The Marriage of the Living Dark

CHAPTER-1

the pattern of the day

The day was hot. On the mountain road, dust rose from the metal tracks of the troop carrier, smudging the perfect blue of the sky. The growl and trundle of the half-track filled the valley as it came down from the heights to the north. In the back of the carrier, beneath a thin cloth awning, sat eight shaven-headed boys and two men - the boys in pale red fatigues, the men in full uniform, their automatic rifles resting lazily between their knees. Eight backpacks rested in the space between the boys. All but one of them were looking down, lost in their thoughts. As the half-track rocked and lurched, their heads moved loosely with the motion. All but one.

A boy of fourteen sat beside the tailgate, his expressive blue eyes taking in every detail of the landscape through which they travelled. The valley was filled with scrub and pine and a host of small, dark purple flowers. Lifting his head slightly, the boy sniffed the air. Through the stink of hot diesel and dust he could smell the rich scent of the blooms, mixed with the all-pervading pine. It was not far now.

Daniel turned, looking back into the shadows of the carrier. Aidan was sitting down the far end, on the left, behind the driver who was just visible through the dusty glass thatsectioned off the cab. At fifteen Aidan was the oldest and most experienced of them, the natural leader of their team. While the rest were physically still boys, Aidan was already a man, broad at the shoulder, his muscular chest showing through the tight cloth of his fatigues. Daniel smiled fondly, then looked down. This would be Aidan’s sixth time in Eden, his own fifth.

Daniel pushed the thought aside, concentrating on the moment. Each day had its own texture, its own feel. No two days were ever the same. You had to try to identify the difference; to isolate those moments that gave the day its own distinctive shape and pattern.

He did not know where he had learned this, yet he knew it to be the truth. It was like ladybirds. They all seemed identical, yet if you looked carefully you might see how the pattern of six black dots on the red casing differed in each and every case, giving each tiny insect its own distinguishing touch of individuality.

So it was in this world. Even ants, he was sure, possessed such tiny differences.

The guard beside Daniel stirred and made a small, murmuring sound in his sleep. Like his colleague at the front, he had been dozing the last hour or so. If they had wanted to, they could have killed the guards, the driver and his mate, and fled.

It would have been easy. It was what, after all, they had been trained to do.

But they did not want to escape.

Strange, Daniel thought, looking down the line of boys until his eyes rested on the youngest, Ju Dun. Only nine years old, Ju Dun was a small but stocky boy, self-contained and quiet, with deep brown eyes that seemed much older than his years. But so it was with all of them. There were no real children here, only soldiers.

Even so, Ju Dun was young to be on a team; much younger than Daniel himself had been when he’d first come to Eden.

Eden...

Geographically, Eden was a twenty-five kilometre square piece of land in the Black Forest, south-east of Munich, but in truth Eden was not in the normal world, or, at least, not in the day-to-day world that ordinary men would recognise.

“Daniel?”

Daniel looked across to Aidan. The guards slept on, but the others were alert suddenly, watching their exchange.

“Yes?”

“Nervous?”

Daniel shook his head. When it ended, it ended. Until then the newness of things was enough for him. “You?”

Aidan smiled. That smile said everything. Seeing it, the boys also smiled. This was a good team, and they all knew it. They had been together three months now and were as prepared as they could possibly be. That was, if one could prepare for Eden.

“We’re almost there,” Daniel said, as the carrier eased its way between two great shoulders of rock, the gradient levelling out as they came out onto the floor of the valley.

“Home sweet home,” Aidan said, winking at Ju Dun. “I wonder what new surprises the Man has prepared for us.”

Mention of DeVore sobered the younger boys. Benoit and Leon both looked down. Only the eleven-year-old, Christian laughed. “Something for the specimen jar, no doubt” Aidan grinned and nodded. “Oh, no doubt of that at all.” Slowing down, the carrier rattled through a pair of gates and into a high-walled compound. It slewed around, then stopped.

The guards jerked awake.

“Okay...” the driver said, coming round and beginning to take the pins from the tailgate. “You know what to do.”

As the tailgate swung down with a clatter, the boys jumped down, one by one, passing the backpacks down to each other, then began to unload the rest of their equipment from the storage area at the side of the carrier, working silently, efficiently, as a unit, while the guards looked on with eyes that saw but did not understand.

