‘I look forward to it, Stef Kalinski.’

Titus said sternly, ‘I, of course, will stay. After all, you would probably all be dead before the End Time anyhow if not for my organisation and leadership.’

Stef smiled. ‘I won’t deny that, Titus Valerius.’

Clodia clutched her father, burying her head against his chest.

‘So,’ Stef said now. ‘That leaves three candidates for one place.’

Again there was a dismal silence as they shared looks. The remaining candidates were Beth, mother of Mardina. Chu Yuen, father of the baby. Clodia, who was younger than Mardina herself.

Clodia spoke first. ‘It must be Chu,’ she whispered. ‘The baby needs her father. And Mardina will need Chu’s strength and wisdom. Take Chu, not me.’

Her father embraced her. ‘Good girl. Romanitas to the end.’

‘She’s right,’ Beth said impulsively to Chu Yuen. ‘Of course it must be you. You’re the father. You’re a good man, Chu. And you’re much stronger than I ever could be—’

Mardina broke down completely now. With her baby in her arms she stumbled over to Beth. ‘No! Mother, I can’t be without you.’

‘Yes, you can.’ Beth took her by the shoulders, and held her, looking into her daughter’s face. ‘You can do this. You must – you will. My father, Yuri, used to speak of doors he passed through in his life. He fell asleep on Earth, woke up on Mars, and wound up on Per Ardua, light years from home and a century out of his time. Just another door opening, he would say. You go through it and deal with what you find.’

‘When he died,’ the ColU said, ‘he said the same thing, even at the end. I was with him, in deep space … Just another door, he said.’

Mardina gasped, ‘But what about you? Mother, what about you?’

‘I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me. I won’t be alone.’

‘You will not,’ the ColU said. ‘Just as I attended your father’s death, Beth Eden Jones, so I was there at your birth. I will be honoured to have your company now.’

Stef let out a deep breath. ‘I admit right now I could use a hug. But I’ll wait my turn. So, Earthshine, you got your news out, and the decision is made.’

‘And we have a lot of work to do,’ Earthshine said gravely.

CHAPTER 74

Time ran down quickly after that.

Stef Kalinski found herself counting down landmarks. Things she’d never see again, or do again. A last shower, in the crude lash-up they’d set up at one end of the dome. A last dinner with the group. The last time she flossed what was left of her teeth …

Suddenly it was the final time there would ever be a tomorrow.

They had taken to sleeping in separate little huddles around the dome, Chu with Mardina and the baby, Titus close to his daughter. That last night, by unspoken consent, they pulled their sleeping gear together in a rough circle close to Earthshine’s static installation. The last nine, including Earthshine and the ColU, alone on this world – perhaps the last humans in the universe – gathered together in a dome illuminated by low-level lights, and the sunset glow of Andromeda.

Stef surprised herself by sleeping pretty well, for an old buzzard, she told herself. It was almost a comfort to be woken a couple of times by the baby’s demands to be fed, and the murmuring of Beth as she helped her daughter. Stef smiled in the dark. Poor Mardina still had her duties to perform, end of the world or not. Who would be a mother?

Actually Stef would, right now.

When she woke, there were only hours left.

In the dome morning, after a subdued breakfast, the first order of the day was to get Chu, Mardina and the baby installed in the Hatch.

Earthshine had created a protective sphere, like the one in which he’d encased his probe to the End Time: a thick heat-absorbent shell that, he believed, had kept the probe functioning for fractions of a nanosecond, while Ari Guthfrithson and Inguill had been immediately destroyed. Maybe it could help now, in this new transition – and the ColU had agreed that it could do no harm.

The shell, scaled up to take humans, was like a big smooth egg, the cross-section of its shell thick – it had taken a squad of fabricators some time to construct. It looked scary, the threat it embodied was scary, and Mardina and Chu looked suitably anxious as they wriggled their way into the tight interior, with their packs of tools and clothes and food and water and baby stuff – even pressure suits, improvised from the Mars gear Beth had brought with her. With all that stuff crammed in, there was barely room to move. But the young family would just sit out the remaining time in the shell. Earthshine said it was confident the Dreamers would take care of their destiny from that point on; no more need for palm prints in indentations in doors.

Then it was time to seal the shell, and close up the Hatch. Time for Beth to say goodbye to her daughter, the others to lose their friends.

Stef had always had a feeling she was going to have trouble getting through this part of the day without making a fool of herself, and so she said her farewell with a quick hug of Chu and Mardina, a last stroke of the baby’s smooth and untroubled forehead. Then she took herself away from the sundered family.

She set off around the dome, on a last round of chores. She checked the lights and heating that excluded the Per Arduan farside cold and dark, preserving the banks of green growing things they cultivated here.

And she found Clodia.

The Roman girl was carrying cans of water, and packets of plant food synthesised by Earthshine, some for the potatoes and beets and other terrestrial imports, some for the Arduan plants. As she worked her way along the rows of young eye-leaves, Stef saw that Clodia was smiling.

Stef joined her. ‘This place is pretty neat and tidy.’

‘That’s my father for you. He’s been preparing for the end of the world like it was an inspection by Centurion Quintus Fabius.’

Stef laughed.

‘Meanwhile,’ Clodia said, ‘I don’t see why these should go hungry. Even today.’

‘No indeed. Look, the eye-leaves are turning to follow you.’

‘They always do. Every day. I make sure I don’t walk too fast, so they can track me.’

‘Considerate. And you always smile at them?’

Clodia shrugged, as if embarrassed. ‘Why not? I never saw a builder, only pictures of them. But I see those eyes looking at me, and I don’t know what kind of mind lies behind them. I never knew anybody who didn’t feel better for being smiled at, did you?’

‘I suppose not …’

Stef was aware of time passing. They had all said resolutely that they didn’t want a countdown, but on this last day at least Stef couldn’t help have at least a rudimentary sense of the hour. And she knew –

A horn sounded, a signal Earthshine had insisted on.

‘Come on. Let’s get back to your father.’

Once again the group gathered beside Earthshine’s spidery enclosure. A fire had been lit, though it wasn’t cold in the dome; its crackling was comforting, and a bowl of water was bubbling to the boil.

Titus was squatting on a bench, with a mug of what looked like beer in his one hand. Stef knew he had been experimenting with home brewing; he said that all legionaries learned such skills on long marches away from home. Stef herself had assiduously avoided any contact with the stuff.

Clodia helped herself to a mug of tea and went to sit by her father, on blankets at his feet, and cuddled up against his legs. Now Stef could see Clodia’s eyes were puffy, her cheeks streaked, as if she’d been crying. Stef cursed herself for not noticing before. Crying over what, the coming end for her father, the loss of her own military dreams? If so, at least she seemed calm now. That was the gardening, Stef thought. Nothing calmed you quite so much as cultivating your garden. Even when it didn’t have eyes to look back at you.