‘Listen to the lady,’ grunted Casey. Despite his evident discomfort, he was busy slotting together a number of metal brackets and rods until they formed a tripod. He reached up to the movie projector, slipping it out of the bracket holding it to the ceiling, and placed it on the floor beneath a table. He next fitted the multi-lensed device onto the apex of the tripod. He poked at it with a few stubby, calloused fingers, then frowned. ‘Damn thing isn’t working.’

‘Jeez,’ said Wallace. ‘Just get out of the way before you break the thing again.’

I saw Wallace had already finished his second whisky. After seeing Nadia knocking back a beer first thing that morning, I was starting to wonder if I’d landed on the Island of Functional Alcoholics.

Wallace stepped forwards and expertly pressed different parts of the sphere until it glowed softly from somewhere deep inside. He stepped back, and made a number of curious gestures, in the manner of a medieval sorcerer in his laboratory summoning forth a demon.

I’d already guessed the device must itself be some kind of projector, but I found myself taking a startled step back when apparently solid spheres, rendered in primary colours, materialized in the air around us. They hung there in apparent defiance of gravity.

‘One second,’ said Wallace, making more gestures. The spheres suddenly shifted and morphed into a console floating weightlessly in the air before him.

I realized my mouth was hanging open and quickly closed it.

Wallace glanced our way. ‘If I let Casey try and set all this up, he’d break it. Guaranteed.’ He shook his head at Casey. ‘Some people just shouldn’t be allowed near anything remotely technical.’

Casey just shrugged, apparently unperturbed. ‘So who’s assigned to train Jerry, Nadia?’

‘Me.’ She grinned lopsidedly at me. ‘Not that he needs any more training. Your baby wheels are coming off, kiddo. Officially, your next mission is your first real mission.’

‘In what way does what I just went through not qualify as a “real” mission?’

She laughed. ‘A point well made.’

‘They training you hard?’ asked Casey.

‘Yeah. Why?’

‘Because sometimes it helps in this job to be able to run really, really fast.’

‘That does not,’ I said, ‘reassure me.’

‘It wasn’t meant to.’ He nodded at the contraption mounted on its tripod. ‘Hope you stick around for the show, Jerry. It’s going to be a blast.’

He turned back to Wallace and they fell into conversation, as various colourful yet immaterial shapes bobbed in the air around us.

Nadia led me a little way away. ‘Just so you know, your first official reconnaissance mission is a follow-up to a mapping expedition. Other Pathfinders spent a couple of months exploring and studying the alternate we’ll be going to. Believe me, none of us would set foot in the place if we weren’t sure it was perfectly safe.’

‘That last time was—’