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he saw something about 200 metres ahead tumbling over and over as it drifted towards him. It turned out to be me in a blue coverall -no spacesuit, no helmet, no oxygen.
    The outside temperature was 3 Kelvin, that last fading remnant of warmth from the Big Bang. My arms were held rigidly out in front of me and my legs were drawn up as if to push me away from something. Bill radioed Hubble Straits while manoeuvring
Sun Ra
’s grab arm to bring me in, and in less than three minutes I was being looked after by Caroline Lovecraft P/Pl, Director, Physio/Psycho, Newton Centre for Deep-Space Research at Hubble Straits.
    She ascertained that although I looked like an odd-shaped ice lolly I was not dead but in a state of suspended animation. After a long soaking in warm water my clothes were peeled off me with the care usually reserved for ancient manuscripts. When naked I was coated with synthoderma and floated in a nutrient solution while they gave me a variety of anti-freeze injections and hooked me up to several drip-feeds. I was monitored constantly and after three days Lovecraft made verbal contact as shown in this transcript from 7 November 2052.
    CL
: Hi.
    FG
: Hi.
    CL
: I’m Caroline Lovecraft, Head of Physio/Psycho at Newton Centre. Will you state your name for the record?
    FG
: Johann Sebastian Bach.
    CL
: Do you know where you are now?
    FG
: Contrapunctus One. (HUMS BEGINNING OF
THE ART OF FUGUE
)
    CL
: Mr Bach, can you tell me what happened to
Clever Daughter
and the other seven crew members?
    FG
: Very, very high, the legs of Contrapunctus One. Centuries and centuries – mustn’t look down.
    CS
: About
Clever Daughter -
can you remember anything at all?
    FG
: If you can hold on to the terror you can hold on to the world, (HUMS AGAIN THE BEGINNING OF
THE ART OF FUGUE
) B said. (OR ‘BEA SAID’ OR POSSIBLY ‘B.Z.’ SPEECH BECOMING SLURRED)
    CS
: What did B say?
    FG
: Be the music. Thou. (OR POSSIBLY ‘THOWL’)
    CS
: Couldn’t quite catch that. Please say again.
    FG
: Is he? (SPEECH MORE INDISTINCT)
    CS
: Is he what?
    FG
: (LOOKING AROUND) Not here. Gone. (OR POSSIBLY ‘GORN’)
    CS
: Did you say ‘gone’ or ‘Gorn’?
    FG
: (SHAKES HEAD, THEN OPENS MOUTH AND POINTS TO IT)
    CS
: You’re hungry?
    FG
: (SHAKES HEAD, COVERS FACE WITH HANDS, FALLS ASLEEP, TERMINATING INTERVIEW AT 15:32)
    I have no recall of that conversation but I do remember the next one, which took place two days later in another part of Newton Centre. I was vibrant with fear at the time; I felt as if I was a puzzle of many pieces, all of them speeding outward from me in all directions. I was afraid I’d never get them back together and at the same time I was afraid that I would. The song in my head was:
    ON THE GOOD SHIP LOLLIPOP,
IT’S A SHORT TRIP TO THE CANDY SHOP, …
    At a desk opposite me was a tall bald man with glittering spectacles. He was wearing faded jeans, hiking boots, a denim shirt, and an old green cardigan. Through the window behind him I could see the lights of the flicker docks passing in the black sparkle of space and just beyond them Mikhail’s Quadrangle 4 Snackdome (24 HRS – FREIGHTERS YES) revolving like a beacon with a ring of bright rubbish in slow orbit as it majestically receded from view with the turning of the station. Far beyond Mikhail’s there came and went the occulting blue flash of the Hawking Threshold light, beyond it the pale planet Ereshkigal with its seven circling Anunnaki, and beyond those the jewelled fling of Inanna’s Girdle.
    The tall bald man’s spectacles were twinkling as if he had ways to make me talk. I had no idea why I was sitting in a chair in his office; I couldn’t remember anything between flickering out of Nova Central and waking up at Hubble Straits and I rather thought I’d like to keep it that way. ‘Perhaps you’ll tell me’, I said, ‘what I’m charged with.’
    ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Deep Space Command might possibly have one or two questions about the