He sat by the bed listening for her footsteps, wondering if he could be mistaken. It wouldn’t take long to pull down a tent and bring it inside, and she’d have no reason to return quietly.

Agata hummed in misery, and Azelio called out, trying to console her. But between these exchanges, Ramiro heard nothing but the wind blowing dust across the hull.

24

‘The link’s open!’ Tarquinia shouted.

Agata had woken just moments earlier, and for moments more she lay in a daze, astonished at her prescience. Then it occurred to her that Tarquinia must have repeated the call several times.

She rose from her bed and raced down the passage, sand still clinging to the skin of her back. The rest of the crew were already gathered around the console.

‘. . . all safe and in good health,’ Tarquinia was saying. ‘We landed successfully on Esilio and made an assessment of its potential for settlement; we’ll be sending the technical reports shortly. But as you can imagine, we’re eager for news from the mountain.’

There was a perceptible delay as the ultraviolet pulses crossed the void, then a man’s voice replied: ‘We’ll need to receive your reports first, before the channel is used for personal calls.’

Tarquinia was taken aback. ‘I understand. But can’t you fill us in on what’s been happening?’

‘What do you want to know?’ the man inquired impassively.

‘Is the messaging system working?’ Ramiro interjected.

‘Yes.’

‘How long has it been in use?’ Tarquinia asked.

‘Almost three years.’

Agata leant forward towards the microphone. ‘And how long will it remain in use?’

The signal’s time in transit was fixed; the awkward pause before the reply was as unmistakable as if they’d been speaking face to face. ‘My instructions are to receive your reports and then facilitate personal calls, not to engage in an open-ended dialogue.’

Agata didn’t know what to make of this rebuff. But the exchange would be monitored and recorded; she couldn’t blame the link operator if he didn’t want to break any protocol imposed from above.

Tarquinia said, ‘I’ll queue up the reports now, and resume contact when the transmission’s complete.’

‘Thank you, Surveyor. Audio out.’

‘What a welcome!’ Azelio complained. ‘And it’s not as if we could have caught them unprepared.’

‘Oh, I’m sure they were thrilled by our safe return,’ Ramiro replied. ‘We’re just three years late for the party.’

The console switched to a graphic showing the progress of the data transmissions. Agata squinted in disbelief at the predicted completion time, but caught herself before protesting out loud. In order to make the time lag reasonable at this distance, they needed to use very fast UV. But such high velocities also meant very low frequencies, and hence low bandwidth.

‘Azelio gets the first call,’ Tarquinia decided. ‘Then Agata, Ramiro, myself.’