Since Dax had seen through his little ruse with his p-top, Cormac had ventured into a local hardware store and bought an underwater pencil cam with a 280 degree viewing head and integral microphone. It now rested in a pot filled with pens and memory sticks sitting on a shelf in his mother"s room-where she and Dax usually had their little discussions.
"The editing didn"t take," said Dax. "I thought it might happen-wanted to retain too much."
Hannah just gazed at him expressionlessly. After a moment she said, "It was a bit foolish to take Ian out diving when you knew that."
Dax waved a hand, smiled. "He was in no danger. I made sure he had a fully cybernetic suit and for good measure requested a city submind to load to it."
Cormac swore quietly-a word that was a particular favourite of his brother"s during these talks he had with their mother. So Mackerel had loaded to his suit at Dax"s instruction. That figured.
"Did they get my turbot?" Dax asked. "As I understand it I speared a right monster out there."
"You don"t remember?" she asked.
He shook his head. "They had to remove a lot more this time. Apparently the adrenaline and the sight of blood and death, even if it was that of a fish, caused a synaptic link to partially excised memories." He grimaced. "There was more to it than that, but it caused something akin to amplifier feedback with the result that the whole circuit was reinforced. They had to remove the lot."
"Your turbot will feed the customers of this hotel for the next week, and we"ve had a substantial amount deducted from our bill."
"Excellent! I look forward to trying some myself."
Cormac had already eaten some of the turbot while Dax had been away for editing again-it had tasted fine but the circ.u.mstances that brought it to his plate left him lacking in appet.i.te. He continued to listen, hoping to hear something about the drone that had brought Dax in, but the conversation just did not go that way. Dax sat back, a gla.s.s of beer in his hand rather than whisky this time.
"Do you remember that time Dad went harpoon fishing around the wreck-that shark?" he said.
"I remember," said Hannah.
"d.a.m.n but we were s.h.i.tting ourselves when he tried to get it through the lock back into the hotel. Even though he got it straight through the head it kept on moving. It was like being in a confined s.p.a.ce with a sanding machine."
"Sanding machine?" Hannah looked distracted, almost disinterested.
Dax tapped his forearm. "If it wasn"t for my suit I"d have needed a skin graft here. The shark"s skin took off the outer layer right down to the protective mesh."
"Yes," said Hannah, "your father had just finished basic training then... That was when Ian was only two. David went to war just six months afterwards."
"Have you heard anything from him recently?" Dax paused, looking puzzled. "I"m sure I asked something about that, but can"t seem to recollect-something to do with the editing I think."
"Just the usual," Hannah replied. "He keeps me updated with where he is, but mostly he"s after news from here rather than telling me what he"s doing. He knows I don"t want to hear the detail, to know what attack he"s been involved in or how it went. He knows I"ll only worry about his safety..."
What was it about their mother, Cormac wondered. She looked quite ill and there was something quite odd in her tone.
"You"re not interested?" Dax asked.
"I just want to know that he is alive." Hannah put her whisky gla.s.s to one side. "I"m very tired now, Dax. Can we call it a day?"
"Certainly." Dax drained his beer gla.s.s, then stood up to wander over to the drinks cabinet and place it there. "See you in the morning." Hannah stood up as he headed for the door, then caught hold of his arm and embraced him. Cormac felt slightly embarra.s.sed-she wasn"t usually so touchy-feely.
"Good night, Mother," said Dax, his expression puzzled.
Cormac thought now might be a good time for him to sign off. More diving tomorrow, and perhaps this time without any traumatic aftermath. He was about to switch off his p-top when he observed his mother sitting down in her chair again and taking up her gla.s.s. She wasn"t heading as expected to her bed. She took up her whisky and held it up before her.
"Here"s to editing," she said. "Please forgive me, David."
What on earth did that mean?
Cormac walked over and gazed about at the wreckage. Someone was making little grunting sounds and, stepping round a collapsed table and jumble of burning consoles, Cormac gazed down at a slug trail of blood, plasma and charred fragments of either clothing or skin. The person-it was not possible to tell if it was a man or a woman-had been hideously burnt from the waist upwards. Cormac considered it neutralized, and was about to turn away, then some sympathy kicked in and he fired once, the shot completely exploding the upper body and sending head and arms bouncing away at three compa.s.s points.
What now?
