Furious, feeling the sting of reprimand, Skade did as she was told. Antoinette reached her father’s coffin. It was lashed to the cargo-bay storage lattice, precisely as it had been when she had shown it to the proxy. She placed one gloved hand on the upper surface of the casket. Through the glass of the viewing window she could see his profile. The family resemblance was quite evident, though age and gravity had shaped his features into an exaggerated masculine caricature of her own. His eyes were closed and the expression on his face, what she could see of it, was almost one of bored calm. It would have been typical of her father to snooze through all the excitement, she thought. She remembered the sound of his snoring filling the flight deck. Once she had even caught him peering at her through nearly closed eyelids, just pretending to be asleep. Watching to see how she handled whatever crisis was in progress; knowing that one day she would have to do it all herself. Antoinette checked the rigging that bound the coffin to the lattice. It was secure; nothing had come adrift during the recent manoeuvres. ‘Beast…’ she said. ‘Little Miss?’ ‘I’m down in the hold.’ ‘One is uncomfortably aware of that, Little Miss.’ ‘I’d like you to take us subsonic. Call me when we’re there, will you?’ She had steeled herself for a protest, but none came. She felt the ship pitch, her inner ear struggling to differentiate between deceleration and descent. Storm Bird was not really flying now. Its shape generated very little aerodynamic lift, so it had to support itself by vectoring thrust downwards. The vacuum-filled hold had provided some buoyant lift until now, but she had never planned on going deep with a depressurised hold. Antoinette was acutely aware that she really should have been dead by now. The Demarchist shipmaster should have shot her out of the sky. And the pursuing spider ship should have attacked before she had time to dive into the atmosphere. Even the dive should have killed her. It had not been the gentle, controlled insertion she had always planned, but more of a furious scramble to get beneath the clouds, riding the vortex that the Demarchist ship had already carved. She had appraised the damage as soon as level flight had been restored, and the news was not good. If she made it back to the Rust Belt, and that was a big ‘if — the spiders were still out there, after all — then Xavier was going to be very, very busy for the next few months. Well, at least it would keep him out of trouble. ‘Subsonic now, Little Miss,’ Beast reported. ‘Good.’ For the third time, Antoinette made sure that she was bound to the lattice as securely as the coffin, and then checked her suit settings again. ‘Open the number-one bay door, will you?’ ‘Just a moment, Little Miss.’ A brilliant sliver of light cracked open at her end of the lattice. She squinted against it, then reached up and tugged down the bottle-green glare visor of her suit. The crack of light enlarged, and then the force of the in-rushing air hit her, slamming her against the lattice’s strut. Air filled the chamber in a few seconds, roaring and swirling around her. The suit’s sensor analysed it immediately and sternly advised against opening her helmet. The air pressure had exceeded one atmosphere, but it was both lung-crackingly cold and utterly toxic. An atmosphere of choking poisons and shocking temperature gradients was, Antoinette reflected, the price you paid for such exquisite coloration when seen from space. Take us twenty klicks deeper,‘ she said. ‘Are you certain, Little Miss?’ ‘Fuck, yes.’ The floor pitched. She watched as the suit’s barometer ticked off the increments in atmospheric pressure. Two atmospheres; three. Four atmospheres and rising. Trusting that the rest of Storm Bird , which was now under negative pressure, would not fold open around her like a wet paper bag. Whatever else happens , Antoinette thought, I’ve probably blown the warranty on the ship by now … When her confidence had risen, or rather when her pulse had dropped to something like a normal level, Antoinette began to inch along towards the open door, dragging the coffin with her. It was a laborious process, since now she had to fasten and unfasten the coffin’s moorings every couple of metres. But the last thing she felt was impatience. Looking ahead, now that her eyes had adapted she saw that the light had an overcast silver-grey quality. Gradually it became duller, taking on an iron or dull bronze pall. Epsilon Eridani was not a bright star to begin with, and much of its light was now being filtered out by the layers of atmosphere above them. If they went deeper it would get darker and darker, until it was like being at the bottom of an ocean. But this was what her father had wanted. ‘All right, Beast, hold her nice and steady. I’m about to do the deed.’ ‘Take care now, Little Miss.’ There were cargo-bay entrance ports all over Storm Bird , but the one that had been opened was in the ship’s belly, facing backwards along the direction of flight. Antoinette had reached the lip now, the toes of her boots hanging an inch over the edge. It felt precarious, but she was still safely anchored. Her view above was obstructed by the dark underside of the hull, curving gently up towards the tail; but to either side, and down, nothing impeded her vision. ‘You were right, Dad,’ she breathed, quietly enough that she hoped Beast would not pick up her words. ‘It is a pretty amazing place. I think you made a good choice, all things told.’ ‘Little Miss?’ ‘Nothing, Beast.’ She began to undo the coffin’s fastenings. The ship lurched and swayed once or twice, making her stomach twist and the coffin knock against the lattice’s spars, but by and large Beast was doing an excellent job of holding altitude. The speed was now highly subsonic relative to the current airstream, so that Beast was doing little more than hover, but that was good. The wind’s ferocity had died down except for the odd squall, as she had hoped it would. The coffin was almost loose now, almost ready to be tipped over the side. Her father looked like a man catching up on forty winks. The embalmers had done a superlative job, and the coffin’s faltering refrigeration mechanism had done the rest. It was impossible to believe that her father had been dead for a month. ‘Well, Dad,’ Antoinette said, ‘this is it, I guess. We’ve made it now. Not much more needs to be said, I think.’ The ship did her the courtesy of saying nothing. ‘I still don’t know whether I’m really doing the right thing,’ Antoinette continued. I mean, I know this is what you once said you wanted, but…‘ Stop it , she told herself. Stop going over that again . ‘Little Miss?’
