'There,' said Cormac, 'sufficient, don't you think?'

Thorn nodded his agreement. They left the containment sphere.

The embarkation lounge was not crowded, but it seemed to be kilometres long. The four of them gathered round the dracomen and walked quickly to the far doors. Cormac thought that the strange glances they were getting were due to their uniforms rather than the bird-walking dracomen. He noted, with a quick sideways flick of his eyes, two dodgy-looking individuals loitering by a drinks dispenser, and surreptitiously reached down and keyed the start-up sequence into shu-riken. Before he had taken two more paces, shuriken's holster was humming against his wrist.

'You see them?' he asked Thorn.

'I saw them,' Thorn replied.

'Stay alert. We might be walking into it right now.'

'I'm always alert,' Thorn said, a touch of annoyance in his voice.

The doors opened out onto an AGC park surrounded by country with the bleak quality of moorland. Pools like tarnished copper coins were banked round with thick growths of something like sage, speared through with the black blades of sedges. Where there was neither of these, the ground was pebbled with something thick and green and which, without closer inspection, Cormac thought, could be either geological or biological. His momentary curiosity on this matter was assuaged when he saw one of these growths break open to fling a cloud of helicopter seeds into the air. As he walked on, he espied something like a flying rabbit with a split trunk come to suck the seeds up before they reached the ground. It got most of them. Cormac pulled his finger away from the quick release on his shuriken holster.

'Did they follow?' he asked of Thorn.

'Out of the lounge, yes - but not now,' Thorn replied.

'We've been eyeballed then. Probably something set up for later.'

In the distance could be seen a line of bluish forest, and beyond this the sky was cut by a chaos of laminated slabs that could have been alien ruins. Beyond the run-cible facility, the AGC park and a scatter of finned cooling towers that could have been mistaken for something living, there were no other buildings in sight. Viridian had been colonized for a long time. Only on the most recently colonized planets had it become acceptable to establish runcibles within cities - or cities around runcibles. The sky was pale-green, the sun showing through bluish clouds: a green glare of a copper arc light. The planet was well named. Cormac realized, as he stepped out, that this was what the submind had told them. Was there a red moon? he wondered. And what exactly were the 'glass dragons'? Was that a reference to the dracomen, or to the Maker?

The armoured personnel carrier stood out from the other vehicles, like a vulture amongst canaries. The private AGCs were of all colours, and small; some of them were open and more like flying sedan chairs, some of them were reproductions of the petrol-driven cars of old Earth, but few of mem were ugly. The carrier was battleship grey. In appearance and size it was a railway carriage minus wheels, and with all hard and uncompromising angles. At the back of it there were tail-mounted turbines, and along its length a number of stabilizing fins. There were turrets for automatic projectile guns and beam weapons. It was a formidable machine. As they approached, Cormac glanced from it to the red Cortina replica parked next to it.

'Hardly covert,' he said.

Arn was a sergeant in the ES regulars, but just as obviously a native of Viridian. He was a short stocky man with cap-cut, light blue hair, a bushy moustache of the same colour - and it seemed to be natural coloration - and dark pupil-less eyes deep-set in a craggy face. He studied them for a moment, then saluted smartly and opened the door to the carrier.

'Sergeant, you have weapons for us?' said Thorn.

'So too.' He saluted again.

'No need for all that,' said Cormac. 'Just show us the weapons and take us to Motford. I'll give a briefing there.'

Arn pointed out some crates strapped in the back of the carrier, then went to take his position at the controls. Cento joined him - looking hopeful, Cormac thought. Shortly the carrier was airborne and, when they were clear of the AGC park, the ion boosters roared. The carrier accelerated smoothly; it would have been quite possible to walk about inside while it was travelling.

'How much do you intend to tell them?' Aiden asked.

Cormac looked up in surprise from the crate he was opening. He had expected Thorn to be the one to ask that, as the Golem Thirties were decidedly taciturn.

'I see no reason to hold back on anything this side of the runcible. Only we ourselves will use the energy weapons, though. They're just extra muscle for when friend Pelter puts in an appearance.'

Aiden looked pointedly at the two innocuous boxes at the end of the case. Cormac lifted one out and pressed his thumb against the lock. It was keyed only to him. The box opened to reveal a gleaming cylinder, twenty centimetres long by five wide, with the letters CTD in a garish red pictogram, purpled by the light. On the end of each cylinder was a black cap with a miniconsole on it - remote or timer, the result was always the same. Cormac smiled.

'Perhaps we'll leave off telling them about these,' he said, and closed the box. It had 'JMCC: Enropower. I Kilowatt Hour" etched into the lid. The cylinders, though, were not powerpacks: they delivered a great deal more energy than one kilowatt, and in substantially less time than an hour. CTD stood for contra-terrene device. Thorn by then had opened another case, and was holding a weapon that had the appearance of a stubby carbine made of glass and old wood. Under the glass, salamanders writhed, waiting to be released.

When Cormac had finished his briefing, ten regulars dispersed to their sky-bikes, which were parked haphazardly on soggy lichen-covered ground. They were to fly escort, and all other vehicles were to be warned off. Arn lifted the carrier into the sky with a smooth acceleration. Cormac took one of the four seats at the control console, along with the sergeant and Aiden.

'These ruins, Sergeant, describe them to me,' he said.

'So too. They're what's left of an old ES ground installation, sir. There's just a few fragments of a shield dome surrounding a couple of underground missile silos. Surrounding that is a radial scattering of old storage buildings, nothing very large. There are supposed to be bunkers under the ground around the silos, but no one goes in there. Still hot.'

'Would it be possible to land next to the underground silos?'

'Not so. No clear ground, and the roofs of the buildings would never take the weight of this carrier.'

'What's the scale?'

'Whole site's about two kilometres across. Silos were for Hunter Tens, about fifty metres deep and ten in diameter, three of them. Don't know anything about the bunkers… sir.'

Cormac nodded.

'The description you've given is sufficient, Sergeant. Most concise. Put us down on the perimeter, wherever you deem suitable.'

The sergeant allowed himself a tight little smile.

'Sarge, we got someone on the edge of detector range. Looks like they're following.'

'You know the drill, Corporal. Warn them off.'

'They don't respond. Shall I send back Cheng and Goff?'

Cormac leant forward. 'Cormac here.'

'Colonel, sir!'

'What's your name, soldier?'

'Tarm, sir.'

'Very well, Tarm, I want you and this Cheng and Goff to go back personally. Warn them off. Turn them if you can. If they fire on you, take them out. Otherwise I want them driven back a fair way, but not so far they won't be able to pick up on us again. Do you understand?'

'I think so, sir.'

'Don't be thick, Tarm,' interjected the sergeant.

'Oh… Oh, I see. On our way, sir.'