'No. From Adjudicator Bishop's s.p.a.ceship.'

'Get rid of him.'

'Sorry; he's on priority override.'

Piper threw up her hands. 'Put him on then.'

A representation of the Adjudicator blinked into life on one side of the room. 'I've been monitoring the transmission from Moloch.'

'Ace is in trouble,' the Doctor said. 'I have to go down there.'

'We'll go together, Doctor. I think the case may be breaking at last.'

'I'm coming too,' a voice piped beside Bernice. It was Cheryl. 'Sam's down there.'

The Adjudicator's image hesitated momentarily, then nodded. 'Very well. Trau Engado, I will be requiring your presence as well. We leave immediately.'

Bernice sealed her starsuit helmet and stepped from the Adjudicator's s.p.a.ceship on to Moloch's Bridge terminal. She found herself standing on top of a translucent bubble set in Moloch's ice*bound landscape, close to one side of a bowl*shaped depression some fifty metres across. High above them, the base of the Bridge pa.s.sed through a cone of semi*transparent cables, which were anch.o.r.ed all around the edge of the depression, before continuing downwards to merge smoothly with the bubble itself. Following the thread of light upwards into the darkness, Bernice found that the curves and kinks which had been so obvious from the surface of Belial had straightened out a little more. The system was definitely coming back under proper control.

She began walking towards the depression, as four suited figures followed her from the ship, still arguing about the paperwork.

'Look at the Bridge,' she said over the commlink. 'It's self*repairing all right.'

'It had to be,' the Doctor replied. 'Such a complex system, left to run for millennia, without the simplest form of housekeeping? No. The only answer was an active control system.'

'But where does the energy come from?' Miles obviously had a command override. He had been listening in.

'Isn't it obvious?' the Doctor said, not at all discomfited.

'If it were obvious, we wouldn't have been here for five years trying to find it, and Paula would still be... Would still be...'

'Look around you.'

'At what?' Bernice asked.

'At nothing. At everything.'

Shrugging, Bernice followed the Doctor's instructions. At first the glare from Lucifer extending beyond Moloch's ice*locked horizon, and reflecting from Belial high above turned the depths of s.p.a.ce into a flat black backdrop that could just as well have been suspended a few feet in front of her eyes. She sighed, squinted, and still saw nothing. After a few moments, she realized that if she half closed the filters across the starsuit helmet she could cut out at least some of the light. Within a few seconds, her eyes had compensated, and she could see what the Doctor meant.

s.p.a.ce was alive with ghostly curtains of light. Pale violet in colour, they waved gently in some invisible wind. Stars glinted through their folds. Wherever she looked, there was faint colour and slow movement.

'It's beautiful,' Miles whispered.

'Commonplace,' Bernice said. 'Charged particles interacting with the magnetic field of Lucifer. You find aurorae around most planets.'

'Quite right,' the Doctor's voice crackled in her helmet. Bernice could see him raise a bulky suited arm and gesture grandly at the surroundings. 'But the Lucifer system is unusual in many respects. The parent star is a red giant nearing the end of its life, and as it runs the gamut of fusion reactions, exhausting one element after another, the spectrum of particles it emits becomes exotic. As the particles catch Lucifer's magnetic field, it is extended into s.p.a.ce like a fishing net caught by the tide. And drifting through that net are two little fishes named Belial and Moloch, feeding off the rich plankton of energy.'

There was a long moment of silence.

'Do you know what you're saying?' Miles said, awestruck.

'Occasionally,' the Doctor replied.

Cheryl said slowly, 'Are you trying to tell us that something, either here or on Belial, is extracting the energy from the variations in magnetic potential that the moons are pa.s.sing through?'

'Quite so.' Bernice could hear the smugness in the Doctor's voice.

'It's the Bridge. It's got to be.' Miles's voice was hushed, and Bernice saw his helmet tilt as he craned his neck upwards to look at the Bridge. 'But the power... Incredible! It's hardly feasible that they... And the storage problems!' From the way his voice grew alternately loud and quiet, Bernice could tell that he was shaking his head. 'Why didn't we realize?'

'Like the purloined letter,' said the Doctor smugly, 'it was too obvious to see.'

Bernice followed his gaze upwards as Cheryl began to speak. 'Yes,' she said softly. 'Yes, it would make sense. The Lift moves up and down the Bridge, reacting to the stimulus of local magnetic field strength, riding the isogonal contours and providing information to the feedback mechanisms which direct its movement. That explains the apparent randomness of its motion. We were wrong. It's not a transport system at all; it's a whomping great acc.u.mulator!'

