'Yes, Dragon set a limit of twenty thousand visitors a year.'

'Solstan year?'

'No… Colora,' she said, annoyed.

Cormac stared at her. 'I require assistance, not impatience,' he said, and waited.

'Yes, Ambassador,' she said grudgingly, rubbing her hand on a leather-sheathed hip. Cormac accessed his link and immediately had a report up in his visual cortex. Rather than download it into his memory, he speed-read it while he studied his surroundings.

Maria Convala. Born on Aster Colora 2376 solstan, exobiologist attached to the Earth Central study team, ambitious, has connections with the Separatist movement, is rumoured to have been involved in the third Jovian putsch…

He smiled bleakly to himself and thought about his other operation in this sector. Earth Central had only chosen him to come here because he knew the systems, the people, those most likely to cause trouble. Even now the agents he was running were uncovering Separatist cell after cell in that razor-walk of undercover work. As soon as the first cover was blown, the whole investigation would collapse, but a huge proportion of the Separatist network would fall with it. Of course, what was going on here was different - wasn't it? Files blinked out and dropped away as he dismissed them as irrelevant. He allowed the smile to fade from his face and slid his attention to the iron slug of an AGC that had been left on hover nearby. He noted the rust streaks, and the plates welded to its underside. It was old. Such was always the way this far from Earth; things broke down, wore out, were infrequently replaced. He should consider himself lucky they had AGCs here at all. Was that why this sector was a hotbed of Separatism? Not enough luxuries?

'Shall we go?' he said, after a pause.

As they slid above the desolation, Cormac accessed information more relevant to his task. There was no life here but for the human colony, the sentient Dragon and the insentient Monitor (the latter two leviathans), nor had there been. There were no fossils, chalk deposits, or life-based hydrocarbons - nothing. Billions had been expended in deep-coring projects, sifting machines and lengthy geochemical studies. The questions remained: where was the ecology from which Dragon and Monitor had evolved? Was it on Aster Colora?

Dragon had immediately communicated with those first to arrive through the seed-ship runcible, and had been in continuous communication with the colony ever since, yet little had been learnt about it. Dragon relished oracular pronouncements and Delphic replies.

'Has Dragon given reasons for its request?'

'It was more of a demand than a request.'

'Clarify that.'

With her hand resting on the guide-ball of the AGC, Maria glanced at him. 'We have always been here on sufferance. It said, "Send me an ambassador"; there was no request.'

Cormac noted the bitterness. As a Separatist, he realized, this put her in an intolerable position. How could she campaign for political independence while Aster Colora could not rise above colony status? He wondered just how deeply in she was and how far she was prepared to go. He didn't want to have to kill her.

The red land flowed under the rock of the AGC until at length Cartis, like a spreading fungus, came into view. Like any tourist, Cormac booked into the metrotel. In his room he slumped on his bed and accessed Dragon/ human dialogue. Human politics were irrelevant in this case which, for Cormac, was a novelty.

'You continue to evade our questions concerning yourself,' asked a man only just holding on to his temper.

'Yes, this is true,' came the indifferent reply.

'Yet for years you have had access to our information systems. You know our history, the level of our technology… You perhaps know more about the human race than any single member of it. Why will you not tell us about yourself? Surely, this is little to ask?'

'You are correct: I know more about you people than any single member of your kind.'

'You have not answered my question.'

'Yes, I have.'

'I do not understand.'

'A very human trait.'

'Please explain.'

'The runcible has been developed to the stage where it is near perfect in function. Humankind can now step from star system to star system with ease. On Earth, contra-terrene power is about to be introduced. In the system of Cassius the first Dyson sphere is under construction. The matter for this project came from a planet of Jovian size, demolished by a contra-terrene missile.'

'Do you fear us?'

'Should I?'

'Many assume that this is the reason for your reticence.'

'How old are you, Darson?'

'One hundred and seventy, solstan.'

'It is likely that you will live to be over eight hundred years old and then only to the of ennui.'

'Perhaps. How old are you?'

'Do you represent your race, Darson?'

'In the sense—'

'No, you do not represent your race. I cannot sit in judgment on you. Send me an ambassador.'

After the dialogue had ceased, Cormac opened his eyes and scratched at his head. He was tired; he had, after all, travelled a long way. He got off the bed and shed the clothes he had been wearing only a few hours earlier, personal time, in New York, and wondered, as always with cold humour, what the morning might bring. Of course he did not know whether it was day or night here, but such things he had for quite some time dismissed as irrelevant. He lived by personal time. It was the only way to stay sane.

The morning brought Maria with an analysis from Darson, the Dragon expert. Cormac read it over a breakfast of spiced eggs, honey fish and two pots of tea.

Darson's conclusion was that Dragon, in human terms, was insane. After reading it, Cormac dressed in his shabby survival suit and placed in his rucksack the single device he might need. On his way out he consigned the report to the waste disposal. Shortly he was sliding above redland, red under a bloody sky.

'What is your opinion of Darson?'

'He's a pompous old fart,' Maria replied, and Cormac liked her for that.

'He believes Dragon is psychotic,' he said.

'I am not qualified to judge,' she replied.

Expressionlessly Cormac watched pink sleet slide off the frictionless screen of the AGC. 'You are qualified to have an opinion.'

Maria hesitated before replying. Cormac glanced at her and could see her discomfort. She was, he knew, trying to decide how to influence him and what opinion it would be best to own. He repressed a smile. She was in a difficult position. Instructions had preceded him: no unnecessary contact, straight to Dragon, the crux. He could see that she was unnerved.

'The dialogue with Dragon is deceptively human… Darson seems to find it difficult to accept the alien.'

Cormac chuckled. The AGC dipped as Maria glanced at him. Unable to find any way of applying leverage, she had answered with the truth. He nodded to himself and looked ahead as she slowed the AGC and began to power it down. Before them lay the Junkyard: the tangible result of people's flouting of Dragon's rule of no machinery larger than a man within a two-kilometre radius. Many people had died here. Maria put the

AGC on hover. Cormac tapped the com on his belt as the door slid open.

'I'll contact you when I want picking up,' he said and left her.

After reaching the line of smashed AGCs and hover scooters that marked the two-kilometre boundary, Cormac shouldered his rucksack and climbed a rusting hulk. Even through the snow the four spheres were visible, standing like vast storage tanks on a plain of broken rock. After a moment he clambered down the other side of the boundary, peeking in the wrecked AGC at its occupants, whom no one had bothered to retrieve. As his feet touched the ground, the ground itself moved.

Pseudopods.

He stood very still and waited, the taste of salt turning acrid in his mouth. Five metres to one side of him the ground rippled and a thing like a metre-wide cobra exploded into the air. Cormac dropped to avoid a flying rock, then rolled, looked up. It arched above him, a single crystalline blue eye where a cobra's mouth should have been. The ground tilted and another explosion followed. Then another. Cormac put his rucksack over his head as explosion followed explosion and he was pelted with shards of rock. Then it ceased, and he stood in the silence.