He searched the wreckage, the pain from his injuries steadily increasing as adrenaline washed away. Eventually he found the first-aid kit he sought inside the ATV"s luggage compartment. It was difficult to open, for his left hand was now completely useless and as soon as he tucked the flack gun in the top of his trousers his right hand began to stiffen too. First he found some antishock capsules and swallowed two of them dry. Next he found some local a.n.a.lgaesic patches, stuck one above his left wrist and one directly over the burn on his thigh. Blessed numbness immediately spread in those areas, also taking the edge off the agony of his hand and the elbow above it, which felt broken. Using a can of a.n.a.lgaesic spray skin he completely covered the ruin of his left hand. With a tube of wound glue held in his mouth, he squirted into the deep cut on his right wrist, closing the cut by tilting his wrist and waiting a moment for the glue to bond. Another patch went on his collar bone, then he paused. He didn"t want to deaden himself completely-there was still work to be done. Now he found a micropore bandage and wrapped it about his left hand to give it more protection than given by the spray skin, which was already leaking in places. Sticky dressings on his other wounds, for more padding. Enough. Now weapons.
Weapons weren"t difficult to find, since there were pulse-rifles scattered all about the area. He picked up five of these and tossed them in the pa.s.senger seat of the ATV, then, after further searching, he found a satchel of gecko mines and a pack of old-style bullet magazines for a machinegun, included them and, as an afterthought, threw in the first aid kit too-the effect of the a.n.a.lgaesics he had used was limited. He climbed into the driver"s seat and checked the controls: simple start b.u.t.ton and single joystick, which was useful when having only one hand. He set the electric motor running, pulled back on the stick and the ATV shot backwards, crashing over burning wreckage and wheel-spinning on a wet corpse as he turned the vehicle. Forwards now and it shot towards the door. No remote door control visible, no matter. The ATV slammed into the door, tearing it out of its runners, the roller mechanism crashing down on the roof. For a moment it hung draped over the vehicle, but when he turned it and brought it to a halt, the door slid off.
Now Cormac took his time checking out the onboard computer and communication system. As expected the radio and line-of-sight laser communications were encoded, sealed, it wasn"t possible for him to send a message to ECS via that route. All that was available was a netlink, and that had numerous restrictions upon it. He was, however, able to tap in a text message and route it to his own infrequently used net-s.p.a.ce and hope that an AI, somewhere, was keeping watch: Ian Cormac, location Dramewood, "ware-concealed ATV carrying CTD to be deployed against ECS battalions, am in pursuit in similar vehicle. He was about to add something about checking targets, but then realised a satellite strike against the other ATV could not be used since that might breach the antimatter flask with the same result Samara and Carl had intended, though of course Carl had not intended to be in the vicinity.
Cormac dedicated a subscreen down in the bottom right-hand corner of the main console screen for any reply he might receive, then called up a local map on the main screen. It flicked up, showing the location of his own ATV within it. He spent a moment sending another message giving the coordinates of the Separatist base behind him, then stared at the map. He had hoped it would show him where the other ATV was, but it didn"t. He frantically searched through menus, eventually pulling up a list. Highlighted was Veh3, amidst numerous other designations, presumably including Separatist positions in the woodlands and maybe even known ECS ones. He highlighted each "Veh" on the list and went back to the map. Four were visible. The one on a road behind him he a.s.sumed was the old ATV heading away, and there were two others out in the woods. He checked through menus again, selected the coordinates of the nearest vehicle then chose autopilot. The ATV immediately lurched into motion-chances were that the closest one had the CTD aboard. Now he turned his attention to the weapons on the seat beside him.
Checking the displays on each rifle, he chose the two with the highest charge and laboriously set about stripping both of them of their b.u.t.tstocks and one of them of everything he could to reduce weight without impairing function. He also removed its electronic trigger mechanism, which would have screwed it up as a single weapon, but he did not have that in mind for it. The ATV was now jouncing over rough ground so this made his task doubly difficult. Glancing up he saw hundred-foot-tall diseased-looking skarches from which the husks were peeling. Obviously the Prador had hit this area with something, but he had no idea what.
Detaching the end of a wire from the remaining trigger mechanism he inserted it into the relevant plug in the wholly stripped rifle. Now, when he pulled the trigger, both rifles would fire at once. He taped the weapons together with surgical tape, tested their weight with the barrels resting across his left forearm, then grimaced to himself. Carl had shown him how to do this.
