DAY 23

 

 

The sun dawned red and the Canopy glowed. The jungle erupted, once more, into outraged wakefulness.

Sorcha stood at the edge of the precipice, body armour on, helmet shucked back, and looked down and across at the beauty of sunrise over New Amazon.

“It’s glorious, isn’t it?” Saunders said.

“Have you filmed it?”

“Of course.”

“It’ll make a wonderful documentary.”

Saunders marvelled at the view, and at the stupidity of Sorcha.

“They’ll never make a movie of this planet, Sorcha,” he said gently. “That bridge is burned.”

“I guess,” she conceded.

“You look gorgeous.”

“Do I?”

Sorcha looked like shit: like she’d fallen into a quicksand swamp, and walked for days in the blazing skin-searing heat, and for long nights with her face lashed by icy winds, then been swallowed alive by a monstrous hedge and spat out again; but yes, she also looked gorgeous. “Would I lie about a thing like that?” Saunders said gallantly.

Sorcha remembered a few things about Professor Carl Saunders. He was nearly six hundred years old; he had been divorced sixteen times; he had once been accused of bigamy. And he was famous for his charm, and womanising zeal.

“Hmm,” she said.

“He’s mad, you know,” Saunders told her. “Hooperman. Or rather, he’s become mad, over the centuries. The Andrew Hooperman I knew was an angry and vengeful and, let’s face it, frankly annoying bastard. But he would never have done all this. He would never have massacred innocent men and women. So Hooperman must have gone mad, it’s the only explanation.”

Sorcha shrugged. “Whatever.”

“Which is tragic if you think about —”

“Skip the fucking philosophy. How do we kill him?” Sorcha said bluntly.

“We can’t, if he’s a Ghost. He’s not alive, he’s incorporeal, he’s beyond our power to hurt him. So all we can do is smash and obliterate every single Doppelganger Robot on the planet. And then we have to rebuild a civilisation without robots, and without AI. Because then, Hooperman will have no way of attacking us. He’ll be a spirit, without flesh, without metal, sans everything.”

“That sounds like a plan,” Sorcha said, and felt the breeze on her cheeks, and exulted in anticipation of war to come.

“It’s great, seeing all of you back with your science projects,” said Mia with a shy laugh.

“It’s what we’re here for! We’re Scientists, for heaven’s sake!” Ben told her. “That’s what that idiot Anderson never understood.”

“You’re right. Absolutely right. I wish I —” She broke off, embarrassed.

“What?” he prompted, gently.

“Well, I envy you, really,” Mia said, disarmingly. “I’d love to have been a Scientist. I was always hopeless at that stuff, I flunked my maths degree. So I admire people who can do maths and science without, you know.” She grinned. “A brain implant and things.”

“Oh there’s no shame in getting answers from a brain implant,” said Ben, with ostentatious generosity.

“Still, I’m trying to train myself to think more scientifically,” said Mia. “So — can I just ask —” She conjured up her virtual screen, and was presented with an endless array of photographs of skeletons of New Amazonian animals.

“— you to explain to me,” she said, “about the two sorts of vertebrate?”

He smiled. “Of course,” he said. “Well, where shall I begin?” And he began, using the photographs on his virtual screen to illustrate his points.

“This is Type A: creatures with a bonelike vertebra, or double vertebra, or triple vertebra, or those with a latticelike vertebra made, strangely, of copper. This is a good example of Type A,” he said, tapping the mid-air image with his finger. “And this is a Juggernaut, with a copper lattice infrastructure. And this is a Basilisk.”

“And Type B?”

“Has anyone ever told you,” said Ben gently, “that you’re a wonderful, warm, special, sexy woman?”

Mia laughed, a lovely bell-like laugh, which she had copied from Mary Beebe because it was so cute. “Not nearly enough people!” she admitted, smiling.

“You like men, don’t you?” Ben continued.

“Actually, I’m gay,” Mia told him.

“But you like flirting with men.”

“I’m not a flirt!” she protested, and laughed another bell-like laugh.

“And you like telling men you’re gay, because they immediately have an image of you naked with another woman, and that turns them on.”

Mia’s smile faltered. She held back on the bell-like laugh.

There was something not right about Ben’s tone; was he mocking her?

“But you’re not,” said Ben, “not really.”

“I’m sorry, Ben?” said Mia, baffled.

“People think you are, but you’re not,” explained Ben. “You’re not wonderful at all, or warm, or special. Far from it. You’re mediocre. Tediously average. Deplorably pointless. And you’re not sexy, either,” he continued, in the same gentle tones. “You’re not even highly sexed. Sex is something you endure, but it gives you no pleasure. Because you’re emotionally frigid,” he said, still gently. “Aren’t you?”

She blinked. Something had gone badly wrong here.

“You’re sad,” said Ben. “Sad. Empty. Pathetic. People feel sorry for you, don’t they, Mia? Or rather, sometimes they do. But usually they just think you’re a sluttish, stupid, manipulative bitch.”

The walls and floor were collapsing in Mia’s world. She’d wanted to win Ben’s friendship. Why was he taunting her like this?

“That’s not true,” she replied, pathetically.

“You act like a whore. You flirt with men and with women, with total lack of shame. You’re insincere. And you ingratiate yourself with people,” Ben explained. “Don’t you? Hmm? You’re like a chameleon. But there’s no real you, is there? You’re just a nothing, a sycophant. But the truth is, when your back is turned, people laugh at you.”

Mia flushed, stifling her rage, knowing it was all true.

“But don’t take it personally,” Ben continued, in calm, reasonable tones. “It’s just the way you are. Some people have oodles of charisma and sex appeal. But there’s only so much to go around, isn’t there?”

“Fuck off, Ben.”

“Ah. I’ve struck a chord.”

“No, you haven’t!” She didn’t know how to counter him: denying what he had said felt like an impossible task. “I was just asking you,” she said tensely, “about what passes for bone on this godforsaken —”

“I’d really hate to be you, Mia,” Ben crooned at her. “You’re so utterly fucking useless. But I am, really, I’m fond of you.” Ben stroked her hair, teasing some strands away from her face, sending shivers down her body, but of hate, not desire. “But don’t worry your pretty little head about the science,” he told her. “You just work on your cooking skills, and keeping yourself pretty and cheerful and being nice company. Because you know what? You’re going to be a Mummy soon, aren’t you? You’re going to have dozens and dozens of little babies, and that will be your role in life from now, until you die.”

“I’m — looking forward to that,” Mia said coldly, her heart in hiding.

