I stared in fascination. The machine climbed over Dandy, hindmost legs raised as if in effete distaste. My body shivered in expectation of the thin flechettes that had felled at least two of my guards, no doubt peppered from the questing snout.

Decapitation.

The seed of this locust had come aboard the shuttle at Lai Qila — perhaps with the duplicity of Achmed Crown Niger , although I could hardly believe such villainy even of him. More likely he faced a similar assassin even now.

The machine seemed reluctant to push past me. Knowing I was soon to die, a deep calm stole over me, replacing the nausea of seeing my guards so quickly dispatched. I knew I would join them soon.

Still, my mind raced, trying to think of ways to survive.

The pilot thinker would know something was very wrong. It would radio an emergency signal ahead. We were only a few minutes from Preamble.

With a start, I considered the possibility the locust wanted to be taken to Preamble. It would kill me, attach itself to the shuttle’s thinker, take over the controls… And carry itself, and more progeny, into the research site. I could not allow that to happen.

I faced off the machine for more long seconds. I slowly bent down hoping to grab Kiri’s weapon, the closest to me. I didn’t make it. With a slight shudder, as if making a sudden decision, the locust rushed along the aisle, grabbed the gun, and shoved me aside with bone-bruising strength. It moved forward and began to work on the bulkhead door to the pilot thinker’s space.

Quickly, I bent over Jacques and Kiri. They were dead. I ran aft down the aisle and rolled Dandy over. His eyes flickered and opened. He moaned. The machine had hit him hard on the side of his head but had not shot him.

I dragged Dandy forward and hefted him into a seat, clicking his harness. His head lolled and he looked at me.

“Can’t let it get to Preamble,” he murmured.

“I know,” I sad. Facing forward, I shouted at the pilot thinker, “Bring us down, now! Crash the shuttle!”

Dandy shook his head. “Won’t do it. Tell it to land.”

The locust expertly sliced through the forward bulkhead and locked door. Beyond, I saw the shuttle’s cockpit, pilot thinker mounted above the controls. The locust grew a new appendage and poked at the thinker’s box.

“Crash, damn you!” I cried. “Land! Bring us down now!”

The shuttle lurched and rolled. The locust’s body slammed against the luggage bay and released the cases of the dead guards. Behind, Jacques and Kiri seemed to rise off the floor, given new life, limbs flailing. Aelita’s carriage fell past me to the rear of the shuttle, smashing into Jacques’ body.

I did not know that the pilot-thinker would obey my orders, but there was no other explanation for the craft’s wild antics, unless the thinker hoped to throw the locust away from its case.

But the locust would not be thrown. An insectoid limb flew past me, black and gleaming, but despite the loss, the locust clung to the front bulkhead and continued to probe the thinker’s case. Above the roar of stressed engines and the crashing of luggage and awful slapping of bodies, I heard a drilling whine.

I pulled myself into a seat with all the strength I could muster. Jacques slid past me and spattered my leg with blood. The shuttle rolled again just as I locked the harness.

Before assuming crash position, I glanced forward and saw the pilot thinker’s case ripped open, gelatinous capsules spewing forth.

The locust became the center of a spinning nightmare.

We hit.

My shins pushed painfully against the rack in front of me. For some immeasurable time I felt nothing, and then another slam. Bones snapped and I blacked out, but only for an instant. The shuttle was still sliding and rolling as I came to, tumbling across the ground. I heard plastic and metal scream and the hiss of departing air, instinctively shut my eyes and mouth and pinched my nose, felt the touch of vacuum as my skin filled with blood — and the pressure canopies ballooned around our seats, sucked down against the cabin floor, filled quickly with compressed air hot as the draft from an oven door.

The shuttle stopped rolling, slid with a shudder and a leap to a nose-up angle, and lurched to a halt.

I sat strapped in my seat, wrapped within a canopy like a lizard inside a rubbery eggshell. My rib cage had become a plunging of knives with every gasping breath. I gritted my teeth to keep from screaming. My vision shrank to a hand-sized hole of awareness. Going into shock. Fighting to stay conscious, I glanced through the foggy membrane at Dandy’s seat. He had slumped to one side. I couldn’t figure out why; then I realized he had unstrapped the upper portion of his harness before passing out.

I could not see forward. Debris blocked my view. I could not see the locust.

I pressed my head back against the seat’s neck rest. I could stand the pain now; shock numbed me. I felt cold and sweaty. Battle over. Earth wins.

With some irritation, I felt small emergency arbeiters wrap their tendrils around my wrist. The shuttle’s tiny little life-saving machines had scrambled to check us out. I tried to pull my wrist out of the way. The tendrils tightened and a tube of medical nano entered the arteries at my wrist. The silver and copper arbeiter, barely as large as a mouse, tied to a shining blue umbilicus, crawled up my chest and exuded a cup over my mouth and nose. I tried to shake my head free but sweet gas filled my lungs and the pain subsided. The chill lessened. I grew calm and neutral.

The little machine hung on my chin and projected a message into my eyes. You are not badly injured. You have three cracked ribs and ruptured eardrums. Torsion units will reset the ribs and wrap them in cell-growth and sealant nano. The ruptured eardrums are being sutured now. You will not be able to hear for at least an hour.

I could feel the action in my chest, specked little fibers growing from bone to bone, rib to rib, tightening inexorably, torquing the ribs back together.

“All right,” I said, hearing nothing.

The shuttle cabin atmosphere has been breached. Integrity cannot be restored. No rescuers have responded to our emergency signal. The pilot thinker is damaged, perhaps destroyed. We will soon exceed our programming. Do you have any instructions?

I tried to look at Dandy again. The fog on my canopy had cleared a little and I saw him still slumped forward. “Is Dandy alive?”

One seated passenger is alive but unconscious. He will regain consciousness soon. He has a minor fracture of the tibia and minor concussion. There are two dead passengers. We cannot repair the dead passengers.

“What about Aelita?”

Copy of thinker “Aelita” condition unknown.

Dandy lifted his head and raised an arm to wipe the inside of his canopy. He peered at me groggily, plugs of nano sticking out of his ears like muffs. “Are you okay?” He mouthed the syllables extravagantly and signaled with his free hand.

“Alive,” I replied.

“Can you move?” He waggled his hand.

I shrugged.

I caught part of the next message: “… move with me… Get out…” But he could not coordinate his fingers to unhitch himself. He shook his head groggily.

I would have to rescue my guard.

I knew in theory how the canopies worked. They could stretch and roll with my movements, keeping a tough membrane between me and the near-vacuum of Mars’s atmosphere. I unhitched and stood, feeling the nano shift within me, the edges of my broken ribs grinding.

The cockpit of the shuttle had been torn off and the nose lay open to the sky. Part of the cockpit bulkhead panel, cut by the locust and pushed aside in the crash, stuck out at a crazy angle. An emergency safety symbol decorated a small hatch on the panel. Pushing forward in my canopy, I wiped at the moisture inside the membrane, trying desperately to see where the locust had gone.