The light snuffed out, and the man fell flat on his face.

The other four assailants began to howl. Lori had heard a dog lamenting the death of its master once; their voices had that same bitter resentful grieving. She realized some of her hardware units were coming back on-line, the disruption effect was abating. Her chameleon suit circuitry sent psychedelic scarlet and green fireworks zipping over the fabric.

“Kelven!” she shouted desperately.

Alone in his darkened office a thousand kilometres away Kelven Solanki jerked to attention behind his desk as her static-jarred voice crashed into his neural nanonics.

“Kelven, he was right, Laton was right, there is some kind of energy field involved. It interfaces with matter somehow, controls it. You can beat it with electricity. Sometimes. Hell, she’s getting up again.”

Darcy’s voice broke in. “Run! Now!”

“Don’t let them gang up on you, Kelven. They’re powerful when they group together. It’s got to be xenocs.”

“Shit, the whole village is swarming after us,” Darcy called.

Static roared along the satellite link like a rogue binary blitzkrieg, making Kelven wince.

“Kelven, you must quarantine . . .” Lori never finished, her signal drowning below the deluge of rampaging whines and hisses. Then the racket ended.

TRANSPONDER SIGNAL DISCONTINUED, the computer printed neatly on Kelven’s desk screen.

“I told you we shouldn’t have come up here, didn’t I?” Gail Buchannan said. “Plain as day, I said no, I said you can’t trust Edenists. But you wouldn’t listen. Oh no. They just waved their fancy credit disk in front of your eyes, and you rolled over like a wet puppy. It’s worse than when she was on board.”

Sitting on the other side of the galley’s table, Len covered his eyes with his hands. The diatribes didn’t bother him much now, he had learnt to filter them out years ago. Perhaps it was one of the reasons they had stayed together so long, not from attraction, simply because they ignored each other ninety per cent of the time. He had taken to thinking about such things recently, since Marie had left.

“Is there any coffee left?” he asked.

Gail never even glanced up from her knitting needles. “In the pot. You’re as lazy as she was.”

“Marie wasn’t lazy.” He got up and walked over to the electric hotplate where the coffee-pot was resting.

“Oh, it’s Marie now, is it? I bet you can’t name ten of the others we ferried downriver.”

He poured half a mug of coffee and sat back down. “Neither can you.”

She actually stopped knitting. “Lennie, for God’s sake, none of them had this effect on you. Look at what’s happened to us, to the boat. What was so special about her? There must have been over a hundred brides in that bunk of yours down the years.”

Len glanced up in surprise. With her bloated features rendering her face almost expressionless it was difficult to know what went on behind his wife’s eyes, but he could tell how confused she was. He dropped his gaze to the steaming mug, and blew on it absently. “I don’t know.”

Gail grunted, and resumed her knitting.

“Why don’t you go to bed?” he said. “It’s late, and we ought to stay awake in shifts.”

“If you hadn’t been so eager to come here we wouldn’t have to mess our routine up.”

Arguing just wasn’t worth the effort. “Well, we’re here now. I’ll keep watch until midmorning.”

“Those damn Ivets. I hope Rexrew has every one of them shot.”

The lighting panel screwed into the galley’s ceiling began to dim. Len gave it a puzzled glance; all the boat’s electrical systems ran off the big electron-matrix crystals in the engine-room, and they were always kept fully charged. If nothing else, he did keep the boat’s machinery in good order. Point of honour, that was.

Someone stepped onto the Coogan ’s deck between the wheel-house and the long cabin. It was only the slightest sound, but Len and Gail both looked up sharply, meeting each other’s gaze.

A young-looking teenage lad walked into the galley. Len saw he was wearing a sheriff’s beige-coloured jungle jacket, the name Yuri Wilken printed on the left breast. Darcy had told him about the invaders using sequestration techniques. At the time he’d listened cynically; now he was prepared to believe utterly. There was a vicious wound on the lad’s throat, long scars of red tender skin all knotted up. A huge ribbon of dried blood ran down the front of his sleeveless shirt. He wore the kind of dazed expression belonging to the very drunk.

“Get off my boat,” Len growled.

Yuri Wilken parted his mouth in a parody of a smile. Liquid rasps emerged as he tried to speak. The lighting panel was flashing on and off at high frequency.

Len stood up and calmly walked over to the long counter fitted along the starboard wall.

“Sit,” Yuri grated. His hand closed on Gail’s shoulder. There was a sizzling sound, and her dress strap ignited, sending licks of yellow flame curling round his fingers. His skin remained completely unblemished.

Gail let out an anguished groan at the pain, her mouth yawning open. Wisps of blue smoke were rising from below Yuri’s hand as her skin was roasted. “Sit or she’s dead.”

Len opened the top drawer next to the fridge, and pulled out the 9mm, semi-automatic pistol he kept for emergencies. He never had trusted lasers and magnetic rifles, not exposed to the Juliffe’s corrosive humidity. If anyone came aboard looking for trouble after a deal went sour, or a village got worked up about prices, he wanted something that would be guaranteed to work first time.

He flicked the safety catch off, and swung the heavy blue-black gun around to point at Yuri.

“No,” the lad’s malaised voice croaked. He brought his hands up in front of his face, cowering back.

Len fired. The first bullet caught Yuri on his shoulder, spinning him round and pushing him into the wall. Yuri snarled, furious eyes glaring at him. The second was aimed at Yuri’s heart. It hit his sternum and the planks behind him were splashed with crimson as two of his ribs were blown apart. He began to slide down the wall, breath hissing through feral teeth. The lighting panel jumped up to its full brightness.

Len watched with numb dismay as the shoulder wound closed up. Yuri squirmed round, trying to regain his feet with slow tenacity. He grinned evilly. The grip on the pistol was growing alarmingly warm inside Len’s hand.

“Kill him, Lennie!” Gail shouted. “Kill, kill!”

Feeling preternaturally calm, Len took aim at the lad’s head and squeezed the trigger. Once. Twice. The first punched Yuri’s nose into his skull, ripping through his brain. He sucked air in, warbling frantically. Blood and gore slurped out of the hole. The second shot caught the right side of his temple, driving splinters of bone into the wood behind like a flight of Stone Age darts. His feet began to drum on the deck.

Len was seeing it through a cold mist. The punished, mutilated body just refused to give up. He yelled a wordless curse, finger tugging back again and again.

The pistol was clicking uselessly, its magazine empty. He blinked, trying to pull the world back into focus. Yuri had finally fallen still, there was very little left of his head. Len turned aside, grasping the side of the basin for support as a flush of nausea travelled through him. Gail was whimpering softly, a hand stroking the terrible blisters and long blackened burn marks that mottled her shoulder.

He went over and cradled her head with a tenderness he hadn’t shown in years.

“Get us out of here,” she pleaded. “Please, Lennie.”

“Darcy and Lori . . .”

“Us, Lennie. Get us out of here. You don’t think they’re going to live through tonight, do you?”

He licked his lips, making up his mind. “No.” He brought her the first aid kit and applied a small anaesthetic patch to her shoulder. She let out a blissful little sigh as it discharged.