At the catering unit Cormac said simply, ‘Coffee,’ as the machine now recognized his voice and would provide it exactly how he liked. He inspected the cup of white sludge it had provided, then fully keyed in his request. Another one to add to Chaline’s list. When he finally got the drink he was after, he returned to Chaline’s table and sat down.

‘Right, tell me, what’s the activity?’

The screen changed to show Dragon, and Chaline looked at Cormac in annoyance. He shrugged apologetically, then returned his attention to the screen. Ripples were travelling all round the surface of the alien.

Hubris said, ‘One hour ago there was an energy emission directed away from the Andellan system. It was full-spectrum lased light. The reading was in the giga-joule range. If the same pattern is being followed this time round, another emission will occur in fifty-four minutes. I am moving the ship to the other side of the planet, and have left just one observer probe.’

At that particular moment Cormac felt he would rather be on the other side of the galaxy. Was Dragon getting ready to destroy them? If it was they were in serious trouble.

‘Anything else?’

‘I am also picking up emissions across all spectrums. Some of them have some internal logic and mathematical coherency, but I have not as yet been able to translate. These emissions are directionless.’

‘OK,’ said Cormac, and the screen flicked back to the scene Chaline had been observing. He studied her and noted how she was deliberately keeping her face free of expression.

‘All yours,’ he said with a smile.

‘Thank you so much,’ she said, then pushed her chair back and stood up. ‘Unfortunately some of us have work to do.’

Cormac made a gesture of appeasement, but Chaline walked away. He couldn’t decide if she was angry or amused. Involvement, he thought, trying not to feel guilty. He sat there sipping for the next few minutes, then called up again the scene from the probe.

Dragon was rippling even faster now, and its spherical shape was being distorted.

‘Hubris, are you sure we’re safe here?’ he asked.

The AI’s reply was succinct. ‘No.’

The fifty-four-minute mark passed. Sixty minutes was reached, sixty-five . . . The flash momentarily blacked out the picture from the probe. When it came back, Dragon was spherical again, the ripples moving across its surface just as Cormac had first witnessed.

‘Hubris, where did that one go?’

‘The planet’s surface. Imaging in . . . the probe has it.’

The picture showed a spreading black cloud with hellish red fires at the centre of it.

‘That was Mount Prometheus,’ said Hubris.

Cormac shook his head in amazement. Enoida Deacon would not be displaced from her niche in the history books, but what the hell was Dragon doing?

‘I have picked up something from Dragon. It’s in all human languages.’

‘Let’s hear the English version then.’