I got back up and hunted around until I found a key, sitting on a dusty shelf, that fitted the cuffs. I programmed some adjustments to the transfer stage’s settings, then paused, seeing Casey’s video camera still mounted on its tripod.

I picked the camera up and turned it this way and that until I found a slot with a memory card. I popped the card out and pocketed it, then made my way up the stairs and out into the late afternoon sunshine. Off in the distance, I saw a trailing line of bee-brains. They didn’t look as if they were headed my way, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I started to run back to where I’d left Yuichi.

I found him right where I had left him. His head was slumped to one side, his jaw slack, his eyes closed as if in death.

I felt the bottom fall out of my stomach, thinking I had lost another friend. But then his eyes opened, and he squinted up at me.

‘I guess she found you,’ he said. ‘You catch Casey?’

I knelt down beside him and helped him to stand. ‘We caught him,’ I said.

‘And Rozalia?’ he asked haltingly. ‘I heard shooting.’

I shook my head and said nothing. Yuichi just nodded, looking suddenly old.

‘Come on, you goddam hippie,’ I muttered, doing my best to take his weight. ‘Time to get the hell out of here.’

TWENTY-FIVE

Yuichi gazed down at Rozalia’s body with a look of infinite sadness when I manoeuvred him down the steps of the basement some minutes later. The stage was powered up and ready to take us home. All I had to do was punch in a last command.

‘We’ll come back and get her, I promise,’ I said, just before the basement faded from view.

‘Yeah,’ Yuichi muttered, looking lost. ‘No one gets left behind, right?’

I felt the familiar seesaw during the moment of transition, and then we were back inside the shipwrecked trawler. My heart swelled inside my chest when I saw Chloe standing framed in the moonlight, just beyond the rent in the hull. She came forwards and I held her tightly, feeling tears run down my cheeks. I had never been so glad to see someone alive.

Finally I let go of her, and she helped me guide Yuichi back outside, to where Randall, Winifred and Selwyn were waiting for us. Kip Mayer sat on a rock nearby, looking dishevelled and forlorn, his suit streaked with dirt. As we emerged from the hull he stared at us as if we were ghosts.

Selwyn grabbed hold of me by both arms. ‘Casey?’

‘Dead,’ I replied. I looked over at Mayer. ‘The Authority’s safe. We stopped him just in time.’

‘We were going to go through and look for you, but we couldn’t make the connection,’ said Selwyn. ‘We were afraid something terrible had happened.’