The corridor led to a heavy-looking door with a thick glass window. It slid open as they approached – but led into a small circular chamber, bare but for the door in the opposite wall.

‘Airlock,’ Graham remembered. ‘We came through here on the way in.’ There was a two-button control panel. Graham tried both, and the door behind them slid shut, quickly followed by the one in front of them sliding open.

Both Graham and Ryan hurried through the door and into the dark, fetid room beyond.

‘Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,’ Ryan groaned, taking in the weird organic feel. ‘We’re back on the station!’

‘Maybe not. That one was properly messed up, it was shaking, screaming, going down.’ Graham pulled on a sort of sticky vine growing from the wall, and another door opened onto a corridor pulsing with light. ‘This looks all right. I think we’re on board another station.’

‘Like the first one.’ Ryan pulled a face. ‘Course, the Astingir go after any Wraith tech to destroy it, don’t they. This place must be next on the list!’

There was the muffled noise of a laser blast behind them. A furious equine face appeared at the glass panel in the door leading back to the Astingir ship.

‘Back off, Aquillon,’ said Ryan, holding up the cylinder and attempting his toughest look. ‘I’ve got Nitro-90 in here. Plenty of it.’

The Legate flattened her ears. ‘You use the same weapons as your murderous friend.’

‘We don’t want to hurt anyone,’ Ryan went on, ‘but we don’t want you to hurt us!’

‘So if you come in here,’ said Graham, ‘Ryan’s gonna blow up your whole airlock. Think about that. How you gonna get off your ship and on again then, eh?’

Suddenly Ryan fell back dizzily against the wall. ‘Granddad …?’

‘It’s all right mate, I’ve got this,’ hissed Graham, not taking his eyes from the horse-creature through the glass. ‘So, Legate, just stay right where you are and we’re golden. Well, you are, and your ship is …’

‘Granddad!’ Ryan shouted.

This time Graham turned to him, in time to see Ryan shimmering like a reflection in water, slowing fading away. ‘Oh, my God,’ he breathed in horror. This collector was fully functional, of course – and doing its job, boosting an abducted human being onward to its next destination.

‘Ryan, no!’ he yelled. ‘Don’t leave me …!’

But Ryan already had. The final thing to fade was the glint of alien light shining off Ace’s metal torch.

Defenceless and alone, Graham turned back to Aquillon, who was watching him with ever-narrowing eyes.

‘Um …’ Graham licked his dry lips, wiped clammy palms on his jacket. ‘I’ve got plenty of those Nitro-90 things too, OK, Aquillon? Pockets full of them … so, yeah, stay back or I’ll …’