The blockhouse was an ugly, functional building. It rested against the outer wall of Eden like an undecorated clay box, its slit windows and single doorway like something a child might have drawn. Behind it, dwarfing it, the wall rose a further fifty metres into the cloudless sky, solid and black, stretching off into the distance on either side. Guard towers studded the top of that immense wall, every half kilometre of its length, their deadly lasers facing inwards. No one cared what went into Eden. The lasers were there to make sure that nothing came out.

In a long, low-ceilinged room inside the blockhouse, Daniel sat in the corner, looking on as the younger boys lovingly checked and re-checked their equipment. Leon, the twelve-year-old, looked nervy; he had an insular air that was not his normal cocky style. By comparison, Johann, the tall pallid eleven-year-old, seemed positively nerveless. Christian, his bunk mate, was smiling and whistling to himself as he checked the charge on his rifle, while Benoit simply sat on the edge of his chair, staring at his hands. Ju Dun, meanwhile, was limbering up, stretching his neck and shoulders, then his arms, flicking out his hands, warming up the muscles.

Everyone reacted differently to this. Everyone had their own way of coping, but Leon’s nerviness was worrying. Daniel knew he would have to watch that. As he looked across, Aidan came back into the room, trailed by Slaven. “Okay,” Aidan said. “They’ve given us a slot Two hours and we’re in.” Daniel saw how the boys looked to one another at the news. Excitement and fear were equally mixed in those looks. For some of them - Ju Dun, Benoit, Christian and Johann - this was their first time in, but even for Leon and Slaven this was only their second time, and the second time - as Daniel knew from experience - was the worst. It was all theoretical until you’d been inside, but they knew now what to expect Daniel stood. As he did, Aidan came across to him. Briefly he held his arm, then leaned close, whispering in his ear.

“I’m glad you’re here.”

Daniel smiled. Eden had changed them both. You did not go through it once, let alone five times, without it changing you. It made you appreciate things. Without it, Daniel would never have discovered the nowness of each living moment.He stared at Aidan’s face a moment longer, then gave a single nod, conscious of the others watching them.

From where it hovered just beneath the curved ceiling of the approach tunnel, the tiny OP unit sent back its signal to the Core. Other observation probes - none larger than a midge -floated nearby, some sending back wide-screen images of the waiting team, while others hovered much closer, their microscopic lenses peering through the darkened visors of the helmets, transmitting pictures of the individual boys’ expressions as zero hour approached.

Meanwhile, in the Core, a specially sealed vault at the centre of Eden, buried a hundred metres below the surface, a second team of analysts and strategists, sat watching a bank of screens and making notes.

Three hundred seconds now and counting.

From his seat in the gallery overlooking the operations room, Core Leader Dublanc looked on, his face expressionless, his gloved hands resting lightly on the tilted desk The faces of the eight boys showed in a single line at the centre of the wall of screens, Aidan’s to the left, Daniel’s to the far right They were looking good. Confident Their body signals were healthy: pulse rates, perspiration, blood pressure. Even Leon had settled now.

“If s looking great,” Dublanc said through his lip-mike, his voice booming through the speakers down below. “We’re going to scale up the first assault. Beef it up a little.”

There was a murmur at that, but no one argued. It was why they were here, after all; to test out the Man’s soldiers. To put them through their paces. On a single large screen to the right, the image sent back by the first probe dominated the room. It showed the eight boys standing in a group some five or six metres back from the Entrance Gate. They were dressed in full body armour, which glinted red-black in the half-light of the tunnel. Inside, it would change colour to match the backdrop, but right now it wasinactive. The group were heavily armed. Two had flamers, another two rocket-launchers. Two of them carried special battery packs - like huge, black plastic bricks - strapped to their sides, while Aidan and Daniel had a whole range of weapons attached to them. Each boy had two large semi-automatics - each weapon equipped with both munitions and laser functions - clipped to his back. All in all, the boys carried the fire-power of a small army.

The long, reinforced helmets the boys wore gave them a strange beetle-like look, accentuated by the five wedge-shaped neck-protector gorgets that extended from the back rim of the helmet to cover the shoulders and upper back. All wore armoured gauntlets and special flexible knee-length boots, part steel, part plastic. These boys could step on a mine and not lose a toe ... just so long as they didn’t do it twice.