Saunders was on his knees, inspecting some insectoid creatures with his visor magnifier.

“Are we done?” asked Sorcha.

“Not nearly done.”

“I’m bored.”

“How can you be bored?” he marvelled. He beckoned her to look. “You see that rock?”

“No.”

“Look. The rock.”

She bent down and looked. She used the magnifier and did an ultrasound scan. “It’s alive.”

“It’s alive.”

“So it’s not a rock.”

“It’s not a rock.”

“So, who gives a fuck?”

“It’s a previously undiscovered life-form,” Saunders told her. “A new genus, a new species.”

“Does it move?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you polish it, and put it on a necklace?”

“It’s a living creature, Sorcha.”

“It’s kind of a nice colour,” she admitted. She picked up the rock. It was red, like a ruby the size of a thumb. As she moved it, patterns of light appeared on the rock. “It would look pretty neat on a necklace.”

“Put it back.”

The rock evaporated. Sparkles tumbled from her fingers. “I killed it.”

“Maybe not. Maybe that’s part of its life cycle.”

“Let’s go back, huh, spend some time in the sack? Or do I mean, on the rock? Whatever.” She laughed.

“It was so wrong,” Saunders said.

“What was wrong?”

“What we were planning to do on New Amazon. It was evil.”

The blank look in Sorcha’s eyes alarmed Saunders. He persisted.

“Rocks that dissolve into sparkles. The millions of life-forms. The Aldiss trees, the Rat-Insects, the Flesh-Webs, the Juggernauts, the Exploding-Trees, the Gryphons — do you really think I could bear to kill all that?”

The truth hit Sorcha hard. “You always intended to do this. The fake attack on Xabar, blowing up Juno, the Depot.”

Saunders nodded, hiding a smug smile. “Hooperman forced my hand. But yes, this was always the plan. I’ve been preparing for it for the last two years. I built a missile silo, I built the Depot, I bought antimatter, I did all that I did, in order to save New Amazon.”

“All those people died!”

“Not my fault. Hooperman killed them. With my original plan, no one would have died. The missile attack was intended to be all sound and fury, killing no one, signifying nothing — that’s a quotation by the way. But I needed an excuse to justify destroying Juno.”

“That’s some elaborate scheme.”

“I’m the man who spent forty years devising a way to merge chess and Go. This, by comparison, was simple.”

They walked back to their camp. A cloud swirled above them, creating dark and light patterns in the air, then condensing into an oval shape, then sweeping away fast. Without even realising he was doing it, Saunders subvocalised a description of the cloud patterns for his MI, and speculated that it might be some kind of aerial life-form. So much to —

Sorcha interrupted his thoughts: “So the Gryphons are sentient, huh?”

“Yes.”

“How —” She screamed.

“What?”

“My father. My father! He’s right there.” She stopped in her tracks, and pointed madly into space. Saunders smiled. Behind them, Isaac cawed.

“I see nothing.”

“He’s there!” Sorcha could see him, tall, brooding, angry, just as he always was in life.

“He’s not there. It’s an illusion. His image is in your memory. The Gryphon plucked it out, made it manifest.”

“He was thinner than that, in real life,” she said accusingly, staring at the hollow-faced man who was staring accusingly back at her.

“Show me the security perimeter,” Ben said frostily to Private Clementine McCoy.

“Yes, sir.” She walked him through it. “We have four cameras here, four here. Three sentries on duty at any one time.”

“You use the Scientists as sentries, don’t you?”

“Yes, Sergeant Anderson told us to do that. It gives us a bit more time to —”

“Don’t you realise the Scientists have work to do? Important work.”

“I appreciate that, but Sergeant Anderson said —”

“Complex, unfathomable work. Work you could never begin to comprehend. Do you have a PhD, Private?”

“I have a BA. In Military Engineering. I —”

“I said, do you have a PhD? Do you know what that is? Can you do a Fourier Analysis? Do you grasp the topology of N-space? Name the atomic mass of four fundamental particles. You can’t, can you?”

“Give me a —”

“Don’t do a search, you good for nothing waste of fucking space.”

“No, sir.”

“You’re a good for nothing waste of fucking space, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.” She was comfortable with this level of abuse.

“In future, don’t be so fucking useless.”

“No, sir.”

“And wipe that stupid smile off your face.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re like a little automaton, aren’t you,” said Ben, marvelling. “All I have to do is wind you up.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Take your armour off.”

“Yes, sir.”

One, two, three, four — it was a bewilderingly fast kit change. Clementine stood before him in vest and knickers, sweat trickling down her skin, past the goosebumps that sprang up on her flesh in the weirdly chill breeze.

Ben retracted his helmet. He took off his right gauntlet. Clementine stood to attention, semi-naked, utterly composed.

Ben kissed her, and tongued her, and touched her breasts with his one bare hand, then gripped her arse and squeezed. Clementine allowed it all, still standing to attention. She hated it, but this too was fairly standard military protocol.

“We may have rebels in our midst. I want you to kill them.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Will you do that?”

“Yes, sir. Just name them, sir.”

Ben grinned, a slow unfolding grin of delight. “In due course. Dismissed.”

“Yes, sir.”

Sorcha’s father vanished.

“So, what do you say?” Saunders asked her.

“About what?”

“About joining me in my mission to save New Amazon.”

“We’re marooned, had you forgotten? What’s to save, from what?”

“Before Juno exploded, it would have sent out a Mayday signal. Earth will send a rescue party.”

“It’ll be at least a hundred years before troops arrive,” Sorcha pointed out.

“That’s not so very long, in the scale of things,” Saunders retorted. “And once they arrive, they’ll terraform the planet according to the original plan.”

Sorcha thought hard. “What are you asking me to do?”

“I’m asking you to join with me,” Saunders told her, “to build a garrison planet, and fight the Earth expeditionary force when it arrives. To protect this beautiful planet.”

“You want me to take arms against the Galactic Corporation?”

“I want you to build an army that can fight them.”

Sorcha was stunned. Then incredulous.

“What army?” she mocked. “There are only eleven survivors. Even if we all start having babies, there won’t be —”

“Caw,” said Isaac, and Sorcha had another vision of her father, staring at her, accusingly, blood trickling from his eyes, dying. She shuddered, and her father’s body ruptured and he turned into a pool of water and the water glistened, and it turned into a floating globe. The planet of New Amazon.

“Ah,” said Sorcha, looking at Isaac, and the thousands of Gryphons in flight above her.

