slanted in from the foot tunnels, and blast doors ribbed the black rock walls.
His sight was still going, but he felt a little better for being able to see outside. At first he worried, in a distant, theoretical way, that the lights might give too much warning, should he be lucky enough to catch the humans still in the station. But it made little difference. The air pushed in front of the train would warn them soon enough. He raised a panel near the power-control lever and peered at it.
His head was light; he felt very cold. He looked at the circuit breaker and then bent down, jamming himself between the rear of the seat — cracking the blood seal beneath him and starting to bleed again — and the edge of the console. He shoved his face against the edge of the power-control lever, then took his hand away and gripped the collision brake fail-safe. He moved his hand so that it would not slip out, then just lay there.
His one eye was high enough off the console to see the tunnel ahead. The lights were coming faster now. The train rocked gently, lulling him. The roaring was fading from his ears, like the sight dimming, like the station behind slipping away and vanishing, like the seemingly steady, slow-quickening stream of lights flowing by on either side.
He could not estimate how far he had to go. He had started it off; he had done his best. No more — finally — could be asked of him.
He closed his eye, just to rest.
The train rocked him.
'It's great,' Wubslin grinned when Horza, Yalson and Balveda walked onto the control deck. 'It's all ready to roll. All systems go!'
'Well, don't wet your pants,' Yalson told him, watching Balveda sit down in a seat, then sitting in another herself. 'We might have to use the transit tubes to get around.'
Horza pressed a few buttons, watching the readouts on the train's systems. It all looked as Wubslin had said: ready to go.
'Where's that damn drone?' Horza said to Yalson.
'Drone? Unaha-Closp?' Yalson said into her helmet mike.
'What is it now?' Unaha-Closp said.
'Where are you?'
'I'm taking a good look through this antiquated collection of rolling stock. I do believe these trains may actually be older than your ship.'
'Tell it to get back here,' Horza said. He looked at Wubslin. 'Did you check this whole train?'
Yalson ordered the drone back as Wubslin nodded and said, 'All of it except the reactor car; couldn't get into bits of it. Which are the door controls?'
Horza looked around for a moment, recalling the layout of the train controls. 'That lot.' He pointed at one of the banks of buttons and light panels to one side of Wubslin. The engineer studied them.
Ordered back. Told to return. Like it was a slave, one of the Idirans' medjel; as though it was a machine. Let them wait a little.
Unaha-Closp had also found the map screens, in the train just down the tunnel. It floated in the air in front of the coloured expanses of back-lit plastic. It used its manipulating fields to work the controls, turning on small sets of lights which indicated the targets on both sides, the major cities and military installations.
All of it dust now, all of their precious humanoid civilisation ground to junk under glaciers or weathered away by wind and spray and rain and frozen in ice — all of it. Only this pathetic maze-tomb left.
So much for their humanity, or whatever they chose to call it, thought Unaha-Closp. Only their machines remained. But would any of the others learn? Would they see this for what it was, this frozen rock-ball? Would they, indeed!
Unaha-Closp left the screens glowing, and floated out of the train, back through the tunnel towards the station itself. The tunnels were bright now, but no warmer, and to Unaha-Closp it seemed as though there was a sort of revealed heartlessness about the harsh yellow-white light which streamed from ceilings and walls; it was operating-theatre light, dissection-table light.
The machine floated through the tunnels, thinking that the cathedral of darkness had become a glazed arena, a crucible.
Xoxarle was on the platform, still trussed against the access ramp girders. Unaha-Closp didn't like the way the Idiran looked at it when it appeared from the tunnels; it was almost impossible to read the creature's expression, if he could be said to have one, but there was something about Xoxarle that Unaha-Closp didn't like. It got the impression the Idiran had just stopped moving, or doing something he didn't want to be seen doing.
From the tunnel mouth, the drone saw Aviger look up from the pallet where he was sitting, then look away again, without even bothering to wave.
The Changer and the two females were in the train control area with the engineer Wubslin. Unaha-Closp saw them, and went forward to the access ramps and the nearest door. As it got there it paused. Air moved gently; hardly anything, but it was there; it could feel it. Obviously with the power on, some automatic systems were circulating more fresh air from the surface or through atmospheric scrubbing units.
Unaha-Closp went into the train.
'Unpleasant little machine, that,' Xoxarle said to Aviger. The old man nodded vaguely. Xoxarle had noticed that the man looked at him less when he was speaking to him. It was as though the sound of his voice reassured the human that he was still tied there, safe and sound, not moving. On the other hand, talking — moving his head to look at the human, making the occasional shrugging motion, laughing a little — gave him excuses to move and so to slip the wires a little further. So he talked; with luck the others would be on the train for a while now, and he might have a chance to escape.
He would lead them a merry dance if he got away into the tunnels, with a gun!
'Well, they should be open,' Horza was saying. According to the console in front of him and Wubslin, the doors in the reactor car had never been locked in the first place. 'Are you sure you were trying to open them properly?' He was looking at the engineer.
'Of course,' Wubslin said, sounding hurt. 'I know how different types of locks work. I tried to turn the recessed wheel; catches off… OK, this arm of mine isn't perfect, but, well… it should have opened.'
'Probably a malfunction,' Horza said. He straightened, looking back down the train, as though trying to see through the hundred metres of metal and plastic between him and the reactor car. 'Hmm. There's not enough room there for the Mind to hide, is there?'
Wubslin looked up from the panel. 'I wouldn't have thought so.'
'Well, here I am,' Unaha-Closp said testily, floating through the door to the control deck. 'What do you want me to do now?'
'You took your time searching that other train,' Horza said, looking at the machine.
'I was being thorough. More thorough than you, unless I misheard what you were saying before I came in. Where might there be enough room for the Mind to hide?'
'The reactor car,' Wubslin said. 'I couldn't get through some of the doors. Horza says according to the controls they ought to be open.'
'Shall I go back and have a look, then?' Unaha-Closp turned to face Horza.
The Changer nodded. 'If it isn't asking too much,' he said levelly.
'No, no,' Unaha-Closp said airily, backing off through the door it had entered by, 'I'm starting to enjoy being ordered about. Leave it to me.' It floated away, back through the front carriage, towards the reactor car.
Balveda looked through the armoured glass, at the rear of the train in front, the one the drone had been looking through.
'If the Mind was hiding in the reactor car, wouldn't it show up on your mass sensor, or would it be confused with the trace from the pile?' She turned her head slowly to look at the Changer.
'Who knows?' Horza said. 'I'm not an expert on the workings of the suit, especially now it's damaged.'
'You're getting very trusting, Horza,' the Culture agent said, smiling faintly, 'letting the drone do your hunting for you.'
'Just letting it do some scouting, Balveda,' Horza said, turning away and working at some more of the
