Prozor took something out of her utility belt. I only got a glimpse of it before she leaned over the side of the bucket and let it fall into the shaft. Because there wasn’t any lungstuff in the shaft, and we were already under two gees, it went down fast.

‘What was that?’ Trusko asked.

‘I was just thinkin’ of them that came here before us, and them that’ll come here later,’ Prozor said.

I think what she dropped into the shaft was a flower, with red petals, and the vacuum must have turned it into something like glass.

But I never asked her and she never spoke of it.

We loaded the Ghostie armour and equipment onto the launch. We were properly tired by then, ready to drop, but I think Trusko still had the spur in him to go back into the bauble at least once before we rested. But when he contacted Drozna, everything changed.

‘Don’t want to make more of it than I should,’ Drozna said, his voice coming over the squawk console inside the launch. ‘But we got something a little while ago.’

‘Got something?’ Trusko asked.

‘It was on the sweeper for a moment. A return, nearby. Something large, but not clear either. All ragged, like it was made up of bits. Then it was gone, and there’s been nothing since.’

‘Probably a fault on the sweeper,’ Trusko said, like he wanted someone to pat him on the back and tell him to stop worrying.

Prozor looked at me. I could only see the middle part of her face through that grilled-over porthole, but it was enough. She didn’t like the thought that was forming in her head. A return meant that another ship was near. It couldn’t be the Nightjammer, though, because the Nightjammer didn’t know we were taking a look at the Fang.

Did it?

‘Something’s not right,’ I said.

And Prozor answered: ‘I think we’re agreed on that.’

I’d played out in my head how and when we might get round to informing Trusko that his ship and crew had been turned into bait for Bosa Sennen, but the time had always been of my choosing, when we were good and ready for it. And somehow, as I ran that little exchange through the toy theatre in my head, I’d got over the knotty part about breaking it to Prozor that the Nightjammer already knew where we were. Exactly how I got from one side of that conversation to the other, I hadn’t figured.

I guess it was time to find out.

‘Captain,’ I said, still meeting eyes with Prozor, still aware of her face bottled behind that glass, all angles and fury, ‘there’s something you and I need to have a little chat about.’

‘Fura?’ he asked, not getting the tone of what I was saying.

‘I’d listen to her,’ Prozor said.