Outside the train, the chilly air was redolent with the odours of oil and some other acrid chemical smell. He shrugged his jacket more closely about himself, then reached up to touch his scalp as the cold added to his misery by causing sharp stabbing pains all over it. He was also hungry and thirsty, not having eaten since they delved into the supplies aboard the aero they had used to travel here. He realized that the computer hardware in his skull, and the constant pain from the surgery employed to install it, had distanced him from his body to the point that he was neglecting it. He glanced at Hannah, who had made no complaints even though she must be as worn down as himself, but he could do nothing for either of them now.

‘Just play along,’ he said, as he pulled open the door into the mobile building before them and stepped up inside it.

Within lay a suiting room: spacesuits on hangers along one wall, test equipment against another, and various hoses trailing along the floor. He wanted them wearing suits but wasn’t sure about how he could achieve that if he was supposedly here as an inspector only. No one around but, lightly linked into nearby cams, he observed a technician now approaching down the entrance tunnel. Time now, he felt, to begin isolating this plane, to begin cutting it off from surrounding Govnet. Yet penetrating the plane was proving difficult, as if it was already partially isolated. Perhaps the spaceport authority had done this to prevent penetrations similar to the one that brought down the other craft. Now the technician stepped into view and Saul concentrated on him, trying to read his features through the constantly flashing lights.

‘Agent Green,’ he announced to the technician.

The man was shaven-headed, a scar running down from his forehead and over his right eye, which was a double-pupil engraft. He looked like he should be clad in an enforcer uniform rather than the orange tech overall he was wearing. He showed little reaction to Saul’s odd appearance. Perhaps seeing his own face in the mirror over many years had inured him to such sights.

‘You’re the inspector,’ he said.

‘I certainly am,’ Saul rasped. ‘And I want to start here with these.’ He gestured towards the suits, meanwhile searching local software for explanations of the suiting-up protocols, and how the suits worked. ‘Myself and my assistant are going to suit up.’

The man merely shrugged – you’re the boss – and said nothing, which annoyed Saul because now he had just found a justification for why he, as an inspector, wanted to don a suit. The suits possessed sophisticated comware that linked into the plane’s computer. He therefore intended to check this facet of the system for possible sabotage.