'For once, just once in my life, I'd like to do something good.

Something that isn't just to make myself feel good.' She shook her head gently. 'You see, that's just about the only thing I haven't tried yet, that might might make me feel good. I don't know if that's making the least bit sense.' make me feel good. I don't know if that's making the least bit sense.'

Glitz considered this. Fool people into thinking you're nice and generous, and they'll give you more than you can take otherwise. It had worked before. 'I think I do, yeah.'

Chat laughed. 'I'm glad you came to me for help. You're my friend, Sabalom Glitz. I cried for a week when you and Dibber left with your shares of the money, and I don't want to lose you a second time.'

Glitz wasn't exactly sure how to take that. If he was boasting to Dibber, he might have said it sounded like she fancied him. Here on his own, though, he doubted that was the case. Women like men who could give them a good life, not old lags like him. He thought he ought to give her some sort of answer. 'I don't want to lose me either.'

Frobisher caught sight of the Chinese girl's eyes as she returned from the cockpit, and was surprised. There was something in them that reminded him of himself when he was younger. He had once spent fourteen years of his life as a supermarket till in Walthamstow to be near the girl who worked there. In Chat's eyes, he saw something of what he had felt back then.

It was odd, seeing something of yourself in someone else.

He wondered if that was because it was like stepping outside one's own identity, or whether it was just because the look of love always looked weird to outsiders.

Though he'd never say it to her, he didn't think much of her taste. Still, as the Doctor said, it took all sorts.

Mandell had sat down in the Administrator's chair in the Foreign Technologies tether. A semicircle of monitors arrayed in front of the seat repeated displays from all the main terminals in the control centre around them. 'Now,' Mandell said, a little more languidly. 'What else should I know about, while I'm here?'

Wei relaxed somewhat, now that his life wasn't in imminent danger. 'There is something...' He stopped himself. It was so unlikely to be important that he was reluctant to risk the scorn he knew it would bring. Then again, seemingly unimportant or unlikely events often turned out later to shape the fate of people, governments and even worlds. And where this vision was concerned, nothing could be taken for granted... 'One of them was a Veltrochni,' he stated bluntly.

'A Veltrochni?' Mandell looked panicked at the thought.

'Those two-timing bastards... they could at least have the common decency to let us get our double-cross in first.'

Wei activated one of the monitors. He keyed in the time and location code that he recalled from their search of the security recordings earlier. A recording of the events in the dock appeared on the screen, starting with the activation of the TARDIS' safety device. Then the Veltrochni and his unidentified associate arrived, and all hell broke loose. Wei was glad the camera angle didn't show his hasty exit from the area, Mandell wouldn't take too kindly to seeing that.

Mandell merely pursed his lips as the scene played out.

'Whoever he is, he's from Pack Lorkhal; not one of Brokhal's entourage. Stop it there!' Wei hastily froze the playback of the security logs. Mandell tilted his head, as if listening to the memory of a distant voice. He tapped the screen, over the shorter grey figure. 'Enhance this image.'

Wei did so, and the figure swam into focus. Its skin was mushroom grey, and it had spindly limbs. Large jet-black eyes were set into its oversized head. 'I don't believe it... It's a Tzun.'

'Impossible!' Wei exclaimed. 'They all died out millennia ago.' He grunted. 'Except Sha'ol, of course, but he -' Wei's throat went dry.

Mandell nodded solemnly. 'Exactly. Sha'ol and Karthakh.

The Doctor said they were fleeing two attackers, and now we know who.' He grimaced. 'That's all I need, isn't it? This pair after the man I need to save my bacon.'

'The Doctor has proved resourceful so far, Mandell lo lo,' Wei said, hoping to cheer his boss up. If the boss was cheery, he'd be less likely to take out his stress on Wei. 'He might finish the job first.'

'What? With that pair after him? There's more chance of Sabalom Glitz being elected President than Sha'ol and Karthakh failing to fulfil a contract.' Mandell drummed his fingers on the desktop. 'Have you any coffee?'

'I think so.'

'Get some. I need it.'

Wei gestured to an aide, who hurried off. Sifti, Sifti, perhaps we could make a deal with the bounty hunters. Offer them more.' perhaps we could make a deal with the bounty hunters. Offer them more.'

