‘I think I am,’ said Janer. The two of them now fell into a comfortable silence. Janer felt calm and relaxed. He hardly noticed the ratchettings and clonks of the ship’s mechanisms.

‘You were here for quite a while, weren’t you?’ he asked after a while.

‘Eighty years, give or take. I hardly remember a lot of those years. I guess you don’t when there’s not a lot happening.’

‘What about when you first came here and discovered the virus . . . the weird set-up here?’ he asked.

Erlin’s expression became troubled and she shot him an assessing look.

‘Some strange things happened then, but it’s been so long that I sometimes wonder if my memory played tricks on me.’ She shuddered as if the cold was now getting through to her.

‘Well, don’t just leave it there. Now you have to tell me,’ said Janer.

She stared at him with her expression suddenly hard. ‘Why should I tell you?’

Janer met her look. ‘Because we’re the same. We’re both coming to that time in our lives when we wonder why we should carry on. You should tell me because you may gain some insight, and because you lose nothing by telling me, but you do gain time.’

Erlin’s hard expression was broken by a smile. ‘You have an unbreakable arrogance, Janer Cord Anders,’ she said.

‘Yes, which is why I’ll live. Now tell me.’

Erlin’s expression became troubled again as she turned to lean on the rail, staring out to sea.

‘I was young when I came here - young, enthusiastic, curious, and sure I was going to do great things with my life.’

‘And you did,’ said Janer.

‘Debatable,’ said Erlin, then after a moment continued, ‘You know how seeing that fight between Domby and Forlam brought home to you what this world is really like?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, my moment of revelation was somewhat more . . . horrifying than that. I’d been on board the Treader only a few days. I’d been ferried out to it by AGC from the Dome - that was when the runcible was planet-based. At that point I hadn’t even seen one of the sails, as there wasn’t one aboard when I arrived. Anyway, Ambel, Peck and Anne went ashore on a little island to get some fresh meat to attract in another sail. While there, Peck got attacked by a leech and, of course, I was fascinated to discover that Ambel had hammered the leech on the ground until it released the plug of flesh it had taken, and that Peck just screwed the piece of flesh back into place.’

‘That was it?’ Janer asked.