He felt weight. His seat was pushing into his back. Half a gee at least, he guessed a maybe more. The ship clattered and banged. Moving forward, beginning to accelerate, the armoured piston of the aerobrake would be bearing the brunt of any impacts she suffered against the ruins of the habitat.

*If this isn't the Winter Queen . . .' he said, leaving the statement unfinished.

*By the time I planted the charges,' Hector said, grimacing as the acceleration notched even higher, *I'd already seen the state of this ship and the rest of the habitat. You think I didn't have questions by that point?' He clenched his fists, his wrists jutting from the restraining cuffs. *I had to know, Geoffrey. There was still time to look into the system files. Maybe I'd stumble on a destruct option as well, save myself the worry of those charges not doing their job. So I came in here and sat in this seat, only expecting to be here a few minutes.'

*That's when the seat imprisoned you?'

*No . . . I consented to this.' He smiled ruefully. *I had immediate access to the top-layer files. It's an old system, but easy enough to navigate. At first, it was more than willing to let me have access.'

*And then?'

*I hit a point where it wouldn't let me go any further. Detailed construction history, navigation logs . . . all that was blocked. No time to look for workarounds. But the ship said I could have access to everything I wished, provided I proved that I was Akinya. I didn't question it. Why wouldn't the ship want to know that I was family before giving me its deepest secrets?'

*So you let the cuffs close around you.'

*I had to buckle in first: the blood-sampling system wouldn't activate until I was secured. That was foolish . . . but I didn't have time to sit and weigh the options. I wanted to know, very badly. And I assumed the ship would take a drop and release me again.'

The acceleration had been rising steadily ever since their departure, and it was a long time since Geoffrey had felt the ship crash into anything. Whatever remained of the Winter Palace, they must have left it far behind by now. He hoped that Jumai had got to safety, and that the Pans had managed to undock their ship in time.

*How did you call for help?'

*Still had a comm-link to my suit, and my suit could still get a signal to the Kinyeti.'

*You didn't tell Dos Santos much.'

*I told him I needed help. I knew he'd come as quickly as possible. There was still time to get me out.'

*After the ship had taken the blood sample . . . did it keep its word?'

*Yes,' Hector said. *That's how I found out that this isn't Winter Queen. It's . . . something else. I found the construction history. This ship is sixty-two years old. It was built in 2100, when Eunice was off on her final mission. Winter Queen was a good twenty years older than that.'

Geoffrey nodded to himself, thinking that he understood Hector's error. *Something happened out there, that's all. Her previous flight logs got wiped somehow, and everything was reset to zero.'

Hector sighed. *All the files cross-matched. Nothing had been erased or lost. This ship only ever made one trip. It was built in deep space, and it came back to Lunar orbit, where it's been ever since. Box-fresh.'

*What do you mean, built in deep space?'

*Unless the files are lying . . . this ship was manufactured on one of our Kuiper belt assets. A dormant comet, orbiting beyond Neptune.'

*You make igloos out of ice, Hector, not ships. I know that much.'

*I realise this is painful for you, Geoffrey, getting up to speed with what your own family has been doing for the last hundred years. Of course you can't make anything out of ice and dirt: that's not why we went to the Kuiper belt, nor why we spent a fortune planting flags all over anything bigger than a potato. We mine those iceteroids for what they can give us: water, volatiles, hydrocarbons. We send robots and raw materials out there and they build mining and on-site refining facilities, and then they package the processed material and catapult it back to us on energy-efficient trajectories. The robots and raw materials come from our facilities on the main belt M-class asteroids, where the metals are. It's a supply chain. Can you grasp that?'

*You still haven't told me how a ship could originate on a comet.'

*There are metals and assembly facilities in the Kuiper belt. We put them there, to mine the volatiles. Thousands of tonnes of complex self-repairing machinery, serviced by Plexus machines a even more tonnage. And that infrastructure was already in place by 2100, already earning back our investment.'

*You're saying it could have been reassigned to make a ship?'

*Saying it's possible, that's all. Maybe illegal a there'd have been any number of patent violations, unless our subcontractors were somehow in the know a but it could have been done. If Eunice wanted to build a copy of her ship, she had the means. All she would have needed were raw materials and time.'

