Consider Phlebas

5. Megaship

Vavatch lay in space like a god’s bracelet. The fourteen-million kilometre hoop glittered and sparkled, blue and gold against the jet-black gulf of space beyond. As the Clear Air Turbulence warped in towards the Orbital, most of the Company watched their goal approach on the main screen in the mess. The aquamarine sea, which covered most of the surface of the artefact’s ultradense base material, was spattered with white puffs of cloud, collected in huge storm systems or vast banks, some of which seemed to stretch right across the full thirty-five-thousand-kilometre breadth of the slowly turning Orbital.

Only on one side of that looped band of water was there any land visible, hard up against one sloped retaining wall of pure crystal. Although, from the distance they were watching, the sliver of land looked like a tiny brown thread lying on the edge of a great rolled-out bolt of vivid blue, that thread was anything up to two thousand kilometres across; there was no shortage of land on Vavatch.

Its greatest attraction, however, was and had always been the Megaships.

“Don’t you have a religion?” Dorolow asked Horza.

“Yes,” he replied, not taking his eyes away from the screen on the wall above the end of the main mess-room table. “My survival.”

“So… your religion dies with you. How sad,” Dorolow said, looking back from Horza to the screen. The Changer let the remark pass.

The exchange had started when Dorolow, struck by the beauty of the great Orbital, expressed the belief that even though it was a work of base creatures, no better than humans, it was still a triumphant testimony to the power of God, as God had made Man, and all other souled creatures. Horza had disagreed, genuinely annoyed that the woman could use even something so obviously a testament to the power of intelligence and hard work as an argument for her own system of irrational belief.

Yalson, who was sitting beside Horza at the table, and whose foot was gently rubbing the Changer’s ankle, put her elbows on the plastic surface beside the plates and beakers. “And they’re going to blow it away in four days’ time. What a fucking waste.”

Whether or not this would have worked as a subject-changing parry, she did not get a chance to find out, because the mess PA crackled once and then came clear with the voice of Kraiklyn, who was on the bridge: “Thought you might like to see this, people.”

The view of the distant Orbital was replaced by a blank screen onto which there then appeared a message in flashing letters.

“We just ran through that message shell,” Kraiklyn added. “See you later.” The PA crackled again, then was silent. The message faded from the screen and the Orbital filled it again.

“Hmm,” Jandraligeli said. “Brief and to the point.”

“Like I said.” Yalson nodded at the screen.

“I remember…” Wubslin said slowly, staring at the band of brilliant blue and white on the screen, “when I was very young one of my teachers floated a little toy metal boat on the surface of a bucketful of water. Then she lifted the bucket by the handle and held me up against her chest with her other arm, so that I was facing the same way she was. She started to go round and round, faster and faster, letting the spin send the bucket out away from her, and eventually the bucket was straight out, the surface of the water in it at ninety degrees to the floor, and I was held there with this great big adult hand across my belly and everything spinning around me and I was watching this little toy boat, which was still floating on the water, even though the water was straight up and down in front of my face, and my teacher said, ‘You remember this if you’re ever lucky enough to see the Megaships of Vavatch.’”

“Yeah?” Lamm said. “Well, they’re about to let the fucking handle go.”

“So let’s just hope we’re not still on the surface when they do,” Yalson said.

Jandraligeli turned to her, one eyebrow up: “After that last fiasco, dear, nothing would surprise me.”

“Easy in, easy out,” Aviger said, and the old man laughed.

The haul from Marjoin to Vavatch had taken twenty-three days. The Company had gradually recovered from the effects of the abortive attack on the Temple of Light. There were a few small sprains and grazes; Dorolow had been blind in one eye for a couple of days, and everybody had been quiet and withdrawn, but by the time Vavatch came into sight they were all starting to get so bored with life on board ship, even with less of them on it, that they were looking forward to another operation.

Horza kept the laser rifle which kee-Alsorofus had used, and carried out what rudimentary repairs and improvements the CAT’s limited engineering facilities would allow him to effect to his suit. Kraiklyn was full of praise for the one he had taken from Horza; it had lifted him out of the worst of the trouble in the hall of the Temple of Light, and, although it had still taken some heavy fire pulses, it was hardly marked, let alone damaged.

Neisin had said he’d never liked lasers anyway and wouldn’t use one again; he had a perfectly good rapid-firing light projectile rifle, and lots of ammunition. He would carry that in future when he wasn’t using the Microhowitzer.

Horza and Yalson had started sleeping together every night in what was now their cabin, the one the two women had occupied. During the long days of the voyage they had grown closer but spoken comparatively little, for new lovers. Both seemed to want it that way. Horza’s body had completed its regeneration after its impersonation of the Gerontocrat, and there was no longer any trace or sign of that role left on him. But while he told the Company that he was now the way he had always looked, he had in fact moulded his body to look like that of Kraiklyn. Horza was a little taller and fuller-chested than his neutral normal, and his hair was darker and thicker. His face, of course, he could not yet afford to Change, but under its light-brown surface it was ready. A short trance and he could pass for the captain of the Clear Air Turbulence; perhaps Vavatch would give him the opportunity he needed.

He had thought long and hard about what to do now that he was part of the Company, and relatively safe, but cut off from his Idiran employers. He could always just go on his own way, but that would let down Xoralundra, whether the old Idiran was alive or dead. It would also be running away from the war, from the Culture and the part he had chosen to play against it. In addition, at first, there was the idea Horza had been toying with anyway, even before he had heard that his next task was to involve going to Schar’s World, and that was the idea of returning to an old love.

Her name was Sro Kierachell Zorant. She was what they called a dormant Changer, one who had no training in and no desire to practise Changing, and had accepted the post on Schar’s World partly as a relief from the increasingly warlike atmosphere in the Changers’ home asteroid of Heibohre. That had been seven years before, when Heibohre was already within what was generally recognised as being Idiran space, and when many Changers were already employed by the Idirans.

Horza was sent to Schar’s World partly because he was being punished and partly for his own protection. A group of Changers had plotted to fire up the ancient asteroid’s power-plants and take it out of Idiran space, make their home and their species neutral again in the war they could see was becoming inevitable. Horza had discovered the plot and killed two of the conspirators. The court of the Academy of Military Arts on Heibohre — its ruling body in all but name — had compromised between popular feeling on the asteroid, which wanted Horza punished for taking other Changers’ lives, and the gratitude it felt towards Horza. The court had a delicate task, considering the not wholehearted support the majority of Changers gave to staying where they were and therefore within the Idiran sphere of influence. By sending Horza to Schar’s World with instructions to stay there for several years — but not punishing him otherwise — the court hoped to make all concerned feel their own particular view had carried the day. To the extent that there was no revolt, that the Academy remained the ruling force in the asteroid, and that the services of Changers were in demand as never before since the formation of their unique species, the court had succeeded.

In some ways, Horza had been lucky. He was without friends or influence; his parents were dead; his clan was all but defunct save for him. Family ties meant a lot in the Changer society, and with no influential relatives or friends to speak for him Horza had perhaps escaped more lightly than he had a right to expect.

Horza cooled his heels on Schar’s World’s snows for less than a year before leaving to join the Idirans in their fight against the Culture, both before and after it was officially termed a war. During that time he had started a relationship with one of the four other Changers there: the woman Changer Kierachell, who disagreed with almost everything Horza believed, but had loved him, body and mind, despite it all. When he left, he knew it had hurt her much more than it had hurt him. He had been glad of the companionship and he liked her, but he hadn’t felt anything like what humans were supposed to feel when they talked of love, and by the time he left he was starting, just starting, to grow bored. He told himself at the time that that was the way life was, that he would only hurt her more in the end by staying, that it was partly for her sake he was leaving. But the expression in her eyes the last time he’d looked into them had not been something he enjoyed thinking about, for a long time.

He had heard she was still there, and he thought of her and had fond memories; and the more he had risked his life and the more time had elapsed, the more he wanted to see her again; the more a quieter, less dangerous sort of existence appealed to him. He had imagined the scene, imagined the look in her eyes when he came back to her… Maybe she would have forgotten about him, or even be committed to some relationship with the other Changers at the base on Schar’s World, but Horza didn’t really think so; he thought of such things only as a sort of insurance.

Yalson made things a little difficult, perhaps, but he was trying not to build too much into their friendship and coupling, even though he was fairly sure it was only those two things to her as well.

So he would impersonate Kraiklyn if he could, or at least kill him and just take over, and hope he could get round the comparatively crude identity fidelities built into the CAT’s computer, or get somebody else to do so. Then he would take the Clear Air Turbulence to Schar’s World, rendezvous with the Idirans if he could, but go in anyway, assuming Mr Adequate — the pet name the Changers on the Schar’s World base had for the Dra’Azon being which guarded the planet — would allow him through the Quiet Barrier after the Idirans’ botched attempt to fool it with a hollowed-out chuy-hirtsi. He would, if at all possible, give the rest of the Company the chance to back out.

One problem was knowing when to strike at Kraiklyn. Horza was hoping that an opportunity would arise on Vavatch, but it was hard to make definite plans because Kraiklyn didn’t seem to have any of his own. He had simply talked of “opportunities” on the Orbital, which were “bound to arise” due to its impending destruction, whenever he had been asked during the journey.

“That lying bastard,” Yalson said, one night when they were about halfway to Vavatch from Marjoin. They were lying together in what was now their cabin, in the darkness of the ship night, in about a half-G on the cramped bedspace.

“What?” Horza said. “Don’t you think he’s going to Vavatch after all?”

“Oh, he’s going there all right, but not because there are unknown possibilities for a successful job. He’s going for the Damage game.”

“What Damage game?” Horza asked, turning to her in the darkness where her naked shoulders lay on his arm. He could feel their soft down against his skin. “You mean a big game? A real one?”

