'It's like Jack's beanstalk, isn't it? Only a different colour.'

Drawing his gun, Bishop turned in surprise.

The Doctor did not move. 'h.e.l.lo, Ace.'

Ace hovered nervously. 'Hi.' She paused.

The Doctor remained facing into the valley. 'It's out there,' he said. 'The secret thread that binds together Lucifer and the Angels. If only I could touch it, run my hands over it, unknot it.'

Bishop lowered his gun, but did not holster it. 'Trau Bannen had the answer, judging by the files on his workstations.'

'If only the irritating man hadn't insisted on deleting the most important information and keeping it with him on paper all the time so that n.o.body else could read it, and then having the criminal negligence to lose that hard copy.' Now the Doctor turned to look directly at Ace. 'You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you, Ace?'

Silently, she held out a plastic folder stuffed full of paper. 'Thought you might need these, Professor.'

'Indeed.' The Doctor's voice was hard. Bishop's eyes narrowed, and he tightened his grip on his gun, although he wasn't entirely sure why.

'Yeah. Got a problem with that, have you?'

The Doctor took the folder and flipped casually through the pages of closely written notes. 'The man could have done with a few calligraphy lessons.' He closed the file and looked up at Ace. 'Problem? Why should I have a problem?'

Ace's grin slipped a little. 'I don't know. 'Cos I was working for IMC, perhaps? 'Cos I thought I was better off with someone who couldn't move backwards and forwards in time quite as much as you can?'

The Doctor frowned. 'Why should I think that? Our relationship's been fine until now, hasn't it?'

'Yeah. So like I said, got a problem?'

The Doctor smiled. 'No, Ace. No problem. Not now. I'm just very glad you're alive.'

Ace laughed. 'You're glad!' She sat down, cross*legged, and stared out across the valley. She brushed a hand across her face, continuing the gesture to take in the surrounding landscape. 'So what's this all about, then?' glad!' She sat down, cross*legged, and stared out across the valley. She brushed a hand across her face, continuing the gesture to take in the surrounding landscape. 'So what's this all about, then?'

'I'm not really sure yet. Some of these notes are encrypted. Who did he think he was, Leonardo da Vinci? I'll need a code word to work out some of the more important pa.s.sages.' He thought for a moment. 'I don't suppose Trau Bannen will volunteer the information, but '

Ace interrupted, 'I bet it'll be on file somewhere at his workstation. I bet it's something really easy like his logging*on codeword, or his son's name. Do you want me to go and suss it out?'

The Doctor beamed. 'I'd be very grateful.'

'Colour me gone.' Ace jumped to her feet and ran off into the landscape behind them.

As soon as she was gone, the Doctor sat heavily on the ground. His smile vanished, to be replaced with a look as black as thunder.

Bishop holstered his gun. 'What's the matter?'

'Everything.'

'I don't understand. Krau Ace seems to be back on our side again '

'Is she?' The Doctor drew his knees up to his chest and hugged them. 'Or is she still on Legion's side? Or on her own side? How many sides are there? How long is a piece of string? How many beans make five?' His face reflected an increasing panic. 'Sometimes I think that I am a Doctor of no brain at all.'

He sighed theatrically. 'In almost a millennium,' he said glumly, 'I don't think I've ever had a companion who has been this much trouble.'

Piper O'Rourke gripped the arms of her acceleration couch as the starpod sank through the b.l.o.o.d.y glare of Lucifer's atmospheric corona. Her knuckles were white, her jaw clenched in fear. The virtual interaction module she wore showed her the outside view as a great ocean of boiling cloud through which she fell at faster and ever faster speeds. She blinked sweat out of her eyes. Had this view of h.e.l.l been the last thing Paula had seen before being crushed to pulp? Perhaps it was ironic that she, Piper, should now feel the same fear as the girl whose death she had been responsible for.

'I have come to see how your house is,' Miles Engado's soft voice intruded into the roiling cloudscape. 'Is it prepared for large crowds?'

With an effort, Piper unclenched one fist from the arm of the couch and paused the simularity software. Muscles trembling, she slotted the device back into its receptacle. She blinked as her eyes momentarily lost focus, before the starpod interior swam back into view.

