When Yi Chung had been growing up in Kowloon, Sally Fung was the prettiest girl in the apartment block.

Even as Sally had gone from being a girl to being a woman, she would potter around the central courtyard in no more than panties and a short T-shirt, seemingly oblivious of the effect this had on the local boys. Yi Chung had never quite managed to ask her on a date, and she had since moved to work in an office in Singapore, but she had remained somewhere in his subconscious as the baseline for his judgement of female beauty.

Which brought him back to Emily Ko. Emily Ko didn't exactly look like Sally but she had the same bearing and attitude, as far as Yi Chung could tell from a respectful distance.

To hell with the birthday, he decided. He would do what Ah Fei suggested, and go and meet her as she left work. He was sure the worst she could do was say no to a request for a date.

'It's at times like this,' Captain Kutzov said, 'that I wish they could put portholes and lights on the boat.' Morozich loomed over both him and Radzinski as they gathered around the chart table in the conn. Radzinski had spread a printout of the morning's radiation readings over the table.

Kutzov had also acquired a chart of the sea floor for this area, and the latest set of sonar scans. The sonar had shown no other vessels in the area, but had highlighted a discrepancy between a region of the sea floor and its representation on the chart.

'We could send out a diver with a camera on an umbilical,' Radzinski suggested.

Morozich shook his head. 'Haven't got one long enough.'

'A camcorder, then,' the captain decided. 'You can seal one up so it's waterproof?'

Morozich thought about it.'I think so, but what good would that do?'

'If it's another boat, someone aboard could at least tap on the hull in Morse.

If there are fellow submariners trapped, we have to let them know we can send for help. Even if they're Americans.'

Everyone nodded slowly. As with fighter pilots, there was an unwritten rule that submariners were all brothers, regardless of which navy they served in.

'All right,' Morozich agreed. 'Get Lermentov kitted out,' he told Radzinski.

Ah Fei would be tried for racketeering in 1998. At the trial, he would speak of this time only briefly. He himself could take or leave the violence inherent in being a Triad footsoldier, a 49, he would say, but Yi Chung sometimes worried him. Yi Chung was so eager to advance up the ranks.

When Fei and Yi Chung had found that something - not some-owe, as he had made sure he put in his testimony - had beaten them to Wing, he had thought for a moment that Yi Chung might attack a neighbour, or even Fei himself, to make sure everyone knew he was tough.

On Yi Chung's birthday, though, Ah Fei had felt sure his fellow 49 would be in cheerier mood.

He bounded lightly on to the roof of Yi Chung's apartment building, bearing a giftwrapped bottle which he hoped he and Yi would drain later in the evening. It would make up for the obvious disappointment Yi Chung had shown at not being able to chop Wing. He was surprised to find Yi Chung already gone. 'Where's Yi?' he asked another guest.

'Gone to see some girl.'

"That tart at Auntie Yee's?' Fei assumed.

The man shook his head. 'Some hairdresser, I think.'

'I see see' Fei was surprised, but pleased, that Yi Chung seemed to be taking his advice. 'Tell him I called, OK?' He remembered the present and was disappointed they wouldn't be sharing it that night. 'Oh, and give him this.'

Imagine your eyes on one side of thin glass, looking at lightless waters on the other side. Feeling it around you, supporting you, but also engulfing and swallowing you. Hearing only the blood rushing in your ears, and your ragged breathing.

Fish appear briefly, startled, in your torchlight, then are gone as completely as if they had never been. You hope there are no sharks in these waters; it's deep, and it's night, and it's too dark to even see one before you're halfway down its throat.

The jury-rigged dial on a Geiger counter shows you the direction to swim in, and the rebreather jamming your mouth stops you complaining about heading towards a radiation source.

Then, suddenly, your knees are in soft sand, and clouds of it rise into the darkness as you steady yourself. Your breathing jolts, sure the sand will choke you, even when you know it can't, and you almost lose the rebreather that keeps you alive down here.