Mandell shook his head. 'They're the worst kind of professionals there are, Wei: ones who have integrity. Once they've accepted the contract, that's that. No, we'll just have to kill them, if we ca-' He broke off, wondering how he could have been so stupid. It must be lack of caffeine, he told himself. 'Hang on a minute... We won't be needing the Doctor after he's been to Elchur. So long as their contract doesn't have a time limit on it, they might accept a side deal to wait until after the Doctor has done his part...'

'Brilliant, sifu,' sifu,' Wei responded eagerly. Wei responded eagerly.

'Yes,' Mandell agreed. 'Put out a general hail to the ship they took.'

The Speculator's Speculator's engines might be aged, but their churning still made the floors vibrate with a mechanical heartbeat. engines might be aged, but their churning still made the floors vibrate with a mechanical heartbeat.

Like the rest of his Nest, Gorrak found it vaguely comforting.

It was like being in the womb of some passive mountain goddess, and so definitely reassuring. It wasn't like being in one of the little ships that most masters provided for their Ogron troops. There it felt like being in a ration tin.

Gorrak looked at the scanner screen in the Speculator's Speculator's main control room. There were no holotanks here; just clunky consoles with good solid dials and switches, and two-dimensional monitor screens. There were lots of differently coloured blips moving to and from a nearby planet. Gorrak didn't know what each specific colour referred to, but he did know that every blip was a spacecraft. main control room. There were no holotanks here; just clunky consoles with good solid dials and switches, and two-dimensional monitor screens. There were lots of differently coloured blips moving to and from a nearby planet. Gorrak didn't know what each specific colour referred to, but he did know that every blip was a spacecraft.

There were rich pickings here, he saw. He cracked massive knuckles, and grinned to himself. With so many ships, there must be some that would bring the Nest riches and food, and they could keep all of it to themselves.

There was a mad cackle from what used to be the briefing room. The Nest's matriarch had set up home there, in defiance of Gorrak's leadership. So far Gorrak had been unable to think of a way to get rid of her that wouldn't lead his nest-mate to kill him. The matriarch was her mother, after all. As far as Gorrak was concerned, she was a pest.

'What you look at?' he grumbled.

'My daughter's mate drooling.'

'These ships good targets. Make Nest rich. Feed us for long time.'

'You have no rock in your head,' the matriarch snapped back. 'This place not good.' She had probably seen omens again, Gorrak reflected. She did that a lot, being a Shaman.

She wasn't a very good one, in his opinion; a good Shaman should be able to win them favour with the gods. 'Bad omens here,' she went on. Gorrak wondered what she'd taste like minced. 'Two baby cousins ate another today.'

Gorrak laughed. Childhood was a fun thing, he remembered. Utterly terrifying, but fun all the same. 'Hah!

They good lads. Grow up like me.' All Ogron children who survived must have eaten some of their siblings at some point. Food was scarce enough on Braah to mean starvation for undernourished offspring. In order to supplement that, the survivors didn't dare let a good corpse go to waste.

'Hah?' the matriarch exclaimed. 'This cousin not dead yet.'

Gorrak's face wrinkled into revulsion. 'This mean we have to capture more ships,' he said finally. 'Then there is food for all. This good omen, not bad.' Pleased with this display of his superior intellect, Gorrak turned back to the main control room. If he could just find out which ship was nearest...

As he had promised himself, Frobisher took a long flight, soaring on the thermals that formed a three-dimensional road system above the city. It was quite conducive to meditation, and he thought it was a shame the Doctor could never try it. Just stretch out the wings, and slide through the air...

He didn't register it at first, but the flier that was parked on the roof of a distant building looked very out of place. It was quite a distance from the deserted factory, but on a direct line of sight.

Frobisher might have been on vacation with the Doctor for a long time, but he still had a detective's instincts, and they led him to overfly that roof. Two men in dark suits were watching the factory through some sort of telescope. That couldn't be a coincidence. He hurried back to the factory, changing back to his more comfortable penguin shape behind the Nosferatu. Nosferatu.

'Doc,' he called out as he entered the crew room. 'We're being watched.'

