'Any sign of Stanton?' Cormac asked.

'No sign, sir. We found the shuttle, though. Whoever brought it in must have been a lunatic. It looks like it only just made it to the surface in one piece.'

'Can't be coincidence that it landed here,' said Cormac.

'Probably zeroed in on the proton gunfire, sir. I would think that most of the planet knows something happened out here by now.'

'Yes, quite probably.'

There was a short, tense silence.

'What now?' the sergeant finally asked.

Cormac saw that Aiden had finished reattaching the cables and was coming back. He nodded towards the carrier. 'Now… now you take your own men, and Thorn, Cento and Mika, back to civilization in the carrier. Aiden and I continue on.'

The sergeant could not hide his relief.

'Not a chance,' came a voice from behind.

Cormac turned to see Thorn walking unsteadily towards him. Mika came out behind him.

'Should he be walking?' Cormac asked her.

'I wouldn't recommend vigorous movement, but he's all right to walk. The other two won't be walking, though. One for obvious reasons, the other because his optic nerves are burnt out. That said, they're easily enough replaced.'

Thorn was staring hard at Cormac. 'You promised me,' he said.

Cormac shook his head. 'You asked - but I promised nothing. I remember it precisely. Carn found that hole in the artefact before I could give you a reply'

'Please,' said Thorn levelly, too proud to beg.

'You can come if you wish. But if we have to run, I won't wait for you.' Cormac turned away. Mika watched this exchange, then suddenly spoke up.

'I'm coming as well,' she said.

'If you like,' said Cormac, then turned at the sound of Aiden winding the cable in at high speed. The cable drew taut and Aiden's winding slowed. The winch, Cormac knew, had been attached to an electric motor on the front of the carrier. Strapped to the tree there was no motor to run it, and there was not a man here capable of turning the hastily fabricated handle. They all watched in silence as Aiden got the carrier up and teetering on its corner. When it crashed down level, Cormac immediately headed over to it. Shortly he returned, carrying a bulky rucksack.

'We're going now,' he said, and nodded towards Mika's AGC. The three fell in with him as he strode towards it.

In a moment they were airborne and gone.

'Goodbye,' said the sergeant, with a complete lack of sincerity. A few days before he had been eager for the chance of action. Now he just wanted to reach a safe retirement.

Cormac checked his watch after he had set the cruise-control on the AGC. 'Should be there in under an hour. Aiden, what are the precise co-ordinates of where the Maker went to ground?' Aiden told him, and Cormac nipped a map-screen from the console and checked them. 'Seems there is a cave mouth there. I'll be going in to set the CTDs. I am going alone. You, Thorn, are not capable at present, and I do not see why Mika should be exposed to the danger.'

Aiden said, 'But I see no reason why I should not accompany you.'

'You would not - and that is because you're not in possession of all the facts. You'll stay with the AGC. That's a direct order.'

There was no answer to that, so none was given.

Fifty minutes of flying brought them to a position directly above the given co-ordinates. Cormac brought the car down to twenty metres above ground level, then looked down at the cave mouth. It was a ragged rent in the side of a mountain, but easily accessible. He landed the vehicle a short distance away.

Before he left the car, Cormac reached back and said, 'Give me your thermal scanner, Aiden.'

The Golem handed it over: a grey box the shape of a soap bar, with a single screen and ball control. Cormac turned it on the three of them, and saw how little of a reading he got from Aiden. There were separate heat sources at his chest and groin, but the rest of his body was almost invisible. Mika and Thorn were statues of molten glass on the screen. Cormac moved the ball control and the area covered by the screen expanded. Positions relative to the sensors on the end of the scanner were given in metres, in three dimensions. He tilted the scanner and saw that these measurements did not change. The device was keyed to a ground level, then. He nodded with satisfaction and put the scanner in his pocket. When Aiden moved to hand over Thorn's proton gun, which lay on the back seat, Cormac held up his hand.

'I won't be needing that,' he said, and got out of the car. In silence they watched him go. He walked away with the rucksack slung over one shoulder: a tourist out for a brisk hike.

As he reached the cave mouth, Cormac ran a quick diagnostic on shuriken. It might have been damaged by the android, or by the seeker bullets. The miniscreen pointed out a slight aberration in the programming sequences, and some minimal damage to the chainglass blades. Both defects were acceptable. The blades were still more than serviceable, and he reckoned the source of the slight aberration was Tenkian himself. No way had he programmed shuriken to intercept seeker bullets, then hang in the air like a bristling terrier.

Cormac entered the cave.

A rush of creatures that he at first took to be bats fled past him. A close inspection of them showed him that they indeed had batlike wings - but seemingly no body or head. There was also something insectile about them. The cockroaches and burrowing beetles on the floor of the cave were terran, but the blue-metal centipedal creatures that seemed to be preying on them were from somewhere else entirely. Cormac trudged on through fallen bodies like dry leaves and turned on Aiden's scanner.

It indicated that there was something large about fifty metres ahead, and twenty metres further down. He advanced cautiously, wondering if he had been foolish to refuse the proton gun. He had not wanted it because shuriken seemed capable of dealing with anything the Maker might put in his way, and a proton weapon might well have brought the roof down on him. He paused for a moment and opened his rucksack. The box he took out was from Thorn's kit - he suspected it had belonged to Gant. He opened the box and took out one drone light, initiated it, then tossed it into the air. It ignited and shot off ahead of him.

The drone light bobbed down into darkness, and Cormac caught a glimpse of mirrored reflection. He halted and punched a particular attack program into his shuriken's holster, then took it out and tossed it into the air in front of him. It spun up and hung there, revolving like a metal-saw, but with its blades moving in and out as they had after it had destroyed the seeker bullet that had Cormac's name on it. Cormac viewed it with suspicion: it was not supposed to do mat. Tenkian, again. No one really knew what the weapon-smith did with his microminds, but it was often said that some of his weapons developed minds of their own, so to speak. Just so long as shuriken did its job, Cormac would be happy.

Twenty metres more and Cormac saw a flailing of chrome legs - as the drone light shot to the side of the tunnel and went out. He halted and listened at the dark. There was no alternative. He reached down to the holster and felt his way to the enable button. He pressed it and listened to shuriken whir away from him.

Only a few seconds after shuriken had gone there was a crashing from the darkness, and a familiar sound as of an air-compressor starting. He heard a scrabbling, the crash of a heavy body going down, then the metal-saw whine of shuriken striking. Sparks flared in the tunnel ahead and in their light Cormac caught a glimpse of a nightmarish shape. The sparks went out, flared again with a second strike, then a third, a fourth. When the only sound he could hear was the sound of those strikes, Cormac advanced, sending another drone light ahead of him.