'Yes, but, as I said, it's just a feeling. At any rate, the images were very painful ones.'

'Death?'

'Yes.' Sam hesitated.'A car crash.'

Denadi nodded. 'My experience was a memory of death also. Death without choice.'

Sam looked up eagerly. 'Mine too! Or rather,' she added thoughtfully,'someone else's choice.' She frowned.'No,' she added again,'You were right. I think it was more about thelack of choice on someone's part and thea.s.sumed choice on the part of someone else.'

Denadi was clearly in agreement. 'My first exposure to the church was -' incredibly he smiled - 'a stand-up row between a member who maintained he had a right to die and his partner who claimed he did not.'

'What happened?'

'I do not know. I was young at the time. I did not see the outcome. But the argument was enough to set me thinking.'

'And that's why you chose your faith? Why you believe in the right to die?'

'I have always thought so.'

Sam nodded slowly, reviewing impossible images that were nonetheless frighteningly familiar. 'In this memory... the first car I ever owned - own, I mean - will kill a girl. It was - will be - an accident. She could have been saved. Her father refuses to allow a blood transfusion. His faith forbids it.'

'He makes the choice for her?'

'Yes.'

'She dies.'

'Yes.'

'And that's why you choose your faith? Why you believe in the right to choose?'

Sam sighed. 'It's what I've always thought.'

Denadi was silent.

Sam said,'Tell me about the Bel system, Father. I know there are more than one intelligent species living here.'

'You mean the Hanakoi?'

'More than that. The Hanakoi have human-like motivation. They wouldn't need to communicate by metaphor. Is there any other intelligent life I don't know about?'

"There are the Hoth.We don't know much about them. They live in the atmospheres of the gas giants.'

'Whatdo you know about them?'

'They rarely communicate with others.'

'And when contact does take place?'

Denadi shook his head."The only contact was... dubious. There are rumours. A missing ship, the crew driven mad. An a.s.sumed warning... The Hoth do not like strangers.'

Sam bit her fingernail thoughtfully. 'What if it wasn't hostility? What if it was just... I don't know... a lack of common ground. I mean,' she continued, her words speeding up as the ideas formed more fully, 'what if the Hoth just communicate telepathically, or empathetically rather, by tapping into intensely personal memories and using them as means to send a message?'

Denadi considered. 'You think the Hoth are trying to tell us we could save them and that the choice is ours?'

'Them or someone else...' Sam fell silent.'Someone to whom time doesn't mean what it means to us...'

'Who? And what can we do about it?'

'You're asking me? I'm the stranger in town, remember. Maybe someone here, on this moon. Maybe the refugees? Maybe another alien life form?' Sam shrugged, then swayed dizzily. 'Someone somewhere is asking for our help. We don't know who and we don't know what to do about it. We're trapped in a s.p.a.ceship in a freezing ocean on a radiation-blasted moon, with no food and limited air and someone wantsour help.' Sam sighed.'Fortunately, I know exactly what to do.'

Chapter Six.

Conaway's ship jagged to avoid weapons fire. The pilot swore. "They're not supposed to fire at us. We're a medical ship! Can't they read the transponder signal?'

'I just knew it was going to be one of those days. First the sun explodes, then I nearly drown in a tidal wave and now we're being shot at by the people whose lives we're trying to save. Great. Just great.'

The rest of the medical team were military personnel. They just sat in grim silence as the ship was smashed from side to side by the proximity of the blasts. Conaway didn't bother to look at them. She knew what they were thinking. It was their friends getting creamed out there. And they couldn't fire back. In fact they were here to provide medical care for those on the other side lucky enough to survive.

A bright flare close by caused the vision ports to be rendered opaque momentarily. When the screen cleared the collision alert sounded. A smashed hunk of wreckage which had once been a private yacht loomed ahead of them, power gone, hull mangled, riddled with holes.

An emergency beacon was glinting in the wreckage.

Conaway narrowed her eyes.'Can you get us in there?'

The pilot frowned. "There's a lot of debris. The wreck's drifting free - it's going to drop into the atmosphere in -' he consulted instruments - 'about six minutes.'

Conaway nodded. 'Plenty of time, then.'

'I don't think -'

'You're not paid to think, soldier!' Conaway's shout dropped to an intimate whisper as she leaned close to the pilot. 'As Major Smoot's ex-wife I could make your life a b.l.o.o.d.y nightmare and you know it. Now do as you're told.'

The pilot said nothing, jerking back on the stick and gunning the engines as he saw a gap in the debris. Conaway just managed to regain her seat before the acceleration kicked her in the rear.

Two minutes later they were tethered - docking was impossible - to the hulk. Already Conaway thought she could detect shreds of vaporous colour clinging to the hull - ionisation of the thinnest of atmospheres. Four minutes. That's all they had before burn-up. Three if you counted the minute they needed to get away themselves.

