Monica frowned over at Samuel, who was still silent, his brow creased up in concentration. She added a little prayer of her own to all the unheard babble of communication whirling around Lady Mac for the Navy to exercise some enlightenment and tolerance.

Trafalgar’s strategic defence command told Joshua to hold his altitude, but refused to grant any approach vector until his status was established. The Navy’s emergence zone patrol ships approached to within a cautious hundred kilometres, and took up a three-dimensional diamond observation formation. Targeting radars remained locked on.

Admiral Lalwani herself talked to Samuel, unable to restrain her incredulity as he explained what had happened. Given that the Lady Macbeth contained not only Mzu and others who understood the Alchemist’s principals, but a quantity of antimatter as well, the final decision on allowing the ship to dock belonged to the First Admiral himself. It took twenty minutes to arrive, but Joshua eventually received a flight vector from strategic defence command. They were allocated a docking bay in the asteroid’s northern spaceport.

“And Joshua,” Samuel said earnestly. “Don’t deviate from it. Please.”

Joshua winked, knowing it was being seen by the hundreds of Edenists who were borrowing the agent’s eyes to monitor Lady Mac ’s bridge. “What, Lagrange Calvert, fly off line?”

The flight to Trafalgar took eighty minutes. The number of antimatter technology specialists waiting for them in the docking bay was almost as great as the number of marines. On top of that were a large complement of uniformed CNIS officers.