Nothing crosses the Cinder Reach on courage. It crosses on mass.

The rule at the near gantries has not changed in forty years. A captain loads what he intends to burn, the clamps release, and whatever is still standing on the dock when the ship clears the towers stays there. Cold. Unspent. Nobody turns back into the Reach for cargo he decided against.

Ten hulls went out this cycle.

Gabes went out fastest.

176.16 across the gulf, the hardest burn anybody logged, and the seventeenth-hardest ever recorded on this route. Sixteen crossings in the entire book have beaten it.

He also left a man sealed in a bay on the near dock.

Geno Smith went into that bay cold with 28.54 in him. Gabes strapped Kyler Murray into the chair instead, and Murray gave him 10.92 the whole way over.

17.62.

Every other ship in the Reach would have finished behind Gabes this cycle. Nine for nine. That bought him one win, and a champion sitting at 1-2, and ten dollars he will not enjoy.

Mario was in the same lane.

152.86. On this crossing, only ten hulls have ever burned that hard and still come in second. His dock was nearly bare — he had loaded what he owned, the way he loads it every cycle, which is more carefully than anyone out here.

Gabes came past him by 23.3.

Mario has scored more than all but two men in this league and he has one win.

Now go back to the near side and look at what Bill did under the floodlights.

The manifest was in his hand. The crates were stacked along the gantry with his own seal on them, nineteen points and change of loose mass, 19.36 of it, and the clamps released with all of it standing there in the light.

What went into the Reach was 70.94.

It was the slowest thing out there by a margin that made the beacons query it twice. Nine other hulls were crossing and every single one of them would have passed him. Not most. All nine.

A cycle ago this man was first in the fleet. He has dropped four places, and the efficiency logs finally show what the wins were hiding: 82.04 percent of what he carries actually burns.

Daniel caught him.

That is the part worth keeping. Daniel's own crossing was 101.6, ninth out of the ten logged, a limping, underfuelled thing that eight other ships in the Reach would have overtaken without noticing. One of them would not have.

By 30.66.

So they came down to the dock with the belt, which Daniel had been wearing since the last cycle for leaving his own strength behind, and they took it off him and put it on Bill, who was standing beside his crates. Daniel finished ninth of ten and went home unbuckled.

Nate does not leave anything on the dock.

1.9. That is the whole of it, the sweepings, the dust the loaders kick off the plates at the end. He burned 175.26, he is 3-0, and he has now been assigned the same lane as Bryan nine times in this league's history.

Bryan has arrived first once.

This cycle Bryan crossed with 126.86 and 15.6 still bolted to the gantry behind him, and Nate went by him by 48.4 as though the lane were empty. That is two straight losses. Bryan is beginning to look like a man who keeps being scheduled against weather.

And then there is Jack's dock.

Empty.

Not nearly empty. Not a crate, not a pallet, not a sealed bay with a light on inside it.

0.

I have spent two editions describing the man he left behind in a locked compartment — the one who outscored the man Jack took, on a night the margin covered for him and let him walk. This cycle there was nobody to leave. He loaded every last kilogram he owned and burned 135.92, and I record it here with the same seriousness I used against him.

The ship he passed was Justin's, by 22.52.

Justin's transponder has ninety-seven crossings logged in it. At one hundred the far beacon opens a channel and says his name back to him, which has happened four times in fifteen years to anybody. He is three short. He is 0-3. He has been out three times this season and the beacon has read him and stayed quiet, three times, and he has spent a winter rebuilding the hull that keeps getting there second.

Bolek made the crossing in 138.8 and put Eric/Blakey away by 36.96, which is the second straight cycle he has arrived without incident. He is 2-1 and second in the fleet and there is nothing to write about him, which for Bolek is the review.

Eric/Blakey is also 2-1, and is 7-20 against the field, and took his first loss of the season this cycle. He has been arriving in the wake of slower ships for a month. The Reach has now noticed him.

At the end of a cycle the slowest hull pays the fastest ten dollars. Bill's went out to Gabes, from the man who carried nothing to the man who carried everything and is still 1-2.

On the near dock the floodlights stay on all night. There is one bay down there with the clamps locked and the light burning inside and 28.54 sitting in it, still warm, still waiting for a ship that left without it.

Nobody unseals it.

The Reach takes no returns.