The hatch of the shuttle-pod hissed open. Adam Hawkshaw descended the ramp and observed a robot and buggy awaiting him. Beyond the spaceport, the spires and domes of the colony where the murders had occurred were visible. A sudden blast of steam from a nearby vent startled him.
The gravitational field on New America was E+.35 but Hawkshaw felt heavier as he walked to the groundcar parked beside a row of cargo pallets. After synchronising local time with the utilibot, he realised he was late for his appointment with the Governor, John Pastor.
The landscape beyond the speeding groundcar was alien and forbidding, the sky an ominous shade of purple-blue. The robot had a fleck of rust on its right arm and the car’s interior was shabby with dust. Strange structures of undefined purpose began to appear as the vehicle engaged a traffic beam and surged towards the tallest building.
Hawkshaw paused for a final glance at the colony of New America before entering the shuttle-pod. It had been an exhausting month in a taxing environment before the killer had been arrested.
Just moments earlier, Hawkshaw had watched Matthew Cloud, shackled and sedated, unrepentant triple murderer, hustled into the cargo space of the pod. He would be an unpleasant presence during the three-month return to Earth before Hawkshaw could sign him over for judicial torture and execution.
Cloud was intelligent and wily, borderline psychopathic, Hawkshaw reflected as he buckled himself into his seat. As a prisoner with nothing to lose, he would bear watching over the coming weeks aboard ship.