She stared in silence at the bulkhead for several more seconds. ‘Shit,’ she said at length. ‘That’s just about right.’

‘Whatever’s about to happen on Earth is going to happen to Copernicus as well, and it’s going to be soon. So I need to shut the gates down before the same thing can happen to the colonies. I’m telling you this so you’ll understand why you can’t hang around once we get up there. You have to find your way through a gate as soon as possible, or you’ll be stranded.’

‘How sure are you that you need to do this?’ Lester demanded.

‘All I know,’ Saul said truthfully, ‘is that I’ve seen what’s going to happen to the Moon, and the only way it could have got there is via the Array.’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Lester. ‘It had to have come through the Array on the way to Earth, right? Maybe they had more of those artefacts stored up there in Copernicus, somewhere. Maybe they caused it?’

‘He’s got a point,’ said Mitchell. ‘You can’t deny it’s a possibility.’

‘Jesus, Mitch,’ Saul rounded on him, ‘don’t you think you’re clutching at straws?’

‘But it’s at least a possibility,’ said Lester, his expression pained.

Amy reached out and touched her husband’s shoulder. ‘No, Lester, what Saul’s saying makes sense. We can’t put our hope on a distant possibility. We have to think for the rest of the human race.’

‘Not all of our people have made a landing yet,’ Lester insisted, suddenly looking all of his years. ‘We already lost Ginny. What if the rest of them couldn’t get through in time?’

‘I’ve seen what’s happening back home – just like you have,’ she said, her voice gentle now. ‘Way I see it, we have a moral obligation to do everything we can to help Saul. I just wish we had a name for the thing causing all of this. Otherwise everything feels so . . .’ She shrugged ‘. . . so random.’

Saul glanced at Mitchell in time to see him shake his head, and push himself back up towards the tunnel leading into the lander.

‘If no more people are being allowed through the Array,’ said Saul, ‘then maybe you’re right, Amy. There’s too many of them for the colonies.’

Amy looked at him with old eyes. ‘Just tell me you don’t want to be the one to have to do this.’

‘I don’t want to be the one to have to do this,’ affirmed Saul, with all the feeling he could muster.

Saul made his way through to the lander, where he found Mitchell waiting.

‘What the hell was all that about?’ Saul demanded. ‘They’ve got every right to know what we’re intending to do.’