Sitting behind a plastic desk with his back to the window, Ezra was a small, slight man about the same physical age as her, with a tuft of blond hair that gave his rounded face a boyish aspect.

Just looking at him made her feel old.

She'd been travelling since her early twenties, jumping from star system to star system, on one trading vessel or another; and while a jump through hyperspace felt instantaneous to the crew of the ship making it, in reality it lasted the same length of time it took light to cross the intervening distance. This, when dealing with distances measured in tens or dozens of light years, meant Kat was objectively quite a lot older than she looked, and certainly a hell of lot older than the young man on the other side of the desk.

"If you were still an employee, we could file an official complaint on your behalf," he said.

Ezra's invite had arrived less than an hour after the brawl at the bar. A few blows had been exchanged. It hadn't been a real fight, but Kat's lip was swollen and she knew she'd have a black eye in the morning.

"There's no need," she said.

Ezra opened a drawer and produced a half-empty bottle of whiskey, and two tin mugs. He poured a measure into each and slid one across the desk to her.

"On the contrary, I think you should file a personal complaint with the port authority, and the sooner the better," he said. "Anything to keep Luciano tied up here for as long as possible."

Kat sniffed the mug he'd given her.

"And why would you want me to do that?"

Ezra appraised her with a look. Then he drained his mug, coughed, and dabbed his lips with a handkerchief. He blinked rapidly and despite his bravado, Kat got the impression he rarely drank.

"We have a bit of a problem, Katherine. The family, I mean. And we need your help."

Kat put her mug back on the desk without sampling its contents.

"I should have known."

Ezra gave an apologetic shrug.

"I know you were excluded from the family because of your, ah, association with Victor Luciano. I also know that association ended acrimoniously, some years ago."

Kat folded her arms across her chest. Victor captained for a rival trading firm, and her relationship with him had been viewed with distaste by both sides. To the rest of the galaxy, it was ancient history. But to her, travelling between the stars, only a matter of months had passed, and the feelings were still raw.

"The thing is," Ezra continued, "we know Luciano's heading to Djatt for the Pep harvest."

Kat shrugged. "Don't you have a ship going?"

Ezra pursed his lips. "We had the Kilimanjaro, but it's been delayed. We can't get a replacement here in time to beat him. It's a logistical thing."

Kat raised an eyebrow. Prized by aficionados and epicures, and produced from a plant flowering only once every hundred years, Pep was a mildly addictive stimulant with a peppery, metallic taste. A single crate of it could fetch enough to buy a brand new starship.

"Delayed?"

"There was an explosion of some sort. Reports are patchy but, unofficially, we suspect sabotage."

Kat sat forward. The Abdulov family had enjoyed a near-total monopoly on supplies of the drug for centuries. To lose it now would be a serious blow to their reputation and prestige.

"Why not send a ship from Strauli?"

Ezra shook his head. "They're seven light years away. The first they'll hear about this is when Victor passes through the system, seven years from now. By the time they can ready a ship, assuming they have one in port, he'll already be well on his way. No, if we want to beat him, then our only option's to send the Ameline."

Kat brushed a speck of lint from the knee of her ship fatigues. "But I don't work for you anymore," she reminded him.

Ezra spread his hands on the desk. "If you do this for us, we're willing to let bygones be bygones. We'll refit and refuel your ship, and we'll reinstate you as an employee and family member, giving you full refuelling privileges at all family facilities."

Kat blinked in surprise. "You're serious?"

"I absolutely am. And to show you how serious, I'm prepared to authorise an advance on your first month's wages, at full captain's salary."

Kat eyed him as he slipped the whiskey bottle back into his desk. Sitting there, he looked every inch the young and ambitious bureaucrat, working to earn the promotion that would take him away from this provincial posting, back to the family's head office on Strauli. And young as he was, he doubtless saw her expulsion from the family as an old quarrel, a dry and dusty fragment of folklore from before his time as a family rep.

To her, the wounds were still fresh.

"I'm doing pretty well on my own, you know."

"I'm sure you are. But this isn't about you, Katherine. Not really."

"Then what is it about?"

Ezra swivelled his chair to face the window. Looking out over the landing field, he steepled his fingers against the tip of his nose.

"The truth is, we're short on ships and we need you. In fact, I'm forwarding you a contract right now." He tapped the arm of his chair and immediately, in her right eye, her implant flashed an icon to indicate receipt of the file.

"And what happens if I refuse?"

Ezra turned his chair to face her again. He spread his hands on the desk.

"I'm offering you a way back, Katherine. What more do you want?"

"An apology might help."

Ezra shook his head ruefully, as if he'd been expecting her to say that. Then he tapped his fingertips on the table.

"Katherine, I grew up hearing stories about you and the way you turned your back on us. I was at school when they took away your commission. But for what it's worth, I've read the files, and I am sorry for the way you were treated."

He bowed his head.

Kat leaned back in her chair and frowned. She hadn't expected him to sound so sincere.

"Do my parents know about this?"

"Your mother and father are on Strauli Quay."

"So this isn't an official apology? They won't hear about any of this for another seven years, at least?"

Ezra smiled bravely. "I assure you, I have full autonomy to act in the family's best interests. If you sign that contract, I'll provide you with a letter of introduction explaining everything, and they'll have to accept it."

He straightened his tie. "Look the fact is, your family needs you, Katherine. It's a matter of honour."

"And all I have to do is beat Victor to Djatt?"

"Yes."

She licked her swollen lip. Despite her pride and lingering resentment, it was a tempting offer, and would give her the funds to fly again. More than that, it would piss Victor off.

