‘Adventure,’ said Mitchell. ‘Doesn’t get much simpler than that.’

‘What’s wrong with VASIMRs, then?’

Mitchell chuckled. ‘Where’s the adventure in that?’

‘You sound like Jeff.’ Saul turned away from the window and let his head drop back against his seat. ‘Did I mention that I never forgave you for talking me into that sub-orbital jump?’

‘I didn’t talk you into it,’ Mitchell reminded him. ‘You just took pity on me after my brother died.’

‘You told me the experience would reaffirm my enthusiasm for life.’

Mitchell shrugged. ‘You sounded pretty enthusiastic to me, at the time. You were screaming all the way down.’

‘Yeah, well, I’m just glad it’s someone else who’ll be flying in that thing, instead of us.’

He glanced sideways at Mitchell and felt a frisson of alarm on seeing the look on his face.

‘We’re going up in a VASIMR, right?’

The corner of Mitchell’s mouth twitched. ‘We would be, except all the seats are taken.’

‘Who by?’

‘The ground control crew and their families. There are maybe a hundred of them, altogether, not including relations – all those responsible for the engineering, fuel supply, onboard systems and general maintenance. The ones that haven’t taken off already are going up as soon as we head up on board the Saturn.’

Before Saul could say anything more, a landing warning flashed, and the hopper began to decelerate hard. He watched buildings hurtle by, and a stretch of black tarmac blurring past, before the hopper’s engines came to a halt and it dropped down, with a gentle thump, next to what looked like some kind of administration building. Sam stood up and pushed open the hatch, letting sunlight spill into the aircraft’s interior.

The air outside tasted gritty, dry and furnace-hot. Saul shielded his eyes with one hand and glanced past the VASIMRs towards the Saturn rocket, clouds of steam now drifting down its sides. Centuries before, men had flown craft just like it all the way to the Moon and back, but the development of the wormhole technology had put paid to almost all of that.

‘Car’s on its way,’ announced the pilot, indicating an open-top vehicle approaching from the administration building.

‘You’l’s oing up in one of those?’ Saul gestured towards the VASIMRs.

Sam nodded. ‘Soon as we get lock-in from the orbital powersats, yeah.’

‘I rode in one once before,’ said Saul. ‘It was a pretty bumpy ride.’

Sam shrugged. ‘Sometimes that’s down to the weather conditions. They’ve been taking off from here round the clock, over the past couple of days. The ones parked over there’ll be the last to go up. You know the Saturn’s going to be much, much bumpier, right?’

‘No,’ Saul sighed, as the empty car stopped beside them, ‘I didn’t know that.’