Kerys frowned, but Beth could see she was intrigued. ‘Such as?’

‘Let me show you. Please, do not draw your weapons …’ He gestured in the air, cupping his hands.

An image congealed before him, a sphere maybe a half-metre across. The bulk of the surface was grey-white ice glistening in the light of an invisible sun, but the blue and green of life sprawled in great patches under curving lids of glass.

Ari gasped. ‘It is beautiful.’

‘It is a world. An asteroid, what you would call a Tear of Ymir. The largest of all – you must have given it a name; we call it Ceres.’

‘To us this is Höd,’ Ari said. ‘After the blind half-brother of Baldr, favourite child of the old gods.’

‘This is what we built there, these great halls. And Ceres became the hub from which the exploitation of the asteroids progressed. Here is another world.’

He snapped his fingers, and icy Ceres was replaced by a more familiar world, a burnt-orange ball, its surface scarred by canyons and craters, ice caps like swirls of cream at either pole.

‘Mars,’ said Kerys.

‘Yes – a name we share. Look what we built there.’ He pulled his hands apart. The planetary image exploded, becoming misty and faint, but the centre, before Earthshine’s chest, zoomed in on a sprawling city, a tower at its heart – a needle-like structure whose height only became apparent when the scale was such that people could be made out individually, in pressure suits at the base of the tower.

‘This is the Chinese capital, in a region we called Terra Cimmeria. I know how all this was built, even the great tower. I can help you discover it. And I have more. Again, do not be alarmed …’

On his upturned hands, a series of animals walked, elephants, bison, lions, horses, each three-dimensional image scaled against a human figure.

The Brikanti stared.

Earthshine said, ‘I and my brothers were created, some centuries ago, for this, above all else. To save the diversity of living things. The destruction of our natural world was not so advanced as it is here, despite centuries of ardent effort,’ he said drily. ‘These animals are known to you only through fossil remains, from bones you find in the ground. To you, the elephants and the apes and the whales are as remote as the dinosaurs. I store genetic data – that is, the information required to recover these animals, to rebuild them. I can give you back your past.’

The animals melted away; he lowered his hands.

‘Also I have books,’ Earthshine said. ‘And art. Think about that. Two millennia of a different tradition.’ He tapped his skull. ‘All stored in here—’

Kerys cut him off. ‘The logic is obvious. Whatever we make of you, we can’t allow you to fall into the hands of our rivals. Welcome aboard,’ she said simply.

Earthshine inclined his head, as if he’d expected no other reaction.

Oddly, Beth noticed, Ari Guthfrithson the druidh appeared more sceptical; she would have imagined the scholar in him would have responded to Earthshine’s pitch.

‘Well, now that’s decided, we have work to do,’ Kerys said briskly. Again she glanced out of the window. ‘I don’t need to inform Dumnona of my decision; I only need to implement it. And no need to give that lot out there any notice. Ari, take charge here; I want all these people strapped in their couches for landing in an hour.’

‘Yes, trierarchus.’ But as Kerys stalked out of the cabin, Ari continued to stare at Earthshine.

The virtual smiled smoothly. ‘Is there something more you want, druidh? After all the decision is made.’

‘Yes. But what strikes me is that in all your bamboozling presentation of the miracles you offer, you never once suggested what it is you want in return.’

Earthshine spread his hands. ‘Your trierarchus has guaranteed me continued existence. Isn’t that enough?’

‘Not in your case, no. I don’t think it is.’

And, studying Earthshine, and the cautious reactions of Penny Kalinski and even Lex McGregor, Beth had a profound suspicion that he was right. That there was far more going on here than Earthshine was yet revealing.

But a warning trumpet sounded piercing blasts, and they hurried to their acceleration couches. There was no more time for debate.

CHAPTER 12

AD 2222; AUC 2975

Even from the ground, on the nameless planet of Romulus, Stef Kalinski had spotted the Malleus Jesu, star vessel of the Classis Sol of the Roman imperium, orbiting in the washed-out sky, a splinter of light. But it was not until the final evacuation from the planet, as she, Yuri, the ColU, and Titus Valerius with his daughter, all rode one of the last shuttles into space, that Stef first got a good look at the craft.

The Malleus Jesu was a fat cylinder of metal and what looked like ceramic, capped with a dome at one end, a flat surface at the other. It looked as if it was held together with huge rivets. There were windows visible in the flanks of the tremendous hull, protected by venetian-blind shutters. The whole craft spun slowly on its axis, presumably to equalise the heating load it received from the sun. The walls were ornately carved with huge figures in the triumphal Roman style: heroic military men striding over defeated peoples, or marching from world to world. Even the rim of that leading dome was elaborately decorated, though the dome itself looked like a crude layering of rock.

Titus Valerius was a massive presence in the seat beside her; he smelled of sweat, stale wine, and straw. Titus pointed at the base of the craft. ‘Kernels. A bank of them. To push the craft, yes?’

‘I know the theory,’ Stef said drily.

‘Push halfway, turn around, slow down the other half and stop at Earth.’ He pointed again, at the dome. ‘Shield from space dust. Rock from world below. Shovelled on by slaves in armour.’

By which he meant, Stef knew by now, some kind of crude pressure suit.

Yuri, pale but intent, peered out. ‘It looks like Trajan’s Column, topped by the Pantheon.’

Stef sniffed. ‘Looks more phallic to me. The Penis of Jesus.’

‘Oh, come on. This is just great. An imperial Roman starship!  … I wonder how the hell they navigate that thing.’

‘The drive isn’t always on,’ said Titus.

Stef realised that a more precise translation of his words might have been, The vulcans do not always vomit fire.

‘Every month they shut it down, and turn the ship.’ He mimed this with his one good hand, like aligning a cannon. ‘The surveyors take sightings from the stars. Then they swivel the ship to make sure we’re on the right track, and fire up the drive again. It’s like laying a road, on the march. You lay a stretch, and at the end of the day the surveyors take their sightings to make sure you’re heading straight and true where you’re supposed to go, and the next day off you go. Works like a dream. Why, I remember once on campaign—’

‘Navigation by dead reckoning,’ said the ColU. ‘Taking sightings from the stars – simply pointing the craft at the destination. They have no computers here, Yuri Eden, nothing more complex than an abacus. And they have astrolabes, planispheres, orreries, sextants, and very fine clocks – all mechanical, and remarkably sophisticated. But this starship is piloted using clockwork! However, if you have the brute energy of the kernels available, you don’t need subtlety, you don’t need fine control. You need only aim and fire.’

Titus pointed again at the craft. ‘Seven decks. Each sixty yards deep.’ He counted up from the base of the ship. ‘Kernels and stores, farm, slave pen, barracks, camp, town, villas of the officers. Plus a bathhouse in the dome for the officers.’

Stef frowned, figuring that out. The word the ColU translated as ‘yard’ was a Roman unit about a yard in length, or roughly a metre. ‘That must make the cylinder something like four hundred metres long. And, judging by the proportions, around a hundred metres in diameter. What a monster. Titus, we’ve been told very little about this flight.’