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since.’
    â€˜So the webs have no idea …’
    â€˜We don’t think so. She’s ours, Janil. All ours.’
    â€˜Have you prepped the chamber?’
    â€˜It’s being done as we speak. I’ve got Clarke running tests on the radiation diffusers, making certain they’re still up to spec. I haven’t told him why, though.’
    For a couple of moments the two stood facing each other. Janil’s head reeled. He understood his father’s excitement now. Understood the need for secrecy, too. It was incredible. Immense. Possibly the biggest thing to happen in DGAP in three hundred years, certainly in the few short years he’d been with the agency.
    â€˜Here they come.’
    On the far wall of the hangar one of the giant portals was slowly winding open. As it slid back, a warm, dusty breeze slipped into the hangar. Janil sniffed.
    â€˜I hate that smell. Outside air always tastes so … old.’
    â€˜That’s because it is.’
    He was surprised to see how light it was, already. The sun was clearly close to the low horizon, because out beyond the domes and spires the sky glowed a bloody crimson.
    â€˜They’re cutting it close,’ he commented.
    â€˜We’ll forgive them, this once. They hadn’t expected to be doing a recovery. We should suit up.’
    â€˜Is that necessary?’
    â€˜Absolutely. Level one quarantine for this one. Let’s face it, she’ll be our last chance, so I don’t want to risk either us or her.’
    Janil followed his father over to the ready room, where two field agents were sitting on the benches, talking and relaxing after their long night. Both leapt to their feet, startled to find the head of research division there, of all places.
    â€˜Good morning, gentlemen. I’m afraid I shall have to ask you to leave.’
    â€˜Of course, Dr Mann.’
    The men were gone in seconds.
    â€˜If I didn’t know better, Father, I’d think you enjoyed that,’ Janil observed dryly.
    They pulled on a couple of flight suits from the clean locker.
    â€˜Helmets too?’
    â€˜Of course.’
    Janil had just locked his into place when, with a resonant, high-pitched hum, the flyer rose up sharply and threaded through the portal, which immediately began closing behind it. Janil and his father stepped back out into the hangar as the pilot hovered slowly across to his place in the line, lowered the flyer onto its three stumpy legs, and shut down power. Slowly, the whine died away to silence.
    â€˜Well, Janil.’ Even through the suit com, his father’s voice was trembling with barely concealed excitement. ‘Shall we go have a look at her?’

Lari crossed the common to the hub, joined the allocation queue and, when it was his turn, waved his wristband over the destination plate.
    â€˜Dome 750 South.’
    The reader chimed and he moved across to stand with the small group waiting for a southbound lift. As he joined them, a middle-aged woman nudged the man she was standing beside and Lari caught the almost imperceptible nod she threw in his direction.
    He knew that gesture well. He’d been living with it as long as he could remember.
    Look, that’s Dernan Mann’s youngest son. He’s a copygen.
    Lari often wondered why his parents had decided to go against protocol and have two sons instead of the mandatory son and daughter, but on the one occasion he’d nerved to ask, his father had been evasive.
    â€˜It was our decision, Larinan, and not a matter you need concern yourself with.’
    But in Port these things mattered, if not to his father then certainly to everyone else. All his childhood, Lari had been aware of the whispers, the comments whenever the four of them were seen in public together.
    â€˜See, if you’re Dernan Mann you can break whatever protocols you like’
    â€˜Must be nice to have that sort of power’
    â€˜Most of us would end up as