'Go,' he said, over his command link.

They climbed out of their cars as one and started forward with their long rifles levelled. The guards by the elevator doors looked up. Keldo revelled in their expressions of disbelief as they saw their supposedly dead enemies marching towards them. The Taklarians were able to take three more strides before the guards recovered sufficiently to reach for their holstered side-arms.

'Now!' Keldo shouted, and the guards fell in a hail of automatic fire.

'Taklars!' somebody screamed.

Keldo's men ran forward to secure the elevator cages, trampling over people who, panic-stricken, had thrown themselves to the ground, and brushing aside those still standing. Keldo found the litter in his path. One of the priests guarding the body flung out his arms as though trying to ward him off.

'No! You must not...'

Keldo knocked him aside and kicked over the litter so that the body rolled in the dirt.

'n.o.body tells a prince of Taklar what he may not do!'

Keldo shouted exultantly.

The holy man who had been scattering water was standing before him, defiantly holding up a circular amulet he wore on a chain about his neck. There was a wild look in the man's eyes.

'In the name of the Maker, I denounce you! Stand back, heathen, or else you will be consumed by His terrible fire...'

Keldo shot him in the chest, the force of the blast lifting him off his feet and sending him sprawling backwards. He lay twitching lightly, eyes staring up at the sky. To Keldo's mild surprise he still clasped his amulet. Faint words bubbled up with the froth of blood about his lips.

'Maker... receive the soul of your servant...'

Keldo shot him again and he lay still. On an impulse he tore the amulet from the man's b.l.o.o.d.y hands, snapping the chain, then strode on to the elevators. They had secured five of them with their cages on the ground. All the guards were dead and the remaining evacuees were a cowering, confused rabble who posed no immediate threat.

'Thorken... stay by me!' Keldo commanded.

They crammed as many men as they could into each cage, leaving the rest to follow when they sent the cages back down.

Keldo punched the topmost b.u.t.ton on the control panel. He had to reach the command decks before the Arkavians had time to seal them off.

The cage creaked and rattled upwards with what seemed like agonising slowness.

Halfway up the Ship they pa.s.sed the lowest of the retractable bridges that spanned the gap between the gantry and the gleaming hull. The large hatch at the far end, obviously intended for loading cargo, was closed. Good, they would need all the supplies they could carry with them to settle Mirath. The first of the bridges leading to smaller pa.s.senger hatches went by and he saw the occupants of the last elevator to ascend ahead of them, running across it. Keldo peered upwards impatiently. Three more hatches, then a gap, then the highest bridges of all that connected with the capsule at the summit of the ship. That was where the control room would be.

Then, as they came opposite the last of the pa.s.senger access levels, the elevator stopped.

Keldo pounded on the upper b.u.t.tons of the control panel until the panel began to crack, but the elevator cage would not move.

'Prince... stop,' said Thorken. 'Access to the higher levels may be restricted... we may need a code or key to go further.'

'We have no time for such things!' Keldo snarled impatiently. He tore open the cage doors and started across the bridge, his men pounding along at his heels.

There was a crackle of gunfire from the hatch at the end of the bridge and one of his men fell with a choking cry. The rest returned fire, bullets flashing off the hull around the hatchway.

Slowly the hatch began to swing closed.

With a roar Keldo threw himself forward and into the narrowing gap between the hatch and its frame, thrusting his arm and shoulder through so that he could fire at the figure standing by the controls on the other side. The man fell even as Keldo forced his bulk inside and slapped his hand over the controls, hitting b.u.t.tons until the hatch halted and then began to swing open again. His men piled through after him.

They were in the Ship.

'Two of you guard this hatchway,' Keldo said. 'The rest come with me.'

Keldo kicked open a door leading to an inner compartment opposite the hatch, gun swinging round to cover the s.p.a.ce beyond, expecting to meet further resistance. Instead he saw only rows of tiered couches with masked and sleeping forms lying upon them.

'They have sedated the pa.s.sengers for flight,' Thorken said.

'If every deck is like this, we shall only have the crew to deal with,' said Keldo. 'Forward!'

They slipped between the tiers of beds until they came to the central core. Here a stairway circled around the small lift shaft that seemed to run the length of the ship. Not trusting the mechanism, Keldo started up the stairs.

They climbed through six decks until they reached a closed hatchway set in the bulkhead that divided the nose section from the rest of the ship. Thorken directed the positioning of a cutting charge on the hatch and they moved a deck down before triggering it. With a crack and billow of smoke a neat disc of metal was blown out of the hatch and fell down the stairs. A second hatch was dealt with in the same way and the Taklarians climbed into the upper capsule.

All was silent. There was no sign of the crew and the tiers of hunks in the pa.s.senger levels were empty even of sleepers.

'Why do they waste these s.p.a.ces?' Thorken wondered.

They climbed on until the stairs ended before a locked hatchway. A sign read: CONTROL ROOM AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY.

'We should not use force on this as we did on the others, Prince,' Thorken cautioned. 'We may damage vital controls on the other side.'

A call came through on Keldo's communicator: 'Men are stationed on each level as planned, Prince. There is little resistance. Most pa.s.sengers are sleeping. The enemy column that left earlier has returned but we are holding them off easily. We have the Ship!'

The men with Keldo cheered wildly.

Keldo hammered on the intercom panel beside the hatch.

'This is Prince Keldo Arrosthenos of the Taklarian Empire. We control the rest of the ship. If you do not open this door your people below will suffer. Do you understand? Can you hear me in there?'

After a few seconds the intercom screen came to life revealing the careworn face of a middle-aged man. 'I can hear you,' he said.

'Who are you?' Keldo demanded.