Dublanc smiled. In their combat gear they finally looked what they were - soldiers. Age did not matter now, only experience, training and skill. And there were none more skilled than DeVore’s boy soldiers. “Show me Daniel.”

At once the individual images vanished, replaced by a single image of Daniel’s face, spread over all sixty-four screens.

Dublanc studied that face a long while; noting how those deep green eyes watched everything, the intelligence behind them considering the texture and form of all they saw, more like a machine than the machines themselves. He had noticed it before; had seen how quickly Daniel, of all of them, adapted to conditions - how he read the pattern of events and acted on it.

If they could get a machine to do that...

Boys came and went, and it was rare for him to recall one specifically, but he had known Daniel was special from the start He remembered standing there in the rain outside the entrance to the mine that day as the truck emerged into the daylight, grating along the iron rails with its freight of black-faced, exhausted boys. And there had been Daniel, standing at the front, watching, those bright green eyes staring out from his grimy face, meeting Dublanc’s gaze fearlessly as the truck clanked by.

He’d had the truck stopped there and then. Had stood there, his long coat wrapped tight about him against the cold, as his men took Daniel down and put him in the half-track. Even then Daniel had not been afraid. That had been the start of it That day in the rain.

“Give me Aidan.”

The image changed. Aidan’s face now filled the bank of screens. As the technicians and observers watched, Aidan turned to face his team, smiling broadly, nervelessly.

“We’re the best,” Aidan said, rousing the younger boys. “That” s why the Man has given us this chance. And we’re gonna make it through, right?” “Right? came the resounding reply.

“We’re gonna blast them and paste them!” Aidan said, clearly relishing the thought “We’re going to blow three different kinds of shit out of the little bastards, right?”

“Right!”

“But most of all,” Aidan said, his voice changing, becoming subtler, conspiratorial, “we’re gonna out-think those little fuckers ... right?” “Right,” came the more sober response.

Daniel smiled, then looked down at the gun he was holding, his thumb stroking the casing of the big semi-automatic with an almost loving care. It fired shells and grenades, but it was best used as a laser. With it, he could pick the eye out of a fly at fifty metres.

There was a low hum, the vibration barely discernible at first, and then it rose up the scale until it was a finely-tuned note; a middle C. At the same time the whole of the great circle of the doorway turned green. The two half-circles of the doors hissed back into the wall. Revealed was an inner room, lit by red strip lights - an airlock - and on the far side of it the door that led through into Eden.

“Okay ... lef s go!”

At the sound of Aidan’s voice they moved into action; as efficient as machines, each knowing what part he had to play.

It took less than five seconds for them to form up inside, Ju Dun, as pole man, taking his position at the front Ten seconds later the doors hissed shut behind them.

The outer doors slammed shut, massive bolts falling into place, and then the inner hatch popped as the explosive hinges were fired. Even as the circular metal plate flew outward, so Ju Dun threw himself through the gap and rolled, opening up with his automatic.

Less than a second later and Johann was through after him, Benoit almost bundling him out of the way as he too pushed through. All three were on the other side now, the sound of their gunfire deafening.

Daniel was next.

He slid through backwards then spun about, clicking the safety off his gun. Ju Dun was two paces out, kneeling, Johann and Benoit formed up at his shoulders, firing with a machine-like efficiency at anything that moved. The Entrance Gate was at the highest point in Eden. From where the team emerged they had a panoramic view of the terrain. To the right was the ruined village, its walls shot away over the years, the remaining brickwork heavily pocked; to the left a sharply descending slope and, just beyond it, the river. Beyond that was woodland, rising to low hills in the near distance, but the eye barely noticed them: what it saw was a flickering cloud of mechanoid hostility, a host of winged and clawed creatures - cycloids and mechanopods, scarabs and homers, assassin bugs and tinflies, screw-whips and stingers. The unheard signal drew them to the Gate like a scent, triggering the preprogrammed malevolence within them.

Daniel felt the adrenaline rush hit him as he took in the sight. The sky in front of him was dark with insect life, yet nothing was getting closer than ten metres. Shattered fragments littered the ground on every side. Twenty metres up, something small and black stopped fluttering and fell like a dropped stone, its jet-black facets glinting as it turned. Ju Dun was directly beneath it Daniel blasted it into a million pieces then turned, shooting the wing off a crab-beetle that was poised to leap from a wall just to Johann’s left Leon was through now, and Slaven. They took their places in the deadly line, their guns blasting away, filling the air in front of them with splintering forms.

