The docking pillar, one of five sticking out from the rim, was pentagonal in section, each external face of it wide enough to encompass the largest type of space plane. As the plane settled against it, she could just about discern the docking clamps engaging underneath it. A belly lock in the plane could be opened to the inside of the docking pillar for loading and unloading cargo, whilst a separate passenger airlock would be engaged via an extending tube. She focused on the interior of the dock, wondering if Smith’s reliance on such views showed how less able he was than Saul, who had no need for such extra aids.

The interior view showed four of Langstrom’s troops making their way alongside the cargo train that serviced the dock, and then descending an internal face of the pillar itself. Ahead of them emerged one end of the passenger embarkation tube, a cylinder three metres high and two wide. As the soldiers approached, the two doors in its side opened to show three figures clad in VC suits, and upside-down. They instantly pushed themselves out, flipping over to come down upright on the floor, legs bending to absorb the shock so that their boots did not disengage. They then moved back-to-back, checking their surroundings.

To one side of the passenger tube, a pair of long double doors hinged up from the floor, opening directly into the belly of the plane. Out flew an object a couple of metres across, looking not unlike a balled-up mass of water pipes.

Smith hissed with anger, and immediately readerguns opened fire, sending the three men tumbling away, but seemingly uninjured. The balled-up thing opened, into a chaotic collection of robotic arms terminating in twin-barrelled guns which at once began firing, so it seemed rather like a faming tumbleweed. Munitions debris spread out in a cloud as readerguns exploded all around the dock. Then, even as the onslaught diminished, the three figures in vacuum combat suits righted themselves and started firing too – at the four personnel who had come to greet them. Hannah found herself flinching as she watched bullets tearing into their bodies, jerking them about helplessly, spewing chunks of flesh and bone out in every direction.

‘Low-impact ammunition in the readerguns,’ observed Hannah. ‘You should have thought of that.’

Smith glared round at her and, by the look on his face, she half expected him to come over and hit her.

‘They were dispensable,’ he replied coldly.

Did he mean the human troops who had just died or the readerguns themselves?

In the dock itself, more troops in VC gear piled out of the airlock, as the big robot settled quietly to the floor. One squad of about twenty troops moved swiftly to the base of the dock and through, down beside the train there, whilst others began removing equipment from the space plane’s hold. Smith watched this activity for some minutes before speaking again.