The man and the woman who had taken Ysbel into custody were sprawled face-down on the floor of the lean-to. Their runabout was parked outside the door, and the security bot Zaquil had commandeered hovered above it, knife-shaped and about two metres long with a pair of stubby wings studded with softly whirring rotors. The runabout raised a door as she approached, and sped out of the godown as soon as she had climbed inside, ploughing upriver to the airfield and zipping across hectares of scorched concrete to a hopper gleaming white and silver in crossing searchlight beams.

Goodwill Saltmire greeted Ysbel as she ducked through the hatch into the hopper’s cabin. She took the seat next to his and as the crash webbing flowed over her told him that it was good to see him again, and meant it. ‘Did Zaquil tell you where we are going?’

‘To find this mysterious project in bear country.’

‘And you’re happy to come along.’

‘My people are involved in it, as well as yours,’ Goodwill said. ‘And I have not yet given up hope of discovering the extent of Joyous Hightower’s wrongdoings.’

‘I’ll locate whatever they’ve been trying to hide out there on our way down,’ Zaquil said, his voice booming in the cabin, ‘and deliver you to the front door.’

The launch warning softly chimed and the cabin’s lights dimmed. A peremptory rumble of the hopper’s motor shivered its frame and deepened into a full-throated roar; a giant invisible hand gently and inexorably pressed Ysbel into her chair as the hopper flung itself away from the world on a spear of flame.

Goodwill had squeezed his eyes shut and gave no sign that he heard her when Ysbel told him that she hated this part but it would soon be over. A brief fierce vibration blurred her vision as the hopper went supersonic, and soon afterwards the g-force peaked and began to slide away, smoothly easing into weightlessness, and the motor’s roar cut out.

‘We’re on our way,’ Zaquil’s voice said cheerfully. ‘ETA is seventy-two minutes.’

Ysbel looked over at Goodwill again, asked him how he was doing.

‘I once saw one of your sky boats take off. I thought it would be noisier.’

‘They leave most of the noise behind,’ Ysbel said.

‘And weight, too,’ Goodwill said, lifting his hands, letting them hang in the air.

‘We haven’t escaped the pull of the world’s gravity,’ Ysbel told him. ‘It will bring us down soon enough. You feel weightless because you are falling at the same rate as your chair and everything else in the hopper. There’s nothing to push or pull on your body.’

‘Is this how you usually travel?’

‘Only when the budget allows it,’ Ysbel said, and asked Zaquil to give them a view.