'Completely.'

'Inconvenient, to say the least.'

'Undoubtedly.'

'Your recommendation?'

'Tricky.'

'But you do have one.'

'Possibly.'

Bishop clasped his hands together and steepled his fingers. When he spoke, his voice was completely without inflection. 'It may interest you to know that I, too, am developing a theory, Doctor. One in which your own involvement plays a significant part.'

The Doctor smiled engagingly. 'You know, I was rather afraid you were going to say something like that.' He turned and left the Operations Room.

Bernice lifted her face to the warming rays of an impossible sun, and wondered at the beauty and mystery of the universe.

Out on the fringes of the Vartaq Veil, looking for traces of her lost father, she had been part of a team excavating a Dyson sphere constructed around a white dwarf star. Built from the debris of planets, moons and comets, the sphere had originally been designed to completely enclose its star, collecting all the energy it gave out rather than letting the vast majority of it escape away into s.p.a.ce. Like most engineering projects, it may have looked good on paper, but in practice it was another thing entirely. Tidal stress and gravitational asymmetries had pulled the sphere out of shape. Newtonian mechanics had done the rest. By the time Bernice and her colleagues had arrived, it had degenerated into a series of unconnected fragments which drifted apart over thousands of years, gradually leaking their atmospheres into the vacuum. The builders, overcome by the tragic outcome of their vast conception, had devolved into a sh.e.l.led race who spent their nomadic existence migrating from one fragment of the sphere to another, living in the ruins of their once great cities and seeing the cosmos as a gigantic jigsaw puzzle being slowly a.s.sembled by G.o.d.

It was a funny old universe.

Bernice looked around. Beautiful though the interior of the lower moon was, there was also something disturbing about it. Perhaps it was the way the horizon curved upwards on all sides, like a bowl, or the way gravity worked when there shouldn't have been any. Perhaps it was the way the translucent 'gra.s.s' seemed to develop an immediate and lasting attachment to anything or anyone that walked across it. But she didn't think so.

Ordinarily she would have relished the variety which the creators of Moloch had offered up for her pleasure without a qualm or a second thought, but this time something was getting to her, making her nervous. Itchy...

Oh.

It was the Veil.

Moloch reminded her of the Vartaq Veil.

Not the precise pattern of plants and trees beyond the human enclave, nor the affectionate gra.s.s, nor even the strange and delightful animal life if it was animal life which peered from the undergrowth at the human installations with delicate curiosity. No.

It was the quiet.

And a sense of history gone terribly wrong.

She shivered, despite the heat.

A wafer thin translucent something something undulated through the air towards her, chuckling gently to itself in a liquid voice. She put out a hand, and the thing wrapped itself around her arm, warm and dry and tingling and Bernice was suddenly struck by a question so obvious it stunned her. If the builders of this artificial paradise had not been around for several millennia as Alex Bannen seemed to think how come the flora and fauna hadn't run riot and completely ruined the environment? undulated through the air towards her, chuckling gently to itself in a liquid voice. She put out a hand, and the thing wrapped itself around her arm, warm and dry and tingling and Bernice was suddenly struck by a question so obvious it stunned her. If the builders of this artificial paradise had not been around for several millennia as Alex Bannen seemed to think how come the flora and fauna hadn't run riot and completely ruined the environment?

Bernice ran the fingers of her free hand through her thickly beaded dreadlocks as she tried to think. She was no naturalist, but it seemed to her that every living thing around her was controlled in some way, by some force: prevented from over*breeding, over*growing. In some way patterned. She had a sudden feeling that if she could only work out how the ecology of Moloch ticked, she would have a vital clue, if not to discovering Ace's whereabouts, then at least to getting a handle on the vanished aliens. With any luck, the rest of the puzzle the missing personnel, the mystery of the Angels and, not least of all, the rapidly sliding situation on the Base itself might follow on from that.

Bernice shook loose the amiable sc.r.a.p of nothing and watched as it fluttered away, lost in moments in the gentle glow of Moloch's endless day.

She rubbed her arm. The skin tingled.

