She had his attention.

'Now,' she continued relentlessly, 'the way I reconstruct the situation is: somebody here was alerted by some unknown person on Earth that these two were on their way here, and the somebody here checked back with the s.p.a.ceport on Earth that they did indeed leave on the ship. As soon as the ship landed, they were arrested. Does that seem reasonable?'

'No crime there, surely?' he asked.

'Well, it all depends,' she said. 'Protocol would suggest that if you were aware of two criminals on board an Earth-registered tourist ship you should have notified the Adjudication service, rather than wait until they landed on 98Purgatory and arrest them yourself. It could be argued that your refusal to contact us makes you party to the crime they are suspected of committing.'

Beltempest thought for a moment. 'And if we were just about to fastline you that we had your suspects in detention, but hadn't actually got round to it?'

'Then we would be grateful.'

He nodded. 'Then we have them.'

'And we're grateful. Are they still alive?'

He checked his watch.

'I wouldn't put money on it,' he said.

Private Fazakerli watched the woman's face with feral, almost s.e.xual pleasure.

She was scared. Terrified. She wasn't showing it obviously, but he could see it in her eyes. She knew she was going to die, and he loved it.

The heat of the jungle was getting to Fazakerli. His head had started to ache, and there was something funny going on with his eyes. Everything he looked at was blurred and distorted. The fleshy leaves on the trees seemed to beckon him onwards suggestively, and the cold, blue glow of the acidic ice beyond the force wall was a purifying, purging energy, stripping him of concerns and worries. Ever since the under-sergeant died he had been paralysed with fear, but now he was fine. Now he felt like a deity.

His finger tightened on the trigger as he waited for Enquorian to give the order to fire. G.o.ddess, was the guy going to wait for ever? Fazakerli wanted to kill something. Anything!

'Wait,' the little man in the white suit said, stepping forward and waving his hands wildly in the air.

'Last requests?' Enquorian sneered. Fazakerli realized with disgust that Enquorian was scared. He didn't want to give the order. He wanted an excuse not to kill them.

The metal of the trigger was warm and silky against Fazakerli's skin. He could feel the sweat trickling down his spine. G.o.ddess, he was so turned on he thought he was going to explode.

The little man's hands flapped as he tried to think up some pathetic excuse, and Fazakerli knew with certainty that Enquorian was going to buy it, whatever it was. He felt his pulse thudding in his temples and neck. He wanted to kill. He had had to kill. to kill.

'You can't kill us because because . . . '

'Because we've been testing you, and the test's over now,' the woman said, stepping forward. Fazakerli remembered her from the Arachnae Arachnae; he'd been returning from leave and looking for some final action, and she'd turned him down in the bar. It hadn't bothered him that much at the time, but now . . .99.

He kept the sights of his blaster firmly fixed upon her loins. He was going to cut her in two whatever happened.

'Test?' Enquorian queried uncertainly.

'Of course.' Her confidence fazed Enquorian, and even the little man with her looked askance, but Fazakerli could hear the shake in her voice. She was terrified. He looked sideways at his comrades. Couldn't they hear it too?

Didn't they want to see her hot blood steaming in the sunshine as much as he did?

No, they were just as uncertain as Enquorian. With the under-sergeant dead, they hadn't got a clue what to do. Weaklings! Why couldn't they just surrender themselves to madness?

'You don't think we could have wiped out four of you so quickly if we were just simple targets, do you?' the woman continued.

'That's right,' the man agreed, 'we're a special, ah . . . '

'Special task force,' she said.

'Yes, a special task force sent to test your reflexes.' The man pulled himself up to his full height. 'And we're not impressed, are we Provost-Major Summerfield?'

'Indeed we aren't, Provost-Major, er, Provost-Major. Not very impressed at all.'

Whatever was happening to Fazakerli was getting worse. His pulse was hammering in his ears so furiously that he had to strain to make out what was being said, and his finger kept flexing against the trigger, taking up the slack and releasing it slowly, coming within a millimetre of releasing the pent-up energy of the weapon.

'P-P-Provost-Major . . . ?' Enquorian stammered. 'I . . . we . . . didn't realize . . . '

'No harm done,' the man said genially. 'Well, not to us at any rate. Least said, soonest mended. Just take us back to the s.p.a.ceport and put us on the first s.p.a.ceship out of here and we'll say no more about it, there's good chaps.'

Fazakerli looked around. The other guys Enquorian, Smitts, Fenian they were all buying it! He saw them through a red haze: blurred figures, moving in slow motion, relaxing and lowering their weapons. He wanted to scream. He wanted to rip their complacent heads from the necks and drink the spurting blood.

With a sense of vast relief, he gave in to the death-thirst.

Fazakerli raised his blaster and fired at the first target he saw. Enquorian's head exploded with a satisfying splat, spraying bone, brain and blood over everyone. The woman dived for cover as he turned the weapon on her, and all he managed to do was splash the energy harmlessly across the force wall.100.

Grunting in frustration, he tried to burn the little man, but he seemed to have vanished into the jungle.

A blaster beam seared across his shoulder. He whirled, catching Smitts across the legs. Smitts screamed shrilly and dropped his gun, the stumps of his legs spraying blood into the air. Fazakerli laughed. Brilliant! He couldn't ever remember enjoying himself so much!

A movement to one side attracted his attention. He tracked it with his weapon. It was Fellian, trying to crawl away. Fazakerli burned through his spine, and watched him thrash around in agony on the blood-splattered ground.

Oh yes! Oh yes yes!