“Yeah. The Ring itself. Last I heard it was only a rumour, but it makes more sense every time I think about it. Vavatch is a certainty, provided they can get a quorum together.”

“The Players on the Eve of Destruction.” Horza laughed gently. “You think Kraiklyn means to watch or play?”

“He’ll try to play, I suppose; if he’s as good as he says he is, they might even let him, as long as he can raise the stake. That’s supposed to be how he won the CAT — not off anybody in a Ring game, but it must have been pretty heavy company if they were gambling ships. But I guess he’d be prepared to watch if it came to it. I bet that’s why we’re all going on this little holiday. He might try and come up with some sort of excuse, or fabricate some op, but that’s the real reason: Damage. Either he’s heard something or he’s making an intelligent guess, but it’s so fucking obvious…” Her voice died away, and Horza felt her head shake on his arm.

“Isn’t one of the Ring regulars—?” he said.

“Ghalssel.” Now Horza could feel the light, short-haired head nod against the skin of his arm. “Yeah, he’ll be there, if he possibly can be. He’d burn out the motors on the Leading Edge to get to a major Damage game, and the way things have been hotting up in this neck of the woods recently, presenting all those wonderful easy-in, easy-out opportunities, I can’t imagine him being far away.” Yalson’s voice sounded bitter. “Myself, I think Ghalssel’s the subject of Kraiklyn’s wet dreams. Thinks the guy’s a fucking hero. Shit.”

“Yalson,” Horza said into the woman’s ear, her hair tickling his nose, “one: how does Kraiklyn have wet dreams if he doesn’t sleep? And two: what if he has these cabins bugged?”

Her head turned towards him quickly. “So fucking what? I’m not afraid of him. He knows I’m one of the most reliable people he’s got; I shoot straight and I don’t fill my pants when it starts getting hot. I also think Kraiklyn’s the best excuse for a leader we’ve got on the ship or are likely to get, and he knows that. Don’t you worry about me. Anyway…” He felt her shoulders and head move again, and knew she was looking at him. “You’d settle it up if I got shot in the back, wouldn’t you?”

The thought had never occurred to him.

“Wouldn’t you?” she repeated.

“Well, of course I would,” he said. She didn’t move. He could hear her breathing.

“You would, wouldn’t you?” Yalson said. He brought his arms up and took her by the shoulders. She was warm, the down on her skin was soft, and the muscles and flesh underneath, over her slim frame, were strong and firm.

“Yes, I would,” he said, and only then realised that he meant it.

It was during this time, between Marjoin and Vavatch, that the Changer found out what he wanted to know about the controls and fidelities of the Clear Air Turbulence.

Kraiklyn wore an identity ring on the small finger of his right hand, and some of the locks in the CAT would work only in the presence of that ring’s electronic signature. The control of the ship depended on an audio-visual identity link; Kraiklyn’s face was recognised by the craft’s computer, as was his voice when he said, “This is Kraiklyn.” It was that simple. The ship had once had a retina recognition lock as well, but it had malfunctioned long before and been removed. Horza was pleased; copying somebody’s retina pattern was a delicate and tricky operation, requiring, amongst a lot of other things, the careful growth of lasing cells around the iris. It almost made more sense to go for a total genetic transcription, where the subject’s own DNA became the model for a virus which left only the Changer’s brain — and, optionally, gonads — unaltered. That wouldn’t be necessary to impersonate Captain Kraiklyn, however.

Horza found out about the ship’s fidelities when he asked the Man for a lesson on how to fly the vessel. Kraiklyn had been reluctant at first, but Horza had not pressed him, and had answered a few of Kraiklyn’s apparently casual questions about computers, which followed this request, with feigned ignorance. Seemingly convinced that teaching Horza how to fly the CAT would not carry the risk of him taking over the ship, Kraiklyn relented and allowed Horza to practise piloting the craft on manual, using the rather crude controls in simulator mode under Mipp’s instruction while the craft went on its way through space towards Vavatch on autopilot.

“This is Kraiklyn,” the ship PA announced to the mess a few hours after they ran through the Culture transmission warning of the Orbital’s destruction. They were sitting around after a meal, drinking or inhaling, relaxing or in Dorolow’s case, making the Circle of Flame sign on her forehead and saying the Prayer of Thanks. The big Orbital was still on the mess screen and had grown much larger, almost filling it with its inner surface daylight side but everybody had grown a little blasé about it and now gave it only the occasional glance. All the remaining Company were there save for Lenipobra and Kraiklyn himself. They looked at each other or the PA speaker when Kraiklyn spoke. “I’ve got a job for us, something I just had confirmed. Wubslin, you get the shuttle ready. I’ll meet the rest of you in the hangar in three ship hours, suited up, team. And don’t worry; this time there’ll be no hostiles. This time it really is you-know-what in and out.” The speaker crackled, then went silent. Horza and Yalson exchanged looks.

“So,” Jandraligeli said, leaning back in his chair and putting his hands behind his neck. The scar marks on his face deepened slightly as he put on an expression of thoughtfulness. “Our esteemed leader has again found us something to employ our slight talents?”

“Better not be in another fuckin’ temple,” Lamm growled, scratching the small horn grafts where they joined his head.

“How are you going to find a temple on Vavatch?” Neisin said. He was slightly drunk, talking more than he normally did when with the others. Lamm turned his face towards the smaller man a few seats away and on the other side of the table.

“You’d better just sober up, friend,” he said.

“Seaships,” Neisin told him, taking the nippled cylinder from the table in front of him. “Nothing but big goddamned seaships on that place. No temples.” He closed his eyes, put his head back and drank.

“There might,” Jandraligeli said, “be temples on the ships.”

“There might be a fucking drunk on this spaceship,” Lamm said, watching Neisin. Neisin looked at him. “You’d better sober up fast, Neisin,” Lamm continued, pointing with one finger at the smaller man.

“Think I’ll head for the hangar,” Wubslin said, standing and walking out of the mess.

“I’m going to see if Kraiklyn wants a hand,” Mipp said, leaving in the opposite direction, through another door.

“Think we could see any of those Megaships yet?” Aviger was looking back at the screen. Dorolow looked up at it, too.

“Don’t be fucking stupid,” Lamm told him. “They aren’t that big.”

“They’re big,” Neisin said, nodding to himself and the small cylinder. Lamm looked at him, then at the others, and shook his head. “Yeah,” Neisin said, “they’re pretty big.”

“They’re actually no more than a few kilometres long,” sighed Jandraligeli, sitting back in his chair and looking thoughtful, emphasising the scar marks still further. “So you won’t see them from this far out. But they certainly are large.”

“And they just go round and round the whole Orbital?” Yalson said. She already knew, but she would rather have the Mondlidician talking than Lamm and Neisin arguing. Horza smiled to himself. Jandraligeli nodded.

“For ever and ever. It takes them about forty years to go right round in a circle.”

“Don’t they ever stop?” Yalson asked. Jandraligeli looked at her and raised an eyebrow.

“It takes them several years just to get to full speed, young lady. They weigh about a billion tonnes. They never stop; they just keep going round in circles. Full-size liners go on excursions and act as tenders, and they use aircraft, too.”

“Did you know,” Aviger said, looking round those still seated at the table and leaning forward with his elbows tightly folded, “you actually weigh less on a Megaship? It’s because they go round in the opposite direction from the way the Orbital spins.” Aviger paused and frowned. “Or is it the other way round?”

“Oh fuck,” Lamm said, shaking his head violently, then getting up and leaving.

Jandraligeli frowned. “Fascinating,” he said.

Dorolow smiled at Aviger, and the old man looked round the others nodding. “Well, whatever; it’s a fact,” Aviger declared.

“Right.” Kraiklyn placed one foot up on the shuttle’s rear ramp and put his hands on his hips. He wore a pair of shorts; his suit stood ready to be put on, opened down the chest front like a discarded insect skin, just behind him. “I told you we’ve got a job. This is what it is.” Kraiklyn paused, looked at the Company, standing or sitting or leaning on guns and rifles throughout the hangar. “We’re going to hit one of the Megaships.” He paused, apparently waiting for a reaction. Only Aviger looked surprised and in any way excited; the rest, with only Mipp and the recently woken Lenipobra absent, seemed unimpressed. Mipp was on the bridge; Lenipobra was still struggling to get ready in his cabin.

“Well,” Kraiklyn said, annoyed, “you all know that Vavatch is going to get blown away by the Culture in a few days. People have been getting everything they can off the place, and the Megaships are all abandoned now apart from a few wrecking and salvage teams. I guess all the valuables are off them. But there is one ship called the Olmedreca, where a couple of the teams had a little argument. Some careless person let off a little nuke, and now the Olmedreca’s got a damn great hole in one side. It’s still afloat and it’s still scrubbing off speed, but, because the nuke went off on one side and that hole hasn’t done a lot for the ship’s streamlining, it’s started going round in a big curve, and it’s getting closer to the outside Edgewall all the time. The last transmission I picked up, nobody was sure whether it would hit before the Culture starts blasting or not, but they don’t seem happy to take the chance, so it looks like there isn’t anybody on board.”

“You want us to go onto it,” Yalson said.

“Yeah, because I’ve been on the Olmedreca, and I think I know something people will have forgotten in the rush to get off: bow lasers.”

A few of the Company looked sceptically from one to another. “Yeah, Megaships have bow lasers — especially the Olmedreca. It used to sail through stretches of the Circlesea a lot of the other ships didn’t go through, places where there was a lot of floating weeds or icebergs; it couldn’t exactly manoeuvre out of the way so it had to be able to destroy anything in its path, and have the firepower to do it. The Olmedreca’s front armament would put a few fleet battleships to shame. That thing could frazzle its way through an iceberg bigger than it was itself, and blast islands of floatweed out of the water so big that people used to think it was attacking the Edgeland. My guess — and it’s an educated one because I’ve been reading between the lines of the outcoming signals — is that nobody’s remembered about all that weaponry, and so we’re going to go for it.”

