Serena Jones the technologist said abruptly, ‘There must be more evidence. For instance, the solar wind should be dispersing slowly.’ She glanced around the room. ‘That’s a wind of charged particles thrown out of the Sun, a steady blast . . . Magsails, like the one Lodestone uses, rely on that wind.’

  ‘A wind that moves a lot more slowly than light.’ Taps on Marlowe’s phone. ‘Didn’t think of that. But I bet somebody did . . . The wind will have been shut off at source, when the Sun was taken away, but there should be a remnant shell still spreading out from the Sun’s location . . . Here it is. The termination of that should reach us in . . . a few days.’ She glanced up. ‘There you are, Minister. A verifiable prediction. Sitting here we’ve done some actual science. Thank you, Ms Jones,’ she said gracefully enough. She looked around the room. ‘So it was moved. We have absolutely no idea how it was moved. And of course one simpler question we can’t answer yet is where it was moved to—’

  ‘Professor Marlowe,’ said Fred Bowles grimly. ‘Let’s get back to the point. You just said, the Sun was taken away. Isn’t there an implication here you haven’t addressed, with all this talk of evidence?’

  Yamanaka leaned forward and said, ‘You’re asking, sir, not so much how this happened, but – who did this?’

  There was a silence. Faint shock, Tash thought.

  Serena smiled. ‘I think we just crashed through a conceptual barrier here.’

  Marlowe sighed. ‘And I was hoping to get away without addressing that. If it isn’t, even yet, some remarkable natural phenomenon . . .’

  ‘Such as what?’ Bowles asked, a little helplessly. ‘A monstrous wormhole through which the Sun might have fallen?’

  Marlowe nodded. ‘That’s conceivable, actually. But such an object would have much more mass-energy than the Sun itself. We would see it . . .’ Her eyes became a little glassy. ‘No, it makes no sense at all. The wormhole would have to have the dimensions of a black hole the size of the Sun – the linear size, not the Sun’s mass. Which would have to have a mass equivalent to . . . about two hundred thousand suns. The size of a respectable star cluster. That’s what you would need.’ She smiled, ironically. ‘Sitting in the middle of the Solar System. We would probably have noticed it,’ she said dryly.

  Serena Jones shook her head. ‘If I may speak. I guess I’m biased, given my own background. But, even if we can never understand the precise mechanism, I believe this event was technological. As you believe, I suspect, Professor. And intentional.

  ‘I mean, we know it must be, right? The removal itself was not – not messy, like a natural phenomenon. Any kind of wormhole would be messy as hell – a rip in space, radiation everywhere? Like the big black hole in the centre of the Galaxy, huge flows of gas and dust, throwing stars around like firecrackers . . . This was clinical. Precise. A surgical excision.

  ‘Do any of you remember Star Trek? Seems to me something just beamed the Sun the hell out of here. Teleported it.

  ‘And, a point I see was raised in previous briefs, the removal was clearly timed to coincide with the solar eclipse. The event must have been meant as a signal to intelligent creatures on Earth. A signal presumably from some other intelligence. It’s actually the only plausible explanation.’

  A brief silence.

  Bowles said, ‘That sounds impossible. But it also sounds like what happened. And the energy you would need to do all that . . . to teleport the Sun?’ He looked hesitantly at Marlowe.

  Marlowe said, ‘We can guess at the power levels required. And that implies a Kardashev Type III culture. By which I mean a Galaxy-scale culture, Minister. Or at least, a culture able to wield energies on the scale of the Galaxy—’

  Kay-Three. Tash observed the jargon, noted it in her phone, checked the spelling.

  Bowles looked irritated now. ‘Kardashev? Didn’t he play in goal for Dynamo Moscow?’

  Grace Butterworth suppressed a laugh with a snort.

  Marlowe ignored that. ‘I’m speaking of an enormous amount of energy, very precisely applied.’

  ‘How?’ Bowles snapped.

  ‘For now I haven’t the slightest idea. Perhaps through some exotic physics – a reaching down from a higher dimension of space, which I know some of the physicists argue for, to make sense of their equations. Something beyond our ken – for now. Which doesn’t mean we can’t analyse its effects.’

