‘Captain,’ I said, drawing his attention back to us now that we were in the armour. ‘We ought to get you fitted, too.’

He’d known what we were doing, but Trusko still jumped when he saw what we’d become. I took that as a good omen. His gaze was sliding all over us, like his eyes couldn’t find something to settle on. ‘I know you’re there,’ he said. ‘I can even see you. I tell myself I can see you, ’least ways. But somewhere between my eyes and my grey, the message isn’t getting through. It’s like just the idea of knowing you’re there, just holding that in my head, it’s like a number that’s got too many digits.’ He was saying this with more distaste than fascination, and the look on his face wasn’t so much awe or delight as the sickly, paling appearance of a cove who’s having trouble keeping his dinner down. ‘I don’t like it,’ he said, giving a little shudder. ‘It’s wrong.’

‘None of us like it,’ I said. ‘But Bosa’s going to like it even less.’

‘Let me dock the launch first,’ he said. ‘It’ll keep me occupied for the next ten minutes and any delay might look odd.’ He stretched towards the console. ‘Drozna. We’re lining up for you. Get the doors open and be ready. Anything we need to know about?’

‘Nothing since that sweeper return,’ we heard Drozna answer. ‘Like you say, probably just a glitch . . . but it was clear, for the moment it was there. Is everything all right, Captain?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘We’ve had false returns before, and they haven’t given us cause to abandon a bauble halfway through the cracking of it.’

I drew a line across my throat, telling Trusko to cut the conversation short before it took us all into choppy seas. ‘There’s no difficulty, Drozna. Just get that door open.’

The arrangements for docking took up the remaining minutes of our crossing. We had to get back into our seats for the last part of it, and it was strange to buckle myself in, look down at my own belly, and find myself looking all the way through to the chair. I knew I was wearing the armour, and I knew there was a body under it, but it was getting harder to hold those two things square in my head.