To fix the assembly in place they needed to use the tent again, to protect the edges of the gash they were repairing. Ramiro attached it to the wall with resin at half a dozen points, partitioning off their end of the chamber while leaving a large gap to one side through which to shoo out the pellets. But it was harder than before to drive sunstone from the enclosure, with most of the air they vented just escaping straight into the void.

They’d built the assembly with a raised rim that could sit flush against parts of the wall uncontaminated by the earlier repair. Ramiro spread resin around the whole margin of the gash, then with their jetpacks gently bracing them they manoeuvred the assembly into place.

‘It’s rocking a little,’ Tarquinia said.

‘Don’t say that,’ Ramiro begged her. He reached over and pushed on the spot where Tarquinia had been applying pressure, and felt the stone wobble under his fingers.

At least they’d had the foresight to put a handhold on the inner face of the assembly; Tarquinia grabbed it and pulled the whole thing back from the wall. Ramiro searched the contact region; a pellet of sunstone had stuck in the resin. He managed to wiggle it free, his body jittering as the jetpack struggled to track and counter the small changing forces.

They tried again.

‘Flat, no give,’ Tarquinia announced.

‘Same here.’ Ramiro wasn’t quite ready to believe it, but all they could do now was turn up their jetpacks and push, hoping to end up with an airtight seal.

‘If we’d built clamps into this thing we could have tightened them against the outside of the hull,’ Tarquinia mused.

Ramiro buzzed but offered no opinion; attaching them in the first place would probably have taken more time than it saved.

‘What would you have done in the old days?’ he asked. ‘If you’d been piloting a gnat with this kind of damage?’

‘Flown it back to a workshop in the Peerless for repairs.’

‘And if you couldn’t use the engines until the repairs were completed?’

Tarquinia said, ‘Then I’d call someone for a tow. See how a lifetime of experience has prepared me for this moment?’

They kept up the pressure for two chimes, the resin’s nominal curing time. When they shut off their jetpacks and took their aching arms away, the assembly remained in place.

Ramiro looked over their handiwork. When the chamber was re-pressurised all the force would be pressing the glued surfaces together more closely, and the sloping side walls would also work in their favour, wedging the assembly ever more tightly into place. The whole thing wasn’t going to fall apart; the worst that could happen now was a small leak.