Geoffrey closed his eyes. It wasn't just the steadily mounting gee-load, although that was a part of it. He needed to think. If they were on VASIMR propulsion now, the power plant was surely being pushed to its limit. He remembered how leisurely the departure of Sunday's swiftship had appeared.

*And secrecy,' he said.

*She had it. The Kuiper belt's a long way out, and it's not like anyone else was living anywhere near that asset.'

*Want to hazard a guess as to where we're headed?'

Hector looked at the trajectory display, but it was clear that he'd already digested the salient details. *If that's to be believed, then we're going a long way out.'

*Maybe back to the ship's point of origin?'

*If I could get out of these restraints, maybe I could query the ship.'

Geoffrey struggled against his own cuffs, but they were still holding him tight. *We're safe now, though,' he said, thinking aloud. *The ship clearly wanted to make sure one or both of us was family, so it had to test our blood. It may also have wanted to cushion us during the escape phase. But that's over a so why would it insist on holding us here now?'

*Is that a rhetorical question, cousin?'

*Release me,' Geoffrey said.

The cuffs relinquished their hold, as did the ankle restraints. He was still buckled into the seat, and while the ship was under acceleration it might make sense to stay that way, but he was no longer a prisoner of the chair.

*You just had to ask nicely.'

Hector clenched his fists again, made one final attempt to break the restraints by force, then said, *Release me.'

The ship let him go. Hector stretched his arms, holding them out from his body against the acceleration. Geoffrey remembered that his cousin had been confined to the chair for a lot longer than he had, and had spent much of that interval expecting to die. For the first time in a very long while he felt a dim flicker of empathy.

They were blood, after all.

*I guess the next thing is to tell it to stop and let us off.'

Hector strained forward. *This is Hector Akinya. Acknowledge command authority.'

*Welcome, Hector Akinya,' the ship said, speaking in what Geoffrey recognised as the voice of Memphis, or one very close to it. *Welcome, Geoffrey Akinya.'

*Stop engines,' Hector said, in the tones of one who was used to getting his way. *Immediately. Return us to Lunar orbit.'

*Propulsion and navigation control are currently suspended, Hector.'

Geoffrey issued the same command, was met by the same polite but firm rebuttal. It was irksome to have Memphis speaking back, as if the ship failed to grasp that mimicking the voice of a recently dead man was an act of grave tactlessness.

*How long?' he asked. Then, sensing that the ship might need clarification: *For how long are propulsion and navigation control suspended?'

*For the duration of the trip, Geoffrey.'

Hector looked at him, evidently sharing his profound unease at that answer. *State our destination, and the duration of the trip,' he said.

*Our destination is KBO 2071 NK subscript 789,' the ship said. *Akinya Space Trans-Neptunian asset 116 stroke 133, codename Lionheart. Trip time will be fifty-two days.'

Hector listened to that and shook his head.

*What?' Geoffrey asked, growing impatient. *Is that the same place or not?'

*It's the same iceteroid where the ship was built. I remember the name, Lionheart. But that's Trans-Neptunian, for pity's sake. I've been as far out as Saturn, cousin. I know how long it takes, and fifty-two days won't begin to cut it.'

Geoffrey could only nod. He knew how long it had taken the swiftship to get Sunday to Mars, and Mars was a hop and a skip away compared to Neptune's orbit. *Eunice's mission to the edge of the system took a lot longer than a hundred days, even allowing for the return time.'

*More than a year. So either the ship is bullshitting us, for no reason at all, or . . .' Hector didn't seem to know where to go with that.

*Or we're on a very fast ship.'

*Nothing's that fast.'

*Until now,' Geoffrey said.

Behind them, the command deck doors opened. Geoffrey twisted around in his harness, straining to see past the bulk of his seat. His heart skipped at the sight of a proxy, looming in the doorway. It was one of the shipboard units he'd seen earlier a a man-shaped chassis constructed from tubes and joints.

It was cradling a body, and he recognised it.

*This female has suffered minor concussion, but is otherwise uninjured.' The proxy spoke with the voice of the ship. *Shall I convey her to the medical suite?'

Geoffrey unbuckled his harness. They were still accelerating, but the thrust appeared to have levelled out at around one gee. He could move around in that without difficulty, provided he took care. *Do so,' he said.

*I thought you said you were alone.'

*I thought I was.'

