“There will not be another shuttle to Scylla for two hundred solstan days.”

“What?”

“There will not be another shuttle — “

“I heard what you said. Why will there not be another shuttle to Scylla for two hundred days?”

“Because it is summer.”

“I beg you pardon?”

There came a sound very like a sigh from the console as if it was tired of repeating this information to people who hadn’t checked.

“Scylla is closed to all traffic for a period of two hundred and seventy three solstan days during its summer season. All ground bases are sealed. This is due to the accelerated activity of dangerous life forms at this time of the year.”

I walked away from the console feeling like a complete idiot. Some of the equipment I had in my luggage was brought along to deal with the life forms I had seen in Paul’s memory, a precaution which had cost me a fair lump of credit for transportation under seal. Now I’d discovered that in my eagerness I’d made a complete bollix. I’d have to go back to Ganymede and wait three quarters of a year before I could come back. In a daze I headed for one of the bars at the edge of the lounge with the vague idea of getting plastered.

I was into my third scotch when a vaguely familiar figure slipped into the seat on the other side of my table. It took me a moment to recognise him, even then I wasn’t quite sure. He looked too clean, too suave, not the man I’d known.

“What a surprise to meet you here,” said Chaplin Grable, and he grinned as amiably as a shark. I sat upright and looked at him in surprise. His smile made a small transition into a sneer as he took out a chainglass blade and began cleaning his nails. They didn’t need cleaning.

“My contact tells me there was a small foul up. I didn’t get time to put the LTM back so he concealed it in the hammer-whelk shell.”

He glanced up from cleaning his nails and I wondered why I had always considered him to be a faintly ridiculous, irritating, but harmless fool.

“Seems the shell went into the next lot, which was then purchased by a Mr Chel. That would be you wouldn’t it?”

He slid around the table into the seat next to me, his arm along the back of my chair and the chainglass knife held between his fingertips with its point pressing against his leg. I considered hitting down on the knife and driving it into his leg, but decided that was a fool’s move. I needed to know how much he knew, how much he had planned. I put on my best buying and selling face.

“Grable, I doubt very much you could get away with using that here, so put it away and let’s talk a little business.”

He watched me coldly and the knife disappeared with practised neatness into a wrist sheath. I’d have to watch him.

“Correct on the first point, a little awry on the second.”

“Your speech is somewhat altered Mr Grable.”

“It suits the situation,” he said with a nasty smile.

I needed to get a step ahead of him. I decided to take a little gamble.

“Of course, it is a shame you don’t know the location. Didn’t your contact have time?”

It was a hit. Grable turned a sickly white, then came back with, “But I’ll have two hundred and seventy-three days in which to scan this planet and find the base.”

His was a hit as well.

“An arrangement, perhaps,” I suggested.

“Yes, it seems the most sensible course.”

I’d never understood the expression ‘eyes like gimlets’ until that moment. Grable had shed his normal unpleasant exterior and what was revealed underneath wasn’t much better.

About an hour ago I reached this location. It will do. There is a hollow in the surface with a sheltering overhang on the eastern side. Here I will be protected from the first destructive surge of the flood. All that remains is for me to survive when this area is under forty metres of sea.

When I arrived here I sat on a fairly dry rock and fingered the bracelet. Nearby the autogun settled down on its tripod legs: an improbable steel mosquito. After a moment I pushed my fingernail under the edge of the green diamond. With a faint hum the diamond hinged out to reveal a polished cavity. I knew what to do next but was again reluctant. I looked across at the nearby scorched carcase of a murder-louse then moved over to it. It smelt of boiled lobster and was steaming slightly. Using a piece of shell I scooped up some ichor and dribbled it into the hollow in the bracelet. The diamond has now clicked back into place. I sit upon my rock and wait.

Grable’s contact on Carla was a man who ran an exclusive minishuttle service to Scylla. It wasn’t illegal, just a little grey. The console had informed me that the planet was closed to all traffic at this time of its year, which didn’t mean it was against any law to go there. All the individual protection laws had been thrown out centuries ago. If a person wanted to risk his own life that was his privilege, just so long as no other unconsenting individuals were put at risk. The powers that be look upon it as evolution in action, an eminently sensible view in my opinion.

His name was Warrack Singh and he had the appearance of someone out of a flat screen pirate film; a kind of new millennium Errol Flynn, deliberately so, I think. His companion was one of the later Golem and was perhaps the reason Singh’s launch equipment and shuttle were in such good order, but then, with the money he charged there should have been no reason for the situation to have been otherwise.

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