“What if this ship hits the wall while we’re on board?” Dorolow said. Kraiklyn smiled at her.

“We’re not blind, are we? We know where the wall is and we know where… we’ll be able to see where the Olmedreca is. We’ll go down, take a look, and then if we decide we have the time, we’ll remove a few of the smaller lasers… Hell, just one would do. I’m going to be down there, too, you know, and I’m not going to risk my own neck if I can see the Edge wall looming up, am I?”

“We taking the CAT?” Lamm said.

“Not over the top. The Orbital’s got just enough mass to make the warp a tricky proposition, and the fusions would get zapped by the Hub auto-defences; they’d think our motors were meteorites or something. No — we’ll leave the CAT here unmanned. I can always control it remotely from my suit if there’s an emergency. We’ll use the shuttle’s FFD; force fields work fine on an Orbital. Oh, that’s one thing I shouldn’t really have to remind you about; don’t try to use your AG on the place, OK? Anti-gravity works against mass, not spin, so you’d end up taking an unexpected bath if you jumped over the side expecting to fly round to the bows.”

“What do we do after we get this laser, if we get it?” Yalson said. Kraiklyn frowned briefly. He shrugged.

“Probably the best thing is to head for the capital. Its called Evanauth… a port where they used to build the Megaships. It’s on the land, of course…” He smiled, looking at some of the others.

“Yeah,” Yalson said. “But what do we do once we get there?”

“Well…” Kraiklyn looked hard at the woman. Horza kicked her heel with his toe. Yalson glared round at the Changer while Kraiklyn spoke. “We might be able to use the port facilities — in space, that is, on the underside of Evanauth — to mount the laser. But anyway, I’m sure the Culture will be prompt, so we might even just go to sample the last days of one of the most interesting combined ports of call in the galaxy. And its last nights, I might add.” Kraiklyn looked at several of the others, and there was some laughter and a few remarks. He stopped smiling and looked at Yalson again. “So it could be quite interesting, don’t you think?”

“Yeah. All right. You’re the boss, Kraiklyn.” Yalson grinned, then put her head down. Under her breath, to Horza, she hissed, “Guess where the Damage game is?”

“Won’t this big seaship go right through the wall and wreck the Orbital anyway, before the Culture does anything?” Aviger was saying. Kraiklyn smiled condescendingly and shook his head.

“I think you’ll find the Edgewalls are up to it.”

“Ho! I hope so!” Aviger laughed.

“Well, don’t worry about it,” Kraiklyn reassured him. “Now, somebody give Wubslin a hand to run a final check on the shuttle. I’m going up to the bridge to make sure Mipp knows what to do. We’ll be setting off in about ten minutes.” Kraiklyn stepped back and into his suit, gathering it up and putting his arms into the sleeves. He fastened the main chest latches, picked up his helmet and nodded to the Company as he walked by them and up the steps out of the hangar.

“Were you trying to annoy him?” Horza asked Yalson. She turned to the Changer.

“Ah, I just wanted to give him a hint that I could see through him; he doesn’t fool me.”

Wubslin and Aviger were checking the shuttle. Lamm was fiddling with his laser. Jandraligeli stood with arms crossed, his back resting against the hangar bulkhead near the door, eyes raised to the ceiling lights, a bored expression on his face. Neisin was talking quietly to Dorolow, who saw the small man as a possible convert to the Circle of Flame.

“You reckon Evanauth is where this Damage game’s going to be?” Horza asked. He was smiling. Yalson’s face looked very small inside the big, still open neck of her suit, and very serious.

“Yes I do. That devious bastard probably invented the whole goddamn op on this Megaboat thing. He’s never told me he’d been to Vavatch before. Lying bastard.” She looked at Horza, punched him in the suit belly, making him laugh and dance back. “What are you smiling at?”

“You,” Horza laughed. “So what if he wants to go and play a game of Damage? You keep saying it’s his ship and he’s the boss and all that crap, but you won’t let the poor guy have a bit of fun.”

“So why doesn’t he admit it?” Yalson nodded sharply at Horza. “Because he doesn’t want to share any of his winnings, that’s why. The rule is we divide everything we make, sharing it out according to—”

“Well, I can see his point if that’s what it is,” Horza said reasonably. “If he wins in a Damage game it’s all his own work; nothing to do with us.”

“That’s not the point!” Yalson yelled. Her mouth was set in a tight line, her hands were on her hips; she stamped her feet.

“OK,” Horza said, grinning. “So when you bet on me to win my fight with Zallin, why didn’t you give all your winnings right back again?”

“That’s different—” Yalson said in exasperation. But she was interrupted.

“Hey, hey!” Lenipobra came bounding down the steps into the hangar as Horza was about to say something. Both he and Yalson turned to the younger man as he skipped up to them, fastening his suit gloves to the cuffs. “D-d-did you see that message earlier?” He looked excited and didn’t seem to be able to keep still; he kept rubbing his gloved hands together and shuffling his feet. “Novagrade g-gridfire! Wow! What a spectacle! I love the C-Culture! And a C-C-CAM dusting — hoo-wee!” He laughed, doubled at the waist, slapped both hands on the hangar deck, bounced up and smiled at everybody. Dorolow scratched her ears and looked puzzled. Lamm glared at the youth over the barrel of his rifle, while Yalson and Horza looked at each other, shaking their heads. Lenipobra went dancing and shadow-boxing up to Jandraligeli, who raised one eyebrow and watched the gangly young man prancing about in front of him.

“The weaponry of the end of the universe, and this young idiot is practically coming in his pants.”

“Aw, you’re just a spoilsport, Ligeli,” Lenipobra said to the Mondlidician, stopping dancing and dropping his punching arms to turn away and slouch off towards the shuttle. As he passed Yalson and Horza he muttered, “Yalson, what the hell is C-CAM anyway?”

“Collapsed Anti-Matter, kid.” Yalson smiled as Lenipobra kept on walking. Horza laughed soundlessly as the young man’s head nodded inside the open neck of his suit. He walked into the open rear of the shuttle.

The Clear Air Turbulence rolled. The shuttle left the hangar and flew along the underside of the Vavatch Orbital, leaving the spacecraft flying underneath like a tiny silver fish under the hull of some great dark ship.

On a small screen, fitted at one end of the shuttle’s main compartment since its last outing, the suited figures could watch the seemingly endless curve of ultradense base material stretching off into the dark distance, lit by starlight. It was like flying upside-down over a planet made of metal; and of all the sights the galaxy held which were the result of conscious effort, it was one bested for what the Culture would call gawp value only by a big Ring, or a Sphere.

The shuttle crossed a thousand kilometres of the smooth undersurface. Then suddenly above it there was a wedge of darkness, a slant of something which looked even smoother than the base material, but which was clear, transparent and angling out from the base itself and slicing into space like the edge of a crystal knife for two thousand kilometres: the Edgewall. This was the wall bordered by sea, on the far side of the Orbital from the thread of land they had seen on their approach in the CAT. The first ten kilometres of the flat curve were dark as space; their mirror surface showed only when stars reflected on them, and looking at that perfect image the mind could spin, seeing for what looked like light-years when in fact the surface was only a few thousand metres away.

“God, that thing’s big,” Neisin whispered. The shuttle continued to rise, and above it there appeared through the wall a glow of light, a shining expanse of blue.

Into sunlight, hardly filtered through the transparent wall, the shuttle climbed in empty space beside the Edgewall. Two kilometres away there was air, even if it was thin air, but the shuttle climbed in nothing, angling out along with the wall as it sloped towards its line of summit. The shuttle crossed that knife-edge, two thousand kilometres up from the base of the Orbital, then started to follow the slope of wall back down on the inside; it passed through the Orbital’s magnetic field, a region where small magnetised particles of artificial dust blocked out some of the sun’s rays, so making the sea below it cooler than elsewhere on the world, producing Vavatch’s different climates. The shuttle continued to fall: through ions, then thin gases, finally into thin and cloudless air, shuddering in a coriolis jetstream. The sky above turned from black to blue. The Orbital of Vavatch, a fourteen million kilometre hoop of water seemingly hung naked in space, spread out before the falling craft like some vast circular painting.

“Well, at least we’re in daylight,” Yalson said. “Let’s just hope our captain’s information about exactly where this wonderful ship is turns out to be accurate.” The screen showed clouds. As the shuttle fell and flew, it was coming down onto a false landscape of water vapour. The clouds seemed to stretch for ever, along the curved inside surface of the Orbital, which even from that height looked flat, then sweeping up into the black sky above. Only much further away could they see the blue expanse of real ocean, though there were hints of smaller patches closer to hand.

“Don’t worry about the cloud,” Kraiklyn said over the cabin speaker. “That’ll shift as the morning wears on.”

The shuttle was still dropping, still flying forward through the thickening atmosphere. After a while they started going through the first few very high altitude clouds. Horza shifted slightly in his suit; ever since the CAT had matched velocities and curve with the big Orbital, and turned off its own AG, the craft and the Company had been under the same fake gravity of the construction’s spin — slightly more, in fact, because they were stationary relative to the base but further out from it. Vavatch, whose original builders had come from a higher-G planet, was spun to produce about twenty per cent more “gravity” than the accepted human average which the CAT’s generator was set for. So Horza, like the rest of the Company, felt heavier than he was used to. His suit was chafing already.

Clouds filled the cabin screen with grey.

“There it is!” Kraiklyn shouted, not trying to keep the excitement from his voice. He had been quiet for almost a quarter of an hour, and people had started to get restless. The shuttle had banked a few times, this way and that, apparently searching for the Olmedreca. Sometimes the screen had been clear, showing layers of cloud beneath; sometimes it hazed over with grey again as they entered another bank or pillar of vapour. Once it had iced over. “I can see the topmost towers!”

