But he'd never really seen himself sitting for hours in front of a monitor with a grey and grainy little 2-D picture of a man in a box.

The prisoner was a curio. His shirt was torn and stained with what appeared to be a mixture of mud and blood. He'd received a good beating for some reason, and his injuries were being deliberately left untreated. Leung wondered what he'd done, what major indiscretion had brought him here in this sorry state. He'd heard stories of Corporate Espionage. Cloak-and-dagger figures infiltrating Ceres Alpha with a mission to s.n.a.t.c.h the contract. There were rumours that they had people in Comp Maintenance implanting virus programs.

People out in the field disrupting the crop chem. And he'd heard rumours that they'd captured some of the enemy agents and tortured them in a specially built secret annexe down in Medicare Central.

Leung had hoped for a piece of the action. He'd volunteered himself for special duties, thinking he might be posted somewhere vital. Now he was disgruntled.

The man in the cell was wandering up and down, apparently forgetting he'd just been truly trounced. He gazed around, inspecting the walls with careful attention, running his fingertips over some of the welds, tapping every now and then with his ear to the surface. Turning his attention to the door, he spent a good ten minutes tapping, rubbing, listening and finally kicking in frustration.

Leung watched him empty his pockets on to the bunk but he obviously found nothing of use in them. Abruptly, he was on the floor, scurrying about on his hands and knees. Same routine of tapping and listening and scrutinising every inch closely. Then he stood in the middle of the room with his arms outstretched, fingertips touching the wall at one side, apparently estimating the gap left at the other side. He scratched his head.

He moved the bunk into the middle of the room and jumped on top of it to take a closer look at the light fitting in the centre of the ceiling. After a few minutes trying to break into the high-security seal with his bare fingers, he gave up and continued with his gazing. Then he finally noticed the hidden surveillance camera and his battered face loomed large in Leung's monitor as he looked closely into it. Leung saw the man's fingers trying to prise open the high-sec seal on the camera lens, blobby white shapes probing the outer edges of the monitor. Eventually he gave up and his vastly bloated features 148receded. He remained in full shot, a nice close-up of his bloodied face, which was abruptly filled with a big beaming grin.

Leung watched in irritated fascination as the prisoner raised his hand to show Leung a small white sphere that he was holding between his fingers. He raised his other hand to grasp the ball. Then opened both hands and to Leung's surprise the ball had vanished altogether. He opened his lips slowly, and the ball had miraculously appeared inside his mouth.

He waved cheerfully at Leung before jumping down off the bunk and pushing it back into position against the wall. Then he threw himself on to the bunk with his arms behind his head and his ankles crossed, and he fell motionless except for the rhythmic flexing of his foot.

When the fear surged through her, Anji slammed her eyes shut tight. She had had to get a grip. to get a grip. Had Had to take control. Calm down. Take stock and a.s.sess the situation. The tide of dread subsided, and she opened her eyes to find them back to normal in the mirror. to take control. Calm down. Take stock and a.s.sess the situation. The tide of dread subsided, and she opened her eyes to find them back to normal in the mirror.

Had she imagined the spreading blackness? Or was it part of the illness she was suffering from the TARDIS? Did it have something to do with her dreamlike connection with the children in the hold? Who were they? Why were they held in such barbaric conditions? And what was going on in a hospital that was run by doctors with guns?

Had they arrived in a lunatic asylum that had been overrun by the inmates?

Too many questions. And she was in no fit state to find the answers.

What she needed was a Plan. She was drawn towards the hold. Back to the children. But Peron had said they were posting a permanent guard. Too dangerous. She had to find the Doctor. He'd know what was happening. He'd have everything sussed.

So where was he?

With a glance round the room, she saw Danes sprawled on the floor. He was dead, of course. Ma.s.sively overdosed on everything going. She knew that without even checking his pulse. How did she know?

Apart from the bed and the machine that Danes had wheeled to the side of it, the room appeared to be empty. What she needed was some information.

She needed to discover where she was and how to get to wherever the Doctor might be. What she needed was some nice person to ask.

Huh!

No. . . Not necessarily some nice person. . . Perhaps some nice thing thing to ask. to ask.

A place with this level of medical technology would have computer systems 149 that she might be able to communicate with. Some sort of HAL 9000. But how would she recognise it? Dave had always blabbed on excitedly about miniaturisation and computers getting everywhere. About how she'd be able to talk to her microwave in years to come to set up her business meetings.

She tried the medical machine. Tugging it across the room to avoid Danes's body, she poked a couple of the b.u.t.tons experimentally.

