Tarren now focused on the hooper, briefly glanced back at the control unit mounted on the arm of his throne, then returned his attention to Spencer.

"ECS doesn't come here," said Tarren. "When you've gone, more people like me will come back."

"But you won't," said Spencer. Tarren did not even get a chance to be afraid, before she casually shot him through the side of the head. She calmly watched him stagger and collapse, then walked over to the throne and, after taking up and pocketing her wallet of diamond slate, pumped numerous shots into the hexagonal control unit, smashing it open and setting it smoking, then she tore it from the chair arm, dropped it on the floor and stamped it to fragments.

"Okay," she continued, breathing heavily as she walked back past Tarren, who was still shuddering into death, a pool of blood spreading about his head, "Thrace did head out to the old terraforming station and hasn't been back. We'll head out there and see what we can find."

Cormac carefully regained his feet. Now he not only had a headache, but felt dizzy and nauseous again.

"What about him?" he asked, pointing at the kneeling hooper.

"We'll take a DNA sample for ECS Records," she said. "At least one more might then be accounted for out of the millions still listed as missing."

That wasn't quite what Cormac had meant.

"He's still alive," he said.

Spencer shook her head. "He died years ago when they tore out his brain. What's left will need to be destroyed, thoroughly. If what you see there is not fed the right antivirals and foods it'll mutate into something even nastier."

Just then the doors to the bar crashed open and in strode Travis and Crean, along with two of the locals, a man and a woman, both armed. The woman peered down at Tarren and grimaced. "You could have left him alive."

"I wouldn't want to turn you into a killer, Adsel," said Spencer flatly.

Adsel, whom Cormac suspected must be the ECS informant here, said, "But that's what I and my friends will have to be here if we are to keep people like this away."

"Certainly, but you're not in any rush, are you?" She gazed at Travis and Crean. "Arms cache?"

"Yep," said Travis. "The last of his lot are running for their ships—" Travis nodded at Tarren. " — with the locals in hot pursuit."

"But we remain focused on the mission," said Spencer, gazing at Cormac, who was tying his wrist to one of his harness straps to support his injured arm. "We need a vehicle."

"There's one just outside you can use," said Adsel, who was now standing before the hooper, peering down at him.

"Good." Spencer nodded.

"Is he safe?" Adsel asked.

Spencer walked over, abruptly stooping and pulling an evil-looking stiletto from the top of her boot. She stooped over the hooper and with much apparent effort cut a slice of flesh from the top of his ear, which she then dropped into her wallet of diamond slate. There was no blood.

"Safe as can be," she said, "but you'll have to throw him into one of your incinerators if you don't want something nasty crawling around here when the virus in him decides it's time for him to start feeding."

"Right," said Adsel, stepping back. "Right."

All business, as if what she had just done was of no further note, Spencer asked, "Could you also get our wounded comrade back to our shuttle, should he need the help?"

Cormac was sickened by a reality which until now had been of a mild academic interest to him. He had seen the ruins, the spaceborne wreckage, the casualty figures; he had heard of Prador snatch squads and actually fought the creatures himself, but this, this hooper, brought home to him more than anything the horror of the war his father had fought and died in. Dragging his gaze away from the big man he focused on Spencer, trying to bring himself back to the moment. He considered arguing against being sent back to the shuttle, but rejected the idea. He had been a liability and now, with this injury, he would be even more of one. Doubtless, when Spencer and the rest had checked out this old terraforming plant and either captured Carl or ascertained that he wasn't there, he, Cormac, would be in for a tongue lashing. Quite possibly Spencer would decide she no longer needed his services.

"Can you fly a shuttle injured like that?" she abruptly enquired.

Of course he could; he nodded.

"We'll head straight out to the terraforming plant and start searching. When you get to the shuttle, you bring it straight out there." As she turned away an area map arrived in his aug, almost like a dismissal. It gave the coordinates of the old terraforming plant some fifty miles away.

"I've told Sadist to come in above us now, since if Thrace is here I rather doubt he's now unaware of our presence. It should arrive in about an hour and begin scanning the plant. But we'll get out there and start searching." She gazed about at them. "Let's move." She led the way out and Gorman, Travis and Crean followed. Only Crean looked back, her expression unreadable.

"Cold bastards, those Polity agents," said Adsel.

Cormac glanced across at her, then scanned round for his pulse-gun. He found it lying under a table by the foot of one of Tarren's men, who was unconscious—snoring in fact.

"What are you going to do with them?" he asked.

"Those identified as murderers become fertilizer, just like him." Adsel gestured towards the hooper. "The rest get to leave if there's a ship left, if not they work for their keep."

Cormac stared for a moment more at the hooper, who now seemed to be sagging closer to the floor. He felt a stab of sadness. Here was a crime he could do nothing about, a crime that might well have been committed before he was born. Returning his attention to Adsel, he reckoned the people here would probably do all right. Presumably they now possessed weapons, if Spencer's comment about a weapons cache was anything to go by, and the will to use them. It struck him as unlikely there would be any more Tarrens coming here, since people like that, though quite prepared to kill, did not like risking their lives unless there was profit to be made and no other options available. It did occur to him, however, that in this Adsel, they might end up with a completely home-grown despot.

"I'll be able to get to the shuttle myself," he said as, with difficulty, he holstered his pulse-gun.

"I imagine so," said Adsel, "but I wouldn't want any of my people mistaking you for one of Tarren's men—it's been getting quite nasty out there."

The moment he and Adsel reached the courtyard, Cormac saw what she meant. The water in the interlinked ponds was now red, and a shoal of the troutlike fish had gathered underneath a floating corpse clad in a grey envirosuit, whether to feed or just out of curiosity was difficult to tell. Out in the garden were two more corpses—both also Tarren's men. One of them had obviously been shot numerous times through the back with a pulse-rifle, the other was hanging from a palm tree, optic cable wound around his neck and secured over one of the sawn-back scales on the trunk. His hands were tied behind his back and his face black, tongue protruding. He had died there. Trying to be coldly analytical, Cormac realised that someone must have held onto his feet while he strangled, to stop him from supporting his own weight on the lower tree scales.

"Lot of bitterness here," he observed.

Adsel just glanced at him blankly, then dismissively looked away again.

In the airlock she put on a breather mask pulled from within her bright clothing, and they headed out towards the spaceport. Three ships were rising from the ground and another, still on the ground, was smoking, muted fires visible inside through blast holes in its hull, sustained by internal air supply and doubtless soon to be extinguished by the oxygen-free outer atmosphere. Numerous locals were scattered here and there, and numerous corpses lay sprawled on the ground, many wearing the same kind of bright clothing as Adsel. When they finally reached the shuttle, all under the watchful gaze of a crowd of locals gathered about the nissen huts, Adsel stepped back.