Anastasia taxied towards the circular wall of metal and a waiting airlock.

They came out of the airlock tube into a rock-walled reception room. Greg walked carefully in the low gravity field, very conscious of inertia, each step carried him a metre and a half.

New London's Governor was waiting for him, flanked by two assistants. A tall, spare man who smiled expectantly, holding out his hand. Greg stared, frantically trying to place a name to the distantly familiar face.

"Greg Mandel, good to see you again. It's been over fifteen years, yes?"

Now the memory came back. Sean Francis, one of Event Horizon's younger generation of executives, a disturbingly ambitious one, if memory served. He was also superbly efficient, and keen, giving his total attention to every problem and request, no detail was too small to be reviewed. It was an attitude Greg had enjoyed the first time he'd met him, Sean Francis in person inspired confidence. Then after five minutes' exposure, the unrelenting effusiveness began to grate.

Greg shook his hand. "Seventeen years, would you believe? Seems like you've done all right for yourself. I'm surprised Event Horizon let you go."

Sean Francis grinned brightly. "I haven't left. I'm just on sabbatical. You see, the English Government had to have a trained executive who was also completely conversant with the space industry in the hot seat, so Julia Evans loaned me out. Simple, yes?"

"Yeah." Even after all this time Julia's political expediency still never failed to gain his admiration. New London might be a Crown Colony on paper, but in realpolitik it was hers, and no messing.

Sean Francis introduced his assistants. The man was Lloyd McDonald, an Afro-Caribbean, one of Victor's people, whose job description was New London's corporate security chief. Greg suspected his responsibility extended further than that, given the administrative hierarchy. The woman was Michele Waddington, the Governor's secretary. Another on secondment from Event Horizon.

We've prepared a barracks facility for your team in the security quarters," Lloyd McDonald told Melvyn. "My people will take your gear down to it."

"Fine," Melvyn said.

"Are you anticipating trouble?" Sean asked.

"There is a possibility," Greg admitted. "I'd like Lloyd McDonald here to step up his screening procedures for new arrivals. In particular for a man called Leol Reiger. He's a tekmerc, very dangerous. And he might just be stupid enough to try and follow us up here."

"Reviewing visitors is the responsibility of the Immigration office," Sean said. "But I can have company security personnel deputized as backup, that's within my brief." He turned to Michele Waddington. "Get the authorization lined up, please."

"Yes, sir." She entered an order in her cybofax.

"Got a profile of Reiger?" Lloyd McDonald asked.

Greg held up his cybofax, and squirted the data over to McDonald's. The security chief glanced at it. "There are three more flights scheduled for today. I'll make sure the passengers are isolated and identified before they're allowed into the colony."

"If Reiger does come up he won't be alone," Melvyn said. "Make sure your people are armed."

"Anything else?" Sean asked.

Greg looked at Melvyn, who shook his head.

"Just somewhere for us to get changed," Greg said. "We'll start hunting after that."

"Certainly," Sean said. "I've had some rooms prepared in the Governor's Residence for you."

"I'll see my team to their barracks then join you," Melvyn said.

"Right, bring a couple of them back with you," Greg said. "Carrying, but nothing heavy, the Tokarevs will do."

"Sure thing."

Greg picked up his flight bag and followed Sean into a circular lift, along with Charlotte, Suzi, Rick, and Michele Waddington. It started to descend slowly, Greg's feet nearly left the floor. Gravity built steadily.

The doors opened on to another smooth tunnel carved through the living rock, a pair of moving walkways ran down the middle, two broad biolum strips were fixed to the ceiling, brighter than usual. Gravity felt normal. Greg looked along it, expecting to see it curve up out of sight, but there was a corner about eighty metres away, and another one behind him. The floor might have been slightly curved, it was hard to tell.

They took a walkway down to the corner, then another one. The layout reminded Greg of the Prezda arcology, people slotted neatly into regulated accommodation space. Hive mentality.

There was a policeman sitting behind a metal desk outside the door to the Governor's Residence. He stood and saluted as Sean showed his card to the door.

The Governor's Residence changed Greg's mind about conformity. The interior seemed to have been lifted straight out of some eighteenth-century colonial trader's mansion, a formal European layout, with modern Asian and Oriental furnishings. The rooms were spacious and airy, with high ceilings and white walls, pillars and arches dominated the architecture. He wondered how much it cost to lift all the wood up from Earth.

Suzi stood on the parquet floor of the hall, and whistled appreciatively. "Not half bad. You pay rent?"

"No, this is my official residence. It comes with the job. The King and Queen have slept here, and the PM."

"No shit? Now us." She nudged Greg playfully.

"Tell me about the Celestial Apostles," he asked as Sean led them up the stairs to a broad landing.

Sean put on an unconvincing smile. "Bunch of religious nuts, mostly; though some technical types threw in with them. Their creed decrees space as the turning point in human destiny. No specifics, surprise surprise. Just generalities; space will save us, expand our spiritual horizon. Same kind of crap most loony cults spout. The main difference is that the leadership don't live off the acolytes. By all accounts they're quite genuine in their belief. They all live in the disused tunnels and empty storage chambers. I wouldn't call them dangerous, exactly; but personally I'd just as soon send the police and security teams into the tunnels to round them up and deport them, yes? I mean, what happens in a real emergency situation, a pressure loss? Or an epidemic, how would they get vaccinated? I'd have to risk my people trying to help them. But of course they never consider that."

"So why don't you?" Greg asked.

"The police do catch a few. But Julia Evans says let them be, no big trawling operation. It's not as if we'd drain the Colony's police budget."

Greg gave Suzi a satisfied grin, he'd known that kind of sentimentality was one of Julia's traits. Suzi just rolled her eyes.

The bedroom was decorated in red and gold, with ornate hardwood marquetry furniture. Painted fabric screens had been used to partition off the bathroom and jacuzzi with forest scenes, black backgrounds with tall spindly trees, pale leaves. Metal-framed French windows opened out on a balcony with iron railings, a row of potted ferns was lined up along the front edge.

Greg dropped his flight bag on the bed, and pushed the windows open. Hyde Cavern's air was warm, humid, ozone rich, and smelt of fresh blossom. He was looking out over a small deep valley, with a blunt dark massif of rock blocking the far end. A slim tubular sun blazed with blue-white virulency overhead, its glare haze blocking out any sight of what lay behind it. He followed the sides of the valley as they rose upwards, curving in like two giant green waves about to topple. If he used his hand to shield his eyes from the tubular sun, he could just make out the landscape directly above.

By then he was ready for the impossible sight. He'd been intellectually prepared for it, of course, but ground as sky was still a dismaying sight. The physical mass, pressing down.

He wasn't quite sure what to call the involuntary phobic shudder running down his back, but it seemed as though the little cylindrical worldlet was about to constrict, crushing him at the centre.