Sharrow felt her heart start to race. She checked the rifle again. She brought out the HandCannon and checked it too. They were under-gunned for an operation like this, but they hadn’t had time to get all the gear they’d wanted together.

The morning after she’d been dropped in Nis by the Solipsists and met up with the others, they heard the Passports would be issued within the next twenty hours.

Miz told them his plan; Cenuij told him he was crazy. Zefla’s considered opinion on its legal implications was that it was ‘cheeky’.

They had just enough time to set up the All-Terrain purchase for the next day and storm through Aïs in a variety of taxis, buying up desert gear, bits of comm equipment and the heaviest automatic hunting rifles and ammunition the Aïs county laws would allow them to have. Just another day or so and Miz could have had heavier weaponry flown in and cleared through one of his front companies, but the Passports were issued on time that day and they had no choice but to make their move.

Their final purchases had been three large discs of coated heavy-duty aluminium foil-spare parts for a portable solar furnace-and some glue. While Dloan and Miz had been buying those, Sharrow had been in the hotel, placing a call to a descendant of one of the Dascen family’s servants, a man rich enough himself to have a butler and a private secretary both of whom Sharrow had to go through before she got to Bencil Dornay, who cordially and graciously invited her to his mountain house, along with her friends.

“-ast!” Sharrow heard Miz say.

“What?” she sent back, rattled by the tone of his voice. There was no reply. She stared into the distance, where the white line of the monorail disappeared into the desert shimmer.

“I can see it!” Cenuij shouted from above.

An infinitesimal silent line appeared on the liquid horizon, barely visible through the trembling air. The tiny bright line lengthened; sun burst off it briefly, flickering, then blinked out again.

Sharrow stood up and clicked the visor magnification to twenty. It was like looking at a toy-train set reflected in a pool of wobbling mercury. The train was still a couple of kilometres away from where Miz was lying on the top of the monorail. She watched the shadows of the support legs flicking across the train’s nose as it raced along under the rail, a tearing silver line curving through the heat.

She counted.

“Shit,” she heard herself say. The shadows were strobing across the train’s aircraft-sleek snout at almost three per second; the supports were spaced every hundred metres and the expresses normally ran at about two-twenty metres per second; that was the speed they’d based their calculations on. She drew a breath, to tell Miz to throw the foil over early, when she saw a flash under the monorail.

“Foil’s down!” she heard Miz yell.

If Miz’s plan was going to work, the train’s needle radar should now be picking up the echo of the foil screen and slamming the emergency brakes on.

“It’s going too fast,” she beamed to Zefla. “It’ll overshoot.”

“On my way,” Zefla sent back, and started running towards Sharrow.

A roaring, screaming noise came through the tight-beam; Miz was just audible above the racket, shouting, “Feels like it’s braking. Here it comes!”

“Start running!” Cenuij called down to Sharrow.

“I’m running, I’m running,” she muttered, sprinting across the corrugated karst towards the next support leg.

Two kilometres away, Miz lay on the top of the monorail, his cheek held just off the burning surface. The vibration and the noise bored through him; the humming from beneath built into a teeth-aching buzz that seemed to threaten to jolt him right off the rail. He spread himself out, trying to clamp himself to the rail with his hands and feet. Beneath him, the circle of foil he’d dropped into the path of the train vibrated gently on its plastic stays, its coated surface reflecting the train’s radar. The noise and vibration rose to a crescendo as the furiously braking train screamed past underneath.

“Shi-i-i-i-t!” Miz said, his teeth chattering, every bone in his body seeming to judder. The vortex of air swept up and over him, lashing at his clothes.

The bullet nose of the decelerating train hit the circle of foil, ripping through it instantly and sending the shredded pieces fluttering through the air like a flock of falling silver birds.

The train roared away, still braking. Miz jumped up. “I’d put that second foil down now, kids!” he tight-beamed, then ran to the support leg and started climbing down towards the All-Terrain.

Sharrow slowed, looking back down the curving line of support legs; light and shade flickered at their limit. She ran on through the parched air, still slowing, and waited for the second circle of foil to drop above her. She could hear the train now; a distant roar.

“Going fast, eh?” Zefla grinned, dashing past.

The second foil reflector dropped and spread ten metres ahead of Sharrow. She stopped, breathing hard, a furnace in the back of her throat. Zefla jogged on, fifty metres in front of her. Sharrow looked back; the train came on, still slowing; the noise stayed almost constant as the slipstream ebbed and the wail of protesting superconductors gradually faded as the train drew closer.

Then it was above her, the carriages flicking past just a couple of metres over her head; the train’s sleek nose hit the second foil screen and held it, tearing it from its stays so that the glistening membrane wrapped round the snout of the front carriage, snapping and cracking around it until the train drew to a stop.

She was just behind the rear of the last carriage; it hung, swinging slightly from the white line of track. She ran on, jumping ridges in the limestone and following Zefla, her gun out ready in front of her. Zefla glanced back.

Suddenly something dropped out of the train from the second-last carriage, between Sharrow and Zefla. In the same instant as it came fluttering down from the still-swinging hatch she recognised the gold and black shape as a Huhsz uniform. Sharrow knew Zefla would dive for cover just there. Sharrow went in the same direction, dropping into the cover of a corrugation in the karst, her gun tracking the falling uniform.

The Huhsz officer’s cape hit the ground as empty as it had been when it left the train. Dust rose. She aimed at the opened hatchway. A hand gun and face appeared. She waited. Hand gun and face withdrew again.

A movement to her right made her heart race briefly before she realised it was the shadow of the train on a long ridge of karst by the track-side; she was seeing what must be Dloan and Cenuij’s shadows as they got into position above the train.

Sharrow shifted her position a few metres along the shallow trench into better cover.

Something else fell from the train, at its nose; the foil screen flashed and glittered, rustling to the ground.

“Shit,” Sharrow breathed. She touched the side of her mask. “Foil’s fallen off,” she broadcast. “Break something.”

“Right,” Dloan’s voice said.

They’d smeared the second foil with glue so that it would stick to the front of the train, but obviously it hadn’t held; now the railway’s technicians and controllers back in Yadayeypon would be looking at their screens and read-outs and seeing a clear view in front of the train and probably no indications of damage. Soon they would start thinking about letting the train continue on its way again.

There was a pause, then a loud bang from above. Sharrow relaxed a little; that ought to be Dloan and Cenuij doing something terminal to the train’s power supply. A brief grinding noise overhead, and the sight of the second-last carriage settling down a little lower and sitting very still while the other carriages swayed slightly, confirmed that its superconductors were no longer holding it up inside the monorail; the train was trapped.