'You had companions?' she asked him.

'Yes. They were heading for the city when we crash-landed last night.'

'You crash-landed?'

The man appeared momentarily unsure of himself. 'Yeah.'

'How many of you were there?'

'Me, the Doctor and Anji.'

'No more?'

'No.'

'Why did you come here?'

'We were forced down. Our ship had some kind of. . . problem.'

'What kind of problem?'

'I'm not sure. It's all a bit technical for me.'

He was lying, and she was wasting her time over the com. Gritting her teeth in frustration, she briefly considered travelling out to Gamma Twelve, but it would take time she didn't have right now, and there were other priorities 123 here. While she was considering her options, there was a buzz at the door and she saw through her obs window that it was a young comptech.

'Give me Damsk,' she snapped.

Loss of signal, then Damsk's head reappeared.

'I want that man questioned. I want to know who he is and what he's doing here, d'you understand? I want the truth, and I want it fast.'

Damsk looked distressed. 'But he's still under medical supervision.'

'He's well enough to talk,' Peron told her.

'He's suffering concussion.'

'He's having you on,' Peron sneered. 'Question him now and report back as soon as you know who he is and who he's working for.'

'No. I'm med officer here, and I say he's not fit to be questioned.'

'You're talking to Colonel Peron of Military One,' Peron said, feeling the anger boiling up inside her. 'I would advise you not to question my orders.'

'And I would advise you not to question my patient.' Damsk stuck firm. 'He'll be well enough to talk to you in the morning. I'll call you back then.'

The call was cancelled and Peron snarled, jumping out of her seat to get the door.

After a few seconds' delay, the door buzzed open and Veta recognised Colonel Peron from her military files. Peron was in dark temper, obviously fuming but trying to keep a cap on her rage.

Lifting her databook, Veta forced a smile into her cheeks that felt all wrong.

'Comp maintenance,' she announced, trying to sound friendly and official.

'I'm looking for Dr Peron.'

'You found her,' Peron said, waving Veta into the office.

It was a fairly s.p.a.cious room. Bigger than Pryce's office. Veta was struck by a noticeable lack of personal possessions. Like Pryce, Peron didn't seem to need reminders of her family while she was at work.

Standing by her chair at the back of the desk, Peron was waving her hands around trying to activate the desktop.

'There. See. It's completely dead. Collapsed as soon as I turned it on today.'

'No problems recently?' Veta asked. 'No warning signs at all?'

'Minor glitches.' Peron shrugged.

Veta squeezed another smile into her face. 'There're some funny things happening lately.'

'You can say that again.'

124.Slumping into the seat, Veta used her security key to unclip the access panel on the edge of the desk, revealing the interface that would allow her inside the comp. Hovering at her shoulder, Peron appeared uneasy, as if she needed to be elsewhere but didn't want to leave Veta alone.

'I have one or two things to sort out,' she informed Veta at last. 'I'm going to have to leave you to it.'

'No problem,' Veta said. 'I'm sure I can manage.'

Peron was heading out the door when Veta suddenly spurted, 'Oh! Pa.s.scode!'

'Pa.s.scode?'

'I'm going to need it to even get this thing started, I'm afraid. If you're worried about security, you can always set up a new one as soon as I've done.'

Again, that look of angry frustration, as if Peron had too many irons in the fire and the fire were getting over stoked. She hesitated at the door, uncertain.

'Libra-one,' she said abruptly.

'Libra One?'

Peron spelled it out and Veta nodded at each letter.

'OK. Shouldn't be long,' Veta said brightly, forcing a confident smile into her face. 'You leave it with me.'

For a dreadful moment, she feared Peron was about to change her mind and hang around to watch, but, after a second of uncertainty, Peron gave her a brief nod before leaving.

Leaving the comptech to work on her machine, Peron stormed into Pryce's office and closed the door, checking the security light was illuminated before she tried to call Foley. The WorldCorp logo informed her that Foley was currently offline, so she put another call in to Military One. She got a green-cap receptionist, a young man who looked as though he'd just got out of school and just got out of bed. He didn't even straighten to attention when he saw her. She raised his name and rank under his image for reference.

'Where's Captain Foley?' she barked.

The young man looked aside, then back at Peron. 'Offline at the moment, sir.'

She was amazed he'd remembered to add the 'sir'.

'I know she's offline,' Peron seethed. 'I asked where she is.'

Again he looked aside briefly. 'She's in Gaskill Tyran's offices, sir. There's a call silence set up. No indication of how long it might last, I'm afraid.'

'Get a unit out to Gamma Twelve,' Peron demanded. 'They've got a visitor there I want back here. I've put a trace on Dr Pryce. He seems to have vanished 125 off the face of the planet. His com may be faulty. Keep trying for me, and as soon as Captain Foley's back online get her to look for him and report back to me. And next time I see you, if you've not had a comb through that hair, I'll have you cleaning toilets for the next six months, Private Szymanowski.'