Miles's voice was bitter with self*reproach. 'All the power we could ever have wanted, and it's been right under my nose for years.'

'You couldn't use it on Earth, of course,' the Doctor said. 'There's a huge difference between the magnetic fields, for a start, and the radiation from Lucifer's sun is quite, quite different.'

'But it would have made all the difference to Project Eden,' Cheryl muttered. 'Like your party trick with the neutrino collectors and the hymetusite: we couldn't have scaled it up enough to solve Earth's energy shortfall, but it could have supported us here whilst we searched for the long*term solution the high*ma.s.s elements in Lucifer's core.'

Bernice had reached the apex of the terminal dome by now. She moved through the conical root*system of cables which formed the Bridge's anchor, down towards the centre of the depression, and waited for the others to catch up.

As she waited, she began to study the anchor cables around her. She looked upwards, trying to visualize how the Lift would be able to move past the point where they connected to the Bridge. Before she got very far with her thoughts, she realized the cables were moving, rising past her... No! They weren't moving, she realized in sudden alarm, it was her: she was sinking. She tried to take a step, but the suit wouldn't respond to her commands.

She looked down at her feet, and felt her blood run cold. They weren't there. She had sunk up to her ankles in the translucent bubble. Even as she watched, the gooey material oozed up to her knees. She tried to struggle, but she was held fast. Thick fingers of the viscous substance were reaching up from the surface towards her starsuit's hips.

'All aboard that's getting aboard,' the Doctor said with relish.

'This is supposed to happen?'

'This, unless I'm very much mistaken, is the airlock.'

'Well, that's original, to say the least.'

As the terminal surface moved past her helmet, she thought she could see a fine structure to it, a lattice of irregular cells which pulsed and churned while she watched. Then darkness enfolded her, and she found herself standing on a solid surface in a shadowed room, staring upwards at the underside of the dimple with a strange sense of having been reborn.

Over to one side, the stalk of the Bridge penetrated the soft surface and, in a network of roots and capillaries, grew into the floor. There was a ragged hole in the side nearest her; she a.s.sumed this was where Ace and her companions had escaped from inside the hollow shaft. Watching in fascination, she saw that the material was gradually reforming.

The surface above her bulged out into a number of large teardrop shapes which hung above her for a moment, trembling slightly, before depositing the Doctor, Miles, Cheryl and Bishop beside her. She a.s.sumed that the Lift, under normal conditions, would have arrived in the terminal the same way.

The Doctor began to clamber out of his suit, peering around at his immediate surroundings. 'This is all quite fascinating,' he said, drawing his umbrella from his starsuit and using it to point at the terminal entrance. 'Moloch's Pit should be this way.' He set off at a brisk walk.

Bernice ran to catch up with him. 'How could you know where the Pit was if you've never been here before?' she asked curiously.

The Doctor didn't answer. Bringing up the rear, Bishop frowned thoughtfully. 'An interesting point, Krau Summerfield,' he said mildly, to himself.

Ten minutes later, they had pa.s.sed through the kilometre*thick crust of the moon via Moloch's Pit, and were moving once more into the human*designed areas of the base.

At the door to the Operations Room, the Doctor paused briefly and sniffed. 'Hmm,' he said, as the door slid open and he led the way inside. 'Ionization. That's odd.' He took another sniff, wrinkling his nose with distaste. 'What do we know that produces a smell like that?'

Bernice grinned. 'Alex Bannen?'

The Doctor tut*tutted sternly; n.o.body smiled.

'Electrical activity.' Cheryl crossed the patchy carpet to the nearest window and began to study the landscape depicted on it.

The Doctor nodded thoughtfully. He made a swift circuit of the room, studying the read*outs of each station, pausing only once, to run his fingers across the MultiCray input terminal.

'What are you doing to the neural net, Doctor?' Bishop said sharply.

'Checking to see how much damage has been done to it,' the Doctor said with some irritation.

'Damage?'

The Doctor tapped the side of his nose. 'Electrical activity, remember?' He indicated a diagnostic panel, where several red lights had begun to blink in confirmation of his words. Information began scrolling across a virtual screen beside the Doctor's head.

Cheryl moved impatiently. 'I've had just about all I can take of this mucking about. If you want me, I'll be looking for Sam.'

She began to walk towards the door, but the Doctor stopped her with a look. 'According to the roster, your husband was due here but never turned up,' he said sternly.

'That's ridiculous!' Cheryl exclaimed in a voice that was far too loud. 'This is a b.l.o.o.d.y nightmare. Where are all the people?'