The Company crowded forward in the cabin, getting out of their seats and coming closer to the screen. Only Lamm and Jandraligeli stayed sitting down.

“About fucking time,” Lamm said. “How the hell do you have to look all this time for something four K long?”

“It’s easy when you’ve no radar,” Jandraligeli said. “I’m just thankful we didn’t hit the damn thing while we were flying through those awful clouds.”

“Shit,” Lamm said, and inspected his rifle again.

“…Look at that,” Neisin said.

In a wasteland of clouds, like some vast canyon torn in a planet made of vapour, through kilometres of levels and in a space so long and wide that even in the clear air between the piled clouds the view simply faded rather than ended, the Olmedreca moved.

Its lower levels of superstructure were quite hidden, invisible in the ocean-hugging bank of mist, but from its unseen decks rose immense towers and structures of glass and light metal, rearing hundreds of metres into the clear air. Seemingly unconnected, they moved slowly and smoothly over the flat surface of the low bank of cloud like pieces on an endless game board, casting dim and watery shadows on the opaque top of the mist as the sun of Vavatch’s system shone through layers of cloud ten kilometres above.

As those huge towers moved through the air, they left behind them wisps and strands of vapour, ruffled from the mist’s smooth top by the passage of the great ship beneath. In the small, clear spaces that the towers and higher levels of superstructure left in the mist, lower levels could be seen: walkways and promenades, the linked arches of a monorail system, pools and small parks with trees, even a few pieces of equipment like small flyers and bits of tiny, doll’s-house-like furniture. As the eye and brain grasped the scene, they could, from that height, make out the overall bulge in the surface of the cloud that the ship made — an area of slight uplift in the mist four kilometres long and nearly three wide, and shaped like a stubby pointed leaf or an arrowhead.

The shuttle came lower. The towers, with their glinting windows, their suspended bridges, flyer pads, ariels, railings, decks and flapping awnings, sailed by alongside, silent and dark.

“Well,” Kraiklyn’s voice said in a businesslike way, “looks like we’ll have a bit of a walk to the bows, team. I can’t take us under this lot. Still, we’re a good hundred kilometres away from the Edgewall, so we’ve got plenty of time. The ship isn’t heading straight for it anyway. I’ll put us down as close as I can.”

“Fuck. Here we go,” Lamm said angrily. “I might have known.”

“A long walk in this gravity is just what I need,” Jandraligeli said.

“It’s vast!” Lenipobra was still staring at the screen. “That thing is huge!” He was shaking his head. Lamm got up from his seat, pushed the youth out of the way and banged on the door of the shuttle flight deck.

“What is it?” Kraiklyn said over the cabin speaker. “I’m looking for a place to put down. If that’s you, Lamm, just sit down.”

Lamm stared at the door with a look first of surprise, then of annoyance. He snorted and went back to his seat, shoving past Lenipobra again. “Bastard,” he muttered, then put his helmet visor down and turned it to mirror.

“Right,” Kraiklyn said. “We’re putting down.” Those still standing sat again, and in a few seconds the shuttle bumped carefully down. The doors jawed and a cold gust of air entered through them. They filed out slowly, into the wide views of the silent, rock-steady Megaship. Horza sat in the shuttle waiting for the rest to go, then saw Lamm watching him. Horza stood and gave a mock bow to the darksuited figure.

“After you,” he said.

“No,” Lamm said. “You first.” He nodded his head to one side towards the open doors. Horza went out of the shuttle, followed by Lamm. Lamm always made a point of being last out of the shuttle; it was lucky for him.

They stood on a flyer landing pad, near the base of a large rectangular tower of superstructure, perhaps sixty metres tall. The decks of the tower soared into the sky above, while over the surface of the cloud bank in front, and to all sides of the pad, towers and small bulges in the mist showed where the rest of the ship was, though where it ended it was impossible to tell now that they were so low down. They couldn’t even see where the nuke had gone off; there was no list, not a tremor to reveal that they were really on a damaged ship travelling over an ocean, not standing in a deserted city with clouds moving smoothly past.

Horza joined some of the others by a low restraining wall at the edge of the pad, looking down about twenty metres to a deck just visible now and again through the thin surface of the mist. Streamers of vapour flowed across the area below in long sinuous waves, sometimes revealing, sometimes obscuring a deck covered with patches of earth planted with small bushes, with little canopies and chairs scattered about and small tent-like buildings on the surface. It all looked deserted and forlorn, like a resort in winter, and Horza shivered inside his suit. Ahead of them, the view led to an implied point about a kilometre away, where a few small, skinny towers poked out of the cloud bank, near the unseen bows of the craft.

“Looks like we’re heading into even more cloud,” Wubslin said, pointing in the direction they were heading. There a great canyon wall of cloud hung in the air, stretching from one side of the horizon to the other, and higher than any tower on the Megaship. It shone for them in the increasing sunlight.

“Maybe it’ll go away as it gets warmer,” Dorolow said, not sounding convinced.

“If we hit that lot we can forget about these lasers,” Horza said, looking round from the rest towards the shuttle, where Kraiklyn was talking to Mipp, who was to stay on guard at the shuttle craft while the rest went forward to the bows. “With no radar we’ll have to lift off before we go into the cloud bank.”

“Maybe—” Yalson began.

“Well, I’m going to take a look down there,” Lenipobra said, bringing his visor down and putting one hand on the low parapet. Horza looked across at him.

Lenipobra waved. “See you at the b-bows; ya-hoo!”

He vaulted cleanly over the parapet and started to fall towards the deck five storeys below. Horza had opened his mouth to shout, and started forward to grab the youth, but, like the rest of them, he had realised too late what Lenipobra was doing.

One second he was there, the next he had leapt over.

“No!”

“Leni—!” Those not already looking down rushed to the parapet; the tiny figure was tumbling. Horza saw it and hoped that somehow it could pull up, stop, do something. The scream started in their helmets when Lenipobra was less than ten metres from the deck below; it ended abruptly the instant the spread-eagled figure crashed onto the border of a small earthed area. It bounced slackly for about a metre over the deck, then lay still.

“Oh my God…” Neisin suddenly sat down, took off his helmet and put his hand to his eyes. Dorolow put her head down and started to unfasten her helmet.

“What the hell was that?” Kraiklyn was running over from the shuttle, Mipp behind him. Horza was still looking over the parapet, down at the still, doll-like figure crumpled on the deck below. Mist thickened around it as the wisps and streamers grew thicker for a while.

“Lenipobra! Lenipobra!” Wubslin shouted into his helmet microphone. Yalson turned away and swore to herself softly, turning off her transmit intercom. Aviger stood, shaking, his face blank inside his helmet visor. Kraiklyn skidded to a halt at the parapet, then looked over.

“Leni—?” He looked round at the others. “Is that—? What happened? What was he doing? If any of you were fooling—”

“He jumped,” Jandraligeli said. His voice was shaky. He tried to laugh. “Guess kids these days just can’t tell their gravity from their rotating frame of reference.”

“He jumped?” Kraiklyn shouted. He grabbed Jandraligeli by the suit collar. “How could he jump? I told you AG wouldn’t work, I told you all, when we were in the hangar…”

“He was late,” Lamm broke in. He kicked at the thin metal of the parapet, failing to dent it. “The stupid little bastard was late. None of us thought to tell him.”

Kraiklyn let go of Jandraligeli and looked around the rest.

“It’s true,” Horza said. He shook his head. “I just didn’t think. None of us did. Lamm and Jandraligeli were even complaining about having to walk to the bows when Leni was in the shuttle, and you mentioned it, but I suppose he just didn’t hear.” Horza shrugged. “He was excited.”

He shook his head.

“We all fucked up,” Yalson said heavily. She had turned her communicator back on. Nobody spoke for a while. Kraiklyn stood and looked round them, then went to the parapet, put both hands on it and looked down.

“Leni?” Wubslin said into his communicator, looking down too. His voice was quiet.

“Chicel-Horhava,” Dorolow made the Circle of Flame sign, closed her eyes and said, “Sweet lady, accept his soul in peace.”

“Wormshit,” Lamm swore, and turned away. He started firing the laser at distant, higher parts of the tower above them.

“Dorolow,” Kraiklyn said, “you, Wubslin and Yalson head down there. See what… ah, shit…” Kraiklyn turned round. “Get down there. Mipp, you drop them a line or the medkit, whatever. The rest of us… we’re going forward to the bows, all right?” He looked around them, challenging. “You might want to go back, but that just means he’s died for nothing.”

Yalson turned away, switching off her transmit button again.

“Might as well,” Jandraligeli said. “I suppose.”

“Not me,” Neisin said. “I’m not. I’m staying here, with the shuttle.” He sat with his head bowed between his shoulders, his helmet on the deck. He stared at the deck and shook his head. “Not me. No sir, not me. I’ve had it for today. I’m staying here.”

Kraiklyn looked at Mipp and nodded at Neisin. “Look after him.” He turned to Dorolow and Wubslin. “Get going. You never know; you might be able to do something. Yalson — you, too.” Yalson wasn’t looking at Kraiklyn but she turned and followed Wubslin and the other woman when they set off to find a way down to the lower deck.

A crash they felt through their soles made them all jump. They turned round to see Lamm, a distant figure against the far-away clouds, firing up at flyer-pad supports five or six decks above, the invisible beam licking flame around the stressed metal. Another pad gave way, flapping and spinning like a huge playing-card, smashing into the level they stood on with another deck-quivering thump. “Lamm!” Kraiklyn burst out. “Stop that!”

The black suit with the raised rifle pretended not to hear, and Kraiklyn lifted his own heavy laser and flicked the trigger. A section of deck five metres in front of Lamm ruptured in flame and glowing metal, heaving up, then collapsing back down, a blister of gases blowing out from it rocking Lamm off his feet so that he staggered and almost fell. He steadied and stood, visibly shaking with rage, even from that distance. Kraiklyn still had the gun pointing towards him. Lamm straightened and shouldered his own gun, coming back almost at a saunter, as though nothing had happened. The others relaxed slightly.