It takes a few moments to recover yourself, but soon you start making your way again. There's a rock at the edge of the torchlight, and you head towards it, being careful not to disturb the sand. You wish you had a shark billy or spear gun just in case, but the torch, counter and camcorder attached to your belt are burden enough.

As you near the rock, those black doubts and fears resurface in your mind like warning triangular fins. The rock is not a lone object, like so many others around you, but just part of a larger surface. It's smooth, like metal.

Unlike metal, it is bright, shining, not corroded or coated with underwater life. It's as if only the image is really there, and you can't help but touch it.

You don't want to; you're afraid it's radioactive, but you have to know that it's really there.

Your fingers slide off, as if it's oiled.

Watching the diver's videotape, certain that those feelings must have assailed Lermentov, Morozich shuddered. Whatever the thing displayed on the glass surface of the TV monitor before his eyes actually was, it wasn't a submarine. A submarine would be black and rough, encrusted with life, Or yellow or white, if it was a civilian scientific craft.

In fact, Morozich couldn't think of anything that wouldn't be teeming with barnacles and suchlike, after being sunk for a while. Not anything made by man or nature, anyway.

'What the hell is it?' he whispered.

'I have no idea,' Kutzov admitted. 'Some kind of lava flow, perhaps. Liquid ore being forced up through a fault?' He poured himself another tiny cup from the wardroom's samovar, without taking his eyes off the TV screen showing the video footage.

'It wasn't hot out there,' Lermentov said. At least not in the ordinary way.'

'We don't know how long it's been cooling,' Kutzov pointed out. 'The thing could have appeared weeks ago, or years.'

"There's something else.' Lermentov carefully unwrapped a piece of oilcloth to reveal a sparklingly clean shard of silver metal. 'I picked up this.'

'It polished up nice, but apart from that, what what?'

'I haven't polished it,' Lermentov interrupted. 'It came like that; totally clean and non-corroded.' They all stared at the metal. 'It's also very light.

Here.' He handed it round, and Morozich was impressed; the metal weighed almost nothing. It was more like plastic or polystyrene, than solid metal.

Kutzov had developed a calculating expression. 'An ore like this could be valuable valuable' The others looked at him. 'Non-corrodable, light, flexible. Just the sort of new discovery that's worth a fortune in hard currency.'

'Then we're going to report this?' Morozich asked. It was tempting, and he could foresee buying his way out of the navy and into a luxury yacht in the West, but something made him uneasy. He was sure this needed more thought. Of course, usually it was when most thought was required that the least thinking was actually done.

'Yes,' Kutzov answered with finality. 'Make for periscope depth.'

Chapter Four.

H Jungle Our There

lieutenant Fiona Clark sat stewing in the one bar in Ban Lung, wishing she'd signed on to some service that didn't supply spec-ops teams to UNIT-SEA. It wasn't the jungle, or the wildlife, or the mission that she couldn't stand; it was the beer in this remote nowhere. She couldn't get a decent off-duty beer within a hundred miles, and all her current haunt served was piss-warm Miller.

She was fairly sure she had managed to disguise her military appearance, largely by keeping the combat trousers and wearing a baggy T-shirt and bandanna. That seemed to be de rigueur for backpackers in this region, and made her blend in as well as any white woman could.

Her superior, just entering the bar, had more of a problem blending in. It didn't matter how hard he tried, but Major Russell Barry could never quite get the hang of looking like a civilian backpacker. For all that he had changed into blue jeans and a cotton shirt, he stood, talked and moved like a soldier out of uniform. Neither too lean nor overly muscled, he was fit, despite the greying hair and salt-and-pepper stubble.

The pair nodded to each other. 'Any likely subjects today?' Barry asked softly.

'Maybe.' Clark inclined her head in the direction of a corner table. There, a couple of guys with the look of hardened backpackers were poring over a map, using their empty glasses as paperweights, in spite of the waitress's attempts to clear them away.

