'Hmmm...'

'I still can't quite believe it,' Miles sighed. 'I know Federique had problems fitting in, that's inevitable with the Energy Police, but this '

'I only met her once,' Bernice mused, 'when she told me to turn the volume down on a simularity in my room to conserve power, but I didn't get any impression of weakness. Quite the reverse, in fact. She seemed to enjoy being able to tell people what to do. I think it was the way she walked, more than anything. She swaggered. People who swagger don't kill themselves. Other people, perhaps, but not themselves.'

'I have to rule this all as hearsay and speculation,' Bishop said, standing up. 'I have what amounts to a signed confession. Despite your doubts, I see no reason'to delay my return to the Guild outstation on Earth.'

'You don't?' the Doctor said, gazing up at the ceiling. 'How interesting.'

'You wish to draw something to my attention, Doctor?'

'What could I I know?' know?'

'Then I shall prepare to ' He broke off and sneezed suddenly. 'Leave,' he added, his eyes watering.

'Except...' The Doctor trailed off. Everybody in the room hung expectantly on his pause.

'What is it?' Bishop snapped finally.

'No, it's such a small matter. Forget I said anything.'

'Tell me.'

The Doctor pursed his lips and shook his head. 'I wouldn't want to bother you with such a minor point.'

'Tell me!'

'It's the hand,' the Doctor said, in a voice that had just a fraction too much self*effacement in it to be wholly convincing.

'What hand?'

'Krau Rabaan's hand.'

'Which one?' Bishop was getting increasingly angry.

'Her left one.'

'What was wrong with her left hand?'

'Nothing.'

'Then what are you babbling about?' Bishop shouted.

'She was holding the vibroknife in her left hand.'

'What of it?'

'Krau Rabaan was a Muslim, wasn't she?'

'I repeat: what of it?'

The Doctor whirled round. His face was set hard, his voice had taken on an accusatory tone. 'In the Muslim faith, the left hand is seen as unclean. Muslims will not use their left hand for cooking, for greeting people, for eating...'

'Yes?'

'Or for holding cutlery in.'

Bishop was silent. Bernice could almost see the wheels turning in his head.

'People do strange things in desperation,' he said finally. 'Even hold knives in the wrong hand.'

'But religion is the last thing to go,' the Doctor said. 'It's the final crutch. Krau Rabaan would not, could not go to Allah having profaned herself.'

Bishop swung round, his robes billowing. His hand beat out a rapid tattoo on Miles Engado's desk as he stared at the wall.

Eventually he turned back to the Doctor. 'It looks as if I may have to stay longer than I had planned,' he said. 'The possibility has to be acknowledged that Krau Rabaan was murdered and the murder made to look like suicide to divert suspicion from somebody else. I shall be informing Earth Central of my findings via message drone, Trau Engado. In the meantime, I shall want to talk again to Rabbi Zehavi, the man who found the body. That will be all, gentlemen.' He turned to where Bernice was slumped in the chair. 'And lady.'

As the Doctor pa.s.sed Bernice, his hand snaked out and grabbed her shoulder. She found herself hauled from the chair.

'Time to leave,' he murmured into her ear.

They had almost made it out of the door when Bishop said, 'Oh, Doctor?'

The Doctor stopped. Bernice looked across at his face. He knew something. She could read very little of the Doctor's true feelings, despite the time they had been together, but she could read that, at least. Unfortunately, so could Bishop.

'How did you know that Federique Moshe*Rabaan was holding the vibroknife in her left hand?'

The Doctor said nothing.

Bernice turned to look at Bishop. 'You told us,' she said calmly.

'No,' Bishop said. 'I did not.'

Bernice could see the Doctor's smile out of the corner of her eye. It gave her the strength to carry on. 'You did,' she said. 'And I don't see any of those little drones in here to prove otherwise.'

The Doctor dragged her out and slammed the door before Bishop could explode.

'I need to see Alex Bannen,' the Doctor said rapidly as he dragged Bernice along the corridor towards the Pit and the deads.p.a.ces. 'I'm worried about what he might do now that Rabaan is out of the way.'

'He's an intelligent man, isn't he?'

'More than I had given him credit for. And I made two serious mistakes because I underestimated him.'

Bernice positioned herself in the middle of the corridor and yanked on the Doctor's arm as he ran ahead. His feet flew out from underneath him and he dropped to the floor, his hat hanging in the air for a few seconds before falling to cover his face.

Bernice sat on his chest. 'I'm not letting you up until you tell me what's going on,' she shouted.

'Mmmph mrph hrrmph!' the Doctor said. Bernice removed his hat from his face and stood.

'Did you feel that tremor in Miles's office?' he rattled.

'Yes. I thought somebody had dropped something heavy.'

