Frustrated, he let it go. Something wrong, but not life-threatening. The situation irked him. He knew he must be overlooking something, some part of the spoiler that wasn't what it seemed. Yet the operation was so clear-cut.

As if shamed by its failure, his gland dried up.

The Sanger was creeping up to the dormitory, its big cans dominating the view through the windscreen. Event Horizon used three of them for its hundred-and-twenty-strong workforce, a third of Zanthus's total population.

Greg saw a Swearingen commuter back away from one of the Event Horizon cans, a windowless cylinder with spherical tanks strapped around both ends. Tiny stabs of white fire flickered from its thruster clusters.

Jeff Graham rolled the Sanger with a drumfire burst from the RCS thrusters. A huge Event Horizon logo slid past the windscreen; the peak of the flying V was missing, patched over with a rough square of hoary thermal foam. The RCS was firing almost continually. A screen on the flight console showed an image of the payload bay, with the airlock tube extended. A matching tube jutted out of the dormitory can, the two barely half a metre apart.

Contact was a small tremble, the whirring of electrohydrostatic actuators clamping the two airlock tubes together.

Jerry Masefield released his belt, and drifted up out of his seat, using the ceiling handholds to crawl down to the rear bulkhead. Greg pressed his belt's release, and cautiously pushed down with his palms. Victor Tyo and Isabel Curtis watched closely. He grinned at them and grasped one of ceiling handholds. His legs developed a momentum all of their own, pulling his torso along until he was lying flat against the ceiling.

Stomach muscles were the key, Greg decided, keep the body straight and rely on his arms to pull him about. He hauled himself towards the rear bulkhead, remembering to take inertia into account as he stopped.

There was a ripple of applause. The rest of the team were swimming out of their seats. Jerry Masefield had opened the airlock hatch and disappeared inside. Greg swung slowly round the rim and followed him into the can.

Greg couldn't quite figure out the section of the dormitory can he'd emerged into, a tunnel with a hexagonal cross-section, three and a half metres wide, bright biolum strips every five metres, hoops protruding everywhere. Logically, it ought to have been a connecting corridor, except it was full of people. They lingered near the walls, aligned with their feet towards him, a foot or hand hooked casually round the hoops, all of them wearing flightsuits and helmets. A large proportion were eating; their food resembled pizza sandwiches, the same pale spongy dough, tacky fillings. No crumbs, Greg realised, and no need for plates and cutlery. Twenty metres away, four exercise bikes were fixed to the walls, riders pedalling away furiously. There was a sign opposite the airlock, an old London Underground station strip: Piccadilly Circus.