Cormac stooped down and placed his weapon on the ground. Over his comunit he could hear strange whistlings and creakings. The Maker brought its head closer to him. He could feel the energy of it; as a tension in his face and a thrumming in his bones. He could see that it possessed three of what seemed to be eyes. Mandibles of glass opened from the sides of its jaws. Cormac looked into the throat of hell.

Again: laser fire flickering inside the glassy body. The dracomen were back. The AGC circled and the draco-man with the carbine fired continuously. The Maker made that wind-sound again, but now there seemed to be to Cormac an element of anger in it. Fire flashed from its mouth and struck the AGC. The car shuddered and pieces of it fell from the sky. It shuddered again and something detonated under its cowling. Trailing black smoke, it went into a dive and eventually fell into the forest to the north of the ruin. The Maker turned its head and looked at Cormac again, its glass mandibles opening and closing as if in indecision, or anticipation. Then, with a surge of power and light, it launched itself into the sky, remained poised there for a moment, then shot down into the trees.

'Oh my God! Ohmegod!'

'Colonel, sir, please respond. The creature—'

'What the fuck?'

'Will you look at that!'

'Shaddup, Goff! Colonel? Colonel?'

Cormac did not want to answer. He could do without those jabbering human voices. There was a stillness here that he wanted to savour. But, as he stood motionless, his sense of duty re-asserted itself. He sighed and returned to the world.

'Cormac here.'

'Sir, an AGC just went down in the forest, a thing… light… It landed where the AGC crashed.'

'What's happening now?'

'Trees… burning… No, it's coming up!'

Cormac stared across the ruins and saw the Maker rise into the sky. It held the two dracomen silhouetted against its body, looking black as if charred by that fantastic light. Suddenly it became an actinic torpedo, blurred, wing-sails grabbing at the air, and then it became a streak of fire to the east.

That it had no AG was obvious at a glance through the dusty portal. Its main body was a flattened cylinder terminating in a full-screen chainglass cockpit. A pair of ion engines was set back on either side of the cockpit, and another pair was set just forward of a stabilizing fin like a huge rudder. Each of the four engines was a sphere with a slice taken off it to expose the grids inside. Each could be moved independently to give a degree of forward and reverse thrust, but only so far as they did not blast into each other. The shuttle might well be fuelled and its small fusion tokomac might still be serviceable, Jarvellis could not tell. The shuttle rested on the floor of the small bay with the doors open before it, and the arc of the station curving away from the top of that opening. If she wished to reach it, she had to cross ten metres of floor through vacuum. That would not have been too much of a problem for the Outlinkers, and maybe she too could have made it. But how long would it take for the lock on this side of the bay to cycle? How long for the lock on the shuttle? And would there be atmosphere inside it?

Jarvellis moved away from the portal and looked around. This worn corridor ran round the bay in an arc, and there were doors behind her. She tried one, pressing the correct button this time. The door slid aside with a low grinding to reveal a wedge-shaped room that was utterly empty. The fifth room she tried contained the lockers and soon she was inspecting a spacesuit that made the one she had owned seem state of the art. It had a bowl helmet of scratched plastiglass: a helmet that was actually breakable. The material of the suit itself was layered, and just that: material. There was no armouring, no sealant layer. Air was provided by an external bottle with a vulnerable pipe that plugged into the neck-ring. She wiped dirt from an old digital readout and saw that the bottle did contain air, though how the pressure reading related to time or suit pressure, she could not say. Laboriously she pulled the suit on, and then tucked the helmet under her arm as she headed for the lock. The inner door, a great thick thing that actually operated on hinges, opened with surprising silence. As she stepped inside, a different noise greeted her.

'Is that you in that lock, Captain Jarvellis?' Tull asked over the intercom.

Jarvellis ignored the voice, put her helmet on and twisted it into place. Maybe the seals would not work so well. Maybe they would work for long enough. She opened the valve on the air bottle and got a hiss of air that was breathable, but had a vaguely putrid smell.

'Captain, please come out of that lock. Very little of the equipment there has been serviced. You could kill yourself… oh, I see… I wouldn't advise trying to use that shuttle. It has no AG, you realize? Those ion eng… you… s…'t…'

The inner lock was irised. It made no noise as it opened, but that was because there was now no air to transmit sound. Neat way of shutting Tull up anyway. Jarvellis stepped out of the lock and hurried over to the shutde. The door she saw was not a door with an airlock. She twisted the two handles at the side of it and hinged it open. It was a single-seal door; only with it closed would the shuttle fill with air. Back when this station was constructed, weight had played an all-important role. A full airlock would have been too much extra. Jarvellis stepped inside and closed the door.

White vapour was now leaking from the folds at the elbow of the primitive suit. It was also leaking out round the neck-seal and painting glitters of frost across the plastiglass.

The cabin of the shuttle was simply a plain box, with spring fixings along the floor to take either chairs or cargo straps. Ahead there was another hinged door. She moved quickly to it and tried to turn the handles. Nothing gave. She put her weight on the handles, and they started to move just before her feet left the floor. She pulled herself down and jammed her foot in one of the spring fixings to try again. Vapour bloomed around the door, then dissipated. She got it open and pulled herself in. Even as she closed the door, she found herself panting for air that was getting increasingly thin. A button. Cycle. She hit it and dragged herself to a dusty seat before the console and control column. She searched for a readout and found it above the door. The readout was in bar and she was not sure what was required. She cracked open the helmet when vapour ceased to flow from the seal. No difference now anyway; there was littie left in the suit.

'Captain Jarvellis… Jarvellis… I hope you can hear me. Can you hear me?'

'Yes, I can hear you, Tull,' she said.

'Good,' said the Oudinker. 'Now, just so you don't kill us all by trying to start those ion engines in the station, I'll tell you how to use the magnetic impeller. It'll get you out of that bay and away. Beyond that, you're on your own.'

Jarvellis dropped into the pilot's seat. The padding crunched underneath her and dust circulated in the cockpit. She studied the antique controls and wondered if it might have been better to go meekly to mind-wipe. 'Go on, then, run me through it,' she said.

Aiden and Cento had their heads bowed and their shoulders slumped as if in exhaustion. Cormac saw that their emulations were off as well: not a breath moved their torsos, nor the flicker of an eyelid crossed their eyes. like two marionettes with their strings cut, they sat on the lichen-covered plascrete and broken glass. Their weapons were lying on the ground beside them, ignored.

'Aiden? Cento?'

Was there something there? A shiver of movement? Cormac could not believe that they had been completely disabled. He had previously seen nothing short of a proton gun with that capability.