Cheryl palmed the access lock on the medlab door and the hatch rolled open. She moved cautiously into the room.

'h.e.l.lo? Christine?'

There was a sudden movement behind a bank of filing cabinets.

Cheryl sucked in an alarmed breath. 'Sam?'

'I'm afraid not.'

The Doctor.

'Go away,' she snapped.

'I could do that,' he said, emerging from behind the cabinets. But I wouldn't be taking the problem with me, would I?'

'Who says I want you to!' Cheryl croaked out the words before lapsing into another long silence.

'Why don't you tell me about it? I guarantee it'll help.'

'You wouldn't understand. You're just a '

'Just a man? Isn't that expression out of date yet?'

'I was going to say... Oh h.e.l.l. I don't know what I was going to say.'

'That's good. Now we can start fresh, with no preconceptions.' The Doctor sat on one of the medlab's empty diagnostic beds, and drew his legs up into the lotus position.

'I'm not ready to talk yet. If you had any degree of sensitivity you'd be able to see that.' Angrily, Cheryl turned and left the room.

After a moment's thought, the Doctor followed her.

Miles re*entered the Bridge terminus. The floor of the chamber was obscured by a silver mist that had risen since their arrival. Tiny clouds swirled about his legs as he walked. On impulse, he reached out and pa.s.sed his hand through the vapour. The silvery substance clung to his skin, looking like tiny beads of mercury, as slippery as graphite between his fingers. Miles flicked his hand absently. The stuff relinquished its grip upon him readily enough, drifting away to join the main ma.s.s of the stuff as it cl.u.s.tered around the end of the Bridge, where some kind of subtle activity seemed to be taking place.

Miles looked closer, his confusion momentarily overcome by curiosity. The hole through which the survivors of B Shift had left the Bridge was knitting back together like cloth, the weave forming as the bulk of the mist reduced. High above Miles's head, beyond the terminus bubble, the Bridge itself was trembling; it was becoming more difficult to see, as if something were being called into shape around the central shaft.

Miles blinked. Something was forming around the Bridge: a new Lift.

Miles felt suddenly weary.

It was time to carry out his decision.

He walked through the Bridge terminus to the Atmospheric Vehicle Research Laboratory: the room where Paula had spent most of her working time. The starpod, her creation, hung suspended in the engineering pit.

He looked around the room where she had spent much of the last few years. So stark. So cold. He crossed to the open storage cabinets and ran his fingers along the rows of simularity crystals; her files, her notes, her diary. Her life.

His fingers paused over one that was simply labelled 'Dad'. He pulled it out and looked at it blankly, then slipped it into his pocket.

Miles crossed decisively to the starpod, unsealed the hatch and swung himself into the cabin, smiling as it snuggled shut behind him with a soft pneumatic wheeze.

He took one of the two pilot seats and began to strap himself in. Activated by his body heat, the onboard systems began to power up.

A representation of the Laboratory sprang into life around him, fed into his modified cornea by low power laser beams. Other sensors synched in with other senses. He could see in a three hundred and sixty degree sphere via the pod sensor modules, just as he could feel the ambient temperature, and even smell the lubricant that someone had carelessly leaked on to the floor. He moved his arm into a myo*feedback harness; a mechanical specimen grip unfolded and flexed in time with his movements.

He was was the pod. the pod.

With a spoken command, he operated the control which would open the roof of the AVR Lab, allowing the pod access to free s.p.a.ce.

Bishop pulled the crystal that the Doctor had left in the simularity reader free and turned it over and over in his hands. He reached beneath his robes and pulled free the personal reader he'd brought from his ship. Slipping the crystal into the device, Bishop watched as the file read up, observing the contents with great interest.

Evidence.

Suppressed evidence, no less.

He attached a judicial pa.s.sword to the file, saved it, pocketed both crystal and reader, and began to think hard about the information he'd discovered.

It could be the reason for everything.

Perhaps he was not as far short of solving this case as he had supposed.

Trying to avoid the undulants' over*affectionate advances, Bernice moved deeper into the jungle.

