‘Bollocks,’ Laura grunted.

They all turned to face the airlock’s inner door, just past the remaining exopod. Caution lights were shining purple.

‘What do we do?’ Laura asked.

‘Are there any weapons on board?’ Joey asked.

Ayanna gave him a startled glance. ‘Crap. There’s probably something in the emergency landing pack.’

‘It won’t come to that,’ Laura said, but it was more like a mantra than anything she believed. Nobody in this era needed weapons; biononics could be configured into quite aggressive energy functions if anyone was seriously threatened.

‘You wouldn’t want to mess with some of the engineering tools,’ Joey said.

‘Are they real?’ Laura asked, mostly to herself. The screen showed her that the docking cradle had finished pulling the exopod inside the EVA hangar airlock. ‘Is that Ibu and Rojas?’

‘What the hell else can they be?’ Ayanna asked. ‘Oh, fuck, what is happening?’ Her mental shielding was cracking open, flooding the EVA hangar with raw fright.

Laura found herself in the centre of swirling shadows. They were growing fangs and teeth, turning from phantom grey spectres to solid black figures. Thousands of people shrieking somewhere far away were growing closer. She raised her hands in reflex to ward them off, worried that perhaps Ayanna’s telekinesis would give substance to her imagination. ‘Ayanna! For fuck’s sake get a grip.’

‘I don’t want them in the shuttle,’ Ayanna wailed.

‘Nobody does! We can’t stop the bastards, now. We’ll just have to manage them when they do get in.’

Ayanna looked just as panicked as before, but the outpouring of emotion reduced slightly.

Joey spun round to face the other way. ‘Can we lock the hatch to the silo compartment?’

‘If we can lock it, Rojas can sure as shit unlock it,’ Laura said.

‘Then we break it,’ Joey said. ‘Use telekinesis, wreck the circuits behind the bulkhead.’

Laura glanced at the hatchway herself. It was incredibly tempting. The lights above the exopod airlock turned from purple to green. The malmetal door started to peel open.

‘Oh bollocks,’ Laura muttered. The hatchway to the silo compartment was barely four metres away. She was sure she could get through in a couple of seconds if she powerdived for it – assuming she aimed right, no guarantee of that given her free-fall skill level. Her ESP started to pry around the bulkhead, reducing it to a translucent blue sheet in her mind. It was threaded with dozens of cable conduits. Which ones control the hatch?

The docking cradle trundled into the EVA hangar and placed the exopod on its lockdown clamps. All Laura could do was stare at the alien globe the electromuscle tentacles were clutching. Her ESP revealed nothing; it was a blank zone inside her perceptive field. And yet . . . She smiled, knowing now that there was no reason to worry. Whatever it contained was absorbing Ayanna’s malicious phantoms. A temperate sense of relief filled the EVA hangar. And her heart was racing away inside her chest.

‘Fight it!’ Joey’s mental voice told her, a jarring discord to the tranquillity Laura was feeling.

‘Oh no!’ Laura groaned. ‘No no no!’ Her own dread at the realization of what was happening was enough to damp down the emotional balm the alien globe was giving off. She saw Ayanna had started to move towards the globe, and grabbed her arm. ‘Stop! Ayanna, for crap’s sake! It’s like a narcomeme.’

Ayanna’s head twisted back to stare at Laura, and now she really looked frightened.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ Joey said.

Laura swung round on the handholds, and prepared to push off against the bulkhead. She heard the exopod’s hatch open. There was a brief hiss of pressure equalization. And even though she knew it was stupid, she paused to glance at what was coming out.

Ibu slid out smoothly, catching hold of a handhold on the EVA hangar’s wall. ‘What’s happening?’ he asked, and his voice was still weird, as if there was fluid in his throat.

‘You tell me,’ she barked. ‘What is that thing?’

‘Who knows? We brought it here to study.’ He was bending his knees, swinging round slightly so his feet were pressed against the exopod’s hull.

Ready to pounce, Laura thought.

Rojas glided easily out of the hatch.

‘Get out of here!’ Joey’s mental voice shouted. He began scrambling along the bulkhead, hauling himself towards the hatch into the silo compartment. Shaking arms made him miss the second handhold.

Ibu kicked off, flashing along the middle of the EVA hangar like a human missile. Rojas followed.

Laura screamed and jumped for the hatch. Her foot caught Joey’s shoulder and the collision flicked her sideways. She spun and slapped at the bulkhead, righting her trajectory. Ayanna was right beside her.

Rojas caught Joey’s ankle. The squeal that came through Joey’s spasming throat was like a pig grunting. Then Rojas was clambering along the hyperspace theorist as if the two were caught in some weird dance move. It quickly turned into a furious wrestling match as they squirmed against each other.

Again, Laura hesitated. Her hand grasped the hatch rim. Ibu was close, reaching forwards. And Ayanna was level with her. ‘Go!’ Laura yelped. Ayanna wriggled through the hatchway with the agility of an eel.

Joey’s cries of dread were echoing round the hangar. Ibu’s hand clamped round Laura’s shin. She squealed, first at the shock, then the yell grew wilder as she realized just how tight and painful his grip was. Stronger than any normal human. ‘What the—’

His other hand clamped round her right ankle. She tried to pull herself through the hatch into the silo compartment, but she couldn’t move. Now Ibu began to pull her the other way. She felt her arms starting to straighten out as his unnatural strength over-powered her, tugging her back. Various ancient unarmed combat routines began to unfold from her storage lacuna, slipping into the macrocellular clusters. But Laura didn’t wait; she instinctively lashed out with her free foot, catching Ibu on the side of his head.

It had all the impact of hitting him with a feather.

He snapped her ankle. She heard the bone break with a terrible crack, and her leg went numb for a glorious instant. Then the incredible pain fired into her brain. Secondary routines damped down the impulse, reducing it to a manageable level. But Ibu slowly and deliberately rotated her foot. The fractured bone made a fearsome grating sound. Her macrocellular clusters cut the nerve impulses altogether.

Laura felt sick. But manic strength allowed her to cling on to the hatchway. Through watering eyes she looked back at Ibu, whose face was impassive. He was simply waiting for her to let go, so he could—

What?

Laura couldn’t understand any of this. Rojas had now subdued a frantic Joey, putting him in some kind of submission lock.

Ibu bent her ankle again. Laura knew she only had seconds before she lost her grip and was drawn back. Then Ayanna was back in the hatch, her telekinesis jabbing at Ibu’s face.

Now he grimaced, his own attention diverted, a counter telekinesis parrying her attack. But he didn’t let go of Laura.

Hanging on grimly to the hatch rim, Laura directed her telekinesis to her breast pocket. The Swiss army knife wriggled free, and she flicked the longest blade out. It rotated in mid-air to point at Ibu. Laura shoved it forwards with all the power she had.

The blade sliced down Ibu’s cheek and stabbed into the gap between his suit’s helmet ring and his neck. He froze. Ayanna gasped.

Laura’s ESP perceived the blade penetrate a good six or seven centimetres into his flesh just behind the clavicle bone. A dark blue liquid began to pour out along the side of his neck. For one confused moment, she thought her knife had cut through some kind of coolant tube in the suit. Then she finally acknowledged it was blood – or whatever the Ibu-copy used for circulatory fluid.