“So. It’s all over.” When Avaiq breathed out, his whole body sagged. “I suppose I shouldn’t regret what I did. But I do.”

“Well, I’m grateful. The whole of the Freezone is. And if it’s any consolation, your fate was sealed the moment you and your friend with the dogs decided to see if the strange European girl needed help.” Petrovitch tried to stand, and ended up in a heap next to Avaiq. “Chyort. That was what happened, wasn’t it? You were, where? Down by the edge of the sea ice, about ten k north of here? You saw the light in the sky, and you had your camera. Then everything electrical you had stopped working. While you were trying to work out what happened, you saw it fall. The capsule. Where did it land?”

Avaiq frowned. “What d’you mean?” He turned over on to his hands and knees and pointed to the frozen river below the slight rise on which the research station was positioned. The broad, flat valley was pocked with shallow lakes, and the river meandered around and through them on the way to the Arctic Ocean. “Right there. That’s where it came down. I thought you knew.”

One of the lakes had a circular ring of ice on its surface: great jagged plates thrown up by whatever had impacted its centre. In the daylight, it was obvious. It may as well have had a kiosk next to it, selling postcards.

“Yebat’ kopat.” Petrovitch stood and stared. “How the huy did that get past us?”

[You came here in the dark, and we have no centimetreresolution satellite imaging capacity ourselves.]

“That has got to change.”

Then Newcomen came out of the main doors of the research station. “Petrovitch? I thought…”

“What exactly did you think, Newcomen?” Petrovitch batted the snow away from his chest and dipped inside for his gun. He pulled his mitten off with his teeth and spat it in the direction of his skidoo. “This is Paul Avaiq, by the way. ARCO engineer. Avaiq, meet – albeit briefly – Joseph Newcomen, FBI.”

Petrovitch straightened his arm. Newcomen looked like he might make the draw sign. Slowly and deliberately, he put his hands down by his side.

“Can I ask what I’ve done?”

“What did you tell them? Last night in your room, you had visitors. Didn’t exchange a single word, but they wrote stuff down and held it up to you, and you, in turn, gave them an answer.”

Newcomen closed his eyes and clenched his fists.

“Fucking look at me, you bastard. What did you tell them?”

“Why don’t you just kill me now? One command. Boom. You don’t even have to pull the trigger.”

Petrovitch took a step closer. The barrel of his gun was a bare breath away from the bridge of Newcomen’s nose. “You told them I thought Lucy was in Deadhorse, didn’t you?”

He opened his eyes. “Yes. I told them.”

“What did they promise you in return?”

“Nothing. They told me I was a loyal American, and that the President thanked me for my continuing service.”

“That was all it took?” Petrovitch’s breath condensed in clouds in front of him. “Pet the dog once and everything’s all right again. Have you forgotten that even your own boss dry-fucked you and left you swinging in the wind?”

“Oh, I haven’t forgotten that,” said Newcomen. “I remember it all, every last thing they did to me. What I do know now is that there was a reason for it. I understand they did what they did for reasons of overwhelming national security. That was why Buchannan sacrificed me. Why the Director ordered it. I signed up to protect and defend the United States of America and that’s exactly what I ended up doing. Part of me wishes they’d told me first, but you’d have got that out of me one way or another. Considering what you did to me, I’m glad they didn’t tell me.”

“What I did to you?” Petrovitch shifted the weight off his ankle. It hurt. A lot. In unguarded moments, it felt like it was on fire.

“You put a bomb in my heart.”

“Oh. That.” His eyelid twitched. “I lied.”

“You what?”

“I lied. While you were unconscious, I just put a strip of skin on your chest, then lied my zhopu off.” Petrovitch frowned. “Is that worse that actually cutting you open and placing explosives in your chest? I don’t know.”

“You bastard.”

“I can say that: you can’t. Twenty dollars. Look, everyone expected it of me. Those watching us certainly did. They didn’t care as long as I led them to Lucy. But with your new-found enlightenment, you agree with that. Everything that was done to you, every last little indignity they heaped on you. I’m a lot less sanguine about it than you are. Then again, I’m not serving the ravenous god of national interest.”

“I served my country. They were a better judge of my character than I was. They used me like a weapon, and yes, I submit to their authority.” Newcomen’s hand had lost its mitten, and now he made the draw sign. His automatic slapped into the palm of his hand and his stance mirrored Petrovitch’s. “Lucy’s dead, and you’re under arrest.”

Petrovitch squinted into the shadow inside Newcomen’s gun. “You do realise your gun hasn’t even got a firing pin.”

Newcomen had to try. He managed to move his finger the small distance required to pull the trigger. He was expecting the gun to kick, an empty shell to spin out, and the recoil to load another bullet. All he got was a click.

He tried again, and again. He pressed the gun against Petrovitch’s forehead, twitching his index finger as fast as he could.

“I didn’t want you shooting me by accident. Or design.” Petrovitch knocked Newcomen’s arm aside, hopped forward and brought his knee up hard. All the bombast flew out of the American in one explosive gasp. “Looks like a smart move now.”

Newcomen roared in pain, and, to his credit, tried to stand, his gun dangling from its tether. Petrovitch simply put a foot in his chest and heaved him on to his back.

“Come on, you must have had worse playing football. On your feet, soldier. I want you to regret you’ve only one life to give for your country.” Petrovitch felt a hand rest hesitantly on his shoulder, and he shook it off. “I thought you’d woken up! Turns out you think just like them. It’s not just the planet that belongs to you. It’s the whole of space, too. I just hope we don’t find out that you’ve committed the biggest fuck-up in recorded history.”

Again the hand, and again the angry brush-off.

“We had one shot at this. One chance to get it right. It fell to you, and what did you do? You blew them up! Huy tebe v’zhopu!” Petrovitch went to kick the prone Newcomen, and this time the hand clamped tight.

“What are you doing?” Avaiq pulled him around, and Petrovitch finally remembered it wasn’t just him and Newcomen. “He’s down. Beaten.”

“I want to make him realise what he’s done.”

Grabbing a handful of Newcomen’s parka, Petrovitch lifted the man bodily off the ground and threw him in the direction of the frozen river. He landed heavily, slid a little, dug in through the crust of surface snow to the soft powder beneath.

“Petrovitch, you have to stop.” Avaiq stood between them.

“He needs to know.”

Newcomen, shaking snow from his head, half sat, half lay on the ground. “What? What do I need to know?”

“Look behind you.”

“Do you really think I’m going to—”

“Just look. There. Right there. That’s where it came down. Part of it. It fell from the sky and came down right there.”

Newcomen finally looked over his shoulder, and saw the ice ring. “What are you saying? What is that?”

“It’s an impact crater. It’s an impact crater made by the re-entry vehicle from an alien spaceship that the United States of America shot down using SkyShield. A spaceship that had a working fusion drive, a spaceship that exploded in the atmosphere some twenty k south of Deadhorse, a spaceship that started its journey around another yebani star and made it all the way here across light years of nothing, only to get blown up as it arrives – by you!”