  Yamanaka asked, ‘More importantly, why would a K-III . . . do this?’

  Marlowe looked up. ‘We’re way out on thin ice here. I really and truly don’t want to speculate further. Not without more data.’

  Bowles thought that over. ‘No. I understand. Well, at least you’ve given us some kind of frame in which to think about this, Ms Jones, Astronomer Royal.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Yamanaka. ‘And I’m getting competing calls. This brief session has been remarkably useful. But I’m afraid we’re done here for now. Thank you all.’ And abruptly she picked up her phone, stood, walked out of her virtual room.

  Marlowe just winked out of existence, like the Sun.

  So did Serena Jones, with a regretful smile.

  Tash got her stuff together and stood. She saw that the staff, the stenographers, were packing up too – and found Bowles had already gone.

  Tash asked Grace, ‘That’s it? Just like that?’

  Grace raised her eyebrows. ‘Our lords and masters can be efficient when their asses are on fire. Come on. That was the easy part. Now Fred has to brief the PM . . .’ She picked up her phone. ‘Oh, by the way . . .’

  ‘What?’

  Holding up the phone she smiled, her face transformed. ‘I just got a call from my sister. Ella, in Naples. I’m an aunt. This is turning out to be one hell of a day, isn’t it?’

  13

  1800 GMT

  Tash got her next call from Mel, on Skythrust Two, around six in the evening.

  By then Tash was sitting with Grace in one of the many canteens in Government House, a building that was accustomed to hosting multiple all-nighters, as tonight was likely to be. Sitting, sipping coffee, keeping up to date and preparing, while they waited to be called for some specific task. Phones, personal and work, on the table top before them. The smart walls carrying various news feeds.

  Also on the table, snacks. Neither of them was hungry, though Tash guiltily thought she ought to force something down, as her body kept its own time on this timeless day. Even before the Sun went away, she had already just been through an all-nighter. So, caffeine and cakes.

  Meanwhile, it seemed, Mel and Marlowe were still observing stuff down there over the Southern Ocean, as Skythrust drifted under a still empty, star-spattered sky.

  And what a sky, Mel said softly. The crew have dimmed the ship’s lights, at last. We’re sitting under a clearwood dome so transparent we might as well be out in the open. And that stratospheric sky, in this cooling day-night, is getting even clearer as the last moisture condenses out of the air. Wow, what a spectacle. The southern hemisphere stars beat out our sparse litter even on a normal night.

  Of course most of us, including the Astronomer Royal, keep looking west for any glimmer of the long-set Sun.

  But just now we lost Neptune, Tash. Right on the edge of the Solar System. Took all this time for the last of the sunlight to slog out there and back again. Now the whole planetary system is dark. Wow, think of that. Lit up only by starlight.

  Grace Butterworth raised her eyes at overhearing Mel’s words, whispering from the phone. ‘Dark planets, huh. Can’t say that’s top of my agenda just now.’

  Tash grinned back. There was worse company than Grace, even if she was deliberately provocative at times. Just as well since, as the day had worn on, Fred Bowles had made it clear that he expected the two of them to stay close, to stay ready – Tash presumably for her diligence, academic intelligence and smattering of science, and Grace for her reliable muscle, willpower, and ability to get things done.

  ‘OK,’ Tash said. ‘But somebody has to be thinking about that kind of thing, Grace, along with the stress on the National Grid and a bit of petty looting on Northumberland Road . . .’

  Mel was still talking, evidently distracted by her huge sky.

  . . . I’m worried about Jim, of course. And Zhi too. Oh, the Lodestone seems safe enough; they are a stationary habitat and won’t drift far, and the whole thing is encrusted with battery packs. They will be able to survive a long time, and retrieval will be easy. Whereas—

  ‘Whereas Jim’s Al-miriykh is a lightweight Mars ferry. Mel, can we set up an open link with Zhi? Just you, me and him. Whatever comes next.’

  A frown in the phone’s tiny screen. An In-Joke group hug. But you know what he’s like. Withdraws into himself. I can try. I need to check Jane is OK. Later.

  More coffee. More screen-watching.

