"Balveda," Horza said, "I'm doing you a courtesy letting you in on all this; don't annoy me."

Balveda arched her eyebrows, staying silent.

"How do we know these are the same lot who got here inside this weird animal anyway?" Neisin said. He looked suspiciously at Horza.

"They can't be anybody else," Horza said. "They were damn lucky to survive what the Dra'Azon did to them, and even the Idirans wouldn't risk sending any other forces in after they saw what had happened to this lot."

"But that means they've been here for months," Dorolow said. "How are we supposed to find something if they've been here all this time and haven't found anything?"

"Perhaps they have," Horza said, spreading his arms wide and smiling at the woman, a trace of sarcasm in his voice; "but if they haven't, it's very possibly because they won't have any working gear with them. They'd have to search the whole Command System.

"Besides, if that warp animal was as badly damaged as I heard it was, they won't have had much control over it. Very likely they crash-landed hundreds of kilometres away and had to slog here through the snow. In that case they might have only been here for a few days."

"I can't believe the god would let this happen," Dorolow said, shaking her head and looking at the surface of the table in front of her. "There must be something else to all this. I could feel its power and… and goodness when we came through the Barrier. It wouldn't let those poor people just be shot down like that."

Horza rolled his eyes. "Dorolow," he said to her, leaning forward and planting his knuckles on the table top, "the Dra'Azon are barely aware there's a war going on. They don't really give a damn about individuals. They recognise death and decay, but not hope and faith. As long as the Idirans, or we, don't wreck the Command System or blow the planet away, they won't give a damn who lives or dies."

Dorolow sat back, silent but unconvinced. Horza straightened. His words sounded fine; he had the impression the mercenaries would follow him, but inside, deeper than where the words were coming from, he felt no more caring, no more alive than the snow-covered plain outside.

He, Wubslin and Neisin had gone back into the tunnels. They had investigated the accommodation section, and found more evidence of Idiran habitation. It looked as though a very small force — one or two Idirans and maybe half a dozen medjel — had stayed for a while at the Changer base after they had taken it over.

They had apparently taken a lot of freeze-dried emergency food supplies with them, the two laser rifles and the few small pistols the Changer base was allowed, and the four portable communication sets from the store room.

Horza had covered the dead Changers up with the reflector foil they had found in the base, and removed the semi-suit from the dead medjel. They had looked at the flyer, to see if it was serviceable. It wasn't; its micropile had been partially removed and badly damaged in the process. Like almost everything else in the base, it was without power. Back on board the Clear Air Turbulence, Horza and Wubslin had dissected the medjel's suit and discovered the subtle but irreparable damage which had been inflicted on it.

All the time, whenever Horza wasn't worrying about what their chances and their choices were, each moment he stopped concentrating on what he was looking at or supposed to be thinking about, he saw a hard and frozen face, at right angles to the body it was attached to, with frost on the eyelashes.

He tried not to think about her. There was no point; nothing he could do. He had to go on, he had to see this through, even more so now.

He had thought for a long time about what he could do with the rest of the people on the Clear Air Turbulence, and decided he had no real choice but to take them all into the Command System with him.

Balveda was one problem; he wouldn't feel safe even leaving the whole crew to guard her, and he wanted the best fighters along with him, not stuck on the ship. He could have got round this problem just by killing the Culture agent, but the others had got too used to her, had come to like her just a little too much. If he killed her, he would lose them.

"Well, I think it's insanity to go down into those tunnels," Unaha-Closp said. "Why not just wait up here until the Idirans reappear, with or without this precious Mind?"

"First of all," Horza said, watching the expressions on the others" faces for any sign of agreement with the drone, "if they don't find it they probably won't reappear; these are Idirans, and a carefully chosen crack squad of them at that. They'll stay down there for ever." He looked at the tunnel system drawn on the screen, then back at the people and the machine around the table. "They could search for a thousand years in there, especially if the power's off and they don't know how to bring it back up, which I'm assuming they don't."

"And you do, of course," the machine said.

"Yes," Horza said, "I do. We can turn the power on at one of three stations: this one, number seven or number one."

"It still works?" Wubslin looked sceptical.

"Well, it was working when I left. Deep geothermal, producing electricity. The power shafts are sunk about a hundred kilometres through the crust.

"Anyway, as I say, there's too much space down there for those Idirans and medjel to have a hope of searching properly without some sort of detection device. A mass anomaly sensor is the only one that'll work, and they can't have one. We have two. That's why we have to go in."

"And fight," Dorolow said.

"Probably not. They've taken communicators; I'll get in touch with them and explain who I am. Naturally I can't tell you the details, but I know enough about the Idiran military system, about their ships, even some of their personnel, to be able to convince them I am who I say I am. They won't know me personally, but they were told a Changer would be sent later."

"Liar," Balveda said. Her voice was cold. Horza felt the atmosphere in the mess change, become tense. The Culture woman was looking at him, her features set, determined, even resigned.

"Balveda," he said softly, "I don't know what you were told, but I was briefed on The Hand of God, and Xoralundra told me the Idiran ground force in the chuy-hirtsi knew I'd been sent for." He said it calmly. "OK?"

"That wasn't what I heard," Balveda said, but he sensed she was not totally sure of herself. She had risked a lot to say that, probably hoping that he would at least threaten her or do something which would turn the others against him. It hadn't worked.

Horza shrugged. "I can't help it if the Special Circumstances section can't brief you accurately, Perosteck," he said, smiling thinly. The Culture agent's eyes looked away from the Changer's face, at the table, then at each of the other people sitting around it, as though testing them to see who they each believed. "Look," Horza said in his most honest-sounding and reasonable voice, spreading his hands out, "I don't want to die for the Idirans, and God knows why, but I have come to like you lot. I wouldn't take you in there on a suicide mission. We'll be all right. If the worst comes to the worst we can always pull out. We'll take the CAT back through the Quiet Barrier and head for somewhere neutral. You can have the ship; I'll have a captured Culture agent." He looked at Balveda, who was sitting in her seat with her legs crossed, her arms folded and her head down. "But I don't think it'll come to that. I think we'll catch this glorified computer and be well rewarded for it."

"What if the Culture's won the battle outside the Barrier and they're waiting for us when we come out, with or without the Mind?" Yalson asked. She didn't sound hostile, just interested. She was the only one he felt he could rely on, though he thought Wubslin would follow, too. Horza nodded.