Someone was crouching down on top of the third, secreted amid a twist of metre-wide pipes. When Murphy switched his retinas to infrared, a distinctive thermal emission hazed around the edge of the pipes like a pink mist. Neural nanonics computed the output as consistent with a single person.

“Wrong,” he muttered. His suit audio speaker boosted the word, sending it rumbling round the hall. Okay, she’d made an effort to hide, but it was a pitiful one. Going through the motions. Why?

“Dr Gilmore?” Murphy datavised. “Is there any kind of super weapon she could have stolen from one of your laboratories?”

“Absolutely not,” Gilmore datavised back. “Only three portable weapons are undergoing examination in the laboratory. I verified their locations as soon as we knew Couteur had escaped.”

Another explanation gone, Murphy acknowledged miserably. “Encirclement,” he datavised to the squad. They began to fan out along the hall, keeping behind the pipes and machinery. When they had her surrounded he cranked the volume up further. “Come along, Jacqueline. You know we’re here, and we know where you are. Game over.” There was no visible response.

“Sir,” the technical sergeant said. “I’m picking up activity on the electronic warfare block. She’s increasing her energistic power.”

“Jacqueline, stop that right now. I have full shoot to kill authorization on this mission. You really have pissed off our top brass with these stunts of yours. Now take a good look at what you’re sitting on. That casing is all metal. We don’t even have to use our machine guns, I’ll just order someone to lob an EE grenade in your direction. You ought to know what electricity does to you by now.”

He waited a few seconds, then fired three rounds at the pipes just above the thermal emission. The bullets sliced a dim violet streak across his vision that vanished as soon as it began.

Jacqueline Couteur slowly stood up, hands raised high. She glanced round with supreme disdain at the marines crouched beneath her, their weapons gripped purposefully.

“Down on the ground, now,” Murphy ordered.

She did as she was told with insultingly measured slowness; descending the rungs welded on to the side of the conditioner. When she reached the ground five marines advanced on her.

“On the ground,” Murphy repeated.

Sighing at how she’d been wronged she lowered herself to her knees, and slowly bent forward. “I trust this makes you feel safe?” she enquired archly.

The first marine to reach her shouldered his machine gun and took a holding stick from his belt. It telescoped out to two metres, and he closed the pincer clamp around Couteur’s neck.

“Scan and secure the rest of the hall,” Murphy instructed. “We’re still missing three bodies.”

He walked over to where Jacqueline Couteur was being held fast. The pincer was riding high on her neck, tilting her jaw back. It was an uncomfortable position, but she never showed any ire.

“What are you doing?” Murphy asked.

“I believe you’re in charge.” The tone was calculated to annoy, superior and amused. “You tell me.”

“You mean this is all you’ve achieved? Two hours’ liberty and you’re sulking about down here? That’s pathetic, Couteur.”

“Two hours tying up your resources, frightening your squad. And you, I can see the fear clouding your mind. Then I also eliminated several key CNIS science personnel. Possibly I engendered some more possessed to run loose in your precious asteroid. You’ll have to find that out for yourself. Do you really regard that as insignificant, lieutenant?”

“No, but it’s beneath you.”

“I’m flattered.”

“Don’t be. I’ll find out whatever scam you’re pulling, and I’ll blow it out the fucking airlock. You don’t fool me, Couteur.” Murphy pushed up his visor, and shoved his face centimetres from hers. “Zero-tau for you. You’ve abused our decency for way too long. I should have shot you back on Lalonde.”

“No you wouldn’t,” she sneered. “As you said, you’re too decent.”

“Get her up to the lab,” Murphy snarled.

Gilmore was waiting for them at the top of the stairs; he directed them to professor Nowak’s laboratory where a couple of technicians had prepared a zero-tau pod. Jacqueline Couteur hesitated slightly when she saw it. Two machine guns prodded into the small of her back, urging her forwards.

“I ought to say sorry for any suffering you’ve undergone,” Gilmore said awkwardly. “But after the courtroom, I feel completely vindicated.”

“You would,” Jacqueline said. “I shall be watching you from the beyond. When your time comes to join us, I’ll be there.”

Gilmore gestured at the zero-tau pod, as if getting in was voluntary. “Empty threats, I’m afraid. By that time, we shall have solved the problem of the beyond.”

Couteur gave him a final withering glance, and climbed into the pod.

“Any final message?” Murphy asked. “Children or grandchildren you want to say something to? I’ll see it’s passed on.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

He grunted and nodded to the technician operating the pod. Couteur was immediately smothered beneath the jet-black field.

“How long?” Murphy asked tensely. He still couldn’t believe this was all there was to it.

“Leave her in for at least an hour,” Gilmore said with bitter respect. “She’s tough.”

“Very well.” Murphy refused to allow the door connecting the secure laboratory with the rest of the asteroid to be re-opened, not with three people still unaccounted for. The marines continued their sweep of the utility caverns. As well as people, Murphy had them examine the fusion generators. Since the loss of the external heat exchangers, they’d been operating in breakeven mode, shunting their small thermal output into the emergency heat storage silo. Couteur couldn’t rig them to explode, but the plasma could do a lot of damage if the confinement field had been tampered with.

The technicians reported back that they were untouched. After another forty minutes one of the missing bodies was found, dead, and stuffed behind an air conditioning vent. Murphy ordered the squad to go back through the rooms they’d covered and open all the remaining grilles, no matter what size. A possessed could easily hollow out a small nest for themselves in the rock.

He waited seventy minutes before ordering the zero-tau pod to be switched off. The woman inside was wearing a tattered and burnt laboratory tunic with the CNIS insignia on her shoulder. She was weeping fervently as she tottered out, clutching at a bloody wound across her abdomen. Murphy’s characteristics recognition program identified her as Toshi Numour, one of the weapons section’s biophysics researchers.

“Shit,” Murphy groaned. “Dr Gilmore,” he datavised. There was no reply. “Doctor?” The communications processors in the secure laboratory complex reported they couldn’t acquire Dr Gilmore’s neural nanonics.

Murphy burst out into the main corridor, and shouted at his squad to follow. With ten suited figures clattering along at his heels, he sprinted for Gilmore’s office.

As soon as the black shell of the zero-tau field had snapped up around Jacqueline Couteur, Pierce Gilmore headed back for his office. He didn’t protest at Hewlett’s continuing restrictions in preventing them from leaving the secure laboratory complex. In fact, he rather approved. He’d received a nasty shock when Couteur escaped, on top of the asteroid physically shaking in the wake of the antimatter blast. Under the circumstances, such precautions were both logical and sensible.

The office door slid shut behind him, and some of the lighting came on. Current power rationing permitted him only four of the ceiling panels, the kind of light provided by a cold winter afternoon. None of the holographic windows were active.

He walked over to the percolator jug, which was still bubbling away contentedly, and poured himself a cup. After a moment of regret, he switched it off. There probably wouldn’t be enough space in his evacuation allocation to take it or any of the bone china cups with him. Assuming there would be any allocation for personal effects. With over three hundred thousand people to evacuate in a week, the amount of baggage they could take with them would be minimal to zero.