The bar was full of such people, but most of them were more relaxed and probably about to head back towards civilisation. The map suggested that these two were about to go even further off the beaten track. Either that, Clark thought, or they were even more desperate for a better beer than she was.

Barry glanced over, not looking as if he was glancing over, and called to the bar girl for a beer. 'You could be right,' he said to Clark. 'They definitely look like they're planning to head off the beaten track sometime soon. Of course, knowing our luck, nothing'll happen happen'

'But you want us to keep an eye on them anyway.'

Barry nodded. 'like the float on a fishing line. Go wake Tranh, and see if he can predict their likely route. Then have Gibson and Harris shadow them.'

'Right, sir.' Clark drained her beer with a grimace, then left, mulling over how she would describe the two subjects to Gibson and Harris.

waking to sudden, full alertness without any of the disorientation that usually accompanies the emergence from sleep - it is a strange feeling, yet perversely normal. He can almost feel himself thinking that he isn't thinking about it.

Then he's passing along metal tubes and through solid walls. Others are in file with him, gravitating towards a central point. Ahead is a transposition arch - and he knows that and is comfortable with it, without knowing what it is or what the word means. The wall by his hand extrudes a weapon. It's unfamiliar, but clearly designed to shoot people. His fingertips are charging it, totally familiar with the procedure, as he steps through the transposition arch.

There is a glare of bright sunlight in his eyes, and it isn't white or gold, but blue. He stares, momentarily astonished by its beauty, and something flits across it.

Then the blue resolves itself into the sky between the tree tops far overhead, and the sun is its normal yellow-white. At that point Tranh realises he is truly awake.

Clark stopped shaking Tranh's shoulder when the man coughed himself awake. He had fallen asleep in a rocking chair on the verandah of the small hotel the UNIT team had booked.

like most people in the area, he wasn't large and wore simple clothes that were probably a few years old. 'I'm sorry,' he said, 'I didn't realise I'd fallen asleep asleep'

'Luckily it was me that was sent to wake you,' Clark replied.' Come on, there's still coffee in the pot.' She led Tranh through and up the worn stairs of the cramped hotel. The first room on the left had been converted into the ops room, with maps and satellite photos pinned to the walls, and scrambled communications equipment ranged around.

Gibson and Harris, both skinheaded white men who seemed to have been produced from some cloning factory, were already there, chatting over the coffee-pot in a manner more genial than their thuggish appearance suggested. Harris handed Tranh a coffee. 'Sorry mate, but you missed breakfast.'

'And lunch,' Gibson added. 'But we kept the coffee warm.'

'Thank you,' Tranh said gratefully, giving them a slight neck-bow. Clark had to admit that though Tranh might be a bit laid-back, he was polite with it.

Better still, he really knew his stuff.

'Are we going somewhere today?' Tranh asked.

"They are,' Clark told him, 'but we're not.' She looked at Gibson and Harris.

'Two good subjects are preparing to leave town for parts unknown. We want you you' She nodded to Tranh. ' To predict To predict where they might be going. where they might be going.

Then you two will get ahead of them and shadow them. If they have a rendezvous rendezvous like the others, we'll need a full report.' like the others, we'll need a full report.'

'Perhaps they are returning to the city?' Tranh suggested.

Clark shook her head. "They were looking at maps, clearly looking for routes they haven't seen before. They definitely weren't preparing to retrace their journey'

Tranh nodded thoughtfully, and turned to study the largest-scale map of the area. Clark traced a finger over the whole area of Kratie, before pausing over a crater lake. 'From the way they were pointing at their map, it looked like they were interested in this area.'

Tranh nodded. 'Then this would be their likely route.' He stabbed a place on the map with his index finger. 'This place has good walking paths and opportunities for safe shelter.'

'Helluva bit close to the Laotian border,' Gibson muttered.

'Yeah' Clark wasn't really surprised. The sort of thing they expected to find tended to happen on a border. That way, each government could pass the buck on to the other. 'Figures. OK, now you know where you're going. Take enough kit for, say, three days in the field.' Gibson and Harris were already out the door. Clark grinned approvingly.

