Holly’s mind raced. If the goblins had somehow managed to hook up the terminal to a power source, then all the safety features would have been activated. Including.

Captain Short whirled, but the blast doors were already closing. The fireproof barriers were automatically triggered by a thermo sensor in the chute.

When a flare passed by below, two-metre-thick steel doors shut off the access tunnel from the rest of the terminal. They were trapped in there, with a column of magma on the way. Not that the magma would kill them — there wasn’t much overspill from the flares. But the super-heated air would bake them drier than autumn leaves.

The goblin was standing on the tunnel’s edge, oblivious to the impending eruption. Holly realized that it wasn’t a question of the fugitive being crazy enough to fly into the chute. He was just plain stupid.

With a jaunty wave, the goblin hopped into the chute, rising rapidly from view. Not rapidly enough. A seven-metre-long jet of roiling lava pounced on him like a waiting snake, consuming him completely.

Holly did not waste time grieving. She had problems of her own. LEP jumpsuits had thermal coils to disperse excess heat, but that wouldn’t be enough. In seconds, a wall of dry heat would roll in there, and raise the temperature enough to crack the walls.

Holly glanced up. A line of reinforced ancient coolant tanks were still bolted to the tunnel roof. She slid her blaster to maximum power and began sinking charges into the belly of the tanks. This was no time for subtlety.

The tanks buckled and split, belching out rancid air and a few trickles of coolant. Useless. Thev must have bled out over the centuries, and the goblins had never bothered replacing them. But there was one left, untouched. A black oblong, out of place among the standard green LEP models. Holly positioned herself directly underneath and fired.