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death. He let out the clutch and rolled again, picking up speed downwall.
     
    Shadows on the wall. He spotted them, half a kilometer to the right of his own lengthening smear. All dimming; he glanced over his shoulder at the sun, three-quarters obscured by the top rim. He’d be on whatever threw the shadows before they were swallowed up by the advancing deepshade.
     
    His heart sped up, as his fist rolled back on the Norton’s throttle, when he spotted the jagged edges of metal curling up from the wall. A solid darkness lay inside, just visible past the ripped segments of wall.
     
    This is a bad scene, Axxter. Just turn round and . . . roll away. His warning sounded inside his head as he halted the Norton at the edge of the torn zone. A section of wall, twisted and blackened, reached out into the sky, its sharpest point circling back on a line even with his head. It looked mean enough to rip open any angel that might chance to drift by.
     
    Split on out of here. These War sites, cold and abandoned echoes of that ancient violence that had wracked the building, always spooked him. He hadn’t known that there was one out here; some of these wastewall sectors had zero files on them, producing just question marks and a refund of your money when you queried Ask & Receive. Some people got off on them; the ancient battle sites nearest to the heavily populated horizontal sectors drew a certain number of tourists. Some people got off on anything. Axxter heard the wind whistling past the jagged point in the sky and shivered. A papery, skeletal note a hungry bird might make. Fat chance of getting a good night’s sleep, conducive to effective business negotiations, around here. Time to split. Go make your camp somewhere else, a long ways somewhere else.
     
    He reached out and gripped the edge of the metal curling up alongside the Norton. The chill inside him died, fell away into a hole under his gut.
     
    The metal was warm, hot at its core. The retained heat of the violence that had torn the wall open passed into his palm.
     
    He jerked his hand back, the fright finally penetrating through his surprise. “Jee . . . zuss.” No more than a whisper. When he breathed again, he smelt the trace of smoke drifting out of the darkness ringed by the ripped wall sections.
     
    If they were still here – the ones ( and you know who , he told himself) who had blown open the building’s skin, and had put that sickening smell into the wind, sickening with the knowledge of what it was even if you had never smelled it before – if they’re still here, thought Axxter, inside there , it’s no use pouring on the throttle and splitting on out of here. Because they don’t work that way. How far would he get before he felt the same heat that had charred and twisted the metal wall on his own back? Not far enough – Christ, he thought, sick with dismay. What happened to all that good luck?
     
    Of course, they might not still be here. Watching him from inside the gaping hole, with their hard little eyes, or whatever they might have instead of eyes. In which case, by their absence, he would be allowed to scurry away with his deeply treasured little life.
     
    In which case, also – the thought rose unbidden, an automatic mercantile reflex – you might as well see what’s in there. In as in information . Which can be peddled; that’s what being out here on the vertical does to you, thought Axxter, amazed at the track of his mind
     
    Greed beats fear anytime. Axxter slung one leg over the Norton’s tank and let his boot pithons snap onto the wall’s surface.
     
    Cautiously – though he knew there was no point – he gripped the torn edge of the metal and peered around it. The heat inside the metal soaked through his jacket to the skin of his stomach. Lying on the curved shelf the wall segment formed, he could look across the gaping hole torn into the building. Or out of – the explosion, or whatever it had been, had come