Daniel, his back to the wall, fired over their heads, lobbing grenades into the seething mass of dark, crawling things that covered the ground just beyond the front wave.

Here were things that hopped and chattered, things that whirred and buzzed; here were a thousand different things that crawled and jumped and clicked with menace, and all much larger than life and ten times as deadly as the originals on which they had been so carefully modelled.

And whatever moved, they blasted, not letting anything get within ten metres of where they crouched, the circle of the hatch at their backs. Christian was through and then, finally, Aidan. And as the eighth gun began to bear on the swarm, so they began to make progress, the numbers of their assailants steadily diminishing.

Daniel was conscious of the movement all about him, of bodies jerking and turning, as target after target was picked out, such that the team seemed a single creature with eight deadly snouts that spat fire and steel, not a single enemy drone getting through.

And then, as suddenly as it began, it ended, the swarm withdrawing with a desultory buzz and whine.

Daniel looked about him, seeing through the visors of their combat helmets the elation on every face. But Aidan knew that such respite was brief. “Come on!” he yelled into his lip-mike, his voice resounding in their helmets, “lef s get moving!”

At once the team moved on, keeping close together, tightly organised and in perfect step, like a machine with sixteen legs and sixteen arms, heading down the slope towards the river, the black wall receding behind them as they began to make the crossing.

There had once been a war, many years before, between the Man and his enemy, Lee Wan, the King of the Han. From his bases in the south, the Man had struggled to liberate the north from the Tang’s tyrannical grip. The main thrust of that lengthy War had been fought out in a great trench between the two great cities, a long, narrow zone that was known only as The Rift, a place so inimical to mankind that a new form of life had evolved, a whole host of artificial life-forms dedicated not to their own propagation and survival, but to the destruction of all other living forms.

Evolved, men said, yet in truth these forms were not a genuine part of the great evolutionary tide; they were more a breaking of the great chain, a perverse twisting to breaking point of that age-old process. A reversal. And as they became more complex and more subtle, so - though they mimicked evolution’s drive to betterment and the fulfilment of some vague, far-future goal - they grew closer to the great Nullity from which they derived their being. Of this the boys knew little, other than what they had been told by the education officers back in the training camp. Only Daniel, intrigued by what he had seen in Eden, had taken the trouble to seek out Commandant Dublanc and ask why such things were and how they had come about. That query had produced no answers - only a long stay in the isolation cells. It was not, after all, the boys’ place to question, only to act upon instruction. They were soldiers, not scholars. What they needed to know they would be told, and nothing more.

Looking down at the great bank of screens, Dublanc saw how Daniel turned and looked back at the Gate, a long, thoughtful stare, his dark eyes taking in everything.

“Close on his eyes.”

The boy’s head grew, filling the screens until, from the shadows of his face, only the eyes shone out, massive, each sea-green eye spread out over nine screens.

It was like staring straight into his head. One could almost see what he was thinking.

“Do you think he knows?” one of them asked, turning from his desk to look up at Dublanc.

“Not yet,” Dublanc answered.

Yes, but he tviH, he thought, remembering Daniel’s persistence. That spell in isolation hadn’t cured him - he had still wanted to know. And finally - faced with the choice of indulging Daniel’s curiosity or doing away with the boy altogether - he had given him access to the camp library, such as it was. Yet if the boy thought he’d find all the answers there, he must have been disappointed, because these days no one knew the answers, least of all the scribes who had tampered with the ancient books.

The past was one huge fiction. And the future?

Dublanc turned in his seat, looking across at the map of Eden that glowed in the

shadows to his left

Inside the gates of Eden there was no future, only the endless present

“Leon, go left and come out behind the wall! Benoit, cover his back!” Aidan spoke urgently into his lip-mike, his voice sounding clearly inside their helmets as they crouched in the narrow road that ran through the ruined village. As he spoke, his instructions were punctuated by concussive thuds and bright laser flashes as one or other of the team fired off a gun, responding to the buzzing whine of some flickering, flashing attack. “Joh, Christian, take anchor. Slaven, you go in first Ju Dun and Daniel will back you up. Now go!”