Next Cormac removed the power supplies from the other three rifles, which were essentially contained in their moulded forestocks. To two each of these he attached a pliable gecko mine and then he set the timers to four seconds once he hit the priming b.u.t.ton. To the third he stuck the remaining four mines and rather than use the timer, he set just one of the detonators to a violent-movement setting with a delay of two seconds. He put this device back in the satchel, then proceeded to empty the machinegun magazines of bullets and pack them around it, along with anything hard and small within reach, including the plastic magazines themselves. Last, he lifted his feet up off the floor and, bracing his back against the seat, kicked out one section of the front screen. He was ready.
The other ATV was some miles away and Cormac realised that at the steady pace of the autopilot he would be unlikely to catch up with it any time soon. He clicked the autopilot off, took up the joystick and thrust it forwards. The vehicle accelerated abruptly, kicking up decaying matter dropped from the skarches around him. Now he began hearing the occasional susurration of a distant beam weapon firing, the crackle of pulse-gun fire, the thwocks of detonations and a vicious ripping sound it took him a moment to identify as that of a proton carbine. That last weapon probably meant there were Sparkind out here. He hoped to f.u.c.k that if he ran into any of them they"d not mistake him for a Separatist.
Abruptly he realised he was now rapidly closing in on the other vehicle. It had stopped. This must be where they were going to position the CTD.
"Samara," said Carl"s voice from his console. "I am quite capable of doing this unsupervised, thank you very much."
d.a.m.n.
He kept driving.
"Samara, reply."
Carl was going to know something was wrong. After a moment Cormac noted the other ATV turning to head straight towards him. Abruptly the icon representing that vehicle just disappeared from the screen. Cormac quickly rea.s.sessed his plans. He switched the autopilot back on, still heading for the original coordinates, then turned his attention to the weaponry. Estimating distances and times he reached inside the satchel and reset the detonator from "violent movement" to a timing of eight minutes, and hit the priming b.u.t.ton. It was the best he could do in the circ.u.mstances. Finding a catch on the pa.s.senger seat cushion he hoisted it up. There was a tool bag in a compartment underneath. He pulled this out, dropped the satchel inside then tipped the tools back in on top of it. More shrapnel. He placed the two other mines with attached power supplies into the tool bag, along with his twinned pulse-rifle, and taking this with him he opened the door and jumped.
Cormac hit the ground and rolled, then came up onto his knees swearing and really wishing he"d brought the first aid kit too. But he had no time for pain now. He carefully hung the tool bag, with the two bombs inside, from his left shoulder, then rested the rifle across his left forearm, tucked close to his body, and set off along the root-laden ground between the dying skarches, giving himself plenty of cover but staying parallel with his ATV. Taking into account the amount of time it took him to get from the vehicle, he began silently counting down from four-hundred-and-fifty. In a moment he was gasping, and the vehicle was pulling ahead of him. A sight to one side gave him pause: a wrecked mosquito autogun, a scattering of b.l.o.o.d.y field dressings and a single corpse in ripped-up chameleoncloth fatigues. This proved, along with earlier mention of another battalion coming in, that there was more going on out here than evidenced by the rumours Yallow had heard.
The ATV was still in sight.... three hundred, two hundred and ninety-nine...
Then he heard the whine of a distant motor, the crashing and b.u.mping of something heavy moving fast through the rough woodland. Then, at two hundred, it came into sight ahead. Cormac crouched behind a deadfall of skarches that had obviously fallen long before the Prador arrived to trash this world, and watched. Something shrieked and he dropped lower.
Rail-gun? A f.u.c.king rail-gun?
Chunks of metal flew from the vehicle he had occupied. It shuddered, but just kept on rolling. Pure luck that nothing had struck under the pa.s.senger seat, for the vehicle cabin looked like a pepperpot. The other ATV slowed. A second fusillade smashed into his own ATV, but still no detonation and still it kept on rolling. The other turned abruptly and stopped. His own vehicle rolled on and crashed into its side, its wheels still turning, then abruptly something inside it died and it shuddered to stillness.
Armed with pulse-rifles, three troops piled out. Cormac noted only the driver remaining in the other vehicle, so he a.s.sumed Carl and one other were still back at their original position. They showed no wariness of anyone occupying Cormac"s ATV-why should they, anyone inside would have been paste. One of them climbed up and, after a bit of a struggle, pulled open the door, which just fell off its hinges to the ground.
