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he thought they must be back over land, until he caught sight of a line of black water foaming against the expanse of ice.
    He knew how big some of the pharms could get, but this had to be one of the largest. He could make out a few dozen pre-fab buildings clustered below, off-white domes and warehouses that nearly merged into the ice itself, distinguishable only by the corporate logos on their roofs and the faint shadows they cast under the moonlight.
    Once they had landed, they disembarked into a bitingly cold wind. There was no sense of motion, however, no way to tell that they were standing on a chunk of floating pykrete rather than on solid ground. Saul peered into the distance, but was unable to discern where the ice ended and the water began.
    ‘What’s to stop the Sphere authorities or anyone else just landing here and storming the place?’ Saul yelled over the sound of the wind.
    ‘You mean if we weren’t already paying them not to?’ Hsingyun yelled back, withdrawing a small antenna-like device and holding it out in the direction of the nearest dome. ‘Well, since you ask, there are mines buried in the ice all around us. I can find the safe path through the minefield, so just follow behind me and stay close, unless you want to blow yourselves the fuck up.’
    The pre-fab buildings proved to be much larger than they had appeared from the air. Many were several storeys in height, and he spotted a few automated vehicles traversing the narrow roads linking buildings and warehouses.
    ‘Nobody here to greet us?’ Saul asked.
    ‘Trust me, they know we’re here,’ Hsingyun replied, over his shoulder, before stepping forward cautiously. The antennae device he clutched in his gloved hand gave a beep, and he began to walk more quickly.
    As he and Jacob fell in behind him, Saul was not entirely unfamiliar with the technology Hsingyun was using. He knew they were, in fact, stepping directly on top of mines as they approached the dome. The mines communicated with each other by radio frequency, activating or deactivating according to pre-set patterns, meaning that the ‘safe’ path through them could change as often as you programmed it to. You therefore needed something hooked into the same encrypted network in order to find your way through the minefield without getting killed.
    Saul caught Jacob’s eye and flashed him a dark look. If this turned out to be a trap and they needed to get out, it was going to be almost impossible to negotiate the minefield without Hsingyun’s device.
    We should have said the warehouse, or no deal , Saul wanted to yell.

 
THREE
     
    Kepler Colony, Sphere Administered Development Zone, 15 January 2235
     
    Hsingyun paused and suddenly changed direction a couple of times as they moved towards the dome, stopping and walking off briefly to the side before moving forward again. Saul and Jacob took care to follow very closely in his footsteps.
    The snow crunched beneath Saul’s boots, the cold quickly finding its way through the soles and numbing his toes. His testicles appeared intent on crawling back inside his body every time he saw a dark shape lodged in the ice directly underfoot, and he shuddered with relief when they finally passed through a door leading into the dome’s interior. The air inside felt so warm and thick by comparison that, for a moment, Saul almost couldn’t breathe.
    A railing in the centre of the otherwise empty dome surrounded a spiral staircase leading down through a wide shaft cut into the ice. Saul took a firm grip on his briefcase and followed the other two downwards, the steel treads clanging noisily underfoot as they descended.
    The interior of the ice-pharm proved to be almost as enormous as the exterior. Saul saw room after room filled with industrial machinery, tended by workers wearing masks and protective gear. The air was filled with the constant thunder of production. To one side, thick sheets of semi-translucent plastic hung to the floor from