Through the long hollow bay Killeen heard the Family furtively snatch weapons from clips, shuffle across the tile deck, fade into hiding places. Quick, unhesitating, almost instinctual.

Killeen pushed Toby into a hollow beneath a steaming sulfurous vat. The boy protested, wanting to see what would happen. Killeen kept a firm hand on the boy’s chest as he listened, figured.

Anything downlooking in the IR would see the vats ripe in red. Hard to pick out humans, then. Adequate shelter for the moment, but the Family would be pinned down. Once the ones up above were spread widely, each human who emerged would be a ripe moving blob, target-simple.

Killeen activated his boots. He stepped clear and leaped for the rim of the nearest vat. He landed unsteadily on the narrow steel ledge, felt his balance going. If he was lucky his IR image blended with the vat vapor. He wobbled, trying to see above, inhaling a rank biting lungful.

A tinny clank to his left.

He hesitated, starting to get scared. His arms wind-milled to keep steady.

Another clank.

He leaped. Off at an angle this time, vector chosen more by his toppling than by his plan.

He soared into the high arching vault. A sudden coldness invaded his chest and he felt a thousand hostile eyes probe him. He did not know the smooth curve he followed was a parabola but sensed immediately that he would hang too long at the apex, too warm and radiant against the cold ceiling. So as he passed a broad girder he lunged and grasped it. He hauled himself onto a rough shelf deep in rust flakes.

He rolled, lost his grip, almost fell off the other side. The dust of ages prickled his nose. The slumbering dark seemed shot through with flashes of yellow and ivory. Killeen got to his hands and knees and blinked to let his eyes adjust.

He was staring into the face of a mech. It was a three-eyed navvy, with skin of burnished organiform and blunt brass seize-and-draw hands. It wasn’t a fighter but it lunged at him, face coming up fast in Killeen’s still-speckled vision.

He jerked a ramrod launcher from his belt and held it forward and the navvy—knowing nothing of fighting, and obviously commandeered by some higher form, enlisted for this—slammed into it. The sharp point sensed the mech coming and darted sideways to the softest spot. Killeen held it firmly and felt the point go in, just beneath a thin ceramic slitvent. The point found a circuit, worked its magic, and the mech abruptly froze.

But this was just a simple navvy. Killeen rolled left to see around it. Across the chasm were further webbed girders, solid black lines scratched in gray gloom. Something skittered along one. No, three. Opalescent forms moving in quick little rushes, surefooted.

And beyond, in gathering muskgloom, were two more. They had traction clasps which clamped them to the girders and permitted easy movement. Long bodies, a feathery quality to their gliding gait. And between the wedgelines of girders, smaller forms prowled among the knobby iron struts.

Killeen’s tongue touched his farthest back tooth a certain way and he sent Stay still. They’re up top, on a low-frequency channel he would never understand but had used throughout his life:

His only advantage was the navvy body. He pulled a pulse pistol from the belt and awkwardly leaned around the lifeless hulk. The nearest target was coming his way, perhaps curious but more likely following a search pattern.

Below, the vats fumed covering vapors. Killeen flashed a quick look in the IR and saw a mottled haze, pinpricked by bright sources which might be human. As soon as this bunch of mechs scanned the floor, they would select targets, he knew.

He shot the first one clean. Its fore-eyes flared blue and then it died. The next target started to turn his way. He kicked hard at the navvy body. It rocked unsteadily. That would make it look active. Immediately something smacked into it, delivering crackling blue webs.

All right. That would tell them that this mech was dead and the real target had to be elsewhere. Good enough. He kicked it again and it teetered. A second bolt hit it and blew a tread off the far side. The navvy wrenched sideways and fell, exposing Killeen.

He was ready and fired quickly at anything he could see. Already an illusion of misty orange leaped into his right eye. He knew they would blind him if they could find the right key into his nervous system.

Two more dim profiles shot at the mech as it fell. He traced them by their sudden spurts of emission in the radio. He thought he had hit them. Then the mech struck the deck below with a splintering crash. It roared in his ears, which had enhanced themselves without his thinking of it. The crash brought cries of surprise in his inner ear, from the Family.

A bright green volley glared at his right. A crisp sputtering answered, bringing the descending hurrriiii of a wounded mech.

A hoarse shout of Got ’im! and more firing.

Killeen felt the odd whoooom of passing bolts. If one struck it could wriggle into his circuits, seize his nerves or worse. He fired back at the source. The mechs were of a class he could not tell, but they moved quickly in the gloom and were not mere scavengers. They did not aim to kill, but to probe and subvert.

There! Up!

Crossin’to you, Jake.

Trackin’x Watch—

A white glare.

Jake!

The sudden brightness blinded Killeen for a moment. He kept his head down while his systems adjusted and when he looked up again there were fewer mech-signatures in the IR.

In his inner ear hoarse voices shouted.

Ledroff gave cool commands.

Someone was counting dead mechs but Killeen paid no attention. He was looking for movement among the vats.

Down a shrouded lane below came something slick. It had a narrow, ferret head and oblong body. Killeen recognized it: a Crafter.

The Crafter slipped among repair modules and threaded its way quickly through a spare-parts bin. Spindly legs jerked and found purchase.

A Crafter was not a fighter or forager. They were smart, though, able to organize navvy teams. Surely this one would not usually care about a band of scavengers which had blundered into its resting station.

But it had organized the navvys up here as a diversion while it crept below. That meant that the Crafter either felt itself threatened or else had an injunction specifically to act against humans, even if that was not its main job.

And it was only meters away from the cubby where Toby crouched.

Killeen knew he could not penetrate the Crafter’s upper body with a bolt. Only his ramrod could.

He got to his feet, crouched low, and judged distances. A beamed message to Toby would alert the Crafter. He perched to jump and—

—whooooom—a blurring, clawing cloud flooded him with brittle images of crisp yellow deserts, gritty sand, sicksweet smell of roasting flesh—all scrambled and coming fastfurious into him. He lost his balance, felt his hands and feet go coldhard numb.

He jumped anyway.

The deck rushed up at him and he leaned forward, sensing nothing in his body but able to direct his sawdust hollow hands to thrust forward on the ramrod. Wind whistled. The Crafter gleamed metalpure in pale descending light. The ramrod quivered into life, its head turning as its minute sensors sought and savored. The Crafter’s ceramic sheen beckoned it.

Killeen hit the Crafter boots first and rocked forward. The ramrod point plunged in and he felt it snake and seek and bite hard. A fast jolt of electricity shot through him and shorted to the self-ground of the Crafter, its power source exhausting itself in a snapping prickly surge.

It whined and froze.

Killeen lay on it for long moments, unscrambling his senses.

Something strong had hit him just before he dived. He listened to distant silky shouts and tried to tag the voices with names. They were all saying something about Jake but for a while he could not untangle the mingled threads.