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‘Good food,’ said the Ogron. He scooped up a handful of meat, took Chris’s hand, and plopped the raw mutton into the human’s palm. ‘Try some of this.’

Chris looked at the meat, the juices starting to leak on to his fingers. ‘Er,’ he said.

The silverware on the tray rattled. Chris glanced at it. The Ogrons were looking at one another, chunky teeth showing in their leathery faces.

Chris started to laugh. He put the handful of flesh back down on the tray. ‘Thanks, but I already ate.’

The Ogrons laughed louder, the cutlery rattling harder with the force of it. Chris hoped they weren’t trading rude comments about him in those deep rumbles.

‘I am Son of My Father,’ said the Ogron. He picked up the stray handful of meat and gulped it down.

‘I am his Sister’s Son,’ said the other.

‘Great, hi,’ said Chris. ‘Listen, how much did Professor Martinique tell you guys about this expedition?’

‘He did not tell us much,’ said the Ogron. ‘He told us to lift and carry his boxes and things.’

‘Did he tell you about the crater? The base hidden under the rock?’

‘He did not tell us,’ said Son of My Father. ‘But we heard him talking to Zatopek about the crater. He does not know very much about it.’

Chris nodded. ‘Never mind. I figured you guys might know something he wasn’t telling us… like what’s really hidden inside that mountain.’

The Ogron hesitated, glancing at his nephew. He raised a dark hand, gesturing Chris closer.

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He put his mouth close to Chris’s ear and whispered, ‘I don’t know.’

The cutlery started rattling again.

Later, Chris took the tray back to the galley. Iaomnet and Zatopek stopped talking the instant they saw him, and glared at the table. ‘Good night,’ he said, quickly stacking the tray in the cleaner.

‘See you in the morning,’ said Iaomnet as he retreated.

Chris really wanted to stretch his legs, but the Hopper didn’t even have a gym. He could run in circles around the cargo bay, but it just seemed pointless. He went back down the corridor to the bridge.

The Doctor was sitting in one of the chairs, his face lit in slow-moving patterns by the telltales. The view through the front window was blackness marked with rainbow streaks. Chris tried to ignore it – hyperspace did strange things to your eyes as they tried to focus, and it always made his head ache. The Doctor was watching it as though it was a particularly interesting television programme.

‘I think there’s a lover’s tiff going on in the galley,’ murmured Chris, turning one of the chairs backward and sitting in it. He leant over the back of the seat. ‘Iaomnet and Zatopek.’

‘Or a professional disagreement, perhaps?’ The Doctor raised an eyebrow. ‘The geologists appear to have neglected to fill their assistant in on all the details of the mission.’

‘I was right, wasn’t I? Those images were military. Probably classified.’

‘Of course. Most likely, they’re from Mei Feng’s original expedition.’

‘I can’t believe the military would miss the significance of that line down the mountain.’

‘Maybe they didn’t bother to examine it,’ said the Doctor.

‘Then why take the picture in the first place?’ Chris said.

‘Besides, after what happened to the first expedition, you think they’d be looking for an explanation.’

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‘Good point.’ The Doctor drummed his fingers on his mouth, thinking. ‘I wonder if someone pulled a few strings, and this is the first expedition to get permission…’

Chris insisted, ‘Even if it was low-level security info, there’s no way that a couple of university geologists could have gotten their hands on it. Who are these people?’

‘Good question,’ said the Doctor. ‘Though at this point I think we’d be a little hypocritical to complain that they weren’t who they say they are.’

Chris spent the next morning helping Zatopek work on the sensor array. The young academic monitored the links from a palmtop while Chris and the Ogrons unpacked huge antennae and scanner dishes from their plastic crates.

After lunch, Chris crawled out through the airlock and spent an hour welding things