He saw the world outside through the coloured glass of the old window. No sunlit woodland, no forest glade, no blue skies, no cobalt edge of the Karanine ridge in the afternoon haze. No Gershom.

Outside was a grey desert. Dunes of dust stretched away as far as he could see, broken by outcrops of rock that looked like the calcified vertebrae of long-dead, leviathan creatures. A thin wind lifted powder from the crests of the dunes, winnowing it into the air like sea spray.

The sky was black and starless. A bone-white curve, like an immense tusk of light, rose from the horizon into the sky. It was a moon, or a close neighbour planet, rising in the sky in three-quarter shadow, impossibly close.

The black void sky had one feature: a blue-white whorl that radiated the light he’d first taken to be the sun’s rays. The whorl was immense. A nebula, or some kind of stellar vortex, gleaming fiercely like the negative image of a black hole. Trailing arms of frosty light and energy clouds radiated from the heart of it.

It looked to Drusher like a vast eye gazing back at him.

Drusher let it look. He held its stare and returned it, unblinking.

Then he lowered himself onto his heels and turned away from the window.

‘All right,’ he said to Nayl. ‘I have a little perspective now. I’ve got my head together.’

‘You sure?’

‘Positive, Nayl. Lead on. Let’s find the others.’

Nayl hesitated.

‘I only ask because… you groaned again.’

‘I didn’t,’ said Drusher.

‘I’m sorry, but you did. Involuntary I’m sure, but–’

Drusher held up his hand sharply.

Nayl had heard it too. A soft, stifled moan.

‘I told you it wasn’t me,’ Drusher said.

‘It came from the hallway,’ said Nayl. ‘Come on.’

‘Just calm the hell down and let me think,’ said Voriet.

Deputy Cronyl glared at him. His face was flushed, and he looked set to throw a punch at the interrogator.

‘Please,’ said Voriet softly. ‘I know this is very distressing. I am fighting to process it myself.’

‘But how can we be here all of a sudden?’ Cronyl snarled.

‘Just give me a moment,’ said Voriet. ‘Just a moment…’

He looked at the ancient machinery spinning in the twilight around them. Such an extraordinary device. Could it be? Could the rumours, the uncorroborated intelligence… Could they all have been true?

The heretic scum actually possessed this thing, and it was working?

This, he decided with a wince of grief, this secret was why Thea had died.

‘Here’s what we’re going to do,’ he said, turning to Cronyl.

Something slammed into Cronyl and flipped him. The deputy landed on the metal deck with a yowl of pain. A savage spin-kick connected with Voriet’s jaw, snapping him off his feet.