They scrambled inside and she eased herself into the c.o.c.kpit. Domecq knelt behind her watching every move with eager, childlike interest.

'You better strap in,' she told him.

'I'll be fine,' Domecq said. 'I'm one of those backseat drivers who want to see exactly where we're going.'

Foley punched in her code and watched for the green light that signalled release of the locking bars. By the time the light was given, she'd fired up and they were already lifting into the blizzard.

'Amazing that you can use this kind of transport under such terrible conditions,' Domecq said as they took to the air.

'You can't knock one of these out of the sky unless you got a multiphase anti-aircraft cannon,' Foley a.s.sured him. 'These things can fly through any planetary conditions you could imagine, plus a few you wouldn't want to think about.'

'What d'you think he'd done?' Domecq asked.

Foley was thrown by the non sequitur. 'I'm sorry?'

'That poor man we pa.s.sed who'd been beaten up by your uniformed thugs.'

'That poor man could be a vicious outlaw,' Foley said, swooping them over the edge and plunging down into a steep planet-fall.

The air turbulence made it heavy going, and the chopper was thrown about like a toy. Foley gripped the joystick and disregarded the auto-override that 60was trying to cut in. Domecq defied all the laws of momentum to remain glued to her shoulder. He seemed entirely unperturbed by her shock tactics, and in fact he was shaking his head with his mind obviously elsewhere.

'I recognise the hallmarks of brutality,' he said simply, as she yanked the stick to level them out. Her stomach continued along the same trajectory and took a short while to get back in touch.

'You only saw him for a split second,' Foley argued, trying to compensate for some particularly bad-tempered near-ground currents caused by the uneven-ness of the terrain.

'Oh, it has distinct characteristics,' Domecq a.s.sured her. ' No! No! ' '

The tone of his voice changed so suddenly that she had to glance back to read his face. He was peering out into the storm, now shocked into silence. Through the front screen, following his gaze, Foley could see very little. Visibility was down to a few metres.

'What?'

'The TARDIS.'

'The what?'

'Put us down.'

She did as he said and they clambered out into conditions that made Foley thank G.o.d she had her anti-sand-storm gear on. She pulled the goggles down over her eyes and dropped the flaps to protect her ears. Domecq wandered off, for all the world as if he were taking a ramble on a breezy summer's day. His hair whipped up above his head and his jacket flung itself around his shoulders, slapping him in the face and rising like wings about him.

Foley followed him as he strolled into the storm. The ground bucked and vibrated from the approach of the city, and there was so much noise she could hardly hear herself think. Domecq seemed oblivious.

Then she saw what he was looking at. It emerged from the storm and she glared at it in disbelief. A squat dark box apparently made of blue-painted wood. Incredibly, the slightly battered-looking colour had remained intact, despite being subjected to the sandblasting that sometimes pa.s.sed for night on Ceres. Foley grasped Domecq by the sleeve.

'What the h.e.l.l's that?' she screamed above the wind.

'My equipment,' Domecq told her, fighting with his flailing coat. He was looking back in the direction of the city, pointing. 'We set off in that direction,'

he yelled. 'I left Fitz about a kilometre over there.'

Foley adjusted the goggles to try to penetrate the storm, and only fifty or so metres away she could make out the lights of the approaching city. She gazed 61.into the ferocious night while she unhooked the detector from her com unit, then did a complete sweep of the vicinity, widening the range as she turned repeatedly.

She realised Domecq was scrutinising the readings at her shoulder. She shook her head.

'I'm sorry '

Domecq grabbed the detector from her.

'You get back to the chopper,' he said. 'I'm going to take a look around.'

'Don't be stupid,' Foley hollered. 'You're not exactly dressed for these conditions. You need combat fatigues, a survival kit '

'I am am a survival kit,' he told her. 'Wait in the chopper. I won't be long.' a survival kit,' he told her. 'Wait in the chopper. I won't be long.'

He was about to turn his back on her when she grasped his shoulder and clenched her fist angrily in front of his face.

'Now listen to me,' she shouted. 'I'm not going to let you go get yourself killed again. It's not gonna look too good on my report card if I lose you after risking my life to save your idiot skin in the first place.'

She started to drag him towards the chopper, but found herself holding an empty jacket that whipped around in the wind. She saw his white shirtsleeves briefly before he was devoured by the weather.

Foley considered pursuing him, but without the detector there was a real danger she could lose herself completely out here. She decided instead to return, fuming, to the chopper and give him a few minutes before abandoning him to his fate.