'Hey,' she said. 'Anybody there?'

No answer.

The machine eventually buzzed into life under her haphazard ministrations.

Its business area filled with lights and tiny screens, like windows pa.s.sing around and through one another.

'Can you hear me?'

It couldn't. Obviously. So she continued to press and poke until the machine died to darkness.

There were large panels on the walls that looked at first glance like sheets of Perspex with vague areas of translucent colour sprayed on the other side to show through. Art? Or computer interfaces? Who could tell? The sheets appeared to be completely at aesthetic odds with the untidy conduit-covered walls. Maybe they were there for decorative purposes, to draw the eye away from the bad workmanship.

Approaching one of the sheets, she tried stroking it to see what happened.

She was slightly surprised and, extremely gratified to see the colours on the other side of the Perspex move and merge in response to her touch. A bubble of holographic animation materialised in the air by her head. A blue sky with a jolly great sun shining off to, the right, and a flock of birds wheeling about in the top half of the image.

'h.e.l.lo?' she tried.

'Can I help you?' the hologram asked. It was a s.e.xless voice that could as easily have been male or female, but it had a friendly enough intonation.

'I don't know,' she admitted. Unsure if she was talking to a human operator or the machine itself, she needed to be careful. 'I wanted some information.'

'How can I help you?'

Come on, Anj, take the plunge. 'I'm looking for someone.' 'I'm looking for someone.'

'Name?'

'The Doctor.'

'Which Doctor would you like?'

' The The Doctor. That's his name.' Doctor. That's his name.'

'I'm sorry. We have no one registered by that name on the records.'

150.Pause. 'OK. Can you tell me where new arrivals report to?'

'New arrivals?'

'New visitors. . . ' An idea struck her. Knowing the Doctor, it was worth a try.

'Is there a VIP suite?'

'The VIP suite is situated by Central Offices.'

'And where are those?'

'Level Ninety. Median region.'

Great. Where the h.e.l.l was that?

'Can you give me a map?'

The holographic sky vanished to be replaced by a three-dimensional schematic diagram that looked like a map of some mad architect's worst nightmare. There was a pulsing red dot somewhere in the centre, and near the top was a pulsing green dot. It took Anji a few seconds to work out that the red dot was her, and the green dot was where she wanted to be. And in between was a whole d.a.m.n lot of messy schematic: millions of hair-thin lines intersecting one another mostly at right angles, but many of them taking tangential detours.

It took her another few seconds to work out that the lines were colour-coded, and that most of them were probably ventilation shafts and maintenance access tunnels that she could ignore.

'Can you show me the standard route I'd take?' she asked.

Ninety-nine per cent of the lines promptly vanished, leaving only a skeletal map showing a few corridors and lift shafts with truncated offshoots to help her get her bearings. Anji suddenly had a better idea.

'If I wanted the. . . maintenance route,' she said, unsure of exactly how to put this without hearing alarm bells and sirens, 'in order to check the. . . ' (the (the security of the grommets and sky hooks?) security of the grommets and sky hooks?) '. . . main power lines between here and the VIP suite, could you show me that?' '. . . main power lines between here and the VIP suite, could you show me that?'

'Main power lines?'

Oh I don't know! The way n.o.body will see me. . . the tradesman's entrance. . .

let me up your hack pa.s.sage. . .

'I want to check the security of the. . . ' ( telephone lines? washing lines? ley telephone lines? washing lines? ley lines? wiggly-whatsit lines?) lines? wiggly-whatsit lines?) '. . . communications channels.' '. . . communications channels.'

'Com channels are monitored entirely by comp systems.'

'The ventilation system?'

'Manual vent maintenance is not necessary.'

'But can you show me the ventilation system between here and the VIP suite?'

The skeleton-map reconfigured instantly. A to B by a different route. But still lots of aborted branches that she imagined could be hugely confusing if she 151 tried to memorise even a small portion of the route.

'Thank you. Can I have a printout?'

'Printout?'

'Can I take this picture with me?'

'I'm sorry. Your com is inactive.'

'Com?'

'Please activate your com.'

Com. . . Com. . .

Dashing over to Danes's inert body, she turned him over and unclipped the small badge from his chest, dipping it to her own chest. The badge was simply a disc of transparent plastic with splurges of colour slopped on the wrong side, but she knew now what the technology around here looked like. How to get the badge to work, on the other hand, was another thing entirely.

She tried pressing it in the centre.