'I wish it was that simple. Bannen is meddling with the alien machinery. He has brains, but no patience. And I gave him some clues. That was my first mistake. I also made sure he had enough power to follow those clues up. That was my second mistake. I had hoped the influence of Moshe*Rabaan would hold him back from using that power, but now she's dead he has moved faster than I had antic.i.p.ated.'

'But what's he doing?'

'He doesn't know, that's the problem,' the Doctor said, clambering to his feet. 'He's like a child in a motor car; he doesn't understand the difference between beeping the horn and starting the motor.'

'Oh great,' Bernice muttered. 'Sometimes I don't know which of you is worse.'

They ran off together towards the Pit.

There were three more tremors whilst they were on their way to the Mushroom Farm. The last was strong enough to make Bernice stumble and almost fall. By the time they arrived, alarms were going off all over Belial Base and the science personnel were running around chaotically.

Light blazed from the doorway, stabbing at her brain even through half*closed eyes. A deep drone made her head buzz and the ground vibrate beneath her feet.

Bannen was standing just inside the doorway, silhouetted against the light. The mushroom*shaped control consoles were blazing red and green. Arcs of light zapped from mushroom to mushroom. The concentration of ozone made Bernice's nose itch.

'Bannen,' the Doctor shouted, 'you must stop this madness! You don't know what you're doing!'

Bannen turned. His face was panic*stricken. 'I didn't think...' he screamed. 'I just... I thought I was just powering it all up! I didn't realize!'

'Turn it off, man!'

Bannen held out a file of blank paper. 'I can't!' His eyes filled with tears. 'Someone's stolen my notes!'

Something made Bernice turn around. Piper O'Rourke was standing in the doorway. The bright light had bleached her clothes, her skin, her hair, so that she was just a patch of brightness against the opening. 'The moons!' she screamed. 'Alex, the moons! You're moving them out of alignment. The Bridge is going to snap!'

Bernice turned back to the room.

'Oh Christ,' Bannen was crying. 'Oh my good Christ!'

The Doctor was looking at Piper. 'Ace was in the Lift?' he mouthed. Piper must have nodded, because the Doctor's face fell.

'Daddy?' said a voice behind Bannen. 'I'm scared.'

A small child stumbled out from behind the closest mushroom and held out its hand.

Bannen reached out to his son as madness engulfed them all.

PART THREE.

MOLOCH.

'And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of G.o.d ascending and descending on it.'Genesis, chapter 28, verse 12

Chapter Seven.

Jesus Garcia de Soto y Delporto stared through the transparent Lift wall with a puzzled expression. His face clouded; first with alarm and then fear.

The stars were moving.

Even as he shouted for attention, Jesus had picked a target star and was tracking its apparent movement around the Lift. Within seconds, it was halfway between him and the place where the other five members of B Shift were grouped together, discussing procedure and checking through stacks of domestic stores for Moloch Base.

Jesus pushed himself off and floated rapidly around the Lift, bringing himself expertly to a stop less than a metre from the slight form of Christine LaFayette.

'Christine,' he said urgently, 'get everyone into their s.p.a.cesuits.'

'What?'

'For G.o.d's sake, do it now! The Lift is spinning.'

'He's right, get moving!'

That was the newcomer. Ace? Was that her name? She seemed to have a sensible head on her shoulders. While the others stood and gawped, she had already pushed herself over to the storage lockers and was busy tossing the flimsy emergency s.p.a.cesuits over. Jesus caught one and popped the seals.

'All right, move it!' Christine shouted. 'I don't know how strong the Bridge is, but it can't be designed to absorb this much stress.'

'How far have we turned?' Ace asked.

'Thirty degrees at a guess, but fast; my reference star has already gone behind the filament engagement a.s.sembly.'

'The what?'

He pointed to the central area of the torus, where the otherwise transparent wall was a translucent pink. 'The area where the Bridge pa.s.ses through the Lift.'

Over on one side, Lars Ulrich blinked his fashionably painted eyelids whilst he calculated moments of inertia and angular velocities on the wax tablet he always carried with him. 'Thirty degrees of rotation in one minute, you say? Is angular velocity of...' The tall mathematician's thin face creased with surprise. 'h.e.l.l on ice, we should be flying through walls by now.'

'Suit up first. Talk later.' That was Ace again. She certainly didn't waste words. Even though she'd stopped to hand out the suits, she was still first into hers. 'Somebody check me.'

Jesus inspected her seals. 'Tight.'

Ace checked his in turn and then moved on to the other team members. 'Okay. Jesus, you'll do. Lars, fine. Christine, check your left elbow seal. Kosi, Yukio, you're both okay. Right everyone; latch your helmets back and don't switch to internal power until you have to. We're still spinning, but the integrity of the Lift seems to be intact for the moment. Jesus, how far round are we?'