“Ah, indeed,” said Saunders, and smiled, with faith and hope and rich anticipation of the years to come, as the vast flock of Gryphons above them blackened the sky.

“There,” he told her, “is your army.”

“You miss him terribly, don’t you?” said Ben to Mary Beebe, as she filled the oxygen tanks with air catalysed from seawater.

“I don’t like to talk about it,” she told him curtly.

Ben didn’t take the hint; he lingered, standing rather too close to her.

“I’ve read William’s security file, of course,” he told her casually. “In my new capacity as military commander of the expedition.”

“I said,” repeated Mary, “I don’t like to talk about it.”

“He was unfaithful to you, apparently. Back on Lima.”

“That doesn’t bother me.”

“You had an open relationship, did you?”

“I don’t like to talk about it.”

“You know about his children there? The two girls? They must be eleven or twelve by now. Twins. By that allegedly very sexy spaceship trooper.”

A flash of pain appeared on Mary’s face. She and William had chosen never to have children. This came as a shock.

“I don’t,” said Mary, hiding a world of anguish, “like to talk about it.”

Ben didn’t even bother to hide his smile.

“Can I tell you a secret, David?”

David Go liked to work in his cabin, alone, without interruptions. But Ben Kirkham insisted on an open-door policy: he liked nothing better than popping in to chat to his “team”.

“I don’t want to hear your secrets, Dr Kirkham.”

Ben leaned on the doorway, peering in, in a fashion that infuriated David. He liked doors that were closed!

“We’re all one big happy family here, David. We all look out for each other,” said Ben gently.

“That’s good,” said David grudgingly, and insincerely.

“Except, that is, for you,” Ben added. “That’s because everyone hates you, David. And do you know why? Because you’re an arse-licking bottom-feeding piece of shit.”

“If you’re trying to goad me, Kirkham, you need to be a lot more subtle than that.”

“Hugo Baal hates you more than anyone. ‘Why should he be alive?’ That’s what he said to me the other day. ‘Why is David Go still alive, when cleverer and more worthy men and women have died?’ ”

“Fuck off, Kirkham.”

“You’re a sad and lonely man, aren’t you? And mediocre. And socially embarrassing. And annoying to have around. But you should be nice to me, you know, David. Shall I tell you why? Because I’m the only person here who can actually bear your company.”

David gulped, and couldn’t speak; and realised, to his horror, that he believed every word of what he had just been told.

Tonii was working out on the punch and kick bags when Ben drifted in to chat.

“Hi there, my goodness, sweat and muscles, a potent combination,” Ben chortled. Tonii wiped himself down, and forced a grin.

“Hi there, Ben.”

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not missing Sergeant Anderson?”

“I’m a Soldier. I don’t ‘miss’ people.”

“So sharp! So droll! You really are a marvel,” Ben crowed, openly eyeing Tonii’s masculine/feminine torso.

“Thank you, sir.”

“There’s just something I wanted to say.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Um, there’s no tactful way of saying this,” Ben admitted, and paused.

“Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir.” Tonii waited. “What, sir?”

“Tonii,” said Ben, smiling, “you are not normal.”

Tonii flinched; then cursed himself. A Soldier never flinches.

Ben continued in the same soft tones: “You are not normal. You are not even human. You are not man, nor are you woman, you are just — a — pathetic — fucking — freak.” And this time, Tonii remained stony-faced.

“Yes, sir,” he said flatly.

“What are you, Soldier?” Ben asked. “Hmm? What are you? Answer me. That’s an order, you piece of shit. What are you?”

“A freak, sir,” said Tonii Newton with familiar, awful, numb, unquestioning obedience.

“You’ve done what?” said Hugo, disbelieving.

Hugo was in the galley, cooking Two-Tail meat to feed to his rats. To his annoyance, it simply wouldn’t darken or show any other signs of cookedness.

“I’ve deleted your diary entries,” said Ben, smirking. “By remote computer link. We don’t need your silly jottings, man, we have the official log and the download of the Encyclopedia of Alien Life to rely upon.”

Hugo grinned. “Don’t be so —”

“I mean it. I’ve done it.”

Hugo’s look of desolation and despair sent a shudder of joy running through Ben’s body.

Hugo slept badly that night, and every night, because of the sound that cracked the darkness of the AmRover dorm, a shuddering gasping sound that ate away at his soul.

Mia couldn’t sleep either, because of the same, ghastly sound.

Mary Beebe was on sentry duty outside the AmRover, but even she could hear the gasping/shuddering sound through her helmet amp.

Tonii Newton was on sentry duty inside the AmRover; the relentless moaning noise was driving him insane.

Finally Clementine McCoy shook David Go awake. “You’re doing it again,” she said fiercely, and David looked up at her with panic in his eyes, begging for her forgiveness, and her pity. “Just,” she said more kindly, “stop making that fucking noise.”

David nodded, and lay back down. And he was silent for a while.

And after a long period of silence, sleep came to Mia and Hugo and Clementine; while Tonii and Mary were able to keep their watch in peace.

But eventually David too fell asleep. And he began to dream dark nightmares. He dreamed of being raped and humiliated, he dreamed of being snubbed and disregarded, and he dreamed, most of all, of being treated like a nobody.

And in his dreams, he began to weep, again, and the sound of his anguished, gasping sobs cracked the night, again.

In the morning Ben Kirkham, who now slept in the soundproof and heavily fortified Observation Bubble, woke as fresh as a daisy. He couldn’t understand why everyone else looked so tired.

From Dr Hugo Baal’s diary (covert)

June 44th

This is a living hell. I don’t know who I hate more — Ben Kirkham, for being an evil manipulative blackhearted monster, or David Go, for his incessant fucking nightmares.¹

I have made a worrying discovery about Dr Ben Kirkham. Well, not so much a discovery as a hypothesis, or even a theory, but worrying nonetheless.

I am now convinced that Kirkham is the murderer of Sergeant Anderson. But I’m quite happy to condone and indeed celebrate that. The man² deserved it, and it was essential for our survival that someone killed him. So good luck to Kirkham for having the balls to do it.

