"We'll head out for the landers. I for one will not surrender myself to the Underground in this uniform," he said, rather than relayed through his aug. It was more comforting to speak out loud in this darkness, and there was so much horror coming in over aug channels of late that he was beginning to develop an aversion to using them. Perhaps Toris felt the same, for he too replied aloud:

"They'll be going all out to attack our wonderful First Commander Aberil Dorth. We might be somewhere behind them or caught between the two of them."

Molat didn't like the tone he seemed to be getting from Toris ever since the destruction of the spaceport. Most proctors neither liked nor trusted Aberil Dorth — the man was psychotic at best — but that was not an antipathy you allowed yourself to voice aloud, or to even think if you could help it, since mistakes were easy to make over aug channels.

"Nevertheless," he said. "That is the only direction we can head to find safety."

Toris looked up, and seemed about to say something he might regret. However, a rushing rustling in the flute grass stilled further vocal conversation.

Toris: "What in God's name was that?"

Molat: "It sounded big, and I felt the ground move."

Toris: "You know there are heroynes and siluroynes out here?"

Molat: "Thanks for the reminder That's made me feel much better."

Molat turned off the little heater and stood up, blinking to clear the gridded after-images from his vision. Another hissing in the flute grass behind Toris had Molat pointing his rail-gun in that direction. Toris turned, with his own laser pistol gripped two-handed. Something odd about the grasses over there…? Then Molat realized what he was seeing: two deep dark eye-pits in which glittered eyes like faceted grey sapphires. Its huge head — which was the most yet to become visible — had the appearance of a bovine skull patterned with flute-grass stripes, and trailed two flat-tipped feelers from its lower jaw. The teeth, when they were exposed, had no camouflage, however, and gleamed like blue hatchets in the moonlight.

"Siluroyne! Siluroyne! Oh fucking hell, I'm dead! A Siluroyne!"

Molat supposed that Toris didn't even realize he was broadcasting, as the man fired his hand laser into that huge face. The monster bellowed and reared, its multiple forepaws opening out in silhouette against the sky like a huge clawed tree. Molat realized that Toris's shooting had only pissed off something that had been intending to eat them anyway. It seemed to him there was only one way for him to escape. He reached out and, as hard as he could, shoved Toris towards the monster — before turning and running.

"Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!"

Glancing back he saw the thing stooping down, its many forepaws closing in like a cage.

"Oh God no! Please no!"

It was upright again now, and in two of its sets of claws it held Toris like a hot dog. Molat shut down his connection as the monster began crunching down the other man's leg like a stick of celery, almost as if it wanted him to continue screaming, and knew that if it bit the human's other end the screaming would stop. Molat ran hard and fast, not caring in what direction, just so long as it was away.

The first grabship brought in a chunk of asteroidal rock that was too huge to get in through the doors of the heavy-lifter bay. But such was the original architecture of the Occam Razor, Skellor found he could reposition whole floors and compartments, huge generators, ducts, and the numinous devices of the ship, and then actually part its armoured hull to allow such a mass of material inside. In the new bay thus created, Skellor kept the great stone positioned centrally by a balancing of grav-plates, and reached out to it there with an explosion of the ligneous pseudopods that were Jain, and himself.

High-speed analysis which was more like touch and taste soon rendered to him the chemical structure of his prize. He found large quantities of iron, silicates, and sulphur; lesser quantities of carbon, much of it turned into useful fullerenes by the heat of the explosions that had destroyed the moonlet; rare earths and radioactives there was in fact very little on the periodic table that was not represented here. Having tasted, he then fed — his pseudopods thickening and hardening, and the asteroid, now laced with webworks of filament, visibly shrinking like a fly being sucked dry by a spider.

Soon there was no need for the grav-plates to hold the rock in position, as his pseudopods had become almost indistinguishable in girth from great oaks. Other asteroids, drawn into other bays, he treated in the same manner, but now almost unconsciously — like a man simply breathing or feeding. With more conscious application he created a superconducting network from the fullerenes to link together the eighty-four flat-screen generators and the U-space engines. The independent controls of these he found burnt beyond the recovery of any Polity technology; however, that recovery was not beyond him. With silicon and rare earths he rebuilt the little controlling subminds, understanding, as he did so, why the system was not centralized; how, with a ship this size, even the high-speed adjustments he could make through the net were not fast enough.

With other materials Skellor strengthened his grip on the structure of the rest of the ship but, having discovered the utility of being able to alter its internal and external structure at will, he did not completely ossify it in the ligneous growth of the Jain architecture — so he kept the movable floors and walls, and the bridge pod that could be expelled from the ship with a thought. Even so, upon taking an external view through the sensors of one of the grabships, he saw that the Occam Razor was now very much changed in appearance: its great lozenge of golden metal was now marred by the grey and silver of Jain architecture, patterned like lichen.

It was from these outer structures that Skellor felt the harsh radiation of the nearby sun like a balm, as he sucked it in and converted it to his purposes. In truth, materials were not his greatest requirement here — but the energy to absorb materials, and to extend throughout the ship was. Almost unconscious, again, had been his earlier calculation that he would have drained all the Occam's energy resources by doing what he now did, so would have had none left to drop the ship into U-space. As his work continued, his requirements for energy grew. The radioactive material from the asteroids was quickly refined and burnt away, and soon he was flinging out huge curving spines up to a kilometre long, between which he exuded nacreous sheets that were something like the meniscus of a bubble, which then turned deep black to absorb more of the sun's energy — to grow, to keep on growing…

It took one of the grabships, blasted off course by some huge chemical explosion occurring in the load it was bringing in, and then crashing into a growing array of these sun sails, to raise Skellor's awareness out of this incessant growth. Abruptly he realized that nothing more was now required; that he was ready to drop himself into U-space. Consciously bringing to a halt the expansion of himself throughout the ship, while retracting the sun sails, he found difficult. There was inner resistance from that part of himself that was Jain. It was that same separation of self that an addict experiences, and Skellor realized he must never allow himself to go too far along that way again. It would be so very easy just to lose himself in growth for growth's sake, and forget all other purpose. In moments his will had reasserted itself, and he remembered his work, which was more important than anything, anything at all.