'Com active,' the hologram announced, and the map vanished, only to reappear again instantly at her side.

'Com active.' Anji grinned. 'It's good to talk.'

The night had teeth. Big vicious sharp teeth that it was keen to sink into Fitz.

He scurried down the perimeter of the base as Ayla had indicated, but he could see only a few yards ahead in the terrible conditions. Only a couple of hundred metres, she'd said. Metres equals yards plus a touch. For all the years he'd spent with the mostly metric Doctor, his mind still insisted on working in imperial.

It took him a good few minutes to reach the main door, and just beyond, as Ayla had promised, were the landbugs. They were like three-wheeled bikes with giant thick tyres and odd-looking boxes attached that reminded Fitz of those sidecars he used to see a lot when he was growing up.

There were four of the bugs, huddled together as if they were trying to protect one another from the squall. He began to take a closer look, trying to decide which one might be Ayla's, when he saw that each bug had an emblem painted on the side. The one nearest to him had a picture of a tree, the next one along a skull. He moved round the other side and saw that one had a picture of a bird painted on it, and decided that was probably Ayla's.

Fumbling for the keys she'd given him, which in actual fact were a set of small discs like coins all fastened together on a thin chain, he knelt across the bug's seat and inspected what he took to be the dash board. It was simply a panel of dark plastic that seemed to have splodges of dim paint spilled under it. Separating out one of the 'keys' at random, he began to search for a slot 152but failed to find one. As he leaned closer, however; the panel glowed into life and he saw that it now contained a screen with little animated windows sliding about inside it.

In the spa.r.s.e, flickering light he could see a tiny slit on the edge of the panel.

He pushed the disc into the slit and a word appeared in one of the windows on the dash.

pa.s.scode?

Another window suddenly contained a qwerty keyboard and he used it to input the letters 'G. . . o. . . '

A shout went up nearby. There was the sudden clamour of voices and Fitz saw dark shapes shifting in the swirling weather. Lights danced about in the gloom, some of them falling directly on him.

'. . . l. . . d. . . f. . . '

'Get him,' somebody yelled.

'. . . i. . . n. . . '

With a burst of air exploding from his lungs, Fitz was sent sideways off the bug and hit the ground with a crash of shoulders. Somebody heavy landed directly on top of him with a grunt and the stench of sweat. There were more voices and lights flailing about in the winds. A long moment of confusion before Fitz got an intense light straight in his face. He brought up his arms to shield his eyes. As far as he could see there were two dark blobs moving about in the fierce illumination, plus the roughneck-who'd landed with him.

He felt himself being dragged to his feet and manhandled past the bug. Then he was held tight while the lights explored him and the surrounding area. He saw one of the black blobs yank the keys out of the bug and hurl them in a long wide arc through the air. Fitz watched the keys get swallowed up by the storm, and saw his hope of freedom go swiftly with them.

Peron's hands were shaking as her fingers manipulated controls on the desktop, first renewing her pa.s.scode, then calling up the scenes she'd recorded last night when Pryce had attacked the creature. The image was fuzzy, a grey ball of static with barely definable areas of light that she could only just make out to be Pryce. She rechecked the readings, as she had already done last night, to trace the fault. Nothing.

She'd a.s.sumed when her machine broke down that yesterday's bad reception had been a warning glitch in her system. Now the repairs had been carried out by Comp Maintenance, the system should be clear.

153.

Scanning the sec log, she found the point at which she'd entered the hold with the creature. There were three multipic lenses in the corridor outside the cells, and that should allow her to obtain excellent images from various angles.

What she found, though, was another grey ball of fuzz. The sound was also nothing more than an annoying hiss through which she could only just make out the clanging of the cell doors.

She watched herself enter the hold, listening to the bang and clatter, the trepidation evident in her face. She watched as she dangled the creature by the neck in front of her. The crackle was now louder than ever, too noisy for her to make out her words. The picture failed and almost instantaneously resurrected itself. She watched as she threw the creature across the bay and it slammed into the far wall, a crumpled ball of arms and legs. It lay there looking, stunned.

The picture blacked out completely, and the volume of sound became abruptly unbearable. A deafening hiss of noise. And suddenly she heard them.

The voices. Talking much faster than she could possibly comprehend, but the sound now she'd recognised it was unmistakable Thousands of muttering voices.

'She's in,' Veta said urgently, almost startled at the realisation that the warning flag she'd set up was finally glimmering.

Josef watched over her shoulder as she worked furiously on the substructural code around Peron's machine.