'If you stay out there you could be dead within five hours.' Saul felt a hint of human irritation arising within him.

'Your sister too,' added the Messina clone.

This information threw Saul into a fugue that lasted a whole second, then he began searching cam data and footage, located Var's overseer's office, glanced at a recent report from Langstrom a and realized he had not been keeping his eye on that particular ball. Next he linked through to Alex's backup and then Ghort's, and began decoding both present data streams and recent memory.

'What happened?' he asked meanwhile.

'He shot her . . . thought she was me.'

'Is she dead?' Even as he flatly asked the question, Saul felt hollowness in the pit of his stomach. Just as with the ships out there, he had been in error: he had not done enough, he had got it wrong. The moment he knew they existed he should have killed the chipped rebels. Here then was the price for his attempt to use a light touch, not to be so dictatorial, to try and put humans in a position to solve their own problems.

'I don't know,' Alex replied. 'She was shot through the gut and chest when I saw her, with maybe one through her visor too.'

The words fell like blows. Saul now felt the terror of some kind of disconnection a as if he was falling into an abyss a and a huge regret. For a second he just could not incorporate this simple data; could not accept what Alex was telling him. Then at last some of the data from Alex began to unravel, visual only, showing the view through his visor of a great mass of rubble and sand. Saul began to work with it and cross-referencing a cam view provided confirmation that Saul was seeing sulphur compounds scraped up from the surface of Io. Alex next switched his attention to the gap in the hull through which all this had poured, before turning aside to peer up at a tall bulkhead wall. Memory decoded then, and Saul replayed the earlier exchange between the two men . . .

Alex had little time to react. He couldn't fire on Ghort, so he threw himself backwards to the opening and tried to propel himself out of sight. At that moment the entire ship shuddered and he found himself falling away from the opening before slamming feet first into the very same beam juncture Ghort had concealed himself behind. Now looking towards the outer wall of the ring, Alex watched a storm of material pouring in through the hole in the hull and mounding up. This seemed to last an age, the ship shuddering constantly all around him. Then he was falling again, dropping across the ring section till again coming down feet-first on a hard surface. His recently healed leg shrieked in protest, then gave way underneath him. He had time enough to register that it had broken before a wall of sulphurous rubble swamped him.

Saul pulled himself out of the alluring grip of the memory and returned to the moment, still struggling to accept what his logic told him as he began reading the decoding from Ghort. When the ship hit Io, the man had managed to drag Var into a side corridor, so he was not thrown after Alex, nor did he suffer such a fall when it righted itself on the surface. He had moved on, a quarter of the way around the ring, and was now in a branch corridor, one that terminated against a wall of asteroidal ice. A patch sat in place over the persistent leak in his suit, but he was cold, in pain, thoroughly aware of the damp feel of blood inside his suit, though still standing and still able to move. Var lay at his feet, and he hoped to use her to bargain for his life. In a moment he would move on, work further round the ring to get as far away from that homicidal clone as he could.

Back to Alex now, who was glaring at the section of bulkhead leading up to the opening he had fallen from, searching for handholds, while his tracking program gave him Ghort's location over three kilometres away. The Messina clone was not far from the massive rubble of sulphur compounds scraped up from the surface of Io, and which had swamped him as the ship righted itself on the surface. He had been buried in it and spent the best part of an hour digging himself free. Saul made calculations and realized that, judging by her injuries, Var needed treatment fast, and that with a broken leg Alex could not hope to get to her quickly enough, let alone deal with Ghort. Yet, on another level, Saul also understood that his calculations had their element of denial.

'Alex,' he instructed, 'head to your immediate right. There you'll find a maintenance tunnel under the vortex generator, which will bring you out in what remains of the Arboretum endcap. From there you'll easily be able to make your way round to Arcoplex Two. I've just sent a map to your implant, so go now and get yourself seen to.'

'But Ghort . . . your sister?' Alex protested.

'Ghort is badly injured and dying, and my sister is already dead,' Saul replied. He was only saying that to get Alex to desist . . . wasn't he? Saul had no way of knowing how true his latter statement might be . . . surely. 'Further effort on your part will prove futile. You've done well, Alex, but this is now over.'

