‘I ain’t never seen one of these,’ Prozor said, looking us all in the eyes, and making it seem powerfully convincing. ‘But I’ve read of ’em. It’s an engineered organism, made for assassinatin’ folk. Called a Kill Star. A living weapon. It lives on a cove – binds to their nervous system, drinks off their blood, hides where it’ll be hard to see. Looks like a scar or blemish if you can see it at all, and matches their body temperature, so you can’t read it on a thermal scan. Doesn’t trouble the cove, and they can waltz in almost anywhere and not have anyone know they’re carrying a Kill Star. But when they need someone killed . . .’

‘It detaches,’ Strambli said, with a quiet horror.

‘Learns through the nervous system who to go after – picks up on hate and body chemistry. Finds itself a dark corner like a shoe or a pocket and waits. Then it crawls out and creeps its way into you. Into your mouth, into your lughole, any orifice it chooses. By the time it’s going in, it’s too late. Little gooey thing works its way into your innards and starts pulling you apart from inside, using those little feelers.’ Prozor’s face was a mask of hard indifference. ‘Brain’s the best way to go. Once it starts rippin’ up your grey, there ain’t a lot of you left to feel it happen. But Gathing’s must’ve come in through his gob – down into his guts. No wonder he was screamin’. ’ Prozor was still holding up the tweezers, with the milky thing writhing and squirming on the end of it. The others were keeping their distance.

‘You know a lot about it,’ Drozna said, arms folded across his chest. ‘Sorry, but it’s only what we’re all thinking.’

‘Aye,’ she said. ‘And if I’d had plans to vent Gathing, a Kill Star would have suited me nicely, if I’d had the quoins to afford one, or known where to ask. Bring me a tankard, Strambli. Drozna: you got some of that hydraulic fluid you use in your sail-control gear?’

He looked doubtful. ‘I can fetch some. How much?’

‘About a tankard.’

While Strambli and Drozna were occupied, Trusko said: ‘Someone managed to bring it aboard, Prozor, regardless of how expensive or difficult those things are to find. You’d understand why we might have misgivings, especially concerning our most recen—’

‘It weren’t me,’ she said. ‘Fura can speak for herself, but she was in the bone room when Gathing started screaming, wasn’t she?’

‘You said it could have been hidden away, waiting for its chance,’ Trusko said. ‘I’d say that makes any one of us a possible suspect.’

‘Wait,’ Surt said, bending down to reach something tucked behind Gathing’s hammock. ‘Cove’s got his vacuum boots here. Why weren’t they racked away with the rest of the suits?’