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noises no louder than a string of the smallest firecrackers on Guy Fawkes night. The weapon was plainly silenced in some way. But the officer fell out of the cab like a puppet whose strings had been cut. And there was blood. Itwas too horrific to be real. Clara knew she'd screamed. She couldn't help it.
    The one soldier who hadn't surrendered threw his rifle at the nearest of the new arrivals and ran, straight towards Clara and her mother. He fell over the tin trunk—which might have saved his life. The guns might be silenced but they ripped into the undergrowth. “Don't shoot. Dr. Calland is in there,” snapped the tall man. “Sergei, Ivan, Viktor. After him. He's unarmed now. Dr. Calland. You can come out. It is safe.”
    Some of the newly arrived men jumped down off the platform and walked into the nettles. Mother stayed dead still, and so did Clara. It didn't help. A beam of torchlight was fixed on them, and they had to get up.
    â€œCount Alexander Pulshikoi,” said her mother, to the tall man who had been giving orders, with a degree of coolness Clara had to admire. “What are you going to do with us?”
    He clicked his heels and bowed. “Exactly what I said I would do, Doctor, before you were foolish enough to run away. You will be flown to Moscow. Our scientists are very keen to work with you. They are very excited about your work. It's a line that has not been pursued for some time.”
    â€œFlown? From here?” asked Mother.
    He smiled. The smile was all teeth and no humour. “You will fly to London in a few hours' time on the regular shuttle-flight. There you can board a good Russian airship.”
    Her mother took a deep breath. “You'd better bring our bags and my trunk. I'll need that.”
    He nodded. “It will be done. I think we need to depart from here.”
    â€œWhat about those Inniskillens?” asked her mother. “They should not be hurt. Please.”
    He smiled his false smile again. “They will not be. Merely detained along with the train driver. We cannot afford to leave them here, that is all. And they would have killed you, you know.”
    Clara could feel her mother's hand squeeze hers. Her mother obviously didn't trust him either, but there was nothing they could really do.
    They'd been whisked by car to the Dublin airship terminal, and from there—separately, to stop them doing anything rash in public, as Count Alexander had coolly explained—into a locked first-class cabin, part of a suite reserved for the Russian ambassador. The cabin had been about five times the size of the little cubby they would later share on the Cuttlefish. The other difference was that the door was open on the submarine. They could come and go as they pleased.…
    On the airship Clara had had to crawl out along the ventilation shaft to go anywhere.

T he Royal Navy commodore facing Duke Malcolm was doing his best to bluster and not to look very afraid.
    Duke Malcolm felt the Royal Navy had…delusions. They liked to pretend they were the Senior Service. That the British Empire's existence and safety rested on the Royal Navy. But these days, with the Empire crumbling and unravelling on the edges, and buckling in the middle under the weight of people and the disastrous effects of the sudden melt, it was Imperial Intelligence that held the Empire together. The Royal Navy was still the world's greatest maritime force, and her fleets could sail anywhere in the world they wished to, as they had for more than fifty years since the 1914–1915 War. Well, they could sail anywhere, if they could get the coal, as his half-brother was inclined to say. The Americans and Russians had enough coal to get them anywhere. They just didn't have the fleet, and they didn't have the munitions for a long war either. The methane burst that had accompanied the Melt had killed off half the sailors in the Russian Navy, a problem that Duke Malcolm wished the