'Yes. They're bundled up with the clothes I came in.

Plus the other things you asked for."

Steve turned to Cadillac. 'What about your walking skins?"

'I burned them."

Steve eyed him. 'Trust you. Where're the body-paints you told me about?"

'In one of those cupboards..."

'Well, we need 'em." Steve laid the bag of precious pink cleaning leaves on top of the worksuit. 'Put these in too, plus anything else that might come in useful." He signalled Jodi and Kelso to precede him through the door. 'Okay. We're just gonna take a look around.

You've got five minutes to get changed and packed.

Then we'll go over the plan." Steve stepped quickly outside, then popped his head back into the room. 'And while you're at it, why don't you two patch things up?

We've got a long haul ahead of us, and we're gonna need each other every step of the way."

He slid the door shut and joined Jodi and Kelso at the far side of the adjoining room, whose window screens faced the side wall of the Heron Pool compound.

Kelso eyed him thoughtfully. 'I ain't too happy 'bout that lumphead walking around with all that hardware.

Suppose he turns it on us?"

'Yeah,' murmured Jodi. 'I thought we were taking these two guys back as prisoners."

'That comes later,' said Steve. 'At the moment, we're all supposed to be on the same side. You're a couple of renegades helping us make the break. You want to get back to the Big Open, and they're going back to their own people."

'And you're going with them..."

Steve shrugged. 'Listen. As long as they believe that, it's gonna make our job a whole lot easier - right?"

'I just hope you know what you're doing,' muttered Kelso.

'Trust me,' said Steve.

Steve stepped out of the pavilion on to the rear veranda and walked down the steps into the yard. Beyond it was a small vegetable garden, then a short stretch of gra.s.s which ended in a line of shrubs and trees and a stone wall.

Cadillac's domestic staff were still ranged along it, with their children perched on top.

Even though they had been watching the build-up since early morning, their attention was now riveted on the three planes preparing for take-off. Over the past months, flying machines had become a familiar sight but today's events were special because of the importance of the people involved and the surrounding pomp and ceremony.

No one noticed Steve cross quickly to the dung-heap where he had left two wooden buckets containing the usual night mix but, as he went to pick them up, the plump, bossy cook turned to pick up a wandering bare-a.s.sed infant. Recovering from her surprise, she gave him a suspicious stare. Steve tilted the bucket towards her to reveal its contents then pretended to empty it.

There was a dramatic roll of drums and Shwaah-ba-ba-BOOOMMM! The sound of three pairs of launch boosters igniting in quick succession rippled towards the pavilion. The cook hurriedly lifted the small child on to the wall and sought a foothold herself to get a better view. A full-throated roar of approval came from the seated spectators and watching troops as the Consul-General's flying-horse climbed steeply into the sky followed by his two escorts.

Steve took a firm grip on both buckets and hurried out of sight.

Entering the bath-house, he stripped off his distinctive brown uniform and donned a set of borrowed clothes: the sleeveless wrap-over top and trousers worn by the Mutes who manned the cookhouse and other services provided for the Tracker workforce. After making sure the load of ordnance that was packed round his ribs didn't show, Steve pulled a battered wide-brimmed straw hat down about his ears, collected his buckets and went down the newly worn path that linked the pavilion to the workshops behind the Heron Pool compound.

The name, which had only come into use at the beginning of the year when the project had begun, came from the pond behind the flying field.

The compound itself had been built several decades before and had originally been used to house a detachment of horse-soldiers belonging to the Min-Orota. Years of peace and partial demobilization had left it empty except for a caretaker and his family, and most of the original buildings had been dismantled and transported elsewhere.

It had then been rented by the local landowner as a feed and grain store and as winter quarters for his livestock.

Situated in a quiet rural area, close to the main east-west highway and bordering on a large stretch of grazing land, the site had appealed to Min-Orota's advisers and had been promptly repossessed. The dilapidated lean-to which was still standing in the north-west corner had been allotted to the Mute slaves, and new wooden units had been constructed to house the Trackers, their guards and overseers.

Shigamitsu, the Heron Pool commander, his two chief lieutenants and their families had been billeted in the nearby house of the local landowner - who had been obliged to find another roof to sleep under.

