A fresh tremor rolled under our feet, and I heard a bang from somewhere on the far side of the dome as something rolled off a shelf.

‘We’d better get moving,’ said the other of the two soldiers. ‘Get up on the stage.’

We all hurried up the ramp and onto the stage. One of them remained behind just long enough to program the control rig before hurriedly scurrying back up to join us. When the air twisted around us and I felt an increasingly familiar momentary sense of weightlessness, I nearly wept.

FIVE

Back on the island, we found ourselves surrounded by chaos.

There were men – wearing civilian clothes, technician’s jumpsuits and military fatigues – moving, sorting, cataloguing and loading what looked like hundreds of crates of every size and shape onto trucks parked haphazardly just outside the hangar doors. There was barely any room for myself and the others to squeeze past them all as we climbed back down from the transfer stage. We were all still wearing our spacesuits, helmets clutched in gloved hands.

Rozalia took Nadia and me by the arms and shouted over the din something I couldn’t quite make out. The other two who had been with Rozalia, along with the two soldiers from the Forward Base, had disappeared into the throng. I had never even caught the names of the two scientists.

‘You!’ a voice shouted, loud enough to carry over even the tremendous noise. ‘Stay right where you are!’

I looked around until I saw a red-faced man in uniform come storming towards us. He had a tag on his chest that read BARNES.

Here comes trouble, I thought, and steeled myself.

Barnes made straight for Nadia. ‘You had a direct order to come back to base. What the hell were you—’

‘I’m the Pathfinders’ elected head,’ Nadia interrupted him. ‘Did you seriously think I was going to just abandon one of my own people down there? And I didn’t just get her out – I got two of your people out as well.’

Barnes turned to stare at me, and in that moment I smelled his breath and knew he was drunk. He whipped back round to stare at Nadia, pointing his finger at her chest. ‘Don’t bullshit me,’ he snarled. ‘It was so you could rescue your girlfriend, wasn’t it?’

Nadia stared back at him, having overcome her initial shock. ‘I disobeyed your order,’ she said, ‘because you’re an asshole and everyone knows it.’

‘Where I come from,’ said Barnes, ‘we have laws about people like you. Do you hear—’

He never got to finish the sentence because Nadia had hauled back and landed a punch right on Barnes’ nose. He stumbled backwards, one hand covering his nose and with a perplexed look on his face.