He heard them before he saw them. The skittering of chitinous legs on stone. The biters were coming, drawn to the very scent of his progress [2].

To the north, the rhythmic, heavy thump of electric mining drills bit into the crust of a vast iron patch [2]. They did not tire. They did not complain. They simply chewed the earth and spat out raw ore onto yellow conveyor belts that flowed like rivers of metal [2].

But the silence at the perimeter was a lie. Beyond the reach of the bright electric lamps, in the choking smog of the pollution cloud, things were moving.