A people-sized door was opened in the hull’s flank, with a short set of steps lowered to the ground. Waved forward by Tollemache, Yuri and Liu climbed the steps.

Yuri paused by the door frame. The hull’s skin was covered by a layer of anti-impact cladding that still bore UN and ISF logos, and warning signs about fuel loading and electrics. The cladding itself was yellowed and had suffered a multitude of little holes, like insect boring. This was a human-made thing that had travelled between the stars. And now here it was, buried in the jungle of an alien world. Sometimes Yuri really did feel like a man out of his time.

And Mardina and Beth came hurrying along a short corridor to the doorway to meet them, Beth wide-eyed and grinning. ‘Wow, Dad! Look what we found!’

‘Wait until I tell you what we found . . .’

But Tollemache was waiting behind them. ‘Move it, shithead.’

Yuri just laughed. Tollemache had got noticeably more irritable since Yuri and Liu had found him on the way back, and told him all about the hatch – a spectacular discovery within walking distance, that might even have been his ticket off the planet, years ago, that he’d entirely missed. No wonder he was sore. Yuri moved on, following Liu and the others through the door.

Inside, the hull was brightly lit by fluorescents, a soulless glow that Yuri remembered too well from the years of his interstellar flight. And, when they got the door shut, it quickly turned cool, cool enough that Beth was soon shivering.

They were led to a kind of central hall where a table was set with three chairs. An older man in an ISF uniform was hastily dragging in more stackable chairs from a store. ‘Welcome,’ he said. ‘My name’s Brady; the rank’s lieutenant.’

‘Same as mine,’ Mardina said.

‘I know, Lieutenant Jones. I remember you. My promotion is more recent.’

Mardina glanced at Yuri and raised her eyebrows. More recent?

The rover driver walked in through another door. It was the first time Yuri had seen the man without a pane of glass standing between them.

‘And this is Major Keller,’ Brady said. ‘Jay Keller. Another recent promotion.’

Keller was about fifty, Brady maybe sixty, Yuri thought. Their uniforms were spruce enough.

They all stood around, uncertain. This big chamber inside the hull was like a brightly lit hall, with its curving ceiling overhead, spotlessly clean. It had evidently been refitted since its years in space. Mesh partition panels had been repositioned to give a flat floor with storage space beneath. Yuri could see bunks in screened-off areas, what looked like a galley, a comms console, maybe a science bay. A huge black screen dominated one whole area, with sofas drawn up before it. The fans and pumps of the air conditioning hummed, busy. They were inside a vast, shiny machine, just as if they were in space again.

In this setting the six travellers, covered in mud and wearing clothes made of bark, looked like chunks of the jungle. Beth was staring around, the fluorescents reflected in her eyes.

And Keller and Brady were staring at her, in her skimpy jungle-heat clothing.

‘My daughter,’ said Yuri.

‘And mine,’ Mardina said heavily.

Keller and Brady glanced at each other, looked away.

Beth seemed oblivious to this. ‘I thought that truck was something. But this . . .’

Mardina hugged her. ‘Welcome to my world, sugar.’

Brady moved, breaking the tension. ‘Please. Sit. You can imagine we don’t get too many guests.’

Tollemache grunted. ‘These fuckers aren’t guests.’ He shucked off his ice-filled coat and pulled opened his uniform jacket. His corpulent face bore a ragged layer of grey-white stubble. ‘They’re illegals, remember. They were supposed to stay where we put ’em. They shouldn’t be here at all.’

Brady smiled. ‘Yeah, well, Parry, Sanchez, Britten and Sen should have stayed put too, and they’re long gone. Come on, Tollemache. After all this time we’re all just human beings together on an alien world, right?’

Tollemache just shook his head, walking away. ‘Christ, I need a shit.’

‘Sit, please,’ Brady said again. ‘You’d like something to drink? We have orange juice—’

He got no further than that. ‘Orange juice?’ said Liu. ‘You have orange juice?’

Keller and Brady hastily laid on a kind of breakfast, of oats with milk, something convincingly like bacon, toast, orange juice, and coffee.

Mardina fell on the coffee, drinking cup after cup. ‘I never knew falling off the wagon could feel so good.’

Liu ate until, he said, his gut ached. Beth just nibbled; the food seemed to be too rich for her.

‘I’m guessing this stuff doesn’t come out of an iron cow,’ Liu said.

‘Oh, we have all that,’ Keller said. ‘But we were left with a mass of supplies, and the recycling still works pretty well. The system was meant to support eight; even now there’s more than enough for three.’

Mardina frowned. ‘Eight?’

‘Four men, four women,’ Tollemache said, emerging from a bathroom, zipping his fly. ‘The women left in year seven.’

‘Can’t imagine why,’ Mardina murmured, looking away from him.

‘Just drove off into the fucking jungle in one of the rovers. Never heard from them again. Probably long dead, all of them. That left four of us.’

‘Cancer got Whitstable,’ Keller said. ‘Maybe you remember him, Lieutenant?’

Mardina shrugged.

Delga grinned. ‘I heard from your buddy here that you volunteered for this, right? You actually trusted ISF to come back for you.’

‘There was going to be a bonus,’ Brady said. ‘Promotions.’

‘Well, at least you got those, it sounds like,’ Liu said, laughing now. ‘What, did the chief of the ISF itself call you up from four light years away?’

‘And all the time,’ Mardina said, ‘you were surveilling us. The colonists.’

‘Well, we tried. You would keep moving around, all of you . . .’

Mardina said, ‘We were told we were on our own here, on Per Ardua.’

Tollemache said stonily, ‘The planet’s called Prox c.’

‘We were told there was no ISF presence. We were told there would be no resupply, no visit, not for a century.’

‘Well, they would tell you that,’ Brady said. ‘To get you to perform the way they wanted you to perform. Making babies, and filling Prox c with little UN citizens before the Chinese get here.’

‘Yeah,’ Mardina said bitterly. ‘Just like they told you what you wanted to hear. To get you to perform.’

Brady stiffened. ‘I think we’ve maintained our morale pretty well in the circumstances.’

‘We make our reports,’ Keller said. ‘Monthly, more often if something comes up. The science guys back on Earth are interested in the variable star winter going on just now.’

‘And we get responses,’ Brady said. ‘I mean, there’s a four-year each-way light delay, but we do get responses.’

Liu grinned. ‘And so you put on your uniforms and you act like good boys before the cameras, for the bosses that abandoned you. Because maybe good boys will get picked up after all. Right?

‘In fact our log shows—’

‘I bet it doesn’t show what goes on in the dark,’ Delga said. ‘When you put these big floodlights out, and crawl into your bunks. We all need comfort.’

‘Shut up,’ said Brady.

Delga said, her voice a slithery hiss, ‘Which one of you’s the bitch?’

Suddenly Tollemache was at her back. He wrapped his big arm around her throat, and squeezed. Somehow, though she clearly couldn’t breathe, Delga kept smiling.

‘Let her go, Peacekeeper,’ Liu said.

‘Just remember,’ Tollemache hissed in Delga’s ear, ‘we’re the ones with the guns. Never forget it.’ And he released her.

She slumped forward, coughing. Beth ran to her, and rubbed her back to help her breathe.

Cautiously they sat at the table once again. ‘So,’ Liu said, ‘all these years you’ve sat in this tin can. When all the time you’ve got the discovery of the century sitting in the jungle an hour’s walk away.’