'Let's move,' said Little Brother Manjuele.

Justine nodded her agreement. 'If you're quite ready, Mr Homunculette? We are under attack, after all.'

Homunculette turned to glare at her. 'I'm ready. Help me get her up.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'I can't carry here alone, can I? Come on. Help me.'

'F'get it,' Manjuele said, with the faintest of grins.

Homunculette clenched his fists. 'Listen, you little primitive '

'Look out!'

Justine spun around. The Doctor stood next to her, his companion at his side, the Relic hovering at his feet. Qixotl and the UNISYC Colonel were close at hand, and all of them were staring up the corridor. Justine followed their lead.

There was something at the end of the pa.s.sage, standing at the point where the corridor turned a ninety-degree corner. At first, Justine thought the creature was E-Kobalt, but she soon realised it was larger, bulkier, than the Kroton commander had been. Its body was bloated, covered in shapeless b.u.mps, the front of its torso plated with panels of silver-white armour. Instead of legs, it had a single gigantic tread. Its shoulders were huge, almost touching the opposing walls of the pa.s.sage. Justine was reminded of one of the war machines described in the works of Mr Wells. Tanks, she'd heard them called.

Like E-Kobalt, the monster had two flexible limbs extending from its body. However, both of these arms ended in open tubes. The being's tiny head rotated on top of its gigantic body.

'What ' Justine began.

Before she could say anything more, something knocked her off her feet. In the moments that followed, she worked out that it had been the Doctor. He'd moved backwards down the corridor, away from the war machine, sweeping Justine along with him. When Justine regained her senses, she found herself leaning against the wall at the other end of the pa.s.sage. The Doctor and his a.s.sistant were nearby, while Qixotl and Kortez were already hurtling off along a side-tunnel.

As Justine watched, the corridor in front of her was filled with what looked like a thick white mist. She saw Manjuele sprinting towards her, the wave-front of the gas at his back. The Little Brother looked terrified. It was the first time Justine had seen him like that, and it was amazing how pathetic he suddenly seemed.

There was a groaning from the other side of the vapour, the sound of the monster trundling forward. Justine saw the casket vanish amidst the puffy white clouds. It had tried to follow the Doctor, but it hadn't been fast enough.

'Move!' the Doctor shouted.

So Justine moved. She made for the side-tunnel, the same way Qixotl and the Colonel had gone, the Doctor and the girl in front of her. The Cousin's skirt wrapped itself around her legs as she ran, so she had to hop some of the way to stop herself toppling over.

'What is it?' the girl asked, as she headed up the pa.s.sage.

'Another Kroton,' the Doctor told her. 'Full battle dress, this time. It's the kind of body they wear when they want to make an impression. Not very energy-efficient, though.' He stopped, without warning. Justine very nearly ran into him. 'Which way to the shrine?' he asked her, urgently.

Justine pointed. 'But the Relic '

'Too late. We're going to have to tackle the problem at the source.' He took his companion's hand, and dragged her away around the corner Cousin Justine had indicated.

Manjuele appeared at Justine's side. His eyes were bulging out of his head, and he looked like he was ready to start crying at any moment.

'S'no good,' he blabbered. 'No good. S'like home. S'just like home. Riot tanks. Oh G.o.d. Oh Jesus Christ.'

Cousin Justine slapped him. Once, on the cheek, as hard as she could.

'We have a duty to the Grandfather,' she said, sternly. 'Had you forgotten?'

Manjuele looked down at his shoes. A grimace settled on his face.

Justine surveyed the pa.s.sage. The Doctor and his friend were long gone. Kortez and Qixotl had vanished, too. Behind them, the rumbling had stopped, and the gas wasn't following them around the corner.

'What d'we do?' Manjuele asked, feebly.

'The Spirits will guide us,' Justine replied. Amazingly, she managed to make it sound like she really believed it.

The Kroton's designation was I-Coda-Minor. It had been one of the four units manning the lead ship of the Warspear, and like its cell-mates, it had obeyed E-Kobalt-Prime's order to leave the dynatrope without question. The next three ships in the Warspear formation had received the same order. Two units from each craft had disembarked, the dynatropes descending to ground level before opening up their sphincteral valves and allowing their occupants to roll out into the City.

I-Coda twisted its cranial unit, readjusting its senses until it could see through the clouds of crystal up ahead. The corrosive had no effect on Kroton tissue, naturally, but it was known to have spectacular effects on carbon forms. I-Coda was disappointed to note that there were no bodies in the pa.s.sage.

There was something of interest, though. An unidentified object, suspended above the floor on miniature antigrav units. I-Coda's high-level senses detected biological matter in the object's interior. The Kroton rolled forward, and extended a probe. E-Kobalt had given orders to look out for an item like this. Something of great tactical importance, evidently.

I-Coda's probings were interrupted by a dull sniffing sound, from somewhere within low-level sensory range. It readjusted its perception parameters. Yes; there were several chambers set alongside the corridor, and something was moving around inside one of them. I-Coda turned a slow process, in this body and trundled through the nearest doorway.