The 'trees' put her in mind of the Bridge: nests of translucent pink roots which burst from the powdery soil and curved upwards into single trunks which soared above her head and fanned out again into an inverted cone of branches. Put a beachball at both ends and the comparison would be perfect.

A faint breeze caressed the back of her neck. She turned, and gasped.

A wave of movement was sweeping across the forest. As it reached each tree in turn, the tree gracefully bent over, curving its trunk so that both roots and branches touched the ground. The branches burrowed into the soil; the roots relinquished their grip. The tree straightened, upside down, a perfect mirror image of itself.

'Wow,' she breathed.

When, after a few moments, no further miracles were forthcoming, she moved on.

As she walked, her mind was still puzzling over the mystery of Moloch's peculiar ecology. She was sure there was a pattern there somewhere, a pattern which included the missing personnel, the carefully planted flora, the tingling undulant, everyth*

Hang on a minute.

Undulants? Tingling undulants?

Bernice thought hard. The Doctor had mentioned ionization when they'd first entered the Operations Room; ionization caused by electrical activity. And the undulants displayed a conspicuous electric field whenever they moved; she'd felt it as static whenever they touched her. Bernice sucked in a deep breath, searching for a tell*tale smell and there it was! The faintest hint of... Of Her thoughts suddenly interrupted, Bernice gave a cry of surprise and horror.

On the ground in front of her was a motionless human hand.

Bernice swallowed hard. The hand was connected to an arm, which vanished into the nearby undergrowth. Bernice hesitated. Skeletons in tombs and ancient embalmed bodies were one thing; this was entirely another.

She took her hip flask from her coveralls and emptied it in one long gulp. Alcohol doped with various smart chemicals stung her throat. She looked down again. The hand was still there. The gra.s.s around it seemed to beckon her on.

Taking a deep breath, she forced apart the translucent boughs and peered through.

Jammed into the undergrowth were a number of dead bodies.

Ace's blood*soaked jacket lay on top of the pile.

Miles gazed out into s.p.a.ce through the circular hatch in the roof of the chamber. From somewhere beyond the artificial horizon, the Bridge arced up and away into the darkness, the lower part of its immense length in shadow, the upper glinting with fiery reflections from Lucifer's atmospheric corona. Miles used his connection with the starpod to dim the chamber lights, and the stars sprang into sharp relief. He wondered where Sol was. He was an administrator, not an astronomer, and that question had always floored him. Was Sol even visible from here? He was d.a.m.ned if he knew.

Miles powered up the starpod's sensor arrays, enhancing his own senses and sending them arcing out into s.p.a.ce in search of the planet of his birth. Paula would have a companion on her journey to the afterlife. He just wanted to say goodbye first. To take one last look at the electronic signature which marked out his birthplace from the countless other star systems he could see. To imagine for the last time the forests and oceans, green and alive, the way they'd always been in historical dramas. The way they'd always been for his people: the fishers, the hunters.

There was a shadow. Something vast and artificial. Something...

...slipped through the ether and smashed into his mind.

Miles screamed and fell into an unforgiving darkness filled with endless pain and memories.

Piper O'Rourke looked up from the shift supervisor's desk as a dishevelled and embarra.s.sed Alex Bannen walked into the Belial Base Operations Room, followed by his son.

'Sleep well, Alex?'

'No.' The physicist was clutching a plastic beaker from which he drank greedily.

'That won't do you any good, you know.'

Alex's face a.s.sumed a shallow, humourless grin. 'It's tea.'

Piper raised one eyebrow in a surprised apology. 'Er how's...' There was an awkward pause. 'I'm sorry, I don't know his name.'

Bannen set down the beaker. 'Mark. Come in here. I want you to meet a,' he hesitated, 'a colleague.'

There were hesitant footsteps. Piper got up from her seat. 'h.e.l.lo, Mark. I'm Piper. We met before.'

The child's gaze was as piercing and intelligent as she remembered. 'You're the woman who hates my dad.'

Piper closed her eyes.

And opened them sharply at an insistent, warning buzz from her duty station.

'What's that?' Bannen's son moved to examine readouts.