The Doctor nodded. 'I wondered when you'd realise that,' he said proudly. 'Mandell was bound to keep an eye on us. He's taking an awful risk by relying on us to do his dirty work for him. The slightest slip by us could leave him in serious trouble.'

'Why don't we, then?'

The Doctor motioned with the datapad. 'Because at the moment it would leave this planet in even worse trouble.

Whatever Mandell and his cronies may be up to, there are millions of people here who are totally innocent, but would suffer the consequences. I, for one, cannot let that happen.'

Frobisher agreed with him. Having so many lives depending on oneself was incomprehensibly stressful, and Frobisher wished he could just change shape and walk away from all this. How the Doctor kept sane, Frobisher had no idea.

Surely it was impossible to become used to bearing the responsibility for whole planets on your shoulders?

Even if that was possible, Frobisher was pretty sure he never wanted to get used to it. He was just a private eye. A middle-aged being with endless curiosity and a love of jazz.

He wasn't a superhero; superheroes could do everything without the slightest doubt or fear. Frobisher couldn't.

The Doctor smiled at him. 'I'm glad you're back, though,' he said. 'I think we might require your skills now.'

'Something wrong?'

'It's Oskar, the other member of the gang. None of the others know where he is.'

'If he was a member of this gang,' Frobisher mused, 'he must have a rap sheet as long as a Wagnerian opera. The cops will have more up to date information on him.'

'Exactly. Which is why I want you to go and pay them a visit.'

An hour later, Frobisher was skimming through the records, searching on the key phrase 'Oskar Goetz'. It was taking the computer a while, since it was checking not only the planetary police records, but those for the entirety of GalSec space. If Oskar had so much as let as a library book go overdue anywhere on any human-occupied planet, a record of it should come up. Eventually.

'Kala?' someone asked from behind him. Frobisher turned, recalling that this was the name of the cop in the picture Monty had given him. Apparently she'd been watching Monty for a while.

'Er, yes?'

It was a short man with a shaved head and olive skin. 'I heard from Pell last night. Says he's coming to town at the weekend and we should meet up.'

'So?' Frobisher hoped he wasn't going to ask for advice, but could see that he was.

'So should I say yes?'

'It's your life. D'you want to say yes?'

'Well, sort of, but he does live on Teal Beta.'

'So?'

'I might not see him again for ages.'

'Never pass up a good thing,' Frobisher said. 'Something special may not come again, so you should take the chances that arise.'

'Right... Well, I -' a communications monitor buzzed in another room. 'Damn, that's me. I'll catch up with you in a minute, OK?'

'Yeah, sure,' Frobisher agreed, fervently hoping otherwise.

As luck would have it, the terminal he was working at beeped, and he saw that the information he wanted was there. He printed out a hard copy quickly, then reset the machine, and left.

Once out of the police headquarters, Frobisher relaxed, and shifted into a more nondescript form. This time he became a short humanoid in a trenchcoat and fedora. Round-rimmed glasses somehow stayed over the two round eyes in his otherwise featureless head. It was several moments, in fact, before he realised that he had unconsciously returned to his true form.

It was a form he hadn't adopted in several months, and he wondered why his instincts had chosen it. To remind him that it was there, perhaps? That it had been just as long since he had actively taken part in a detective investigation?

Whatever, the Doctor would have to know his latest discovery. Their quest had hit a hurdle.

Kala passed the nondescript faceless alien in the trenchcoat as she turned into the station house. She knew Monty of old, of course, and had seen Glitz before, but there had been a new face at the garage. Kala was both irritated at the extra complication, and intrigued by the newcomer. He certainly wasn't as down-market as Monty or Glitz and Dibber, and she thought he might be one of Jack Chance's friends. He certainly dressed like a reject from the Cafe Terrestriale.

It would be best to check up on him before barging in with questions. Like any good cop, Kala knew that it was best to only ask those questions to which you were already pretty sure of the answers. That way you either corroborated your data, or caught someone out in a lie.

She stopped to bundle her coat into her locker, then went through into the main office. She called home and left Nic word that she might be late again. Then she went on into the records office, and found a terminal.

'G'night, Kala,' Jemson said, passing her on his way out.