"And the second reason."

"I'll leave Agent Spencer to tell you about that."

Soon they were aboard the large shuttle and ensconced in one of its cabins with the Polity agent. The explanation was quite simple:

"Carl Thrace," Spencer supplied.

The cabin was cramped and seemed as packed with equipment as Spencer's office down in the military encampment. The two Golem stood back against one wall while Gorman snagged the only free chair and Cormac sat on a plasmel crate which, by its label, contained fragmentation grenades. Cormac wondered if Spencer dragged around a collection of stuff like this wherever she went, or if she had merely taken a cabin previously vacated by another of her kind.

When no one else seemed inclined to ask, Cormac enquired, "What about him?"

Spencer was sitting at a cluttered desk gazing at a screen, occasionally pressing buttons and manipulating a ball-control she held in her right hand. "After searching through millions of hours of scan data the Hagren AI eventually managed to track his course from when he abandoned you in the Dramewood," she said without looking up. "The ATV delivered him to a rendezvous with an old hydrocar limousine—" Now she did look up. " — driven by Sheen, who took him to a guest house in the old city. The data showed no sign of him leaving the guest house, but Sheen was kind enough to inform us that, as well as having syntheflesh patches for concealing weaponry, Carl has a whole kit for drastically altering his appearance. The AI checked its recordings and tracked everyone who left the hotel—all but one have been tracked down and eliminated from the search." She now turned her screen towards them to show a portly individual with yellowish and slightly scaly skin, and mouth tendrils that wound into a large spadelike beard. He was clad in brown leather and wore leather trilby. "He's calling himself Marcus Spengler now."

"I'm still not quite sure why I'm here," said Cormac.

Spencer eyed him for a moment. "There was some discussion about whether to allow you to continue in the Sparkind. Though you have shown an aptitude for the job, your training is lacking. The powers that be were considering sending you for further training while the rest of your unit—" She flicked a glance at the other three. " — took a vacation."

"Damn," said Gorman. "What made 'em change their minds?"

The room lurched at that moment and a deep vibration shook the vessel they were aboard. There was no doubt it was now launching.

"My request changed their minds," Spencer replied. "My aim is to bring Carl Thrace down and I prefer to work with those whose methods I'm familiar with." She glanced at Cormac. "I wanted Cormac included for two reasons: having known Carl for two years he might well be able to identify him despite any disguise but, most importantly, Carl Thrace will recognise Cormac."

Bait, thought Cormac.

"I take it Thrace has left Hagren?" suggested Travis.

"After leaving the guest house," Spencer replied, "he headed for the inland commercial spaceport and boarded a small but very fast light-cargo hauler."

"Smugglers," said Gorman.

Spencer nodded. "Almost certainly, since that ship's destination seems to be the Graveyard."

Gorman cursed, and well he might.

"Get some rest now," said Spencer. "We dock with the Sadist in three hours."

"The Sadist?" Travis enquired.

"AI humour," said Spencer, "go figure." She waved them away.

After Spencer had dismissed them, Cormac received a message in his aug from the ship's AI giving a schematic of the ship itself and the location of a cabin he could use for the brief time he was aboard. Crean and Travis headed off somewhere else in the ship, perhaps to occupy themselves with Golemish things while the soft humans of their unit sought home comforts and sleep. Gorman accompanied Cormac, since his own cabin was nearby. As they walked, Cormac considered everything he knew about the Graveyard. Originally this borderland and buffer zone between Prador and Human space was called the Badlands, but the name was soon dropped in favour of the more accurate description. Polity AIs did not intervene there or, rather, they did not intervene overtly, beyond sending in the odd warship to drive off any Prador vessels that were getting too close to the Polity for comfort. The place had become home for some nasty types, but the worlds and stations they occupied were few in number compared to the other once-habitable worlds that could now be described as war graves.

"It should be an interesting experience trying to find him there," Cormac opined.

Gorman snorted derisively. "You can bet it'll get dirty and bloody within an hour of us making landfall."

Cormac paused by the door to his cabin and Gorman slapped him on the shoulder before continuing on to his own. "Get your head down, boy—you're going to need your rest."

Cormac pressed his hand against the palm-lock and the door slid open. He stepped inside and looked around, feeling a grab almost of nostalgia on seeing that he had been given a four-berth cabin just like the one he, Carl, Yallow and Olkennon had arrived in at Hagren. Obviously this ship, having dropped off its passengers, had room to spare. He dumped his pack and his pulse-rifle on an empty bunk, then stepped over to the wall to pull the screen remote from its slot and turn on the room screen. Immediately the screen showed an image of the ground far below and quickly receding.

The old city and the military township were no longer visible, though the Prador ship's crash site showed as a shape like a small eye just inland. Trying a few other views he got the curve of the horizon and the glint of one or two objects in orbit. Magnification brought into focus a coin-shaped satellite and a ship shaped like a canal barge with three U-space nacelles jutting equidistantly on vanes at its rear. It was an old-style attack ship and he wondered if it was the Sadist. Logging on to his present ship's server he requested details on all ships in the vicinity and discovered that it was. He peered down at the remote and found a touch control marked «voice» and pressed it.

"Ship," he said, "can you hear me?"

"Of course I can hear you," replied the voice of a grumpy old woman, "and my name is Pearl."

"Nice to… be aboard you, Pearl," Cormac replied. "Can you tell me why it is going to take us three hours to dock with the Sadist, when it's clearly visible out there?"

"The attack ship is waiting on further targets below and, for our own safety, it's best not to dock when it might open fire at any moment."

"Fair enough."

"Is that all?"

Cormac considered something else he'd been delaying for some time. "I would like to send a message to Earth…"

"And you're telling me this why?"

"I… I've never done this before." He felt a bit stupid, for he knew how to go about sending a simple message, even if it was over a vast distance. The truth was that he wanted to talk to someone about it. However, this AI's attitude did not encourage conversation.

"Simple enough," said the Pearl AI, "you just address it correctly and send it to my server where it'll sit in the queue until I make my next U-space transmission, which should be in about three minutes. Now is that all?"

"That's it, thank you." Cormac hurriedly thumbed the «voice» control again.

Now he sat on one of the bunks and called up the message in his third eye to review it. First he described his journey from the training camp on Mars to Hagren, then he went on to describe some of what had happened on that world, though his internal censor had been working overtime. As he reviewed it, he wondered if this was the same sort of message his father had sent to Hannah while he had been away fighting the Prador. At the end of the message came the bit of most importance to him: