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last visit with Monica Jansson five years ago – back in a different age, the age before Yellowstone. The big sky, the call of birds, were unchanged. Otherwise she barely recognized the place. Even the fence before her had developed from a flimsy barrier into a regular Berlin Wall, all concrete and watchtowers. No doubt the interior of the facility itself was riddled with intensive anti-stepper security.
    The purpose of all this industry was evident. She could already see the profile of one rocket, elegant, classic and unmistakable. This really was a space launch facility. But it was not like Cape Canaveral, in the finer detail. There were no towering gantries, and that single rocket she spied was short, stubby, nothing like the great bulks of a shuttle or a Saturn V – surely inadequate for the task of climbing up out of Earth’s deep gravity. But it didn’t need to beat Earth’s gravity, that was the point; that rocket would not be launched into the sky but stepwise, into the emptiness of the universe next door.
    Overall, instead of being endearingly backyard-rocketship amateurish as it had been, the facility and its approaches now looked like one big engineers’ playground. The Gap had become big business these last few years, she knew, as governments, universities and corporations back on the Datum had gradually woken up to the potential of the place. Now hoardings shouted the names of every major technical outfit Sally could think of, from Lockheed to IBM via the Long Earth Trading Company – and including the Black Corporation, of course. This had become probably one of the most crowded stepwise locations beyond Valhalla, the greatest city of the High Meggers.
    Which was one reason she hadn’t come near the place for years. And why it was hard to take a single pace forward, like she had a phobia. She reflected that Joshua Valienté would do better in this situation. Good old Joshua now seemed quite at home in moderately cramped social situations like this, while she was ever more a loner and a hardened misanthrope.
    But it was her father who had summoned her here, and nothing could change him , for better or worse. Willis Linsay, dear old Dad: creator of the Stepping box, a gadget probably stolen out of the box from under Pandora’s nose and released into an unsuspecting world. That was Dad all over, tinker, tinker. If you couldn’t find him, just head towards the explosions and the wail of ambulances . . .
    And as she stood there, reluctant, conflicted, uncertain, here he came, walking boldly out of the compound to meet her. How had he known she was here? Oh, of course he would know.
    He was taller than she was – she had always had more of her mother’s colouring and body shape – and thinner than ever, like a man built of nothing but sinews and bone. After her mother had died he’d seemed to live on nothing but brandy, potatoes and sugar, for years.
    He slowed as he approached her. They stood there, wary, eyeing each other.
    ‘So you came.’
    ‘What do you want, Dad?’
    He grinned, a slightly deranged expression she remembered too well. ‘Same old Sally. Down to business, eh?’
    ‘Is there any point me asking what you’ve been doing – hell, since you turned the world upside down on Step Day?’
    ‘Pursuing projects,’ he murmured. ‘You know me. You either wouldn’t understand or you wouldn’t want to know. Suffice to say it’s all for the common good.’
    ‘In your opinion.’
    ‘In my opinion.’
    ‘And is there some new project that you brought me here for?’
    ‘Here?’ He glanced around at the GapSpace installation. ‘ Here is only a waystation, en route to our ultimate destination.’
    ‘And where’s that?’
    He said simply: ‘The Long Mars.’
    Sally Linsay was used to wonder. She had grown up stepping, as a child she had walked into uncounted alien worlds. But even so, as her father spoke those words, she felt the universe pivot around her.
    They were met at the