He swept the beam of the coherer across the ground; the wind was raising so much dust that it was impossible to make out the surface below, but given that the Surveyor wasn’t sinking its immediate surroundings were unlikely to prove treacherous. He slid the short boarding ladder out from the airlock; its feet vanished before it touched the ground, but a scant or two further down it encountered firm resistance.

He clambered down the ladder and stood on the surface. Even with the cooling bag encasing his feet there was an unpleasant grittiness against his soles; he took a few steps to see if he’d grow accustomed to the texture, but it remained distracting so he hardened and desensitised the skin. The wind wasn’t strong enough to knock him down, but he couldn’t move confidently without pausing each time it rose up, to recalibrate his efforts to compensate for the force.

‘Ramiro?’ Tarquinia’s voice came through the link in his helmet.

‘I’m fine!’ he replied, shouting to be heard above the dust scraping across the surface of his helmet. He closed the outer door of the airlock, then walked around to the window and raised a hand; his crew-mates raised theirs to shield their eyes from his coherer. ‘Sorry.’ He swivelled the beam upwards, out of their lines of sight. ‘The wind’s annoying, and I can’t see much. But I don’t think I’ve started speaking backwards or ageing in reverse.’

Agata said, ‘I’m coming out.’

Ramiro made a quick circuit around the Surveyor; he couldn’t see any damage on the outside of the hull. Agata emerged, stepping gingerly across the swirling sand.

‘So this is what a planet’s like,’ she said numbly.

‘It’s not exactly welcoming,’ Ramiro conceded. ‘But it should be more appealing once the weather improves.’ He glanced up at the stars; he could just make out the arc of the rim, its usual dazzle reduced to a pale broken line. Though the wind and the dust were the most intrusive novelties, even the more familiar elements of their surroundings were juxtaposed so bizarrely that they lost their usual meaning: on the slopes of the Peerless strong gravity and an open sky always lay in the same direction. He wondered if he’d ever be able to sleep out here, or if he’d panic and imagine that he was falling into the stars.

‘Whenever I pictured the reunion, I always thought of people meeting in a corridor,’ Agata confessed. ‘But it will probably be outdoors – in the countryside, where the vehicles can land safely. It might even look like this.’

‘We’ll recreate the centre of Zeugma for you later,’ Ramiro teased her. ‘To give you some better imagery for the ceremonies in the town square.’

Azelio joined them. ‘I’d be happy with some gardens to break the gloom,’ he said.

‘Be my guest.’ Ramiro gestured into the darkness.