Kraiklyn got them all together; then they set off, following Dorolow, Yalson and Wubslin to the inside of the tower and a broad sweeping spiral of carpeted staircase which led down, into the Megaship the Olmedreca.

“Dead as a fossil,” Yalson’s voice said bitterly in their helmet speakers, when they were about halfway down. “Dead as a goddamned fossil.”

When they passed them on their way to the bows, Yalson and Wubslin were waiting by the body for the winch line Mipp was lowering from above. Dorolow was praying.

They crossed over the deck level Lenipobra had died on, down into the mist and along a narrow gangway with nothing but empty space on either side. “Just five metres,” Kraiklyn said, using the light needle radar in his Rairch suit to plumb the depths of vapour below them. The mist was getting slowly thinner as they went on, up again onto another deck, now clear, then down again, by outside stairs and long ramps. The sun was hazily visible a few times, a red disc which sometimes brightened and sometimes dimmed. They crossed decks, skirted swimming pools, traversed promenades and landing pads, went past tables and chairs, through groves and under awnings, arcades and arches. They saw towers above them through the mist, and a couple of times looked down into huge pits carved out of the ship and lined with yet more decks and opened areas, from the bottom of which they thought they could hear the sea. The swirling mist lay in the bottom of such great bowls like a broth of dreams.

They stopped at a line of small, open, wheeled vehicles with seats and gaily striped awnings for roofs. Kraiklyn looked around, getting his bearings. Wubslin tried starting the vehicles, but none of the small cars were working.

“There are two ways to go here,” Kraiklyn said, frowning as he looked forward. The sun was briefly bright above, turning the vapour over them and to each side golden with its rays. The lines of some unknown sport or game lay drawn out on the deck under their feet. A tower forced out of the mist to one side, the curls and whorls of mist moving like huge arms, dimming the sun again. Its shadow cut across the path in front of them. “We’ll split up.” Kraiklyn looked around. “I’ll go that way with Aviger and Jandraligeli. Horza and Lamm, you go that way.” He pointed to one side. “That’s leading down to one of the side prows. There ought to be something there; just keep looking.” He touched a wrist button. “Yalson?”

“Hello,” Yalson said over the intercom. She, Wubslin and Dorolow had watched Lenipobra’s body being winched up to the shuttle and then left, following the rest.

“Right,” Kraiklyn said, looking at one of the helmet screens, “you’re only about three hundred metres away.” He turned and looked back the way they had come. A collection of towers, some kilometres away, were strung out behind them now, mostly starting at higher levels. They could see more and more of the Olmedreca. Mist streamed quietly past them in the silence. “Oh yeah,” Kraiklyn said, “I see you.” He waved.

Some small figures on a distant deck at the side of one of the great mist-filled bowls waved back. “I see you, too,” Yalson said.

“When you get to where we are now, head over to the left for the other side prow; there are subsidiary lasers there. Horza and Lamm will—”

“Yeah, we heard,” Yalson said.

“Right. We’ll be able to bring the shuttle closer, maybe right down to wherever we find anything soon. Let’s go. Keep your eyes open.” He nodded at Aviger and Jandraligeli, and they went forward. Lamm and Horza looked at each other, then set off in the direction Kraiklyn had indicated. Lamm motioned to Horza to switch off his communicator transmit and open his visor.

“If we’d waited we could have put the shuttle down where we wanted to in the first place,” he said with his own visor open. Horza agreed.

“Stupid little bastard,” Lamm said.

“Who?” asked Horza.

“That kid. Jumping off the goddamned platform.”

“Hmm.”

“Know what I’m going to do?” Lamm looked at the Changer.

“What?”

“I’m going to cut that stupid little bastard’s tongue out, that’s what I’m going to do. A tattooed tongue should be worth something, shouldn’t it? Little bastard owed me money anyway. What do you think? How much do you think it’d be worth?”

“No idea.”

“Little bastard…” Lamm muttered.

The two men tramped along the deck, angling away from the dead-ahead line they had taken previously. It was difficult to tell where exactly they were heading, but according to Kraiklyn it was towards one of the side prows, which stuck out like enormous outriggers attached to the Olmedreca and formed harbours for the liners which had shuttled to and from the Megaship in its heyday, on excursions, or working as tenders.

They passed where there had evidently been a recent fire-fight; laser burns, smashed glass and torn metal littered an accommodation section of the ship, and torn curtains and wall hangings flapped in the steady breeze of the great ship’s progress. Two of the small wheeled vehicles lay smashed on their sides near by. They crunched over the debris and kept walking. The other two groups were heading forward, too, making reasonable progress according to their reports and chatter. Ahead of them there still lay the enormous bank of cloud they had seen earlier; it wasn’t growing any thinner or lower, and they could only be a couple of kilometres from it now, though distances were hard to estimate.

“We’re here,” Kraiklyn said eventually, his voice crackling in Horza’s ear. Lamm turned his transmit channel on.

“What?” He looked, mystified, at Horza, who shrugged.

“What’s keeping you two?” Kraiklyn said. “We had further to walk. We’re at the main bows. They stick further out than the bit you’re on.”

“The hell you are, Kraiklyn,” Yalson broke in from the other team, which was supposed to be heading for the opposite set of side prows.

“What?” Kraiklyn said. Lamm and Horza stopped to listen to the exchange over their communicators. Yalson spoke again:

“We’ve just come to the edge of the ship. In fact I think we’re a bit out from the main side… on some sort of wing or buttress… Anyway, there’s no side prow around here. You’ve sent us in the wrong direction.”

“But you…” Kraiklyn began. His voice died away.

“Kraiklyn, dammit, you’ve sent us towards the bow and you’re on a side prow!” Lamm yelled into his helmet mike. Horza had been coming to the same conclusion. That was why they were still walking and Kraiklyn’s team had reached the bows. There was silence from the Clear Air Turbulence’s captain for a few seconds, then he said:

“Shit, you must be right.” They could hear him sigh. “I guess you and Horza had better keep going. I’ll send somebody down in your direction once we’ve had a quick look round here. I think I can see some sort of gallery with a lot of transparent blisters where there might be some lasers. Yalson, you head back to where we split up and tell me when you get there. We’ll see who comes up with something useful first.”

“Fucking marvellous,” Lamm said, stamping off into the mist. Horza followed, wishing the ill-fitting suit didn’t rub so much.

The two men walked on. Lamm stopped to investigate some state rooms which had already been looted. Fine materials snagged on broken glass floated like the cloud around them. In one apartment they saw rich wooden furniture, a holosphere lying broken in a corner and a glass-sided water tank the size of a room, full of rotting, brilliantly coloured fish and fine clothes, floating together on the surface like exotic weeds.

Over their communicators Horza and Lamm heard the others in Kraiklyn’s group find what they thought was a door leading to the gallery where — they hoped — they would find lasers behind the transparent bubbles they had seen earlier. Horza told Lamm they had best not waste their time, and so they left the state rooms and went back out onto the deck to continue heading forward.

“Hey, Horza,” Kraiklyn said, as the Changer and Lamm walked along the deck and into a long tunnel lit by dim sunlight coming through mist and opaque ceiling panels. “This needle radar’s not working properly.”

Horza answered as they walked. “What’s wrong?”

“It isn’t going through cloud, that’s what’s wrong.”

“I never really got a chance to… What do you mean?” Horza stopped in the corridor. He felt something wrong in his guts. Lamm kept walking, away from him, down the corridor.

“It’s giving me a reading off that big cloud in front, right the way along and about half a K up.” Kraiklyn laughed. “It isn’t the Edgewall, that’s for sure, and I can see that’s a cloud, and it’s closer than the needle says it is.”

“Where are you now?” Dorolow broke in. “Did you find any lasers? What about that door?”

“No, just a sort of sun lounge or something,” Kraiklyn said.

“Kraiklyn!” Horza shouted. “Are you sure about that reading?”

“I’m sure. The needle says—”

“Sure isn’t much fucking sun to lounge—” somebody broke in, though it sounded as if it was accidental and they didn’t know their transmit was on. Horza felt sweat start out on his brow. Something was wrong.

“Lamm!” he shouted. Lamm, thirty metres away down the corridor, turned as he walked and looked back. “Come back!” Horza shouted. Lamm stopped.

“Horza, there can’t be anything—”

“Kraiklyn!” This time it was Mipp’s voice, calling from the shuttle. “There was somebody else here. I just saw another craft take off somewhere behind where we landed; they’ve gone now.”

“OK, thanks Mipp,” Kraiklyn said, his voice calm. “Listen, Horza, from what I can see from here, the bows where you are have just gone into the cloud, so it is a cloud… Shit, we can all see it’s a goddamn cloud. Don’t—”

The ship shuddered under Horza’s feet. He rocked. Lamm looked at him, puzzled. “Did you feel that?” Horza shouted.

“Feel what?” Kraiklyn said.

“Kraiklyn?” It was Mipp again. “I can see something…”

“Lamm, get back here!” Horza shouted, through the air and into his helmet mike together. Lamm looked around him. Horza thought he could feel a continuing tremor in the deck below.

“What did you feel?” Kraiklyn said. He was starting to get annoyed.

Yalson chipped in, “I thought I felt something. Nothing much. But listen, these things aren’t supposed to… they aren’t supposed to—”

“Kraiklyn,” Mipp said more urgently, “I think I can see—”

“Lamm!” Horza was backing off now, back down the long tunnel of corridor. Lamm stayed where he was, looking hesitant.