The room hadn't been affected by the corrosive. On the far side of the area was what I-Coda took to be a biped rest-unit, and stretched out on it was a motionless humanoid female. I-Coda detected no life signs. By the side of the unit was a single humanoid male.

'I-den-ti-fy-yourself,' I-Coda ordered.

The humanoid looked up. A trace of liquid appeared in the corner of one of the biped's visual sensors, though I-Coda wasn't sure if this was due to damage or some form of lubrication.

'Why can't you leave us alone?' the alien asked.

I-Coda answered the question by wobbling one of its weapons attachments. 'I-den-ti-fy-yourself-or-you-will-be-dispersed.'

The humanoid reached out for the female being. It he, I-Coda remembered; humanoids had specific terminology for units of different genders stroked the side of the woman's face.

'Animals,' said the man, quietly. And disappeared.

I-Coda recalibrated its senses, but it was too late. Whatever had happened to the humanoid, the Kroton's systems hadn't picked it up. It was almost as if the being had vanished inside the body of the female, though the laws of physics insisted this was impossible.

Then the female disappeared, too. There was a rhythmic wheezing, groaning sound, which made I Coda's head spin in the most peculiar way, before the last traces of her body faded out of existence.

The Kroton filled the room with corrosive material, more out of frustration than for any practical reason. Then it backed out into the corridor, and made its report to E-Kobalt.

A square of grey light appeared at the end of the pa.s.sageway. Mr Qixotl kept moving. He had no idea where the others were, and he didn't particularly care. For a while, he'd been following Kortez, but they'd run into another one of the Kroton tanks, and Qixotl had lost sight of the Colonel among the clouds of corrosive. The man was probably dead by now. A wet patch of bioma.s.s, lying in a corner somewhere. Bleugh.

But now the exit was only a few metres in front of him. Qixotl had headed for the main entrance of the ziggurat all right, the only only entrance of the ziggurat simply because he hadn't been able to think of anywhere else to go. Even if he'd managed to reach the Faction's shrine, he had no idea how to pilot the thing, and he doubted Cousin Justine would survive long enough to meet him there. He could have relied on the Doctor, of course, but he still got the feeling the Doctor wanted to kill him. h.e.l.l, the front door was as good a way out as any. The Shift had no reason to want him dead. The Doctor, yes. Homunculette, yes. But old Qixotl? Qixotl was the middleman. Anyone could see he was harmless. Right? entrance of the ziggurat simply because he hadn't been able to think of anywhere else to go. Even if he'd managed to reach the Faction's shrine, he had no idea how to pilot the thing, and he doubted Cousin Justine would survive long enough to meet him there. He could have relied on the Doctor, of course, but he still got the feeling the Doctor wanted to kill him. h.e.l.l, the front door was as good a way out as any. The Shift had no reason to want him dead. The Doctor, yes. Homunculette, yes. But old Qixotl? Qixotl was the middleman. Anyone could see he was harmless. Right?

Right?

Yeah. He'd make it out of the ziggurat in one piece. The Krotons wouldn't bother firing on him from the air, not if the Shift was giving them their orders. His own ship was parked just outside the City wall, he could be off this dirtball planet in ten minutes or so.

A large, hulking, angular shape blocked the light at the end of the tunnel. Qixotl juddered to a halt, and raised his hands.

'OK, OK, so I'm trying to bail out,' he said. 'Not much of a problem for you guys, yeah? I mean, you let me get through, we'll forget this ever happened.'

The Kroton rumbled forward. Qixotl saw a second, identical shape moving into position behind it. Oh, good grief. How many of the things were there around here?

He took a step back. 'All right, I get the idea. You want me to give myself up, maybe help you out. Fine, whatever you say. You want to know where the Relic is? I can show you. No problem.'

'I-den-ti-fy-yourself,' gurgled the first Kroton.

'What? Oh, right.' Qixotl lowered his hands, and straightened his tie. 'Qixotl. Mr Qixotl. Your boss knows me.'

'Qi-xo-tl.' The Kroton's head swung a little to the left, then a little to the right. Qixotl guessed it was getting in touch with E-Kobalt, checking his ID. 'Qi-xo-tl. Mis-ter. You-have-been-i-den-ti-fied.'

'Good. Right. Lovely.'

'You-are-un-im-portant.'

'Er, sorry?' said Mr Qixotl.

The Kroton opened fire.

The burst was short, a puff of concentrated crystal that spurted from one of the Kroton's arms and licked against Qixotl's chest. There was no pain.

Qixotl gawped at the Kroton. 'What did you do that for?' he tried to say.

He tried. But he couldn't. He couldn't even breathe. He felt like someone had surgically extracted most of his throat. Then he looked down.

His chest wasn't there. There was a hole, almost a perfect circle, reaching from nipple to nipple. The front of his suit had been chewed away, as had his skin, as had the flesh underneath, as had most of his ribcage. There was no blood, though. The hole was rimmed with silver-tinted frost, and inside his chest the organs looked like they'd been freeze-dried.

Many thoughts went through Qixotl's head in the next few nanoseconds. However, whichever way he looked at it, he kept coming back to the fact that no humanoid life-form could possibly survive with a wound like that.

