The Crafter abruptly shot into view. It moved so quickly Killeen saw it only as a suddenly expanding wedge of high-gloss metal. It bolted through the gate, ratcheting loudly. Its treads crunched to a stop near the team.

Bud translated:

Get on.

Need speed.

Killeen signaled to Hatchet, who nodded. Silently the humans swarmed up the Crafter’s side. Killeen held Toby on a mudguard over the treads. They barely got on before the Crafter started off at high speed. The Renegade passed some mechs which gave no sign of noticing, just kept up their eight-armed labors.

They accelerated. Smears of light and shadow passed. The Crafter surged through narrow alleyways, its treads clattering. The humans held on against sudden lurches and assaulting chords of vibration.

Killeen tried to place Toby higher but it was impossible. Sometimes the mudguard would shriek, scraping a corner as they rounded it. The second time this happened, half of Toby’s tightweave blanket ripped away.

“Slow!” Killeen called. “We’ll—”

The Crafter slammed to a stop. Killeen bundled Toby into what was left of the tightweave. He saw that the Crafter had stopped not for them but because this was a new manufacturing complex. Towers of sullen amber glass rose and twisted with byzantine grace. Fluids percolated in some, rushed like mountain streams in others. The ceiling flooded them with a harsh, ultraviolet glare. Killeen looked at his hand and could see black veins beneath the skin.

Supplies this way.

Come.

The Crafter led them.

The mech could barely squeeze through a narrow gap between two translucent, inverted cones which bubbled with noxious currents. Harsh brown layers of gas drifted silently overhead. Heavy air clasped at them, working moist cool fingers into their sinuses.

They came into a gallery of identical pods. Green polyalum casings rose in identical stacks into the vapor sky above. Pipes led everywhere.

“Hold,” Hatchet whispered. He gestured. A mech was working at the far end of the complex. It could not see the thin line of humans from this angle. The Crafter faded back behind a boxy housing.

That’s smart mech.

Multiple processor, class 3.

Best it not sense us.

“Can’t the Crafter shut it down?” Killeen asked.

Others notice it gone.

Crafter is afraid here.

Must be quick.

Killeen relayed the message to Hatchet and then soundlessly asked, What’s it doing to fix Toby?

We go to special place.

Crafter knows repairs done there.

It better not be trying some trick, Killeen thought precisely. A veiled threat, though he doubted any of them could harm the Renegade.

It says is honest.

Must hurry though.

Hatchet conferred with his people. The Kingsmen nodded, whispering. Cermo said the mech looked almost done with its job; it was cleaning up, putting tools away.

“Too chancy to try a lateral maneuver,” Hatchet said. Everyone agreed. Nobody knew the way.

They waited for the mech to move off. Killeen and Shibo put Toby down beside one of the pods. Killeen’s nerves had been leaping as they turned every fresh corner. His sensorium rippled with pungent hints. A leak dripped somewhere, amplified by the polished reflecting surfaces. Obscure rumblings spoke of fluid movements beneath their boots. Steam whistled from a vat.

Killeen leaned against a polished bronze pod. This bewildering complex was far larger than anything his father had ever described. The Bishops had nibbled at the mere outlying fringe of something they could not understand. Here everything depended on stealth alone. There would be no hope of fighting or escaping, if they were caught. He wondered idly if any humans had found a way to live in such a labyrinth. Rats in the walls. Pests.

He felt a click in the machinery behind him and turned to see. A window in the pod had phased into transparency. Beyond was a mass of something moving in pale blue light. He frowned, puzzled. Levers and pivots worked with patient energy beneath a glistening wet film. But there was something about the angle, the bulky pivot col lars….

Legs. Human legs.

They were all pumping. Steady. Relentless.

The pivots were sockets. Ample hip joints were mounted to a shaft in the back wall. Thighs picked up the stroke of this steel shaft.

Farther down, the turning joints were human knees. Green kneecaps flexed as the thigh muscles worked beneath pale yellow, transparent skin. The legs pumped down through stringy shanks. But the calf sinews did not taper into tendons that attached to ankles. Instead, at each completion of its pump, a leg bunched and drove hard against something coarse and leathery.

He could see seven legs bunching and stroking, each at a different phase of the cycle. They delivered thrust to the complicated brown nexus where the foot should be, a power train that converted flywheel energy into a complex series of modulated crankshaft motions.

Pump. Stroke.

Flex. Turn. Kick.

A slick sheen kept the parchment-yellow skin moist.

He turned away, breathing hard.

He had the impression that the arms and legs were growing, bulking out the muscles. But for what?

He deliberately made himself not think of what he saw. There was no room in his mind for anything but essentials.

His sensorium gave back a numbed hollow shock. At the base of his spine he felt a brimming warmth that was a temptation. The sensorium itself could move to protect itself. With stealthy fingers it reflexively tried to soothe the images in his mind.

A tempting oblivion. To let a blank indifference ease an icy slab between him and the remorselessly pumping legs.

No.

He wrenched away and crossed the narrow sheetmetal walkway. He must know more.

His fingers found a pressure release and here too a window fluxed.

Legs labored in a moist blue realm. At the far end of the pod the legs were shorter, as though they had not fully grown yet.

He quietly moved away from the others. A feeder line dripped out into the decking. He knelt and smelled a sweet aroma. Food.

He fluxed another window. Here more veined legs worked and he could see another production line above.

Arms. Bulging human arms worked against an intricate set of pressers and cam gears.

Feeder lines laced them. Wires hooked into the leathery biceps and wrists. As he numbly watched, one arm shifted to bring its rhythms to bear on a different set of pressers, and lunged more furiously for a short moment. Then it swiveled with quick grace and returned to its earlier job.

Six sets of arms labored beneath pale, sickly light.

Biceps tapered into massive deltoids. These anchored at double-ball jointed shoulders set into the back wall.

There were no hands. The motive energy did not require such deft dexterity. Momentum flowed with jerky purpose into the ratcheting network below.

“Ho! It’s leavin’,” Hatchet called.

Killeen stood slowly, dazed. He got control of himself. Walking back to the team, he was grateful for the abrupt interruption. Splinters of pain shot through his back, reminders of the labor of carrying Toby. He only vaguely noticed this. He made no sign to Shibo. He just bent and picked up the end of Toby’s sling.

Ahead, the Crafter lumbered off. The team marched on.

FOUR

The Crafter found its goal quickly in the cool silences of the colossal complex. A bin of separate compartments dominated the far wall of the towering room. Vapor poured from the faces of the enameled hatches. A tide of pearly fog descended on them from the wall as they approached.