Horza could hear something, a curious growling noise; it reminded him of a jet engine or a fusion motor heard from a very long distance away, but it wasn’t either. He could feel something under his feet, too — that tremor, and there was some sort of pull, a tug that seemed to be dragging him forward, towards Lamm, towards the bows, as though he was in a weak field, or—

“Kraiklyn!” Mipp yelled. “I can! There is! I — you — I’m—” he spluttered.

“Look, will you all just calm down?”

“I can feel something…” Yalson began.

Horza started running, pounding back down the corridor. Lamm, who had started to walk back, stopped and put his hands on his hips when he saw the other man running, away from him. There was a distant roaring noise in the air, like a big waterfall heard from far down a gorge.

“I can feel something too, it’s as if—”

“What was Mipp yelling about?”

“We’re crashing!” Horza shouted as he ran. The roaring was coming closer, growing stronger all the time.

“Ice!” It was Mipp. “I’m bringing the shuttle! Run! It’s a wall of ice! Neisin! Where are you? Neisin! I’ve got—”

“What!”

“ICE?”

The roaring noise grew; the corridor around Horza started to groan. Several of the opaque roof panels fractured and fell to the floor in front of him. A section of wall suddenly sprang out like an opening door and he just avoided running into it. The noise filled his ears.

Lamm looked round, and saw the end of the corridor coming towards him; the whole end section was closing off steadily with a grinding roar, advancing towards him at about running speed. He fired at it but it didn’t stop; smoke poured into the corridor. He swore, turned and ran, following Horza.

People were yelling and shouting from all over now. There was a babble of tiny voices in both Horza’s ears, but all he could really hear was the thundering noise behind him. The deck beneath his feet bucked and trembled, as though the whole gigantic ship was a building caught in an earthquake. The plates and panels which made up the corridor walls were buckling; the floor rose up in places; more roof panels shattered and fell. All the time the same sapping force was pulling him back, slowing him down as though he was in a dream. He ran out into daylight, heard Lamm not far behind.

“Kraiklyn, you stupid motherfucking son of a bitch’s bastard!” Lamm screamed.

The voices yammered in his ear; his heart pounded. He threw each foot forward with all his might, but the roaring was coming closer, growing stronger. He ran past the empty state rooms where the soft materials blew, the roof was starting to fold in on the apartments and the deck was tilting; the holosphere they had seen earlier came rolling and bouncing out of the collapsing windows. A hatch near Horza blew out in a gust of pressured air and flying debris; he ducked as he ran, felt splinters strike his suit. He skidded as the deck under him banged and leapt. Lamm’s steps came pounding behind him. Lamm continued to scream abuse at Kraiklyn over the intercom.

The noise behind him was like a gigantic waterfall, a big rock-slide, like a continuous explosion, a volcano. His ears ached and his mind reeled, stunned by the volume of the racket. A line of windows set in the wall ahead of him went white, then exploded towards him, throwing particles at his suit in a series of small hard clouds. He put his head down again, he headed for the doorway.

“Bastard bastard bastard!” Lamm bellowed.

“— not stopping!”

“— over here!”

“Shut up, Lamm.”

“Horzaaa…!”

Voices screamed in his ear. He was running on carpet now, inside a broad corridor; open doors were flapping, light fittings on the ceiling were vibrating. Suddenly a deluge of water swept across the corridor in front of him, twenty metres away, and for a second he thought he was at sea level, but knew he couldn’t be; when he ran over the place where the water had been he could see and hear it frothing and gurgling down a broad spiral stairwell, and only a few dribbles were falling from overhead. The tugging of the slowly decelerating ship seemed less now, but the roar of noise was still all around him. He was weakening, running in a daze, trying to keep his balance as the long corridor vibrated and twisted around him. Now a rush of air was flowing past him; some sheets of paper and plastic flapped past him like coloured birds.

“— bastard bastard bastard—”

“Lamm—”

There was daylight ahead, through a glassed-over sun deck of broad windows. He jumped through some big-leaved plants growing in large pots and landed in a group of flimsy chairs set round a small table, demolishing them.

“— fucking stupid bast—”

“Lamm, shut up!” Kraiklyn’s voice broke in. “We can’t hear—”

The line of windows ahead went white, cracking like ice then bursting out; he dived through the space, to skid over the fragments scattered on the deck beyond. Behind him, the top and bottom of the shattered windows started to close slowly, like a huge mouth.

“You bastard! You motherfu—”

“Dammit, change channels! Go to—”

He slipped on the shards of glass, almost falling.

Only Lamm’s voice sounded through his helmet now, filling his ears with oaths which were mostly drowned in the smothering roar of the endless wreck behind. He looked back, just for a second, to see Lamm throwing himself between the jaws of the crumpling windows; he careened over the deck, falling and rolling, then rising again, still holding his gun, as Horza looked away. It was only at that point he realised he no longer had his own gun; he must have dropped it, but he couldn’t remember where or when.

Horza was slowing down. He was fit and strong, but the above-standard pull of Vavatch’s false gravity and the badly fitting suit were taking their toll.

He tried, as he ran in something like a trance, as his breath streamed back and forth through his wide-open mouth, to imagine how close they had been to the bows, for how long that immense weight of ship behind would be able to compress its front section as its billion-tonne mass rammed into what must — if it had filled the cloud bank they had seen earlier — be a massive tabular iceberg.

As though in a dream, Horza could see the ship about him, still wrapped in clouds and mist but lit from above by the wash of golden sunlight. The towers and spires seemed unaffected, the whole vast structure still sliding forward towards the ice as the kilometres of Megaship behind them pressed forward with the vessel’s own titanic momentum. He ran by game courts, past tents of billowing silver, through a pile of musical instruments. Ahead there was a huge tiered wall of more decks, and above him were bridges, swaying and thrashing as their bow-ward supports, out of sight behind him, came closer to the advancing wave of wreckage and were consumed. He saw the deck to one side drop away into airy, hazy nothing. The deck under his feet started to rise, slowly, but for fifteen metres or more in front of him; he was fighting his way up a slope growing steeper all the time. A suspension bridge to his left collapsed, wires flailing; it disappeared into the golden mist, the noise of its fall lost in the crushing din assaulting his ears. His feet started to slide on the tilt of deck. He fell, landed heavily on his back and turned, looking behind him.

Against a wall of pure white towering higher than the Olmedreca’s tallest spire, the Megaship was throwing itself to destruction in a froth of debris and ice. It was like the biggest wave in the universe, rendered in scrap metal, sculpted in grinding junk; and beyond and about it, over and through, cascades of flashing, glittering ice and snow swept down in great slow veils from the cliff of frozen water beyond. Horza stared at it, then started to slide down towards it as the deck tilted him. To his left a huge tower was collapsing slowly, bowing to the breaking wave of compacted wreckage like a slave before a master. Horza felt a scream start in his throat as he saw decks and railings, walls and bulkheads and frames he had only just run past start to crumple and smash and come towards him.

He rolled over sliding shards and skidding fragments to the buckling rail at the edge of the deck, grabbed at the rails, caught them, heaved with both arms, kicked with one foot, and threw himself over the side.

He fell only one deck, crashing into sloped metal, winding himself. He got to his feet as fast as he could, sucking air through his mouth and swallowing as he tried to get his lungs to work. The narrow deck he was on was also buckling, but the fold-point was between him and the wall of towering, grinding wreckage; he slipped and slid away from it down the sloping surface as the deck behind him rose into a peak. Metal tore, and girders crashed out of the deck above like broken bones through skin. A set of steps faced him, leading to the deck he’d just jumped from, but to an area that was still level. He scrambled up to the level deck, which only then started to tip, canting away from the wave front of debris as its front edge lifted, crumpling.

He ran down the increasing slope, water from shallow ornamental pools cascading around him. More steps: he hauled himself towards the next deck.

His chest and throat seemed filled with hot coals, his legs with molten lead, and all the time that awful, nightmarish pull came from behind, dragging him back towards the wreckage. He stumbled and gasped his way from the top of the steps past the side of a broken, drained swimming pool.

“Horza!” a voice yelled. “Is that you? Horza! It’s Mipp! Look up!”

Horza lifted his head. In the mist, thirty metres above him, was the CAT’s shuttle. He waved weakly at it, staggering as he did so. The shuttle lowered itself through the mist ahead of him, its rear doors opening, until it was hovering just over the next deck above.

“I’ve opened the doors! Jump in!” Mipp shouted. Horza tried to reply, but could produce no sound apart from a sort of rasping wheeze; he staggered on, feeling as though the bones in his legs had turned to jelly. The heavy suit bumped and crashed around him, his feet slipped on the broken glass which covered the thrumming deck under his boots. Yet more steps towered ahead, leading to the deck where the shuttle waited. “Hurry up, Horza! I can’t wait much longer!”

He threw himself at the steps, hauled himself up. The shuttle wavered in the air, swivelling, its open rear ramp pointing at him, then away. The steps beneath him shuddered; the noise around him roared, full of screams and crashes. Another voice was shouting in his ears but he couldn’t make out the words. He fell onto the upper deck, lunged forward for the shuttle ramp a few metres away; he could see the seats and lights inside, Lenipobra’s suited body slumped in one corner.

“I can’t wait! I’ve—” Mipp shouted above the scream of the wreckage and the other shouting voice. The shuttle started to rise. Horza threw himself at it.

His hands caught the lip of the ramp just as it rose level with his chest. He was hoisted from the deck, swinging under outstretched arms and looking forward under the shuttle’s fuselage belly as the craft forced its way up into the air.

“Horza! Horza! I’m sorry,” Mipp sobbed.

“You’ve got me!” Horza yelled hoarsely.

“What?”

The shuttle was still climbing, passing decks and towers and the thin horizontal lines of monorail tracks. All Horza’s weight was taken by his fingers, hooked in their gloves over the edge of the ramp door. His arms ached. “I’m hanging onto the goddamn ramp!”

“You bastards!” screamed another voice. It was Lamm. The ramp started to close; the jerk almost broke Horza’s grip. They were fifty metres up and climbing. He saw the top part of the doors jawing down towards his fingers.

