By then they were on the ground. Irene, who had knowledge of fifty planets before she was fourteen, recognised a dump when she saw one. Mambo Rey was a place no one wanted, except to hologram themselves getting sex against a collapsing industrial shed in clever light. It was less a world than a lifestyle accessory. ‘Having a great fuck, wish you were here!’ 35 degrees Celsius, humidity nil. A metal taste filled the mouth: rare earth dust, rotting even as it separated out of the ancient strata, blew across the concrete on the wind, silting up the corners of the wooden terminal buildings. As the surrounding  mesas eroded, they had exposed the remains of early life in that part of the Halo – huge, bare, cryptic, radioactive forms that looked less like bones than pieces of architecture. Elsewhere in the subtle gradations of Funene’s twilight zone, hallucinatory giant insects strode the horizon on long, fragile legs.

‘Jesus,’ Irene said: ‘Roach planet.’ And then, bending down suddenly, ‘Hey! I found a heart-shaped stone!’

After a brief argument  with Liv, who claimed it was no more than  a tooth  washed out  of some ancient  alluvial deposit,  she presented  it to Fat Antoyne, and the women set out to find the Snakebite bar. Antoyne watched them trudge off across the hot cement – laughing and arguing arm in arm, an image sharpened and  rendered  almost  unbearable  by the  glare of the  perpetual afternoon – then went back inside the Nova Swing and examined the stone. It was pink, translucent, full of small bubbles suspended in a web of hazy fracture planes. It wasn’t a tooth. He rubbed it with his thumb, then dialled up MP Renoko.

‘We’re here,’ he said.

‘Hello?’ a voice replied. ‘Hello?’

The pipe was bad. If it was Renoko, he sounded  as if he was already talking to someone else.

‘Are you there?’ Antoyne said.

‘Hello!’ the voice shouted. ‘For a moment I thought you’d gone!’

‘Is this Renoko?’

‘Who’s that? Is that you, Antoyne?’

‘We can take delivery of those goods of yours,’ Antoyne said. At this, he thought he felt Renoko’s attention focus suddenly. ‘Hello?’

‘You’ll find us in the old lost property office.’

‘Are you here, then?’

‘Well,’ said Renoko. ‘That depends  what you mean.  Do you need me to be there?’

‘I’m at Mambo Rey,’ Antoyne said. ‘Where are you?’

‘Antoyne?’ Renoko interrupted.  ‘This is a bad pipe, Antoyne.

Hello?’ Another  pause. ‘Find the  lost property  office,’ he said.

‘Someone will take care of you.’

‘I’m here,’ Antoyne said. ‘Where are you?’

‘PERDIDOS Y ACHADOS!’ shouted Renoko.