At last he straightened to attention as if she'd put her boot up his backside.

'Yes, sir.'

She cut the call, and another was waiting. Private Danes.

'We got a fix on the girl, sir.'

'Where is she?'

Danes shook his head, unsure of himself.

'Well this thing says she's toplevel, sir.'

'Where on toplevel?'

'According to the readings, she's outside.'

'How the h.e.l.l did she get outside?' she fumed rhetorically. 'Where are you now, Danes?'

'Reception Sixteen. We're just about to go out, sir. The storms are pretty severe and the readings are a bit wild. We'll have to carry out a manual search.'

'I'm coming up. I'll meet you out there.'

'Yes, sir.'

Danes's head cut and Peron took a moment to gather her thoughts. Things were getting a bit wild, all right. And now, with more of these disappearing people arriving out in the field, there was a good chance that the situation was going to escalate. It didn't have the hallmarks of a military op, but it was clear to Peron now that they had rival agents at work all over the place. The field troubles could only be a result of infiltration by a rival corporation, and it was becoming more obvious by the minute that the worsening comp difficulties were also linked to the same agent activity.

She really needed to get a complete security scan under way, review the personnel files and look seriously at anybody who might have links with rival organisations. That would be a huge task, but it was one that she could look at getting under way as soon as she could talk to Tyran.

For the moment, her priority was to get the girl back. It wasn't going to look too good if she lost somebody in whom Tyran had shown so much personal interest.

To Foley's dismay, when Tyran introduced the real Domecq, the impostor Domecq jumped up from his seat and rushed round the desk to shake hands.

126.Domecq seemed as taken aback by this as everybody else, and there were suddenly more guns in evidence than ever.

'Dr Domecq,' the other Doctor said, a great grin slapped across his face, completely ignoring the Earth Central firepower aimed directly at his head. 'It's a great pleasure. . . '

At a signal from Tyran, Zach swept forward and grasped the impostor Doctor by the shoulder, levelling his pistol smoothly to his head. Raising his hands, the Doctor allowed Zach to guide him back to his seat. While Tyran paced about the open s.p.a.ce beside his chair, Zach remained at the Doctor's shoulder and the gun remained firmly at his temple.

'Now,' Tyran said quietly. 'Shall we start again?'

'Start again?'

'Who are you?'

'I'm the Doctor.'

'What's your name?'

'I don't know.'

'You don't know your name?'

'It's a long, long story.'

'I bet it is. But one way or another, you're going to tell it to me.'

Standing now in front of the impostor, Tyran was pa.s.sing from hand to hand what looked to Foley like a short rubber truncheon. She found Tyran's eyes on hers, and glimpsed in them such a profound vacuum of pity that it made her shiver.

'Cuffs, Captain Foley.'

It took a second for the command to register, but when it did she stepped forward and slipped the cuffs around the Doctor's wrists. He didn't struggle, didn't resist. She clipped them into place, but left them as loose as she possibly dared. Captain Foley had been a.s.signed interrogation duties before, and it wasn't a part of her job she particularly enjoyed. Military combat was one thing, beating the s.h.i.t out of a potentially innocent civilian was entirely another. And in her brief engagements with this alias Domecq, she'd somehow managed to forge a kind of begrudging respect for the man.

Smiling now, Tyran raised the truncheon like a gun in front of him, and Foley realised with shock and horror that it was a probe. Banned for three hundred years, it was a piece of technology that even Earth Central military didn't stoop to utilise. Its use was the only crime in the seven worlds that carried the death penalty.

127.

'Now,' said Tyran, 'I think it's time to see what dirty little secrets you have locked away in that head of yours.'

As she caught the scent of ozone, Foley saw the Doctor spasm in his chair.

The walls abruptly darkened, pulsing with thick intermingled colours. The colours swirled and combined, producing areas that may or may not have been suggestions of images. Faces appeared briefly. She recognised the girl in medicare. There and gone in an instant. The face of a man with long straggly hair.

The blue wooden crate she'd brought into storage. More faces, flashing transiently through the walls like so many ghosts in flight. Memories of people he'd known. Ephemeral moments in his life.

Perched on the edge of the desk, gazing around the walls at the contents of the Doctor's head, Tyran seemed satisfied with the results. The Doctor was breathing hard, the air hissing through his teeth in short, harsh bursts. He was straining at the cuffs, his arms stiff and shoulders hunched in G.o.d-knows-what agonies. Foley felt physically sick just being there.

'Who are you?' Tyran asked evenly, almost politely.

The walls were filled with the Doctor's face, multiple images gazing at them like reflections in a shattered mirror. Eyes wide open and fingers at the lips, exploring as if seeing itself for the first time.

The Doctor gasped, arching backwards in the seat.

'Name.'

'I. . . don't. . . know. . . '

'Name.'