Dressed, she climbed the ladder up to the flight deck, a grey-walled cave at the front of the ship, illuminated by banks of softly glowing computer displays. Sliding her legs beneath the main console, she settled herself into the pilot's seat.

She could see the curve of Tiers Cross through the forward windows, its snowfields blindingly bright with the reflected light of its orbiting, artificial suns. She took a moment to savour the view before buckling up, thinking of all the cold, lonely evenings she'd spent standing on its frozen streets looking up, anticipating this moment.

When she was ready, she hooked her neural implant into the ship's sensorium and a head-up display appeared, superimposed across the vision in her right eye. Life support connectors snaked into the sockets sewn into the chest and thighs of her ship suit. The peppery smell of raw space filled her nostrils as her body interpreted the incoming data from the ship's sensors, converting it into recognisable human sensations. Her skin prickled all over and, deep in her gut, she could feel power building in the fusion reactor. She was linked to the ship and it pulled at her like an eager puppy straining the leash.

> Where are we going?

It showed her a stylised, three dimensional map of local space, covering a sphere a dozen light years in radius.

Kat smiled.

"It's good to be back," she said.

She blinked up a cursor and used it to click on the icon representing Strauli Quay. Seven light years away, with few natural resources and situated at the intersection of three trade routes, the planet was an important crossroads in interstellar culture, a collision of ideas and fashions from a hundred worlds, its wealth and reputation sustained by the rivers of commerce flowing through its orbital docks. And although no-one there had seen her in decades, it was also her home.

She thought of her parents, living and working in the sunny coastal villas and courtyards of the Abdulov compound. In her head, she could almost smell the jasmine in the gardens and hear the snap and flap of boat sails on the afternoon tide.

> Set course for Strauli Quay?

"Yes."

> You got it.

She felt the old ship shiver as the fusion thrusters fired, pushing it up and out of orbit, seeking the emptiness of interstellar space. Tiers Cross fell away from the window, to be briefly replaced by the sparkling jewels of the Bubble Belt.

> Message coming in.

Above the window, one of the overhead displays cleared to reveal the worried face of the family representative, Ezra.

"Captain Abdulov? Are you under way?"

"We're just breaking orbit. Why, what's the matter?"

The young man flushed. "It's Captain Luciano. His ship jumps for Strauli in five minutes."

"Victor's ahead of us?" Kat cursed under her breath. It was illegal to activate jump engines within a hundred planetary diameters of the surface-a distance that would take her more than an hour to reach at maximum thrust.

"Yes, I'm afraid we failed in our attempt to delay him."

"Did you put in the complaint?"

"I did, but the local police have shown considerable reluctance to interfere in what they call 'a dispute between traders.' Personally, I suspect bribery."

Kat balled her fists. She'd given up her home and family for Victor Luciano, only to have that sacrifice thrown back in her face when he left her. She couldn't let him beat her to Djatt, not now she stood to get back everything she'd lost.

A matter of honour, Ezra had called it.

She took a deep breath.

"Okay," she said, "here's what's going to happen. Ezra, you need to get on the line to traffic control. Tell them I've got an emergency on board. I don't care what, make something up."

"An emergency?"

"I don't know. A reactor leak, maybe. Something that means I have to activate my jump engines right now."

"You can't do that."

"At the same time, I'm going to open up the fusion motors so I'll have enough residual velocity following the jump to overtake Victor before he reaches the Quay."

On the overhead screen, Ezra's mouth opened and shut wordlessly as he tried to think of a suitable response. Jumping under thrust was even more strictly forbidden than jumping within a hundred diameters. If another ship happened to be in the way when she appeared at her destination, she wouldn't have time to take evasive action, and she'd still be accelerating when she hit it. Worse still, if it was behind her, her exhaust would incinerate it before she had time to cut the thrust. The risks to everyone were too great, and harsh punishments were doled out to captains caught engaging in such reckless behaviour. Punishments up to and including imprisonment and ship seizure.

"I know what I'm doing," she said.

Ezra scratched his head. "But what happens at Strauli when they see you coming in hot?"

Kat smiled. "That won't be for another seven years, and you'll be well into middle age before the news works its way back here, so why don't you let me worry about it?"

Ezra opened his mouth again to protest but she broke the connection before he could.

Fuck it, she thought. I'm never coming back to this dump.

She blinked up the engine controls and ramped up the thrust, letting it push her back in her seat. Accelerating hard, she told the Ameline to bring the jump engines online. Hooked into the ship's senses, she felt the two smooth purple coils of twisted space-time powering up in its belly, their design back-engineered from the arches that first allowed humanity to spread out into the universe.

Thousands of kilometres ahead, Victor's ship stood against the darkness like a silver splinter in the night.

She opened a channel.

"Hey," she said.

On the overhead screen, Victor regarded her with tired eyes.

"What are you doing, Katherine?"

Strapped into her couch, she did her best to smile against the acceleration.

"I'm beating you to Djatt."

There was a short delay as her words crawled across the gulf separating them, and then Victor shook his head sadly.