The medical staff unsnapped their buckles and swung into the airlock. Conaway went in with the second party. The yacht was a new model, built to support up to thirty pa.s.sengers. They didn't know how many survivors there were going to be, or where they were to be found.

The airlock was gone. The wreck groaned as Conaway pulled herself inside through the largest of the hull breaches, the sound travelling to her ears through her contact with the slashed metal, the sound like a wounded soul moaning in the deepest cave imaginable. Hull stress. Metal fatigue. Modern workmanship. This ship would shred like a straw dolly in a wind tunnel the moment it hit any kind of atmosphere.

There were twelve bodies and one survivor. Lucky thirteen. He was trapped in the emergency airlock. The door was mangled, wedged shut, power to the lock mechanism gone. Conaway heard him banging - the sound was transmitted to her through the groaning metal of the hull every time she touched it.

'We have to get him out.'

'We'll need to cut the door.'

'Is there air in there? Does he have a s.p.a.cesuit?'

'What's our timeline?'

'Two minutes.'

More swearing.

'We'll have to blow it.'

'If he's not in a suit he'll die.'

'Better that than burning up on re-entry. Now move!'

Explosive bolts were primed. A moment later the door was a glowing hole.

The survivor wore a s.p.a.cesuit.

Metal had shredded the leg.

Conaway moved in, grabbed the thrashing figure, whipped an emergency bag over the limb, sealed it shut with hyperglue. The bag inflated immediately - a transparent balloon filled with oxygen and blood. Lots of blood. Conaway took a tourniquet from her pack and applied it to the man's thigh. Only when she could see him yelling in pain through the visor did she tie it off.

Someone said,'Timeline's gone.'

'We're out of time, Doctor. We're out of here. Right now.'

The wreck was shaking now, the voice of the hull risen from a moan to a scream whenever she touched it. The ship was coming apart, unravelling around them as they fought back through the main companionway to the breach in the hull.

Wreckage had sealed it.

'Back to the airlock.'

Another half-minute gone.

More charges blew the outer door. Stars peered in, together with streaks that were air hurtling past.

The medical ship held station nearby. The hull was alive with ionisation, glowing sheets of colour. Conaway could see the pilot's face through the vision port creased in concentration as he held the ship in position.

The ship came closer.

The airlock slid open.

A fin grazed the hulk, tearing through the wreckage.

'Now! Jump now! '

Leaping from the corpsed ship was the most terrifying thing she had ever done. She stared hard at the survivor and tried to ignore the tug of the atmosphere, the vast curve of the planet that lay waiting for any unlucky enough to miss the boat.

Then her body slammed against the hull beside the airlock. Many hands grabbed her and she was dragged inside.

'Get us the h.e.l.l out of -'

Beyond the vision ports the hulk disintegrated into glowing wreckage, a thunderous rain of debris, clawed shards which tore at the ship, battered the fins; metal which slashed at the hull, sheared the jets.

More wreckage smashed against the forward ports. The pilot rocked in his chair. He yanked back on the stick - - and all h.e.l.l broke loose.

Spinning wildly as jets burned out of control, hull whining with stress, the ship was suddenly a live thing - a creature of metal and plastic and ceramic screaming in unexpected death throes. Flame belched past the ports, a brief moment of glory and then darkness.

The tumbling continued unabated, angular velocity set by acceleration. Ahead, the planet loomed, atmosphere s.n.a.t.c.hing at the hull as gravity reached up to pull them from the sky.

'The engines - they're gone! I can't hold her! My G.o.d - we're going down! '

The hospital was the colour of a desert sun - white, flat; only the temperature was different. There was no heat here. The white was cold. Cold like the floor, cold like the walls, the paint, the furnishings, the inhabitants.

Everything was cold; the warmest thing here was herself.

She burned.

Guilt. Anger. Fear of death.

Fear of life.

The girl in the hospital chapel was cold, too, her face blushed to give an appearance of health. Looking closer, Sam shivered. Her skin was disguised with make-up but the truth was obvious: underneath the make-up the flesh was cold and white as fresh milk. She lay motionless, all movement stilled, breath stilled, life stilled. She lay on a slab of white-painted metal, draped in a white cloth.

Silk, Sam noticed. The sheen was unmistakable, white on white like the cold girts bloodless cheeks.

She moved closer, drawn by the aseptic quality of the figure, the light, the white cross burning at the head of the gurney.

Cheryl. Dear Lord. Cherry.

There was no smell.

How had they stopped that?

Sam blinked; her eyes ached from the white. What should a dead girl smell like? Peaches and spice? Antiseptic? Rotting flesh? The future?

Sam touched the skin of the girl's cheek. She remembered - oh how she remembered! - the life, the love, the connection. The pain of birth, the loss of her wife, the fulfilment of parenthood.

Something made a noise.

Behind her.

She turned.

Slow turn.