At once the team moved into action, Benoif s flamer opening up on a coppice just to Leon’s left as he ran, toasting a group of three metamoths even as they launched themselves, their tiny egg-like bombs sparking explosively. Slaven had the worst job. At the centre of the village was a well, at the foot of which was an energy-tap. There were hundreds of them, scattered throughout the Garden, and the team could use the taps to recharge their weapons, but each taphad to be fought for, for they were also the main source of energy for the countless mechanoids that populated Eden.

There were three types of taps. The simplest and most numerous were the platform taps, that were situated at the centre of big bowl-shaped platforms. Then there were well taps and - rarest of all - dome taps, of which there were no more than six in the whole of Eden.

The taps themselves were energy spigots - small, studded posts onto which one might clip one’s weapon, or, in the case of insects, one might squat and “feed”. Normally Aidan would have ignored this particular tap and pressed on, recharging further in, but the sheer intensity of the attack at the Gate had left several of the boys’ weapons on low charge. They had to take this tap. But it would not be easy. Well-taps were never easy.

As Slaven ran towards the well, Daniel saw what looked like a billow of dark smoke lift from the well’s mouth. But it wasn’t smoke. Smoke didn’t make that whining, drone-like noise. He saw Slaven hesitate, then open up with his automatic. At the same time, Daniel went down onto one knee and, flicking his visor to longsight, opened up with his laser, firing past Slaven’s shoulder, squeezing short bursts that seemed to cut tiny holes in the drifting swarm. The tiny insectile machines popped and cracked and, splintering, fell from the air like shattered crystal, but there were hundreds of them. Thousands. Both Ju Dun and Aidan were firing now - Aidan lobbing mortars into the air from his big gun, the circular shells fragmenting in the midst of that chittering, droning cloud of metallic bugs - yet more and more seemed to come up out of the well to replace those which had been destroyed.

Slaven was slowly moving to his right now, drawing the swarm with him. That was his job. Leon, meanwhile, had come out on the far side of the well and was stealthily approaching it At the same time, Johann and Christian were moving into the gap Slaven had created. If all went well, the three boys - and Benoit, who was hurrying to move into position - would get to the lip of the well at roughly the same time.

The swarm was almost on Slaven now. You could barely see him. At any moment they would cease holding back and fall on him as one. A muscle in Daniel’s cheek twitched. Timing was everything.

“Okay, Slaven, seal!”

Yet even as Aidan gave that crucial order, Daniel saw one of the bugs - a tiger-wasp, its bright orange and black markings distinctive - fall directly towards Slaven’s back. He twitched his gun upward to fire, but the back of Slaven’s helmet was directly in his line of fire. Seal damn you!

The material of Slaven’s uniform shimmered and changed colour, becoming a simple metallic black. At the same time it changed shape, hardening into a kind of chrysalis. The tiger-wasp shattered against it Instinctively, Daniel turned his head away. Even so, the flash left him half-blind, while the concussion rattled his teeth and set up a ringing in his ears.

When he looked again the sky around Slaven was clear. At the well, Leon and Johann were climbing in, harnessed to their partners, their guns picking off anything that came up out of the darkness at them. Not that there was much left down there.

Daniel looked back at Slavea The black pupa-like shell of Slaven’s uniform lay at the centre of a small depression in the earth. All about it, forming a perfect circle roughly fifteen metres in diameter, the earth was charred black Faint wisps of steam rose up out of that blackness, drifting to the north. The wind had changed.

Daniel turned, looking about him. Ju Dun was up, and Aidan. There was a shout from the well. The tap was secured.

He allowed himself a smile. They’d done it, and without a single man lost.

Hurrying across, he knelt beside Slaven. A moment later Ju Dun was at his side. Without needing to be told, the young boy put his hands beneath the shell and, with Daniel’s help, turned it over.

Daniel studied the suit a moment. Good. There were no cracks. The seal had held. Looking to Ju Dun, he nodded.Lifting the suit between them, they carried it across and laid it beside the curved wall of the well, Aidan covering them all the while Slaven would be out of it for some while, but he was fine. The worst he’d have was a blinding headache.

But it had been close.

Johann and Christian were busy lowering weapons down the well to Leon at the tap. At once Ju Dun and Daniel joined Benoit and Aidan, taking their positions about the well, picking off anything that came in sight, whether it was a threat or not Some teams, he knew, did little else. They took a tap then held it, knowing that at the very least they had a constant energy supply. But it was a no-win situation. You couldn’t live on energy alone. There was water in the suits - enough for two days - but you had to get across and out before you could eat again. Yes, and at some point you also had to sleep. And that’s when they got you.

