Jarvellis coughed. Her lungs were filling with fluid. Her entire body ached and her left side was a wide line of pain. She felt dizzy and sick. She nodded her head, then turned it to one side. Jeth cautiously stepped in close and pressed the blocker to the back of her neck. The fibres of neural shunt went in, and blessed numbness rolled down her body in a wave. Tull pressed buttons on a small control panel. Jarvellis did not feel the elevator move. She only knew it was coming to the centre of the station, when panic that the floor had fallen away pulled her out of the haze. She was weightless.

Now the Outlinkers felt safe, they quickly got hold of her and manoeuvred her through the sliding door into a tubular tunnel. Even this exercise was difficult for them, for though she was weightless she still had inertia. It took the both of them hauling at her to overcome it and get her moving. The walls of the tunnel were diamond-patterned to offer grip for feet and hands. Interspersed at regular intervals were rails and catch-loops. Sinking back into the haze, Jarvellis watched the little robot swinging past on the latter of these like an iron gibbon.

They brought her eventually to a curved room with no definite floor or ceiling. There was equipment on every surface and she was relieved to see a modern medbot, cell-welder and all those other devices that equated the repair of the human body with that of any other machine. They pulled her to the weightless version of a surgical table, a frame ringed with adjustable clamps, and there secured her in place. Tull pulled back the dressing on her breast, while Jeth set the medbot to work on her thigh.

‘I’ll do my best, but you’ll need to see a cosmetic surgeon,’ he said. ‘You’ll need regrowth and reconstructive surgery. Too much mammary fat is missing.’

Jarvellis tried to speak, but hardly anything came out of her dry mouth. Tull leaned closer and she tried again. Eventually he got the gist of her request. She heard him speak hurriedly to his wife, but could not distinguish the words. There came a humming sound: some sort of ultrasound scanner.

‘Still alive,’ Tull said. ‘We’ll make sure the foetus stays connected.’

Jarvellis tried to speak again, and once more he leant in close to hear her.

‘All right,’ he said, and made an adjustment to the nerve-blocker. The numbness rose from her neck and rolled her into oblivion.

* * *