Xante gave him a simple shrug. “Hope. That you’ll get back together with her. That the pair of you will fly on to Sanctuary after the final battle, and live happily ever after. Crap like that, you’re never here anymore.”

“I am!”

“Not in your head, you’re not. You spend all your head time thinking of her.”

“I tried an electrical discharge,” Dellian now explained to Yirella. “But I panicked and put too much power into it. Fried every chunk of technology in there.”

“Okay, well, the idea was sound.”

“Yeah? So—”

“No, I’m not giving you any clues.”

Dellian managed a weak smile and put his arm around her. “But it is solvable? We can get to the negative energy loop chamber?”

“Probably.” She laughed.

They wandered along to one of their favorite groves, where the trunks of the older trees grew upward in an identical shallow curvature as they followed the camber of the toroid’s rotational gravity, as if they’d all bowed to the same wind. He always found walking underneath them to be slightly disconcerting. Orchids and trailing moss swamped the boughs above, with bright-plumed birds zipping about. On the edge of the grove was a small waterfall emptying into a pond filled with ancient gold and black koi fish. A marble table was perched beside it, inside the ribs of a radial pergola draped with sweet flowering jasmine.

When they sat down, remotes started to unpack their meal and lay it out for them. Dellian sipped some of the wine they poured and scanned the small slice of star field he could see through the shaggy vegetation. Juloss was always visible just above the lip of the geodesic, while the various free-flying subsidiary stations slipped in and out of view, tracing short arcs.

“Is that the Morgan?” he asked, as one of the battleship assembly stations appeared.

She barely glanced up from the plate of seared scallops the remote had put down in front of her. “No, the McAuley. You can’t see the Morgan from here.”

“It’s nearly finished.”

“I know.”

He started eating his own scallops, wishing there were more than just three. Ship assignments had finally come through last week, and the Morgan was going to be carrying Dellian and his squad out into the galaxy. He was desperate to know if Yirella was going to be on board with them, but too terrified to ask. If she wasn’t, then that was it; the end. Relativistic time dilation would ensure their parting would be final. Though perhaps one day in a few thousand years, one of them might read of the other in a history file, when the human race was finally reunited.

He opened his mouth to ask, but heard himself say: “How’s the lure coming?”