“Mipp!” he yelled. “Don’t close the door! Leave the ramp where it is and I’ll try to get in!”

“OK,” Mipp said quickly. The ramp stopped angling up, halting at about twenty degrees. Horza began swinging his legs from side to side. They were seventy, eighty metres up, facing away from the wave of wreckage and heading slowly away from it.

“You black bastard! Come back!” Lamm bellowed.

“I can’t, Lamm!” Mipp cried. “I can’t! You’re too close!”

“You fat bastard!” Lamm hissed.

Light flickered around Horza. The underside of the shuttle blazed in a dozen places as laser fire hit it. Something slammed into Horza’s left foot, on the sole of his boot, and his right leg was kicked out as his leg burned with pain.

Mipp screamed incoherently. The shuttle started to gather speed, heading back over the Megaship and diagonally across it. The air roared around Horza’s body, slowly tearing his grip away. “Mipp, slow down!” he shouted.

“Bastard!” Lamm yelled again. The mist to one side glowed as a fan of short-lived beams incandesced within it, then the laser fire shifted and the shuttle sparkled again, cracking with five or six small explosions around the front and nose section. Mipp howled. The shuttle increased speed. Horza was still trying to swing one leg onto the sloped ramp, but the clawed fingers of his gloves were slowly scraping along the roughened surface as his body was slipstreamed back behind the speeding craft.

Lamm screamed — a high, gurgling sound which went through Horza’s head like an electric shock, until the noise snapped off suddenly, replaced for an instant by sharp cracking, breaking noises.

The shuttle raced over the surface of the crashing Megaship, a hundred metres up. Horza felt the strength ebbing from his fingers and arms. He looked through the helmet visor at the interior of the shuttle only a few metres away as, millimetre by millimetre, he slipped away from it.

The interior flashed once, then an instant later blazed white, blindingly, unbearably. His eyes closed instinctively, and a burning yellow light came through his eyelids. His helmet speakers made a sudden, piercing, inhuman noise, like a machine screaming, then cut out altogether. The light faded slowly. He opened his eyes.

The shuttle interior was still brightly lit, but it was smouldering now, too. In the turbulent air whirling in from the open rear doors, wisps of smoke were tugged from scorched seats, singed straps and webbing, and the crisped black skin on Lenipobra’s exposed face. Shadows seemed to be burnt onto the bulkhead in front.

Horza’s fingers, one by one, came to the edge of the ramp.

My God, he thought, looking at the scorch marks and the smoke, that maniac had a nuke after all. Then the shock wave hit.

It slapped him forward, over the ramp and into the shuttle, just before it hit the machine itself, throwing it bucking and bouncing about the sky like a tiny bird caught in a storm. Horza was rattled about the interior from side to side, trying desperately to grab hold of something to stop himself falling back out through the open rear doors. His hand found some straps and fisted round them with the last of his strength.

Back through the doors, through the mist, a huge rolling fireball was climbing slowly into the sky. A noise like every clap of thunder he had ever heard vibrated through the hot, hazed interior of the fleeing machine. The shuttle banked, throwing Horza against one set of seats. A big tower flashed by the open rear doors, blocking out the fireball as the shuttle continued to turn. The rear doors seemed to try to close, then jammed.

Horza felt heavy and hot inside his suit, as the heat from the bomb’s flash seeped through from the surfaces which had been exposed to the initial fireball. His right leg hurt badly, somewhere below the knee. He could smell burning.

As the shuttle steadied and its course straightened, Horza got up and limped forward to the door set in the bulkhead, where the outlines of the seats and Lenipobra’s slumped body — now spread-eagled near the rear doors — were burnt in frozen shadows onto the off-white surface of the wall. He opened the door and went through.

Mipp was in the pilot’s seat, hunched over the controls. The monitor screens were blank, but the view through the thick, polarised glass of the shuttle’s windscreen showed cloud, mist, some towers sliding underneath and open sea beyond, covered with yet more cloud. “Thought you… were dead…” Mipp said thickly, half turning towards Horza. Mipp looked wounded, crouched in his seat, hunchbacked, eyelids drooped. Sweat glistened on his dark brow. There was smoke in the flight deck, acrid and sweet at once.

Horza took his helmet off and fell into the other seat. He looked down at his right leg. A neat, black-rimmed hole about a centimetre across had been punched through the back of the suit calf, matched by a larger and more ragged hole on the side. He flexed the leg and winced; just a muscle burn, already cauterised. He could see no blood.

He looked at Mipp. “You all right?” he asked. He already knew the answer.

Mipp shook his head. “No,” he said, in a soft voice. “That lunatic hit me. Leg, and my back somewhere.”

Horza looked at the back of Mipp’s suit, near where it rested against the seat. A hole in the bowl of the seat led to a long, dark scar on the suit surface. Horza looked down at the flight-deck floor. “Shit,” he said. “This thing’s full of holes.”

The floor was pitted with craters. Two were directly under Mipp’s seat; one laser shot had caused that dark scar on the side of the suit, the other must have hit Mipp’s body.

“Feels like that bastard shot me right up the ass, Horza,” Mipp said, trying to smile. “He did have a nuke, didn’t he? That’s what went off. Blew all the electrics away… Only the optic controls still working. Useless damn shuttle…”

“Mipp, let me take over,” Horza said. They were in cloud now; only a vague coppery light showed through the crystal screen ahead. Mipp shook his head.

“Can’t. You couldn’t fly this thing… with it in this shape.”

“We’ve got to go back, Mipp. The others might have—”

“Can’t. They’ll all be dead,” Mipp said, shaking his head and gripping the controls tighter, staring through the screen. “God, this thing’s dying.” He looked round the blank monitors, shaking his head slowly. “I can feel it.”

“Shit!” Horza said, feeling helpless. “What about radiation?” he said suddenly. It was a truism that in any properly designed suit, if you survived the flash and blast, you’d survive the radiation; but Horza wasn’t sure that his was a properly designed suit. One of the many instruments it lacked was a radiation monitor, and that was a bad sign in itself. Mipp looked at a small screen on the console.

“Radiation…” He shook his head. “Nothing serious,” he said. “Low on neutrons…” he grimaced with pain. “Pretty clean bomb; probably not what that bastard wanted at all. He should take it back to the shop…” Mipp gave a small, strangled, despairing laugh.

“We have to go back, Mipp,” Horza said. He tried to imagine Yalson, running away from the wreckage with a better start than he and Lamm had had. He told himself she’d have made it, that when the bomb had gone off, she’d have been far enough away not to be injured by it, and that the ship would finally stop, the metal glacier of wreckage slowing and halting. But how would she or any of the others get off the Megaship, if any of them had survived? He tried the shuttle’s communicator, but it was as dead as his suit’s.

“You won’t raise them,” Mipp said, shaking his head. “You can’t raise the dead. I heard them; they cut off, while they were running. I was trying to tell them—”

“Mipp, they changed channels, that was all. Didn’t you hear Kraiklyn? They swapped channels because Lamm was shouting so much.”

Mipp crouched in his seat, shaking his head. “I didn’t hear that,” he said after a moment. “That wasn’t what I heard. I was trying to tell them about the ice… the size of it; the height.” He shook his head again. “They’re dead, Horza.”

“They were well away from us, Mipp,” Horza said quietly. “At least a kilometre. They probably survived. If they were in shadow, if they’d run when we did… They were further back. They’re probably alive, Mipp. We’ve got to go back and get them.”

Mipp shook his head. “Can’t, Horza. They must be dead. Even Neisin. Went off for a walk… after you had all gone. Had to leave without him. Couldn’t raise him. They must be dead. All of them.”

“Mipp,” Horza said, “it wasn’t a very big nuke.”

Mipp laughed, then groaned. He shook his head again. “So what? You didn’t see that ice, Horza; it was—”

Just then the shuttle lurched. Horza looked quickly to the screen, but there was only the glowing light of the cloud they were flying through, all around them. “Oh God,” Mipp whispered, “we’re losing it.”

“What’s wrong?” Horza asked. Mipp shrugged painfully.

“Everything. I think we’re dropping, but I’ve no altimeter, no airspeed indicator, communicator or nav gear: nothing… Running rough because of all these holes and the doors being open.”

“We’re losing height?” Horza asked, looking at Mipp.

Mipp nodded. “You want to start throwing things out?” he said. “Well, throw things out. Might get us more height.” The shuttle lurched again.

“You’re serious,” Horza said, starting to get out of the seat. Mipp nodded.

“We’re dropping. I’m serious. Damn, even if we did go back we couldn’t take this thing over the Edgewall, not even with one or two of us just…” Mipp’s voice trailed off.

Horza levered himself painfully out of his seat and through the door.

In the passenger compartment there was smoke, mist and noise. The hazy light streamed through the doors. He tried to tear the seats from the walls, but they wouldn’t move. He looked at Lenipobra’s broken body and burned face. The shuttle lurched; for a second Horza felt lighter inside his suit. He grabbed Lenipobra’s suit by the arm and hauled the dead youth to the ramp. He pushed the corpse over the ramp, and the limp husk fell, vanishing into the mist below. The shuttle banked one way, then the other, almost throwing Horza off his feet.

He found some other bits and pieces: a spare suit helmet, a length of thin rope, an AG harness and a heavy gun tripod. He threw them out. He found a small fire extinguisher. He looked round but there didn’t seem to be any flames and the smoke hadn’t got any worse. He held onto the extinguisher and went through to the flight deck. The smoke appeared to be clearing there, too.

“How are we doing?” he asked. Mipp shook his head.

“Don’t know.” He nodded at the seat Horza had been sitting in. “You can unlock that from the deck. Throw it out.”

Horza found the latches securing the seat to the deck. He undid them and dragged the seat through the door, to the ramp, and threw it out along with the extinguisher.

