Lellan pointed her remote control at the smaller, centre door and it opened with a tearing sound as they approached. Inside was a space the same size as the lift cage, with yet another door at the opposite end. Eldene recognized this was an airlock, but wondered at its purpose when they had walked into breathable air before reaching it. She looked questioningly towards Fethan, but it was Carl who answered that question too:

"The main cavern haemorrhages air all the time, but we can produce it faster than we lose it. This lock is about a century old — from a time when we didn't have much oxygen to spare," he said.

Main cavern? Eldene wondered.

As the inner door opened, Eldene thought for one moment that they had returned to the surface — so bright was the vision before her. Following the others through, she looked about herself in wonder.

The cavern was so huge and so well lit that its lofty ceiling had the appearance of lowering cloud rather than stone. Across it ran webworks of metal, and in places it was supported by huge many-windowed buildings, formed like a collection of bulging discs of distinctly varied sizes stacked haphazardly one upon the other until reaching the ceiling. Running down the centre of this cavern, with arched bridges spanning it, was a foaming torrent, whose source was a dark hollow in one wall, warded at its sides by two slowly turning water-wheels. Alongside this river, Eldene recognized the same pattern of square ponds used on the surface to grow food crustaceans, and their presence helped give a further indication of the sheer scale of this place. Beyond the ponds lay fields in varying shades of green and gold, or the black of recently turned earth. On the floor of this cavern were not many low-rise buildings — it seemed space was at a premium, hence the design of the pillar-townships. However, as they advanced further into this underground idyll, Eldene did spot some recently erected prefabs around which many people busied themselves at many tasks. They too all wore uniforms the colour of old flute grass — like Lellan and her two comrades — and their labour seemed mainly to concern maintenance and preparation of weapons.

On the last of the five days, they were all together in the flight cabin as the ship hurtled towards the atmosphere of Masada. Glancing at one of the subscreens, Thorn watched the explosive bolts detaching themselves from the lump of asteroidal rock, and the arms they were fixed to folding back out of sight. A few blasts from the manoeuvring thrusters were enough to have the rock apparently rising from Lyric II, though it would be more correct to say that the rock now hurtled towards atmosphere at a speed slightly faster than that of the ship.

"What about it outpacing you?" Thorn asked.

"It's angled so it'll explode and fragment, rather than burn up. We'll be one of those fragments," said Jarvellis.

Stanton picked up with, "Believe me, no one watching will call attention to the dissimilarity of velocities. Up here, reporting anything to your superiors that you are unsure about gains you no credit, and the best way for the lower echelons to keep out of trouble is to keep out of notice."

"A fatal lack of vigilance," Thorn observed.

"Yes, it's why the Underworld now possesses a more advanced technology than the Theocracy itself. Their only disadvantage is in numbers and position." He called up an image on one of the side screens and gestured to it. Satellites hung stationary around the curve of the horizon, the nearest one bearing an uncanny resemblance to a huge curved machine-gun magazine. "What advantage the Underground does have, it must be prepared to use soon, before the Theocracy finishes building something with greater punch than that." He indicated the satellite.

"And what is that?" Thorn nodded to the displayed picture.

"Laser array — but it's only effective on the surface of the planet. It can't reach into the real Underground."

"They're building something that will?"

"Near-c coil-gun. Should have enough power to penetrate right down to the caverns."

"And the people on the surface?"

"It'll kill millions, but the Theocracy doesn't care about them — down on the surface they breed easily enough."

"If the ECS knew about this, then you'd get some action."

Stanton turned to gaze at him. "The Polity just lost an Outlink station out here, supposedly to Dragon. The Theocracy is building things like that," Stanton stabbed a finger at the screen, "supposedly as a defence against Dragon. All nice and innocent, so if the Polity came in heavy-handed now, it'd cause big problems with its members and potential for rebellion inside its own borders. They'll need a damned good reason to intrude here; like an open rebellion, or a cry for help."

"I see," said Thorn.

Now Lyric II was vibrating, and a couple of hundred metres ahead of it the rock was producing contrails and small pieces of it were ablating away. All around — ahead of the rock — the surface of the planet filled the screen. Thorn glanced at Jarvellis's profile as she now manoeuvred the ship down out of the contrail and below the rock itself. She looked rapt and beatific — this was what she was all about.

"About two minutes. Stress readings are way up," she said.

Thorn glanced with alarm at Stanton.

"On the rock," explained the mercenary laconically. "We've got a sensor on it."

The rock began to glow and, like a stuttering gas torch with the pressure too high, its contrail kept igniting and going out, until suddenly it ignited completely on full blast. Larger pieces began to break off from the rock, coiling away, sparkling with burning iron.

"We're on it!" shouted Jarvellis, and slammed her hand down on the controls. All at once, the rock broke into four large pieces and many smaller ones, those pieces themselves rapidly parting, driven asunder by gaseous explosions. Lyric II's ion engines roared, for a moment internal AG did not correct, and Thorn felt himself coming out of his seat. On the screen, the breaking-up rock rapidly receded, as Lyric II slowed and dropped through atmosphere behind it, underneath a trail of smoke and vapour dispersing across the sky. It occurred to Thorn that on a Polity world this scenario would never have been allowed, not so much because of the superior detectors possessed but because the AIs would have long since mapped the solar system concerned, therefore knowing in advance what asteroidal debris posed a threat, so would have been very suspicious of finding one out of place. Also, no Polity AI would have allowed a rock of that size into inhabited space.

Soon Jarvellis switched the view on the main screen to encompass the planet's surface. Under cloud like swirled sugar, the main inhabited continent soon became visible amid seas of a dark purplish blue. This continent was roughly rectangular, with its four corners stretched out so it bore some resemblance to the sail on an old galleon. Mountain chains spread from one of the corners, as if this was the point where a cannon-ball had holed the sail and it had subsequently been roughly stitched together — the material rucked up in the process. Huge areas extending beyond these mountains were dark greenish blue, whilst other wide areas were khaki or Sahara beige.

"Desert?" Thorn pointed at the last of these.

"No desert here," Stanton replied. "What you're seeing there is old flute grass — where it's not yet been flattened by spring storms or the new is yet to come through like it has elsewhere."

"It's all flute grass?"

"Not all. There's other kinds of native vegetation, and of course there's the agricultural areas — mostly crop fields and ponds — but when you're in the wild it seems like nothing but flute grass. It's said that there were once trees here."