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'What makes you say that?' asked Cormac.

'If it was solid it would weigh a few thousand tonnes. It would have sunk into this floor a lot deeper than it has, and -' he inspected an instrument strapped to his arm '-1 detect no AG emanations.'

He placed the M-tester against the surface again, then took his shaking hand away. He caught the tester before it hit the floor.

'Frictionless, but with only microgravity readings. Definitely hollow.'

He removed a miniconsole from his belt and placed the M-tester into a hollow incorporated in it. He punched out a program, then removed the M-tester.

'Aiden…' Aiden stepped smartly forwards. 'Hold this against the surface for thirty seconds. Do not let it move any more than one millimetre. It can't correct for any more than that.'

Aiden obliged, pushing the M-tester against the surface, then freezing into a stillness no man could match. Cam turned to Cormac. Cormac noted he was shivering, but not from the cold.

'Hopefully we'll be able to get a surface reading. This stuff's too dense for us to scrape away a sample.' He walked round the object, stopping every now and then to push his hand against it. Cormac glanced round and saw that Thorn had stood up. The soldier dropped his companion's head to the ground and walked over. He had lapsed for a while, but to a Sparkind a dead man was just so much meat. They only buried the dead if there was a risk of infection.

'I'm sorry, Thorn,' said Cormac.

Thorn put his hands on his hips and looked to one side for a moment before replying. 'He had a hundred and sixty-three years. He knew the risks… I only ask that you let us stay with this to the end. I want to meet whoever or whatever left that creature here.'

Cormac thought about that. Had it been
left
here? Or had it been here for its own purposes? Was there really a connection between this place and the runcible incident? There were still too few facts to go on.

Aiden turned then, removing the M-tester from the object's surface.

'There's a hole here,' said Carn from the other side. They moved round to join him.

In the gleaming surface was a hole about twenty centimetres across. It looked as if something had melted right through from the inside. Cormac noted that the material was eggshell-thin. Carn shone a light inside.

'Nothing there,' he said, and then he took the M-tester from Aiden. 'Ah, we have a reading…' He fell silent and stared at the device for a long while.

'What's the problem?' asked Cormac.

'This can't be right,' said Carn.

'What can't?' said Thorn with a touch of irritation.

'The reading we… It's adamantium…'

'And?' Cormac prompted.

Carn looked up. 'We can crystallize adamantium. It's sometimes used for machine tools when field and beam technology can't be used… As far as I know, it is theoretically impossible to shape it…'

More questions… Who made this thing? What had been inside it? Where had its guardian come from? All

Cormac knew was that this was alien. Dragon? Perhaps he would know soon.

'OK, is there much more you can find out now?'

'Need more equipment, really.'

Cormac turned to Thorn. 'Collect some pieces of that creature. We'll take them back for Mika to analyse.' He turned back to Cam as Thorn stepped away, unhooking a bag from his belt. 'I'll want you to put a team together and come straight back here.'

'Chaline won't like that. Her technicians are stretched pretty thin as it is.'

'She'll have to like it. That runcible is not coming down until one or two things are resolved.'

A dragon is coming…

Cormac looked at what had once been Gant. 'He can be collected later, if necessary. Let's get out of here.'

Thorn looked once more at his friend's remains, nodded briefly and turned away. There was no risk of infection. It was likely Gant had already found his tomb.

With Cam and Cormac leading and Thorn and Aiden coming up behind, winding the lines in, they ascended the shaft. The continual peppery rattle of stripped-off cladding falling away accompanied them. Just up from the chamber they paused in their ascent so that Aiden could take up the shredded carcase of Cento and strap it to his back. Unlike Gant, Cento would live again, once his body was rebuilt. His mind rested untouched in an armoured box in his chest. Cormac regretted that the same could not be said for Gant. Medical technology could extend the life of man to an as yet undiscovered extent; it pushed back the borders of death, but death remained.

