Somehow that figured, and Cormac’s grimace returned in full force.

In one of the small departure bays a further individual awaited them. However, this one was neither human nor Golem but dracoman — a product of the giant alien entity called Dragon — and an example of what might have gone on to dominate Earth if only the dinosaurs hadn’t been wiped out. Dracomen were one of Dragon’s jokes, or lessons, or whims. They were as reptilian as their name implied: their skins were mostly tegulated with green scales, except from throat to groin where they were yellow. They possessed a leg structure and gait that was distinctly birdlike, faces jutting and toadlike, and huge eyes. Scar, one of the first of the dracomen to be created, now exposed his teeth in an expression that could be either a grin or a preparation to rip out someone’s throat. Admittedly, Scar might still grin while committing such a bloody assault.

‘The other dracomen?’ Cormac enquired of Smith.

‘All reassigned. There aren’t many of them in total and their peculiar ability to resist Jain sequestration and to recognize it in others, even at a distance, is too valuable a resource to risk.’ Then, perhaps realizing how pompous he had sounded, Smith continued, ‘Jerusalem doesn’t want all those eggs in one basket… do dracowomen lay eggs, anyway?’

On the circular steel floor a small intership shuttle awaited: essentially a flattened cylinder twenty feet long with gimbal-mounted steering thrusters shaped like two-foot-long pitted olives mounted on its rear. The ramp door was down and the lights were on inside. Jerusalem had clearly prepared the way. Without comment, Cormac headed over and boarded the craft, and the others followed him inside. As he strapped himself in, he experienced sudden trepidation, but not because of the enemies he might be about to face. This would be his first time travelling through U-space since his arrival within this system. He could detect ships arriving and departing through that continuum, so what would be his reaction now he was going to be actually entering U-space himself?

Again Mr Crane was perched in his favourite vantage point atop the sandstone monolith, gazing out over the butte-scattered and presently arid landscape of the planet Cull. He still wore his long coat, but it was rather tattered now, as were his trousers and wide-brimmed hat. Even his boots were scored and sand-abraded. However, the brass-coloured adamantine body underneath these garments remained untouched by this harsh environment. Vulture, at the moment circling the monolith, wondered if within that body Mr Crane’s rejoined crystal mind thought unfathomable thoughts, or perhaps no thoughts at all. The bird also believed that a technology feared across the Polity maintained the brass Golem’s other internal workings, whatever they were.

Set in a brass face that seemed the sculpture of some remorseless Apollo, the black eyes were unblinking. In their depths it seemed that small stars flickered occasionally, or perhaps that was just Vulture’s imagination. When finally the bird descended before him in a flurry of dust and a scattering of oily feathers, he directed his gaze upon it and tilted his head in faint query.

‘They’re still searching every square inch of this place, but still keeping well away from you, buddy,’ the bird announced.

Vulture himself had once been an artificial intelligence running a ship of the same name. A Dragon sphere had saved his life from that nutjob Skellor and the Jain technology the man had wielded, but had then transferred the AI into this avian receptacle. Spreading his wings into the dusty wind, Vulture stretched luxuriously: he rather liked this body, perhaps Dragon had done something to his mind to make him feel that way.

‘I reckon they’ve been instructed to keep their hands off you,’ he decided. ‘You gave them a Jain node when they asked for it and they know that irking you wouldn’t be the greatest idea.’

Secretly Vulture reckoned that the Polity survey and clear-up teams would at some point be given the go-ahead to intrude here, but at least Earth Central was holding them back just for now. Mr Crane and the creatures living in the weird village scattered at the base of this lump of sandstone were an imponderable that should not be left alone. Would not be left alone.

Almost as if he read Vulture’s thoughts, Mr Crane abruptly rose to his feet and peered out in the direction the bird had approached from. He strode over to the edge of the monolith and, with an agility that belied his weight, heaved himself over the edge and began to descend using handholds cut into the stone. Vulture waddled to the edge and peered over, observing how one of the sleer-human hybrids was clinging to the rock face beside the android’s route down. This disconcerting creature resembled an eight-foot scorpion with a human face where its mandibles should be. Its facial features seemed frozen in a permanent scream.

As Mr Crane’s boots finally clumped down heavily into the dust at ground level, Vulture launched himself into the air and descended to glide low over his head. The Golem reached up a hand to prevent his hat being displaced by the sudden draught, pausing to peer up at the bird before he strode on.

All about them lay the homes of the hybrids: the results of Dragon’s experiments in combining the genome of the sleer — a native arthropodal creature — with that of humankind. Their dwellings were like giant hollowed-out gourds, but constructed from sand bonded with a natural glue that sleers could emit and which some of these hybrids could also still produce. Through the circular entry holes could be seen chitinous activity — the snap of a pincer or the flexing of an armoured insectile leg — combined with elements of bastardized humanity like a face or an arm, and sometimes from those dark interiors could be heard voices muttering rudimentary language. How these creatures had become Mr Crane’s charge Vulture could not fathom, just as he could not see how they communicated with him, yet somehow they did.

As Crane reached the far edge of the village, two of the hybrids began to follow him out. One looked quite like a young girl except for her multifaceted eyes and the pincers that protruded from her mouth. The other was a centaur-boy: the upper half of a male human child seemingly grafted on a sleer body. The brass Golem halted, stared at them, then inclined his head slightly back towards the scattered dwellings. The two children hung their heads in disappointment, then traipsed back disconsolately the way they had come.

‘They like you,’ said Vulture, settling in the dust beside the Golem.

Crane looked at him but made no comment. Since their partnership began — Vulture liked to think of it as a partnership — Crane had said just a total of twelve words to him. There were other communications: a small gesture of the hand here, a slight inclination of the head, maybe a blink. Mr Crane was what Vulture liked to describe as a conversational minimalist.

Half a mile on from the hybrids’ village lay the beginning of a sandstone labyrinth of buttes and canyons. Following sometimes along the ground and sometimes in the air, Vulture observed scattered lumps of carapace lying on the ground and the body of a huge third-stage sleer draped over a rock nearby — ready for the hybrids to dismember. Many of these vicious creatures came in looking to dine on their more vulnerable hybrid kin but, after Mr Crane had ripped their heads off, became dinner themselves.

Crane halted, also surveying his surroundings, before gazing pointedly at Vulture as the bird landed on the dead sleer. Vulture stretched out a wing towards one of the nearby canyons. ‘That one.’

Giving a slight inclination of his head in acknowledgement, Mr Crane trudged on. Within an hour they came within sight of one of the Polity survey teams that usually preceded the clear-up teams. Their large treaded vehicle was parked below a sandstone cliff, the base of which was pocked with numerous holes. A woman held up some sort of scanning device to these holes in turn, while peering closely at the device’s screen. Her male companion spotted Crane and Vulture first, and grabbed the woman’s shoulder to drag her round to see. He looked scared; she looked fascinated. Though Mr Crane had not made any effort to show himself to the inhabitants of Cull, the story had spread of his involvement in recent events here. Also, rumours were heard of the atrocious things he had done in the Polity, admittedly while under the control of various big-time villains. Vulture doubted if Mr Crane even cared that he was now a legend.