Alex hesitated, but then he turned and obeyed.

Saul now hesitated too, then exerted control over his voice and planned the words he would use before he made another call.

'Ghort,' he said.

'Hah . . . wondered when you'd be talking . . . to me.'

'If you get my sister out of there, you get to live,' Saul replied, his tone washed of emotion as he sent a map to Ghort's implant. 'You'll be met by Hannah Neumann and some medics at the place I've designated.'

'Go to hell,' said Ghort, abruptly sitting down.

Saul badly wanted just to kill the man, but again suppressed emotion. Formulae of human responses assembled and solved in his mind, and he knew by Ghort's attitude that the man thought his bargaining chip was no longer valid, and that Var was indeed dead. Keeping himself utterly under control, Saul explained, 'She might appear dead to you, but Hannah Neumann might still be able to do something. Please try to get my sister to her swiftly.'

Ghort just sat panting for a moment, then suddenly stood up. In the light gravity of Io, he hauled up Var, loose-limbed and flopping like any new-made corpse, managed to throw her over his shoulder, then set out along the route Saul had detailed. Meanwhile, the medics Saul had summoned from Arcoplex Two were on their way. He had done the best he could, and could now only wait for Hannah Neumann's verdict.

He focused next on the Fist as it swung in orbit around Io and descended towards the horizon, doubtless with its ground forces getting ready to disembark, and struggled to care. After a long period of just watching, he finally managed to get his thoughts in motion again. From an intellectual distance he considered how it would have been optimal to have ramped up robot activity the moment this ship went out of sensor range, but its drones were still nearby and he did not want the ship's captain to have any reason to consider firing on him when it rounded the moon and finally landed. He ran calculations on likely landing sites, checked the energy ratios in the vortex generator, and coldly made tentative selections of generator containment coils.

And he waited.

Command Bartholomew gazed at his screen, studying various drone views of Saul's ship; registering the numerous holes in its hull, and the peculiar chemical fires burning inside. Deep radar and other sensing techniques showed that there was still life and movement there. Many internal compartments were charged with atmosphere, as were the three cylinder worlds, and certainly there was some metallic movement detectable, which meant Saul's robots were still a threat. However, the ship was definitely down and would not be going anywhere. Readings showed that the vortex generator, the only drive presently available to it, was incrementally winding down. Bartholomew also wondered if an Alcubierre warp could be generated both in a gravity-well and through the ground beneath.

'Perhaps I should put some slugs into those,' suggested Oerlon, speaking from a screen frame and indicating, with pointer arrows, the atmosphere sections on a schematic growing steadily more detailed as more data came in.

'You can if you wish,' Bartholomew replied, 'though I feel that the human crew is hardly a danger. Saul's robots will be the main problem. You must also avoid hitting the Arboretum cylinder, since that is the last known location of the Gene Bank samples.'

Oerlon grunted and shrugged. 'Then there's that new section below the old Argus Station Tech Central. It looks like a likely location for our friend Alan Saul.'

'Whom we have been instructed to capture alive,' Bartholomew reminded him. 'No, you land your ship, and return fire only if fired upon. Once down, you launch the ground assault and use your ship's weapons to cover the troops.' He paused thoughtfully for a moment. 'This was one of the least likely scenarios envisaged, but we do have assault plans drawn up, though they were originally drawn up with Mars in mind. Scenario B of the two, I think.'

Oerlon nodded. 'Spiderguns in through the top of the ship, main human assault through the equator, however it's positioned. Five-man teams covering a sixth man, who carries the tank-buster. Limited EM pulse fire in system-critical areas, because missiles will do less damage to the ship's computer system.' Oerlon grimaced. 'I've had plenty of time to memorize all of it.'

'Then I don't need to issue you any further orders,' said Bartholomew. 'I want constant tacom updates, but, otherwise, go and get the job done, Captain Oerlon.'

The other captain nodded, and his screen frame blanked out.

Now the drone views showed deep black shadows around Saul's ship as the surface there became subject to an intensity of light it probably had not seen in billions of years. One drone swung round and tilted up to show the Fist descending through the thin atmosphere of Io, its main fusion engine bright as a welding arc while steering thrusters flashed and glared like nighttime gunshots. It came down fast a couple of kilometres to one side of Saul's ship, poised on its fusion torch, then, with a blast of steering thrusters, slid over the top of the five-kilometre-high mountain of metal. The flame seared the pole of Saul's ship and hull metal sagged, melted and burned away, opening up an extended view into the interior.

