'Hoo-felching-rah.'

Exactly on time, the door to their room slid open. Through it, Glitz could see that every door on this deck had also opened.

Then Jack pulled him aside, so that he wasn't framed in the doorway, before flattening himself against the wall beside the door. Chat pressed herself against the wall on the other side, and the door opened.

A pair of Ogrons hesitated suspiciously in the doorway, but that didn't help any. Jack grabbed one by the ears and cracked his head against the wall, while Chat slammed her boot into the other's stomach and clubbed him across the back of the skull when he doubled over. They each took one of the Ogrons' guns.

Outside, pools of light in the distance picked out the edges of thick pipes and walkways that criss-crossed the below-decks area. A narrow walkway with no safety rail led along the row of translucent dorms, an indeterminate distance above an indistinguishable floor. Another Ogron started to emerge from one of the other doors, but promptly slumped back into his chair with a smoking wound in his chest from where Jack shot him.

Glitz immediately checked the other rooms, not at all discomfited by the corpse, and found the small locker for prisoners' possessions. The lock was just a simple magnetic seal, and Glitz had no trouble opening it so that everyone could retrieve their belongings. Frobisher morphed himself into an Ogron, and handed the holosuit unit to Liang.

'How does this work, again?' Liang asked.

'Press there,' Glitz told him, 'and we're laughing.' And the Ogrons, he didn't feel the need to add, would be laughing on the other side of their faces.

A heavy thudding presaged the arrival of three Ogrons into the navigation room where Gorrak had been studiously trying to look as smart as his partners who were going over their course to the Katana system. 'Boss!' the nearest called to Gorrak. He sounded strangely nervous and excitable.

'Prisoners!'

'What about prisoners?' He knew they had prisoners. This was not exactly a proper report.

'Prisoners in second engineering. Old prisoner and one in funny clothes.'

'Second engineering?' Karthakh asked. The Ogron pointed to the place on a plan of the ship that was shown on one of the consoles. 'Auxiliary control!'

Sha'ol was already frantically operating the ship's computer. 'It must be the Doctor. He has shut out all engineering and helm control. He's sealing off all access ways between decks. We must cut our way through to the auxiliary control room. Are they armed?'

'No, they run away from us.'

Sha'ol paused a moment, then fetched his disruptor from the chart table. 'More fool them.'

Chapter Eighteen.

'What is this in aid of?' Monty asked, as the Doctor finished his manipulations of the ship's environmental controls.

'I've cut engine power; I'd rather not go to wherever it is that Sha'ol and Karthakh plan to deliver me. I've also increased the oxygen and helium mix in the air. Veltroch's atmosphere has a lot more carbon dioxide than Earth's, and the Ogrons' planet has a higher amount of hydrogen.'

'So this'll suffocate them?' Monty didn't exactly like the idea, but if it would save their own skins...

'No, Monty. There are Ogron children on board as well as warriors, remember. Anyway to do that, I'd have to alter the mix so far that it would affect us as well. But it should impair them a bit, and give Frobisher and the others a chance to beat them here.'

'And if they don't?' He jerked his head towards the door, which was still being thudded by Ogron fists.

The Doctor picked up a large spanner. 'I thought of that.'

He brought the spanner down on the console, smashing the controls repeatedly until they were a mass of smouldering junk. 'They're not regaining control of the ship.'

The door to the VP office of Chronodyne Industries opened, to reveal only a vague blackness within. Wei, aware that he would be expected to test the waters, as it were, for his superior, stepped in and looked around.

The place was open plan, and completely devoid of furniture. A few yellowed pieces of paper were scattered on the threadbare carpet, and the air smelled of crumbling rockcrete.

Mandell followed his aide in, nodding to himself. 'I thought so...'

'This building hasn't been occupied in years,' Wei said.

'No, which suggests that the company name is just a front.'

'For who?'

Mandell turned back to the door. 'For this Zimmerman that Cronan mentioned. And what does Cronan do...?'

'Synthesises vraxoin,' Wei answered, trying to follow his superior's lead. 'But I thought this bunch built our time dams...'

'Everyone should have a hobby,' Mandell said with a sort of exaggerated mildness. 'I think it's time Cronan discovered ours. Is the tracer still sending?'

'He's at the spaceport.' Wei said, after checking the signal from the nanotransmitters that Cronan unwittingly carried.

'Good. Let's go.'

Karthakh stopped again, when they reached another sealed door. Gorrak and the other dozen or so Ogrons paused for breath, while Sha'ol started cutting through the door with his disruptor. It took only a few seconds for the sonic weapon to do this job, but Karthakh would have been happier if Sha'ol had let him use explosive-tipped KEM darts. The oxygen levels were rising, though, and none of them wanted to start a fire.

At least the Ogrons' plasma rifles couldn't ignite the atmosphere, which Karthakh found to be a great relief, since they might well have disregarded the danger. He knew he shouldn't blame them for their evolution's slow progress, but the sort of stupidity that endangered their own cubs was difficult for him to bear.

