They were techniques which—with improvements in calibration and application—remained in use among the dig teams on Resurgam. Physics allowed only so many methods to date objects. Sylveste should have seen all that in an instant and recognised the skull for what it was: the oldest human object on Yellowstone, carried to the Epsilon Eridani system centuries earlier, and then lost during the colony’s upheavals. Calvin’s unearthing of it was a small miracle in itself.

Yet the flush of shame he felt stemmed less from ingratitude than from the way he had allowed his ignorance to unmask itself, when it could have been so easily concealed. It was a weakness he would never allow himself again. Years later, the skull had travelled with him to Resurgam, to remind him always of that vow.

He could not fail now.

“If what you’re implying is the case,” Pascale said, “then they must have been buried like that for a reason.”

“Maybe as a warning,” Sylveste said, and stepped down towards the three students.

“I was afraid you might say something like that,” Pascale said, following him. “And what exactly might this terrible warning have concerned?”

Her question was largely rhetorical, as Sylveste well knew. She understood exactly what he believed about the Amarantin. She also seemed to enjoy needling him about those beliefs; as if by forcing him to state them repeatedly, she might eventually cause him to expose some logical error in his own theories; one that even he would have to admit undermined the whole argument.

“The Event,” Sylveste said, fingering the fine black line behind the nearest cofferdam as he spoke.

“The Event happened to the Amarantin,” Pascale said. “It wasn’t anything they had any say in. And it happened quickly, too. They didn’t have time to go about burying bodies in dire warning, even if they’d had any idea about what was happening to them.”