Before she severed the second post completely, she stopped to think through her choices. If she spent air carrying the bomb onto the same kind of path as the others, that would be the end of her contribution; she’d have too little air left to intervene in any other way. But if there were already enough bombs waiting above the light collectors to cause the disruption, there was no need for this one to be carefully positioned. She could simply let it fall away into the void.

Agata looked up across the rock face; she could see a glimmer from the transition circle reflected in the dome of one of the light collectors. How many other bombs had been grabbed and slowed and sent to play their part in the pyrotechnics? She should trust her fellow searchers to have caught at least half a dozen by now – all the more so, given how plentiful they’d turned out to be.

She had one hand around the arm of the occulter, which remained firmly attached to the mountain. She snapped the second post and tossed the freed bomb over her shoulder, watching with her rear gaze as it tumbled down and disappeared.

But how many remained, clinging to the rock, waiting to make a final dash towards the collectors? A dozen? A gross? Agata closed her eyes and thought of letting go, falling clear of everything and losing herself in the stars.

She’d wanted a glimpse of the reunion before she died, but in the end the only thing that the future had ever promised her was the cosmos meeting up with itself: every particle, every field, every wrinkle in space matching perfectly as they came full circle. The geometry that achieved that had no need to please her; it was what it was, and she’d never been more than a tiny part of it. The miracle was that she’d lived to understand its nature as well as she had. But if a meteor struck or the bombs blew the axis open, she did not want to stay and witness the carnage.

Agata opened her eyes. Her right arm was aching; she pulled herself up and managed to grab the occulter with her left hand as well, but it was too awkward maintaining both holds so she let her right arm rest completely. She checked the clock on her belt by touch; less than two chimes remained to the disruption. She wasn’t going to flee. She had no hope of finding another occulter on the rock face, but the time was approaching when the bombs could come to her.

She stared down into the transition circle, but then she caught herself and turned her gaze to the side, trying to adjust for her own rotation and the arc that her adversary would need to follow as it fought to cancel its greater sideways velocity and spiral in on the target.