The interior s.p.a.ce was curved and dimly lit, bulked out with navigational equipment. Additional equipment was fastened to the curving walls. Across from her, in the copilot's couch, Miles's face was lit from one side by blinking coloured lights from the main instrument spread. His face was as blank as it had been back in the Lift.

A wave of guilt crashed into Piper's mind. Another life destroyed. The life of a man whose love she did not deserve. Guilt and regret welled inside her until she wanted to scream. Her shoulders began to heave and her eyes filled with tears. Shaking, she buried her face in her hands, too ashamed to face the man she loved for any longer. After a moment, Miles reached out and hesitantly touched the side of her face, wiping away the tears.

Without thinking, she slipped the catch on her safety harness; then she was in his arms, and she couldn't tell whose tears were the hottest, and he was whispering her name over and over again: a litany against the darkness.

'Teal! This way!' Cheryl dodged sideways down an access corridor.

Seconds behind her, Teal gasped as molten metal from a near miss splattered across his arm.

The sound of running feet followed. Ardamal turned the corner behind them, new gun primed. Both walls of the pa.s.sageway blistered. No warnings this time, then. It was fight or flight. Flight or death.

'Cheryl, the gun. Use the... b.l.o.o.d.y gun!'

Ardamal's gun! She'd forgotten she still held it. It must be the shock 'Cheryl!'

She skidded to a halt, spun, dropped to one knee and sprayed hard radiation back down the corridor. Teal ran past her as the trooper dived for the side of the corridor. Without waiting to see the results of her action, Cheryl turned and began to run again. Thirty metres away, the wide double doors which opened on to the Mushroom Farm beckoned invitingly. The doors began to open as Teal hammered on the outside lock. Cheryl increased her speed with an effort.

'Come on, Cheryl! You're nearly there!'

Another energy pulse sizzled past her head and blew chunks from the wall, but Teal was through the portal, head down and running for the lock controls.

She dived in through the doors as they began to close. Panting, she scrambled across the glimmering chrome floor.

Teal moved away from the doors, bent double, sucking in great lungfuls of air. He straightened with a sigh. 'Christ on a stick, that was '

An energy pulse flashed between the closing doors, skimmed the top of Cheryl's head and punched a hole the size of a fist in Teal's chest.

He gazed down stupidly at the smoking wound. There was no blood: the perfectly circular wound had cauterized instantly.

Cheryl didn't scream until he actually fell, as the doors clanged shut and the smell of burnt flesh and melted clothing seeped into the air.

'He shouldn't have hit me.'

Cheryl whirled with a gasp.

Ardamal stood in front of the doors, a field dressing on his head, a new gun clenched in his hands, the same blank desire in his eyes.

Cheryl scrambled for her gun. Ardamal seemed to move in slow motion. Casually, he shot the weapon from her hands.

'Naughty, naughty. Can't have a loaded gun in untrained hands now, can we? No telling what might happen.' His expression did not change as he stepped forward and pressed the barrel of his own weapon against Cheryl's cheek. She winced as the heat blistered her skin.

'Look at me. I like to know I'm being listened to when I speak.'

Shaking, Cheryl gazed upwards into his face. He was smiling.

She closed her eyes.

The Doctor looked up as the sound of gunfire crackled through the Mushroom Farm. In moments, he was racing back through the forest of glittering stems towards the entrance. Bishop was hard on his heels, gun drawn, his face set and grim.

Ten minutes of hard running brought them within sight of Alex Bannen's workstations, and the entrance beyond. Ace was standing over the smoking body of Teal Green; Cheryl Russell struggled madly in the grip of an IMC trooper. Even as he watched, the man struck her heavily across the face and she fell.

'That's enough, trooper,' Ace said.

The man glared with undisguised hatred at Ace.

'I should have...' he snapped, and stopped.

'Fried me in the null*gray shaft?' Ace completed the sentence for him. 'Perhaps you should. Meanwhile, let's see that gun holstered.'

The trooper snapped to attention, putting his gun away as ordered. There was murder in his eyes, and the Doctor couldn't tell if it was for Ace or Cheryl. 'Consider yourself on report, trooper.'