Yi Chung ignored the annoyed looks of shoppers and commuters as he paced around outside the hairdresser's. He tried to keep out of sight, though he wasn't sure if this would simply make him seem more suspicious, and thus less attractive.

It was a dilemma he hadn't considered, but suddenly just about everything worried him. If Emily Ko said yes to a date, surely his life would be changing for the better, and change should never be entered into lightly.

He suddenly knew she would say no. She wasn't Sally Fung, wasn't likely to be as amenable as Auntie Yee's girls, and probably had more sense than to take up with a wise guy like him.

As quickly as he thought that, he reminded himself that he was young and handsome, and that nobody could resist the charms of a young, handsome wise guy. As his emotions continued to yo-yo, he kept pounding the pavement back and forth as if trying to wear a hole in it.

His pacing was stopped by a painful impact and he rocked back on his heels, just managing to stay upright. That was more than could be said for the girl he had just blindly walked into. Embarrassed and guilty, he bent to help her up. He was already trying to apologise, but only gibberish seemed to be coming out. Giving up on speech, he took her hand and lifted her to her feet.

It was Emily Ko, and his heart sank. He had wanted to meet her, but this wasn't exactly what he'd had in mind. 'I'm sorry,' he stammered. 'I was just just'

She slapped him in the chest. 'You were just not paying attention. Probably thinking too much about what trouble you want to get into next. I know your type - Fei Jai,' she sniffed dismissively.

Yi Chung cringed inwardly. He was proud of his determination to back down to no man, but harsh words from a pretty girl made him wish he'd never been born. 'Actually, I was waiting for you.'

'For me? Why?' She gave him a look that said she knew exactly why, and what he could do with himself rather than with her.

'I wanted wanted I mean, I I mean, I just just' That look was still there, more frightening to him than a knife in a rival 49's hand. He recognised that he had reached the stage where any attempt to make things better would just make them worse. 'Sorry' He stepped aside with a weak smile, and she brushed past him.

Yi Chung felt like a helpless child again. Nothing was going right for him today. The only consolation he could draw was that no one who knew him had seen his loss of face. He would tell anyone who asked that she turned out not to be his type, or something. Anyone except Ah Fei, of course.

He set off for home, but stopped immediately. His foot had come down on something lying on the pavement. It was a small wallet with some money and Emily Ko's ID and credit cards in it. The cash was tempting: only a couple of hundred dollars, but every little helped. He had plenty of time to pay for his initiation, as a percentage came out of every deal he made, but it wouldn't hurt to clear it quickly. He wondered whether this was good luck or bad. There was only one way to find out.

Though most people in civilised countries take it for granted, their freedom is a wonderful thing. For the first time in more than a dozen years, Kurt Williams and Danny Taylor had been enjoying the particular freedom that comes with no longer having to attend classes.

Both of them had been accepted by Australian universities, and this was their gap year. They were taking time off before their friendship, which had grown throughout high school, was interrupted by having to live near campuses on opposite sides of the country. This was a year to themselves, and they intended to use it and enjoy it to its fullest.

Of course, such luxuries never come cheap so they had made a deal with a publisher to finance their free year by writing a backpacker's guide to Cambodia. The assignment had been easy to get, not least because relatively few other people wished to go there while there were so few guidebooks. Those that did tended to stick closely to Phnom Penh and Angkor, and there were already enough guides to those places.

As the sun reached its peak, the pair found a suitable clearing in which to rest, and began to set up a small fire for a midday meal. For all that their packs were designed to spread the load evenly, it was a relief to shuck them.

Kurt slipped off into the bushes while Danny prepared a brew-up. When he returned, the smell of coffee was most welcome. 'Don't know what the locals were complaining about,' Danny said. 'There are no mines up here, and no rebels.'

Kurt sniffed disdainfully. 'Didn't that girl you were talking to say something about the place being haunted? Spirits and demons, and all that crap.'