But Dr Kirkham, as well as being a murderer, appears to be a seriously strange individual, even by the standards of xenobiologists. He’s introverted, but sometimes wildly extroverted. He’s brilliant, but also slapdash. And there are times when it seems to me he doesn’t understand anything, literally, not anything at all, about human psychology.³

I’ve made a detailed analysis of Ben Kirkham’s behaviour over the last two years, and I have cross-collated it with the following, the checklist of psychopathy which we used to use to test the sanity of our lecturers back at the University of Pontus:

Key Symptoms of Psychopathy

Emotional/Interpersonal	Social Deviance
glib and superficial	impulsive
egocentric and grandiose	poor behaviour controls
lack of remorse or guilt	need for excitement
lack of empathy	lack of responsibility
deceitful and manipulative	early behaviour problems
shallow emotions	adult antisocial behaviour

 

Like most of us, I’m sure, I score five out of ten on this scale. Eccentric and grandiose, and proud of it! Lacking in remorse and guilt! (Well, I never do anything wrong, do I?) Deceitful and manipulative, c’est moi. And an endless need for white-knuckle-ride daredevil excitement, of course,⁴ coupled with a dreadful addiction to chocolate, though an addiction to chocolate isn’t on the list, I concede.

But Kirkham scores ten out of ten. He is a human being who does not feel emotion, who pretends emotion, who acts emotion. He is acerbic, cruel, unreliable, mocking, his hand gestures are large and elaborate, and he playacts all the time. (I’ve even seen him wear spectacles when he wants to seem professorial, even though his eyes are less than ten years old.)

He is, in short, a clinical psychopath.

And his behaviour since the death of Sergeant Anderson has been appalling. He has undermined and belittled every member of our small company. He has no respect for our academic authority, he taunts the Soldiers with their inefficiency, he issues impossible orders and berates us for not obeying them. And as for David Go, who of course is still traumatised by his near-rape experience during Anderson’s vile regime — Kirkham constantly goads him in a way that is unendurable to witness.

Most unforgivably of all, he tried to use the network Censor system to delete my diary entries, not realising that not only do I wirelessly connect every diary entry with my brain implant, but I do so twice, the second time using a secure imaginary number code of my own devising, on a frequency that, according to the textbooks, does not exist. In the old days, apparently, this was known as the belt and braces strategy.⁵

Kirkham is a danger to all of us. He is a predator in our herd of whatever it is we are a herd of.

He has to die.

Sorcha watched the Gryphon Egg Ritual, and wasn’t even remotely shocked.

“They inseminate themselves,” explained Saunders, “by eating the chicks of other birds.”

“Yeah, I got that. Cool, huh?”

“Cool?”

“Pretty much.”

“It’s appalling! Savagery beyond belief!”

Sorcha laughed at his earnestness. “You should see some of the things they did to us in basic training!” she joked.

Saunders chose not to enquire further.

“This is a very difficult moment for all of us,” Dr Ben Kirkham explained to his army of two — Privates Clementine McCoy and Tonii Newton.

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, sir.”

Private Tonii Newton hated Ben Kirkham with all his soul. But Tonii was trained to obey, and he always did obey. So he stood to attention and waited to hear his new boss out.

“In order to survive, we have to be ruthless.”

“Yes, sir,” said Tonii.

“Yes, sir,” said Clementine.

“I think you know what I mean.”

“Yes, sir,” said Clementine.

“No, sir,” said Tonii.

Ben sighed. “The Scientists have to die,” he explained.

“Beg pardon, sir?” Tonii asked, incredulous.

“They’re a burden. They don’t pull their weight. And they are going to consume all our rations if we let them.”

“They’re part of our team, sir,” said Tonii loyally.

“We don’t need them. They’re not Soldiers.”

“No, sir. Nor are you, sir. Sir.”

“Don’t be insubordinate, Private.”

“No, sir.”

“I estimate that we could live for four hundred years or even longer with what we have on the AmRover, if there are just three of us eating. Longer still if we access the supplies and equipment on the Satellite, if we can safely get to it. We have all we need to rebuild a civilisation. We have the gene stock, the gender balance. We could create an entire new human race, between the three of us.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, sir.”

This man’s a fucking lunatic, thought Private Clementine McCoy.

This man is totally fucking deranged, thought Private Tonii Newton.

And no way am I fucking him! Clementine resolved.

And if he thinks I’m going to fuck him . . . ! Tonii thought, appalled.

“This is the plan,” Ben explained.

Mary Beebe and Mia Nightingale were watching the flowers fly. It was a slow, tedious job, but it was a relief to finally be back studying nature.

They were standing, with their body armour in stealth mode and helmet visor magnification on High, next to a flowering shrub that wended its way past the Flesh-Webs. It was essential to remain motionless, but it was an uncomfortable experience, especially since — because of the shortage of waste-absorbent underwear — both Mary and Mia were using catheters.

“How did you start going out with him?” Mia asked over the MI-radio, after a few hours had elapsed.

“Hmm? With who?”

“With William. Your husband.”

“Ah.”

They both savoured a long pause.

“We were on a xeno mission together,” Mary replied. “Sharing a two-person tent. One thing led to —”

“Ah, I’m with you.”

“Inadvertent frottage led to mutual masturbation, which led to aeons of exquisite love.”

“That’s often the way of it,” said Mia.

“Really?” said Mary.

“Not really, I was being ironical.”

“Ah,” said Mary, hugely amused.

“Yes, indeed, ‘Ah,’ ” retorted Mia. She was getting the hang of this.

“Why do you ask?”

“What?”

“About William?”

“He’s all you ever think about, and I’m a believer in going with the flow.”

“Very astute.”

“I think so.”

“And this, pray do tell me, is this how gay women chat up other women? By asking about their dead husbands?”

“Invariably.”

“Smart tactics.”

“I think so.”

“Do you really?”

“No.”

“Ah.”

Mia loved the way her banter with Mary flowed; rarely, indeed, had she ever talked such precisely phrased bollocks.

And it soothed and enlarged her soul — to be liked, to be thought amusing, to be allowed to flirt and brag a little. After all Ben Kirkham’s endless psychological undermining, it was only her times with Mary that kept her sane.

“I’ve been reading up about him,” said Mia, tenderly. “His biog. His published writings. He was a very vivid personality.”

“For ‘vivid’ read, ‘full of himself’,” Mary snorted, lovingly.

“I think I would have liked him. If I’d known him. I mean, if I’d known him better.”

“He was a cantankerous old bastard.”

“That’s what I would have liked about him.”

They waited, and watched.

Then Mia continued, with hard-achieved casualness: “I’ve read all your joint articles as well, you know. Well, the summaries anyway.”

“William wrote them all. I could never turn a word. Detailed observation was my forte.”

“I’m the same. It’s why I became a film-maker.”

“I look, and look, and see what others miss.”

“Like the trembling of that stamen.”

“Just like that.”

“And that flower. That’s not a flower. It’s an insect.”

“Well spotted.”

“See, it has a dozen microcreatures on its tongue. There.”

