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city.
    He
paused, then moved to where the rocks on his left offered some cover.
He crouched, enabled his tele-ability, and probed.
    Nothing.
Absolute silence. He had expected to pick up the static of Das’s
mind-shield, but he read nothing.
    He
stood and scanned the streets. They appeared empty, eerily silent. He
wondered where Das had gone. Had she been picked up by Chandrasakar
and taken somewhere...? His tele-ability had a range of a little over
500 metres. They could be anywhere beyond that.
    He
decided to head for the cover of the city and move systematically
through the streets. He would search for thirty minutes, then return
to the membrane. The thought of being reunited with Sukara filled him
with joy.
    He
stood and hurried down the steps, coming at last to the boulevard
that encircled the city. He moved into the shadow of a crumbling,
brown-walled building and probed. He reckoned he had travelled 300
metres from the top of the steps - but there was still no static from
the mind-shields of Das or Chandrasakar and his men.
    He
moved from the building and hurried down the wide street towards the
centre of the city, keeping in the shadows of the walls. Part of him
wanted to return now, leave Das to her fate and get back to the
safety of the chamber. Another part wanted to find Das, save her from
Chandrasakar. He wondered if his motivations in wanting this were no
more than the desire to show her that he had overcome the combined
powers of her government and the Chandrasakar Organisation.
    He
reckoned he had walked a couple of hundred metres from the edge of
the city when he detected the first faint signal of the mind-shield.
It was a patch of static, very faint, on the edges of his perception.
    He
concentrated. It was around 500 metres away, to his right. He came to
a turning and slipped along it, and as he did so the static of the
mind-shield became stronger.
    The
static was unmoving, and he rapidly covered the distance towards it.
    Then
he stopped, panting, and pressed himself against the rough wall of a
windowless building. He detected another eight mind-shields, a little
way beyond the first. He calculated that they were all within 400
metres of his present position. They, like the first, were unmoving.
    He
moved forward with greater care, keeping to the cover of walls and
buildings.
    When
he judged that the mind-shields were no more than fifty metres away,
he stopped and considered his next move.
    He
was in the recessed doorway of a building that occupied the end of a
row. The door was made of some toughened fungal material. He applied
pressure, then a little more, and it gave under his weight. The room
was small and gloomy. He ran through it to another, larger room, and
found what he was looking for. A narrow staircase, with tiny steps,
rose to the second floor. He climbed carefully so as not to put his
feet through the ancient material.
    The
room on the upper floor was spacious and overlooked what once might
have been a fountain. He moved to the shuttered window, reached out,
and carefully eased open the shutter.
    Light
filled the room, momentarily dazzling him. When his eyes adjusted, he
peered out - then pulled back quickly, hardly able to believe what
he’d seen.
    He
took a breath, looked again.
    He
saw Das first. She was sitting against a low wall, very still, her
legs outstretched before her and her hands holding something in her
lap. Vaughan saw, with incredulity, that she was embracing the mess
of her entrails that had slopped from the wound in her abdomen. Her
eyes were still open, staring sightlessly at some point far beyond
the confines of the cavern.
    Only
then did he see Chandrasakar.
    His
body was lying on its back five metres to Das’s right. His head
and shoulders, detached, were a metre away, connected by a long smear
of blood.
    Vaughan
pulled back again, heart throbbing, and considered what might have
happened. When he looked again he knew what he was looking for.
    He
saw no sign