He’d gone perhaps ten paces when the same piglike shriek they had heard earlier came from ahead of him, accompanied by the sound of something crashing through the dingle.

‘It’s all happenin’ now,’ muttered Roach, as he and Boris came up behind Keech.

Tracking the noisy progress of whatever it was out there, Keech then moved on again.

Shortly they came to the path recently broken through the dingle. Here peartrunk trees had been pushed aside and discarded branches crushed flat. Keech glanced both ways along it, then turned to the others.

‘What is that?’ he asked flatly.

Roach just could not prevent himself looking sneaky, while Boris stared at the ground like a guilty schoolboy.

Keech went on, ‘It’s the Skinner, isn’t it?’

Boris mumbled something.

‘What?’ Keech snapped.

‘The Skinner,’ Boris explained. ‘Reckon it found its body, then someone else found it.’

‘Hoop? . . . They’re killing Hoop?’

‘I reckon.’

Keech glared at the both of them, then turned into the path heading in the direction from which those squeals had come. Boris plodded after him without comment. Roach looked rebellious for a moment, then sighed and followed as well. They walked with more caution now, because of leeches in the crushed foliage, but even more because of what they were following. Ahead of them, they heard that squealing yet again, and all three of them halted. Keech stared at the settings on his weapon for a moment. He was just about to continue along the path, when Roach caught his shoulder.

‘Someone comin’,’ the crewman warned.

Keech gestured off to one side, and the three of them quickly moved into the shade of a tilted pear-trunk tree. Three other people soon appeared on the track behind them.

‘That you I see sneaking about in there, Roach?’ said Captain Ron.

‘It weren’t my fault,’ said Roach.

Keech stood up and stepped into the open. Janer momentarily followed him with the raised snout of his laser, then guiltily lowered it.

‘Seen any Skinners hereabouts?’ asked Ron.

Keech looked at him sharply.

‘Can’t miss him,’ continued Ron. ‘Big blue fella even uglier than Roach, and thoroughly pissed off. He went this way.’

Keech glanced farther up the track they had been following. He gave a grim smile. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

* * * *

Sniper scanned the atolls lying far to the right of him, and tried once again to get a signal through.

‘Hey, Warden! What the hell are you doing?’

This time - the first time in many minutes - the Warden replied. ‘What I am doing, Sniper, is decoding a Prador thrall-controller-code, and I would be thankful if there were no more interruptions.’

‘What about us?’ Sniper asked.

‘Head for the island, and take over there from Twelve. This is not yet finished,’ the Warden replied, then disconnected.