At last Hork flicked over his controls and pushed himself away from the panel. "You may as well let the animals rest," he said to Dura. "That's as far as we're going."

Dura frowned and peered out of the windows. "We can't penetrate any deeper?"

Hork shrugged, and yawned elaborately. "Not unless a channel through the bergs opens up. The bergs are like a solid mass from here on in — you can see for yourself. No, this is the end of the journey." He drifted up through the cabin, took some fragments of untouched leaf matter from the pigs' trough and chewed it without enthusiasm. He handed more handfuls of food to Dura. "Here," he said.

Dura took the food and bit into it thoughtfully. The whine of the turbine was stilled now, and she was suspended in a silence broken only by the hoarse wheezing of the pigs and by the soft thumping of hyperonic fragments against the magnetic shield. The pigs, still bound into their harnesses, were trembling with the panic of their blocked flight; their six-fold eyes rolled. As she ate, Dura ran her hands over the dilated pores of their flanks; the simple action of soothing the frightened animals — of tending creatures even more scared than herself — seemed to calm her.

Hork folded his arms, his massive shoulder muscles bunching under his glittering costume. "Well, this is the strangest picnic I've ever had."

"What do we do now?"

"Who knows?" He grinned at her, a fragment of his professional charm showing. "Maybe that's all we've come so far to find." He pointed out of the window. "Corestuff. Hard, dangerous and dead. Anyway, it's not over yet. We've only just arrived, after all. We can stay here for days, if we have to."

Dura laughed. "Maybe you should go out and make a speech. Wake the Colonists out of their thousand-year slumber."

Hork studied her impassively, his heavy jaw working; then he turned away from her, rebuffing her completely.

She felt alone and a little foolish. In the renewed silence of the cabin, her fear crowded in once more. She stroked the quivering pigs and sucked on leaf-matter.

She wondered how long they would have to wait here, before Hork would give up — or, terrifyingly, before something happened.

In the end, they didn't have to wait very long at all.

—

Hork screamed, his voice thin and high with terror.

Somehow Dura had fallen asleep again. She jolted awake, the muggy Air thick in her lungs and eyes. She looked around quickly.