Beth looked at her father in growing horror. ‘Dad?’

‘I can’t follow you,’ Yuri said softly. ‘No matter what the conditions. I wouldn’t survive.’

‘Dad, no!’ Beth would have come to him, but Mardina kept a firm hold on her arm.

They were all watching him now, Laughlin looking embarrassed, King with an assumed expression of sympathy, Colonel Kalinski with what looked like genuine shock and sorrow, even Tollemache showing a kind of gruff respect.

King spread his hands. ‘Then what will you do, Yuri Eden? Where will you go?’

‘There is another option. To go back to the only place I’ve ever been free.’

‘Dad—’

Laughlin leaned forward. ‘You’re going back through the Hatch?’ He glanced at Kalinski. ‘Is that possible? Is it safe?’

‘We don’t know, sir. We haven’t tried it yet.’ She glanced at King. ‘Even though we’re dreaming up all these schemes about mass migration through it. I don’t see why not, however. In fact, Mr Eden, if you’re serious about this—’

‘Yes?’

‘I’ll come with you.’

King snorted. ‘Are you crazy? You’ll end up four light years from home. And, after another lightspeed hop, four more years in the future.’

‘I know. I understand that. But there’s a scientific purpose, sir. Somebody’s got to be the first to try it – I mean in a planned, scientific manner. We need to know the link works, that it’s stable. And we need to know how it works. I mean, we’ve had this Hatch under surveillance for years, but we never had the courage, or the imagination, to take the next step, as you did, Yuri. To go through. Well, now’s the time. And who better but me?’

‘She is an ISF officer,’ Laughlin pointed out. ‘And the nearest we have to an expert to boot. Along with her sister, of course. This is all rather a rush – but it is a compelling case, Sir Michael.’

Tollemache shook his head. ‘I just don’t get it. You saw the images I sent back. Prox c is a shithole. And I can tell you these press-ganged colonists they’re talking about sending through are going to be the dregs of the megacities and the slums, scraped up and shovelled through, just like it’s been in Mars. Why would you go there voluntarily, a bright spark like you?’

Stef glanced at Yuri. ‘Personal reasons. Because it will be better for me there than here. Just like you, sir.’

For Yuri and his family, that was only the start of an argument that raged for days. But he knew Mardina; from the minute she said she was staying on Earth with Beth, and for all Beth’s tears, he had known that his family was lost. Dead to him. And soon to be cut off from him by a barrier of thick time, just as his parents had cut him off before.

He, however, was going home.

CHAPTER 64

Yuri and Stef Kalinski stood side by side in the chamber of the Hatch on Mercury. A handful of technicians stood around on the surface above, monitoring instruments, gazing down curiously.

Above Yuri’s head, the great lid was slowly closing.

None of their families were here. A month after they had all walked through the hatch from Prox, Beth and Mardina were already on Earth, Yuri had been told, and Kalinski’s twin was nowhere around. It was just the two of them,

Yuri looked over at Kalinski. They were both sealed up in heavy-duty Mercury-standard armoured spacesuits. Yuri had even been shown how to open the cockroach-type radiator wings. This time there was no question of them just wandering through the Hatch system without protection, as they had on Per Ardua; now no chance was being taken. He couldn’t see Kalinski’s face behind her gold-plated visor. Even now he didn’t feel he knew her too well. They had had, ironically, little time to talk since the decision had been made to send them through the Hatch. He said, ‘Last chance to climb out.’

‘I’m fine, sir.’

‘Don’t call me sir, for God’s sake. And no more goodbyes?’

‘I feel like I already left.’

‘Yeah. Me too. Kind of unusual for twins to split up, isn’t it?’

‘We’re unusual twins. I’ll tell you about it some time.’ She grinned. ‘And I guess there will be plenty of time. And – Beth?’

He was trying to put out of his head his last encounter with Beth. Neither of them had been able to speak for crying. ‘The last thing I told her was my true name.’

Kalinski stared at him.

He glanced up. By the light of the ferocious sun, the last few techs were just visible past the edge of the closing lid. One of them got down to her knees and waved. Yuri waved back.

And then the lid closed, silent, heavy, and that was that; they were shut off. The light in here, provided by the glowing walls, roof, floor, was bright enough, yet dimmed compared to the glow of the blocked-out sun.

Yuri glanced at Kalinski. ‘You OK?’

‘Yes. You?’

‘I wonder if we made the jump already. I mean in space. You think we’re already on Per Ardua?’

‘Impossible to say,’ Kalinski said. ‘But my feeling is that we make the transfer in the central bridging room, not these antechambers. It was in the central room you said you experienced a gravity shift.’

‘Maybe. Who knows? Are you ready?’

‘Sure.’

They had actually worked through the transition process in virtual simulations, real space-programme stuff. You just pressed your hands into the indentations in the inner doorways. Nobody knew if gloved hands would work, or if, as the indentations came in sets of three on each door, one or two or three people would be necessary to work them.

In the event, two pairs of hands seemed to work just fine. The door swung back.

Just another door, opening ahead of you, Yuri. Just another door, in a long line of doors.

They climbed through easily into the central chamber, and faced the second door, complete with its set of hand marks. They glanced at each other, shrugged, and lifted their hands. The door behind them swung closed.

And when they opened the door before them Yuri immediately stumbled, under heavier gravity. Per Ardua gravity. Was he already back? Had another four years already passed? If so, Beth was gone.

When he walked out of the middle chamber and climbed through the second hatch, Yuri found himself back in the Per Ardua chamber he remembered. The lid was closed; he couldn’t see the sky. But there was the builder map on the wall, at which Kalinski stared avidly. There was the ladder from Tollemache’s rover, presumably having stood here for more than eight years. There was even scattered mud on the floor, brought in from the surface by their boots, long dried. ‘Like I’ve never been away,’ he said.

Kalinski leaned with one gloved hand on a wall. Yuri knew she’d been training to cope with Per Ardua’s full Earth-type gravity, but it was going to be hard for a while. ‘I’m relieved it worked. I thought it would, but—’

‘I know. At least we’ve not been dropped in the heart of a sun, or something. I don’t think it works that way, this link system. It all seems too – sensible – for that, doesn’t it? Look, we’re not going to need these suits. What say we dump them?’

‘I guess we could. There are no sim controllers to order us around now, are there?’

‘Welcome to my world, Colonel Kalinski.’

They got out of their suits quickly; they were self-operating, self-opening. Underneath they both wore light, practical coveralls in Arduan pastel colours, and they had backpacks of survival gear and science monitors.

Yuri nodded at Kalinski, hefted his pack, and made his way up the ladder to the closed hatch lid. Braced on a rung, he pressed both hands into indentations in the lid – indentations which, he recalled, had not been there the last time he passed through, and the builder marks seemed to have vanished.

To his relief, the hatch opened smoothly.

He looked up at a dismal cloud-choked grey sky framed by dead-looking trees, and it was cold, he could feel it immediately, cutting through his thin coverall. He’d been gone for eight years, he reminded himself, four years as some kind of disembodied signal passing from Ardua to Mercury, and four years coming back again – even if it only felt like a month to him. Plenty of time for things to change.