‘It does look genuine,’ he concluded. ‘Genuinely artificial, that is; don’t ask for my opinion on the authorship.’ After geology, he was going to have to add time-reversed archaeology to the list of disciplines he’d sadly neglected.

‘We should leave now,’ Agata insisted. ‘As soon as the Surveyor’s ready.’

Ramiro turned away from the writing. ‘What about the wheat?’

‘The wheat doesn’t matter,’ Agata declared. ‘If there’s nothing left to fight about, there’s no reason for anyone to migrate.’

Tarquinia was sceptical. ‘You really think the Council’s going to switch off the messaging system on our say-so?’

‘What will they need it for?’ Agata was beginning to sound exasperated. ‘This proves that we make it to the reunion! There’s no question of the Peerless being struck by a meteor – or tearing itself apart in a war. How can the Council claim that they need their system for safety and security once we’ve shown them a message that could only be written if we’re safe and secure all the way to the home world?’

‘They could argue that the settlers will write it,’ Azelio suggested.

‘What settlers?’ Agata fumed. ‘How could the settlers write something that would undermine their whole reason for being here?’

‘If the Council doesn’t take it seriously, it won’t undermine anything,’ Azelio reasoned. Ramiro wasn’t sure if that was circular logic, but as self-serving political rhetoric it did have a horribly plausible ring to it.

‘You’ve all lost your minds!’ Agata moaned. ‘If you think this isn’t genuine, tell me what would count as proof of authorship. A message encrypted with a key that we’re supposed to prepare now and then keep secret until we deliver it to the ancestors at the reunion? Even if we found something like that, you could still claim that the key might end up in someone else’s hands along the way.’

Tarquinia said, ‘It’s not just a question of our own doubts; we have to take a broader view of this. If you and Azelio say the writing was there as soon as the rock was exposed, then I believe you – but all we’ll be able to show the Council is an image taken some time after the fact. That’s not even going to establish the sequence of events.’

‘My role here is as a witness for the messagers,’ Agata reminded her. ‘Why would I suddenly change my allegiance and start lying about something like this – just to try to get the system shut down?’

‘Twelve years isn’t sudden,’ Tarquinia replied. ‘They might think we corrupted you.’

‘Then what’s the point of doing anything?’ Agata retorted. ‘Why test the crops, when we might be lying about that, too?’