‘I don’t think so, sir,’ Golvin said politely. ‘For one thing the distribution is wrong. We’re picking up these messages from all around the plain of the ecliptic – that is, all around the sky, the solar system. From bodies where we have no colonies – none of us, either UN or Chinese – such as the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, some of the smaller asteroids.’

‘Survivors, then,’ Jiang suggested. ‘In ships. Fleeing as we are.’

Golvin shook her head with a scrap of impatience. ‘Sir, there hasn’t been time. Nobody can have fled much further and faster than we did. And besides, there’s the question of the languages.’

Beth listened again to the voices coming from the slate, both male and female, some speaking languages that were almost, hauntingly, familiar, yet not quite …

Earthshine said, ‘I can help with some of this. My own systems are interfaced with the ship’s; I have a rather more extensive language analysis and translation suite than the vessel’s own.’

McGregor grunted, as if moved to defend his vessel. ‘Nobody expected the Tatania to need such a suite, sir.’

‘Evidently the situation has changed,’ Earthshine said smoothly. ‘There seem to be three main clusters in these messages – three languages, or language groups. The first, the most common actually, is what sounds like a blend of Scandinavian languages, Swedish, Danish, mixed with old Celtic tongues – Gaelic, Breton, Welsh. The grammar will take some unpicking; much of the vocabulary is relatively straightforward.’ He glanced at Jiang. ‘The second group you might recognise.’

Jiang, frowning, was struggling to listen. ‘It sounds like Han Chinese,’ he said. ‘But heavily distorted. A regional dialect, perhaps?’

‘We’re hearing this from all over the solar system,’ Golvin said. ‘If it’s a dialect, it’s somehow become a dominant one.’

Penny asked, ‘And the third group?’

Golvin said calmly, ‘Actually that’s the easiest to identify. Latin.’

There was a beat, a shocked silence.

McGregor said, ‘I might add that we’ve had no reply to our attempted communications, by conventional means, with ISF command centres. And of course we haven’t replied to any of these radio fragments. The question now is what we should do about all this.’

Penny nodded. ‘I don’t think we have many options. I take it this vessel can’t flee to the stars.’

McGregor smiled. ‘This is, or was, a test bed for new kernel technologies, to replace the generation of ships that first took your parents, Beth, to Proxima Centauri. But it’s not equipped for a multi-year interstellar flight, no. In fact we don’t even have the supplies for a long stay away from dock; as you know our escape from the moon was arranged in something of a panic.’

‘We need to land somewhere soon,’ Beth said.

‘That’s the size of it.’

‘But where?’

‘Well, we don’t have to decide immediately. We’re still speeding out of the solar system, remember. It took us three days under full power to accelerate up to this velocity; it will take another three days just to slow us to a halt, before we can begin heading back into the inner system.’

Golvin said, ‘And then we will have a journey of several more days, to wherever we choose as our destination. We’ll have plenty of time to study the radio communications, maybe even make some telescopic observations of the worlds. Maybe,’ she said brightly, ‘we’ll even be in touch with ISF or the UN by then.’

‘I doubt that very much,’ Penny said drily.

‘Yes,’ said Earthshine, watching her. ‘You understand, don’t you, Penny Kalinski? You suspect you know what’s happened to us. Because it’s happened to you before.’

McGregor stared at him, frowning, evidently unsure what he meant. ‘Let’s not speculate. Look, I’m in command here. But the situation is – novel. I’d rather proceed on the basis of consensus. I’ll give the order to fire up the drive for deceleration. Do I have your agreement for that? When we’ve come to a halt, we’ll review our situation; we’ll make decisions on our next steps based on the information we have to hand then.’

‘Good plan,’ Penny said. ‘Unless, by then, somebody makes those decisions for us. Think about it. We’re in a massive ship with a highly energetic drive, about to plunge back into a solar system where – well, where we may not be recognised. We’ll be highly visible.’

‘Fair point. But we have no choice. All agreed? Then if I can ask you to prepare for the burn, to make your way to your couches and lock down any loose gear …’

CHAPTER 6

The trierarchus of the Brikanti vessel Ukelwydd was known to her crew, as she was known to her family and associates, only by her given name: Kerys.

It was a custom of the Brikanti, especially those Pritanike-born, to eschew the complex family name structures of their fiercest rivals the Romans, all of whom seemed to trace their lineages all the way back through various senatorial clans to the Romans’ Etruscan forebears, and also the traditions of the Brikanti’s oldest allies the Scand, with their complicated son- or daughter-of-this-fellow naming convention. Such as the tongue-twisting surname of Ari Guthfrithson, the druidh who stood before Kerys now, rather ill at ease in the commander’s cabin, and looking at her with growing exasperation.

‘Trierarchus, I get the sense you’re not listening to me.’

Kerys allowed herself a grin. ‘Well, you’re right, druidh Ari, and I apologise. It’s just we’ve been so busy – prospecting like crazy at this latest teardrop before we move on to the next, and the next, following a schedule drawn up by some idiot in Dumnona with a blank parchment and a blanker mind and absolutely no experience of what life is actually like out here in the expanses of Ymir’s Skull  … And you walk in with this incomprehensible news of – what? A ship out in the void?’

‘A ship that shouldn’t be there, trierarchus.’

‘You see what I mean? Incomprehensible. Would you like a drink? I’m stocked up with the usual.’ Meaning Brikanti mead and Scand beer.

Ari raised an eyebrow. ‘I haven’t heard the rumours that you have some wine from Italia tucked away in here, by the way.’

‘Hmph,’ Kerys said, reaching for the relevant bottle in a compartment of her desk. The Roman bottle was pottery, shaped like a miniature amphora, and came with a couple of matching mugs into which she poured the ruby wine, working with care with the ship’s thrust operating at less than full weight. ‘You’ve sophisticated tastes for one so immature.’

‘I’m twenty-nine years old, trierarchus,’ he said, sipping his drink.

‘Younger than me by the best part of a decade, by Thor’s left arse cheek.’

‘Well, I am a druidh, Kerys.’

The word derived from an old Brikanti word for ‘oak’, Kerys knew, and signified ‘great knowledge’. Ari was one of the generalist scholars that all Brikanti ships carried, if they had the room, as opposed to specialists in ship engineering, or in navigation in the deep ocean of vacuum the Brikanti called Ymir’s Skull, or in other essential functions. Ari was assigned here to explore the unknown, to study and categorise the new. After all, each of the fragments of ice and stone and metal that made up the giant belt of worldlets known as the Tears of Ymir – resource lodes it was the Ukelwydd’s mission to survey – was a new country in its own right; you never knew what you were going to find.

‘Here’s to druidh, then,’ Kerys said, raising her mug. ‘And let’s get back to work before we’re too drunk to concentrate. What of this ship you found?’

‘Not me, in fact, trierarchus. Your astronomers were using their farwatchers, fixing our position and mapping a sky full of Ymir’s teardrops, as they do day and night—’

‘Or so they claim in their duty logs.’