‘You could say that, I suppose. That shaft was hit as well: sealed under a pile of rubble and molten rock.’

Was Dragon really just throwing a tantrum?

Whatever it was, it ceased twenty hours later.

* * *

‘Weapons charged and ready to fire,’ said the innocuous voice of Hubris. Those weapons were what Carn had hinted might be used to excavate the artefact: to blow away two kilometres of rock. They were now directed towards the curve of Samarkand from where Dragon approached, silhouetted against the dim sun like some fighting machine from Earth’s bloody past. The weapons could be used now; at this distance it was possible to prevent impact and not be damaged by flashback.

‘Open a channel,’ said Cormac. ‘Let’s see what it wants.’

‘Dragon accelerating at three Gs,’ said Hubris.

‘We can’t stand another collision yet,’ said Chaline.

‘Dragon, if you come closer than one hundred kilometres we will fire on you. This is our perimeter,’ said Cormac.

‘Dragon slowing . . . two hundred and seventy kilometres . . . two hundred and fifty . . .’

‘If it looks as if it’s building up to let loose another charge, fire on it anyway,’ Cormac told Hubris, leaving the channel open so Dragon would hear.

‘Where is it? Where is it?’ boomed Dragon’s voice over the speakers.

‘Where is what, Dragon?’

‘The criminal! Where is the criminal?’

‘We do not know about any criminal. We came here to investigate the destruction of the Samarkand runcible, and the consequent deaths of ten thousand people.’

‘—one hundred and fifty kilometres . . . one hundred and forty . . .’

When Dragon spoke next, its voice had dropped to a conversational level. ‘It killed your people. I tried to stop it, Ian Cormac, but it escaped and killed your people. The confinement vessel should have held it.’

Cormac turned and looked at Carn. ‘Confinement vessel?’

Carn shrugged. ‘What the hell would have needed adamantium to confine it? It must have been quite something, and to break out . . .’

Dragon answered his question. ‘The creature confined was a Maker. Its kind made me. It is a criminal . . . In your limited way, you would call it psychopath. It is an energy creature.’

Cormac looked at Chaline. ‘Psychopath,’ he said.

To Dragon he said, ‘This Maker, it made the nanomycelium that damaged the runcible buffers?’

‘It did. I picked up readings that indicated anomalies in this sector and, knowing the confinement vessel was here, I sent my creatures, by way of your runcibles, to investigate. They came here after the Maker escaped its vessel. It left the mycelium to destroy your runcible and prevent them following.’

Cormac closed the channel momentarily. ‘It ties with what you found out about that guardian,’ he said to Mika. ‘Same technology as Dragon uses. That’s plausible if its kind made Dragon.’

Mika said, ‘Plausibility does not denote truth.’

‘It does not, and of course there are your thoughts on what Dragon might or might not make,’ said Cormac, looking at her meaningfully.