  Word came through confirming that this was indeed going to be an all-nighter, at least. They weren’t surprised. There were bunk rooms; Tash and Grace’s names had been added to a rota.

  ‘I knew it,’ said Grace.

  The government as a whole couldn’t sleep, locally or nationally, because the population wasn’t sleeping.

  But after the first few hours, the first frantic round of meetings at ministerial, intergovernmental and ultimately FIS level, it had become clear that there was nothing much to be done about the situation, for now, nothing save for sticking-plaster solutions to the obvious immediate problems. Schools closed tomorrow at least, as the Cobra meeting had recommended, and Tash smiled as she imagined Marlowe’s rage at such trivialities. Well, it was something sensible that could be done.

  More widely, people were reacting in their diverse ways. There had been a run on the stores, online and otherwise, and a strategic decision had already been made to impose a quick rationing of essential items, notably items like torches and storm lamps, long-life foodstuffs like rice. Almost a reflex move by government agencies, their procedures hardened by decades of disruption of various kinds. There was always panic buying, Tash thought, from floods to pandemics – and now to the vanishing of the Sun.

  Meanwhile, as the evening closed in, a lot of people had gone home from work early, if they had gone in at all, to hunker down with their families.

  In Newcastle, by now it would have been dark anyhow. The world had started to feel a little more normal– the pubs and bars were becoming crowded, the police were reporting. Cinemas too, especially the big immersive three-dimensional multi-sensory venues. A place to huddle with other people, Tash guessed, and to escape from the world for a while. Similarly the police were reporting that the churches were packed too.

  On a national scale the darkened cities were flooded with police resources, amid talk of sending in the army if there was trouble. Generally, however, there was not much sign of the drink- and drug-fuelled riots of which the online tabloids had gleefully warned. Tash had observed this before, in emergencies of various sorts during her own life. When the real crisis came, most people stayed calm.

  Grace, though, had different contacts.

  She claimed to know survivalist types who were heading for their end-of-the-world bunkers, caches of food and medicine and weapons and such, deep in the countryside. Then again, she said, some of those bunkers were a century old, having been first dug out during Cold War nuke scares. Elsewhere environmental campaigners fretted that the governments would use the crisis as a ploy to open up fossil fuel sources – but such campaigners always fretted about that. Others went to the churches to pray to mitigate the savagery of a vengeful god. And still others were talking about the sunlight shut-down itself as an act of war, waged by some power yet to be identified.

  Tash, politely, tried to avoid getting drawn into any arguments with Grace over all these freshly minted conspiracy theories. She vaguely fretted about Grace’s apparent relative credulity, though; she seemed to take some of this stuff seriously.

  Time wore on.

  The weather closed in, as Tash followed through her phone feeds, cocooned as she was in House. Over Newcastle, there had been fog in the afternoon, then rain, and, it was said, some snow inland. Water vapour condensing out of the cooling air. Tash remembered Marlowe telling the Cobra it would take a little longer than that, a couple of days, before the snow came in earnest, but she forgave the Astronomer Royal the hasty, flaky predictions that had been forced out of her. Nobody knew.

  At about eight, Grace showed Tash a report from Moscow, where it was already midnight. Deep, heavy snow, and a weird hail, covering the streets half a metre deep.

  ‘Granted, Moscow in winter isn’t particularly balmy anyhow. Quite a difference from your Astronomer Royal swanning it on her sky boat, isn’t it? But of course she’s floating around over a nice warm ocean. As is Britain, I suppose. As the ocean cools down slower than the air, so it keeps coastal regions warmer than the deep hearts of continents. For now, Newcastle shivers, but Moscow freezes.’

  Tash raised her eyebrows. ‘You know some meteorology?’

  ‘I know a lot of stuff that might surprise you. Science was my bag as a kid. That and rugby. Got to Cambridge to study natural sciences . . .’

  ‘Cambridge. I never knew that either.’

  ‘But, halfway through my second year, I was recruited. MI5. I had already been a L.C. Marine reserve cadet, before Cambridge. Recruiter implied that my combination of brains and brawn could be diverted to more useful purposes in the government’s employ. Almost a cliché, isn’t it? Still, fair enough. Especially when they had me go through a second degree at Edinburgh on politics, ethics, philosophy . . . I’m not just some bodyguard, you see. I’m a scientifically literate adviser to the Minister, and a bodyguard.’

