Apis looked thoughtful for a moment as he closed the clasps down the front of his exoskeleton. "Perhaps they are not used to making war on something that fights back."

"Perhaps," said Cormac, now gazing up at the pterodactyl head that was still hovering above them. "You lied about your ability to drop into underspace, so am I now to believe your story about these people using the mycelium you provided to destroy Miranda?"

"It is true," Dragon replied briefly.

"Okay, I'll accept that for now, but do you suppose for one minute that the Polity would ever forgive you the slaughter of the population on Masada or in those cylinder worlds?"

"I am dying."

"I see, so you intend to go out in bloody style."

"I will live."

"Any remote possibility of a straight answer?"

"I will destroy only their laser arrays."

Cormac glanced around at his companions. It was with a total lack of surprise that he saw Mika holding some sort of instrument up to one of the draconic tentacles. Scar was poised in the air — a reptilian statue. Gant had his foot hooked under the back of one of the seats and once again clutched his APW to his chest.

Cormac returned his attention to Dragon. "What about us? What do you intend for us?"

The head suddenly dropped down so that it was poised right before Cormac. "If I kill and destroy, your Polity will kill and destroy me. You will let me live, Ian Cormac. For how I will now help you, you will let me live."

"I might when I figure out what the hell you mean when you say you are 'dying' and 'will live'. I'd have thought a creature of your capabilities would have learnt how to communicate clearly by now."

The head swung so that it was directed towards Scar. In response the dracoman hissed and seemed ready to attack. Dragon merely said, "He will know — when it is time." With that it abruptly withdrew towards the airlock, tentacles detaching and slithering away after it; the great plug of tangled flesh drew back into a living cavern beyond, and the airlock began to close. The screen they had been observing now showed only something dark and organic, which shifted slowly.

Cormac paused for a moment, then said, "Get strapped in. I think the shit's about to hit."

Seconds later they felt Dragon surface from underspace and, ahead of the lander, curtains of skin began to part. Cormac hunted across the controls until he managed to adjust the setting of one of the lower screens to infrared, to obtain the view he required. Now they could all see a tunnel opening ahead, and going into huge peristalsis. The craft slid forwards twenty metres, and slammed to a halt with a dull boom — then again, as another stretch of tunnel opened. Five times this happened, until through the main screen they saw a vague circle of luminescence. With competent precision, Apis reached down and reset the screen Cormac had previously adjusted — back to its normal view overlooking one side. Then they were out, and falling towards the gleaming arc of a world, starlit space fading to blue on that arc, and hanging nearby a huge machine-gun-magazine satellite, gleaming in bright sunlight. In the rear-view screen Dragon loomed huge against the stars, a distorted sphere across which now passed ripples of light, as over a pool of water containing fluorescing bacteria into which a stone has been cast.

"Shit! Get us out of here!" Cormac shouted.

Apis, who had strapped himself in at the controls before anyone else could object — though Cormac wouldn't, as the boy probably knew them better than anyone else on board — ran at high speed through a start-up sequence and grabbed the joystick. Thrusters roared and the craft tilted to one side, the view of the planet swinging round by a hundred and eighty degrees. There came a thunderous crash, and light flooded the cockpit as from a lightning strike. Now the satellite was behind them, and blowing apart, huge fragments hurtling outwards ahead of a wave of fire.

"Hold us here," ordered Cormac. "I want to see this."

Manipulating thrusters, Apis swung the craft around so the main screen showed a view of Dragon rolling across the darkness above them, heading towards the horizon of Masada — following a line of gleaming shapes suspended above atmosphere like a bracelet of charms for the planet. The creature remained in sight as they descended into atmosphere, and they watched it pause by another satellite and spit an actinic bar down onto it — another satellite gone in a fiercely bright explosion against the blue-black of space.

"Take us further in," said Cormac, then he looked round when the boy seemed disinclined to respond. Apis looked pale and slightly sick.

"The Golem, on the Occam Razor… they hit the ion engines," he stammered, as the landing craft began its brick-like descent. "We've only got manoeuvring thrusters."

Cormac closed his eyes and massaged his temples with his forefingers — he was getting a headache.

"Of course," he said. "This craft hasn't got AG, so we're going to need a flat area at least two or three kilometres long. How much can you slow us with the thrusters?"

Now asked technical questions, Apis lost his sick expression and shrugged himself into a businesslike frame of mind. He checked his instrumentation. "Enough to prevent us burning up, though I calculate… we will be going in at between five hundred and a thousand kilometres per hour."

Cormac glanced round at the other three. "This could prove interesting," he observed.

"You have a strange idea of what constitutes interesting," Mika replied.

"Normally something that involves an explosion, unfortunately," added Gant.

Scar merely bared his teeth.

Cormac went on, "If any of us survive this, it's going to be you, Gant. Your primary mission has to be to get news of what happened on the Occam to the Polity. ECS has to know about Skellor — he could be more dangerous than anything we've ever faced before."

"You are a cold bastard," said Gant.

"Whatever gets the job done," Mika commented sarcastically.

Cormac ignored them both.

The craft was soon shaking, and what had earlier been merely a low droning outside was now growing into a constant roar. Cormac gazed ahead as they punched through stratospheric cloud, above purplish ocean with a scattering of islands like black scabs. Apis manipulated the thruster controls, lifting the lander's nose for the further horizon. Soon they noticed the ocean below was scattered with icebergs.

"Will we make it to the main continent?" Cormac asked almost conversationally.

Apis gave a tight nod in reply.

Separate bergs started knitting below them into an ice sheet, which then started to break apart again. The line of a landmass rose over the horizon, with thick cloud tangled above it. When it became evident that this terrain ahead was mountainous, Apis used the thrusters to take them higher. The roaring was now deafening, the craft shaking alarmingly. Across the main screen rolled motes of something molten, and along its edges a hot glow encroached. Valleys and tors rolled underneath the craft, and it punched through cloud masses — losing vision for long seconds. Spearing down through a final cloud bank, they came out over flat plains, with a glimpse of chequered ponds and a wider spread of agriculture surrounding them. To their right a city loomed out of haze, then rapidly receded.

"Dragon!" Cormac yelled, pointing up to the sky where blooms of light ignited behind cloud, as from a distant thunderstorm.

Signs of civilization receded and they were now plummeting onto an uncultivated plain. The roar doubled as Apis initiated the thrusters to slow the craft, and kept them full on. As he fought to keep its nose up, the craft continued to descend, blurs of beige, dark red and green flashing by beneath them. There came a loud vicious hissing and, glancing at the rear-view screen, Cormac saw a cloud boiling up behind a track hammered through the vegetation below. Apis hit boosters and the cloud was shot through with sheets of flame. Suddenly they were all pressed hard against their straps, and their craft was bouncing and breaking. In the rear-view screen, a thruster nacelle, still jetting flame, curved into the cloud and disappeared. The craft itself began to slew, but Apis managed to correct for this. When Cormac glanced at him, the boy looked terrified but determined. This state of affairs seemed to just go on and on, then, as the din lessened, the craft abruptly, tilted, then flipped. There followed a chaos of rending crashes and bone-jarring jolts, as they rolled over and over, with pieces of the lander breaking away, and cold acidic air rushing in through the gaps torn in the hull, along with a haze of papery fragments. Then they were sliding along, tilted to one side, with wet black mud spraying up through gaping holes.