...seventy, sixty-nine...
d.a.m.n, he was a minute out.
The man dropped back down to the ground and turned to his fellows. He said something, then waved a hand towards the surrounding woodland.
s.h.i.t.
Light glared inside the wrecked cab and then that cab just disappeared with a gravelly crump. Things hissed through the surrounding skarches, dropping thick, dry leaves and tearing off fibrous chunks in dusty explosions. A cloud of oily smoke occluded view, a red fire burning at its heart, and someone was screaming. Cormac guessed his countdown had been too slow. He stepped out from cover, gazed for a moment at a spanner imbedded in the deadfall he had been hiding behind, then jogged towards the mess. The increasing heat of the fire started shoving the smoke higher, but there was no sign of the three troops. He slowed to a walk, carefully surveilling his surroundings. Then he saw the inward face of a skarch coated with bits of flesh and tatters of clothing, and nearby a boot lying smoking like some cartoon depiction of the results of an explosion, only this one still had a foot inside. He trod on offal, warm under his bare feet and guessed only a meticulous search would find all the remains.
The screaming dropped to an agonised gasping. It was coming from the cab of the other ATV, which was now burning too. Cormac pointed his twinned weapon at where the driver should be and fired. A double line of pulse-fire punctuated the air to that cab, punched holes through metal and sprayed burning debris all about, and the groaning abruptly ceased. Cormac quickly moved on, breaking into a trot.
Four bad guys down, but Carl and the other one, about a quarter of a mile ahead of him, had now been thoroughly forewarned. Cormac kept moving at a steady jog, following tracks made by their ATV. He hit an upslope through dead bushes of black convoluted twigs, brittle and crushed flat. Amidst these, knowing he was now close, he slowed, then got down on his belly and crawled. Finally reaching the head of the slope he could see down through the skarches to the ruin of a small composite dome house, but there was no sign of anyone nearby. Now, he should slowly and carefully work his way down there, crawling like this, but really, he didn"t feel physically capable of doing that. He took one of the two explosives out of the tool bag, reset its timer to ten minutes, hit the b.u.t.ton and shoved it into the bushes ahead of him, then crawled backwards until the ruin was once again out of sight. Standing up he ran to his left where the rise he was on sloped down again to the level of the ruin. It was counterintuitive, since the best tactical position would be to come down from higher ground to the right.
Running, he d.a.m.ned the dry skarch debris on the ground since it was near impossible to run on them without making a noise. Shortly he reached the level of the ruin, but it was not yet visible through the trees. He squatted down beside a multiple skarch stump coated in fungus like spilt custard and waited.
The bomb went off with a satisfying flash and glaring explosion, with the added benefit that shortly afterwards a number of skarches started to fall. Cormac ran towards the ruin, using what cover he could and frequently altering his course. No sign of anyone. Shortly he arrived at the curved wall of the ruin and squatted down. His best course in any other circ.u.mstances would have been to toss his remaining explosive into the building, but if the CTD was in there such an action stood a chance of breaking the antimatter flask. What now? It belatedly occurred to him that Carl and his companion might have moved away from this building and now had it in their sights, knowing it would be the focus of anyone coming here-that"s what he would have done in their position. He wasn"t thinking straight. He should have waited out there, perhaps for hours, until one of them put in an appearance. Then again, he was in no condition to wait any length of time.
Carefully he surveyed his surroundings trying to work out where they might have hidden themselves. Two locations seemed probable: the bushes on the slope to the right where he had detonated the bomb, and an area to his left where a skarch had fallen and caught between two others-plenty of cover there. He chose the fallen skarch, since if they had been in the bushes they would probably have retreated from the smoke spreading from where a fire still burned. He selected a skarch with a trunk a yard thick in a straight line to that location, took a couple of paces to his left and ran for it.
Immediately pulse-gun fire stabbed across the intervening s.p.a.ce, past him to the right and impacting the ruin wall. He had just moved in time-whoever was shooting at him must have had him targeted. He fired back as he ran, multiple shots exploding along the length of that fallen trunk, shearing off leaves and blowing up dusty clouds of burning fibrous pulp. The firing at him ceased momentarily, giving him just enough time to get to cover behind his selected skarch, then pulse-gun hits thrummed against the other side of the tree, flinging everywhere debris that looked like chunks of frayed rope and generating a cloud of dust and smoke, then they again ceased.
