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Danny glanced at his map. "They were the Balearic Islands, part of old Spain."

"People lived up there?" I asked, incredulous.

He smiled. "They were small areas of land, Pierre, surrounded by sea. Islands."

I shook my head, struggling to envisage such a configuration of land and sea. On the summit of the nearest peak I made out the square shapes of dwellings, the tumbledown walls of others.

We left the stranded islands behind us.

Three hours later the sun went down to our right in a blaze of crimson. Ahead, indigo twilight formed over Africa, the sky untouched by magnetic storms.

Kat called from the lounge, "Food in ten minutes!"

Danny brought the truck to a halt and we moved back to the lounge. He unfolded one of his maps and indicated our position.

Kat served us plates of fried potatoes and greens - rationing the meat. She was carrying a plate across the lounge for our passenger when Skull emerged from his berth and limped to the table.

"Don't mind if I join you folks tonight? I was getting lonesome back there."

I returned to my meal without a word. Edvard indicated a chair and Skull dropped into it, wincing quickly.

Danny stubbed a forefinger at the map.

"So this is where we are now, and this is where we're heading - a hundred kilometres north of what was the coast of Africa, off a place called Tangiers."

Skull stopped chewing. He looked across at Danny, uneasy. "Let me see ..." He leaned forward, peering.

He looked up. "I don't like the sound of it."

I took a swallow of water, aware of my heartbeat and the sauna heat of the room.

Danny nodded, considering his words. "And why not?"

"Like I said before, there's feral bands down there. We'd best avoid them."

"There specifically, Skull?" Danny asked. "How come you're so certain?"

Skull chewed, not looking away from Danny's stare. "I heard stories, rumours."

Danny lay down his knife and fork in an odd gesture of civility that belied the anger on his face. "Bullshit. Tell us straight - what the hell do you know?"

Skull's eyes darted from right to left, taking in Danny and Kat, Edvard and myself. He looked uneasy, a rat cornered.

Edvard said quietly, "You didn't come from Algiers. So where did you come from?"

The silence stretched. Skull used his tongue to work free a strand of fibre from between his teeth. "Okay, okay... I was travelling with some people. Only they weren't people. Animals more like, monsters. A dozen or so of them. They had a vehicle, a collection of solar arrays lashed together around a failing engine ... Anyway, they were heading west, towards Tangiers."

Danny nodded. "Why?"

Skull shrugged. "They didn't say. They invited me to stay awhile. They needed an engineer to help out, they said. So I travelled with them a few days, a week."

I said, "Why did you leave them?"

"Because I reckoned that soon, once I'd helped out with the arrays, I would've outlived my usefulness and they'd kill me rather than have me using up food and water. They were that kind of people."

He looked around at us, then bolted down the last of the food, stood with difficulty and hoiked himself from the lounge.

Danny said, "So, what do you think? He telling the truth?"

Edvard voiced what I was thinking. "I wouldn't trust him as far as I could spit. Which isn't far, these days."

I said, "We've come across bastard gangs before. We just have to be careful, that's all."

Kat nodded. "I second that."

"What I'd like to know," Edvard said, "is what's so important about Tangiers that this mob was heading for it?"

I was in the cab with Edvard the following day when we came across the hovercraft.

It was late afternoon and we were roughly a hundred kilometres north of the trench, our destination. The sea bottom desert stretched ahead for as far as the eye could see, flat and featureless.

I was nodding off in the heat when Edvard slowed the truck. I sat up and looked across at him. He indicated the horizon with a silent nod.

I scanned. Far ahead, coruscating in the merciless afternoon glare, was the domed shape of a vehicle, entirely covered by