Someone grabbed hold of her chair and began turning it slowly. Hannah looked about her in confusion, then realized that the whole station must be revolving as, through the windows, she saw Earth itself begin sliding round.

Smith staggered briefly before dragging himself back to the console.

‘Good, that’s good,’ he said, gazing at the chaos now revealed on one screen, amidst conflicting forces. ‘Very good, Saul.’

What the hell was Saul up to?

Smith summoned up another image that showed a space plane nearly torn in half, and slowly falling away from the dock it had just crashed into. Hannah could see a couple of people out there in vacuum clad in smart business suits, vapour misting from their mouths.

‘Did you do that . . . sir?’ Langstrom enquired, his face suddenly appearing in a new window opening at the bottom of the screen.

‘No,’ replied Smith, ‘that was Alan Saul who, due to inadequate cell-block security, has escaped. However, he has managed nevertheless to destroy a space plane filled with treacherous delegates, and I see that he has also disrupted the main attack by Messina’s troops.’

‘Yeah, great, but he’s managed to “disrupt” our defences at the same time.’

Smith did not seem to be listening. By now he had summoned up another image on a different screen, this one showing space planes still hovering out in vacuum. ‘I think I know his—’

A great flash of light, and the screen went blank for a moment, yet the light still blazed in through the windows behind Hannah, feeling hot against the back of her neck. The screen image reappeared as autocontrast tried to make the image clear. Some of the space planes were now missing, while others seemed to be tumbling away beyond the perimeter of the Traveller engine’s fusion blast, though it was difficult to tell because they were rapidly disintegrating. Another of them tried to escape, till a detonation starting in its engine travelled up inside the craft to peel it open like a banana. Even as Hannah realized what was happening, the thrust of the massive engine made itself felt.

Half a gravity of thrust cut horizontally through Tech Central, and her chair shot backwards to crash into a console. Glancing aside, she saw the nearest technician actually pinned against the window above his console. Others were thrown from their seats, chairs and people all falling in the same direction, though Smith managed to stay put, clinging to his console like a drowning man grabbing a piece of floating timber. All of Tech Central seemed to tilt right over onto its edge, so that what had once been the floor now rose vertically like a wall.