'Brantus Draad, Mayor of Arkhaven.'

'Then you can order this door opened.'

'Why should I, if you're going to kill us all anyway?'

'Not if you serve us well. We have need of your kind.'

'To live as your slaves. I don't think so.'

'You have no choice. My men control this ship.'

'Yes, I know. I've seen them on the monitors,' Draad said.

'Then you can see they have your people at their mercy.

Open this door or I will order them to kill a hundred as an example.' He held up the b.l.o.o.d.y amulet. 'They will die as your holy man died.'

To Keldo's amazement Draad began to laugh. It was a tired, chillingly bitter laugh without humour; simply an acknowledgement of the perversity of fate. It made Keldo shiver.

'Poor Zeckler,' Draad said. 'I almost feel sorry for him.

But he should have boarded earlier instead of performing his blessings. Then he'd have been asleep by now and wouldn't know anything about this. That was the plan, you know.'

There was something wrong, Keldo realised. The man was not reacting as he should. Out of sight of the intercom camera, Keldo gestured to his men. A soldier began laying a cutting-charge strip around the control room door.

'If you don't care for your priest there are others aboard who you must care for,' Keldo said.

'Care for?' said Draad. 'Oh, yes, there are thousands aboard that I care for. But the most I could do for them was to see their last hours were filled with hope... and that they wouldn't feel any pain at the end.' Draad looked to one side as though consulting another screen. 'I see your men have killed the last of our watchmen and are now all on board. That always was something you Taklarians were good at, killing.'

'We fight to survive. The strong destroy the weak. That is as it has always been.'

'Not any more, I hope,' said Draad. 'Where have you come from, as a matter of interest?'

'The battlecraft on the sh.o.r.e. You could have destroyed us at any time if you had thought to search it properly.'

Draad sighed. 'I should have had it broken up and removed, but there was so much rebuilding to do in the city.

And the Church and the Elite said it made a fitting monument to our victory. Too late now.'

The soldier stood back, detonator held ready.

'Yes, you inferior races are always making such errors, Keldo agreed. 'Such as this one!'

He snapped his fingers. The soldier pressed the detonator and the door blew in.

Keldo charged into the control room through the billowing smoke. His gun swung over banked instrument panels studded with switches; across screens and flashing lights and empty acceleration couches with safety straps hanging loosely down their sides. Draad's face looked out from a screen over the engineer's console.

'Are you satisfied?' he said. 'The Ship is all yours now.'

'Where are your crew hiding?' Keldo raged.

Thorken was pulling at his sleeve. 'My Prince, I think we should leave.'

'No, please don't go,' Draad said. 'Your being here makes it just a little easier to do what I must.'

'What do you mean?' Keldo demanded, feeling the cold touch of true fear for the first, and last, time in his life.

'This,' said Draad simply.

Chapter Thirty-One.

Last Chance A golden fireball enveloped the Ship's landing module, blossoming like an evanescent sunflower over the jagged city skyline. A string of explosions tore down the silver skysc.r.a.per hull, peeling back the plating and exposing the ribs of the ship to the air. Slowly the naked skeleton folded in upon itself, crumpling and fragmenting, melting away in blazing shards.

As it fell a vast billow of grey smoke laced with red and yellow fire rose to meet it, rolling upwards to lick at the base of the clouds.

Even on the outskirts of the city the ground trembled with the impact of its collapse, the vibrations racing through the earth ahead of airborne sound.

The Ship was gone and where it had stood was now a blazing column of fire that licked hungrily about the girders of the launch tower.

For long seconds the tower seemed untouched by the destruction of the Ship, its broken stubs of gantries and bridges still reaching out as though to embrace the s.p.a.ce its lost companion had occupied. Then it began to twist and buckle. With awful majesty it toppled over and vanished below the skyline. A fresh upwelling of smoke and flame erupted as it joined the pyre which consumed the last hope of Arkhaven.

The pocket phone dropped from Lant's numbed grasp as he stared at the rising smoke cloud. He had been asking for more information, uncertain whether he should abandon his companions to obey the desperate call for help. There had been no response to his call. Now there was n.o.body left to answer him.

Curton said: 'Oh, G.o.d no.' Nyra covered her eyes.

The Susan android and some of the NC2s emerged from the storeroom to stare at the scene in disbelief. A huge pall of smoke rolled upwards from the heart of the city where Ship and tower had stood in undisputed dominance for years. The sound of their destruction finally reached the camp; the thunderous roar of multiple explosions followed by the agonising groan and shriek of thousands of tonnes of falling tortured metal.

Then it was past and fading into a prolonged rumble.

Some of the children began to cry.

The Doctor turned to the still-shocked Arkavians and suddenly he seemed to swell with purpose.

'The Ship is gone now and there is nothing you can do about it,' he said with almost cruel emphasis. 'You must contain your questions, and your grief for those who died, for later. There is still a slim chance for us all, but only if we act quickly.'

Nyra was shaking her head woodenly, her eyes bleak with despair. 'There's no chance... no hope. Without the Ship it's all over!.

'No, there is still hope,' the Doctor said, glancing at Ian.

'Because the Ship could never have flown!'

He had the Arkavians' absolute and undivided attention now. They gaped at him incredulously, as though he was suddenly speaking nonsense.

'What do you mean?' Lant said.

'The Ship was a monstrous deception. It did not have sufficient power to lift itself one inch off this planet. I cannot go into the details now, but I beg you to trust me. Consider that if I am wrong you have nothing to lose. Well?'

There was a masterful edge to his words that could not be denied. Curton nodded slowly. Nyra rubbed her eyes and tried to stifle her sobs of despair. With an obvious effort of will Lant met the Doctor's gaze squarely.