‘I’d expect nothing less,’ Trusko said.

Prozor went away and made a show of consulting her notes. She dragged it out for hours, steadfastly refusing to give any clue as to what her verdict was likely to be. She saved up her meanest, sharpest scowl for anyone who tried to squeeze her before she was good and ready.

It was all an act, though. Prozor and I’d already worked out the auguries lay in our favour, provided the Queenie could make the crossing in four weeks. I’d known that before I even went to Trusko with my lies about the skull intercept – it was Prozor who’d given me the parameters that fixed the bauble’s position. The only doubt in our minds was whether that crossing was feasible. Prozor knew a bit more about celestial navigation than I did, but she couldn’t say with certainty that what we were asking could be achieved.

‘Sharp end of it is,’ she said, ‘this lives and dies on what Drozna reports back to Trusko. If only we could bend him to our plan a little . . .’

‘We can’t,’ I said. ‘And if he says it’s not possible, we’ll just have to take it.’

‘You’ve cooled on the retribution idea, then. Getting a bit tasty for you, was it, with wrong words comin’ out of your gob? Like Monetta this and Monetta that?’

‘I haven’t cooled,’ I said. ‘And I only made one mistake. But I know we can’t work the impossible. Trusko’s ship is the hand we’re dealt, that’s all.’

Later we gathered in the galley again. Gathing had his boots up on the table, picking dirt out of his fingernails – although they looked clean to me. Drozna had a concerned look about him, a frown creasing through that forehead tattoo of his.

‘Let’s hear it, then,’ Trusko said. ‘The good news or the bad, whichever it’s to be. Prozor: tell us how the auguries lie for the Fang.’

Prozor studied something in the reflection of her tankard. ‘Maybe hear what Drozna has to say first, eh? If the photons aren’t blowin’ our way . . .’

‘Twenty-nine days,’ Drozna said. ‘If we left now, this watch, we could be on station at the Fang, in orbit and ready to drop the launch, in twenty-nine days. Twenty-seven if we had ion assist and used the reserve sails.’

‘Me ionses is ready for whatever you asks of them,’ Tindouf said, tapping his pipe at the end of his remark.

‘Prozor?’ Trusko asked.

‘Twenty-seven’ll cut it,’ she said, after a moment of deliberation. ‘And give you five days of breathin’ room at the end of it. I know it won’t please you to use those reserves, but if there was ever a time . . .’