‘That’s it, right there,’ Mitchell had gestured through the windscreen towards a nondescript two-storey building set back on the other side of a wide lawn.

‘You’re sure that’s where we took you?’

‘Yeah,’ Mitchell nodded, still staring out at the motel. After a moment, his shoulders lifted and he let out a heavy sigh. ‘That’s the place, all right. I remember it distinctly.’

‘Has it occurred to you,’ asked Jeff, ‘that you’re caught up in a temporal loop?’

‘How do you mean?’ Mitchell had asked, as he guided them to a stop.

‘We’re about to help the other you escape from Arcorex, so he can make his way to the Moon, where he’ll get caught. Except – if I’ve got this right – he’ll escape, and wind up putting himself in cryogenic suspension, until a team from Tau Ceti arrives through a wormhole link sometime in the near-future. Yes?’

Mitchell had nodded. ‘Right so far.’

‘That team brought him – and by him, I mean you – back through the gates, back through time to the present, and now there’s two of you. And now you’re trying to make sure the Mitch I knew from Site 17 makes it to the Moon, so he can escape to that same cryogenics lab and become you. It’s just . . . mind-boggling.’

Mitchell nodded, his expression distracted, as he walked around to the rear of the van. He had opened it and lifted out a couple of shopping bags full of clothes that had been stowed in next to the cans of gasoline they’d purchased at such exorbitant cost.

‘Shouldn’t you book the room first?’ Jeff had enquired.

‘Did it right there, while you were talking,’ Mitchell replied, slamming the doors shut again.

The motel was self-service, and had therefore scanned their UPs before allowing them access to the vestibule. Directions appeared in the air; they followed them up a stairwell and along a cramped corridor. The door of the room Mitchell had booked swung open at their approach.

A TriView opposite the single tiny bed came alive as they entered. It was tuned to a news feed revealing how more growths had been detected, in the Antarctic and North Atlantic respectively, a long, long way from where the first of their kind had appeared.

They two men had glanced at each other wordlessly, then Jeff fell into a chair to watch the rest of the report, while Mitchell ripped open several vacuum-wrapped packs of freshly fabbed clothing, before dumping them on top of a cheap dresser.

‘I already kept an eye on the news while you were sleeping on the way here,’ Mitchell had explained, after glancing briefly up at the screen. ‘There’ve been a lot more bad quakes occurring in the Asian Pacific.’

‘Are those growths the reason?’ asked Jeff.

‘Not exactly,’ Mitchell replied. ‘More of a side-effect.’

‘Side-effect of what, exactly?’