The Surveyor looked a great deal larger than his cell, but most of the interior was destined to be taken up by essential stores or machinery. The main engines were already in place – six beautiful dark panels packed with ultraviolet rebounders, symmetrically arranged around one face of the disc – but the team had yet to install the cooling system, which for a trip of this duration meant a complete sunstone gasification plant, not a few tanks of compressed air.

‘Do we still get to call this a gnat?’ Ramiro asked.

Verano buzzed. ‘Probably not. But this is where my grandfather built the original – the one that made the first trip to the Object.’

‘You’re Marzio’s grandson?’

‘Yes.’

Ramiro felt a slight diminution of his anxiety. Marzio’s skills were legendary, and though talent of that kind was unlikely to be heritable, much of its legacy could still be passed down the generations through teaching and experience.

‘We adapted this from a design that a group of engineers developed a few years before the turnaround,’ Verano explained. ‘It was meant as a proof of concept for a shuttle running between the Peerless and the home world, but they still planned it down to the last detail.’

‘That’s what I call getting in early. What did they call the design?’

‘The Uniter, I’m afraid,’ Verano replied. ‘If we do start mass-producing these things, I suppose we’ll have to think of a more apt generic name.’

‘Deserters?’ Greta suggested.

Half a dozen artisans clung to the scaffolding, working with everything from chisels to coherers. Ramiro moved closer; Greta followed, letting out his chain. Verano invited him to climb a ladder leading up into the atrium so he could look down into the hull. When he reached the top he could see the living quarters through a gap in the rim: four absurdly small rectangles, delimited by a series of slots in the presently vertical floor that the masons would use to insert the walls. Off to the side was a pantry, larger than all four rooms combined. They wouldn’t have the space to grow crops of their own. If one live skewer-worm got into their grain store, they’d end up starving to death.

‘Twelve years in this?’ Ramiro hummed softly. ‘What was I thinking?’ He began descending.

‘It’s too late to back out now,’ Greta replied. ‘Change your mind, and it will be twelve years with no change of scenery.’

Ramiro doubted that. There was an election approaching, and the Councillors had to be coming under pressure over the internments. The investigation into the bombing might yet drag on for years – and in some people’s minds every anti-messager would have to share the guilt, regardless – but there were too many voters who had friends or relatives locked up for no good reason for the Council to remain oblivious to their anger.