I came across Rad Rux's Bastion Tread in Burning Springs, and there was no mistaking what he had set out to build. A heavy gun sits above a broad armored body, with raised plates protecting the sides and a low bank of machinery tucked beneath. It looks assembled to take a hard knock rather than win a beauty contest.

Closer inspection shows just how much patient fitting went into it. Pipes run along the upper body, panels overlap around the turret, and the crew compartment holds a wall of screens, switches and instruments. Rux has worked ordinary salvage into a shape that reads as a tank from every side.

I have lived long enough to be wary of anything built around a cannon. That does not stop me noticing sound workmanship. Whatever orders its crew might receive, the man who put this machine together understood how to make separate pieces look as though they belonged to one another.