Hi, she said, as brightly as she could manage. Im kind of lost and I need to get downside as soon as possible. Ive got business in Aguirre and . . . well, Im really in a hurry.

A hurry? he said. Are you . . . are you with the relief teams?

Relief teams? she echoed.

The surgical teams, he said, his expression growing ever warier. I assume youre from that emergency medical unit they set up in Bay Five?

She had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

Exactly. She nodded with as much enthusiasm as she could humanly muster. She spread her hands, looking down at herself before flashing an apologetic grin at him that said, Well, will you look at the state of me. Im with the relief teams, but I need to get back down there and . . .

He nodded, visibly relaxing and gestured back the way he had come. Theres a shuttle just docking thats brought in more people. If you make it there in the next couple of minutes, you can hitch a ride back down.

Thank you! she said as cheerily as possible, and headed in the direction he had indicated, trying hard to think of where the hell she could go next, once she hit ground-side. It wasnt as if there was anyone down there who could help her, or who could . . .

Sarbakshian.

How could she have forgotten?

She felt a grin spreading across her face as she continued along the passageway.

EIGHTEEN

Megan

By the time Megan landed on Redstone less than an hour later, she had already managed to contact Sarbakshian and arrange a place to stay; somewhere, he assured her, where nobody would be able to find her.

On getting down to the surface, she found the spaceport in utter chaos. Redstone, she was beginning to understand, had recently suffered some kind of major disaster. Under the circumstances, it wasnt hard for her to slip away from the gaggle of relief workers whose shuttle she had joined, drawing in her wake a trail of puzzled or downright suspicious glances. But it was only when she managed to access the Tabernacle for the first time that she understood the enormity of what had happened here.

The bolt-hole Sarbakshian had located for her turned out to be an apartment near the centre of Aguirre, a city neighbouring the spaceport. She showered for a solid hour, meanwhile scraping up every detail she could about the disaster from local news feeds, before falling into a dead sleep and only waking again late the next morning.

She concocted some breakfast from the dried ingredients she found in a kitchen cupboard, then walked, stiff-legged and groggy, to a window seat. It offered a view across the pastel-coloured rooftops of the Rook, as this particular district of Aguirre was known.