About 23:00, Shen's place, NMK suburbs, Friday the 12th of March, 2055.

About 23:00, Shen's place, NMK suburbs, Friday the 12th of March, 2055.

We end with just the basic deal between us, the PM and Biotechnica. We get eb50k each and we will be cleared of all alleged criminal activity that has taken place over the past few days. Oh, and Biotechnica won't hold a grudge. Yeah, right!

We've retired to Shen's place to get some much needed rest and to work out what to do next. We're sat having a drink before heading off to our respective beds, when Crash's mobile rings. It's Sheila Grange. She suggests that we all come up to the Orba Organics facility at L4 as they think they can come up with a complete cure for the 'blue goo' infection, but in order to do so, they need some test subjects. I suppose at least this time we're being asked.

The prospect of being cured seems to swing it and the majority vote is to go. I've got some deep reservations, but being left behind with recent events still very fresh in Biotechnica's corporate memory may not be the best move either. Oh well, at least in space, death comes quickly for most. Mind you, I've seen news footage of spacers involved in radiation accidents, which are all too common up there, what with solar flares and most sizeable stations having at least one reactor of their own, and those spacers looked liked they wished they could die quickly. Sheila tells us to be at the spaceport in 24 hours' time and our transport will be waiting.

If we're gonna be away for a while, there's a loose end we'd better tidy up. And no, I don't mean shoot Shen. I said loose end, not loose cannon. Jake and his crew are infected and as we've got the means to help them, because Yuki has still got a bag of syringes, we ought to do something.

We can't let Sykes make first contact though, because Jake would just hang up. So Yuki makes the call and calmly explains the situation, before handing the phone to Sykes to make the arrangements. We've still got the limo that Shen drove back from the lodge, so we're gonna give that to Jake, along with the bag of syringes. Sykes arranges a meeting at a location on this side of the river, so we don't have to enter the military controlled zone, in an hour's time.

When we head down there, Jake and two of his guys are stood waiting for us on the riverside. Yuki hands over the syringes and as Jake can't take the limo back with him at the moment, we agree to stash it in a safe place, ready for him to pick up later. Then we head back to Shen's for some R&R.

After plenty of sleep and a lazy day, it's time to head off for the spaceport. On arrival we find that travel arrangements have all been made as promised. Having gone through the security checks, where they made sure the solos had left their guns behind, we wait in the departure lounge.

Before long, we board a coach that takes us across the vast expanse of tarmac to a waiting spaceplane, illuminated by the harsh glare of powerful floodlights. It's little different to most airliners, except that it's smaller and more needle shaped. In fact, to just look at it, you wouldn't think we'd progressed much since the British SSTs of eighty years ago.

From the take-off you'd never think we were going into orbit; it's just like a conventional flight. It's only when you realise that after about twenty minutes we're still climbing, that you know it's something special.

As we get far above the altitude of normal flight, a sky blue band appears above the curve of the horizon, topped by a faint sliver of indigo. Looking at an angle, upwards out the window, the sky is turning a beautiful shade of midnight blue, lit by the scattered sunlight falling elsewhere on the planet. Before we know it, we're above the atmosphere and looking out at a marvellous view of the Earth curving away below us; its limb lit a surprisingly bright and vibrant shade of sky blue.

Having escaped the Earth's gravity well and entered orbit, we're no longer accelerating and for the first time we begin to experience weightlessness. We're still strapped into our seats so nobody floats off and all we can feel of any movement is gentle nudges as the pilot fires manoeuvring jets on approach to the orbital station.

We can't see much from the spaceplane of the small station we've docked with. What we can see is the OTV (Orbital Transfer Vehicle) which we'll be boarding shortly for the next part of our trip. It consists of a globe-shaped section containing the cockpit, cabin and cargo area, with a selection of chemical drives clustered behind it.

Before leaving our seats, we're asked to put on 'Velcro' overshoes to enable us to 'walk', with the aid of handrails, from the spaceplane, through a small section of the docking area of the orbiting station and into the OTV itself. The cabin is slightly more spacious than the spaceplane we came up on, but it's noticeable that all surfaces you might want to put something on are covered in Velcro.

Once we and the other passengers making the trip are seated, we feel the gentle nudge of the manoeuvring rockets push us away from the station. Watching the motion of the stars, through one of the cabin windows, it's clear we're angling away from the station.

There's the most gentle of forces pressing us back into our seats as the OTV puts some distance between it and the station. Suddenly there's a much stronger kick and we're on our way out to a higher orbit. After a while the OTV flips end-over-end and starts decelerating to match speed with the next space station.

This one is much bigger than the last orbital transfer station. As we dock alongside, it looks like a large haphazard collection of connecting cylinders and solar panels of various sizes. The average size of the cylinders must be about the same as a large coach or railway carriage and it looks like there are about a dozen, but I know I haven't seen all the station.

Once we're off the OTV, we're separated from the other passengers, whom I guess are either staying here or heading for different destinations to us, and led, accompanied by the seemingly endless 'scritch scritch' sound of Velcro, into a fairly cramped area where the walls are lined with lightweight spacesuits. We're told that we will need to wear one for the next stage of our journey.

The suits are of the 'one size fits all' type so Yuki, who's the smallest of us, looks like she could get lost in hers. They're more survival suit, than they are space suit, as they're designed just to keep us alive in an emergency rather than allow us the freedom to explore the vacuum of space.

Having donned our suits, we're led to through to another part of the station and aboard another docked spaceship. This one is clearly more utilitarian in purpose and the seats are very basic and not particularly comfortable. A fact that is even less welcome when we're told this leg of the trip will be 10 hours long! It's not long before boredom has set in and I find myself taking short naps during the trip. They would be longer, if only I could find a way to sit comfortably in this damn seat.

When the guy who passes for a cabin attendant on the flight announces that our destination can now be seen out the small forward facing view port, for a moment I think our trip is nearly over, but a check of the time tells me that we're still over two hours from our destination. All that can be seen is a small metallic gleam against the backdrop of stars.

That gleam becomes steadily larger until it looks like a rectangle. That can only mean that we're heading for a large cylindrical station. It slowly grows bigger and bigger until it fills the small view port and still very little detail is visible on its slowly rotating surface. I ask the 'cabin attendant' and he tells me the Orba Organics facility we'll soon be docking with was about 3km long and 500m in diameter the last time he knew the figures. He says it could be larger now as it's continuously under construction.

We suddenly lose sight of the station as the spaceship flips over and decelerates on final approach. We can feel when the deceleration ceases and the now familiar nudges that indicate the use of the manoeuvring rockets. There's an almost imperceptible bump as we finally dock with the giant station.

Although we could see the station rotating as we approached, we're not moving, so we must have docked with a part of the station that is still. We're escorted from the spaceship and into an airlock. We wait a moment for the pressure to equalise with the station and then the door to the station opens and we find ourselves looking down a long corridor that ends in another door.

We're led down the corridor and through the door into a small room, not entirely unlike the airlock we were in when we left the spaceship. The door closes behind us and then there's the sensation of movement as if we're accelerating upwards. We're obviously accelerating as the force pushing us down is growing.

We cease accelerating and the force pressing us down holds constant. Our escort tells us that we're now at the equivalent of approximately 0.3G, which is the gravity present at the edge of the cylinder. Can we see it? Soon he says and the door slides quietly open...