He was aware that that caveman Klein was watching him. He started to think of how he was going to deal with that, as the astronaut’s voice droned on and on.

But Lemmy was still staring at him, as if he was working something out. ‘Nobody told you. My God.’

‘Told me what?’

Gustave Klein seemed to have an instinct for trouble. He leaned forward. ‘What’s this?’

Lemmy ignored him. ‘You said something about being sent home. I just figured it out. You think this is home, don’t you? You think this is—’

‘Earth?’ Liu Tao asked now, wondering, staring at Yuri.

Klein stood up. ‘He thinks what? What kind of asshole—’

The class was breaking up, the ‘students’ turning in their seats to see what the commotion was. Major McGregor shut up at last, frowning in annoyance before his spectrograms.

Mardina Jones hurried up again from the back, tapping an epaulette on her shoulder. ‘Peacekeeper to Level 3, lecture room . . . What’s going on here? Is this something to do with you, Eden?’

Yuri stood, hands spread, but he didn’t reply. He’d long since learned that replying was usually pointless, it made no difference to the treatment he got. But he felt surrounded, by the astronauts, the students grinning to see someone else in trouble. Even Lemmy was staring at him.

And Gustave Klein was like a malevolent puppet master. ‘He doesn’t know! You’re right, you little runt,’ he said to Lemmy. His accent was thick Hispanic, despite his Germanic-sounding name. ‘He doesn’t have a fucking clue. What a laugh.’

Now Peacekeeper Tollemache came bustling in, fully uniformed, flanked by two junior officers. They all had nightsticks at the ready – no guns, though, Yuri noticed in those first moments.

‘You,’ Tollemache said. ‘Ice boy. I should have known. Out of the med bay for five minutes and trouble already.’ He flexed his nightstick.

Yuri tensed, preparing to rush him.

Mardina Jones stood between them. ‘Stop this! That’s an order, Peacekeeper.’

‘You don’t outrank me.’

‘Oh, yes I do,’ she said coldly. ‘You know the policy. Take it up with the captain if you like. I wanted you down here to keep order, not break more heads. And you – whatever else you are, Yuri Eden, you’re good at making enemies.’

Tollemache glowered at Yuri, but backed off. ‘You’re the reason I’m in this toilet, you little prick.’

Yuri grinned. ‘Good to hear it, Peacekeeper.’

Tollemache held his gaze for one more second. In the background Gustave Klein leered, drinking up the conflict.

Mardina Jones turned on Lemmy. ‘You. What do you mean, he thinks this is home?’

‘Think about it. The Peacekeeper there knocked him out while he was still on Mars! He never saw a thing, the sweep, the loading, he didn’t get any of the briefings we got. Such as they were. Also, he’s out of his time. You must know that. He hasn’t got the background to understand.’

Mardina frowned, and glanced down at her slate; maybe she hadn’t known that, Yuri thought.

‘We all supposed he’d know what was going on. I guess. That he’d be able to figure it. But—’

‘But maybe not.’ Major McGregor came up to the little group now, and studied Yuri with amused interest. ‘I heard about you. I knew we had one of you lot aboard, a corpsicle. A survivor of the Heroic Generation, eh? And now, here you are, and so confused. How funny.’ Apparently on impulse he said, ‘Follow me, Mr Eden. Bring your little bedwarmer if you like. You’d better come too, Lieutenant. And you, Peacekeeper, if you can control yourself. Just in case it all kicks off.’

Mardina asked, ‘Where are you taking him?’

McGregor grinned and pointed upwards. ‘Where do you think? It will be a fascinating experiment. Come along.’

CHAPTER 3

McGregor led a procession out of the lecture space to the spiral stair that wound its way up the wall of the tower. McGregor glanced over his shoulder at Yuri, who followed directly behind him. ‘We have two of these habitat modules, strapped together side by side, for redundancy, you see . . . You’ll have to tell me what you think of the design. For size, it was modelled on the first stage of the old Saturn V moon booster, for nostalgic reasons, I suppose. Of course much of what we are doing is of symbolic as well as practical value.’

At the top of the tower was a domed roof. They climbed up through that into what was evidently some kind of control room, with a central command chair, vacant just now, arrays of bright screens, and another dome, midnight dark, over their heads. Operatives in astronaut uniforms sat at terminals around the periphery. One or two looked back at McGregor and his party, frowning, disapproving of an incursion into this sanctum of control.

McGregor was studying Yuri, amused. ‘Where do you think you are now?’

Yuri shrugged carelessly, though a kind of deep anxiety was gnawing in his stomach.

Mardina murmured, ‘Lex, go easy—’

‘No, really. Tell me. Come on, man, speak up.’

‘Top of the tower.’

McGregor thought that over. ‘Well, yes. That’s correct, sort of. Perceptually speaking anyhow, given the vector of the thrust-induced gravity. But there’s rather more to it than that.’ He clapped his hands. ‘Lights off.’ The wall lamps died, fading quickly. ‘Just look up. Give your eyes a minute to adjust.’

Yuri obeyed. Slowly, the stars came out across the dome, a brilliant field, like night in the Martian desert. There was a particularly prominent cluster directly overhead.

‘What do you see?’

‘Stars. So what? So it’s a clear night.’

‘A “clear night”. Where do you think you are?’

Yuri shrugged. ‘Somewhere with a good sky. Arizona.’ He vaguely remembered a high-altitude site with big astronomical telescopes. ‘Chile?’

‘Chile. You understand that what you see is simulated, a live feed from cameras mounted on the ISM shield.’

‘ISM?’

‘Interstellar medium.’ McGregor clapped his hands again. ‘Wraparound VR star field.’

The walls and floor of this deck shimmered and melted away. It was as if Yuri, with McGregor, Lemmy, Mardina Jones, Tollemache, Liu Tao, and the handful of operators with their screens, were standing on a floor of glass. And all around him, above and below, he saw stars, with one particularly brilliant specimen directly under his feet.

McGregor grinned by the light of the stars and the display screens. ‘Now what do you see? Where is the Earth? Where’s the planet you thought you were standing on? Where’s the Earth, Yuri Eden?’

Yuri felt his head swim, the universe close up around him, as if he was fainting from fluid imbalance again.

McGregor pointed downwards. ‘There. Down in that puddle of light. That’s the sun. We’ve been travelling from Mars’ orbit for a month. We are now—’ he glanced at a screen ‘—two hundred and thirty astronomical units from the sun. That’s two hundred and thirty times as far as Earth is from the sun – about eight times as far out as Neptune – about a light-day, if I’m not mistaken. You are a long, long way from Earth, my friend.’

‘A ship.’ It didn’t sound like his own voice. ‘This is some kind of ship.’

‘Not just any old ship. This is the Ad Astra. And we are going—’ he pointed straight up, at the cluster of stars at the zenith ‘—there.’

‘You’re on a starship,’ Mardina Jones said, levelly, steadily, looking Yuri in the eye. ‘Heading to Proxima Centauri.’

‘Proxima Centauri,’ Yuri said dully. The very name was meaningless to him.

‘Yuri Eden, this is the UN International Space Fleet vessel Ad Astra. Two hundred colonists, in two hulls like this one. We’re driven at a constant acceleration, at one gravity, by a kernel engine. This ship is like the hulk that brought you to Mars. But of course you don’t remember that. It’s a bit more than four light years to Proxima. Given time dilation it will take us three years, seven months subjective to get there, of which we’ve already served a month . . .’