Horza watched the scene slide by underneath. There were small fires on the beach, and long canoes. At one end of the beach, where the trees cut down towards the water, there squatted a broad-backed, shovel-nosed shuttle, perhaps two or three times the size of the CAT's. The shuttle flew over the island, through some vague grey pillars of smoke.

The beach was almost clear of people; the last few, who looked thin and almost naked, ran into the cover of the trees as though afraid of the craft flying over them. One figure lay sprawled on the sand near the module. Horza caught a glimpse of one human figure, more fully clothed than the others, not running but standing and pointing up towards him, pointing towards the shuttle flying over the island, with something in his hand. Then the top of the small mountain appeared just underneath the open shuttle door, blocking off the view. Horza heard a series of sharp reports, like small, hard explosions.

"Mipp!" he shouted, going to the closed door.

"We've had it, Horza," Mipp said weakly from the other side. There was a son of despairing jocularity in his voice. "Even the natives aren't friendly."

"They looked frightened," Horza said. The island was disappearing behind. They weren't turning back, and Horza felt the shuttle speeding up.

"One of them had a gun," Mipp said. He coughed, then moaned.

"Did you see that shuttle?" Horza asked.

"Yeah, I saw it."

"I think we should go back, Mipp," Horza said. "I think we ought to turn round."

"No," Mipp said. "No, I don't think we ought to… I don't think that's a good idea, Horza. I didn't like the look of the place."

"Mipp, it looked dry. What more do you want?" Horza looked at the view through the rear doors; the island was nearly a kilometre away already and the shuttle was still increasing speed, gaining height all the time.

"Got to keep going, Horza. Head for the coast."

"Mipp! We'll never get there! It'll take us four days at least and the Culture's going to blow this place apart in three!"

There was silence from the far side of the door. Horza shook its light, grubby surface with his hand.

"Just leave it, Horza!" Mipp screamed. Horza hardly recognised the man's hoarse, shrill voice. "Just leave it! I'll kill us both, I swear!" The shuttle suddenly tilted, pointing its nose at the sky and its open doors at the sea. Horza started to slide back, his feet slipping on the shuttle's floor. He jammed the suit fingers into the wall slot the seats had been attached to, hanging there as the shuttle started to stall in its steep climb.

"All right, Mipp!" he shouted. "All right!"

The shuttle fell, side-slipping, throwing Horza forward and against the bulkhead. He was suddenly heavy as the craft bottomed out of its short dive. The sea slithered underneath, only fifty or so metres below.

"Just leave me alone, Horza," Mipp's voice said.

"OK, Mipp," Horza said. "OK."

The shuttle rose a little, gaining altitude and increasing speed. Horza went back, away from the bulkhead which separated him from the flight deck and Mipp.

Horza shook his head and went to stand by the open door, looking back towards the island with its lime shallows, grey rock, green-blue foliage and band of yellow sand. It all slowly shrank, the frame of the open shuttle doors filling with more and more sea and sky as the island lost itself in the haze.

He wondered what he could do, and knew there was only one course of action. There had been a shuttle on that island; it could hardly be in a worse state than the one he was in now, and their chances of being rescued at the moment were virtually nil. He turned round to look at the flimsy door leading to the flight deck, still holding onto the edge of the rear door, the warm buffeting air spilling in around him.

He wondered whether just to charge straight in or to try to reason with Mipp first. While he was still thinking about it the shuttle gave a shudder, then started to fall like a stone towards the sea.

Horza was weightless for a second. He felt himself caught by the eddying wind swirling through the rear doors, drawing him towards them. He grabbed at the channel in the wall he had held onto earlier. The shuttle dipped its nose, and the roar of the wind increased. Horza floated, his eyes closed, his fingers jammed into the wall slot, waiting for the crash; but instead the shuttle levelled out again, and he was back on his feet.

"Mipp!" he shouted, staggering forward to the door. He felt the craft turning and glanced out through the rear doors. They were still falling.

"It's gone, Horza," Mipp said faintly. "I've lost it." He sounded weak, calmly despairing. "I'm turning back for the island. We won't get there, but… we're going to hit in a few moments… You'd best get down by this bulkhead and brace yourself. I'll try to put her down as soft as I can…"

"Mipp," Horza said, sitting down on the floor with his back to the bulkhead, "is there anything I can do?"

"Nothing," Mipp said. "Here we go. Sorry, Horza. Brace yourself."

Horza did exactly the opposite, letting himself go limp. The air roaring through the rear doors howled in his ears; the shuttle shook underneath him. The sky was blue. He caught a glimpse of waves… He kept just enough tension in his back to keep his head against the bulkhead surface. Then he heard Mipp shout; not words — just a shout of fear, an animal noise.

The shuttle crashed, slamming into something, forcing Horza hard back against the wall, then releasing him. The craft raised its nose slightly. Horza felt light for a moment, saw waves and white spray through the open rear doors, then the waves went, he saw sky, and closed his eyes as the shuttle's nose dipped again.

The craft smashed into the waves, crashing to a stop in the water. Horza felt himself squashed into the bulkhead as though by the foot of some gigantic animal. The wind was forced out of him, blood roared, the suit bit at him. He was shaken and flattened, and then, just as the impact seemed to be over, another shock sledge-hammered into his back and neck and head, and suddenly he was blind.

The next thing he knew there was water everywhere about him. He was gasping and spluttering, striking out in the darkness and hitting his hands off hard, sharp, broken surfaces. He could hear water gurgling, and his own choked breath frothing. He blew water out of his mouth and coughed.

He was floating in a bubble of air, in darkness, in warm water. Most of his body seemed to be aching, each limb and part clamouring with its own special message of pain.

He felt gingerly round the small space he was trapped in. The bulkhead had collapsed; he was — at last — in the flight-deck area with Mipp. He found the other man's body, crushed between seat and instrument panel, trapped and still, half a metre under the surface of the water. His head, which Horza could feel by reaching down between the seat head-rest and what felt like the innards of the main monitor screen, moved too easily in the neck of the suit, and the forehead had been crushed.

The water was rising higher. The air was escaping through the smashed nose of the shuttle, floating and bobbing bow-up in the sea. Horza knew he would have to swim down and back through the shuttle's rear section and out through the rear doors, otherwise he'd be trapped.

He breathed as deeply as he could, despite the pain, for about a minute, while the rising water level gradually forced his head into the angle between the top of the craft's instrument panel and the flight-deck ceiling. He dived.

He forced his way down, past the wreckage of the crushed seat Mipp had died in, and past the twisted panels of light metal which had made up the bulkhead. He could see light, vaguely green-grey, forming a rectangle beneath him. Air trapped in his suit bubbled round him, along his legs, upwards to his feet. He was slowed for a moment, buoyed up by the air in his boots, and for a second he thought he wasn't going to make it, that he was going to hang there upside-down and drown. Then the air bubbled out through the holes in his boots punched there by Lamm's laser, and Horza sank.