I grinned. That netting, that monstrous grandiosity, was typical Ghost. It was proof that this Jovian system was indeed a Ghost pit - a new pit, an unopened pit.

Which was why its discovery had sent such a stir through the small, scattered community of Ghost hunters. And why L’Eesh and I were prepared to fire ourselves into it without even looking where we were going. We were determined to be the first.

Already we were sweeping down towards one of the moons. Beneath a dusty atmosphere the surface was brick red, a maze of charred pits.

‘Very damaged landscape,’ I said. ‘Impact craters? Looks as if it’s been bombed flat . . .’

‘You know,’ said L’Eesh laconically, ‘there’s a bridge between those moons.’

At first his words made no sense. Then I peered up. He was right: a fine arch leapt from the surface of one moon and crossed space to the other.

‘Lethe,’ I swore. I couldn’t understand how I hadn’t seen it immediately. But then, you don’t look for such a thing.

L’Eesh grunted. ‘I hope you have a strong stomach, Raida. Hily never did. Like mother like daughter—’

He had me off balance. ‘What about my mother?’

‘Bogeys.’

And suddenly they were on us, a dozen angular craft that looped around the flitter, coming from over our heads like falling fists.

L’Eesh yanked at the stick. We flipped backwards and sped away. But the bogeys were faster. I cowered, an ancient, useless reflex; I wasn’t used to being in a dogfight that humans aren’t dominating.

‘Remarkable accelerations,’ murmured L’Eesh. ‘An automated defence?’

The bogeys surrounded us in a tidy cloud, and hosed us with a crimson haze.

‘There is nothing we can do.’ L’Eesh sat stoically at his controls; blood-red light glinted from the planes of his shaven scalp.

Abruptly the bogeys tipped sideways and squirted away. As the mist cleared I let out my breath.

At first it seemed the unexpected assault had done us no harm. We were still descending to the moon, which was flattening out from a closed-in crimson ball to a landscape beneath us.

Now my softscreen filled with the mournful face of Pohp, the agent who had brought us both here, calling from the Spline. But her image was broken up, her words indistinct: classification of . . . Ghost . . . vacuum energy adjustment, which . . .

A warning chimed.

‘Raida, help me.’ L’Eesh was battling his controls. ‘We’ve lost telemetry from the portside drive.’

It was worse than that. Through the crystal hull I saw a drive pod tumbling away, surrounded by a cloud of frozen fluids and bits of hull material.

I tried my controls. With half our drive gone, they felt soggy.

I looked up to that impossible bridge, a line drawn across the sky, aloof from our petty struggles. There are times when you just can’t believe what you are seeing. A survival mechanism, I guess.

More alarms.