One pace—and he stepped out of one of a bank of runcibles on the planet Viridian in the Mendax planetary system, in the Chirat cluster, 173 light-years from Samarkand.

The containment sphere was empty. But for the lack of crowds here, he might well have been stepping out in the Samarkand sphere again. Quince and light-cargo runcibles had been standardized for half a century; the big difference here was that this sphere was one of many, as had once been the case on Samarkand and as, hopefully, would be the case again when Chaline finished her work. As he stepped off the pedestal the dracomen came out behind him, then Thorn, Aiden and Cento.

‘Viridian?’ Cormac asked, as of the air.

The voice of this new runcible AI had a maturity Samarkand lacked. Irritatingly it still had that patronizing tone, though.

‘Sergeant Polonius Arn is waiting for you with a carrier. The weapons and supplies you detailed will be onboard. He will take you to a rendezvous with the ES regulars. They are waiting at a place called Motford, and from there we can head straight for your destination. It’s one Viridian day’s journey away, just a few hours more than solstan.’

‘What about here, when that thing runs?’ asked Thorn.

The AI replied before Cormac could say anything. ‘In one day’s time there will be an evacuation of this port, the surrounding area, and Westown, because of a fluxing antimatter-containment field. From that moment all runcibles here will only open to Samarkand. The Samarkand AI informs me that, from there, newly arrived personnel are being sent back to Minostra. The remaining technicians will return to Hubris, ostensibly to carry out a refit. The reason given is that another crisis has developed at the outlink station of Danet.’

‘There,’ said Cormac, ‘sufficient, don’t you think?’

Thorn nodded his agreement. They left the containment sphere.

The embarkation lounge was not crowded, but it seemed to be kilometres long. The four of them gathered round the dracomen and walked quickly to the far doors. Cormac thought that the strange glances they were getting were due to their uniforms rather than the bird-walking dracomen. He noted, with a quick sideways flick of his eyes, two dodgy-looking individuals loitering by a drinks dispenser, and surreptitiously reached down and keyed the start-up sequence into shuriken. Before he had taken two more paces, shuriken’s holster was humming against his wrist.

‘You see them?’ he asked Thorn.

‘I saw them,’ Thorn replied.

‘Stay alert. We might be walking into it right now.’

‘I’m always alert,’ Thorn said, a touch of annoyance in his voice.