“You are not welcome here, lieutenant,” said the young woman in a freezing voice.

“Just leaving, ma’am,” said Ortega heavily. She clapped me unexpectedly on the shoulder and headed back to the transport at an easy pace. Halfway there she suddenly stopped and turned back.

“Here, Kovacs. Almost forgot. You’ll need these.”

She dug in her breast pocket and tossed me a small packet. I caught it reflexively and looked down. Cigarettes.

“Be seeing you.”

She swung herself aboard the transport and slammed the hatch. Through the glass I saw her looking at me. The transport lifted on full repulse, pulverising the ground beneath and ripping a furrow across the lawn as it swung west towards the ocean. We watched it out of sight.

“Charming,” said the woman beside me, largely to herself.

“Mrs. Bancroft?”

She swung around. From the look on her face, I wasn’t much more welcome here than Ortega had been. She had seen the lieutenant’s gesture of camaraderie and her lips twitched with disapproval.

“My husband sent a car for you, Mr. Kovacs. Why didn’t you wait for it?”

I took out Bancroft’s letter. “It says here the car would be waiting for me. It wasn’t.”

She tried to take the letter from me and I lifted it out of her reach. She stood facing me, flushed, breasts rising and falling distractingly. When they stick a body in the tank, it goes on producing hormones pretty much the way it would if you were asleep. I became abruptly aware that I was swinging a hard-on like a filled fire hose.

“You should have waited.”

Harlan’s World, I remembered from somewhere, has gravity at about o.8g. I suddenly felt unreasonably heavy again. I pushed out a compressed breath.

“Mrs. Bancroft, if I’d waited, I’d still be there now. Can we go inside?”