The Doctor had bent to examine something he had seen on the dappled carpet beside the communications terminal. He stood almost immediately, and only Bernice noticed that, by aiming a bony finger at the floor, he was covering the fact that he'd pocketed something.

She moved closer to see what he was pointing at.

The patterns on the floor weren't part of the design of the carpet.

They were patches of blood.

Chapter Nine.

When the Doctor spoke, his voice was dark and foreboding. 'There's only one thing to do.'

Cheryl's voice was tense. 'We'll have to search for them.'

The Doctor nodded. 'Cheryl, I wonder if you would be so kind as to cast a professional eye over the experimental laboratories for me.'

Her voice was flat and harsh. 'Am I looking for anything in particular?'

The Doctor was vague. 'Oh, not really. Anything unusual will do. You could check on the medlab, too, if you wouldn't mind. Bernice, I'd like you to check the grounds for signs of activity. Trau Engado, I suggest you and Trau Bishop work back through the base, up the Pit and into the Bridge terminal. I understand Paula had a laboratory there; that'll need to be checked. I'll stay here and coordinate the search. We'll all meet back here in precisely oh, a couple of hours.' He thought for a moment before adding dryly, 'So long as that's all right with you, Adjudicator?'

Bishop said evenly, 'I notice that this particular search pattern leaves you alone here, and free to '

'Steal the silverware?' The Doctor raised an enquiring eyebrow.

Bishop said nothing.

The Doctor gestured towards the centre of the room. 'Someone has obviously interfered with the neural net. That means the security simulators are off*line. If you know anything about how to repair a MultiCray, you are more than welcome to stay and help me. Otherwise, you can stay and make tea. Arcturan, Lapsang Souchong or Earl Grey will be perfectly acceptable. Such a civilized drink.'

Bishop did not rise to the bait. 'Perhaps I should go with one of the ladies,' he said. 'After all, there may be danger.'

'That's quite all right,' Bernice said, frowning. 'When you've drunk the crew of a Grinch pirate skiff under the table, there's precious little you can't do. Besides, I think Miles has already made up his mind.'

While they had been talking, the Administrator had slipped quietly from the room. Bernice shivered. When they'd first arrived at the Base, she had quite liked the old Administrator, but since Paula's death he'd changed. There was something disturbing about the way he'd just well, just left without saying anything. What was he up to?

'Well,' the Doctor said briskly, 'what are we waiting for? We've all got plenty to do. Let's get on and do it.'

Miles Engado, impatient at his slow progress through the Pit, padded softly along the track which spiralled from the Bridge terminus, through Moloch's kilometre*thick sh.e.l.l, to the research centre. The sound of his footsteps was absorbed efficiently by the etched walls and curved pathway. That left a lot of silence to fill, and Miles filled it with fear and guilt.

And with confusion.

The fear and the guilt were his own, but the confusion that was a different matter. It had originated from elsewhere, and infected him as surely as any virus. Less than two days since Paula's death, and already her spirit was demanding the companionship of others on its journey. How many would lose their lives to his daughter's marauding unrest, he wondered guiltily, and at whose door would the fault ultimately lie? Miles felt the confusion in his mind grow into a relentless horror. He was eighty*seven. A man still in his prime. A man of his century. How could he believe believe, really believe, that this primal stuff and nonsense, this superst.i.tion, could affect the day*to*day operation of the most important scientific expedition of its time? Miles groaned inwardly, knowing instinctively that the how and the why of a thing were almost irrelevant when placed against the fact. The fact was that he, the main proponent of the scientific method, was becoming increasingly frightened by a superst.i.tion society had considered dead before he was born. The fact was he felt like a child again, powerless against forces he could not understand let alone control.

With an effort, Miles shook off the lethargy that had been creeping over him since Paula's death, blinding him to his duties and responsibilities.

He'd made his decision.

Now it was time to carry it out.

The Doctor checked to make sure the Operations Room was properly deserted before inputting a simple command into the MultiCray. Immediately, the blinking red lights on the diagnostic panel were replaced by steady green indicators. The system was back on line.

For a moment, the Doctor toyed lightly with the simularity crystal he had found while looking at the blood on the floor. He fed the crystal into a reader and watched with interest as the file scrolled up. He kept one eye on the entrances to the Operations Room. He knew Bishop was lurking around somewhere, but the Adjudicator presented no danger he couldn't antic.i.p.ate.

Unlike Ace, apparently.

Oh well. It was a simple enough matter to 'Yes, I would have started with the simularity records as well.'

Bishop.

The Doctor smoothly keyed in a new sequence of commands.

'Nice idea,' he muttered off*handedly. 'Shame about the software.'

'The files are corrupt?' Bishop asked.