‘Prador,’ muttered Ambel, blinking to clear the spots from his vision. ‘Don’t know what the Warden hit it with, but it was damned effective, I know that, lad.’

Janer took a shuddering breath, then raised his hand and opened it. Revealed was a single red crystal on a piece of cloth. Lucky he hadn’t lost it when he’d dived for cover. He looked round for the hexagonal box, took it up from where he had dropped it, and moved over to join Ambel. Setting the box on a nearby rock, he pressed a touch-plate on its side and a small door irised open at one end of it.

‘You know what this means?’ he asked the Captain.

‘I think I do,’ said Ambel, ‘perhaps more than you. Do you think for one moment that the Warden doesn’t know about this?’

‘Then why would the Warden allow it? Why allow the Hive here at all?’ Janer asked.

‘Balance,’ said Ambel. ‘The Warden has the overview, and knows that a balance needs to be struck here. You can’t have people as durable as Hoopers running around the galaxy without at least one Achilles heel.’ Ambel grimaced at the unintended pun. ‘They’d end up either destroying or being destroyed. Power must be tempered.’

Janer said, ‘Erlin says it’s rumoured that the Polity is scared of you people, so that’s why it prevents further development of this place. But she says she doesn’t believe that.’

‘Erlin likes to believe in goodness,’ observed Ambel.

‘And you?’

‘I prefer to believe in what’s true.’

‘You get to know what’s true out on your ship, do you?’ asked Janer, with a grimace. He manoeuvred his hand so the sprine crystal slid down the cloth that was channelled between his fingers, and into the opening in the box. The hornet waiting there grabbed the crystal and pulled it inside. Ten million shillings, brooded Janer. What the hell.

‘Thinking is something you find you do with increasing clarity as the years pass, and after a time you find there is very little you have not thought deeply about. Truth and clarity are one,’ said Ambel, seeming calm as he said this.

‘I guess that makes sense.’ The opening promptly irised shut. Janer stared at it for a moment then looked up at Ambel. ‘I wonder what your truth will be.’

The Captain had no reply for this.

Janer studied him for a moment, then nodded in response to an internal monologue. ‘The mind tells me everything is primed,’ he said. ‘It’ll only take a minute.’

* * * *

The Skinner had little of human thought left to it. It now hated with the intensity of a human and it hungered like a leech. It had also come to understand fear, but knew it was safe here in the darkness.