She laughed lightly, the high-pitched skipping laugh he once had known so well. "The Mechs sent out their best. But they were too strong, too stiff, too brittle. The strangeness of it broke them, and the isolation. Carnassus had to kill the other two, and he still wakes up screaming because of it. Yes, even in this room. His company was bankrupted. I bought him, and all his strange booty, from the wreckage."