“I saw it.”

“The tongue must be all of .5 millimetres.”

“I’d agree with that estimate.”

“The insects hover around the flowers, but they don’t seem to inseminate.”

“I count forty-two species of insects.”

“I count forty-three.”

“One just flew away.”

“So it did.”

“If the insects don’t pollinate the flowers, why are they hovering so near?”

“They like the colours of the flowers?”

“It’s a vile colour. Fuchsia. I had a flat painted that colour once.”

“I rather like it, as colours go.”

“William liked it too.”

“We have one thing in common then.”

“You have several things in common,” Mary conceded.

“Such as what?”

Mary hesitated, then compiled her list: “Acute intelligence. Dry wit. Attention to detail. Refusal to bullshit and pretend you know more than you actually do know, like some people who I shan’t mention — Ben Kirkham! A sense of humour akin to my own, and, last but not least, a kind soul.”

“I — ah. Well. I don’t know what to say to all that.”

“Sorry, I’ve embarrassed you, through my excessive fulsomeness.”

“I’m just not used to being flattered.”

“Well, that serves you right for spending time with unappreciative imbeciles.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“And so it was intended.”

“Look. The flowers are trembling. They’re about to fly.”

The thirteen-petalled fuchsia-coloured flowers suddenly erupted from the plant and flew into the air and hovered. They danced patterns around the hovering Gadflies and Pinpricks and Spiky Arses and Blue ’n’ Reds, making whorls of colour in the air. Then they swept away like a mist and landed in a patch of ground a good sixty metres away.

“Now watch the insects,” said Mary.

The insects hovered still above the flowerless plant.

“I’m watching. What am I watching?”

“Measure the mass.”

“I’m measuring.”

“It’s an increase of .002 grams per insect.”

“The insects are growing.”

“The insects feed on the flowers.”

“But they didn’t touch the flowers!”

“They feed on something the flowers emanate.”

“A gas of some kind? They breathe in nutrients from the flowers’ farts?”

“That seems the most tenable hypothesis.”

“Farting flowers. Hmm.”

“This is the sixteenth time I’ve encountered such a phenomenon.”

“You’re kidding me?”

“Well yes, I am, actually. Though I have come across something a little bit similar. A tree on Romola that exhaled methane.”

“But why? What evolutionary advantage is there in flowers feeding insects?”

At that moment the insects pounced upon the flowerless shrub. Within minutes the shrub had been eaten, and all that was left was shreds of root.

“Damn!” Mary marvelled. “I’ve not seen that before.”

“The flowers feed the insects, the insects kill the plant,” Mia said.

“They kill the old plant. And the new plants thrive, because they haven’t got to compete with their parents. It’s so elegant.”

“It’s awful, really,” said Mia.

“Awful. And stupid. And deliriously and preposterously amusing.”

Mia laughed out loud at Mary’s lugubrious, mock-serious tone. “You have a lovely turn of phrase,” she told her.

“Thank you.”

“What do you think to Hugo Baal’s notion?”

“What? About killing Ben Kirkham?”

“Yeah.”

“His logic seems irrefutable.”

“Dr Kirkham is a prick. He deserves to die,” said Mia.

“He, the flowerless shrub, we the insects.”

“A lovely metaphor,” Mia assured her.

“Rather arch and over-elaborate, I felt.”

“Not at all, you are a poet, madam.”

Mary laughed. Mia glowed with pleasure.

The Gryphon cawed, and Sorcha had a vision of herself-as-Gryphon flying through the sky, and plunging down, and ripping a hairy tetrapod of some kind limb from limb. She shuddered, and forced a smile.

“What do I do?” she whispered.

“Think beautiful thoughts.”

She thought about the garden in her military academy, the rich colours, the peonies and hollyhocks and Scarlet Flowers and the roses, and her regiment’s mascot, a dog called Ruth, which Sorcha had adopted as her own.

The Gryphon cawed. And Sorcha’s mind was suddenly filled with an image of her beloved dog, Ruth, being ripped limb from limb by a Gryphon.

Sorcha gulped.

Then she thought about their colony ship, squat and grey and leaving a trail of faintly glowing ion particles in its wake as it flew through deep space. And she tried to recollect the star patterns they would have seen, but she couldn’t, and instead was forced to visualise a generalised haze of stars. The colony ship was battered, and deeply shadowed, but every now and then a burst of flame from the ion drive turned the hull into a sparkling marvel. Sorcha had tether-flown along with the spaceship from time to time, tugged at speed through deep space. That image too was vivid in her memory, and she focused hard on transmitting it.

And then, once again, her thought-image abruptly changed, as the Gryphon dabbled in her mind. And now she saw a giant Gryphon flying through black space, and then ripping the colony ship apart, into bloodied pieces.

“These creatures,” said Sorcha.

“Yes?” said Saunders.

“They may be sentient, but they’re not what you’d call smart.”

“They have a one-track mind,” Saunders conceded.

The Gryphon, Isaac, sensed Sorcha’s unease. A new image filled Sorcha’s mind; it was herself, her helmet retracted, short blond hair shining in the sun, walking through the New Amazonian jungle. Then, out of nowhere, a Gryphon pounced, and ripped her limb from limb, then pulled out her improbable entrails like stuffing from a toy bear.

Sorcha shuddered, and raised her middle finger to Isaac. Isaac cawed.

“Did you get that?” Sorcha said bitterly to Saunders.

“Hey,” said Saunders, “Isaac has a sense of humour.”

Hugo was cooking fish, from concentrate. He arbitrarily blended seabass with snapper and fabricated a vast potato rosti to accompany it. It was to be washed down with wine. He added poison to Ben Kirkham’s portion, and served the meal with some sense of triumph.

“Hidden talents, Hugo,” said Ben snidely.

“Leave the man alone,” said Clementine. Her long black Afrohair was a mess, after being crunched up in her helmet all day long. Hugo was aware that all of them stank, with the cloying odour of people who have been trapped for a long time in a small space with inadequate ventilation. The AmRover’s force field was up, and they were stationary.

“A toast,” said Hugo, raising his glass.

The alarms began to ring.

“Another time, huh?” said Ben.

They began to suit up.

Sorcha was shy.

“What’s wrong?” said Saunders, touching her naked body.

“The birds,” she said, as his fingers played with her special spot, and sent spasms of pleasure through her.

“What about the birds?” asked Saunders, touching himself to be sure he was hard.

“Can they . . .”

“Can they what?”

“See us?”

“We’re in a cave. No one can see us.”

