You are approaching the hole in the floor,the personality warned.

“Shit!” She intended it as a defiant bellow. It came out as a whimper. Her body was twice its proper weight. The weakness seemed to amplify her fear, clotting her mind with dread.

An easy jump,the personality promised. Don’t stop running. It’s just a question of timing and sure footing.

Where’s Dariat?she asked suddenly.

Four more paces. Concentrate.

It was as though she was already losing her balance, leaning too far forward and having to windmill her arms to keep upright. The edge wobbled towards her. Her knees were bending and she didn’t know why.

Now!

The personality’s command fired her muscles. Erentz leapt across the hole, flinging her arms forward. She hit the floor on the other side, and collapsed, tumbling painfully. Elbows and knees managed to hit every jutting chunk of rubble.

Get up. You’re almost there. Come on!

Groaning in anguish, she staggered to her feet. As she turned, her wrist beams shone back across the hole. Erentz screamed. The Orgathé itself had come after her. Still the largest and strongest of all the dissociated collective, it clawed its way along the vestibule after the small fleeing entity. There was no way it could fly in here. Even though it was diminished in physical size by the separation of the others, the vestibule was too narrow for its wings to be extended. As it was, the Orgathé had to hunch in on itself to avoid the ceiling.

Fury powered it now. Fury at being ripped from the nourishment. It had been so close to achieving the energy level it wanted. To have that triumph burned away was excruciating. It didn’t care about feeding again, it didn’t even care about breaking out of the dark continuum. It wanted vengeance.

Erentz jerked into motion again. Pure adrenaline-rush terror overrode her recalcitrant leg muscles. She sprinted for the open lift door. A gust of buffeting air told her the Orgathé had sprung across the hole behind her. There wasn’t going to be enough time to fasten the cable straps to her harness.

She slammed into the wall at the side of the lift doors, spinning round to face the Orgathé. It had obscured itself in folds of darkness again. Only the purposeful ripples slithering across the nebulous surface hinted at the terrible menace contained within. She fired the laser pistol, simply to see the darkness stiffen around the beam’s impact point. A wavering dawn of pink light bloomed behind the Orgathé, making a mockery of the weapon.

The flare,the personality urged. Fire the flare at the bugger.

Erentz had nothing else left. All there could be now was a jump into the shaft, and hope the fall killed her before the Orgathé caught her. She brought the slim launcher tube up, pointing it at the centre of the ethereal darkness, and pulled the trigger.

A pathetically small spark of incandescence plunged into the vast Orgathé. It spasmed uncontrollably, appendages writhing to thrash against the walls and ceiling. Huge splinters of polyp were sent whirling in dangerous cascades from the force of the blows. Erentz stared at the monster as it bucked about, incredulous that a tiny flare could induce such an awesome result. The whole vestibule was shaking violently.

Yeah, fascinating,said the personality. Now get out of there while it’s distracted.

She snatched the straps from the strut where she’d secured them. Only one was attached to the harness when she yanked down on the toggle. The power of the rewind made her yip in shock as she went hurtling upwards. Unexpected gee forces tore the laser pistol and the flare launcher from her hands. The narrow band of the shaft wall illuminated by her lights was a continuous blur of grey.

Brace yourself,the personality said.

Abruptly she was in freefall, still rocketing up. Coils of cable floated sedately around her. The lobby door was visible above: blank white rectangle. It expanded at a frightening rate. Then she was slowing, reaching the top of her arc, level with the door. The slack loops of cable sped through the pulley just as she started to fall, and she was wrenched to a halt. Hands reached out to haul her in through the door. She sank down on the black and white marble tiles of the lobby floor, taking fast gulps of air. Her helmet was removed. Annoying voices buzzed querulously in her ears.

“Where is he?” Tolton demanded. “Where’s Dariat?”

“Down there,” she panted miserably. “He’s still down there.” Her mind sent out a desperate affinity call to the ghost. All she could perceive in return was a faint incoherent cry of consternation.

A brutal howl of tearing metal and disintegrating polyp reverberated out of the lift shaft’s open doors. The whole group froze, then looked at the gap as one.

“It’s coming up,” Erentz stammered. “Holy shit, it’s coming after me.”

They scattered, racing for the lobby doors and the trucks outside. Erentz’s exhaustion and bulky suit slowed her to little more than a hobble. Tolton grabbed her arm and pulled her along.

The Orgathé exploded out of the top of the lift shaft at near-sonic velocity, a comet of anti-light. It punched through the lobby roof without even slowing down. Big, lethal shards of amber crystal slashed down, shattering on the marble tiles. Erentz and Tolton both dived for cover under one of the upturned couches as a surf of crystal fragments skittered around them.

The personality watched the visitor curve round and flatten out; perceptive cells strained to keep it in focus. It was a roughly triangular patch of slippery air, surrounded by black diffraction rainbows similar to a magnified heat shimmer effect. Big iron-hard hailstones pattered onto the grass below it. A kilometre above the parkland, it started to curve round, heading back for the Djerba’s lobby. Tolton and Erentz had reached his truck. Both of them were squinting up against the reddish glare of the axial light-tube, trying to spot the visitor. He squeezed the throttle round as far as it would go, and the wheels grumbled into life. They trundled towards the wall of shanty huts at less than ten kilometres per hour.

“Faster!” Erentz yelled frantically.

Tolton reset the throttle. It made no difference to their speed. Another of the trucks was rocking lazily over the ground twenty metres away, going even slower than they were. “This is all the juice we’ve got,” Tolton barked.

Erentz was staring at a thin line of wavering silver-black air that was sliding through the sky towards them. Pellucid streamers were unfurling below it, like long coiling jellyfish tendrils. She knew what they were intended for, and what they were going to grab. “This is it. Endgame.”

No it’s not,the personality said. Get in amongst the shacks. Forget the trucks, and make sure you take all your lasers and flares with you.

With the rest of the personality’s plan expanding into her mind, she shouted: “Come on,” to Tolton.

He braked the truck just short of the first rickety hut of plastic sheeting and lashed-up composite poles. They started running down the muddy alley between precarious walls. High above them, the Orgathé had started its approach run, a cascade of hail falling all around it.

Erentz and her relatives started firing their lasers round wildly. “Incinerate it!” she bellowed at Tolton. “Burn it all.” Bright scarlet beams slashed at walls and roofs, scorching long lines in the plastic. Edges smouldered and started to burn, curling and dripping. Flames spat along junctions, pumping out jets of black smoke.

The group had congregated in one of the larger open yards between the flimsy buildings. Tolton was shrinking back from the apparent madness, shielding his face from the heat that the eager, leaping flames were throwing out. “What are you doing?” he cried.