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wanted it to be true. Just thinking about the possibility made his brain salivate. There were so many ramifications. Not just for John Bruce, but for science. If a fragment of Bruce's memory could become detached and find its way into another person eighteen months later, then where had it been in the meantime? Had it been preserved in the higher dimensions? Had it drifted on hitherto undreamed of upper dimensional currents? Had it snapped back to Earth immediately and spent eighteen months trapped inside Pendennis's head?

    And was it more than just memory? How much of John Bruce's personality had gone with it? A vestigial remnant? Louise said he talked like John. Could a complete sub-personality have ripped away?

    Or was the great Nick Stubbs deluding himself?

    Every week thousands of people saw bright white lights. Near death experience, anaesthetics, drugs. Why should this one be any different? John's brain had come under stress. So what? He was being shot through new space. Everyone expected his brain to come under stress. He saw a white light as he started pass out then came to. End of story. Pendennis was a con-man who'd tapped Louise's mind and John Bruce was as whole as the day he'd joined NASA.

    Nick slumped back onto the sofa. Why did rational explanations always have to be so boring? Why couldn't he live in a universe where the simple answer was invariably wrong, a Heath Robinson universe of elegant complication, magic and imagination?

    He grabbed the remote and pressed 'play.' Maybe the interviewer would ask about Bruce's childhood and the spaceman wouldn't be able to answer.

    John Bruce stuttered back to life.

    "And when I returned to Earth, I was amazed at how beautiful everything was. It was like I'd been wearing dark glasses all my life. Suddenly everything was brighter, the colours deeper, the sounds sweeter. Life was beautiful. It still is. If only people would take time out and look around."

    Nick froze the image and leaned forward. How long had it taken Pegasus to return to Earth? Two days? The white light effect doesn't last that long. If Bruce was still experiencing a disturbance in his visual cortex two days later . . .

    He jumped to his feet.

    Not the primary visual cortex—that was at the back of the brain, too far away. But the temporal cortex. Right place, right function. It handled some of the visual processing and it was close to long-term memory and hearing. A single localised rupture there and . . .

    He was off again, spiralling into the wonderful world of conjecture. He could see it all. A section of higher dimensional matter ripped away. Not enough to kill or critically impair, just enough to mildly distort some of Bruce's sensory functions.

    He paced as he thought, kindling his brain, greasing his synapses. Think, think, think. If only he had a scan of Bruce's brain, he could prove it. He could generate a map, work out exactly what would have been lost and . . .

    He needed that scan. He grabbed the remote, zapped John Bruce, called up a list of his SHIFT contacts and then tried to calm down, taking deep breaths. He had to sound relaxed. A casual voice mail enquiry to a fellow scientist across the pond. Do you still have the full spectrum brain scans from before and after John Bruce's flight? Did that sound innocent enough? What if there really had been a cover up? What if they knew he'd been damaged?

    He tapped his fingers nervously on the remote. What choice did he have? He needed those scans. If SHIFT knew there were problems with the neural shielding then no concocted cover story would convince them to give up the data.

    He voiced in his request and played it back. Then recorded it again, bringing the timbre of his voice down from slightly manic to somewhere around borderline normal. Happy, he appended his contact details and pressed 'send.'

    Then another thought hit him. What if Pendennis didn't need to be telepathic? What if John Bruce had talked about Louise in