A grin tugged one corner of her mouth. She used her neural implant to access the contract and run it through a standard legal filter. It all seemed in order.

"Okay," she said. "I'll do it."

She stamped the contract with her personal encrypted seal and fired it back to the young man on the other side of the desk. She saw his gaze flicker as he confirmed receipt. Then he rose and held out his hand.

"Welcome home," he said.

When Kat got to the commercial shuttle terminal an hour later, she found the Acolyte waiting by the departure gate, and he wasn't alone.

"This is Toby Drake," the old man said.

Kat nodded. Drake was a tall, dark-skinned young man with a chocolate-coloured leather coat and a cumbersome suitcase.

"It's mostly books," he said shyly, as he shook her hand.

"Books?" Kat's neural implant contained a hundred million words of electronic text, and hyperlinks connecting it to the ship's memory, which held at least a hundred million more. Using modern data storage solutions, you could fit every book ever written onto a crystal the size of a human fist. Why would anyone need a whole suitcase just to carry that?

"Uh-huh, lots of books in the suitcase. I hope that's okay? Only Mr Hind here thought there might be a weight restriction?"

Kat tapped the side of the case with the toe of her boot.

"What kind of books?" she asked.

Drake unclipped the lid and extracted a cloth-bound volume. He held it out to her, smiling shyly.

"Real books."

Eyebrows raised, Kat turned the dog-eared hardback over in her hands. It was heavier than she'd expected, considering it was made of paper, and it smelled fusty, like the algae in the Ameline's sewage recycler. She didn't dare open it. She had no idea how it was supposed to work. So instead, she handed it back and led the two men through the boarding gate into the shuttle's passenger cabin. Drake took the seat next to her, and talked to her as the pilots taxied them across the ice to the runway. He had a nice voice, but he was nervous. His hands fidgeted on the arm rests. Between his stammers and pauses, she gathered he was a research scholar, a physicist attached to one of the teams studying the Gnarl at the centre of the Bubble Belt, dragged away from his studies by an unexpected summons.

"Honestly, I don't know what I'm doing here," he said.

Two days ago Francis Hind, the Acolyte, had arrived at Drake's office carrying a handwritten invitation from the leader of an expedition planning to study the Dho Ark. The Ark was a rocky planetoid on the outskirts of the Strauli system. It had been hollowed out, coated in sheets of artificial diamond, and converted into a starship by its inhabitants, the reclusive Dho. About two metres in height, the Dho wore dark gowns similar to those sported by their human agents, the Acolytes. The gowns brushed the floor as they walked, making them appear to glide, and their heads were permanently encased in baroque, chitin-like helmets that gave them the appearance of stylised stag beetles. According to Toby Drake, no-one really knew where the helmets ended and the Dho began.

"It's a hell of an opportunity," he said. "Apart from the Acolytes, this is the first time humans have been allowed into the interior of the Ark. I-I just don't understand why I've been chosen. By the time I get there, the team will have been in place for fourteen years, and I don't know what more I'll be able to add. And besides, it's not my area of specialty. There are at least a dozen better qualified candidates on Tiers Cross alone."

Kat looked across him to the window, and saw they'd reached the end of the runway and were rolling to a halt on the compacted snow, awaiting launch clearance from the tower. Beyond the glare of the spaceport lights, she could see the bubbles of the Belt sparkling like scattered sand in the darkened sky.

"Nervous?" she asked him.

He looked at her. "How can you t-tell?" His knuckles were white.

"A lucky guess."

The noise from the engines rose to a deafening shriek. Drake closed his eyes. His forehead shone with sweat.

"Just relax," she said. "Why don't you tell me about your work?"

He gave her a sideways look. "With the Gnarl?"

"Yes, why not? It might help."

"O-okay." He took a deep breath. "Well for a start, most people think it's a naked singularity, but it's not. It isn't dense enough. If it were a gravitational singularity, its mass would be huge. But as far as we can tell, it weighs less than a medium sized star."

Kat made a face. "I looked at it once and it made my eyes hurt. How do you study it?"

The young man smiled, as if he heard this question all the time. His teeth were very white.

"We do most of our analysis using computers. We try not to spend too much time looking directly at it, but you know, it doesn't hurt to take a glance every now and then."

Kat said, "A breaker once told me it was artificial, built by the same race that built the bubbles."

Drake waggled a hand. "Iffy," he said. "We don't know that for sure. It could be a natural phenomena. Perhaps it was there first, and whoever built the Belt did so in order to study it?"

Kat licked her lips. She was eager to get off the ground.

"So," she said, "we still don't know what it's for?"

"Maybe it isn't for anything. Maybe it just is."

"That sounds like a cop-out."

Drake's teeth flashed. "Maybe it is. But we're learning a great deal just by studying it. The arch network, for example."

"What about it?"

"It turns out that the arches all resonate on the same electromagnetic frequencies as the Gnarl."

Kat frowned, feeling she'd missed something. "What does that mean?"

"It means the Gnarl may be powering the network."

"Really?"

Drake shrugged a leather-clad shoulder.

"I don't know, but I'll tell you one thing." His teeth flashed again. "I'd give my right nut to find out."

Behind them, the engine noise increased. Then the pilot let the brakes off and the shuttle leapt forward, kicking them back in their seats.

As they rattled down the runway, Kat felt her heart pump a wild surge of joy. A grin split her face, and her feet drummed excitedly on the floor. Beside her, Drake sat stiffly in his seat, still sweating, eyes closed.

As the cabin tipped upward and the wheels left the tarmac, he reached for her hand.