‘On the nose, Professor,’ she said, not having a clue what he was talking about. She was only here on a short-term contract from the Lovelace Agency in Brentwood, finding temporary work placements to learn new skills.

‘New skills’ – she was 25 and already needed ‘new skills’.

Somewhat embarrassingly, she wasn’t remotely interested in astronomy but didn’t have the heart to tell Melville that.

Instead, she kept him fed and watered with chocolate bars and tea and listened to him talk about his cat and his mother. (He lived with one and was talking about having the other put to sleep as it had bad kidneys, but Miss

Oladini still wasn’t entirely sure which way round it was.

She had a sneaking suspicion, however, the cat was the healthy one.)

Professor Melville was a sweet old man. Emphasis on the ‘sweet’. And the ‘old’. He said he’d been a pop star back in the Sixties, but she wasn’t sure she believed him.

Miss Oladini certainly liked him, though she rather suspected he was only employed at the Copernicus Array (cos surely he was way beyond retirement age) out of sympathy. Probably why he took the night shifts, keep him out of trouble.

The Copernicus Array itself was a radio telescope built in the gardens of an old Georgian mansion house that had been converted into the Array’s offices, meeting rooms and so on. A shame, Miss Oladini thought. It was a lovely old house – she often liked visiting old houses and although a lot of care had been taken to preserve the original fixtures and fittings, this place seemed sterile and lacking in natural character. She often wondered who had lived here hundreds of years back, what had become of them all and how they’d feel about their drawing rooms, kitchens, bedrooms and ballrooms being converted into rooms full of dull scientists and administrators.

At 23.09, the report had come in from the Griffin Observatory in Maryland. It too mentioned the Chaos Body moving into alignment with another star. But a different one to Clemenstry’s M84628•7. This was M97658•3. Which was patently absurd.

‘Have they all been drinking?’ Melville wondered.

That seemed like quite a good idea to Miss Oladini,

though she only really wanted to get home to her bed. She wasn’t keen on cycling in the dark and, at this time of night, there were lots of people on the roads who might be a bit worse for wear.

At 23.17, the report came in from the Tycho Project, near Beaconsfield. The Chaos Body was edging towards M29034•1.

Of course, this wasn’t all simultaneous – after all, it wasn’t dark in California or Perth right now, it was just that Melville was doing a night shift and had only just turned his computer on.

‘All we need now, Miss Oladini, is Minsk to offer us something daft and—’

And sure enough, at 23.19, the Colossus in Minsk fed through details of how the Chaos Body was in alignment with M23116•3.

Now Melville was alert and curious. Miss Oladini, too, despite her lack of interest in astronomy, because she’d been a mathematics student (hence her ending up here) and she calculated the odds of one Chaos Body suddenly forming a new constellation with four pre-existing stars all on the same night to be… well, bigger odds than there were numerical spaces on her calculator.

Melville patched through the latest photos onto the big screen that dominated one wall of his office. It was indeed a big screen, and state-of-the-art technology that other observatories and radio telescopes around the UK would have donated a lot of right arms for. All Melville had to do was trace an invisible line from his laptop screen to the big screen on the wall and images and words flowed from

one to the other like something out of a sci-fi movie.

Melville was proud of the software, but hadn’t a clue how it worked. He just knew it did and it meant he could move images around on the wall-sized screen without leaving his chair. Which he was doing now.

First he centred his own photo of the Chaos Star. Then he overlayed Clemenstry’s. Then Griffin’s, Tycho’s and finally Colossus’s.

‘Professor…?’

‘I know.’

‘But that’s…’

‘I know.’

‘I mean, how…’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘I know.’

Melville grabbed a phone on his desk. It was red. As he started punching in numbers, he glanced up at Miss Oladini. ‘Have you signed the OSA, Miss Oladini?’

She frowned. ‘Do what?’

‘The Official Secrets Act. Did they make you sign it when you got your work placement forms for this place at the agency?’

Miss Oladini thought for a moment. Melville was scaring her with the question. Normally, he was a nice old guy, bit dotty, bit rambling, smoked his pipe too often. But now he was suddenly alert and officious, stern and all sense of ‘eccentric’ gone.

And Miss Oladini realised that the silly, fussy, dotty old man was an act. Underneath it all, Professor Melville was

sharp as a whistle. Maybe he really had been a pop singer.

‘Well?’

She nodded. She had signed something that had the word ‘official’ in it, she remembered that. Frankly she hadn’t taken much notice of it when Mrs Lovelace at the agency had got her to sign. All the temps signed bits of paper for health and safety, insurance waivers that sort of thing, when they got their placements. One extra hadn’t meant much at the time.

Now it seemed big and scary.

‘Why?’

‘Because without your signature on the bottom of that form, what I’m about to do and what you’re about to hear would have us both in jail for the rest of our lives if you haven’t.’

And Miss Oladini thought hard. Her brain was good with numbers. ‘Form KD62344,’ she said suddenly. ‘I signed it twice and initialled a box, bottom left.’

Melville winked. ‘Thank you.’ He punched a final number on the phone. ‘Aubrey Fairchild, please. This is the Copernicus Array, Code 18. My name is Melville.’

Miss Oladini looked back at the assembled collage of images. The Chaos Body plus the other stars on display meant nothing individually. But now that Melville had put them together, they formed a picture. And not just some abstract nonsense that people saw as a couple of fish, or a plough or a rollercoaster.

This was very clearly, distinctly and sharply a face. A face with a mouth twisted into a laugh.

Miss Oladini shivered because that laugh wasn’t a

happy laugh. It was pure malevolence.

‘Prime Minister? Melville, Administrative Professor at the Copernicus Array. I’m sending you a Code 18 image.’

There was a pause. ‘Yes, sir. No, sir, the images have only been combined here, it’s still a UK threat but give it a few hours…’

Professor Melville looked across at Miss Oladini. ‘No, sir, just myself and my assistant. We’ll stay put until we hear from your people, Prime Minister. No, absolutely, total lockdown, no communications in or out of the Copernicus Array under any circumstances. Goodnight, sir.’

Professor Melville replaced the phone.

‘That was really the Prime Minister?’ Miss Oladini asked.

Melville nodded. ‘I’m sorry, my dear, but I think we’re in for a long night here. Could you check where we are regarding tea and milk?’

Miss Oladini started to leave the room, then turned back to see Melville take a mobile phone from his jacket pocket. She hadn’t even known he had a mobile phone.

‘Professor? Didn’t you just promise Mr Fairchild that we’d have no communications?’

He smiled. ‘That’s why I need you to check on the tea.

If you are not in the room, you can’t be held responsible when I break that promise, commit treason and quite probably professional suicide. Now, for your sake, off you go.’

Confused, Miss Oladini left the office. But she waited just outside the door, to see if she could hear who he was

calling.

She heard the tell-tale electronic beeps of the keypad then, after what must have been quite a few rings, he spoke. ‘Good evening, my name is Professor Melville.