As they approached the head of the shaft, hailstones the size of eyeballs rained down on them and rattled past. Crouched down with their arms over their heads, and with the partial protection of their suits, they waited this out. The hailstorm passed in half an hour. They stepped from the shaft into air of a sharp and almost painful clarity, then made their way to the shuttle across a thick carpet of hailstones. Cormac picked one up to study it. It was greenish grey in colour, and seemed to be laminated.

'Sulphated water-ice and C0
₂
crystallized out in layers,' said Cam, after glancing over his shoulder. 'There'd be some pretty complex compounds in there too.'

Cormac nodded, and watched the stone as the slight leakage of heat from his suit caused it to fluoresce, then he flicked it back onto the ground where it lay feebly emitting light amongst its dead companions. Numberless dead. What was one more in so many thousands? The answer, of course, was always the same: it was personal. He moved on.

They were about to enter the shuttle when Aiden paused for a moment, as if listening. After this he unstrapped Cento and lowered him to the ground, before stepping away from the shuttle. The three humans watched him, but none of them felt inclined to pose a question.

Aiden said nothing in return. He gazed up at the clearing sky and pointed.

'Another ship?' said Carn in puzzlement.

It was small, a speck almost, seen from the surface, and the storms of the upper atmosphere occluded it somewhat, but Samarkand had acquired another moon. Cormac suspected it might be a kilometre wide, and made of flesh.

He said, 'One quarter, if that is relevant.'

Dragon had arrived.

Artificial Intelligence:
AI has been with us since the latter part of the twenty-first century. The difference between a plain computer and an AI is not in computing power, but in the development of an ego. By the 107th revision of the Turing Test, it was becoming evident that there would be no need for further revisions. By the time something becomes AI, it can breeze through one of these tests and does not need the status gained by passing one. When something is AI, it can normally look after itself.

From
Quince Guide
, compiled by humans

Starlit space - vacuum - with planets so distant they were indistinguishable from stars. Suddenly a wormish shape stabbed into existence, as of a laser punching through a block of perspex. Out of this, on contrails of spontaneously generated hydrogen atoms, came the trispherical shape of the
Lyric.
It tumbled as it came, and blue jets of flame quickly corrected that tumble. When the ship was falling into the system, a white sun blossomed on its centre plate as its ion drive ignited.

The
Lyric's
systems were not AI, so they had no appreciation of the poetry of it all. They simply decelerated the ship into the Mendax system in the Chirat cluster and made the few corrections required to line it up to intersect the orbit of the planet Viridian. Then they initiated the start-up sequence for the first cold coffin.

Jarvellis sat up and coughed violently as soon as the lid opened. She was sure she had picked up something on that shitty damp world and that now, because her immune system was depressed after cold sleep, something was riding roughshod through her body. She swung her legs over the side and stood up, if a little unsteadily, then walked to the catering unit where a hot cup of chocolate awaited her. This had been her ritual over a thousand flights. It was only after she took her first sip that she remembered precisely what her cargo was this time. She swore and walked across to the console before the panoramic screen, and hit a control. A subscreen popped up in one corner, showing her Hold B.

Six cold coffins were lined up in the central framework. Packing cases were strapped along the further wall. She felt a moment of panic, until she switched to another view. That panic receded when she saw Mr Crane squatting with his back to one packing case. The android was covered in a hoar of frost and seemed to be sorting some objects on the floor before it. That was all right, then. Jarvellis sat naked in the flight-control chair and set her chocolate on the console. From under the console she pulled a diagnostic cuff and pulled it on, before taking up her drink again and continuing to sip. She considered the idea of waking all of them but John and, when they were up and about, opening the hold door. She dismissed the notion almost immediately. There was no guarantee that the sudden air loss would eject Crane, and anyway he still had that briefcase with him. When the cuff beeped she inspected the read-out and swore again. She took the cuff back off and pressed it into place under the console. No way she could tell John, and she did not suppose it would help him to know she was pregnant by him. She sat back and stared through the screen at the distant sun, and then frowned when she knew she was procrastinating. Time to wake Pelter and his horrid crew. The lunatic wanted time to brief his men, and for them to prepare their weapons. But first there was something else…

Jarvellis swung her chair round, stood up and moved to a locker on one side of the cabin. She palm-keyed it, and the door slid aside and a rack extruded. On the rack hung a bulky spacesuit. The suit was old and it had been a long time since she had used it. All external maintenance was done when the ship was on planet and, in the unlikely event that any might need doing whilst in transit, the
Lyric
had two hull-crawlers with manipulators more dextrous than human hands.