He must be getting old, he thought. This chase was taking more of a toll than he expected, and he was beginning to get a pounding headache...

Barrand relaxed while Cronan did the pre-flight checks. He watched the activity all around the private pad in the spaceport's executive area. Here, the ships owned by well-to-do businessmen and private security firms were berthed, along with the shuttles for those whose ships were too large to land.

Barrand had barely a moment's warning, a mere flicker of a shadow out the corner of his eye, before a gun was at his temple. The man on the other end was an oriental, with a long ponytail and a smart suit. Barrand vaguely recognised him from his trips to the Thor Facility, and that was not a good sign, considering what had so recently happened there.

The other man was someone he'd never met, but recognised all the same, since people in his business learned to know their opposition if they wanted to stay alive and free.

It was Niccolo Mandell. Barrand was surprised that there wasn't a Tac team with him.

'Well now,' Mandell began, 'This is nice and cosy.'

'What do you want?' Barrand demanded.

'Did you say something?' Mandell snapped. 'It's rather rude to interrupt someone else's conversation.'

'As rude as breaking into their ship?'

'Oh, but Cronan and I are old friends.' Mandell grinned nastily, and Barrand began to wonder if he wasn't making some kind of mistake. 'But never let it be said that I'm not a friendly man, so I'm going to invite friendship from you.'

'I've already got a date,' Barrand snapped rebelliously.

'Cancel it. I want to know who your friend Zimmerman is.

You see, he is posing as an official of Chronodyne Industries, who have done some important work for us in the past. But now I find he's a trader in vraxoin, among other things. This is a bit of a problem for me, being so closely associated with law and order. You do understand that, don't you?'

'I don't know who Zimmerman is. I get contacted through a psi-link. It's like some sort of out-of-body experience. You know? I just find myself in this dark place where he talks.

I've never seen his face, but I know that there's more than one of them. He's just their spokesman.'

'And Chronodyne?'

'I've never even heard of it,' Barrand admitted.

Mandell sat back in the cramped passenger seat. 'You know something? Incredible as it may seem, I believe you.' He smiled. 'As. I said, Cronan and I go way back... At least several days. You, on the other hand, are a bit of a problem.

You see, I need Cronan to do something for me, and I'm not too sure that you'll approve. Especially since he'll need your ship.'

Barrand grabbed Mandell by the throat with one hand.

'And how are you going to take it from me?' He squeezed, finding the look or surprise on Mandell's face quite interesting. The SID head's expression hardened, and he wrapped his fingers around Barrand's wrist. Barrand winced; the man was much stronger than he expected from a desk-bound civil servant.

Agony shot up Barrand's arm, the bones of his wrist grinding and scraping roughly together as Mandell pulled him off his throat without apparent effort. Barrand fell painfully to his knees as the grip on his wrist tightened. 'Your ambitions do you credit,' Mandell said, though Barrand heard the cracking of bone more loudly. 'But your grasp on reality needs work.' He released Barrand, who curled into a ball of pain, wanting to nurse his shattered wrist, but fearful to touch it in case it just hurt more. 'I think you see my grip is not a problem.' He turned away, then looked back.

'What is is a problem is this conflict of interests in those people who happen to work for both of us.' a problem is this conflict of interests in those people who happen to work for both of us.'

Barrand nodded painfully. 'I see what you're saying, Mr Mandell... That is our only problem.'

Mandell frowned. 'Did I say it is a problem? Sorry. I'm getting a bit forgetful these days.' He smiled apologetically. 'I meant to say it was was a problem.' The last thing Barrand saw was a muzzle that seemed as big as the sun, and just as bright. a problem.' The last thing Barrand saw was a muzzle that seemed as big as the sun, and just as bright.

Cronan could feel Mandell's eyes boring into him, and was glad that in the shadows the SID director couldn't see his face. 'What is it you want me to do?'

'As luck would have it,' Mandell replied, 'exactly what you want to do. Take this ship as you were told, and kill the Doctor. In fact, destroy the ship he arrives in. You can't miss it; it's an old colony ship several miles long.'

'But I was going to do that anyway.'

'I know. But just to make sure, Wei will go with you. I don't want anybody getting lost.'

Mandell rose and left the cramped interior of Barrand's ship. He would return to his own ship, just in case the Doctor got through. The man was foolishly honest, and that meant it wouldn't be difficult to predict where he would go if he got free.

Frobisher and Liang, looking like the most Ogronish of Ogrons, were leading the way through the confused industrial interior of the Speculator, Speculator, the others only a few paces behind. the others only a few paces behind.

Although the doors on these lower engineering decks were all open, it still took the group some time to find their way. The Ogrons were far more accustomed to the ship's layout, however, and the doors blocking their way down from the upper decks didn't slow them that much.

The practical upshot of all this was that Frobisher's group, and the Ogrons led by Sha'ol and Karthakh, emerged on to the ship's central factory floor at the same time.