'Leaseholder' was a more accurate term, and the duration of the contract depended entirely on the whim of the domain-lord. Like the robber-barons of old, Min-Orota was the ultimate possessor of every square inch of land, everything on it and underneath it.

The only drawback to the compound was its size.

Workers and workshops could not both be contained within its walls.

This was why the two long-roofed structures had been erected on either side of a wide alleyway leading from the arched gate in the rear wall.

There was a six-foot gap between the southern ends of the workshops and the peeling back wall of the compound, and it had become part of the shortcut that Steve and Cadillac used when going to and from work.

The alternative would have meant going through the compound, out of the main gate, then left along the road towards Marabara.

For some unexplained reason, the rear gate was only intermittently guarded. When the Trackers began and ended work they were counted out and counted back in, but Steve had noticed that people were pa.s.sing to and fro during the day without being stopped and, perhaps because he'd been seen going backwards and forwards with Cadillac, no one challenged him when he took the shortcut to the pavilion on his own.

It was surprising, given all the ha.s.sles he had encountered elsewhere.

Maybe it was because the privilege of working there - as with the Mutes who had been selected for the job of roadrunner - meant that security wasn't a problem. As Simons had said to Jodi and Kelso, no Tracker in his right mind would do anything to screw up a sweet little number like this.

Whatever the reason, it suited Steve. The sweet little number was due to come to an abrupt end. And that could prove tough on the renegade linemen who made up the original workforce, but Steve found it hard to be sorry for them. Not knowing who he was, they had treated him with the same contempt as they would any other Mute errand-boy. And when they had realized he was smarter than they were and could perform tasks that were beyond them, they had gone out of their way to give him a hard time.

Carrying a loaded bucket in each hand, Steve stepped through the arch and surveyed the interior of the compound. He now had his back against the north wall.

To his left lay the quarters of the j.a.ps and other d.i.n.ks that made up the permanent staff. Ahead of him was an a.s.sortment of wooden buildings - cookhouse, laundry, bath-house, clothing and bedding store staffed by Mutes.

Set along the wall immediately to his right were the ramshackle remains of the buildings once used by the horse-soldiers and now housing the Mutes. Beyond them, in the north-west corner, was the spot where the compound's collective s.h.i.t was dumped until it was carted away to neighbouring farms.

The two long bunk-houses in which the Tracker workforce was now confined lay side by side, parallel with the west wall. They were separated from their Mute neighbours by a fifteen-yard strip of raked gravel which contained four cruciform whipping-posts used for minor infractions. On the occasions Steve had seen them in use, the victim had simply been left tied up for a day in a position guaranteed to rack him with excruciating cramps; most defaulters, whose crime was not showing a sufficient degree of respect to a pa.s.sing Iron Master, were usually made to kneel on the sharp-edged gravel chips with their hands on their heads for an hour or two.

There was one other building of even greater importance; the guard-house. This was the first structure that met a visitor's eye when he entered by the main, southern gate and found himself in an open area which was used as a parade ground. The guard-house lay facing the main gate, on the far side of this open s.p.a.ce.

Running along the wall on the eastern edge of the parade ground was an off-duty cantina for the lower ranks, where they could meet wives and relatives, and where itinerant traders were allowed to offer their wares. A similar building, against the west wall, offered another form of relaxation that Steve had never encountered in an inst.i.tutionalized form. Cadillac had told him it was a bordello staffed by half a dozen self-employed females.

The whole business of money and the commercial activity which underpinned Iron Master society was a totally new concept, which Steve had found difficult to grasp. The idea of having to work to earn units of currency which you then handed to the person you wanted to jack up seemed quite bizarre.

The cantina and the bordello were of no concern to Steve. His target was the guard-house, but he could not see it from his present position alongside the archway at the back of the compound. He was also unable to see the double entrance gates, but guessed they would probably be open. A handful of the thirty soldiers who manned the guard-house at any one time would be stationed at the gate, gossiping with pa.s.sing farm-girls and bargaining with pedlars anxious to sell their wares to the patrons of the cantina.