'Yes, Ma'am.'

'Now open those doors.'

'Right away, Staff Sergeant.'

In another moment, the doors glided apart. Accompanied by another trooper, Bronwen ap Bryn stepped delicately into the Mushroom Farm and peered down dispa.s.sionately at Teal Green's body, her oiled skull gleaming softly in the glimmering light from the control stems, the tattoos emblazoned there seeming to writhe seductively.

The Doctor pushed forward. 'I demand to know the meaning of this atrocity!'

Ignoring the Doctor completely, Bryn directed her remark to the s.p.a.ce behind him. 'Adjudicator Bishop; you see the consequences of acting without authority. Perhaps now you will accede to the reality of the situation, and put yourself once and for all under my jurisdiction.'

The starpod floated in a sea of Angels.

From within, both Miles and Piper gazed in awe at the signals interpreted by their headsets.

Beyond the thin sh.e.l.l of the pod, the atmosphere of Lucifer changed smoothly from a churning cloudscape to something which almost defied belief. An ocean of liquid*metal zelanite alloy surged and crashed against islands of cloud. The liquid was viscous, a dull silver, and oily in texture. Where it slapped against the sh.o.r.e, pink and ochre clouds peeled away in vaporous streaks. Dull pseudopodia splashed upwards in slow motion, reflecting the colours of the cloudy bluffs. The surface of the ocean was not flat, nor did it even follow the curve of the planet, as gravity dictated that it should have. Instead, great whorls like moon*sized fingerprints spun within the liquid, endlessly moving, shifting, evolving. Some parts of the surface were kilometres higher than others, and at different angles, and all were constantly shifting, as if, in some obscure way, the ocean were alive.

And there were Angels, more than she could count, glimmering, shifting, merging, evolving.

'Sweet Jesus...' she whispered in awe. 'They're dancing.'

'Yonder in the north, there is singing on the lake. Cloud maidens dance upon the sh.o.r.e. There we take our being.'

'What?' Piper snapped her head around at the sound of Miles's voice, but the reality projected by the simularity software and interpreted by her retinal implants prevented her from seeing him. All that happened was that she widened her view of the ocean and the Angels.

And of one particular Angel.

'Miles. Miles Miles.'

The Angel wore human eyes.

'Paula!'

'h.e.l.lo, Dad. Piper. Glad you could make it. You're just in time.'

'What for? What's happening some sort of cultural activity?' Miles asked.

'Don't you know? I suppose not. You never were that good at just listening, were you, Dad?'

Paula spun closer to the starpod, as if to emphasize her words.

'It's my funeral.'

Somewhere, a Tannoy system was booming out an intruder warning. The sound was much diminished in the small storeroom located just off the main executive transporter bay in which Bernice and Christine were changing into their new clothes.

'How do I look?' Bernice smoothed the front panel of the stolen business suit, fastened the collar laces and gave the IMC logo on her breast a final polish.

Christine smeared a little more graphite lubricant across the front of her coveralls. 'The corporate image suits you.'

'Thanks. I think.'

'You realize there's no way this is going to work?'

'Rubbish.' Bernice tied up her dreadlocks with a piece of wire and firmly pulled down the IMC executive cap on top. 'My pretending to be an executive courier is our best ticket off this barge. Where's your clipboard?'

Christine looked around the storeroom.

'Come on, come on. No one will ever believe you're a whitecoat without your clipboard.'

'Ha*ha.' Christine found an LCD clipboard and a light pen, and scooped them up. As a bonus, there was a toolkit stowed in one corner. Christine attached a couple of the more interesting devices to her workbelt. 'Okay. Ready?'

'Let's do it.' Taking a deep breath, Bernice eased the door open a crack, peered through, then opened the door fully and walked briskly into the executive transporter bay.

The ocean heaved and another uncountable horde of Angels was disgorged. Piper sighed. 'So beautiful...'

The Angels whirled upwards, approaching to within a kilometre of the starpod. The original Angels had moved higher, away from the pod, already vanishing into the storm*racked cloudscape above. Piper's hands danced across the console, and the starpod's brain began recording and a.n.a.lysing the events for a future that neither of them might ever live to see.