“I mean, see our minds,” said Sorcha. She looked at Saunders, at his skinny but muscular naked body. And Saunders looked at her, the glory of her nudity.

“Surely not,” chuckled Saunders, and entered her.

On the clifftop outside, Isaac saw it all, from Saunders’s eyes and then he saw it all again, from Sorcha’s eyes, and he cawed with delight.

There was a huge crashing sound and the AmRover lifted up in the air and turned over. Hugo was half into his armour and he went flying and smashed face-down on the ceiling. Bodies flew around him. Clementine and Tonii were already in their armour, and their flying bodies were like missiles. Tonii’s boot barely missed Mary; a fraction to the side and she would have been killed.

Then they were floating in air again, then rolling around, then upside down, then right way up, then falling again. There was a huge smash and they were sliding and — they stopped.

“What the fuck just happened?” roared Ben.

“Something came into the cavern, and picked us up,” explained Mary, “and took us outside, and dropped us.”

“I thought we had a fucking force field!” Ben bleated.

“It, ah, only works against guns and bombs.”

“What sort of fucking force field is —”

“Let’s just deal with this, huh?” said Clementine crisply. She closed her helmet and subvoced a request for visuals. On her helmet visor she saw they were out of the cavern and on the red sands, in view of the ocean. And she could see also that the AmRover was upside down.

THUD. The AmRover was picked up again and dropped again. Bodies went flying. The force field could protect them from a nuclear bomb, but it couldn’t stop them being worried at like a dog’s bone.

“I’m going outside,” said Clementine. “To recce.”

“I’ll cover you, “said Tonii.

They shucked their helmets into place.

“Nine, ten,” said Clementine, and opened the emergency door and rolled out. Tonii followed.

Clementine and Tonii hit the ground and rolled into position and inspected their attacker. It was a land-monster of some kind, vast, looming above them, with golden scales and triple horns on its anvil-shaped head. Clementine put her gun on smart laser and popped a red dot on the forehead of the beast. Then she pressed the trigger.

A shaft of laser light lunged from the gun and hit the creature in its skull, burning through bone and whatever else this creature possessed in its head. But the creature didn’t shift. Its brain was therefore, probably, not in its head. But the creature seemed baffled, unsure how to proceed against prey that could not be killed by being dropped from a great height, and puzzled too, perhaps, at the sudden draught that had appeared in the middle of its skull.

The monster picked up the AmRover again, and dropped it again. Tonii winced. Then he and Clementine opened fire with a hail of explosive bullets — which, to their astonishment, bounced harmlessly off the creature’s armoured scales.

And so they changed gun settings. Sheets of plasma tore out of their weapons and the beast was engulfed in flame. But the plasma beams were reflected off its tough shiny scales. It didn’t ignite, didn’t even seem perturbed, but merely peered around, looking for the source of the heat. Fortunately, it hadn’t yet noticed the two puny Soldiers standing beneath it.

Clementine looked at Tonii; Tonii looked back.

Fuck.

Then Clementine beckoned, and Tonii moved over to the AmRover. It was an upended turtle now. Its rockets were pointing up at the sky, not down. So she took a firm grip on one side, ignited her boot rockets and fired. She flew up in the air millimetre by painful centimetre, gripping the AmRover, until the power of her exoskeleton combined with the boot-rocket thrust enabled her to flip the AmRover back into position.

As Clementine did this, Tonii waited in position, with his plasma cannon ready to blast. He wasn’t at all confident he could kill this creature before it could pick him up and dash his brains out, so he just waited.

The doors of the AmRover were flipping open and the Scientists were getting out to inspect.

“It’s not dead!” protested Ben Kirkham.

“Sssh,” said Clementine, spooking everyone. The monster continued to peer down at them.

“What shall we call it?” asked Hugo.

“A Tricorn,” hazarded Mary.

“A Golden-Rhino.”

“Move back, get behind those trees,” said Clementine, and added: “Oops.”

The creature pounced. Its jaws picked up the AmRover and hurled it away, and its claws reached for the Scientists.

“Narrow beam, full power,” said Clementine, and she and Tonii fired thin plasma beams which locked together at the beast’s mid-point. The beast moved forward, but the plasma beams didn’t waver. And suddenly, the cumulative energy of the plasma beams caused the creature’s hide to catch fire.

But even that didn’t perturb the beast and, engulfed in billowing flame, it carried on attacking. It spotted Mary Beebe and gripped her in its claw. Tonii changed to laser setting and managed to saw the foot off, so that Mary fell back to the ground. The Scientists joined in, firing erratically and burning vegetation all around but landing the occasional lick. And Tonii and Clementine kept up their continuous bursts of plasma power, firing bullets of energy that slowly melted the damned creature’s almost impermeable hide until it finally realised it was in pain, and started to roar.

The Tricorn ran, and the Soldiers ran after it. They fired an explosive shell over its head, which landed and blew a hole in the ground that the Tricorn fell into. And then they rained blasts of plasma down on the trapped creature as it howled with rage.

And finally, the plasma did its job. The Tricorn fell to pieces, and the pieces turned to ash, drifting in the wind.

“That was close,” observed Clementine.

“We didn’t even see it coming,” marvelled Tonii.

“From now on,” said Ben, “two of us on extra-vehicular sentry duty. We can’t risk any further attacks on the AmRover.”

Hugo thought about his meal — ruined. And about the poison — scattered around the cabin.

Would he ever have a second chance?

Sorcha and Saunders flew above the canopy, in the heart of a vast flock of Gryphons. The sky was jagged with sunset. Rocs hovered far above, eager to pounce, afraid to fight the massed ranks of the Gryphons. But from time to time a Roc plummeted and scales exploded and blood poured from a dying Gryphon and the Roc flew away pursued by angry caws.

Below them, for mile after mile, the canopy swept, a vast purple-floored world above a world. Saunders knew they were flying over the ocean now, but still the canopy held, as the Ocean-Aldiss-Tree loomed high and joined the canopy created by the Earth Aldiss. Saunders always admired the sheer chutzpah of the Aldiss tree in capturing the entire damned planet for its greedy self. Now that was a tree he could respect.

But now the canopy was thinning. Below they could see red sands starting to emerge. They flew over the red sands, and past a range of mountains, until the desert began. Here the flock of Gryphons flew down, and Saunders and Sorcha with them.

And they beheld a city. From the air, the white sands shimmered in the heat; but on the surface of the dunes, patterns emerged and solidified. Saunders marvelled at the sight. Huge octagonal buildings had been raised out of the sand. Sand towers soared high, in place of the Aldiss trees. And there was a vast dome, held up by tiny pillars of sand.

