‘Fsk pock… help?’ said SM13 and the three of them turned to stare at it.

‘Self-repair?’ asked Keech.

‘Sprerz-sprock,’ said Thirteen, and rose a few centimetres out of the luggage compartment before dropping back.

‘It speaks?’ said Roach.

‘They often do — but usually only to say “Take that, fucker”. But then my own experience of SMs has mainly been restricted to those uploaded into war drones. They don’t normally employ a wide vocabulary. They don’t really need one,’ replied Keech.

‘Sprzzz carp Sniper.’

‘Makes no sense at all,’ muttered Boris. ‘What’s SM stand for anyway?’

‘Submind. So the Warden’s obviously taking an interest in what’s happening down here. We’ll probably be seeing a few of this one’s brothers and sisters some time soon. Pass it here.’

Boris hefted the probe out of the luggage compartment and handed it carefully to Keech. The monitor grabbed it in one hand and shoved it under his seat, on top of the AG motor, which was now letting out faint wisps of black smoke.

‘It might be able to give us some lift in a bit. We’re going to need it,’ he explained.

‘Scugger-fuck,’ said the probe. It thumped against the underside of the seat, and the scooter lifted fractionally. Keech gave the thruster a quick burst, and the scooter surged forward just enough to avoid the rhinoworm that had chosen that moment to try for a mouthful of Roach.

‘We ain’t gonna make it,’ whined Roach.

Keech passed him the weapon he’d used against Frisk’s ship. ‘This still works, but be careful; there’s no control system, so it could fire in any mode. Don’t use it unless you really have to,’ he warned.

Roach held the weapon in one hand and pensively inspected its controls. He peered down the silvered insides of the twin barrels, then quickly pointed them away from himself.

‘These are illegal, ain’t they?’

‘Yes, does that bother you right now?’ asked Keech.

Roach aimed the weapon at the two following swirls. ‘Not particularly,’ he admitted.

When Pland took over the watch he began by joyously zapping even the smallest leeches that entered the clearing, until Janer thought he’d never get to sleep. Sitting up, wrapped in foil-like heat blanket by the fire, he opened his pack in search of a suitable pill. For a moment he eyed the hexagonal package he’d brought along at the mind’s insistence, then closed his pack again, as he’d decided against the pill. He didn’t want to fall into a heavy sleep, with things like that huge leech out there. He lay down again and stretched himself out on the lumpy ground.

‘Anything from the Warden?’ he whispered.

‘I’m allowed to speak now, am I?’ asked the mind.

‘I didn’t want you distracting me while I was on watch.’

‘You did not want me talking about the packet of sprine crystals Captain Ambel has brought along.’

‘That too,’ said Janer.

‘Just one crystal in the front of the box and I will cease to… bug you.’

‘Very funny.’

‘Would independent finance be a suitable motivation?’

‘Explain.’

‘At present you are effectively in my employ. You travel where I wish you to travel, and you take my eyes with you. Ten million shillings paid into your private account would make you independently wealthy and you could travel wherever you wished. You could go to Aster Colora, as you have always wanted. You could return to Earth any time you wished. There are many things you could do.’

‘Ten million just to put one crystal in the front of your little box?’

‘Yes,’ the mind replied.

‘That can only mean your intentions are against Polity law, and I’d probably be charged as an accessory. Accessory to multiple murder would mean being mind-wiped at best.’

‘Spatterjay is not within the Polity.’

‘It is not in the Polity yet, and are you telling me your hornets will stay here on-planet?’

‘No crime has been committed.’

‘Yet.’

‘You argue that, yet under Polity law any Polity citizen may bear arms.’

‘Within limits,’ said Janer.

‘The only proscribed items are explosives and energy weapons. That proscription is very specific as concerns weapons in the gigawatt range, which, incidentally, is precisely the level of weapon that a representative of Polity law has already been using here.’

‘What?’

‘The monitor, Sable Keech, was in possession of an antiphoton weapon capable of a gigawatt burst. The penalty for owning such a weapon is moral reconditioning.’

‘So that’s what it was,’ said Janer.

‘I would be in possession of no such weapon. What I would possess would merely be for personal defence.’

‘I’d like to go to sleep now.’

‘You have no way of refuting my arguments. Consider this: you get ten million in your account and my aims are achieved now. The alternative is that they are achieved in the next solstan year and you do not get ten million in your account. You would, in fact, have to seek gainful employ with someone else.’

‘Threats now.’

‘Promises.’

‘I just don’t think it’s a good idea to inflict this planet with hornets carrying sprine in their stings. Individual hornets are still just insects and they’ll react to defend themselves unless directly under your control. A lot of people here could die.’

‘Ten million shillings.’

‘I’ll sleep on it,’ said Janer guiltily.

The mind made a buzzing, self-satisfied sound.

When Janer woke again, he felt as though he’d only been asleep for a moment — until he noticed that he could now distinguish sky from dingle. He looked around to see who was on watch, and saw Forlam sitting at the perimeter, the carbine resting across his lap, and his back turned to the dingle. The crewman looked tired and bored — no doubt Pland had scorched all the leeches in the immediate area earlier in the night — and much in need of relief.

Janer was about to call out to him, when he realized he must still be asleep and dreaming. Standing behind Forlam was a blue man — or rather the body of a man. This figure stood about four metres tall, and impossibly thin and long-boned. His hands looked like giant harvestman spiders, his torso a long arc of ribs, and his arms and legs seemed to possess more joints than they should do. Also, he had no head. This is what persuaded Janer he must be dreaming — that and the slow and silent way the blue man moved. Anyway, surely Forlam would not court disaster by sitting with his back to the trees, would he? As Janer tried to wake up, tried to call out, he became aware of Ambel’s snores, and connected them with some kind of reality.

Suddenly he realized this was no dream. Between the blue man’s shoulders sprouted a questing leech’s mouth, and Janer now knew who this man had been.

‘Forlam!’

But his cry came too late. One long bony hand reached down and took Forlam up like a doll. Forlam yelled once and the carbine dropped to the ground. Then he saw what had hold of him and suddenly went silent, mesmerized. The man-thing raised him to its horribly eager leech-mouth and that mouth attached to Forlam’s torso.

Forlam screamed.

‘What the bloody hell!’ Ambel sat upright.

Janer leapt across the still-prostrate form of Captain Ron and dived for the carbine. He seized it just as other questions were shouted. Ambel’s blunderbuss went off with a huge bang and the sound of its shot striking the man-thing was the slap of a spade on flesh. The blow peeled back skin which immediately rolled back into place. The thing kept grinding at Forlam and Forlam kept on screaming.

‘Bugger!… Bugger!… Bugger!’ yelled Peck, pumping his shotgun and blasting away with each repetition of the word. Each hit slewed away fragments of the creature’s skin and punched a grey hollow, but each hollow quickly refilled and blue skin slid back into place. There were other shots, Janer did not discern from whom. He aimed at blue gut and fired. The creature’s torso smoked and it jerked backwards, skin charred away to expose knotted woody fibre underneath. As Janer fired again, it pulled Forlam away from its mouth and hissed out a cloud of blood. A third shot charred skin from its legs, but seemed to cut no deeper than that. It suddenly dropped Forlam to the ground and took a long stride back into the dingle. It was gone in a moment.