Bartholomew smiled. Using a fusion flame like that had not been part of any of the scenarios, but was a clever move on Oerlon's part. Now the spiderguns could quickly swarm inside, over a wide area, rather than go one or two at a time through the railgun holes.

The Fist headed two kilometres beyond Saul's ship and then descended, folding down segments from its lower hemisphere. These were its landing feet, but also the assault force's disembarkation points. Finally it began to settle, dust clouds and chemical fires blasting out from it a coming down onto the surface like a globe on a plinth. As the fusion flame went out, a big door opened down from the landing foot facing nearest to Saul's ship and settled as a ramp.

First out of the Fist came a horde of ATVs sporting ten-mil machine guns and EM tank-busters. These were merely ground cover for the crossing towards Saul's ship, and would be abandoned once the assault proper began. Next came the spiderguns a at the sight of which Bartholomew gave an involuntary shiver. About half of these had their weaponized limbs altered: the lethal firepower of machine guns that fired depleted uranium beads being replaced with EM tank-busters and with launchers firing armour-piercing missiles. These were effectively robot killers.

Next came seventeen hundred heavily armed and armoured troops, some carrying portable tank-busters, some carrying missile-launchers, and all carrying Kalashtech assault rifles. They seemed overly laden with equipment, but in the low gravity, and with their VC suits motorized, they moved almost as fast as the spiderguns. Now, on seeing this force swarming towards the shattered behemoth that had once been Argus Station and which had come close to being converted into an interstellar vessel, Bartholomew felt a kind of shame. It seemed too much like overkill now that the enemy was all but beaten, and it seemed to grate on some sensitivity to fairness inside him.

Earth Ruger's first thought, as consciousness returned, was I'm still alive, swiftly followed by not for long.

The drop shuttle was full of acrid smoke and emitting distinctly unhealthy groans and screeches below the constant roar; Earth kept changing places with sky in the view through the front screen and Trove was screaming obscenities while she wrestled with the controls. Beside him he could hear Galahad muttering something that sounded like a prayer, until he actually heard the words and realized she was reciting the names of extinct animals. Then, with a sound like a bullwhip cracking, followed by another sound like a ground car going into a crusher, deceleration threw him hard against his straps. At the same time, something hit the back of his seat with a gristly thud and a hand flopped loosely past him. It seemed the one remaining soldier had not strapped himself in securely and, if that sound was anything to go by, might not get another opportunity to do so.

Earth and sky gradually ceased to swap places with such alarming regularity, the horizon settling shakily into the horizontal. Then the bullwhip cracked again and the pressure came off, the hand dropping out of sight.

'Fuck it!' shouted Trove. 'Not enough!'

The horizon started wobbling and began to tilt. Another crack resounded, and once again Ruger was thrown hard against his straps, the hand rising up beside him as if to indicate, yes, I'm still here. He noted flecks of blood spattering his suit's shoulder pad, gathering into globules and launching for the screen, but guessed it wasn't his own. The drop shuttle groaned long and hard, and behind he could hear the distinctive sounds of power shorting out a easily recognizable since he had previously heard it aboard the Scourge. With a fourth crack, the pressure came off yet again. But by now the horizon had stabilized.

'That's it,' said Trove, 'we're all out of chutes.'

Clay knew that, without her voice coming over his suit radio, it would have been difficult to hear her through the racket all around him, and he certainly would not have detected the fatalism in her tone.

'And what,' asked Galahad's brutish bodyguard, 'does that mean?'

'It means aileron, thruster and undercarriage braking only,' she replied. 'That's if the undercarriage even comes down, which I doubt.'

Oh, good, though Ruger, we're going to crash and burn. He felt almost like shrugging to some unseen audience. Galahad seemed to believe that some predestination guided the course of her life, and now Clay Ruger was starting to think the same about himself. Apparently he was fated to die in the crash of some sort of flying vessel. He swore to himself, in that same moment, that if he did survive this, his only route off the ground henceforth would be via stairs or a lift . . . well, maybe not even the lift.

