Cam cautiously lowered himself into the chamber and slid to the floor down by the surface of the artefact, before detaching his line. He stared at the creature for a long while, shifted his gaze to Gant's remains, and then quickly turned his attention to the unknown object. He removed a device like a copper limpet from his belt and placed it against the thing's surface.

'This is a metallurgical tester - or M-tester if you don't like long words. We use them for spot analysis of hull metals and the like. Measures stresses, density changes, alloy configurations…' He paused, glanced at Thorn who still held his friend's head, then looked at a small display on the M-tester. He continued hurriedly. 'Incredibly dense…' He crouched down and examined where the curve of the object met the floor. 'It must be hollow.'

'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 CO₂ 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.