Suddenly it's dark. There's an all pervading hum of engines and a ripe locker-room stink of sweat and unwashed clothes that passes in a breath as her host body filters it out. She opens someone else's eyes to see dank, greasy metal walls and low lights. A compact mirror on the desk shows a female soldier with an angular, beautiful face and fine eyes. Her name tag reads 'James'.

There's a movement behind her and her daughter is there. Her daughter who she hasn't seen in the flesh for five years, who she hadn't believed until this moment honestly was still alive. "Chloe?"

"Mom?"

A long time passes in tears and hugging. Chloe's still wearing one of the outfits from the bag she packed for her, all that time ago in the sunshine of her white painted bedroom, when they were a family. When her daughter had a father, and she had a husband. When her dreams were still small and kind.

"Oh God, Chloe, it's really you!" Her daughter is alive. Not just a familiar set of mannerisms in someone else's body, but her own flesh, beloved and missed.

Olding gets up. It's odd to see his tilt of the head, his ever-present smile, on the face of the handsome young African-American man beside her, whose uniform reads 'Becker'.

The little room is full of people. She recognises Young from the files she's been allowed to see since forcing her way onto the funding committee. He's a heavy-set, harsh looking man, shorter than she expected. Nor, when he shakes her hand, had she expected to get an impression of diffidence, of a kind of retiring quiet. He shakes Olding's hand too, gives a self-effacing smile.

"Senators, welcome to Destiny. Since at least part of the reason why you're here is to check me out, I'm going to get out of your way and let you speak to my people without me. Senator Olding, Lt. Scott is my second in command, he can take you wherever you want to go and answer your questions. Senator Armstrong, I'm presuming you'll be happy with Chloe."

Patricia knows she's supposed to be investigating the morale and morals of the ship, but frankly that was only ever an excuse. What she really wants is to get her child back, to rescue her lost princess.

"Should we go round together?" Lt. Scott looks at Chloe for guidance. He's a good looking boy, in a wholesome sort of way. If he's the 'Matt' whom Chloe talks so much about, she should get to know him. But not yet. There are more important things to be sure of first.

"First I'd like to speak to my daughter in private, lieutenant. You two go ahead. We'll catch up with you later."

"This is my room." Chloe shows her in with the same nervous pride with which she once showed her her college dorm. It's both reassuring and jarring. She didn't expect Chloe to look so comfortable here. "The Ancients were very much like us, apparently, with their beds and furniture and stuff. You can see the FTL trails through two windows, and the stars when we drop out."

The worst thing is she doesn't even sound like she's bravely making the best of things. She sounds genuinely enthusiastic.

"I'm so sorry," Patricia says, interrupting. "You must think we've given up on trying to bring you home, but that's not true. It's why I took up your father's career. So I could make sure they didn't just forget."

"Mom," Chloe says, flinging herself down on her bed as though she's still a teen. "It's so great to see you here on Destiny. I miss you, and I've wanted to show you-"

"I miss you too, sweetie. And we are going to get you home. Col Telford is very committed to that promise. I'd go so far as to say he's driven, and that's what we want, because at the moment they don't seem to be trying very hard."

Chloe pulls the ends of her sleeves down over her hands. Her cuffs are fraying and her hair is dishevelled, but she doesn't seem to notice. She snorts in a very unladylike manner. "Telford is so driven that he's already nearly killed us all, twice. If Col Young's more cautious it's because he doesn't want to lose anyone or blow up the ship." She pushes back her hair as if to make her sincerity more obvious. "I wouldn't feel safe with Telford."

Patricia sits down on an alien chair in an alien room millions of lightyears from Earth. It's an extraordinary feeling, part echoing loneliness, part freedom. For a moment, it almost subsumes the frustration and the sensation that everything is going horribly wrong. "But I have to do something!"

"Not this," Chloe folds herself back off the bed, still throwing Patricia off kilter by looking neither tearful nor grateful. "We're good here now. All of that early stuff I told you about, the unrest and the mistrust, it's all over. Col Young's doing a good job, we're starting to get to grips with how the ship works, we have a really exciting mission to fulfil... Please don't wreck it all now we've finally got it together. I don't know what Telford's told you, but he-"

"He hasn't told us anything that you didn't tell me before. That Young's violent, that he's immoral in his personal life and ineffectual in his job. Have you forgotten that during that first year, you told me you didn't feel safe with Young? If that's changed, are you really sure it's not some form of Stockholm syndrome? You've been stuck here with him for so long."

"Did you know that Telford was a Lucian Alliance spy who helped them take over this ship and nearly shoot us all?"

