William tried to get to the heli-deck, but that was a waste of time. The stairwells were jammed with people, and the heat was already intense. So Jackie Brown turned and said, “Come on, boys,” and he started to push his way deeper into the rig.

Eventually they got out through the drill deck, to a lower level which took them out to the foghorn platform. William blinked in the sudden light, breathed in fresh air. The sea was calm, the day bright. People were running everywhere.

There was no sign of rescue, no choppers. There was a gigantic pall of black smoke, though, hanging over the eastern horizon.

“Shite,” somebody said. “They must have nuked Glasgow.”

William could see the gas flare, the system that burned off the inflammable gases produced by the thimblefuls of crude oil that was all they had managed to dredge up, here in the Channel between Britain and Ireland. The flare was burning furiously, much more intensely than usual.

And then, as William watched, the flare exploded. The light was dazzling, brighter than the sun, and you could feel the energy pouring out of it.

The bang was followed quickly by heavy, mortar-like crumps coming from the heart of the rig.

Jackie Brown was standing beside him. “That’s the bloody diesel tanks,” Jackie hissed. He was nursing burned hands.

…And now a fireball rose with a kind of majesty through the heart of the rig. It was the central gas jet. William could hear the tearing of metal, the cracking roar of explosion after explosion, as the rig tore itself to pieces.

The deck beneath him tipped — the whole rig was coming apart — and now, oh God, some of the deck plates were buckling.

The flames were towering over his head.

Jackie Brown clapped William’s shoulder. Jackie, in his fifties, had seen it all before. “Fry and die, or jump and try,” he shouted, and he jumped without hesitation off the tipping side.

There was oil burning on the surface of the water, which was all of a hundred feet below. The heat was already unbearable — William thought of Jenny, and wondered where she was now. He wondered if he should take off his boots first. He jumped.

Henry was pressed back into his couch.

The ignition was a sharp rattle, the engine noise a dull roar, transmitted through the fabric of the Soyuz. Suddenly Arkady’s knee, pressing against his, felt heavy, unbearably bony.

He heard a clattering noise from above as some loose piece of gear fell through the orbital module. The pressure was heavy; he knew it was only a fraction of Earth-normal gravity, but, after three days of weightlessness, it felt like five G.

Arkady and Geena scanned their controls. “Pressures coming up nicely,” said Geena.