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structure. Still, however, it continued to emit those bacilliform objects Cormac recognized. ‘Rod-forms’ was the term now being used for them.

    Suddenly, within view appeared a Polity dreadnought accompanied by a scattering of the newer Centurion attack ships. One of those vessels employed first a DIGRAW - a directed gravity weapon - for a ripple seemed to speed through space towards the wormship, rod-forms bursting apart in its path. The wormship jerked as it was struck, and then writhed to reform, shedding dead segments of its compartmentalized structure. The attack ships now shot past the alien vessel in a random formation, hitting it with just about every weapon they had. By now the dreadnought was firing too: heavier beam weapons and clouds of missiles that seemed to move just too slowly - many of them glowing and going out under defensive fire. One, however, did get through, and the blast must have momentarily overloaded the instruments that had recorded these events, for King’s screen blanked. When it came back on again, it was to show a collapsing ball of fire, which fell back to a painfully bright point, before exploding out again. Falling away from this, the remains of the wormship had lost coherence, become a loose-strewn tangle, which in a moment flicked out of existence.

    ‘CTD imploder,’ King noted.

    ‘Some of it escaped,’ Cormac noted, ‘which rather undermines your suicide-mission theory.’

    ‘We know where it is, and it will be dealt with,’ King replied flatly.

    Cormac grimaced at that then wondered aloud, ‘What was the point of this?’

    ‘I am receiving transmissions now,’ King informed him.

    Cormac waited, arms crossed, enviroboot tapping against the floor. Eventually King deigned to impart to him the relevant information just received: ‘Numerous rod-forms were fired towards Cull. Most of them were destroyed, but two managed to reach atmosphere before they too were destroyed. However, one of them succeeded in firing a single missile.’

    ‘Damage?’

    ‘Yes, damage.’

    ‘Y’ know, King, the Polity consists of humans too and, as much as you may dislike that fact, if you want to be part of the Polity, you’ll have to be ready to talk to them occasionally.’

    ‘The missile contained a form of nerve gas, which was released inside the sleer-human hybrid village.’ Now the picture changed to show a village of globular houses. No sign of any hybrids, though there was a line of what looked like newly dug graves, each marked by a chunk of sleer carapace driven into the ground at its head. ‘Every one of them was killed,’ King added briefly.

    Again, another puzzle.

    ‘Now, first of all, why attack them?’ Cormac paused for a moment. ‘And why use a nerve gas? Surely that required some knowledge of hybrid physiology, when an explosive would have done the job just as well. It seems rather . . . specific’

    Grudgingly King replied, ‘I don’t know.’

    ‘Is Erebus insane?’

    ‘I don’t think so.’

    ‘Then there has to be a logical reason for its recent attacks on Klurhammon and Cull. We have to presume the hybrids represented some sort of danger, and that meanwhile some other threat to Erebus was extant on Klurhammon. How could the hybrids be a danger?’

    ‘I do not know.’

    ‘Dragon?’ Cormac wondered.

    No reply from King.

    ‘Something there I guess . . .’ Cormac kept on turning it over in his mind, aware that minds much greater than his would be looking at the same puzzle. In a moment of inspiration he abruptly cried, ‘Dracomen! Those hybrids are probably like dracomen: immune to being sequestered by Jain technology! The dracomen on Masada must be warned!’

    ‘It’s being done,’ King replied.

    Being done?

    He thought it odd that minds so superior to his own had not worked all this out long before him. Suspiciously odd. Only later did he learn of the wormship assault on Masada - the dracoman homeworld - and how that attacking