‘This is the limit,’ he said, as the bucket creaked under our shoes. ‘We go no deeper. Every span puts more load on that yardage, and we’ll need some strength in reserve for the loot. Strambli: get to work.’

She folded down the connecting bridge and set her case on the end of it, opening it and spreading out her gear like a surgeon preparing for battle.

I glanced at Prozor. We were all on the same squawk channel now, so there was no way to have a private chinwag. But I’d been accounting things in my head. It had taken us nearly four hours to get this deep. We were down to our last nineteen – and that included the time we’d need to get into the launch and up and clear of the bauble.

My good hand sweated into my gauntlet. My tin one clenched against the suit’s stiff finger joints.

Strambli was taking her sweet chaffing time with the door.

She spent an hour not even trying to open it, just sniffing around it, getting a feel for the mechanisms and possible countermeasures. She’d fix on her little listening devices, tap this bit, tap that bit, move something a hair, repeat the exercise, go back to her notes, make mousy sounds to herself, like someone trying to sort out an anagram.

‘Difficulties?’ Trusko asked, after we’d all been thinking the same thought.

‘Just don’t want to rush into anything, is all,’ Strambli said. ‘Be silly to, wouldn’t it, after the time we’ve taken to get here? I think I can see the way through, but I want to be sure.’

‘Take as long as you need. We’ve still plenty of time in hand.’

Every now and then Trusko got on the squawk back to the Queenie. The signal wasn’t good, us being all the way down that hole, and nothing works well in a bauble anyway. But each time I was glad when Drozna came on and said there wasn’t anything unusual going on, no shadowy returns on the sweeper, no dark tattered sails showing up against the leftovers of creation.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t out there.

Just that she was biding her time.

Strambli had been at it for three hours, the door no more open than it had been at the start, when something snapped in Prozor. ‘Mind if I say somethin’?’ she asked, in the tone of someone who’s going to say it anyway, no matter what anyone minds. ‘I ain’t any kind of Opener – wouldn’t pretend to it if I wasn’t. That’s your business, and I respect that. But I’ve crewed with plenty of Openers in my time and I’ve been in a few baubles with ’em, and I s’pose some of it rubbed off on me.’