Yuri shielded his eyes and looked straight up at Proxima, at the huge spots that crowded its face, localised flares showing like scars. When they had landed none of them had been warned about the star winter, as they had come to call it. There were no Earthlike seasons on Per Ardua, but when its face swarmed with sunspots Proxima evidently delivered winters, winters that arrived irregularly, and lasted for an unpredictable time. It was another problem that could have been determined in advance if this world had been properly surveyed before people had been dumped on it like loads of bricks. Well, winter had come, and the whole of the trek south had been a race against the deepening cold.

Now there was this new place. In the green.

Yuri said, ‘If we could stay there even just a bit longer than usual, get through a few growing seasons, build up some stock . . .’

Mardina scowled. ‘But why the hell should this location be magically warmer than any other?’

‘Could be a hot spring,’ Liu said.

‘Yeah, and so not a healthy place to stick around.’

‘But somebody’s doing just that already,’ Yuri pointed out. ‘We’ll learn nothing by sitting around here debating it. I say we fetch the ColU, and go and see what’s what.’

Then there was a pause, as Mardina sat, cradling her mug of tea. Everybody waited for her to speak.

She wasn’t the leader, exactly, not really in command. The tradition of the core of this group, the mothers – Delga and Anna Vigil and Dorothy Wynn – was that nobody was in command, least of all the men. You talked things out and came to a consensus; there were few enough of them, and generally time enough, for that. And certainly Mardina didn’t want the visibility of authority. Her former-astronaut status had been problematic from the start. Nevertheless, as Liu Tao liked to point out to Yuri over a glass of Klein vodka, you had to get Mardina’s approval before you could get on with almost anything. It was a kind of negative leadership, Yuri supposed, a leadership by veto not deployed.

‘All right,’ Mardina said at length. ‘Let’s go and see.’ She began to move, stiff, reluctant; she let Beth take her layers of blankets and fold them away.

CHAPTER 48

A party of four of them, or five if you counted the ColU, made their way along the bank of the river, heading south, upstream to the confluence and the new community. There was only scattered cloud above, and Proxima hung high in the sky, all but overhead now they had come so far south, and their shadows were shrunken beneath them.

Beth had warned that it would take well over an hour to get around the lake, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, Yuri thought. The walk would be good for him, good for them all. Long before the confluence came into view he was thoroughly warmed up from the steady exercise, his breath steaming in the cold. As Mardina walked she stretched and twisted and worked her arms and neck, and even practised whipping her crossbow from the backpack she always carried when away from the camp. Meanwhile Delga, the fourth member of the party, stomped along, one sleeve tied off, her own pack on her back, and no doubt weapons hidden about her person. She seemed just as Yuri had known her all those years ago on Mars, despite the grey hairs, the wrinkled skin of her face distorting her tattoos. Ageing but ageless, he thought.

As for Beth, Yuri could see how his daughter, bursting with energy despite her own long run this morning, was only just staying patient with the steady plod of the old folk.

They came upon the green cover Beth had described. You could see it from a distance. Yuri saw there was no height to it; it was more like a green blanket pinned directly to the ground, like none of the native life Yuri remembered seeing before, the stems, the trees.

To avoid trampling the living cover, they stuck close to the riverbank where the ground was more or less bare. The green wasn’t a solid sheet, Yuri saw close to; he made out individual sprawling plants, blankets of greenish web spread out over the flat ground and firmly rooted by multiple skinny tendrils across their widths. They were like water lilies perhaps, or like the great triple leaves of the canopies of the northern forests.

‘Fascinating,’ the ColU murmured as it rolled carefully along the bank. ‘Yet another body plan, another life strategy. I must study the phenomenon further.’

‘Hm,’ Yuri murmured. Straight ahead he saw smoke rising. ‘I think we’ve a human phenomenon to deal with first.’

‘Perhaps, perhaps. But look beyond that, Yuri Eden. What can you see?’

Yuri had to climb up on its carapace to see what it meant. On the southern horizon was a smear of cloud, thick, black. ‘So? Bad weather for somebody.’

‘You don’t understand, Yuri Eden. We have walked far. Very far.’

‘Strictly speaking you haven’t walked anywhere.’

‘I think we are seeing the substellar point, at last. Or evidence of it. Logically there must be a permanent depression there, low pressure caused by the star’s heat at the point of highest stellar insolation on the planet . . . An endless storm. And this is our first glimpse of that undying substellar weather system. Still hundreds of kilometres away, but a remarkable sight. I am grateful to have lived long enough to see this.’

‘Now don’t go getting morbid about your built-in obsolescence again,’ Yuri murmured. ‘You know how it upsets Beth—’

There was a sharp cracking sound from directly ahead. They all ducked instinctively.

Yuri said, ‘What was that?’

‘A gun shot,’ Delga said. ‘Nice welcome.’ She grinned, evidently relishing the prospect of a confrontation.

Mardina said, ‘Who would get to bring a projectile weapon down from the Ad Astra?’

‘One of your lot,’ Delga said. ‘You can talk about old times.’

Yuri said, ‘You think we should send Beth back?’

Beth snorted. ‘Like hell.’

Mardina shook her head. ‘We have to deal with these characters one way or another. Let’s go forward. Proceed with caution. But,’ she said heavily, ‘stay close to the ColU for cover. OK?’

They nodded, tense, Beth more excited than fearful, Mardina calm, Delga grimly determined, Yuri concerned for his daughter.

The ColU rolled forward once more, and the four of them walked slowly beside it.

Ahead, they soon made out the settlement, smoke rising from a couple of fires, a huddle of huts that were domes of drab Arduan green. Beyond the domes there were fields bearing a lighter green, Earth green – potatoes, maybe.

And a man in a bright blue uniform, holding some kind of rifle, stood between the approaching party and the settlement. The uniform was a Peacekeeper’s, Yuri saw with surprise.

‘Hold it right there,’ the Peacekeeper called. ‘This thing is loaded, you heard the shot. And I will use it as I was trained.’

To Yuri’s astonishment he recognised the man. ‘Mattock. Hey, Mattock! Is that you?’

He could see the man scowl. ‘Who the hell are you?’

‘On the ship, remember?’ Yuri walked forward, hands empty and held wide from his body. ‘You were on my back the whole trip. Well, not just me.’

Mattock held his weapon uncertainly, then let it droop. ‘Eden. The asshole who got cryo-frozen.’

‘And you’re the arsehole who spent the whole trip bragging about the hamburgers and the whores he was going to enjoy back on Earth, while we all spent our lives scrabbling in the dirt in this forsaken place. Remember that?’

Mattock raised the gun again. ‘I’m warning you—’

‘Stand down, Peacekeeper,’ Mardina said now, stepping forward beside Yuri. ‘Jones, Lieutenant, ISF. That’s an order.’

Mattock stared in disbelief at her, a gaunt figure swathed in layers of patched-up clothing. ‘Lieutenant Jones? Are you kidding me?’