The ladder got them into a chamber over five hundred feet long, with the rail-gun sitting above them like a fallen redwood. To one side lay the magazine and related mechanisms: a belt feed still loaded with one-ton iron-and-ceramic projectiles whose impact energy when fired delivered the destructive potential that in the past had been reserved for atomic weapons. Two more torches came on, their beams stabbing here and there about the interior.

"Stinks," said Pramer.

Cormac nodded and took his palm screen. He displayed the map he had made and studied it for a moment, quickly realising he had forgotten nothing about the route.

"You say there'll be no one here this late?" asked Layden. The man looked wired—pupils dilated and motions all jerky and overextended.

"It's unlikely there'll be anyone this deep in the ship, though there might be some nearer the main entrance." He waved a hand about him. "Dealing with this is not so crucial anymore, so the work is confined to the daylight hours. They also don't like coming in here at night, since it was during the night they lost personnel."

"The Prador," said Layden, eyes wide.

"They think they got the last of them."

"They think?"

Cormac eyed Layden with pretend contempt, shook his head and moved on.

The corridor beyond smelt even worse, but then it did not have the ventilation. Ship lice dropped from the uneven walls and scuttled across the floor towards the torch beams. Kicking them away hardly discouraged them, so every few paces at least one of the four needed to crush one of the creatures under a boot heel. They climbed down a ladder bonded to the side of a Prador drop-shaft, where the lice were even more of a danger as they tried to nip fingers or drop on heads. More corridors, one now filled with the stench like that of rotting seafood from Prador second-children heaped on a gravsled outside the Captain's Sanctum. Here the ship lice did not bother them, so busily were they feeding on the corpses. Cormac led the three past these and eventually brought them to their goal.

The room was narrow. To the right was a plain if slightly uneven wall, but to the left was no wall, just the exposed section of a carousel. Many of the compartments in the face of this huge wheel were empty, but three contained smoothly polished cylinders each about two feet long and ten inches in diameter. As Cormac understood it, this was not an actual loading carousel, but just one component in the mechanisms the Prador captain used to select the explosive load for the missiles he was firing.

"Don't look like much," said Pramer.

"Perhaps not," said Cormac. "But detonate one of these in your home city and that city would be gone, along with a fair portion of the coastline too."

Pramer nodded, then reached out to grip the top of one and pull it—it seemed immovable. "How do we get these out?"

"You pull very hard," said Cormac. "The clamps are sprung, but to a tension for Prador."

Pramer started heaving at the CTD, putting all his considerable muscle bulk into the effort. Cormac reached in from the side and tried to help, but though the device moved out of its clamp slightly, the moment they took the pressure off, it snapped back into place.

"We need a lever." Cormac stepped out into the corridor and headed back towards the Captain's Sanctum. It did not surprise him to find Sheen walking beside him, still watching him warily.

"There," he pointed. The remains of the gas-propellant guns the Prador second-children had used lay jumbled in a pile to the rear of the gravsled loaded with their corpses. Cormac and Sheen sorted through the mess, selecting lengths of hard Prador metal that might be suitable. Cormac was just hefting a flat length of square bar, its end flattened like that of a crow bar, when a high girlish and terrified scream echoed along the corridor.

"Layden," said Sheen.

This was not part of Cormac's plans. A man would not scream like that because ECS had come to arrest him, but because he was terrified and in pain. Only two causes seemed probable: either Pramer had done something to him, or something else had just arrived.

Armed with their makeshift weapons, Sheen and Cormac charged back towards the other two, and upon rounding a corner saw Pramer hurtling towards them. He skidded to a halt, and Sheen tossed him one of the handles from the gas guns: a heavy metal ring attached to a short, thick chunk of metal, sharp all around its edges from where it had broken away. He gripped it in his natural hand and hefted it like a massive knuckle-duster, then turned. Cormac noted his artificial hand was missing to expose a short stabbing blade dripping something like green oil. Then the Prador second-child came.

Cormac felt that familiar surge of adrenaline, the tightness in the gut and a feeling as of hot water being poured down inside his spine, but it didn't seem so intense this time. Maybe this was because this Prador wasn't the size of the ones that had been gassed back in the Sanctum corridor, or maybe it was because he was becoming accustomed to the feeling. Certainly, with a shell over a metre across and claws big enough to snip off someone's head, this Prador was not something you wanted to encounter without a large gun in your hand. Cormac eyed the length of metal he held, then the Prador as it ceased its pursuit and began scuttling from side to side in the corridor, obviously wary of attacking the three humans facing it. Seemingly without effort Cormac remembered everything he had been taught about Prador physiology. The manipulatory arms folded underneath the creature's body weren't anywhere near as dangerous as the claws unless they were holding some weapon, and they weren't. The top of the shell, behind the visual turret and eye-palps, would be as hard as stone, as were the claws themselves. There were only a few vulnerable points.

"Hit the visual turret, leg joints and claw joints nearest the body," he said. "Don't let that fucker close a claw on you, or you're dead."

"No shit," said Sheen, stepping to one side and hefting a chunk of metal like a long-handled cleaver.

The Prador second-child came to a decision and surged forwards, its claws spread wide ready to snap closed on any available flesh. Cormac hesitated for a moment, seeing how he and his companions were going to get in each others way, then abruptly ran towards the creature. The Prador emitted a hissing squeal, snapping its claws open and closed perhaps in an attempt to intimidate. Before they came within reach of him, Cormac threw himself over the creature, somersaulting in mid-air with a claw just brushing his head, and came down feet first on its carapace. He had time for one swipe with the metal bar bringing it down hard on one eye-palp, crushing it into the creature's visual turret, before his momentum spilled him behind.

Shouldering into the floor, he rolled and came upright, the creature stopping and half turning towards him. But Pramer and Sheen now attacked, and undecided which way to turn, it presented only one claw to them, while being unable to deploy its other against any of them. Sheen fenced with the snapping claw, while Pramer tried to get in close to use his shorter-range weapons. Seeing an opportunity, he ducked in close and managed to drive his makeshift knuckle-duster straight into the monster's mouth, breaking one mandible.

Rushing in on the rear quarter of the creature, Cormac leapt and came down with both feet on the knee of one leg. The leg broke and the creature squealed, partially collapsing. Cormac brought his bar down on another leg, breaking a joint. Foaming from its broken mouth it turned fully towards him. He hit the base joint of the claw swinging towards him, then backed off. Sheen hit another leg, severing its sharp tip, and the Prador swung back towards her, but it was Pramer who did the most damage. He leapt onto its back, drove his knife down hard, punching through carapace to anchor himself, then began pounding on its visual turret with the gun handle until the carapace there began to crack and green gore to spatter.