“Is there a problem?” Rocio asked.

“You tell me, mate.” Jed pointed at the cliff wall, fifty metres ahead. A horizontal fountain of white vapour was gushing out of an open airlock hatch. “Looks like some kind of blow out.”

“Marie,” Gerald wheezed. “Is she there? Is she in danger?”

“No, Gerald,” Rocio said, an edge of exasperation in his voice. “She’s nowhere near you. She’s at Capone’s party, drinking and making merry.”

“That’s a lot of air escaping,” Jed said. “The chamber must have breached. Rocio, can you see what’s going on in there?”

“I can’t access any of the sensors in the corridor behind the airlock. That section of the net has been isolated. There isn’t even a pressure drop alert getting out to the asteroid’s environmental control centre. The corridor has been sealed. Someone’s gone to a lot of trouble concealing whatever the hell they’re up to.”

Jed watched the spurt of gas die away. “Shall we keep going?”

“Absolutely,” Rocio said. “Don’t get involved. Don’t draw attention to yourselves.”

Jed glanced along the line of blank windows above the open airlock. They were all dim, unlit. “Sure thing.”

“Why?” Gerald asked. “What’s in there? Why don’t you want us to see? It’s Marie, isn’t it? My baby’s in there.”

“No, Gerald.”

Gerald took a few paces towards the open airlock.

“Gerald?” Beth’s voice was high, strained and excitable. “Listen to me, Gerald, she’s not in there. Okay? Marie’s not there. I can see her, mate, there are cameras in the big hotel lobby. I’m looking at her right now. I swear it, mate. She’s in a black and pink dress. I couldn’t make that up, now could I?”

“No!” Gerald started to run, a laboured half-bouncing motion. “You’re lying to me.”

Jed stared after him in mounting dismay. Short of letting off a flare, there was nothing more he could do to attract attention to them.

“Jed,” Rocio said. “I’m using your private suit band, Gerald can’t hear this. You have to stop him. Whoever opened that airlock isn’t going to want him blundering in. And they have to be a major faction player. This could ruin our whole scheme.”

“Stop him how? He’ll either shoot me or blow both of us into the bloody beyond.”

“If Gerald triggers an alarm, none of us will ever get off this rock.”

“Oh Jeeze .” He shook his fist helplessly at Gerald’s crazy lurching run. The loon was fifteen metres from the open airlock.

“Take a hit,” Beth said. “Chill down before you go after him.”

“Fuck off.” Jed started to run after Gerald, convinced the whole world was now watching. And worse, laughing.

Gerald reached the open airlock, and ducked inside. By the time Jed arrived half a minute later, he was nowhere to be seen. The chamber was standard, like the one Jed had come though last time he’d gone inside this bloody awful maggot nest of rock. He moved along it cautiously. “Gerald?”

The inner door was open. Which was deeply wrong. Jed knew all about asteroid airlocks, and one thing you could positively not ever do was open an internal corridor to the vacuum. Not by accident. He glanced at the rectangular hatch as he passed, seeing how the swing rods had been sheered, the melted cables around the rim seal interlock control.

“Gerald?”

“I’m losing your signal.” Rocio said. “I still can’t access the net around you. Whoever did it is still there.”

Gerald was slumped against the corridor wall, legs splayed wide in front of him. Not moving. Jed approached him cautiously. “Gerald?”

The suit band transmitted a shallow, frightened whimper.

“Gerald, come on. We’ve got to get out of here. And no more of this crazy shit. I can’t take it any more, okay. I mean really can’t. You’re cracking my head apart.”

One of Gerald’s gauntleted hands waved limply. Jed stared past him, down to the end of the corridor. A dangerous geyser of vomit threatened to surge up his throat.

Bernhard Allsop’s stolen body had ruptured in a spectacular fashion as the energistic power reinforcing his flesh had vanished. Lungs, the softest and most vulnerable tissue, had burst immediately, sending litres of blood pouring out of his mouth. Thousands of heavily pressurized capillaries just beneath his skin had split, weeping beads of blood into the fabric of his clothes. It looked as though his double breasted suit was made from brilliant scarlet cloth—cloth that seethed as if alive. The fluid was boiling away into the vacuum, surrounding him with a hazy pink mist.

Jed attacked his suit wrist pad as if it was burning him. Dry air scented with peppermint and pine blew into his face. He clamped his jaw shut against the rising vomit, turning bands of muscle to hot steel as he forced himself not to throw up. This spacesuit wasn’t sophisticated enough to cope with him spewing.

Something loosened inside him. He coughed and spluttered, sending disgustingly tacky white bile spraying over the inside of his visor. But his nausea was subsiding. “Oh God, oh Jeeze, he’s just pulped.”

The pine scent was strong now, thick in his helmet, draining feeling away from his limbs. His arms moved sluggishly, yet they were as light as hydrogen. Good sensation.

Jed let out a snicker. “Guess the guy couldn’t hold it together, you know?”

“That’s not Marie.”

The processor governing Jed’s spacesuit cancelled the emergency medical suppresser infusion. The dosage had exceeded CAB limits by a considerable margin. It automatically administered the antidote. Winter fell across Jed, chilling him so badly he held a gauntlet up to his visor, expecting to see frost glittering on the rubbery fabric. The coloured lights flashing annoyingly into his eyes gradually resolved into icons and digits. Someone kept chanting: “Marie, Marie, Marie.”

Jed looked at the corpse again. It was pretty hideous but it didn’t make him feel sick this time. The infusion seemed to have switched off his internal organs. It also implanted a strong sensation of confidence, he could tackle the rest of the mission without any trouble now.

He shook Gerald’s shoulder, which at least put an end to the dreary chanting. Gerald squirmed from the touch. “Come on, mate, we’re leaving,” Jed said. “Got a job to do.”

A motion caught Jed’s attention. There was a face pressed up against the port in the pressure door. As he watched, the blood smearing the little circle of glass began to flow apart. The man on the other side stared straight at Jed.

“Oh bloody hell,” Jed choked. The balmy feeling imparted by the infusion was gusting away fast. He turned frantically to see the airlock’s inner hatch starting to close.

“That’s it, mate, we’re outta here.” He pulled Gerald up, propping him against the wall. Their visors pressed together, allowing Jed to look into the old loon’s helmet past the winking icons. Gerald was oblivious to anything, lost in a dream-state trance. The laser pistol slid from lifeless fingers to fall onto the floor. Jed glanced longingly at it, but decided against. If it came to a shootout with the possessed, he wasn’t going to win. And it would only piss them off. Not a good idea.

The face at the port had vanished. “Come on.” He tugged at Gerald, forcing him to take some steps along the corridor. Thin jets of grey gas started to shoot out of the conditioning vents overhead. Green and yellow icons appeared on his visor, reporting oxygen and nitrogen thickening around him. One thing Jed clung to was that the possessed were no good in a vacuum; suits didn’t work, and their power couldn’t protect them. As soon as he got back out on the ledge he was safe. Relatively.

They reached the airlock hatch, and Jed slapped the cycle control. The control panel remained dark. Digits were flickering fast across his visor; the pressure was already twenty-five per cent standard. Jed let go of Gerald and pulled the manual lever out. It seemed to move effortlessly as he spun it round and round. Then it jarred his arms. He frowned at it, cross that something as simple as a lock should try to hurt him. But at least the hatch swung open when he pulled on it.