‘Now, wait⁠ —’ August found that he was talking to nobody. He sighed and turned to Hoff. ‘Do you think that Greeneye would care that that was obviously a trap?’

‘No.’ Hoff produced his pistol and stuck it under Joan’s chin. ‘But it’s best to be ready. Just in case he can’t chop his way out of it.’

Benny ran frantically through the forest, uphill along the track that led up on to the downs. She had intended to fire off a couple of rounds against the dome’s surface, but the intended effect had been achieved, they were chasing her anyway.

Great. The good bit was that the shattered forest was full of cover. The bad bit was that it was correspondingly hard to run through, even though Benny had carefully selected her path beforehand.

Behind her, Greeneye and Serif were crashing through the undergrowth, trying to bring their weapons to bear on her. If they stopped for a minute and thought about why they were pursuing her, then this was all going to fall apart. She glanced back and saw the look on Greeneye’s face. No, actually, he seemed to know exactly why he was doing this.

She hurdled the stile that led up on to the hills, the chalky path shining slightly in the moonlight, and, struggling for breath, sprinted uphill. She had to be over the ridge in, oh, two minutes, otherwise they’d get a clear shot.

Laying this out had seemed so simple compared to actually doing it. At least Rocastle seemed to have lost a lot of his bullishness. Alton had come into his own, too, working out the timings. It had come down to which one of them could best achieve them. Rocastle had wanted to, but that was ridiculous, and in all conscience, Bernice couldn’t send one of the boys to do this, not even Hutchinson.

Even with her beer belly, which she was personally rather fond of and of which Guy had been terribly enamoured, she was going to be faster than any of the other adults.

She made it over the ridge in one minute fifty, and no energy bolts whizzed past her. She was under cover for the next five minutes.

Then it was a sprint up to the monument.

‘Why,’ hissed Serif, ‘are we doing this?’

‘Because of her, because of Aphasia, just because!’ Greeneye growled. The two Aubertides were pounding their way uphill, burdened by their heavy weapons.

‘Having sexual congress with one more human will not bring Aphasia back!’

‘Maybe not, but it will make me feel better!’ The aliens skidded down the chalk slopes into the long ridge that led around the lip of the downs, and saw Bernice vanishing around the curve ahead of them in the darkness.