‘And if he’s lying, and we surrender our weapons,’ said Langstrom, ‘you know damned well what Smith will do with us.’

‘Have you recently received any word from Smith?’ Saul interjected.

Langstrom shook his head involuntarily, then said, ‘No word, as yet.’

There was nothing to stop Smith from communicating with his troops isolated here, but it seemed he considered them even more dispensable than the robots he had withdrawn from the fighting earlier. Saul also wondered if Smith was now receiving medical treatment, just like he himself would need very soon.

‘He wasn’t lying about these readerguns here,’ said the bulky man, eyeing two corpses sprawled at the edge of the tubeway. ‘And he’s not lying about the robots either.’

Langstrom nodded. ‘What guarantees are you offering?’

‘You know I need to offer you none,’ Saul replied.

The man again tried for some response from Smith, but got nothing. He then cursed and tossed down his machine pistol.

‘Smart move,’ Saul remarked.

‘You’re watching?’ Langstrom asked.

‘As I told you, I have control in a limited area, but my control there is absolute.’

‘You’ll let my men come in?’ Gesturing up at the nearest cam, Langstrom pointed out the robots that hovered menacingly.

‘So long as they don’t try anything stupid, Langstrom,’ Saul agreed.

Langstrom nodded briefly and waved his men back. Speaking over com, he called them all in, and soon they began retreating.

‘What is it you want?’ was his parting question.

Right then, Saul wanted more than anything to not be leaking so much blood inside his suit.

‘Not your concern right now,’ he replied.

As the commander moved off, Saul opened com with Tech Central. ‘Hannah,’ he began.

Braddock was now back inside, too, where he had ordered the three remaining captives to call up views of the surrounding area on their screens. Both he and she looked up simultaneously.

‘A cleanbot has arrived just outside, and I want you to follow it.’

‘Where to?’

‘There’s a surgical area located one floor below you.’

‘I see,’ she said, suddenly looking worried.

Just then the construction robot arrived, dropping through the hole in the tubeway roof, and advanced towards him. He could only see it through the cams, as he programmed in its next location, retracing Smith’s escape route along the tubeway, before giving it very careful instructions about how to pick Saul up. Even so, the world greyed for a moment as its claws closed around him, but it seemed that unconsciousness remained out of his reach.

Hannah felt overcome by a sudden atavistic fear at the sight of the construction robot crouching in the corridor with bloodstains on its cowling. When she saw Saul slumped in front of it with his back propped against the wall, she assumed it must have attacked him. Then she noticed the Caduceus symbol on the door he was resting beside, and logic triumphed. She stepped over the cleanbot that had guided her here, and rushed over to kneel before him.