Cento, that other Golem who had come here, being one of the two Golem who tore apart the brass killing machine Mr Crane, had kept a souvenir, Mr Crane’s arm, to replace one of his own that the killing machine tore away. But who would have thought that Skellor, who had no real previous connection with Mr Crane, would want to resurrect that deadly machine, and would be prepared to come to a place like this just to find a missing part? Cento survived the encounter; the humans did not. Mr Crane threw Ulriss into a river of magma, the other two were left exposed unsuited on the surface.

But that was it: another coincidental connection. Cento came here at precisely the time Skellor—a man controlling Jain technology—sought him out. Then they moved on: Cento and Skellor to finally die falling onto the same brown dwarf sun. And here, on this same world, awaited an object likely to be a vast repository of information that was now confirmed as being too young to be a product of the Jain, and too old to be something the Csorians made. It must be Atheter—Blegg did not know why he felt so sure, but he did. And it might provide part of the solution to the danger the likes of Skellor represented. The artefact’s importance necessitated building a ship large enough to house it: it was too valuable to keep in one place where it could become a target.

Blegg turned away from the blister and walked over to the edge of the platform. Launching himself from it, he felt the weakening tug of the gravplates as he sailed towards the inner hull. Landing right below a structural beam, he absorbed momentum with his legs, caught hold of the underside of the beam and shoved himself down to the airlock at which the shuttle was docked. No path yet led from this side to the same airlock as it was one yet to be put into service. Catching one of the grip bars beside the door, he was about to palm the lock plate but realized the inner door was already opening. He hauled himself over to the door, then inside.

‘You’re an avatar, Blegg,’ so Cormac once told him.

Blegg snorted in dismissal of the thought as the airlock filled with air, and he turned off the shimmer-shield over his face. He next pulled off his hotsuit’s helmet and shut off the air supply in the neck ring. He could transport himself over short distances, alter his body to survive in extreme environments, but in reality he was less rugged than most adapted humans, and certainly nowhere near as efficient as the Golem avatar of the Hourne AI to whom he had just spoken. Why would Earth Central have bothered to create so fragile a representative?