‘I did, though I’ve yet to see what use it will be to us.’

‘You will.’ Var turned away from him. ‘Carol?’

‘Nothing so dramatic,’ she said. ‘If they blow out all the windows, as you suggest, it’ll equalize pressure so that all bulkhead doors linking the outer sections of Hex Three can be opened, whilst anyone still in the internal compartments and corridors will be trapped.’

‘It’s what I would do,’ agreed Var. ‘If they blow out all the windows they can hunt us down in the outer sections, but if we’re in one of the inner sections after that, we’d be trapped and no longer a problem.’

Carol nodded, then reached into her hip pouch for a long, pressurized bottle. It took Var a moment to recognize it but, when she did, she felt a stirring of macabre amusement. ‘Contact adhesive,’ she said.

Carol nodded. ‘A Martian mix based on Terran hyperglues. Whilst exposed to Martian air, it remains in gel form, but the moment it is sealed against atmosphere, for example when sandwiched between metal and a gloved hand, it takes only about two seconds to set. I’ve smeared some on the exterior frames of any unbroken windows, also on the window frames and bulkhead door handles of the sections you’ve already opened to atmosphere.’

‘What about the door handles inside the pressurized sections, like here or in the garage?’ Lopomac asked.

‘In Earth atmosphere the glue oxidizes in about three minutes,’ Carol replied. ‘I could maybe fix that once we see them coming, but only then.’

Var considered that. Once Ricard and the rest made a move, assuming they used a crawler, they could get themselves here within ten minutes. Only ten minutes for Carol to spray glue on every bulkhead door handle within reach, then get safely back to the reactor room.

‘Too much of a risk.’ She shook her head. ‘You’d be very exposed and there’s a chance they could either kill you or cut you off from us before you got back to the reactor room.’ She called up a schematic of Hex Three on the computer screen. ‘Including Ricard himself, there’ll be seven of them,’ she decided. ‘He won’t know for certain where we are inside the hex, so he’ll keep one or two men outside to snipe at us if we try to escape. They’ll blow each remaining window in turn, searching each room after its window has been blown. Almost certainly they’ll throw in grenades before entering, and probably spray the interiors with gunfire too.’

‘But they can’t come through the garage windows, because there aren’t any,’ observed Carol.

‘Precisely,’ Var glanced at her. ‘Which is why I wanted Lopomac here to set up a booby trap.’