The rack folded, opening out the suit like a split bread roll. The opening extended down the front, and down the fronts of the thighs. She slid one leg into one of the boot sections, then grabbed the rack, and hung there to get her other leg in. The rack folded back and the front of the suit sealed, tfügh pads closing last. The helmet was a ribbed ball cowling of chainglass which, folded down, had the appearance of a thick transparent collar at the back of her neck. She stepped from the rack.

Perhaps she was being paranoid, but it had occurred to her right from the start of this jaunt that Pelter now had the means to blast through the airlocks between himself and her. One hint that he might do that - bringing Mr Crane with him - and she would disable the ship and get out through the lock here. John, she felt, would have to take care of himself. She had enough to worry about.

As the
Lyric
continued to decelerate into the Mendax system, Arian Pelter held court in Hold B. He squatted on a case filled with needle missiles while the mercenaries sat, or stood, sipping whatever it was they required after the body's trauma of cold sleep. He addressed them with curt and exact phrases. Each of the mercenaries was well aware of Mr Crane standing not far from them.

'First we have to load the dropbird,' he said.

'Could have done that on Huma,' said Svent. Like Dusache, the little mercenary had scabs on the side of his head, though he had developed a squint on that side too. Apparently he had bought the aug after getting drunk with Dusache. He and Dusache were now standing as far from each other as they could get, and had not spoken since thaw-up.

'On Huma,' said Pelter, 'I had other concerns. And if you interrupt me again with something that is not pertinent, I will tell Mr Crane to tear off your right arm.'

Svent quietened and stared moodily at the deck.

'As I said, first we load the dropbird. That should take up the remaining time we have before we reach Viridian. When we launch, I will pilot the bird in. I intend to land it on a lake approximately a thousand kilometres from the runcible. The nearest habitation is a hundred kilometres from mere.'

'Why so far?' asked Corlackis.

Stanton answered that before Pelter could. 'Runcible AIs have got some pretty heavy processing power. One hint of anything untoward and Viridian will be on us. Minimum safe distance.'

Pelter carried on as if neither of them had spoken. 'Once we're down, we will need AG transport. You two -' he pointed at Svent and Dusache ' - will stay with the bird. Mennecken and Corlackis will go with me to the nearest town.' He inspected the two mercenaries. 'I hope you are both in-condition enough for the run. I want to be back at the lake within forty hours solstan.'

'And me?' Stanton asked.

'With me, of course,' said Pelter dismissively, before continuing. 'There we need to steal two AGCs. It shouldn't be too much of a problem, but obviously we want to do this quietly.'

Stanton reflected on Pelter's idea of quiet: that ECS agent screaming in the rusting shell of a wrecked cargo carrier. He thought about Mennecken being quiet in that alley.

'You said forty hours,' said Corlackis. 'Do we have a timescale now?'

'We have
my
timescale,' said Pelter. 'I want our preparations done as soon as possible. I want to be here when that bastard arrives.'

'And you're sure he will arrive,' said Corlackis. It was one question too far and Corlackis turned away from Pelter's flat stare. 'Never mind,' he finished.

'Within four days I want a base set up a hundred kilometres from the runcible installation. I'll want Svent and Dusache inside the installation, keeping watch. In that time I'll need at least one of the AGCs turned into a weapons platform. Now, any pertinent questions?'

'What kind of force are we likely to be facing?' asked Stanton.

'I don't know. We will know when Agent Cormac comes through. It seems likely that he will bring with him four Sparkind and perhaps some others.'