‘Who knows what our descendants will achieve?’ Lila began. ‘I’m not going to try to refute Pio’s speculations. But it does seem clear to me that any attempt to migrate into orthogonal matter would be perilous – and beyond the danger to the actual pioneers aspiring to set foot on the Object, everyone on the Peerless would be hostage to the need to complete the process in a limited time. Over the generations, as their resources dwindled, they’d be forced to keep wondering whether they needed to cut their losses and try to head home after all. But the longer they put it off, the longer that return journey would be, and eventually any misjudgement of the time they had left would be fatal.

‘Why should we subject our descendants to that kind of torture? We can turn the Peerless around right now, confident that it will support us long enough to complete the trip.’

Lila brought an image onto her chest; the room’s camera picked it up and displayed it on the giant screen behind her. ‘This is the plan,’ she said. ‘This was always the plan, from the day Eusebio broached it with Yalda.’ The sight was enough for Agata to feel a latent impression of the same familiar curve, ready to rise up on her own skin. This was the map of her life’s purpose; she’d understood that since the day she’d first seen it.

‘We know we can make the turn,’ Lila said. ‘All the way around that semicircle, the acceleration we need can be produced with the engines sending photons into the future of either the home cluster or the orthogonal cluster. Only the last stage of the journey presents a problem: it’s not clear how we can begin to decelerate in the approach to the home world. But we’ll have six more generations to address that, and I can’t believe it will prove insurmountable.’

Lila glanced at the timer. ‘To describe this plan as “dangerous” is absurd. Dangerous compared to trying to give birth to children made of negative luxagens? I don’t think so!’

The timer rang. Most of the crowd cheered; Agata ignored her mother’s look of lofty amusement and joined in. Lila deserved the encouragement. Pio’s ideas weren’t likely to get much traction, but with the vote less than a stint away they needed to be refuted decisively for the sake of everyone’s morale.

Pio dragged himself forward again. ‘What dangers would the return pose?’ he asked. ‘Let’s start with a wildly optimistic view, and suppose that the entire journey could be completed safely. Once we reach the home world and deal with the Hurtlers, the barbarians are sure to be grateful – for a while. But could we really live among them, after so much time apart? I can’t see them approving of our ideas about governance, let alone our reproductive methods, and my guess is that they’d hold Starvers in almost as much contempt as Shedders. Then again . . . since we’ve made such a habit of bequeathing tasks to our descendants, maybe the last one could be to devise the kind of weapons they’d need to defend their way of life against the planetary status quo.’