Back at the chopper the monitor was flashing in alarm. She scanned the readings and realised just how dangerously close the city now was. Out in the squall there was no sign of Domecq. She could sit here for a few minutes only, then she'd have to move. Slamming her fist into the monitor, she decided to practise her cussing techniques for the remainder of the time she had.

Bains was manhandled down a series of corridors until he recognised the holding area of Military One. He'd grown accustomed to these walls when he was last forcibly brought back to the city a month ago, and he didn't particularly relish the idea of spending any more nights in these cells.

Tossed into a tiny room that contained a desk and two chairs, he slumped into one of the chairs to gingerly test his injuries while he waited. There was intense pain down one side of his upper trunk, but only when he tried to breathe.

Broken ribs, maybe. There was the option of not breathing at all, but on balance he preferred to put up with the pain.

62.

The men who'd captured him had spoken not a single word. There'd been no questions asked, no comment on his activities. He a.s.sumed they knew who he was and what he'd been trying to do. And he a.s.sumed they were acting under instructions from Gaskill Tyran.

So he'd finally proved what depths they were willing to plumb to stop news of his finds getting out. He thought back to the day he got the job on Ceres Alpha. The offer that came through a series of friends, a fortuitous invitation to apply for the post of official archaeologist on Ceres Alpha, the WorldCorp discovery that was a planet so close in conditions to Earth that people could even breathe the atmosphere. It was an opportunity too remarkable to decline.

Initial surveys confirmed no intelligent life. The atmosphere was maintained by micro-organisms and elementary vegetation. Nothing toxic. The perfect environment for an earlier civilisation to have survived in. He'd never been offered such a chance in his life.

And now he was beginning to wish he'd never set foot on Ceres Alpha.

The door cracked open and a short woman entered. Bains noted that she wore a sidearm and that the holster was open. She was broad with the physique of a man. Short brown hair stuck up from her head in tufts. She regarded him with a shadowy scowl and he imagined that it was her customary expression, one that was set in stone.

The woman remained standing over him while Bains forced the breath in and out of his lungs, using the table for support. When she spoke, she had a voice to match her masculine appearance, deep and gruff with singularly unpleasant undertones.

'You were caught trying to steal a military chopper '

'It's my my chopper,' Bains started to argue, but the agony it caused was too much to bear and his sentence floundered in midair like a bird shot in flight. chopper,' Bains started to argue, but the agony it caused was too much to bear and his sentence floundered in midair like a bird shot in flight.

' Silence! Silence! ' '

the woman snapped.

'Furthermore, you deliberately overrode safety protocol to use your blasters when there were military personnel in the vicinity. I have a man badly injured due to your ruthless stupidity.'

She allowed a long silence to ensue and Bains opted not to punctuate it with anything.

'Before we've done with you,' she snarled, 'you'll wish you'd never set foot on Ceres Alpha.'

The chopper was lifting when Foley saw Domecq reappear directly in front of her. He was waving his arms, trying to catch her attention. She thought about 63.leaving anyway, but changed her mind at the last moment and pressed the door com.

Domecq climbed on board, his shirtsleeves torn and filthy and his hair a scruffy pile of dark-brown curls above his pale face. For a pa.s.sing moment he looked like a phantom, and Foley fancied that he'd got himself killed again after all.

'Nothing?' she asked.

He shook his head, peering down at the detector in his hands.

'Have we got lifting gear on board?' he asked.

'For that crate of yours?'

He nodded.

She gave him a rare and indulgent smile. You just had to give the man credit.

'I think we can manage that for you,' she said. 'But this time will you strap yourself in, please please?'

Tyran's private apartments were vast. Great empty s.p.a.ces with the bare minimum of functional furniture, rooms without warmth or any kind of human feeling. Places without a soul. Carly remembered being hugely impressed the first time she saw them, amazed that anybody could command such s.p.a.ce. But over recent months these rooms had increasingly filled her with dread.

Struggling to overcome the trepidation she felt, she crossed the living area and made her way towards the bedrooms at the back. Outside Tyran's door she paused, listening to the sound of her own ragged breath and the thump of the blood through her head.

Slipping in silence into the room, she found Tyran fast asleep. p.r.o.ne and alone. She'd seen him like this many times, of course, having shared his bed, on and off, for four years now. Shared his bed, and his sec codes. She gritted her teeth and began to search the room in silence, discovering the mind probe on the dresser near the door. It had been discarded casually, like his com and his watch. Such a vile thing, yet to him it was a trinket among his personal effects. She took it in her fingers and felt the tingle of absolute power that it represented.

