Consider Phlebas

"Yup," Wubslin said, checking screens, nodding. "Feet have sunk in half a metre or so. We'll have to remember to run the motors for a while before we try to lift off, when we leave. They'll freeze solid in half an hour."

"Hmm," Horza said. He watched the screen. Nothing moved. There were no clouds in the light blue sky, no wind to move the snows. The sun wasn't warm enough to melt the ice and snow so there was no ru

With the exception of the seas — which still contained fish, but no longer any mammals — the only things which moved on Schar's World were a few hundred species of small insects, slow spreading lichen on rocks near the equator, and the glaciers. The humanoids" war, or the ice age, had wiped everything else out.

Horza tried the coded message once more. There was no reply.

"Right," he said, getting up from his seat. "I'll step out and take a look." Wubslin nodded. Horza turned to Yalson. "You're very quiet," he said.

Yalson didn't look at him. She was staring at the screen and the unblinking eye of the tu

Horza smiled at her, picked up Kraiklyn's laser rifle from the floor, then went through to the mess.

"We're down," he said as he went through.

"See?" Dorolow said to Aviger. Neisin drank from his hip flask. Balveda gave the Changer a thin smile as he went from one door to the other. Unaha-Closp resisted the temptation to say anything, and wriggled out of the seat straps.

Horza descended to the hangar. He felt light as he walked; they had switched to ambient gravity on their way over the mountains, and Schar's World produced less pull than the standard-G used on the CAT. Horza rode the hangar's descending floor to the now refreezing marsh, where the breeze was fresh and sharp and clean.

"Hope everything's all right," Wubslin said as he and Yalson watched the small figure wade through the snow towards the rocky promontory ahead. Yalson said nothing but watched the screen with unblinking eyes. The figure stopped, touched its wrist, then rose in the air and floated slowly across the snows.

"Ha," Wubslin said, laughing a little. "I'd forgotten we could use AG here. Too long on that damn O."

"Won't be much use in those fucking tu

Horza landed just to the side of the tu

He looked back at the CAT, facing him from two hundred metres away, a shining metal interruption on the white expanse, squatting in a blast-mark of brown.

"I'm going inside," he told the ship, aiming a tight beam at it rather than broadcasting the signal.

"OK," Wubslin said in his ear.

"You don't want somebody there to cover you?" Yalson said.

"No," Horza replied.

He walked down the tu

In the second bay, where the flyer should have been, there was nothing. He went on to the next one: more equipment. He was about forty metres inside the tu

The mouth of the tu

Before going round the corner he detached the suit's remote sensor from the side of the helmet and edged its small lens round the corner of sculpted rock. On an internal screen he saw the short length of tu

By the side of the small flyer lay four bodies.

There was no movement.

Horza felt his throat closing up. He swallowed hard, then put the remote sensor back on the side of the helmet. He walked along the floor of fused rock to the bodies.

Two were dressed in light, unarmoured suits. They were both men, and he didn't recognise them. One of them had been lasered, the suit flash-burned open so that the melted metals and plastics had mingled with the guts and flesh inside; the hole was half a metre in diameter. The other suited man had no head. His arms were stuck out stiffly in front of him as though to embrace something.

There was another man, dressed in light, loose clothes. His skull had been smashed in from behind, and at least one arm was broken. He lay on his side, as frozen and dead as the other two. Horza was aware that he knew the man's name but he couldn't think of it just then.

Kierachell must have been asleep. Her slim body was lying straight, inside a blue nightgown; her eyes were closed, her face peaceful.

Her neck had been broken.

Horza looked down at her for a while, then took one of his gloves off and bent down. There was frost on her eyelashes. He was aware of the wrist seal inside the suit gripping his forearm tightly, and of the thin cold air his hand was exposed to.

Her skin was hard. Her hair was still soft, and he let it run through his fingers. It was more red than he remembered, but that might just have been the effect of the helmet visor as it intensified the poor light of the darkened tu

He shook his head, turning away.

He opened the door to the accommodation section — carefully, after listening for any noise coming through the wall.

In the open, vaulted area where the Changers had kept their outdoor clothes and suits and some smaller pieces of equipment, there was little to show that the place had been taken over. Further through the accommodation unit, he found traces of a fight: dried blood; laser burns; in the control room, where the base's systems were monitored, there had been an explosion. It looked like a small grenade had gone off under the control panel. That accounted for the lack of heating, and the emergency light. It looked as though somebody had been trying to repair the damage, judging by some tools, spare pieces of equipment and wiring lying around.

In a couple of the cabins he found traces of Idiran occupation. The rooms had been stripped bare; religious symbols were burned onto the walls. In another room the floor had been covered with some sort of soft, deep covering like dry gelatin. There were six long indentations in the material, and the room smelt of medjel. In Kierachell's room, only the bed was untidy. It had changed little otherwise.

He left it and went to the far end of the accommodation unit, where another wall of plastic boards marked the begi

A dead medjel lay just outside, its long body seemingly pointing the way down the tu