“There are catches on the walls, near this bulkhead,” Mipp called, then grunted with pain. He went on, “You can detach the wall seats.”

Horza found the catches, and pushed first one line of seats, then the other, complete with straps and webbing, along the rails fixed to the shuttle interior, until they rolled out, bouncing on the ramp edge and then spinning away into the glowing mist. He felt the shuttle bank again.

The door between the passenger compartment and the flight deck slammed shut. Horza went forward to it; it was locked.

“Mipp!” he shouted.

“Sorry, Horza,” Mipp’s voice came weakly from the other side of the door. “I can’t go back. Kraiklyn would kill me if he isn’t dead already. But I couldn’t find them. I just couldn’t. It was only luck I saw you.”

“Mipp, don’t be crazy. Unlock the door.” Horza shook it. It wasn’t strong; he could break his way through it if he had to.

“Can’t, Horza… Don’t try to force the door; I’ll point her nose straight down; I swear it. We can’t be that high above the sea anyway… I can hardly keep her flying as it is… If you want, try closing the doors manually. There should be an access panel somewhere on the rear wall.”

“Mipp, for God’s sake, where are you going? They’re going to blow the place up in a few days. We can’t fly for ever.”

“Oh, we’ll ditch before that,” Mipp’s voice came from behind the closed door. He sounded tired. “We’ll ditch before they blow the Orbital up, Horza, don’t you worry. This thing’s dying.”

“But where are you going?” Horza repeated, shouting at the door.

“Don’t know, Horza. The far side maybe… Evanauth… I don’t know. Just away. I—” There was a thump as though something had fallen to the floor, and Mipp cursed. The shuttle juddered, heeling over briefly.

“What is it?” Horza asked anxiously.

“Nothing,” Mipp said. “I dropped the medkit, that’s all.”

“Shit,” Horza said under his breath, and sat down, back against the bulkhead.

“Don’t worry, Horza, I’ll… I’ll… do what I can.”

“Yes, Mipp,” Horza said. He got to his feet again, ignoring the ache of exhaustion in both legs and the stabbing pain in his right calf, and went to the rear of the shuttle. He looked for an access panel, found one and prised it open. It revealed another fire extinguisher; he threw it out, too. On the other wall the panel led to a hand crank. Horza twisted the grip. The doors started to close slowly, then jammed. He strained at the lever until it snapped; he swore and threw it out as well.

Just then the shuttle came clear of the mist. Horza looked down and saw the ruffled surface of a grey sea where slow waves rolled and broke. The bank of mist lay behind them, an indeterminate grey curtain beneath which the sea disappeared. The sunlight slanted across the layered mist, and hazy clouds filled the sky.

Horza watched the broken handle tumble down towards the sea, becoming smaller and smaller; it stroked a mark of white across the water, then it was gone. He reckoned they were about one hundred metres above the sea. The shuttle banked, forcing Horza to grab the side of the door; the craft turned to head almost parallel to the cloud bank.

Horza went to the bulkhead and banged on the door. “Mipp? I can’t get the doors closed.”

“It’s all right,” the other man replied faintly.

“Mipp, open the door. Don’t be crazy.”

“Leave me alone, Horza. Leave me alone, understand?”

“God-damn,” Horza said to himself. He went back to the open doors, buffeted by the wind curling back in from the slipstream. They seemed to be heading away from the Edgewall, judging by the angle of the sun. Behind them lay nothing but sea and clouds. There was no sign of the Olmedreca or any other craft or ship. The seemingly flat horizon to either side disappeared into a haze; the ocean gave no impression of being concave, only vast. Horza tried to stick his head round the corner of the shuttle’s open door to see where they were going. The rush of air forced his head back before he could take a proper look, and the craft lurched again slightly, but he had an impression of another horizon as flat and featureless as that on either side. He got further back into the shuttle and tried his communicator, but there was nothing from his helmet speakers; all the circuits were dead; everything seemed to have been knocked out by the electromagnetic pulse from the explosion on the Megaship.

Horza considered taking the suit off and throwing it out, too, but he was already cold, and if he took the suit off he’d be virtually naked. He would keep the device on unless they started losing height suddenly. He shivered, and his whole body ached.

He would sleep. There was nothing he could do for now, and his body needed rest. He considered Changing, but decided against it. He closed his eyes. He saw Yalson, as he had imagined her, running on the Megaship, and opened his eyes again. He told himself she was all right, just fine, then closed his eyes once more.

Maybe by the time he woke they would be out from under the layers of magnetised dust in the upper atmosphere, in the tropical or even just temperate zones, rather than the arctic region. But that would probably mean only that they would finally ditch in warm water, not cold. He couldn’t imagine Mipp or the shuttle holding together long enough to complete a journey right across the Orbital.

… assume it was thirty thousand kilometres across; they were making perhaps three hundred per hour…

His head full of changing figures, Horza slipped into sleep. His last coherent thought was that they just weren’t going fast enough, and probably couldn’t. They would still be flying over the Circlesea towards land when the Culture blew the whole Orbital into a fourteen million-kilometre halo of light and dust…

Horza woke rolling around inside the shuttle. In the first few blurred seconds of his waking he thought he had already tumbled out of the rear door of the shuttle and was falling through the air; then his head cleared and he found himself lying spread-eagled on the floor of the rear compartment, watching the blue sky outside tilt as the shuttle banked. The craft seemed to be travelling more slowly than he remembered. He could see nothing from the rear view out of the doors except blue sky, blue sea and a few puffy white clouds, so he stuck his head round the side of the door.

The buffeting wind was warm, and over in the direction the shuttle was banking lay a small island. Horza looked at it incredulously. It was tiny, surrounded by smaller atolls and reefs showing pale green through the shallow water, and it had a single small mountain sticking up from concentric circles of lush green vegetation and bright yellow sand.

The shuttle dipped and levelled, straightening on its course for the island. Horza brought his head back in, resting the muscles of his neck and shoulder after the exertion of holding his head out in the slipstream. The shuttle slowed yet more, dipping again. A slight juddering vibrated through the craft’s frame. Horza saw a torus of lime-coloured water appear in the sea behind the shuttle; he stuck his head round the side of the door again and saw the island just ahead and about fifty metres below. Small figures were running up the beach which the shuttle was approaching. A group of the humans were heading across the sand for the jungle, carrying what looked like a huge pyramid of golden sand on a sort of litter or stretcher, held on poles between them.

Horza watched the scene slide by underneath. There were small fires on the beach, and long canoes. At one end of the beach, where the trees cut down towards the water, there squatted a broad-backed, shovel-nosed shuttle, perhaps two or three times the size of the CAT’s. The shuttle flew over the island, through some vague grey pillars of smoke.

The beach was almost clear of people; the last few, who looked thin and almost naked, ran into the cover of the trees as though afraid of the craft flying over them. One figure lay sprawled on the sand near the module. Horza caught a glimpse of one human figure, more fully clothed than the others, not running but standing and pointing up towards him, pointing towards the shuttle flying over the island, with something in his hand. Then the top of the small mountain appeared just underneath the open shuttle door, blocking off the view. Horza heard a series of sharp reports, like small, hard explosions.

“Mipp!” he shouted, going to the closed door.

“We’ve had it, Horza,” Mipp said weakly from the other side. There was a sort of despairing jocularity in his voice. “Even the natives aren’t friendly.”

“They looked frightened,” Horza said. The island was disappearing behind. They weren’t turning back, and Horza felt the shuttle speeding up.

“One of them had a gun,” Mipp said. He coughed, then moaned.

“Did you see that shuttle?” Horza asked.

“Yeah, I saw it.”

“I think we should go back, Mipp,” Horza said. “I think we ought to turn round.”

“No,” Mipp said. “No, I don’t think we ought to… I don’t think that’s a good idea, Horza. I didn’t like the look of the place.”

“Mipp, it looked dry. What more do you want?” Horza looked at the view through the rear doors; the island was nearly a kilometre away already and the shuttle was still increasing speed, gaining height all the time.

“Got to keep going, Horza. Head for the coast.”

“Mipp! We’ll never get there! It’ll take us four days at least and the Culture’s going to blow this place apart in three!”

There was silence from the far side of the door. Horza shook its light, grubby surface with his hand.

“Just leave it, Horza!” Mipp screamed. Horza hardly recognised the man’s hoarse, shrill voice. “Just leave it! I’ll kill us both, I swear!” The shuttle suddenly tilted, pointing its nose at the sky and its open doors at the sea. Horza started to slide back, his feet slipping on the shuttle’s floor. He jammed the suit fingers into the wall slot the seats had been attached to, hanging there as the shuttle started to stall in its steep climb.

“All right, Mipp!” he shouted. “All right!”

The shuttle fell, side-slipping, throwing Horza forward and against the bulkhead. He was suddenly heavy as the craft bottomed out of its short dive. The sea slithered underneath, only fifty or so metres below.

“Just leave me alone, Horza,” Mipp’s voice said.

“OK, Mipp,” Horza said. “OK.”

The shuttle rose a little, gaining altitude and increasing speed. Horza went back, away from the bulkhead which separated him from the flight deck and Mipp.

Horza shook his head and went to stand by the open door, looking back towards the island with its lime shallows, grey rock, green-blue foliage and band of yellow sand. It all slowly shrank, the frame of the open shuttle doors filling with more and more sea and sky as the island lost itself in the haze.

He wondered what he could do, and knew there was only one course of action. There had been a shuttle on that island; it could hardly be in a worse state than the one he was in now, and their chances of being rescued at the moment were virtually nil. He turned round to look at the flimsy door leading to the flight deck, still holding onto the edge of the rear door, the warm buffeting air spilling in around him.

He wondered whether just to charge straight in or to try to reason with Mipp first. While he was still thinking about it the shuttle gave a shudder, then started to fall like a stone towards the sea.