‘Thank you.’ Tergal took his acquisitions out into the sunshine.

Once the ground tremors eased, Cento pushed his head and upper body out of the lava bubble and fruitlessly tried to use his internal radio to contact the survey ship, but there was just too much stone sitting between him and where that vessel rested up on the ridge. Further attempts to contact the orbiting carrier shell also produced no result, but then that could now be on the other side of the planet. He estimated that only twelve metres above he would be able to obtain a sufficient direct line to the landed vessel, but even then he wondered… The layer of crystal below him seemed to be doing things to the signal that defied analysis. When he first felt the groping for contact, he dismissed it as part of this same effect. When the attempt at making a connection became more insistent, he considered shutting down his radio, fearing that this might be another attack upon him. But Mr Crane had let him live—taking a piece of crystal rather than Cento’s artificial life—so, as far as the other humanoid was concerned, Cento was long gone in the river of magma.

He tuned to the groping signal, and made contact.

Who are you? he asked over the link.

Vulture… ship… Skellor… came the reply, along with corrupted code and a weird whining note like a child crying.

Cento absorbed that last name and immediately knew who the second humanoid was. Cento had taken much interest in the events on Masada, and with his ECS clearance he had obtained the full story. That a copy of himself had died aboard the Occam Razor had greatly focused his interest. So, somehow, Skellor had escaped, still possessing Jain technology. This also explained Crane’s resurrection and superior strength and speed: Skellor had obviously made him something more than a merely boosted Golem Twenty-five.

Skellor’s ship? he asked.

Salvor burned now… take download… going U-space… it coming.

I’m prepared for the download, but any attempt at subversion and—

The download came anyway: jumbled information, hints of exchanges of information, views of Skellor standing behind a pilot’s chair containing the burnt-out husk of a human being, Mr Crane squatting on the floor with objects arranged in front of him like chessmen. Then, in one brief burst before the signal cut off: coordinates.

Cento knew that information like this was critical, for with the sheer size of the Polity and all the methods of transportation available, ECS might never find Skellor. But how to convey those coordinates to somewhere they might be of use? The Golem surveyed his surroundings and ran diagnostics on himself. Quite apart from the fact that he only had one arm and was trapped in a rock bubble at the bottom of a steep slope, the heat from the nearby river of magma was beginning to affect some of his systems. Already memory storage was becoming dubious, as the crystal matrix of his mind distorted, the motors in his hips had ceased to function, and those in his remaining arm were into amber. His sight was also going. Infrared was unusable in this situation, but he was also losing the other end of the spectrum. His internal radar suffered the same distortions from the crystal lying below as did his radio. Apart from those latter badly distorted two, he in fact only possessed now the senses of a human being. He had to try for the survey ship again, and to do that he had to get himself higher.

Cento reached above him and was thankful that what remained of his hotsuit had preserved the syntheflesh underneath; this at least meant that he retained a sense of touch. Groping about, he found a crevice—which he tested by wrenching hard against its sides to make sure the rock would not break away. He shut off that part of his emulation program that prevented his joints moving more than was humanly possible. Planning every move in advance, he reached higher, jammed his hand in, then using the full swing of his shoulder joint, hauled himself out of the bubble like a winkle from its shell. For a second he was suspended over magma, then using his wrist joint and elbow, he pulled himself up to the point where he could lodge the knee end of his right thighbone in the lower part of the crevice and then lay his torso fiat against the slope. This he did just in time, as another tremor tumbled loose stone down all about him.

He kept his head down until the cascade had ceased, then looked up. Now he could see that the crevice ran at an angle up the slope and would take him about five metres higher. The problem was that each time he released his hand, he would be supported only by his hipbone and by his weight pressing against the loose stone of the slope. But there was no choice: this close to the magma, the heat would destroy him eventually. He turned and withdrew his hand, reached higher and jammed it in, and maggot-like hauled himself up and up, pausing every time the ground shook, clinging as tightly as he could while falling stone threatened to dislodge him.

Five metres.

Here, Cento noted that some of his systems were coming back online; that the numerous warnings he had been receiving were growing fewer. Glancing down he saw that a curve in the slope now concealed him from the incandescence below, and checking his internal temperature, he saw it was dropping. Abruptly the motors in his hip joints came back on. Here, he realized he might be able to survive for as long as his power supply held out, and even then his mind might remain intact afterwards. Perhaps he should secure himself as best he could, and just drop to minimal function? Cento considered this for only a moment before removing his hand from the crevice and reaching above to clear away loose rock in search of a fresh handhold. Cento was ECS and, though as a free Golem he could choose between duty and survival, he chose duty.

Eventually he located a jut of stone that seemed sufficient to support him, clamped his hand on it and hauled himself up once again, but he could not get himself high enough to lodge his thighbone against that same stone. Lowering himself again, he cleared more rock and found a small hollow just below and to one side of the outcrop. He pulled himself up again, lodging the bone’s end in this hollow—easier now that he could actually move his thighbones about—and, from this precarious position, groped higher. Stone skidded as he pushed it aside, banging and clattering past him. Smooth intestinal stone above now; nothing to grip. Another sudden ground tremor bounced his leg bone out of the hollow. He flailed for a grip as he began to fall, his hand sliding over this treacherously smooth stone. Then before him there appeared a crack, leaking sulphurous gas under pressure, then his arm went through, in an explosion of such gas, and he found a safe grip inside another lava bubble.