“No,” I say, “it’s matching our orbit. Look.”

But Hail shakes her head at me. “Other way round, and yes—you could call it a rock. It looks like one up close; a rock for all that you could tell the difference, but it won’t behave like one.”

“Artificial,” I reply. “That’s what you said. You called it artificial.”

“That’s because it is. That and almost every scrap of rock out there. Built, engineered, whatever. There are four more above us and eight behind us, all moving at the same speed. All keeping the same orbit from the Eye, for what that’s worth in a place like this.”

“Horizon’s moorings.”

“Everything sinks towards the centre, given enough time. Everything except these rocks. Without them, the storms would have us all over the place, and Horizon would have to burn just to keep from sinking. We don’t know how they do it, how they keep their altitude, but we stopped trying to figure it out a while back. Truth is, we need them.”

“There are others, then?”

“Thousands. Hundreds of thousands, millions. Some are small, no bigger than this room. Others are bigger than Horizon. Some aren’t much more than balls of dust, but NorCol’s found things that look like hangars, weather stations, cathedrals, and shapes we don’t have names for. So far, everything we’ve found has been uninhabited, but we’re still paddling in the shallows. A little deeper in, that might still change, we might find something that makes sense of all of this. But the truth is, we don’t know much of anything. None of this is human-origin, but nothing is natural either. That’s it. That’s what we’ve got.” She offers us a nasty smile. “This is your new day job, convicts. You are my new recovery team.”

“Recovery? You mean like—”

“Like the diplomatics do? Yes, only the Authority has too much on its plate to keep a Diplo crew flying out here, so the companies have taken over. Whatever anyone will tell you, NorCol is here to pick the bones of a dead civilisation. Same goes for everyone else.” She takes in our expressions, softens her smile just a little. “Welcome to the froth.”

Six

SIX

RIGHT FROM THE moment I open the door, I can feel the Juno watching me. It’s back in its cradle. Someone has salvaged a new door for the front of it—stripped off something obviously intended to hold a Decatur. It’s supposed to be a form-fit, with hatches and windows; instead, it’s angular, all crags and odd geometrics, with ragged holes cut into the sides. And whoever put it back up took the time to weld a couple of deadbolts over the top, locked them into the concrete on either side. The welds are still black.