weapons slewed slowly towards him, like a nest of snakes moving in unison. The cutter must have detected him. Gaffney was scouting closer, not wanting to discharge his weapons against a false target. The rifle, tracking the moving ship, made Sparver’s suit adjust his position. A stutter of light erupted from the side of the hull. A rain of slugs tore into the upper lip of the ramp entrance, dislodging the icicles just before the lip crumbled away entirely. Sparver took a hit above one knee, a glancing shot that must have ricocheted off the ground. The impact nearly floored him, but his suit wasn’t holed.
He fired the rifle, squeezing off three closely spaced pulses before regaining control of his suit and falling back into cover. Confirmed hit, the weapon informed him.
He peered back over the rim. The cutter was still airborne, but it wasn’t doing any more shooting. The engine note had become erratic. The weapons were jerking around haphazardly, locking on to dozens of false targets. Sparver resettled the rifle on his shoulder and fired another three shots, this time relying on his own aiming ability. Crimson light poured from the hole he’d blown in the side of Gaffney’s ship. The engine note quietened to silence.
The cutter dropped.
A second or so later, Sparver felt the impact slam through the ground. He braced, but there was no explosion. He waited a decent interval, then hauled himself from the cover of the shattered ramp and made his way across the pulverised ground, keeping the rifle aimed nervously ahead of him. The cutter had come down a kilometre away, close to the main entrance point to Ops Nine, where Saavedra would have docked and hidden her own ship. When Sparver reached it he found that the cutter had buried the front three metres of its nose in the frost, urine-coloured rivulets of melted methane-ammonia snow dribbling away from the impact point. The airlock was open, the outer door blasted off and lying to one side some metres away. The inner door was also open, revealing the faintly glowing interior of the crashed vehicle. Sparver’s suit started warning him that radiation levels were above tolerable norms. He ignored its protestations and used a handy boulder to climb into the shell. He pointed the rifle into the interior, using its sighting facility to see around the corner. But it only took a glance to confirm that the cutter was empty.
Gaffney was missing.
“Even for a cockroach, you take a lot of killing,” Sparver said.
Dreyfus snapped to consciousness again. He had no recollection of sliding back under, although he did remember that he had been about to make another attempt to free himself of the table. Perhaps the pain, or simply the exertion, had been enough to loosen his hold on the waking world. Either way, once more he had no clear idea of how much time had elapsed; whether it was seconds or minutes or hours.
“Stay still,” a woman’s voice told him.
“You’re safe now.” He realised that he wasn’t pinned under the table any more, and that the overall blanket of pain had dampened to a vague numbness. His ears were still ringing, his eyes still watering, but he did not feel any worse off than when he had been speaking with Veitch.
“Paula?” he asked, recognising the voice as Saavedra’s, and that she was standing to one side of the bed or couch upon which he was resting.
“What happened? Where am I?”
“I rescued you from the collapsed room. You’re in a different part of the facility, deep enough that it escaped the damage.” Saavedra was almost lost in the shadows, with only dull red highlights tracing her form. She stood demurely, her hands linked before her, against the ruddy glow from a wall panel.
“Did you check Veitch?” She nodded stiffly.
“He was already dead when I got back.” Dreyfus moved his head enough to survey his body. It was difficult, since there was hardly any light in the room. The lower part of his right leg was covered with dried blood, but there was no sign of any bones sticking through the fabric. The pain had eased now: his uniform would have begun secreting topical antiseptic and painkillers as soon as it detected his injury, and by now they’d had time to take effect. His right arm was still sore—the uniform was allowing him to feel just enough pain to remind him not to hurt himself further—but again the injury could have been much worse.
“I don’t know what’s happened to Gaffney, but we should probably think about getting out of here,”. Dreyfus said.
“Before he lost consciousness, Veitch told me that there’d been a containment breakdown. He was convinced that the Clockmaker would have escaped.”
“Do you think there’d be any point in running from it?”
“I’d rather run than sit here waiting for an audience.”
“Well, you don’t need to worry just yet. Containment failed, but not long enough for the Clockmaker to escape. It’s still inside the tokamak. The back-up generators won’t keep it there for ever, but we’re safe for an hour or so.”
“I’m glad. But you should still be thinking about getting out of here now.”
She cocked her head, puzzled by his response.
“Me, Dreyfus? After all that’s happened?”
“You came here by ship, Paula. Find Sparver, then collect your cutter. If you have fuel to reach orbit, do so. Otherwise get back to Chasm City and contact the authorities. If there’s anything left of Panoply, they can probably put you in touch.”
“And then what?”
“Tell them what I told you concerning the Clockmaker. Make sure someone finds out about it. If Jane Aumonier is still alive, tell Jane.”
“How will that knowledge help matters?”
“Maybe it’ll come in useful when they have to put the Clockmaker back in the bottle.”
“You are not seriously injured, Dreyfus. You don’t have to die down here.”
“Someone has to go down to the tokamak. Someone still has to talk to the thing and persuade it to do what it can to turn back Aurora.”
“You think you can persuade the Clockmaker?”
“I’ll give it a shot.”
“How? You don’t even know how to communicate with it.”
“I’ll find a way. Even if I have to open the tokamak and let it out.”
“It would almost certainly kill you.”
“But it might want to talk first. I’ll have to count on that. If I can make it see what a threat Aurora presents… if it hasn’t already worked that out for itself, of course.” Saavedra unclasped her hands. She touched one index finger to her lips, studiedly conveying thoughtfulness.
“I made a mistake in not trusting you when you arrived, didn’t I? I should have listened to you properly; learned everything I could about Aurora.”
“You can make amends by getting through to Panoply.”
“I’ll do what needs to be done. But first I need to know more about Aurora, not just the Clockmaker.
You said she was one of the original Eighty, didn’t you?”
Dreyfus nodded wearily. It seemed unnecessary to rake over this again, given what he had already told Saavedra.
“My colleague knows about as much as I do.”
“But I’m asking you, not your deputy. What was her full name?”
“Aurora Nerval-Lermontov. She was just a girl when they scanned her. I don’t think she was a monster then. Maybe it was society’s hatred and fear that drove her to become what she is, when they knew what Calvin Sylveste had brought into existence. Or maybe she always had it in her, like a seed waiting to flourish. Maybe she was a sick little girl from the moment she was born. Either way, she has to be stopped, wiped out of existence, before she takes over the entire Glitter Band. She won’t stop there, either.”
“Where is she located?”
“We’ve been over this, Paula. We don’t know. There’s about ten thousand habitats up there, any one of which could be hosting her unawares.”
“Could she distribute herself, like a program executing on a massively parallel architecture? A piece of
herself running on thousands of habitats, so that the loss of any one processing centre would not be catastrophic?”