Hector was in the process of undoing his own restraints when a ching request arrived. Geoffrey voked acknowledgement and placed Mira Gilbert's head and upper torso in the middle of the command deck. He voked Hector in on the conversation.

*Unless someone's spoofing the return signal, you're alive,' Gilbert's figment said. *We've been trying to establish contact since . . . well, whatever it was that happened. We'll get to that in a moment. Are you all right?'

Geoffrey took a moment to decide how to answer that question truthfully. *I'm fine . . . for the time being. Beyond that, things become a little murky. I'm with Hector a he's OK as well. Since you seem to be alive, I presume Jumai got word through?'

*Jumai reached the point where she was able to signal us. She told us to undock immediately and execute a safe-distancing manoeuvre. I told her I'd wait until she was in the lock, but she insisted on going back inside.'

*I know. We just found her.'

*How is she?'

*I'm guessing she made it onto the ship just before we departed. She must have been knocked around a bit, but the proxy tells me there isn't anything seriously wrong with her.'

Gilbert's figment nodded. *OK a next question. The habitat's gone. Presumably you worked that much out for yourselves. How much control do you have over Winter Queen?'

*None whatsoever, and by the way, this isn't Winter Queen. It's some other ship Eunice sent back in its place. Similar, but not the same. And there's no sign that Eunice was ever here, either aboard this ship or anywhere in the Winter Palace.'

Hector shot him a warning look. *Any other family business you want to reveal, cousin?'

*They already know more than you'd approve of a a little more won't hurt.'

*How can she not have been in the habitat?' Gilbert asked. *Jumai said something similar, but we didn't have time to get the full story out of her before she went off-air again.'

*I don't know,' Geoffrey replied. *Obviously none of us ever dealt with Eunice except via ching . . . other than our housekeeper Memphis.'

*All right. As important as that is, there are actually more pressing matters right now. You say you can't control the ship a what have you tried?'

*Everything,' Hector said. *Flight plan's locked in, and it won't let us change anything.'

*We're tracking you, but we don't have a handle on your trajectory yet. Where are you headed?'

*If the ship's to be believed,' Geoffrey said, *an iceteroid in the Kuiper belt.'

Gilbert looked apologetic. *You won't make it out of EarthaMoon space at this rate. You're running way outside the safe operating envelope for that type of propulsion system.'

Hector looked sceptical. *You've figured that much out in just a few minutes?'

*You're lighting up near-Lunar space like a Roman candle. You need to find a way to throttle back, and urgently. At the very least, you're going to burn so much fuel you won't have a snowball's hope of slowing down this side of the Oort cloud.'

*The ship has its own ideas,' Geoffrey said.

*You'll have to do something. You've already reached the point where no local traffic has enough delta-vee to catch up with you a and that includes Quaynor, I'm afraid.'

Geoffrey nodded, although a fuller understanding of the situation did not make it any easier to accept. *I need to check on Jumai. Maybe she can help us.'

*We'll keep reviewing the situation,' the merwoman said. *In the meantime, good luck. I was about to wish you "godspeed", but under the circumstances . . . maybe not.'

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR.

Getting to the medical suite had been more difficult than Geoffrey had anticipated. The central corridor had become a plunging vertical shaft, one that could only be ascended or descended using the recessed ladders Geoffrey had noticed on his arrival. He'd wanted to go down alone a he'd tried to persuade Hector to stay on the bridge, monitoring the situation a but his cousin had been determined to accompany him. They had been able to secure themselves to handholds and grabs as they worked their way down, but the process had been time-consuming and fraught with hazard.

There was something troubling about the provision of the ladders, though. Whoever had decided they were necessary must have known that the ship would be accelerating hard. That, and the ship's confident assessment of their trip time to Lionheart, made it all the more difficult to accept that the engine was malfunctioning.

Geoffrey should have been encouraged by that, but he wasn't. He didn't like the idea of being trapped aboard a ship that was already travelling too fast to be intercepted.

*I don't remember what happened,' Jumai said, when the proxy had brought her round to consciousness and the ship had confirmed that her injuries were minor, the concussion having no long-term consequences. *I was outside . . . and now I'm not.'

*You remember Winter Queen?' he asked.

She considered his question for a moment before answering. *In the habitat, yes.'

*You're aboard it,' Geoffrey said, before adding, *sort of.'