“They live here?” Sorcha subvoced.

Isaac cawed and hovered before them, and flashed an image into Saunders’s mind. It was just the same shimmering city of sand with towers and pillars, but the image was growing larger, they were moving closer to it. And Saunders could now (in his mind’s eye) see Gryphons flying through the city, which was even vaster and more magnificent than it had been in real life, and he was flying past the towers which shone like jewels, and now he was inside the city, and he could see below him on the ground Rocs and Godzillas pulling carriages like horses, and everywhere Gryphons flew and plucked hapless prey from the air and danced patterns of aerial dance in a whirlwind of freedom.

“You see it?” Saunders marvelled, to Sorcha.

“Yes. But what? What is it?” Sorcha said, over her MI-radio.

“It’s a dream.”

“This is what the Gryphons dream of?”

“A dream, and also a blueprint.”

They landed. Reality returned. The city was impressive, but much less magnificent than the dream of it, and utterly devoid of life. There were no Rocs inside, no jewels on the towers, no dancing Gryphons or fearless prey. And Saunders hunkered down and picked up a handful of sand. He used his helmet magnifier and saw a dozen tiny Rat-Insect-shaped creatures wriggling in his palm, each clutching a grain of sand.

“See these?”

“I’ve seen them before. Rat-Insects.”

“Not so. Twelve legs not six. The thorax is larger. Claws on the back. They don’t look at all like Rat-Insects.”

“They all look —”

“Don’t ever say that,” Saunders rebuked her.

“Don’t get huffy.”

“This is as much like a Rat-Insect as a rhino is like a koala bear.”

“Can you get over yourself? Why am I looking at this creepy-crawly thing?”

“Let’s call them,” said Saunders, mulling, “Sand-Ants. Harenaformica Sorchae.”

“Sorchae. That sounds like Sorcha.”

“It does.”

“You’re naming it after me.”

“I am,” said Saunders, basking in the warm glow of his own generosity.

“What the fuck for?”

“Huh?”

“It’s a creepy-crawly. If you’re going to name something after me, make it a scary predator. Not a fucking —”

“Let’s keep to the point.”

“What point?”

“These creatures. The Harenaformicas. They built the city. They made this monument. It’s the same process as the Jungle-Wall; the city is built out of sand that’s been processed and turned into builder’s cement by this creature’s digestive system.”

Sorcha looked at the city, its vast scale, the grandeur of its architecture, and blinked.

“But why? There’s no nourishment in sand. Why eat sand and shit it out as cement? What’s the evolutionary purpose of that?”

“They have no purpose. They see an image of the city and they build it, but they don’t know why.”

“The Gryphons make them do this?” said Sorcha, awed.

“Yes,” said Saunders. “This city, it’s the Gryphon vision of a better place. A safe place. This city is the Gryphon Heaven, built for them by Sand Ants.”

Sorcha felt a sudden, cold, overwhelming shudder of fear.

“I have gathered you together,” explained Ben Kirkham, “to explain our new and brilliant survival strategy.”

Then he beamed, like a dog with two-tails, three cocks, and a brand-new bone.

Clementine was in despair; but it was her duty to obey orders.

Tonii was in despair. He desperately wanted to disobey his orders. But he knew that if he did rebel, Clementine would kill him.

Hugo seethed with rage about the fact that his plan to murder Ben Kirkham had failed.

And David Go was, as always, for every moment of every day, simply in despair.

One hour later, at Ben’s orders, they abandoned the cavern and started driving the AmRover through unexplored and treacherous terrain.

The new plan was to travel to the Space Elevator, and thence to the Satellite. This, Ben had abruptly decided, was their best hope of salvation.

It was clearly a plan conceived on a whim, and Ben had allowed no discussion or dissent. Mary Beebe privately thought it was madness to go anywhere near the Elevator, because of the danger of meeting enemy DRs — it was the DRs, remember, who had already killed so many of them! But she didn’t say so, because that would have made Ben angry. And Ben angry was not a comfortable experience.

The others were just blindly following, worn out by Ben’s boundless optimism and refusal to think about problems.

The AmRover soared above the Flesh-Webs, and wove its way through tree trunks, but suddenly the engine started to stall. And then it cut out entirely.

For a few seconds it continued to hover, out of sheer cussed refusal to believe in what had happened.

Then abruptly, it crashed to earth.

Saunders awoke, trembling.

“What’s wrong?” Sorcha said.

“Nothing . . . a nightmare.”

She stared at him blankly. He looked down at his dinner tray, with its half-eaten dried food tablets taken from his body armour’s larder. He wasn’t in bed, he was sitting in the cavern, with Sorcha, and they were eating dinner. “I’m sorry. Did I fall asleep?”

“As I was talking to you.”

“It — happens sometimes. Petit mal. It’s a sign of age.”

Sorcha looked at him with an expression of pity merged with fury.

“What happened in your nightmare?” she asked, mildly.

“I saw . . . a world in which I was king of the Gryphons. But all my people — my fellow Gryphons — turned on me and ate me and shat me out as they flew through the sky.”

“You dreamed that?”

“Someone dreamed that. Something dreamed that.”

Sorcha was baffled; then she got it. “You were having a Gryphon’s nightmare?”

“I must have been. Maybe they transmit images and thoughts without intending to.”

“Fuck.”

“Indeed, fuck.”

Ben finished his inspection of the AmRover’s engine. He emerged smiling.

“The AmRover’s Bostock battery has been leached of energy,” he explained. “It must have been damaged when the AmRover was dropped.”

That’s impossible, thought Mary, but she said nothing.

“Fortunately, there is a solution to our problems. We can walk to the Space Elevator,” said Ben, smugly. “It’ll take two or three weeks, but we’ve got the time to spare. Once we’re there, we’ll stock up on some batteries, then send the Soldiers back to put a new BB in the AmRover. And then, bingo, we’ll hop up into space and colonise the Satellite.”

“But you still haven’t dealt,” explained Mary, “with the problem of what we do if we encounter DRs at the Satellite, and find they want to kill us. I mean, for heaven’s sake! If we don’t even have the AmRover to —”

“If we find any enemy DRs, we’ll destroy them, or reprogram them,” said Ben, casually. “Tonii and Clementine are Killing Machines, they’re pros, they’ll handle it. No worries. Trust me.”

“But —”

“Trust me,” said Ben, smiling even more now, which made it worse.

