He saw there was a commotion around the tent Lemmy shared with Pearl. Yuri ran that way, trying to take in the scene as he went in.

The tent had been pulled away, evidently by main force, leaving a heap of groundsheets, blankets, clothes in the dirt. Lemmy was lying on his back, and even from a distance Yuri could see the pool of blood around his head. Pearl, naked, was sitting up, knees to her chest, hands clamped to her cheeks. Her bare legs were slick with Lemmy’s blood. She was silent, eerily so.

And Onizuka stood over her, pulling at her upper arm, trying to make her stand. Harry Thorne stood beside him, looming over Pearl as well. Yuri saw that both men had their crossbows in their hands.

The others came running, in shorts, T-shirts. Only Matt wore his daytime jumpsuit, and even he didn’t have his boots on. Yuri checked his own back; he always kept a knife in his belt, even when asleep. Now he slipped the knife into his right hand, concealed.

Soon Matt, Yuri, John Synge with Martha, Mardina, Abbey, stood in a wary circle, the whole of the little colony gathered around the central tableau, the ruined tent, the screaming girl, the body, the looming men.

Mardina strode forward now, as if taking command. Yuri saw she had her eyes on the crossbows, but the men didn’t raise them, or stop her approaching. Mardina knelt by Lemmy, and felt for a pulse at his wrist, neck, bent to listen for breath. She sat back on her haunches. ‘Well, he’s dead. Crossbow bolt to the throat, another to the temple.’

Onizuka grunted. ‘Little prick won’t have known what hit him.’

‘We were merciful.’ Harry Thorne sounded more conflicted than Onizuka.

‘Merciful,’ Mardina said. ‘Why did he have to die at all? Don’t tell me. So you two could get at Pearl, right?’

Onizuka, clinging to his crossbow, pulled at the girl’s arm again, but, silent, passive, she wouldn’t move. Onizuka was sweating, angry. ‘That and the little prick beating me at poker again. Final straw,’ he snarled.

‘And now you’re just going to take her for yourselves. What will you do, share her?’

Harry Thorne spread his hands. ‘Come on, Mardina.’ Now he sounded miserable. ‘You know me. I’m no killer, I’m a farmer.’

‘You’re a killer now.’

‘You can’t expect a man to live without a woman. I mean, you’re talking about the rest of our lives. And Pearl, well—’

‘She’s used to putting out. Is that your logic?’ Mardina glanced around. ‘Otherwise you might have come for one of the rest of us. Me or Abbey or—’

‘We got rights.’ Onizuka, struggling with Pearl, tried to raise his crossbow at Mardina. ‘We’re taking what we’re entitled to. Cross me, you bitch, and—’

Yuri let fly with his knife.

It was from the culinary gear left behind in the dump from the Ad Astra, easier to conceal than the big heavy hunting knives they’d been issued with by the astronauts. And he’d been practising too, alone at the edge of the forest.

The knife caught Onizuka in the right eye. Onizuka fired the crossbow wildly, and the bolt sailed away, harmlessly. He fell back, dead.

‘That’s for Lemmy,’ Yuri muttered. He found his heart hammering, the world tunnelling as if he were under heavy acceleration. He’d never before killed anybody.

Now, in front of him, it was all kicking off. Pearl was pulling away from Harry Thorne. Abbey Brandenstein came in from the other side, trying to get to Onizuka’s dropped crossbow. Harry was panicking, waving his own weapon around like an idiot. ‘No – please – it wasn’t meant to be like this—’

Abbey had the crossbow. She raised it. ‘Then how was it meant to be, asshole?’

Mardina, on the ground, scrambled back out of the way. ‘No – Abbey—’

But Abbey, cold and clinical, shot Harry Thorne clean in the heart.

It was only in the aftermath, after Yuri and Mardina had taken the crossbows away, and the others had moved in to inspect the carnage, that they discovered that Pearl Hanks had taken Yuri’s knife from out of Onizuka’s skull, and neatly slit her own wrists, overwriting old, half-healed scars.

Lemmy was gone, his shit life terminated in a shit way. And after six months on Proxima c, just six were left alive.

CHAPTER 18

2159

‘This is Angelia 5941. As usual this voice message accompanies a more technical download. I am in an excellent state of health and all subsystems are operating nominally. Good afternoon, all my ground crew . . .’

The million sisters slept. But their sleep was not dreamless. And they were fewer than a million now, fewer each time they woke.

‘As you are aware I have now been travelling for over four years. I am some one point eight light years from the solar system, and still have more than two light years to travel; even now I am not yet halfway through this journey. In my reporting intervals, when I emerge briefly from cruise mode, I continue to make scientific observations of my surroundings. As you know, the space between Earth’s sun, Sol, and Alpha Centauri happens to have a fascinating structure of its own; before reaching Proxima I will pass through no less than three distinct clouds of interstellar material, each of which I intend to sample and survey. Interim results downloaded.

‘I am also participating with observers in the solar system on long-baseline studies of interstellar navigation techniques, tests of the predictions of relativity and quantum gravity, searches for gravity waves emanating from distant cosmic events, a mapping of the galactic magnetic field, a study of low-energy cosmic rays not detectable from the vicinity of the sun, and similar projects. Interim results downloaded . . .’

She was suspended in a vault of stars, all apparently stationary despite her tremendous velocity. The Doppler effects even at this speed were still subtle, and there was no way even of telling, just by a visual inspection with quasi-human senses, which of these silent points of light was her origin, which her destination. Nothing changed, visibly, from waking to waking.

‘I am disappointed that Dr Kalinski is no longer allowed to serve with you. I do not feel qualified to comment on his prosecution by the Reconciliation Commission, for breaches of the laws passed retrospectively after the crimes of the Heroic Generation . . .’

Something distracted her. A faint murmur of distress. Faint yet familiar, an echo of nightmare. Irritated, she tried to focus on her message to Earth.

‘I am disappointed also that the decision has been made not to send further vessels after me, and to decommission my launch infrastructure. However, without Dr Kalinski’s “crimes” I would not even exist, let alone be out here flying between the stars. He is like a father to me. I hope you will pass on this message to him if you can, and please be assured he may use my missives as testimony in any trial he faces. If they are of use. In the meantime . . .’

That cry of distress was becoming more prominent now. Angelia 5941 could feel the reaction, the unease it caused, rippling through the near-million-strong throng united in the craft’s main body. It came from one of the castaway siblings, she saw now, who was breaking formation from the extended antenna-dish shape that the rest had formed, ahead of the cloud. It was impossible, Angelia 5941 saw, but she was trying to bank in the starlight – trying to descend back to the main body.

‘In the meantime . . .’

Suddenly Angelia 5941 had a brutally clear memory of her own dreams, while supposedly entirely unconscious, immersed with the rest in the kilometre-long javelin form of the interstellar cruise mode. In her dreams she had been the one separated from the rest. She the one cast off and then discarded from the community. She the one banished to die in space. She emitting those horribly familiar wails.