‘Might be,’ said Jeff.

Eliza turned and shot a quick, furious look at him. I’m tired of your insubordination, she’d warned him more than once.

‘Maybe Eliza’s right,’ said Lou, his tone conciliatory. ‘We have to be careful.’

‘So just what is it you’re saying we should do if we ;s abandonhear from them?’ Jeff demanded. ‘Just abandon them?’

‘You’re not in charge here,’ said Eliza, ‘and we have our orders from Hanover.’

‘I know we’re expendable,’ said Jeff. ‘I’m under no illusions on that count.’

‘Nobody’s saying anyone is exp—’

‘We can get to Vault Four with time to spare if we start out now,’ Jeff snapped, his fear flowering into sudden anger; all that adrenalin couldn’t go to waste. ‘Fuck the artefacts.’

‘Really?’ said Eliza. ‘Would you like to share that sentiment with Hanover when we get back?’

‘That could be us stuck in there,’ Jeff insisted. ‘If they’re trapped and still alive, a rescue team won’t get here from Tau Ceti for several hours, probably longer. They’d run out of air long before that.’

Eliza’s expression suggested she was contemplating murder. Typical military mindset, he thought, almost able to see the wheels spinning in her head. It wouldn’t be too hard to engineer an accident for him, not with a long, hard drop on either side of them. Unfortunately for her, everything they saw, heard or did was recorded by their suit’s A/V systems.

‘Dan,’ Farad spoke into the sudden silence, ‘his life-support indicator. It’s back online.’

Jeff glanced down and saw that Dan Rush’s icon had indeed flickered back into life, and it was followed a moment later by Lucy Rosenblatt’s. Mitchell Stone’s icon remained dark, however, as did Vogel’s. The suit interfaces felt clumsy and old-fashioned, and again Jeff found himself wishing that a tangle of security precautions didn’t prevent them from using UP-linked contact lenses.

‘Dan, Lucy, can you hear me?’ Eliza shouted into her comms. ‘We lost track of you. Can—?’

She was interrupted by a brief burst of static, followed by a voice.

‘Hey! Hey, is that you?’ Jeff recognized Dan’s voice. He sounded panicked, very nearly hysterical. ‘Mitch and Erich are gone. It’s just Lucy and me. We—’

‘Slow down,’ urged Eliza, as the rest of them listened in silence. ‘Who else is there?’

‘Just Lucy. Mitch and Erich, they . . . they just . . .’

Dan paused, and for a moment they listened to the sound of his amplified breathing, sounding loud and urgent and close within the confines of their helmets.

‘What happened to them?’ asked Eliza.

‘We were up on Level 214. It’s filled with these deep pits, dozens of them. They were down taking a look inside one, while Lucy and me stayed up above. Then it started to fill up with some kind of liquid.’

‘And they didn’t get out again in time?’