The hopper quivered as its wings realigned themselves in preparation for boosting it into the high atmosphere. Somewhere beneath their feet, the engines built up to a noisy rumble, and Saul gripped his armrests as the acceleration pushed them back deep into their seats.

‘What gave you the idea of using the EDP codes?’ Mitchell yelled over the roar.

‘It was the obvious thing to do,’ Saul yelled back. ‘I mean, Jesus, think about what will happen if we don’t shut those gates down.’

‘That depends,’ said Mitchell, ‘on what you think really is happening.’

Saul frowned at him. ‘What?’

Mitchell waved a hand dismissively. ‘Forget it.’

‘Mitchell, I’ve argued this through with two other people, one of them Olivia. In the end, they both decided to help me. So if you want to know how I’m sure it’s the right course of action, then know that I am very, very damn sure.’

‘Even if it means having the blood of countless innocents on your hands, once you slam the door shut on all of them?’

Saul felt his face grow hot. ‘I know what the goddamned consequences are. But doing nothing would be a hell of a lot worse, don’t you think?’

Somehow, that had seemed to be the end of any further discussion for the remainder of their journey. Once their craft had levelled out, Saul found himself some quick-heating food in a crew locker and devoured it. He then fell asleep for a while, and dreamed he was back in that car, with Donohue shouting warnings about Mitchell, and woke only when the hopper began its final approach to the Roses’ private spaceport, his body racked by a bone-deep ache.

Little about the spaceport had changed over the years since Saul had last seen it. Two lengthy roads cut their way through scrubby desert, while a hangar complex, looking like yesterday’s vision of the future of space flight, sat next to the point where they converged. He saw several huge VASIMRs mounted on the backs of trucks, while an airstrip ran parallel to one of the roads. A small hotel and several other buildings of much more recent vintage were strung along the side of it. Rail tracks extended towards a launch pad consisting of a strip of blackened concrete, several kilometres distant from the hangar complex. A massive gantry stood in the centre of the launch pad, supporting a full-sized working replica of an ancient Apollo Saturn multi-stage rocket that towered over the landscape. The gantry had been empty the last time Saul had seen it, several years earlier, waiting for the Roses to finish a round of fund-raising with a consortium of billionaire adrenalin-junkies, so that the pair of them could build more rockets.

font face="Times New Roman">He gestured past Mitchell and out the window. ‘I never understood the appeal of going up in one of those things.’