'Map screen,' said Trove. 'I need somewhere long and level . . . and over ten kilometres of it.'

Sack obligingly called up a map on the console screen. 'What about Outback Spaceport?'

'No good. It's going to be central India, if we're lucky.'

'What about a water landing?' Sack asked calmly.

'It would tear us apart.'

Sack diligently began searching the screen. 'What about this?' He showed a map which, from Clay's seat, seemed to be all sprawl but for a long white smear through the middle of it.

'Run the navcom,' Trove replied.

Apparently this bodyguard was a bit more than just muscle, for he worked the navigation console before him like a pro before coming up with some figures.

'Got it,' Trove replied, putting the drop shuttle into a slow turn, the horizon tilting. Steering thrusters then rumbled and the horizon rose as Clay's straps bit into him again. He looked for the rising hand, but it didn't appear this time. Maybe the soldier behind had managed to get back into his seat . . . or maybe not.

The sound from outside was now like a gale blowing through an empty windowless office block, and the screen had taken on a reddish tint as if the tough heat-resistant lamination of glass and other materials had come new-made from the furnace. Clay did not know whether this was supposed to happen, but he did know that the internal air conditioning was struggling to get rid of the smoke. The drop shuttle levelled, and now the recognizable shapes of land masses became visible ahead.

'Okay, time to show it our belly,' said Trove.

The horizon dropped out of sight to reveal a deep mauve sky scattered with stars. The roaring, which it had seemed impossible could grow any louder, nevertheless rose in a crescendo. This just continued interminably, the sky becoming bluer before taking on an orange blush.

'This isn't the dawn,' said Trove. 'It's because of Scotonis.'

Meteorites appeared next, scratching lines across an object glowing in the sky just like Jupiter's red spot.

'I didn't think there would be debris,' remarked Clay.

Trove glanced round. 'You're back with us, are you? Well, no, the construction station was completely vaporized. The debris is from Core One and the Hubble Array. Looks as if Core Two survived, though whether anyone aboard did is another matter.'

'Right,' said Clay.

An hour passed, maybe even more time; Clay wasn't counting and was sure he had been dozing when Trove spoke next. 'We've got the nose cams and screen display back.'

Three-quarters of the way up, the forward screen divided horizontally. The top section showed just daylight sky while the lower part revealed the view down towards Earth. Oceans sped by underneath, land masses now took on depth and contour, though that image seemed to be of low pixel count, what with all that land having been subsumed by the cubic structures of sprawl buildings.

At length they entered night again, but a lurid night with a portion of the sky seeming on fire. They were much lower when ocean terminated against electric-lit land mass, and Trove announced, 'East coast of India.'

In the new light, and as low down as they were now, the sprawls became much more visible, and Clay spotted occasional cleared areas amidst them where Galahad's dozers and crushing machines had been at work. Notable too were large areas of sprawl where no electric lights gleamed at all, and he was overcome by a strange spooky feeling on considering how much down there now lay empty. A lake flitted by underneath, divided into fish-farm squares, each reflecting orange but also occupied by black drifts, so probably devoid of fish. Navigational schematics appeared all across the screen, datum lines giving their route in, counters giving speed and desired speed a and much more that Clay did not care to recognize.

'Putting landing gear down now,' said Trove.

Clay felt the vibration but he could not hear the motors, pumps or hydraulics at work. However, he did hear the crash and the abrupt change to the exterior roar. This was good, surely?

'It's down?' Sack enquired.

'No,' Trove replied.

'What did I just hear, then?'

'You heard the landing gear going halfway down and jamming, which means that if it doesn't get torn off or forced back into the ship when we touch down, we'll probably be doing somersaults.'

Okay, not so good.

'Target coordinates in sight,' said Trove. Gleaming with reflected orange light, something was rising over the horizon, amidst the sprawls. She glanced at the map on the console screen. 'This your idea of a joke, Sack?'

'It was the biggest level area available,' he replied.

'Right.'

'Ailerons.' The roar changed in tone again. 'And thrusters.' Another sound next: like wind blowing down a drain pipe. The ship tilted forwards, raising the horizon. Trove lost the liquid crystal display so as to give them a lot of sky over a line of orange, with sprawl towers ranged on either side.

