‘Hang on,’ I said, stopping him with a hand on his shoulder. ‘I want to take a look at it first. Rozalia?’

She nodded, and together we crawled in and around the SUV for a solid twenty minutes, while Oskar and Yuichi watched in apparent bafflement. I couldn’t find a trace or scent of anything, and neither could Rozalia.

‘Mind telling us just what you’re looking for?’ asked Yuichi after a couple of minutes of this. ‘You worried he might have planted a bomb on it or something?’

‘Not a bomb,’ said Rozalia. ‘Worse.’

‘Remember what I told you back at the Mauna Loa?’ I said. ‘Casey smeared stuff onto our SUV so the bee-brains attacked us. ‘

‘Bile, to be precise,’ said Rozalia, peering at the back of a wheel and running her fingers along the rim.

Oskar blanched. ‘You were serious about that?’

She nodded.

‘So, did you find anything?’ asked Yuichi, when we finally gave up our search.

‘It’s clean, as far as I can tell,’ said Rozalia.

‘Maybe we should take the EV instead,’ said Oskar.

‘Nope.’ Rozalia shook her head. ‘We’d need to check it too, and there’s a lot more of it to search.’

‘How are we even going to find him?’ asked Yuichi. ‘I don’t remember anyone telling me just how we were going to do that.’

I looked over at Rozalia. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘the first time I came here it was because we were looking for labs with samples of whatever genetically engineered bug triggered the extinction event on this alternate. And since, according to Wallace, Casey’s looking for some way to wipe out the Authority, he could only be heading for those same labs.’

‘Makes sense to me,’ said Rozalia, nodding.

‘We all got shots to keep us safe while we’re here,’ said Oskar, ‘so there’s obviously an antidote already in existence . . .’

Rozalia shook her head. ‘Except we only have enough for ourselves, and there’d never be enough time to manufacture and distribute in enough quantity to make any difference to the Authority.’

‘Then what’s the point of even being here, if it might be too late?’ Oskar went on. ‘Or is there any way of figuring out if he’s already gone and done the deed?’

Yuichi stepped over to the control rig for the transfer stage and tapped at its keyboard. ‘Looks like he’s been back and forth between here and the island a good few times over the last couple of days. I don’t see any other programmed destinations, or any place that might be the Authority.’ He glanced over at us. ‘If he hasn’t been there yet, then my guess is, whatever he’s got planned, he hasn’t done it yet.’

‘So we go looking for him at Retièn’s gene labs,’ I said.