It's a good thing she's sitting down, her knees weaken at the thought. "That part he didn't tell us. Oh sweetie, you've been through so much. I never wanted this for you."

Chloe looks at her almost as though she's disappointed. It's not how Patricia imagined this conversation would go at all.

"When Eli's mom came on board," Chloe says, with her arms crossed and her chin up, "she was happy for him. She said she could tell he was doing great things with his life, and she was proud of him."

It is disappointment. Patricia is astonished and angry to hear it – she's put so much work, so much passion into the quest to get Chloe back. Chloe is not supposed to be one of the many things standing in her way.

"I'm doing great things here too." Chloe is pacing now, the way Alan paced when he was working on one of his speeches, when he was trying to fit a grand principle or a shining conviction into an effective form of words. It makes Patricia miss both of them, Alan because he used to do that so often, Chloe because she never did it before.

"I'm a pioneer, mom. I'm an explorer, an emissary from humankind to the rest of the universe. The chief scientist on this ship trusts me to do the calculations that are too difficult for him, and Col. Young trusts me to be Destiny's political representative to Earth on his behalf."

Chloe fixes Patricia with a gaze as pointed as any spear. "I don't need rescuing. I'm tired of you talking like I'm some kind of victim, and I would very much like it if you took me as seriously as the people here do. Because I am the one who has been out here all this time and I am the one who knows what it's really like."

It's too late. Patricia pinches her nose and mouth shut to keep in the distress. It's already too late. Her bright-eyed debutante has already grown up and she has already missed the last few years of Chloe's childhood. She has lost her, as she lost Alan, and now she's alone. "Is there somewhere on this ship I can get a drink?"

Chloe hugs her again, as though she's the parent. "No mom. Can I... can I show you something? It might upset you but I think you'd be glad in the end."

Patricia lets her breath out in a little sob, because they both left her, and she doesn't know what else there is left to do. But she nods and Chloe guides her down some more low-lit, chilly metal tubes, up in an elevator to a large wall panel with a clocklike device on it. It's a door, as it turns out, which whirrs and clanks and rises up into the ceiling when Chloe hits the control.

There's an anteroom, and then they're in some sort of aircraft... spacecraft... cleaner than the rest of the ship, its gold detailing gleaming in the blue-green swirl of elf-lights that dance outside the cockpit windows. It isn't as claustrophobic as the rest of the ship, there's a sense of peace and light, and she thinks it would be calming to sit in the pilot's seat and look out into the wonders of the universe as they sailed past.

"This is where daddy died."

Oh God! It's like a spear through the heart. She can't breathe, can't hold herself together, because no. He's not really dead. He's not. Nobody saw him die, nobody saw the body, nobody-

"I watched it, through the hatch – I couldn't get it open." Chloe is crying now too, but Patricia can't look. She moves past the chair "He was sitting right there," and looks determinedly out of the window, putting it all at her back.

"It was peaceful," Chloe gasps. "He didn't struggle. He did it for all of us. I think he was glad that it could be him and not someone else."

No. She's not looking, she's not believing this. He's not gone.

"I told them he wanted to be cremated, so we committed his body to a star. Col Young read the service and said that we owed it to him to survive and carry on his legacy. It was very beautiful. I wish you could have been there, you would have... I thought it helped."

No. She didn't come here for an ending. Not to give it all up, not to acknowledge that Alan's gone and Chloe doesn't need her any more. What about what she wants? Who says she has to let go of everything she loves and start all over again?

She leans her forehead on the glass and weeps until the tears hit the window. When she opens her eyes again they're sore and puffy, and a deep golden light is reflecting off the dark mirror of the porthole from something behind her.

She turns, and for a split second she sees an angel standing behind the chair, its hand resting where Alan died. All kinds of critical processes she didn't know she was running in her normal state of mind stop, and she's blank in awe as she takes it in. It looks like a pillar of fire in the shape of a man, and its great golden wings are outspread from wall to wall.

"Mom?" says Chloe in a concerned tone.

She blinks and it's gone.

"Did you see it?"

"Did I see what?"

Patricia reaches out to touch the back of the seat where its hand had rested, but the place is no warmer than anywhere else. She feels again like everything has stopped so thoroughly that now there's a chance for new things to begin. "Are you sure there's nowhere I can get a drink?"

"We could have a cup of tea in the mess." Chloe can't have seen it. Her world doesn't seem to have rocked at all, she's still looking puzzled and worried, as though Patricia is finally losing the plot. And maybe she is, or maybe she's just accepting that it was lost five years ago, and perhaps it's time to find another.

"I think I'd like that."