Inside the hardened shell of his uniform, Slaven groaned. “Go help him, Daniel,” Aidan said quietly, using a discreet channel to speak to Daniel alone. “I may be wrong, but I think he sealed late.” Daniel shivered. He’d not wanted to admit it before that moment, but he knew Aidan was right The groan deepened to a low moan of pain.

Even as he knelt over it, the shell shimmered again and, softening, changed colour once again. As the helmet visor cleared, Slaven’s face was revealed, his eyes screwed tight in pain.

“What is it, Slaven?”

There was a sharp intake of breath, then, “My back.”

Daniel stepped over him, and, gently easing Slaven up, looked. The suif s sealing had concealed it, but there, just below the protective shielding of the neck-plates, there was a tiny rip in the softer back-plate Protruding from it - broken off, no doubt, in the instant the suit had sealed - was the needle-fine sting of a tiger-wasp.

“Oh, shit...”

Slaven stiffened, hearing the words. “What is it?” Daniel took a breath, knowing Aidan was listening. “A sting,” he said. “We’ll take it out and drug you up. I’ll carry you.”

He looked up as he said this last and met Aidan’s eyes. Both boys knew what this meant. You couldn’t carry passengers in Eden, not without paying the price But there was the morale of the team to consider. To abandon Slaven at this early stage would destroy team morale It wasn’t that the others didn’t know how ruthless things were in here - they knew - it was just that to see one of their own simply left for the mechanoids to pick over would be too much, especially this early.

Aidan came over and, crouching, smiled at Slaven. “You’ll be okay,” he said, speaking on the open channel. “We’ll get you through.” But when his eyes met Daniel’s they conveyed a different message entirely. We have to deal with this, Aidan’s eyes said, as clearly as if he had spoken the words. And sooner rather than later, right?

Right, Daniel answered silently. He undipped the medic’s kit at his side and snapped it open.

“Okay,” he said, speaking to Slaven once more “Let s give you something to numb that pain.”

CHAPTER-2

crossing the river

It was not immediately discernible, but Eden was a place of subtle currents and pressures. Some paths were easy to follow, others fraught with difficulty and if one persevered, that difficulty tended to intensify so that it felt almost as if the air itself were thickening with danger. Most teams tended to gravitate towards the easier paths; to circumvent those places where the danger was most intense and look for trails where progress could be made quickly and at little cost So it was that they found themselves, at midday of the first day, crouched by the river bank on the outskirts of an ancient town, a long way further south than they’d intended.

While Leon, Christian and Ju Dun formed a perimeter guard, Aidan and Daniel took a moment to discuss tactics.

“They’re pushing us out,” Aidan mouthed, his visor pressed to Daniel’s so that the watching bugs could not see what they were saying to each other. “You think we’re heading into a trap?” Daniel mouthed back.

“If s possible.”

“Then maybe we should cross the river.”

Aidan frowned. Here it was relatively easy to get across, but further east the land fell away between rocks and the current was much stronger. It would be much harder to cross back. And they would have to cross back if they were going to get to the Exit Gate.”I’d rather not.” “Then we go north.” “Into danger, you mean?”

Daniel smiled. “I feel I’ve been pushed far enough, don’t you?”

Aidan grinned. “Yes.” “Then lef s go.”

Dublanc was in the back room, lying on his bunk, half-dozing, when one of his assistants came in. He yawned, then opened one eye. “What1 s up?”

“They’re on the move again, sir.”

“Across the river?”

“No, sir. They’re heading north.”

Dublanc sat up, suddenly alert. “North?”

He had expected them to cross the river, then try to re-cross further up, at Ebnet, maybe, or Brand, but north ...

“They’re going through the town?”

“It looks like it, sir.”

Dublanc frowned, genuinely surprised. He stood, then walked out onto the gallery, seeing the team at once, there on the big screen, their backs to the remote as they moved in tight formation into the ancient, ruined town of Freiburg.

“Where’s the nearest tap?”

At once a map was superimposed upon the right of the screen, a flashing light indicating an energy-tap a kilometre north of where the team were. “Do you think they’ll head for that, sir?”

“No.” But even as he said it, he knew that if they were to survive at all, they would have to expend a great deal of their energy, so they’d need a tap.