  Tash thought that over. This was just about the most personal information Grace had ever shared with her. And coming out of nowhere. Memo to self, she thought: get locked down with anyone long enough and you’ll get their life story. Second memo: never underestimate.

  She extended a hand. ‘Well, I’m glad to have met you properly, Grace Butterworth. There are worse people I could be spending this particular evening with.’

  Grace took the hand and shook it, with remarkable delicacy, Tash thought. ‘Likewise. Does this mean I’m one of the In-Jokes now?’

  ‘In your dreams. More coffee?’

  So they sat, and talked, and watched their screens, and responded to a couple of queries from Bowles.

  Tash phoned her father a couple of times.

  At about nine, King George, secure in his own bolthole at Balmoral with his family, addressed the nation.

  In 1940, just as France had fallen, Churchill warned us that if we failed at that moment we might have sunk into a new dark age. Well, Winston, when it comes to dark ages we could show you a thing or two tonight. But I can echo what Churchill went on to say when I promise you that we will get through this trial, whatever it is, however it has come about, however it is resolved. And when people look back in a thousand years’ time, they will still say, this was their finest hour . . .

  It wasn’t a surprise to hear from George at Balmoral. He remained monarch of independent Scotland, as well as of the federation of the English provinces, if not of a proudly independent Wales. And Tash wasn’t particularly surprised to hear him quoting Churchill, the go-to source for speeches designed to inspire Britons – even if the country Churchill had preserved in war now existed only as a historical curiosity, a precursor of the modern loose alliance of nations. But she was impressed by that smart allusion to a dark age. Dark it certainly was.

  When the King was done, Grace surprised Tash again by producing a small hip flask, with two tiny pop-out cups. She poured out small nips, and passed one to Tash. ‘Here. Skye whisky, nectar of the gods. God save the King.’ She knocked back her glass. ‘I was introduced to it when MI5 sent me for more basic training under his sister.’

  ‘Marine training? Who, Charlotte? You’re pulling my leg.’

  ‘Would I? Serving officer, still. Tough taskmaster she was too . . .’

  But the whisky failed to warm Tash, and the moment passed, and still they sat in silence.

  Waiting.

  At about nine thirty, Grace got a message from her sister, in Naples. A ‘nutter’ had tried to break into the maternity ward where Grace’s new little niece was being cared for. ‘Yelling about demon babies born on the Devil’s day.’ Grace glowered. ‘I wish I’d been there. I’d have introduced him to the Devil, all right.’

  ‘But your niece is safe.’

  ‘For now.’ But after that Grace didn’t put down her phone.

  Waiting.

  A little after ten p.m. Tash’s personal phone lit up with a panicky message from Zhi. A relayed broadcast from the Al-miriykh.

  Jim Boyd was in deeper trouble.

  14

  2220 GMT

  ‘TsUP, Houston, Al-miriykh. Jim Boyd here. Speaking to the world, I guess. Thank you to everybody who cares enough to listen in. And love to you, Wu Zhi.

  ‘I am Jim Boyd.

  ‘This is my own damn fault.

  ‘I want to say that from the get-go. Not the fault of the ground controllers, and we are out of synch by long minutes as you know, but I should have waited for advice. And certainly not the fault of my crew, Ito and Marina, who, one way or another, are going to suffer even more because of what I did.

  ‘What I did. My choice. My error. I’ve already downloaded a technical report, and the crew will download more as the events unfold. But I want to say this in my own words, if I can.

  ‘As long as I can.

  ‘OK. Look. Here it is. You know already that when the Sun was – eclipsed, or whatever has happened – we lost our primary source of power: sunlight on our big solar-cell arrays. And we also, incidentally, lost the grip of the Sun’s gravity on us, and we started drifting off course straight away.

  ‘Those, you could say, remain our principal issues.

  ‘And you’ll know by now too that, among our survival options, we do have battery backup power, and we do have a storm shelter, a small cabin within a cabin where we can retreat.