Finally the tendril retracted and the dorsal hatch sealed up.

And now the Pilots cheered, their applause washing through the serene abyssal space, echoing in the cool air, while on the Great Shield the scallop-door lowered into place. There was another way out of the pale hangar, and the big holo displayed it now.

The new ship turned in place and began to fly along a blue-lined tunnel that passed all the way through Ascension Annexe. Everyone grew quiet.

Then, when the ship burst out from the city and into golden mu-space, everybody roared. This maiden flight was a triumph, as Alfredo took his ship on a soaring trajectory towards a crimson nebula. It glimmered against a speckled backdrop of black fractal stars, like coal carved into snowflakes.

Soon the holo faded to transparency, waiting to come to life again. One hundred and seventy-two candidates breathed out, trying to keep calm. Some were weeping. Alfredo’s ship was a good one, his flight a fine start to Graduation.

=Step forward, Pilot Candidate Adam Kirellin.=

The first ribbon-path was gone. Another grew, this time from low down on the Great Shield.

=Rise and be judged.=

It carried Kirellin to the waiting hangar, where his vessel was long and bronze, ringed with lustrous green. When he touched the hull, he tipped his head back and laughed; the sound reverberated from the holo display, accompanied by cheering and clapping from the massed Pilots. The ship took Kirellin inside; within a minute they had burst out of Labyrinth, aimed at a black star, and flown.

=Pilot Candidate Helena Tchal, step forward.=

Carl did not know her. She was wearing a brown tunic with yellow panels, and when her ribbon-path bore her to a hangar that stood empty, no one was surprised.

=No ship. This candidate has a different path to follow.=

There was a smaller platform off to the right, and the ribbon-path carried her to it. Soon there would be other losers to keep her company.

Whatever her alleged preference - yellow for a realspace world - she hung her head. Carl thought she might be weeping.

I wish I wasn’t wearing black.

Or perhaps clothing would make no difference to his forthcoming humiliation.

=Step forward, Pilot Candidate Riley O’Mara.=

Carl muttered: ‘Good luck.’

Riley’s shoulders looked tense as he advanced onto his ribbon-path. He let it carry him to an opening hangar, where a polished bronze-and-steel vessel awaited him.

In the holo, his tears were shining, even as he grinned.

Why am I here?

Good for Riley, but it hurt so much to watch him fly from the floating city into golden void. Another triumph, another contrast to Carl’s own situation.

Somehow, he remained standing while thirty-one more candidates - he counted - rode on ribbon-paths to hangars, twenty-nine of them containing bright new ships. The other two joined Tchal on the losers’ platform.

=Pilot Candidate Carl Blackstone, step forward.=

The ribbon-path sparkled beneath him. Blood-rush washed in his ears. Somehow he remained upright as the flow carried him out over a bluish haze, buildings and piazzas far below, a wealth of architectural constructs within the more-than-city that was Labyrinth. All of it magnificent, usually awe-inspiring; but today it seemed to mock him.

His teeth bit into his lower lip as the flow decelerated, nearing the Great Shield. Ahead, a scallop-door was edging inside, retracting.

Revealing an empty bay.

This is so awful.

The feeling was even worse than he had expected: from his tightened forehead, a sickening downward rush of nausea, a spinning sensation though his feet did not move. The watching Pilots were a blur of tiny featureless faces, splotches of colour.

=No ship. This candidate has a different path to follow.=

Awful, awful, awful.

Standing with Tchal and the other shipless candidates, Carl kept his head down, shaking and trying not to puke. He looked up only twice: once when Soo Lin gained his ship - bronze-and-turquoise with bold curves - and again when Lianna rose for judgement.

In the holo, her face was radiant. He had always known she was special, and here was the proof: her ship was of sweeping silver, a teardrop with eight narrow fins, gleaming and unusual. When she launched into golden mu-space, her first destination was the Mandelbrot Nebula, the boldest of choices for a maiden flight.

The cheering lasted long after the holo faded.

On the losers’ platform, Carl Blackstone wept.

EIGHT

EARTH, 1926 AD

Vodka, borscht and a black cigarette to follow - what could be better? Dmitri Shtemenko leaned back in the hardwood chair and scanned his fellow denizens of the café. Narrow, hard faces, some with spreading beards like his own. He himself was nineteen but looked thirty-five in his reflection, the window turned into a black mirror by the night outside. There were times when he felt ninety-nine.

He sucked smoke, glad he was alive.

‘You want more borscht, comrade?’ called the burly woman behind the counter.

‘No thanks, Ivana.’

Half of the people here knew what he did for a living - so much for secrecy. But it could be useful, and he often acted on the information his neighbours gave him.

One of the things Ivana and her husband Mikhail knew about Dmitri was his dislike of meat, though if fatty gobbets of beef or horse were the only thing available, he would force them down, fighting not to vomit. The proprietors may have had theories about this dislike; they made no attempt to verify by asking.

Things could be hard enough here in Moscow. In the countryside, well, perhaps some of the older men here, with the long hard faces, had seen the same kinds of thing he had. Laughter was something that belonged to childhood, far behind him now.

‘This is the one.’ It was Leonid from the market, brushing past Dmitri on the way to refill his vodka glass at the counter. ‘Grey coat, coming in now.’

Dmitri slowly lowered his chin, an unobtrusive acknowledgement. Then Leonid was talking to Ivana, and Dmitri’s attention, apparently on his own glass, refocused on the door.

The thin man who entered had a long grey coat, as Leonid had said. It was torn and stained with coal and oil, no surprise for a railway worker. His name was Vadim Sergeiev, and he did not look like a criminal. In fact he looked worn out; but Dmitri had no intention of feeling sympathy.

He watched while Sergeiev drank the one glass of vodka he was here for, before buttoning his coat back up and checking his woollen hat. Then he went back out into the night; and after a few moments, Dmitri followed.

Outside, snow was accumulating. In the morning, young women (for there was no unemployment in the great Soviet state) would use square boards on sticks - looking like placards for the kind of demonstration the downtrodden proletariat occasionally organized in imperialist regimes like England - as snow-shovels, clearing away the deep drifts, for pedestrians and also for the occasional official car that might use one of the broad roads.

Up ahead, at the entrance to the Metro system, Vadim Sergeiev met up with two men - they had been smoking to keep warm - and all three continued walking. Down below, the Metro station was like a palace, its walls marble and spotless, its intricate chandeliers gleaming, a symbol of the immense wealth that future citizens would all enjoy, generations not yet born, after many decades of rational planning, mobilizing the resources of the state.

It was quite a walk to the men’s destination, the above-ground railway station, but perhaps they did not have money to spare for the Metro fare. Neither did Dmitri, but in his case he had ways to ride for free.