Such nonchalant technological prowess created an effect which totally belied the spectacle inside the airlock tube, where children cried and threw up and red-faced parents cursed as they fended off the obnoxious sticky globules. Nobody had been given time to prepare for the departure; all they had brought with them was clothes and valuable items stuffed hastily into shoulder-bags. Children hadn’t even been given anti-nausea drugs. The embassy staffers shouted back and forth in angry tones, disguising both relief at leaving Lalonde and disgust at the flying vomit. But the Ekwan ’s crew were used to the behaviour of planet dwellers; they floated around with hand-held suction sanitizers, and cajoled the reluctant children towards one of the five big zero-tau compartments.

Captain Farrah Montgomery watched the picture projected from an AV pillar on the bridge command console, indifferent to the suffering. She’d seen it all before, a thousand times over. “Are you going to tell me where we are heading?” she asked the man strapped into her executive officer’s acceleration couch. “I can start plotting our course vector. Might save some time.”

“Ombey,” said Sir Asquith Parish, Kulu’s Ambassador to Lalonde.

“You’re the boss,” she said acidly.

“I don’t like this any more than you.”

“We’ve got three thousand colonists left in zero-tau. What are you going to tell them when we get to the Principality?”

“I’ve no idea. Though once they hear what’s actually happening down on the surface I doubt they’ll complain.”

Captain Montgomery thought about the flek in her breast pocket with a glimmer of guilt. The reports they’d been receiving from Durringham over the past week were pretty garbled, too. Maybe they were better off leaving. At least she could transfer the responsibility to the ambassador when the line company started asking questions.

“How soon before we can leave orbit?” Sir Asquith asked.

“As soon as Kieron gets back. You know, you had no right to send him on a flight like that.”

“We can wait for two more orbits.”

“I’m not leaving without my pilot.”

“If they’re not airborne by then, you don’t have a pilot any more.”

She turned her head to look at him. “Just what is going on down there?”

“I wish I knew, Captain. But I can tell you I’m bloody glad we’re leaving.”

The McBoeing undocked as the Ekwan moved into the penumbra. Its pilot fired the orbital manoeuvring rockets, and it dropped away into an elliptical orbit which would intercept Lalonde’s upper atmosphere. Ekwan started her preflight checks, testing the ion thrusters, priming the fusion tubes. The crew scurried through the life-support capsules, securing loose fittings and general rubbish.

“Got him,” the navigation officer called out.

Captain Montgomery datavised the flight computer, requesting the external sensor images.

A long contrail of blue-white plasma stretched out across Amarisk’s darkened eastern side, its star-head racing over the seaboard mountains. Already fifty kilometres high and rising. Bright enough to send a backwash of lame phosphorescent light skating over the snow-capped peaks.

Ekwan ’s flight computer acknowledged a communication channel opening.

Ralph Hiltch watched the hyped-up Kieron Syson start to relax once he could datavise the starship again. It should have been something for Ralph to be thankful about, too, communications had been impossible in the aftermath of the landing. Instead he treated it like a non-event, he expected nothing less than the communications block to work. They were owed functional circuitry.

Environment-contamination warning lights were still winking amber, though the pilot had shut off the cabin’s audio alarm. The air was dry and calciferous, scratching the back of Ralph’s throat. Gravity was falling off as they soared ever higher above the ocean, curving up to rendezvous with the big colonist-carrier. The prolonged bass roar of the reaction rockets was reducing.

The air they breathed was bad enough, but the human atmosphere in the spaceplane’s confined cabin was murderous. Gerald Skibbow sat at the rear of the cabin, shrunk down into his plastic seat, a zipcuff restraining each wrist against the armrests, his hands white knuckled as he gripped the cushioning. He had been subdued since the airlock hatch closed. But then Will and Dean were looking hard for an excuse to rip his head off. Jenny’s death had been fast (thank God) but very, very messy.

Ralph knew he should be reviewing the memory of the ape-analogue creatures, gaining strategically critical information on the threat they faced, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Let the ESA office on Ombey study the memory sequence, they wouldn’t be so emotionally involved. Jenny had been a damn good officer, and a friend.

The spaceplane’s reaction drive cut off. Free fall left Ralph’s stomach rising up through his chest. He accessed a nausea-suppression program and quickly activated it.

Huddled in his chair, Gerald Skibbow began to tremble as the forked strands of his filthy, blood-soaked beard waved about in front of his still-bleeding nose.

Ekwan ’s hangar was a cylindrical chamber ribbed by metal struts; the walls were composed of shadows and crinkled silver blankets. The spaceplane, wings fully retracted, eased its squashed-bullet nose through the open doors into the waiting clamp ring. Actuators slid catches into a circle of load sockets behind the radar dome, and the craft was drawn inside.

Three of Ekwan ’s security personnel, experts at handling troublesome Ivets in free fall, swam into the cabin, coughing at the ash dust which filled the air.

Will took the zipcuffs off Gerald Skibbow. “Run, why don’t you,” he said silkily.

Gerald Skibbow gave him a contemptuous glance, which turned to outright alarm as he rose into the air. Hands clawed frantically for a grip on the cabin ceiling. He wound up clutching a grab loop for dear life.

The grinning security personnel closed in.

“Just tow him the whole way,” Ralph told them. “And you, Skibbow, don’t cause any trouble. We’ll be right behind, and we’re armed.”

“You can’t use TIP carbines in the ship,” one of the security men protested.

“Oh, really? Try me.”

Gerald Skibbow reluctantly let go of the grab loop, and let the men tug him along by his arms. The eight-strong group drifted out into the tubular corridor connecting the hangar to one of the life-support capsules.

Sir Asquith Parish was waiting outside the zero-tau compartment, a stikpad holding his feet in place. He gave Gerald Skibbow a distasteful look. “You lost Jenny Harris for him?”

“Yes, sir,” Will said through clamped teeth.

Sir Asquith recoiled.

“Whatever sequestrated him has several ancillary energy-manipulation functions,” Ralph explained. “He is lethal; one on one, he’s better than any of us.”

The ambassador gave Gerald Skibbow a fast reappraisal. Light strips circling the corridor outside the zero-tau compartment hatch flickered and dimmed.

“Stop it,” Dean growled. He jabbed his TIP carbine into the small of Skibbow’s back.

The light strips came up to full strength again.

Gerald Skibbow laughed jauntily at the shaken ambassador as the security men shoved him through the hatch. Ralph Hiltch cocked an ironic eyebrow, then followed them in.

The zero-tau compartment was a big sphere, sliced into sections by mesh decking that was only three metres apart. It didn’t look finished; it was poorly lit, with bare metal girders and kilometres of power cable stuck to every surface. The sarcophagus pods formed long silent ranks, their upper surface a blank void. Most of them were activated, holding the colonists who had gambled their future on conquering Lalonde.

Gerald Skibbow was manoeuvred to an open pod just inside the hatchway. He glanced around the compartment, his head turning in fractured movements to take in the compartment. The security men holding him felt his muscles tensing.