"It seems you are what we thought you were," Carl called.
Cormac did not want to bother replying, but he needed to know where both Carl and that CTD were; he was certain Carl"s voice had not issued from nearby that fallen skarch.
"Wrong, Carl," he replied. "I"m just a grunt, which probably tells you something about the abilities of Samara and her crew." He paused deliberately for a moment. "Or rather, it tells you something about the abilities they used to have."
Carl didn"t react for a moment, which Cormac hoped meant his jibe had struck home. Carl eventually replied with, "It doesn"t matter. In a little while a great many trained ECS soldiers will be turned to ash, which will more than make up for Separatist losses here."
Where the h.e.l.l was he? Cormac just could not locate the source of his voice-doubtless some effect of the surrounding vegetation.
"Seems to me your ash will be mixed in too-you don"t have any transport out of here now," he said.
"Ah but I do," Carl replied. "I"ve got an ATV on the way in to pick us up. Tick tick tick, Cormac. It"s a shame you won"t feel the fire with the rest, since I"ll shortly be in position to get a clear shot at you."
The comment was obviously designed to drive him from cover, but nevertheless it might be true. He surveilled everything within view, but could not yet see any sign of Carl. Where was the CTD?
"I won"t let you detonate that CTD, Carl," he tried.
"Tick tick tick-there"s nothing you can do to stop it now," he said.
Cormac unshouldered the tool bag, reached inside and set the bomb timer to three seconds.
"Where is it?" he asked, expecting no answer.
"Why it"s in the ruin of course," Carl told him. "Do you think you can get to it in time? I suggest you start running now before I finish adjusting the sight on this knackered old pulse-rifle."
Another attempt to drive him from cover, but he had to do something. He did not know Carl"s position, but he did know the position of the trooper who had opened fire on him earlier, and could maybe do something about him. He dropped his twinned pulse-rifle and stood, sliding his back up the tree and hanging the handles of the tool bag from his right hand. Reaching across he took a slow breath, reached in the bag and hit the priming b.u.t.ton, then stepped out to the left, spun and hurled the bag like a hammer straight toward where the trooper was hiding. Pulse-gun fire cut past the other side of the skarch, then jerked across, slamming into fibrous wood just as he ducked for cover again. The trooper had targeted the side of the skarch to his own left, expecting that that would be the side a right-handed gunman would break cover from. Had he been any less proficient, Cormac might be dead now.
Cormac grabbed up his twinned pulse-rifle. The detonation immediately followed, blasting fire and debris past him. He waited a moment more, to be sure he wouldn"t be hit by flying objects, then ducked from cover again, this time from the other side of the skarch.
The bomb had obviously landed by the base of the half-fallen skarch. Long woolly splinters of smoking wood were pointing at the sky. The blast had excavated a crater and fire was spreading through the papyrus-like leaf-litter surrounding it. The skarch, obviously released from its final attachment to the ground, had crashed down flat. Cormac circled it quickly, coming in behind. He saw a backpack by the fallen trunk and three other objects. One of these was a smaller pack of pulse-rifle forestocks-those containing the power supply and aluminium dust charge. The other two objects were feet, protruding from underneath the heavy trunk. Ducked low, because Carl was still out there somewhere. Cormac ran over, then quickly stretched upright to look over the fallen trunk. The man was scrabbling at the ground, but he wasn"t going anywhere. Cormac considered putting a shot through his head when something smashed into the back of his own legs.
It felt as if the world had been pulled from underneath him and he crashed down beside the trunk. All the wind seemed to have been knocked out of him. Where was his gun? He looked around for it and realised he"d dropped it over the other side of the trunk. Then his attention focused on his legs. They were smoking. His left leg was b.l.o.o.d.y and charred, but his right leg was worse-all the flesh flensed away from knee to ankle, just the bones there, blackened.
"I told our friend there I was going to get round behind you," said Carl. "But I thought it better to just step back and use him as bait."
Cormac looked up, just in time to get a rifle b.u.t.t straight in his face. Next he felt hands checking over his clothing, flipping him over and checking again. All he could do was struggle ineffectually until Carl kicked him over onto his back again.
"So you escaped," said Carl.
