“I’m not.” She slipped the suit’s breathing mask on, fiddling with it until it was comfortable. The suit wasn’t pressurized, but the mask maintained her air supply at a constant temperature.

Tolton handed her the electron rod. Its spiked tip was capable of giving off a ten thousand volt shock. “This should stop it getting too close. Electricity seems to be our one constant these days. It can blast the possessed back into the beyond, and it certainly scared the visitor.”

She held up the rod, then slipped it into her belt next to a laser pistol and a fission blade. “I feel like I’m off to poke the tiger,” she mumbled round the mask.

I’m sorry,said the personality. But we really do need to know what these things are up to.

Yeah yeah.she pulled the helmet visor down, a transparent material thick enough to give the world a gentle turquoise shade. You ready?she asked dariat.

Yes.his affinity voice might have said it, but his mind didn’t.

The winch cable had been looped round a pulley at the top of the lift shaft. It ended in a couple of simple straps which Erentz clipped onto a harness around her torso. Above the straps, there was a simple control box on a flexible stalk, with four buttons to govern the winch. She tugged at the thin cable, testing its strength.

It’s a linked molecule silicon fibre,explained one of the engineers who’d rigged it up. Totally reliable; it can support a hundred times your body weight.he indicated a small toggle-like handle nesting in the junction between the two straps. This is your fast retrieval handle. The winch drum is recoil-wound, like a spring. The further you go down, the tighter the tension. So if you need to get back up here in a hurry, forget the control box, simply twist and pull. It’ll reel you in fast. And the whole mechanism is mechanical, so no demon spook can mess with it.