“There are some flashlights and spare jumpsuits in the shuttle’s storage bins by the airlock,” said Exar, “Should be a cutting torch in there too if you want it.”

“And go fetch me the medicinal supplies from inside while you’re at it,” Zildiz told him.

“Ordering me around like that. Who does she think she is?” Rene muttered sourly as he clomped back into the spacecraft. But he did as he was told, piling the tools from the surgeon’s station on a spare stretcher and sliding them down the ramp for Zildiz before he investigated the contents of the storage bins. Among a jumble of incomprehensible tools he located a bronzed blowpipe fed by a canister that emitted a tongue of guttering blue flame with the pull of a trigger. He also found two flashlights like the ones miners wore strapped to their foreheads.

Out of the speaker system the disembodied voice of the flayed god came again, crooning an eerie tune that Rene had never heard the like of before:

“A-hunting we will go,

A-hunting we will go

Heigh-ho, the merry-o,

A-hunting we will go…”

There was no more time to gather equipment. Rene placed the torch in its accompanying safety holster and buckled it around his waist. Stepping back out, he found Zildiz in the process of tearing herself out of her exomorph.

Though to tell the truth she wasn’t so much tearing herself out of it as she was disrobing. With a brush of a dirty fingernail along the bumps of her spine the entire suit split open along a vertical seam. Rene saw a pair of smooth shoulders and the soft curves of her hip before modesty prevailed and he quickly glanced away, his pulse racing.

It had been a long time since Rene had seen a woman, and Zildiz was all that and more. His wayward eyes darted back up the small of her back and followed the silhouette of her waist up to the slope of her delicate ribs—Zildiz was so skinny that he could see the shifting muscles of her torso underneath her dusky, freckled skin. Patterns of thin white marks wound beneath her underarms and up the sides of her neck, looking for all the world like the tan lines made by a silk brassiere. He knew the marks corresponded with the shapes of her exomorph’s armor plates, but all the same Rene could feel a lump building up in his throat at the steamy thoughts which rose unbidden in his head.

He could not for the life of him look away, not even when Zildiz darted a glance over her shoulder and caught him red-handed.

“Careful, Fleet-man,” she warned, “Stare any harder and your eyes might just roll right out of your head.”

Rene at least had the decency to blush.

“Ahem-hem!” he lapsed into a fit of embarrassed coughing, “Zildiz, I hope you don’t take this the wrong way—but what the blazes do you think you’re doing?”

“My exomorph is too damaged to be of further use to me. It will only slow me down.”

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“You told me that severing yourself from it would prove fatal.”

“On Arachnea, yes. If you’ll recall, I almost died of narcosis when my cardiovascular compensators failed—they were unable to cope with the loss of the intake nozzle from my helm. I can already feel the main muscle groups going rigid again. But given that the atmosphere in this place is within both our natural tolerances, I should do just fine without it.”

Zildiz shrugged off the rest of her outfit and stepped out, long strands of gel clinging to her bare skin, but otherwise as naked as the day she was born.

“Uh, right-o. Ehrm,” Rene exhibited a sudden and all-absorbing interest in his boots, “I’ll give you some privacy. Let me know when you’re ready.”

He beat a hasty retreat behind the safety of the shuttle. Rene had to wonder if she was doing that on purpose or if she simply lacked all self-awareness. He suspected the latter; Gallivants seemed to have a purely functional outlook on life. Whichever the case was, his heart was going like the chambers of a canefuel engine.

“Rene, your pulse rate’s gone way up,” Exar said, rolling to a halt near his feet, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he lied swiftly, “Are you coming with us?”

“Sure. Just clip me to the backpack rig like before and I’ll give you my sensor readings.”

“We’re going to need more than just moral support, Exar. It looks pretty tight up there, and your body is perfectly suited for that environment. Why don’t you roll around up there and help us find this Leaper?”

“Gee, I’d love to help out more, but if that crazy coot on the tank treads sees me all acting all self-automated, the jig will be up. He’ll gas the rest of you without hesitation.”

“Who knew you were so damned important,” Rene said with more than a little resentment, “But then again, you Exars were the trusted servants of the ancestors.”

“You’ve got it twisted, man,” Exar replied, “Whoever this nutjob is, one thing’s for certain: he’s no employee of Exodus Industries.”

Not a part of Exodus Industries? Rene thought as he strapped on the rig and helped Exar latch on. What on earth did he mean by that? Could it be that this flayed god was not one of the progenitors? But that couldn’t be right—it had consistently referred to Rene as a crewman, which told him that their cultures shared a common denominator.

He was still pondering this latest contradiction when Zildiz popped her head into view and asked him:

“Say, what’s the holdup? Have you gone timid on me all of a sudden?”

“For godsakes, Zildiz,” Rene said, preemptively shielding his eyes with his hands, “Are you decent?”

“Decent?” she said almost cheerfully, “Why, I’ve never been less than excellent, Fleet-man.”

Zildiz came out dressed in green patient swabs and layers of bandages tied around her chest. All that was left of her exomorph were her gauntlets, greaves, gorget and the pauldron of her right shoulder. The Gallivant had also taken one of the bales of wire and slung them across her shoulders like an empty bandolier of pistols. Together they climbed the cooling slag heap and reached the dented ceiling panel which the sentinel had pointed out for them, Zildiz tearing it off and casting it aside. A trail of bloody footprints led into the ventilation shaft just large enough for them to proceed in hunchbacked fashion.

“The rat’s gone and made a home for himself,” the voice from the speaker system crackled, “Get in there, my pussycats! You’ve got 22 minutes before he reaches the cheddar.”

Then he hummed gleefully:

“The rat takes the cheese.

The rat takes the cheese.

Heigh-ho, the derry-o!

The rat takes the cheese.

The cheese stands alone.

The cheese stands alone.

Heigh-ho, the derry-o!

The cheese stands alone…”

Doing his level best to ignore the insane ramblings, Rene handed Zildiz a forehead light before he flicked on his own.

“Ladies first?” he suggested, carefully sticking his head up into the gap to reveal a twisting warren of interconnecting vents that stretched far beyond what their narrow beams of light could fathom.

Zildiz gave him a blank stare in reply. The pathfinder sighed and heaved his bulky shield in front of him as he climbed into the waiting shadows, the Gallivant trailing softly behind him.