Cormac dragged himself backwards. He needed to get up, needed to stop this... Carl was squatting in front of him, gazing at him curiously.
"But I don"t think you are an agent, not now," Carl continued. "Running straight down to the ruin was a dumb mistake of the kind they don"t make."
Cormac tried to shrug casually, but it didn"t come off that well. The agony was rolling up from his legs in waves and he was starting to shake violently. Carl stood, walked over to the backpack and picked it up by its straps. He walked round Cormac, climbed up onto the trunk and walked along it to where it rested between two upright skarches, then, shouldering the pack, he found handholds on its scaly exterior and climbed. Twenty feet up he hung the pack straps from a large, dry leaf bud, then climbed back down again. Pausing halfway back along the trunk he drew his thin-gun again then jumped down on the other side. After a moment came a shot. A sound Cormac had only been half aware of from the other side of the trunk, ceased at once. Carl had just killed the trapped man. There came further sounds, then Carl dropped down beside Cormac.
"It"s a shame," he said, "but I haven"t the time to get him out from under there, and he would be a bit of a burden if I did." Carl checked the time display imbedded under the fingernail of his right forefinger. "My ride should be here shortly. In an hour we"ll be beyond the blast perimeter." He gazed up at where he had hung the CTD from the skarch, took a remote control device from his pocket, pointed it up there and pressed a b.u.t.ton. It beeped, then he hurled the remote away.
"I"m not going to kill you, Cormac," he continued. "In fact, if you can climb that skarch, you might even be able to save yourself and over a thousand ECS troops." He smiled. "Ciao," then he stood and walked away.
Cormac felt his consciousness fading. He tried to fight it, drifted, jerked back into a world of pain at the sound of an ATV pulling away. No chance of climbing that f.u.c.king oversized weed-he doubted he would be able to even get himself up onto the fallen trunk. But there was another option: his rifle. Laboriously, using one workable and one maimed arm, he began dragging himself along the ground to the other side of the fallen trunk.
Blackout.
Cormac recovered consciousness in a panic, having no idea how long had pa.s.sed, for he possessed no handy timepiece under his fingernail. Dragging himself on he finally reached the crater. The ground all around was smouldering, and he must drag himself through embers to reach his goal. He did so, and it added little to the agony he was already suffering. The dead man came into sight and Cormac looked around frantically for his weapon, any weapon... They were gone. Carl must have picked them up and hurled them away. Cormac lay there with his face in the fibrous leaf-litter, swearing, but without much energy and with his voice slurred. It would be so nice just to stay in that position and wait until everything went away.
Cormac forced his head up, turned and began crawling away from the fallen trunk. Somewhere out here lay his weapon and maybe others. He couldn"t see them, but surely there was a chance...
The thing crashed through the skarch canopy like a giant ingot of lead. Cormac gazed in bewildered recognition upon a nightmare iron scorpion scrambling through the leaf-litter towards him. It poised above him, silhouetted against the sky, huge, long claws each over a foot long opening and closing, then those claws came down and closed upon his body. Something groaned and he felt the hard metal digging into his torso as those claws tucked him underneath a head sporting lethal weaponry and green peridot eyes. Acceleration. The thing now crashed up through a canopy and Cormac glimpsed acres of dead forest below like a maize field long overdue for harvest. The last thing he saw was a searingly bright light igniting and the disc of a shockwave spreading out from it, shredding the skarches in its path.
The concourse, one of four leading in towards the lounges and runcibles of the Paris Runcible Port, had been stripped of its gardens and kiosks and a divider fence erected to separate the bidirectional flow of human traffic. Over the other side of the fence Cormac observed those newly arrived from offworld, and was reminded of scenes he had seen in historical films or interactives, for there was no doubt he was seeing soldiers and support staff returning from the front line. Most of the returnees were in uniform, some of them had arms missing and arm-caps in place; some were in hover chairs, their leg stumps also end-capped. Others had areas of their bodies clad in sh.e.l.lwear, a kind of exo-skeletal prosthetic that enabled wounded soldiers to keep functioning, while the damage underneath was healed by advanced medical technology. Often there were Golem, rendered either partly or wholly into macabre metal skeletons because some damage had removed their humanlike outer covering. And scattered throughout this crowd were numerous full-life-support containers drifting along on AG, some of which were burnished cylinders large enough to hold a whole body, while others were the size of hat boxes.