‘It could have just asked,’ said Carn from where he sat rubbing at his arm above his silvered hand. The technician was studying Cormac’s open chest with great interest.

‘I think you’re right,’ Cormac said to Mika. ‘It was almost as if it was frantically searching the planet for them, and when it didn’t find them there it turned its attention to us and grabbed them as quickly as it could.’

‘Desperately,’ added Mika.

‘I don’t know. Certainly without any regard for human life. We were lucky Hubris could take that kind of punishment.’

He fell silent. At least, most of them were lucky. Mika had been dealing with various injuries for some twenty hours now. Three of the crew were in life-support canisters, awaiting return to civilization. They might survive, though they would then be spending a long time in a regrowth tank. One of the runcible technicians had not been even that lucky; her head had been crushed to pulp when one of the runcible components had shifted and caught her against a wall.

‘Did Chaline have anything to say?’ he asked her.

‘Repairs are well under way, but she’s not happy about the delays. She’s becoming very single-minded about her runcible.’

Mika stepped back from him with her gloved hands held up and away from her white coat. The gloves were quite bloody. She looked up at the screen above where Carn was sitting. This screen showed a scanned image of Cormac’s chest. He had only looked at it once.

‘Aiden?’ he asked.

‘He retrieved the shuttle. Cento’s been stored . . . so has the shuttle; it’s beyond repair. They’re getting another one out of storage as soon as the shuttle bay has been repaired. Chaline was panicking about the heavy-lifter, but it was undamaged.’

She stepped close and started manipulating things in his chest again.

‘Heavy-lifter?’

‘In storage . . . one heavy-lifter and four minishuttles. Chaline needs the lifter to take down the runcible.’

‘Oh . . . seems we might be all right . . .’

Mika did not immediately reply. Cormac felt more movement, then heard the low drone of the bone welder. He glanced down at that moment and wished he hadn’t. From his solar plexus upwards, the skin and muscle of his chest had been peeled back. Mika had a finger shoved through a hole between two obviously broken ribs and was running the tip of the welder along the break. Cormac could smell something strangely dusty. Calcium particles had escaped the electrostatic process that was laying them down in the breaks.