An hour before sunset, when the sheltered canyon was already reduced to a gloomy half-light, more than two hundred people marched down to the arrival lake. Foluwakemi said they were making very sure there were no screwups when Connexion dropped his friends in the geothermal vent.

Solar-charged lamps were switched on around the sickbay as darkness finally fell, making it appear even more macabre. Callum didn’t know when he’d eaten last. Sleep was also a distant recollection, something he used to do in his previous existence. Apollo had to keep sending alert signals to his auditory grains as well as purple flashes to his screen lenses as he kept drifting off.

His time display told him it was two and a half hours after sunset when the cheering started outside. He frowned, puzzled by the sound. Then Foluwakemi rushed in. “They’re here,” she shouted excitedly. Moisture was glinting in her eyes. “You’re telling the truth, aren’t you, detoxification man? You can take us home now?”

“I can take you home,” he promised. Somehow his voice had become hoarse.

Then they were there: Moshi, Alana, Colin, Raina, and Henry. All wearing thick Zagreus-survival coats, their skin flushed from immersion in the scalding water. Smiling, calling out wild greetings. Akkar and Dimon followed them in, looking dazed.

Callum was pulled to his feet and hugged exuberantly.

“We did it, we fucking did it,” Raina was shouting.

“This really is Zagreus, isn’t it?” Moshi said, an astounded smile on his face. “We’ve gone interstellar?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“I had money on it being the Antarctic.”

Nafor appeared, and the reunion damped down fast.

“It is time,” he declared, his gaze never leaving Callum.

“We’ll set up outside,” Callum told him.

Colin and Dimon carried Savi out on her cot, using it like a stretcher. An area was cleared at the end of the stone longhouse, with one of the hot streams bubbling away along the side. People formed a broad circle around them; more perched on the walls of the longhouse. More than two hundred torch beams shone down.

Callum took off his coat and unfastened his backpack. He pulled the half-meter portal out, and a massive cry went up behind the multifaceted wall of beams.

Alana held it steady on the ground, while Moshi stood in front, ready.

Callum studied the status display on his screen lens. The amount of power the portal was pulling out of the grid to maintain entanglement with its twin back on Earth was spiking close to its internal circuitry safety limits. But it was functional. They had a link. “Activate it,” Callum instructed Apollo.

—