Ricard would probably assume she was heading for the garage, but would want to know what she was up to after she halted, therefore she must park the crawler well out of sight of any of those windows glinting like slabs of mica in the stonework. She chose a wall of the hex that faced in towards the centre of the base, where no windows had been made, and where a couple of large insulated water tanks had been erected. By now the overheat warning continued perpetually and the gearbox was making a sound like ball-bearings being rattled about in a tin can. Upon drawing the crawler to a halt, she noticed a haze of vapour in the cockpit, and bleeding out through the holes in the screen– smoke from that gearbox. The shepherd, obviously recognizing her only possible exit from the vehicle, strode round and squatted just beyond the airlock. Next the com light came on – Ricard wanting to talk to her.

Var stood up, rubbing at her arms. The left forearm, from which Miska had removed her ID implant, was particularly painful. Stepping into the rear of the crawler, she eyed the tools available. Gisender had taken out a saw with a circular, diamond-tipped blade, probably so as to quickly cut open the ducting that the fibre-optics had run through, also some hydraulic shears for severing the optics themselves. These would do nicely; but first there was the shepherd to deal with.

She opened the inner door to the airlock, which extended across the rear of the cargo compartment, unlocked the outer door and pushed it open just a little, and peered out. The shepherd immediately rose out of a crouch and drew closer, only a couple of metres away, and looming above. Even in the thin air she could hear the hissing sound its gecko tentacles made. She returned to the cargo compartment, bent over Gisender and hauled off the tarpaulin.

‘I’m sorry about this,’ she said, lifting up the corpse.

She shouldn’t feel so concerned about human bodies, for many had already gone through recycling here, along with the other waste, whilst more recent ones resided in a silo stored for when they would help make up the soil necessary for the arboretum. Manoeuvring Gisender’s body through the airlock itself was easy, though she did wonder if its lack of weight would be noticed. She then pushed the outer airlock door open, just enough to shove the dead woman outside. And the shepherd instantly pounced, its shiny legs clattering against the crawler, tentacles spearing down like the tongues of chameleons. Var held back for a moment as the arachnid machine retreated, then she moved forward to peer outside again. The shepherd was striding away, with Gisender tightly clasped against its underside, clearly with no idea that it had retrieved the wrong EA-suited human.