'Five minutes and we should be there. It's a hydroponics facility on the edge of the blast-zone. A bit hot, but the suits should handle it if there's no fallout from these storms,' said Jane.

'What about you?' asked Cormac.

'I'll have to stay here, otherwise I'll need to spend the next week being detoxified.'

Gridlirtked

It was a nice way to describe it. Cormac knew that she would probably have needed a body replacement.

'Is there any more information on the heat source?'

'Not very much. Hubris has picked up two heat sources of about human mass. They might be survivors.'

And if they are not? Cormac wondered.

Chaline said, 'If they are survivors, they will be very sick, being that close to the blast-site. Let's hope they're not too sick to tell us what happened to the runcible. If they even know.'

Cormac turned from her and watched Mika put her notescreen aside, then open a case on her lap. From this she removed an instrument like a flattened torch. Its wider end was inset with a small touch-panel and screen. He recognized it from one time he went on a mission to a planet that had seceded from the Polity, and where immediately the diree continents had gone to war. It was a hand diagnosticer. It covered a whole range of cases, up to just how many lumps of radioactive metal were lodged in your patient, or what poisons were in his blood, and what viral agents might be eating his face away. Perhaps now she would get a chance to use an instrument like this. Before, he had doubted the possibility.

'Coming up on the facility now.' The shuttle dipped and slowed, thrusters firing in reverse, and through swirls of snow they caught glimpses of three long buildings like half-submerged pipes.

'They are in the middle one. Hubris says there is a power source of some kind there, but it is not being used for heating. They must be in coldsuits. Certainly the heat levels would indicate so.'

The shuttle finally came to a halt in midair, then, using the AG and blue stabs of retro flame, Jane piloted it in as close to the building as she could. It came down into a hissing storm, the beating of ice crystals a constant drone on its hull. Even as it landed, it slid sideways a couple of metres before AG was completely disengaged and its full weight rested on the ground.

'I can't land on the other side, so you'll have to walk the length of the building. Take care, the weather is even worse here,' Jane said.

Cormac grimaced at Thorn, who grinned back before pulling on his facemask. Golem could be patronizing at times. When they had all pulled on their masks and gloves, Gant hit the door control and stepped back. The wind was howling outside and, even when the door was only open a crack, hard crystal ice hissed in and powdered every surface.

'Should we rope up?' asked Chaline.

'No need,' Thorn replied. 'Only a few metres to go, and this wind's not going to pick you up.'

Chaline inspected him for a long moment before reluctantiy leading the way out. Cormac did not need to see her expression to know that she was doubtful. He had his own reservations about their safety. But he also knew that Thorn and Gant would not agree to go roped into a potentially hostile situation. They wanted to be able to move.

Underfoot was cold-cracked plascrete skinned with ice like a layer of badly scratched perspex. This water-ice had been considerably abraded by the wind-driven crystals, and as a consequence it was not slippery. The door was only a few metres away across this surface; even so, it seemed kilometres distant as they struggled to stay upright against the blast of the wind.

'This door is jammed as well,' said Chaline, when they reached the building.

Gant and Thorn both tried it, but it did not move. Gant waved Thorn back and drew his hand weapon. Cormac noted it was standard issue JMC 54: a military version of the thin-gun he had used on Cheyne III, a pistol that fired field-accelerated pulses of ionized aluminium dust, but an effective weapon for all that.

There was an arc-light flash and the buckled and smoking door went crashing down a central aisle between rows of frozen plants. They got in out of the wind.

'Messier than Jane, but just as effective,' said Cormac.

Gant chuckled and advanced ahead of them, with Thorn at his side. He did not put his weapon away. Thorn drew his.

'Have you got a fix on us, Jane?' asked Chaline.

'Yes, I have you,' came Jane's reply.

'How far to the heat sources?'

'Approximately five hundred metres, and they have not moved. Have you found anything interesting yet?'

'Nothing so far.'

They came across the first corpse twenty metres beyond the door - or, rather, half a corpse. It lay on the floor, its lower half missing, and the top half so badly burnt it was impossible to tell if it was male or female. White teeth showed in stark contrast to the blackly incinerated face.

'Jesu!'

That was from Chaline. Gant and Thorn had seen this sort of thing before. Mika knelt down next to the body and inspected it closely. She pushed at burnt lips to get a better view of the teeth, and the lips crumbled away. There was a gagging sound from Chaline. Mika held her diagnosticer against the belly, where the flesh had not been burnt and was like marble.

'Female, heavily radioactive. I'd say she was flash-burnt in the explosion.'

'Quick, then,' said Gant.

'Not necessarily… that's strange…'

Cormac stepped forward and looked down. 'Tell me,' he said.

'It looks like her lower half was cut away after she was burnt. I suppose that could have happened…'

Mika glanced up then around. There was no damage evident to the building where they were, or anywhere nearby. Cormac knelt down and inspected the corpse. He looked over to Mika.

'See there.' She pointed to the severed organs and muscle. 'That was done with a shear of some kind, after she was frozen. See? No fluids.'

Gant stooped down, next to the two of them. 'Now why would someone do that?' he asked.

Cormac knew damned well that the question was rhetorical. He stood. 'We'll find out soon,' he said. 'No need to second-guess.'

They advanced and found another corpse in a similar condition. Then they found a stack of five corpses, which looked like a sculpture made in hell. None of these corpses was burnt. Mika inspected them closely, though with some difficulty as they were frozen together.

'Hypothermia. Most of these froze to death.' She pointed at the corpse of a man right in the middle of the heap. His skin was dark blue and he was impossibly thin. 'That one is an Outlinker. He must have been in a low-G area when AG cut out. His neck is broken.'

'Yeah, but who stacked them here, and why?' wondered Gant.

Cormac wished he could give the soldier a dirty look.

They continued along, until Jane contacted them.

'One of the heat sources is moving, coming your way.'

Gant spoke up quickly. 'This isn't scientific any more. What do you recommend, Agent?'

'Get off this central aisle. We'll hide for a while and see what we might see,' said Cormac. There was no objection from Chaline; since they'd found that first corpse she had been very quiet.

They cut down a side path to a secondary aisle and crouched there behind troughs of frozen hydroponics fluid containing tomato plants, which would shatter at a touch. Both Gant and Thorn held their weapons ready. Cormac moved his hand close to his shuriken.

'Close to you now, about a hundred metres,' Jane told them.

They waited in tense silence.

'Fifty metres.'

'OK,' said Cormac. 'Radio silence until I say otherwise.' He wished he had thought of that earlier. If whoever was coming had a radio he knew where they were.

The figure that clumped down the main aisle appeared to be a human heavily wrapped in whatever materials it could find. Unless there was a coldsuit of some kind underneath all that material, Cormac realized it was not human. The material itself was some kind of plastic mesh: probably the only stuff the figure could find that had not become frangible with cold. Ordinary cloth would shatter at these temperatures. He continued to watch for any signs that they had been spotted, but the figure plodded on slowly, facing straight ahead. As it passed the cross-aisle in which they hid, Cormac's suspicion was confirmed. The figure's knees were higher up than a human's and bent in the opposite direction. It walked like a bird.