The Krotons advanced. Qixotl fell to his knees, and clawed at his chest, desperately trying to knead the flesh back together with his fingers. In all honesty, though, it was never really a great survival plan. He was dying. That much was fairly obvious.

So he dropped to the ground, and let his body get on with it.

13.

A-LES-SON-IN-AN-A-TO-MY.

...physiologically, at least, the Krotons are among the least understood beings in Mutters' Spiral. Our galaxy is well-stocked with carbon-based life, and even silicon-based species, though rare, have been thoroughly researched, catalogued, and dissected over the years. Krotons, however, are something else.

The Kroton Absolute evolved from a form of quasi-organic tellurium-based crystal, native to a world commonly known as Krosi-Apsai-Core, though the empire which gave it that name has long since fallen. Originally, the crystal was predatory in nature, a gestalt life-form capable of creating "slaved" sub-beings out of its own biological ma.s.s. Though these individual units were not in any way sentient, they were adaptive enough to be able to nullify, or even to mimic, the innate offensive/defensive abilities of the species they preyed on.

However, when alien elements were introduced to Krosi-Apsai, the ecosystem went to pieces. The world was occupied by a militant capitalist humanoid culture [see p.349], which arrived in search of fresh territory, mineral wealth, and all the other things humanoids usually look for when they turn up on a new planet. The invaders soon set their servo-robots to work on Krosi-Apsai... a territorial challenge the crystal gestalt couldn't possibly ignore.

Until this point, the crystal had been unable to develop sentient consciousness, its structure being much too crude to mimic any complex organic neural system it might have come across. But the brains of the servo-robots were far more basic, far easier for the gestalt to copy. The result? Millions, perhaps billions, of semi-sentient crystalline ent.i.ties, all heavily armed, all beginning to think like the imperialist worker-units they'd modelled themselves on. The humanoid invaders quickly withdrew, leaving behind a planet full of "Krotons" who suddenly had no idea what to do with themselves.

Over the centuries, the Krotons have developed rudimentary emotional capacity, and have even become capable of creativity, yet something of their heritage remains. Even today, each individual unit is "slaved" to the Kroton Absolute. Every Kroton is psychologically linked to every other Kroton, or at least, to every other Kroton within thinking distance. Some researchers have mistaken this link for telepathy, but in fact the connection is far more subtle.

The crystalline neural networks of the Krotons vibrate as new thoughts cross their minds, and if several Krotons are all thinking about the same thing, their brains vibrate on identical frequencies. Individual units can feel each other's mental fluctuations kilometres away, in much the same way that animals can feel earthquakes hours before any humanoid notices the ground begin to shake...

Professor Gustous Thripsted, Professor Gustous Thripsted, Genetic Politics Genetic Politics Beyond the Third Zone, Appendix XXIV.

Across the Unthinkable City, and in the craft that hovered above it, forty-one tellurium-based brains trembled in sympathy. On E-Kobalt's command, the dynatropes still in the air arranged themselves into a new formation. E-Kobalt knew, even from its position on board the black ship, that one of its underlings had located the Relic. And the pilots of the Warspear knew, from the control centres of their own vessels, what E-Kobalt wanted them to do next.

Each Kroton had the same idea in its head. The old military instinct, the same aggressive urge the Kroton Absolute had learned from the servo-robots on Krosi-Apsai-Core all those years ago. The situation was, in the mind of the commander, quite simple. Once the Relic had been removed from the building, the City would be destroyed, and all the unreliable carbon-based units inside it would be destroyed, as well. It wasn't a plan, it was a fact fact.

'This one,' said Sam, skidding to a halt halfway down the pa.s.sage.

The Doctor peered through the doorway. Sam watched his face as he got his first eyeful of the shrine. He didn't look surprised, but he did look vaguely revolted.

'Definitely TARDIS technology,' he said. He glanced back at the corridor behind him. 'What happened to Cousin Justine?'

Sam swore to herself, very very quietly. In a world of his own again, she thought. 'We lost her ages ago. Didn't you notice? Listen, we can't leave yet. We've got to get Kathleen. And the Relic.'

'We're not leaving. I think I've got an idea.'

'You think think you've got an idea?' you've got an idea?'

'I think so. But I could be imagining it. There are a lot of background thoughts around, it's getting hard to concentrate.' The Doctor tilted his head a little. 'Do you hear that?'

Sam listened. There'd been all kinds of noises around the place while they'd been making their way here. Collapsing masonry, scurrying feet, spinning heads, the works. Now all she could make out was a steady rumbling sound, quite close, maybe around the next corner.

'It's one of the Krotons,' she said. 'That's the noise their treads make.'

'Perfect,' said the Doctor. Then he hurried off down the corridor, towards the source of the noise.

Sam was so startled, she didn't even feel like kicking him. She moved after him, but she stopped when she saw him reach the end of the pa.s.sage. He'd come to a halt, facing the corridor around the corner, waving his arms. Oh no, thought Sam. Please, don't let him be waving at one of the Krotons. I mean, please.