Skerrick

From the crate beneath him, Reed fished up a can of aerated mineral water. A label said it had been treated according to most scrupulous hygienic standards. It had been filtered through porcelain and centrifuged until every last skerrick of life had succumbed. Reed read the label and gazed afresh on to the plain of dust. In a world of unscrupulous sterility, skerricks of life down there were scuttling around vigorously.

Blue deepened in the east, the few skerricks of cloud went all the shades of pastel.

He stood in front of Vonnie Kyle and his eyes examined hers with every skerrick of judgment he could muster.

When he reached this point in his madness, it disabled whatever skerrick of common sense he might have had even to save himself.

"I take visitors out to the Poor Knights today, and they're so excited by the fish life they're just about walking on water," says Wade Doak, one of the country's pioneer divers and underwater naturalists. "And all I can think is that they're seeing a crumb, a skerrick of what it once was."