Saul reached the dome and burst through the outer door and on to the ice. The cold came as a brute physical shock that brought him to a sudden halt, gasping as he filled his lungs with freezing air. Saul was wearing nothing more than a light business suit, barely sufficient to keep him warm on a January afternoon in New York or London, let alone amid Kepler’s half-frozen oceans.

Hands shaking and teeth chattering, he fumbled Hsingyun’s mine detector out of a pocket. Peering across the ice, he felt a surge of overwhelming relief when he saw the ’copter was still exactly where they had left it. He tried to estimate how long it would take him to work his way past the minefield, and how long it would take the men chasing him to catch up. Then he decided to think of something else.

Hsingyun, he remembered, had pressed a red button . . . here.

Ah, thought Saul, as a screen blinked into life on the device, accompanied by a beep. He saw a grid of dots appear on the screen, a blinking zigzag line superimposed over it. A circle at the centre of the grid clearly represented the dome.

He walked a few metres forward, and the zigzag line began to blink faster, finally changing colour as he found himself standing almost directly on top of a buried mine, its dark shape visible just millimetres beneath the ice.

Still grasping the Koch in his other hand, he stepped forward, half convinced he was about to get blown to bits – but nothing happened. He walked faster, then began to run, stopping only when the screen began to blink again.

Hearing shouts from behind, he turned and fired in the direction of the dome, but wide of the mark. Two figures that had just emerged from the dome’s entrance ducked back inside.

It occurred to Saul that if one of his pursuers thought to shoot at the mines to either side of him, that it might just set them off. He crouched low as he ran, filled with an overwhelming sense of urgency, keenly aware of just how good a target his dark suit made him against the ice.

More shots came, and Saul stumbled forward, landing on his knees. For a moment he thought he’d only slipped on the ice, then realized with numb shock that he had been hit in the shoulder. He twisted around, raised the pistol and once again fired towards the dome, but his hands were shaking too badly for him to be able to take proper aim.

Get to the ’copter, you fucking idiot.

T worst thing – the nasty thing – about pykrete bullets was that they melted, leaving a mass of difficult-to-extract and potentially poisonous cellulose fibres buried deep in the tissue of your body. You didn’t need a fatal wound to be in serious trouble.