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Garudi are aboard. She should have moved it by now – why is she delaying?’
    ‘Out of some misplaced concern for your well-being, perhaps?’
    ‘You should be next,’ Swift said.
    ‘No,’ Kanu answered. ‘You’re a witness to this and I want you to survive. If and when you make it back to your friends, they need to know that this was a terrorist act.’
    ‘My friends already know, Kanu.’
    ‘Maybe they do. But for my peace of mind, you’re still going first.’
    Swift gave a perfunctory nod. ‘If you insist.’
    ‘I do.’
    The lock was ready to accept Swift. He was on the verge of entering it when there came a sudden sharp blur of motion and Swift was on the other side of Kanu, the airlock vacant, and Kanu was being pushed – shoved was closer to the truth – into the waiting aperture.
    ‘Swift, no!’
    ‘It is within my capability to help you, Kanu. Therefore I have no option.’
    Before he could act, Swift had pushed enough of himself into the lock to be able to activate the automatic sequence. It was a snakelike striking motion, almost too fast for the eye to follow. Kanu barely had time to register what had happened, let alone abort the lock sequence. Swift withdrew, the door sealed and the exchangers began to drag air out of the chamber.
    ‘The terms of our inspection visit are still in force, Swift! We have our one hour! It has not expired!’
    ‘Which is precisely why I will be joining you on the other side the moment the lock allows it.’
    When the door opened, Kanu had to stop himself toppling out. He had climbed up on the way in but now he chanced a jump, hingeing his legs to absorb the impact and trusting that the reduced gravity of Mars would spare him any injury. He hit the dirt and sprawled, nearly burying his visor in the soil. He grunted, gathered air into his lungs and pushed himself to his feet. He was still alive, and Korsakov was just vanishing into the belly of the flier. ‘I’m clear!’ he called. ‘But Swift is still coming through.’
    Korsakov and the others would have heard something of the exchange between Kanu and the robot, even if its meaning were unclear. ‘Why did you allow—’
    ‘I didn’t!’
    Kanu set about crossing the ground to the flier. It really was not very far, but after a dozen paces he felt compelled to turn back, anxious to see Swift appear in the open lock. He wanted Swift to be true to his word, to be the sincere and honest friend he had always believed in.
    The ship blew up.
    It was not a nuclear blast or metallic-hydrogen phase change; it was not the flare-up of a runaway Chibesa motor. It was not the swallowing whiteness of an unbound post-Chibesa process, the kind of catastrophic event that had destroyed entire holoships.
    It was still an explosion.
    The detonation tore through the ship about a third of the way up the exposed part of the vessel. Above the blast zone, the already leaning edifice started buckling over. Kanu had thought it on the verge of toppling before; now it was fulfilling that promise. Debris, flung in all directions by the detonation, began to rain down around Kanu.
    ‘Kanu!’ someone shouted.
    ‘Take the flier!’ someone shouted in return, and it was only when the words were out that he recognised his own voice.
    Kanu started running, or what passed for running in the soft, slipping dust under his feet. In the distance, the flier was taking off. The boarding ramp was still lowered, dragging across the ground, and the flier was turning to meet him.
    ‘No, Garudi,’ Kanu called. ‘It’s too dangerous.’
    Kanu glanced back again. A lengthening shadow loomed over him now. The wreck was coming down, bowing to meet him. He could see no sign of Swift, and with an exquisite clarity he knew he stood no chance of reaching the flier.

 
    CHAPTER THREE
     
    The seas were heavy, the boat’s rise and fall testing Mposi’s delicate constitution to its limits. For an Akinya, he had always been a poor traveller. Chai and