The command channel went silent. Fian stood up, wandered restlessly around our room, and pulled aside the curtain for a moment.
‘It looks like everyone is still down in the main hall,’ he said.
‘I expect Playdon is keeping them out of our way.’
Fian came back to sit next to me. ‘I know this sounds a bit trivial in the circumstances, but I wish I’d brought some food cartons up here. I’m hungry again.’
‘Me too.’ I sat watching the seconds tick by. ‘Leveque reminds me of Keon.’
Fian frowned, obviously thinking that over. ‘I see what you mean. They have the same lazy approach to life, but Leveque is a lot more intelligent.’
‘I’m not so sure. Keon can be scarily bright sometimes. Those laser sculptures of his, for example. He’s not really artistic. Laser sculptures are very technical, so he gets by with pure intellect.’
‘Maybe.’ Fian changed the subject. ‘If nothing is happening for a while, we could finish our earlier conversation. The one about your impact suit problem.’
I groaned. ‘We already finished it.’
‘No we didn’t. A Military psychologist would have a lot of experience with similar problems and …’
I turned and pinned him down on the sleep sacks. ‘No! I refuse to discuss psychologists at a time like this.’
‘But you …’
I kissed him to shut him up, but the second we broke off for air he was off again. I was still trying to kiss Fian into submission, when a voice spoke on command channel. ‘Fifty minutes since portal lockdown.’
Fian and I were brought back to reality. We exchanged guilty looks, sat up, and paid attention.
‘Seven minutes until Threat team’s next predicted crisis point,’ said the Colonel.
‘I re-emphasize this is of dubious reliability,’ said Leveque. ‘We could only estimate the number of times the sphere had to fire its meteor defence while out near …’
He broke off. The shield around the sphere had suddenly changed, the pulsating colours vanishing to leave a clear white light.
‘Stand by everyone,’ murmured the Colonel.
‘Evidently we over-estimated the number of asteroids,’ said Leveque. ‘Power absorption calculations are in progress.’
Tension gradually eased over the next five minutes, after which Leveque spoke again. ‘The sphere’s power absorption has dropped significantly. We therefore assume the sphere is now at maximum power. The lack of offensive action, although not definitive, is very encouraging.’
‘In which case,’ said Colonel Torrek, ‘I’m taking alert level down from 2 to 3. Attack shift 5, you can stand down. Go eat, drink and sleep. If we don’t get any more excitement, then shifts 3 and 4 will stand down in one hour. Nia, it’s up to you when you take your break.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Nia Stone. ‘Since we’re keeping half the fighters on launch standby throughout the emergency, I’ll opt to command the combined fighters of shifts 3, 4 and 5. Commander Tell Dramis will command shifts 1, 2 and 6.’
Nothing happened for the next couple of minutes, and Fian looked at me. ‘It seems pretty calm now. Dare we go and eat?’
‘I think so. If anything happens, alert status will go back up to level 2 and we’ll get mail to warn us.’
We headed back down to the main hall. There were fewer people around now, so presumably some teams had gone to bed. Playdon inevitably came to check what was happening.
‘It’s still going smoothly, sir,’ I said. ‘We thought we’d eat.’
He nodded, and Fian and I went into the side hall with the food tables. I got our drinks of Fizzup, while Fian sorted through the cartons.
‘This isn’t cheese fluffle, but it sounds as if it includes cheese.’
I accepted the carton of not cheese fluffle. We went back into the main hall and sat on the floor by the wall to eat. Dalmora, Amalie and Krath came to join us.
‘Where are Cassandra 2?’ I asked.
‘They all went next door,’ said Amalie.
‘Next door?’ asked Fian.
‘There’s another big hall like this just down the linkway, with a huge party going on.’ She paused. ‘Oh they’re back.’
I looked around and saw the Cassandra 2 team had met a face painter. Rono was unmistakable, his top emblazoned with the words ‘RONO AND THE REPLAYS’, but I was less sure about the rest. I thought that Stephan was the lion, who was making growling noises and mock pounces at the rest of the team. Maybe he wasn’t so quiet and retiring after all.
‘Playdon!’ Rono called. ‘We’re going to bed. We’ve got a gig in twelve hours time.’