eyes around the room, taking in the framed charts and documents he had up on the walls. There were instruments and knick-knacks and gubbins I couldn’t name, but all of it was shiny and expensive-looking and arranged just so. It was like someone’s idea of a captain’s quarters, more than the thing itself had any right to be.

‘It’s interesting enough, Fura,’ he mused. ‘But it begs the question of why these two ships weren’t setting sail themselves.’

‘I only got the edge of it, sir. What I know about sails and orbits you could scrawl on a stamp.’

The fingers waggled again. ‘Go on.’

‘They weren’t in the right place, to begin with. Starting off from down in the Sunward processionals, with all the worlds you’ve got to dodge around . . . even with full sail . . . they couldn’t make it, sir. Wasn’t going to be time, while that window was open.’

‘But you don’t even know where this bauble is, or whether it’s within sailing range of the Queenie.’

‘I don’t, sir – I mean, not in my own head. But I got some orbital parameters, sir, and a name that might go with the place. It’s called the Fang.’ I squinted at him. ‘That mean anything to you, Cap’n?’

‘No,’ he answered slowly. ‘It doesn’t. Except . . .’

‘What, sir?’

‘Rumours, Fura. That’s all. Snips and scraps. The kinds of thing I wouldn’t ordinarily be so foolish as to put stock in, except . . . you say you had parameters?’

‘I’ve got the numbers, sir. Don’t mean much to me, but then you might know better.’

‘Show me them.’

There are plans that come off the rails as soon as they start moving, and plans that get you frightened because they seem to be going too well, too smoothly, picking up a scary speed, like a tram going down the steep part of Jauncery Road with the brakes off.

I’d floated the Fang past Trusko. I expected him to sit on that intelligence for a day or so before acting on it, if he acted at all. But within an hour of my briefing him, he had called the entire crew into the galley. He hadn’t needed to go far from his quarters for that. Now he had some of his charts and books with him, and the nervous, over-excited air of a spoilt child told they were getting a special present ahead of their birthday. The cove could hardly contain himself.