'Pray, if you think anyone's listening!' Trove shouted.

The drop shuttle hit, began shuddering horribly and tilting further forwards, bringing more of the plain ahead into view. Then, with a crash and a further shudder as of a ground car running over a zero asset indigent, it dropped again.

'That's the landing gear gone!'

They were definitely down, and Clay allowed hope sufficiently out of its box to take a glimpse at the steadily dropping numbers in the bottom corner of the screen. They were slowing and there now seemed to be nothing but that plain ahead.

'We're down!' Trove shouted excitedly. 'We're going to make it!'

Out of the plain ahead, which would probably have appeared white in daylight, a yellow smear expanded and resolved. It seemed toy-like at first, but steadily grew into a huge automated bulldozer with a great serrated roller behind it, parked slantwise across their airfield.

'Fuck it!' Trove added, wrenching the steering column to one side.

Argus Saul gazed numbly at the approaching army and knew that the old robots and his new conjoining robots that crouched throughout his ship would never be enough, could never be enough. Yes, he had thousands of robots under his control, but every one of them could be knocked out easily by an EM pulse. The approaching human troops carried enough tank-busters to do that job, let alone the specially adapted spiderguns he'd just scanned. This was a force that could take his ship with ease, and could achieve all the objectives Serene Galahad had demanded, but for one: capturing him alive. That simply would not happen. He could shut down his body and brain in an instant, and in the same instant scramble his backups. His suit also possessed another option fitted just below his ribcage, in the form of a slab of high explosive. They would not capture him alive, nor would they be taking his body back for Serene Galahad to gloat over.

Dying always remained an option for him, but not yet.

Through a cam out in Arcoplex Two, Saul watched as Alex, his leg in a plastic cast, strapped himself into an acceleration chair and lay back, then he switched to another cam and watched the lid of the cryogenic pod thump closed. The numbness he felt had spread through his entire being; it seemed almost part of his make-up now: cold, just like the inside of that canister. He replayed events, now several hours old, in his mind, and tried to see if there was any way he could change the verdict: Through the sensors of a construction robot, which had been making repairs outside the outer endcap of Arcoplex Two, Saul watched Hannah, followed by two medics carrying a stretcher as they intercepted Ghort. He handed Var over to the medics without fuss, then just stood there, swaying.

'Prognosis?' Saul enquired, speaking through all their suit radios.

After she'd checked the readouts from Var's suit, then had run some kind of scanner over her body from head to foot, Hannah rocked back on her heels. She took her time in replying: 'She's been dead for over an hour. There's nothing I can do.'

'Of course there's something,' Saul immediately replied, then damned that small part of him that had made this response. 'Get her to a cryogenic cylinder in the Meat Locker,' he continued coldly. 'The future is always mutable.'

'I'm so sorry, Alan,' said Hannah as the two medics quickly strapped Var into a stretcher and carted her away. 'The bullet damage isn't much different to what you yourself received, but her brain has gone without oxygen for too long, and there's further damage from the sulphur compounds penetrating her suit.' There were tears in Hannah Neumann's voice, and also an underlying fear.

'Yes, I understand,' said Saul. 'And my sister was reluctant to have an implant and get herself backed up. That means she is probably irretrievably dead.'

'She was a great woman,' said Hannah. 'Very human and humane.'

No, the past could not be changed . . . at least not yet.

Saul now recollected, despite the situation, a brief bitter amusement at Hannah's words. Humane Var who had slaughtered the Inspectorate personnel in Antares Base, later executed Rhone of Mars Science, and here murdered two more people. Even now, Saul found himself constantly amazed by the human propensity for self-deception. He was also aware of the reason for the underlying fear evident in Hannah's voice. She had expected this loss to tip him over. She had expected it to be the moment he ceased to care at all for anyone, and the moment he turned into the monster she had always expected him to be.

As Hannah had moved away to follow the two carrying Var's body, he had said, 'Get her into the cylinder quickly, Hannah.'

'What about him?' she had asked, gesturing to Ghort.

'I will deal with him,' he had stated. 'Go quickly now.'