"But some survived even that," Cormac suggested.

"Yes, they were third-children in a sealed hatchery cum nursery. They grew into second-children by feeding on the remains of their relatives while we dug the ship out." He gestured about himself. "We reckon five or six survived out of about thirty of them… Anyway, we go here." He pointed at a set of wide closed doors just beyond the first-child corpse.

"Why not gas the place again?" asked Yallow.

"A waste of resources for a few second-children," Dent replied. "Though we don't always know where they are, we're always certain where they're not."

It seemed a strange statement to make, especially when Dent needed guards to escort him down here, and especially when people had been killed.

Dent went over to a Polity console that had been mounted beside the door, its optic feed plugged into the control pit where a Prador manipulatory hand would have usually entered a code and been sampled for genetic tissue. Deliberately positioning himself so neither Yallow nor Cormac could see over his shoulder, Dent worked the touchpads then stepped back. Something moved in the wall with a grinding crash, then with a whine of hydraulics the doors began to part along their diagonal split and revolve back into the walls.

Dent turned towards them. "Don't be surprised by the—"

Something shrieked then crackled and it seemed some invisible rope snatched Dent sideways through the air, his body folding at the middle. Loose-limbed he bounced along the floor to lie in a broken heap directly before the door. Packs discarded, Cormac and Yallow crouched, covering each direction along the corridor. Something smashed into the wall above them, showering them with hot fragments. Cormac rolled for cover beside the first-child corpse, while Yallow backed up to the opening doors.

"In here!" she yelled, and reaching down dragged the professor through the widening gap into the Sanctum.

Where the hell had that come from?

Then Cormac saw them: Prador second-children coming down through a hatch in the ceiling. For a second he just froze, unable to process the nightmarish sight, then his training kicked in and he fired a concentrated burst at exposed carapace and glittering spider-eyes, and one of them lost its grip and crashed to the floor. The fallen second-child lay on its back with its legs kicking the air for a moment, then it abruptly flipped upright—one claw and the side of its carapace smoking. It raised some sort of jury-rigged weapon in one of its underhands. He nailed it again, across its visual turret, saw its two eye-palps fly away in burning fragments, then recognised that the weapon it held consisted mainly of a compressed gas cylinder. Briefly, an almost cryonic calm settled on Cormac as he assessed the situation and considered the best response. He aimed carefully at the cylinder, and squeezed off a concentrated burst of fire, the cylinder exploded, flinging the creature hard against one wall, but Cormac did not have time to relish the moment. More fire from above showered him with stinking flesh, shattered carapace and squirming ship lice.

"Get in here!" Yallow opened fire through the still-opening door. Cormac stood and ran towards her, felt something tug at his leg, and fell through into the Sanctum past her. As he tried to stand again, his leg gave way, and glancing down he saw blood, ripped Kevlar, exposed flesh.

Fuckit.

He felt his suit leg automatically begin to tighten to prevent blood loss.

"They're coming through the ceiling," he said matter-of-factly. Cold numbness now suffused his leg as the suit injected analgaesics and antishock drugs. He turned his head sideways and vomited once, hard, wiped his mouth and turned back. He felt wired, like he'd drunk too much coffee, but the drugs were quickly numbing him.

"I spotted that," said Yallow, then fired out into the corridor again.

Ignoring the sarcasm, Cormac went on, "Looks like most of them out there, if Dent was right about only five or six surviving."

"Oh, I was right," said Dent.

Cormac glanced across. The man was standing, his clothing ripped about the waist but no sign of blood, only syntheflesh and something hard and white that probably wasn't bone. Dent was an android, but he didn't possess the ceramal skeleton of a Golem, probably because that could be too easily detected. Some other sort of facsimile, perhaps remotely controlled?

Dent continued, "Just like I was right about them watching the Sanctum. In here they would have had a chance, though remote, of gaining access to the ship's systems, and maybe getting away."

"What?" said Yallow, ducking back for a moment.

"Move away from the door," said Dent.

"We can't let them get in here!"

"Move away from the door—that's an order!"

Yallow reluctantly backed up while Cormac looked on with distanced bemusement. He knew his disconnection was due to the drugs and considered administering a stimulant, then reconsidered, reckoning this would all soon be over and that he and Yallow had already done their part. Now gazing about he spied a huge carapace, nearly fifteen feet across, that was all that remained of the Prador adult—the captain. He noted there were neither legs attached to the carapace nor any lying nearby. Adult Prador tended to lose their limbs and doubtless there were grav-units shell-welded to its underside. He could not see them, though he could see, fixed in a row below the creature's mandibles, the hexagonal control units it had used to control everything aboard this ship. It was those the second-children had been after.

This time there came no sounds of hydraulics or rough mechanical movement as the doors slid rapidly closed. Cormac glimpsed yellow and purple carapace and the glint of an eye through the remaining gap. One of those gas-propellant weapons hissed and stuttered, projectiles slamming against the heavy metal then becoming muffled as the doors finally closed. A hissing bubbling ensued, and white foam issued around the door and along its diagonal slit and rapidly solidified. Cormac recognised the astringency of breach sealant.

"The engineering of these ships was high-tolerance when they were built," said Dent matter-of-factly. "But that was some time ago and much in here is very worn, though rugged enough to continue functioning."

Ah, thought Cormac.

"What are you saying?" said Yallow.

Dent continued, "Prador are not too concerned about secure atmosphere seals in their doors. Like their engineering they are rugged and can survive large pressure changes. They can even survive in vacuum for an appreciable length of time."

"What?" said Yallow, in what was rapidly becoming an annoying habit.

"I think," Cormac said muzzily, "that the Prador have been lured into a trap, and we were here to bait the hook: one apparently old man and two raw recruits to open up this Sanctum."

"We're being used as decoys?" said Yallow disbelievingly.

"Outstanding," said Dent.

Cormac gazed with suspicion at the facsimile human—that was one of Olkennon's favourite comments, so perhaps their Golem unit leader was controlling Dent?

Yallow now turned and gazed at the hardened breach sealant.

"A trap," she repeated.

"Hazon nerve gas, I would guess," said Cormac.

Yallow's expression became grim. "We could have died out there," she said flatly.

"Sort of comes with the territory," Cormac replied.

From out in the corridor, despite the thickness of the door, could be heard the sound of heavy objects crashing about violently. Prador were certainly rugged—it took a long time for even that highly toxic gas to kill them.

The pedestal-mounted autodoc crouched over his injured leg like a chromed horseshoe crab feeding on the wound. With a nerve blocker engaged at the base of his spine, Cormac could feel nothing, but his hearing was fine, unfortunately. He kept his eyes averted from the mechanical surgeon's messy work, but could not block out the liquid crunching or the two-tone notes of bone and cell welders.