The probe was sleek and felt comfortable in the palm of her hand. Formed from black plastic, it had unmarked controls along the side. Carly had no idea what the controls actually did, but the ergonomics of the thing suggested that the raised b.u.mp at the front, accessed by the trigger finger, was the business b.u.t.ton. Levelling the device in front of her, she crept towards the bed, shaking 64so badly now that the probe jigged about in the air and she wondered for an instant whether she could finish what she'd come here to do.

But now she had no choice. He'd made it plain that she'd reached the end of her usefulness. He had tired of her company, and of her services. And she knew that people like her didn't get pensioned off by Tyran. People like her knew too much to be released.

Clambering on to the bed on her knees, Carly pointed the probe at his head and savoured this moment. With the probe he'd terrorised her. He'd effectively killed her many times over. The sweet justice of this vengeance was a beautiful thing to taste. She took a deep breath before pressing the b.u.t.ton. The air was filled with the scent of ozone and Tyran flung up his arms as if in alarm. His eyes snapped open and he watched her in bewildered astonishment. She was gratified to see something akin to fear in his wide-open gaze.

But then his fear transformed. Lifting himself on to his elbows, he simply watched her out of the gloom. Feeling the tears pouring down her face, Carly frantically tried some of the other controls. But Tyran's expression didn't change and she shook the probe in frustration as he pushed himself up and reached out to grab it.

Blind fury consumed her. She lashed out, using the probe as a truncheon, and Tyran fell back with a grunt, dark blood splattering his shadowy pillow.

Dropping the probe, she laid into him with her bare fists, beating and scratching and sobbing with fury.

Then she felt her arms gripped tight and she was hurled through the air. She hit a wall and the wind blasted out of her chest. Momentarily stunned, she found Tyran standing over her wiping the blood from his nose on the back of his arm. Then she saw he had the probe. It swung up through the air and she smelled again the scent of ozone. She glimpsed the loathing in his eyes, and the white light that exploded into her brain filled her with fires that raged and consumed.

And the last thing she ever knew was the look on his face as he killed her.

There were two long scars down the side of his face and blood smeared around his lips and nose, but a few minutes on the accelerator would repair all the damage she'd done.

After splashing his face with cold water, Tyran dried quickly and got himself dressed. Before leaving the bedroom, he bent briefly to peer into Carly's bright eyes. They gazed back at him out of an empty head that lolled back curiously on her shoulder.

65.'You shouldn't play with dangerous toys,' he admonished.

She didn't, of course, reply.

As he swept through the apartment, Tyran grabbed his jacket from the stand by the door. Not bothering to put the jacket on, he unclipped the com and put in a call to Zach. The apelike head of his guard appeared in the air nearby looking as if it'd just been pushed through a mincer.

'Morning, Zach,' Tyran said brightly as he left the apartment and paced down the corridor towards the elevators. 'Woman overboard, please. You'll find her in my bedroom.'

'You were very fortunate,' Peron told him. The words came out a bit dispa.s.sionately, but Domecq needed shaking out of his morose preoccupation. It was nearly six now and he'd spent the last hour at the girl's side simply staring off into s.p.a.ce, completely oblivious to the comings and goings of Peron and the staff.

Emerging from his trancelike state, Domecq gazed at her for a moment like a startled cat.

'I'm sorry?' he said at last.

'You were very fortunate,' she repeated. 'Both of you.'

'I should have been there for Fitz,' he said.

'You can't blame yourself,' she told him. 'Forced landing at night on Ceres Alpha is a dangerous exercise. It's a miracle any of you survived.'

She heard the door open behind her and turned to find Pryce coming into the room. He looked tired and more than a little frazzled around the edges, as if he'd just come in from outside himself.

'Ah, Dr Domecq,' he said. 'I'm sorry to hear about your colleague.'

Domecq shot him a rueful stare. 'He was my friend friend.'

'Yes,' Pryce said, suddenly unsure of himself. 'Yes. Of course. I'm sorry.'

Floundering for a moment, Pryce looked from Domecq to the girl to Peron and back to Domecq. It was comical to see, this head of department lost for words and direction.

'Do you want to see the creatures now?' Pryce asked suddenly. 'Or would you prefer to get some sleep first?'

'The creatures?'

'Yes.'

Domecq came to his senses, jumping abruptly to his feet. 'Yes. Yes, of course.

I'm sorry. I don't know what I'm thinking.'

66.

'Don't you think it might be better to get some rest before you start work?'

Peron suggested. She'd prefer to keep Domecq away from the creatures until she'd verified just who exactly he was. Foley had reported no trace of a wreck on the surface, and it was still possible that the man before them was not Domecq at all. She stared pointedly at Pryce before turning back to Domecq.

'You've been through a long series of quite traumatic experiences tonight.'