“Yes, sir,” said Tonii.

“Yes, sir,” said Clementine.

He’s going to kill us on the journey, thought Hugo.

Isaac picked up the plasma gun in his talons but couldn’t work the trigger.

“Don’t show him how,” said Sorcha.

Saunders was suddenly enveloped in a vivid image of himself being eviscerated (again!) by beak and talons. He paled. He took the plasma gun, slyly put it on Stun, then held the trigger. Isaac studied it.

Then Isaac held the gun in two claws and manipulated the trigger with a talon. A haze of energy flew out, hitting a tree.

Isaac flew off, carrying the plasma gun.

“I shouldn’t,” said Saunders, “have done that.”

The jungle was dense. Moisture rose up in hazy pillars from the earth. Hugo and Mary and David Go and Mia kept close together as they walked.

“How are you doing?” called out Ben, and Hugo threw a grenade and blasted him off his feet.

“Run!” screamed Hugo.

The Scientists ran towards the jungle. “The Soldiers will kill us,” screamed Mia.

“Just run!” And Hugo and Mary and Mia and David Go vanished into the purple and red depths of the jungle.

Ben got to his feet. Blood poured from a cut in his temple, but the body armour had absorbed the blast. Clementine and Tonii ran up to join him.

“What happened?”

“They counterattacked first,” said Ben, cheerfully. “But don’t worry, they botched it. I’m fine.” He retracted his helmet and wiped the blood off his forehead.

Clementine raised her plasma gun and blasted Ben in his unprotected face. His skull exploded and melted, and only the memory of his sneer remained.

There was a long pause.

“What the fuck?” said Tonii, tensely.

“It’s done!” Clementine shouted.

Hugo, Mia, Mary, and David Go drifted back.

“Are you with us, or against us?” said Clementine to Tonii.

Tonii was frozen, conflicted, confused. “That was cold-blooded murder,” Tonii said.

“Yeah.”

“Yes, of course it was,” said Hugo.

“Ben told me to kill all the Scientists,” Clementine explained. “Every single one of them. To give us a better start. He faked the AmRover breakdown. The batteries are fine. This whole excursion was just a trap. Are you with us or against us?”

“If I’m against you,” asked Tonii cautiously, “do I die?”

“No. But you’ll be on your own.”

“With,” said Tonii decisively. “That man was a prick.”

Hugo was elated as they began marching back towards the AmRover. His plan had been brilliantly conceived and audaciously executed. It was hard to kill a man in full body armour, even with a bomb or a plasma blast. But Hugo knew it was human nature to retract your helmet after being blown up. The minute Ben had felt fresh air on his cheeks, he was doomed.

“I’m the new military leader of this expedition,” Clementine told Hugo as they walked, their helmets retracted so they could savour the rich aromas of the jungle.

“Fine by me,” said Hugo, humbly.

“You don’t have a problem with that?”

“No problem,” said Hugo.

There was a long pause, as they walked on.

“So, um, what do we do now?” asked Clementine.

“We walk back to the AmRover,” said Hugo, patiently. “And after that, we follow Kirkham’s plan. It was a good plan, even if he was too stupid to know that. We can’t live in a cave for ever, so we have to go to space. Travel to the Space Elevator, destroy or outwit the DRs, if there are any, but there may not be, travel up to the Satellite. Create two bases, one on the land, one in the sky. There’ll be a supply Depot near the Space Elevator, we can restock there, and make it our capital city.”

“How do you know there’ll be another Depot?”

“It’s the kind of thing Saunders would do. He’s a sly bugger. Also, we need a celebration tonight, to bond us as a team. You need to be a bit less military. Make Tonii your official Number Two. He doesn’t like you, you’ve got to win his love, you can’t expect him to just blindly obey any more. Oh, and beware of Mary Beebe. She’s still in trauma, she’s flaky. Don’t forget the Doppelgangers are out there. We’re still at war.”

“Have you finished?” Clementine said, acidly.

“No. We’re running low on fresh water. We need to dig a hole and replenish. That’ll take us half a day. We’ll start on it tomorrow.”

“We’re fine for water.”

“No, you’re wrong. We’re running low. We should always have a month’s supply of water at any given time. I explained this to Ben but he was too stupid to listen. There’s an underwater lake under us now, but it ends a kilometre away. It’s on the map.”

“I read the map. I didn’t notice —”

“Trust me, I’m right.”

“We’ll dig for water,” Clementine said decisively.

“You’re the boss,” said Hugo, and stopped dead. A few moments later he swore. “Fuck.”

Mary Beebe also stopped dead. But she didn’t realise that was about to happen, so her body carried on walking and she toppled over, and rolled like a turtle. Then Mia, distracted by her own body armour’s malfunction, walked right into Mary and tripped over her. The two of them flailed on the ground, helplessly. Tonii watched it all, awestruck, then he also stopped dead.

Clementine moved her arms and legs. She was fine.

David Go screamed. “I can’t move!” he shouted.

“He sabotaged you,” said Clementine, realising. “All of you. Just me and him would have survived. He drained your Bostock batteries.”

Tonii’s face was a portrait of betrayal. Despite his promises, Ben had never intended him to live.

“Then you’ll have to carry us,” said Hugo.

“All of you?” said Clementine, scornfully.

“Then we’ll stay here, you go for help.”

“I’ll go for help,” said Clementine.

“We’ll stay here,” Hugo concurred.

“We can take the armour off and walk,” protested Tonii.

“Too dangerous,” Hugo decided. “We’ll stay here.”

Clementine set off into the jungle, at a brisk pace. Hugo shucked his helmet back into place.

And Hugo and the others waited.

And waited.

And waited.

After a few hours, the earth below them began to shake. It felt as if a monster from the depths was going to rip the ground apart. Instead, pillars of steam ripped through the soil in countless fountains. Hugo took a spectrometer reading. It was oxygen. Pure oxygen!

This, Hugo realised with dawning delight, was how life was able to thrive on this planet. Oxygen storms! Ripping through the planet’s crust and billowing through the jungle, and replenishing the oxygen sacs of these nitrogen-loving but oxygen-needing organisms.

After twenty minutes the storm abated. The ground returned to normal. Hugo’s oxygen meter read High; they could take their helmets off and breathe the atmosphere. Except, Hugo noted, the oxygen was blended with gaseous sulphuric acid and would burn their lungs. So better, perhaps, he concluded, to keep their helmets on.

Night fell. The oxygen level slowly dipped, the acid drifted away, and the atmosphere returned to its normal, non-toxic, unbreathable form.