"You can't catch us, Kat. Not in that old tub."

Katherine bit her lip, enjoying the moment.

"You think so? Watch this."

Knowing she'd be gone before her words reached him, she gave the mental command for the ship to activate its jump engines. All the power gauges spiked at once, there was a flash of white, and the Ameline vanished.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

MISMATCHED MOONS.

After the flash, darkness in the Land Rover's cab.

Alice let out a cry: "I can't see!"

Also blind, Ed stood on the brakes. The big car ground to a halt. Groping, he reached over and found her arm. They were both shivering and breathless, as if drenched in iced water.

"It's okay," he said, "I'm here."

The flash had been too bright, like staring into the sun. He screwed his eyes shut and waited for the blobby green and purple afterimages to fade. When he opened them, he saw they were parked on a beach, in the dark. Breakers crashed and slithered on the sand ahead, froth bone-white in the light of the Land Rover's headlamps.

Beside him, Alice knuckled her eyes.

"Stop it, you'll make it worse." He pushed her fists away and cupped her face in his hands.

"Look at me," he said.

Her eyes were red and watering. With an effort, she focussed on him.

"Are you okay?"

She looked uncomfortable. "I think so." She pulled back and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her fleece.

Ed reached down and killed the engine. It shuddered into a deep silence, broken only by the rush and hiss of the surf.

Alice said, "Where do you think we are?"

Ed leant forward over the wheel. Beyond the headlamp beams, the beach stretched away in both directions, a long strip of sand bookended by the cliffs of distant headlands. The stars above were clear and bright and unfamiliar, and two crescent moons hung low over the water, one white and the other orange.

An arch shone in the rear view mirror, red in the reflected light from the Land Rover's brakes. While Alice finished rubbing her eyes, Ed dug a torch from his survival kit.

"I'm going to take a look," he said.

Alice caught his sleeve. "Wait! How do we know it's safe out there?"

"Safe?"

She looked around at the darkened sand. "What if the air's poisonous or something?"

Ed took a couple of experimental sniffs, then shrugged. "If it was, I guess we'd be dead already."

He shouldered the door open. Cold air swirled into the cab. The offshore breeze smelled salty, and reassuringly Earth-like. If it weren't for the double moons, they could almost be on a beach in France or Spain.

Alice zipped her fleece to her chin, and opened the door on her side. Neither of them wanted to be the first to speak. They stepped out of the cab in silence, onto the gritty sand. Ed felt the grains crunch beneath his feet. With Alice beside him, he followed the Land Rover's tyre tracks back to the arch. His boots left crisp pleated tracks. Alice scuffed her feet, kicking little sprays of sand with the toes of her white trainers.

The arch looked the same as the one they'd just driven into, in the paddock by the river. The sides were just as cool and smooth, and glowing with the same purple hue. Ed crouched down at its base and scooped up a handful of damp sand, rubbing it between his fingers. The grains were coarse and sharp, like powdered glass. With a laugh, he brushed it from his hands. On impulse, he dug his mobile phone from the inside pocket of his combat jacket, and checked the reception.

"No signal," he said, then grabbed Alice by the shoulders.

"We've done it," he told her. "We're on another planet!"

Alice coughed. She seemed to be having trouble catching her breath.

"You were right, then," she wheezed, "about the arches?"

"Can you believe it?"

Ed felt a bit breathless himself. He took her hand and pulled her down to the water's edge, where the waves hunched and sizzled onto the shore, eerily white in the moonlight. He couldn't stop laughing: here he was, Edward Jason Rico, taxi driver and failed artist, walking on a new world. He put his head back and howled at the unfamiliar stars. He spun in circles with his arms out, and kicked through the surf, soaking his boots and the legs of his jeans.

A new world!

Beside him, Alice walked as if dazed. She kept folding and unfolding her arms, unsure what to do with her hands. Ed guessed she wanted the camera she'd left on the passenger seat of the Land Rover.

"Oh Ed," she said, turning slowly around and around, taking it all in, and unable to quite believe where she was.

He put his arms around her.

"We did it," he said.

She looked over his shoulder and he felt her stiffen.

"What's that?" she said.

Ed let go of her and turned to see.

"Where?"

Alice pointed into the dunes at the back of the beach, about a mile down the beach, to where a silhouette stood against the night sky.

"Over there, on the horizon."

Ed's chest felt tight. He was breathless from shouting.

"It's another arch," he said.

They took it slowly over the dunes. The Land Rover coped well, but the sand was loose and treacherous and kept falling away beneath the wheels, threatening to topple the vehicle over onto its side. Hands tight on the steering wheel, Ed inched them forward, trying to keep the axles as level as possible, following the contours from the top of one dune to the next rather than risk getting mired in the soft depressions between. It was slow, difficult going, and by the time they reached the arch they both had piercing headaches.

Ahead, a sea of charcoal grey dunes rolled toward the horizon, shadowy in the double moonlight. Several had the silhouettes of further arches atop them, maybe a dozen in all.

Slumped in the driving seat, Ed rubbed his eyes. "I don't feel so good."