The thudding in his head was the beat of some primal drum, calling for sacrifice. He wanted to dance, to laugh, to scream, to fall to his knees and praise some indefinable G.o.d of pain and degradation, but most of all he wanted to bathe in the sticky rich warmth of blood.

He had never felt so alive before.

A sound behind him. He turned. The woman was crouched beside the small man, who was trying to stem the flow of blood from what was left of Smitts's legs.

'Why?' she cried. ' Why Why?'

'Why not?' he giggled, and raised the blaster until she was staring down the muzzle. He didn't know whether to kill her straight away or rape her with the weapon and then kill her. Which one would be the most fun?

'There's something wrong with you,' she said. 'Look inside! Is this really what you want?'

He looked inside, and found nothing but a dark, capering figure with his face screaming, 'Kill, kill' at him.

'Yes,' he whispered. 'It's exactly what I want.'

And pulled the trigger.

Powerless Friendless stood in the shadows, opposite the building he lived in, and wondered. Did he dare go in? Something was looking for him. Something dangerous. The place was almost certainly being watched. Chances were, if he went in, the bot would be waiting for him. If it had survived the fall into the ca.n.a.l.

He went through the conversation with the bot again. It knew he was Powerless Friendless And Scattered Through s.p.a.ce, that much was certain, and it had killed Waiting For Justice by mistake, thinking Waiting For Justice was him.

He shook his head. If he shook it hard enough, he could almost hear things rattling around inside. Sometimes he couldn't remember who he was or how 101he'd ended up living in the Undertown. Other times he remembered with frightening detail, despite . . . despite . . .

A glowing light, and a complex mechanism unfolding from a doctor's eye socket. A wrenching pain. A voice. 'You won't feel a thing.' socket. A wrenching pain. A voice. 'You won't feel a thing.'

Sometimes, remembering hurt.

He took a last look up at the window, and turned away. Doc Dantalion could help him. Doc Dantalion had done this to him in the first place.

Sometimes, you just had to let it hurt, and remember anyway.

Bernice closed her eyes, waiting for death.

Even through her eyelids, she could see the flash of light. She counted heartbeats. Two, three, four. She was still alive!

A feeling of relief washed over her and receded, leaving her weak and shaking. She took a deep breath, eyes still closed, and caught the tang of burning on the air. For a moment she was back on Oolis, sharp stones gouging into the flesh of her knees, watching sparks fly up from Homeless Forsaken's singed flesh. Just for a moment, but her heart cried out.

She opened her eyes, half expecting to see a purple sky and orange dust, but she was still standing on the fringes of the fleshy pink jungle of Ybarraculos Epsilon. The Landsknecht was standing in front of her, still holding the blaster with which he had killed his comrades. Smoke was issuing from a small hole in the centre of his battle armour, just beneath the name tag that read FAZAKERLI.

He fell untidily to the blood-soaked ground, still grinning.

Behind him, three people were leaving the shelter of the jungle. Provost-Major Beltempest was one of them. The others a dark-skinned woman with a lined face, and a tall teddy bear were dressed in the blue-gold armour of Adjudicators. The teddy bear was holding a gun.

'Well,' the Doctor murmured, 'that was a close-run thing.'

'Can we leave a larger margin next time?' she asked, still not quite believing that the short explosion of violence was over.

'If the choice was up to me,' he replied, 'I would happily accede to your wishes. However . . . '

Seeing Beltempest approaching, stepping over the bodies of the Landsknechte without even a glance downwards, Bernice was suddenly filled with a rush of fury.

'Oi, four arms!' she yelled. 'Something go wrong, did it? Or were your troops supposed to shoot one another and leave the targets intact?'

Beltempest stomped over and stopped by her side. 'This wasn't supposed to happen,' he said. 'My apologies.'

'Your apologies aren't enough. What the h.e.l.l happened?'

102.His trunk swung from side to side with barely suppressed anger. 'These are trained men,' he seethed. 'They don't fire without orders. They don't fly off the handle. They don't go off the deep end. They don't '

'Enough with the metaphors. What happened happened?'

'I don't know!' he trumpeted.

'Would you have been so worried if he'd killed us and left them alive?'

He had no answer to that.

The female Adjudicator walked over and glanced impa.s.sively at her. Her furry companion was eyeing the bodies. He was looking a little green around the gills.

'Bernice Summerfield?'

'Who's asking?'

'The Order of Adjudicators.'

'Oh. Well, in that case, very probably. Unless I'm not. Which happens.

Sometimes.'

'Whatever. You're under arrest in any case.'

Bernice groaned, and threw her arms up. 'What is this? I've been accused, tried and sentenced for this already. Look around you. The execution was just taking place!'

The Adjudicator shrugged. 'Nothing to do with us,' she said.

'Then what's the charge?'

'Murder.'

'Murder?'

'I am obliged to inform you that your words, gestures and postures are being recorded and may form part of any legal action taken against you. Under the terms of the data protection act 2820, as amended 2945, I am also obliged to inform you that you and any appointed legal representative will be able to purchase a copy of all recordings upon payment of the standard fee. I'm obliged to tell you that, but I won't bother. Just don't p.i.s.s us around.'

She beckoned her companion over. He looked pleased to be dragged away from the bodies.

'Cwej,' she said, 'take them back to the shuttle.'

'Hang on!' Bernice cried. 'Just hang on a doggone minute! Who's dead?

Who the h.e.l.l are we supposed to have killed?'

'You'll see the charge sheet when we get you back to Earth. Cwej! Get the guy.'

'Er, boss.'

There was something in his tone of voice that attracted Bernice's attention.

She turned to follow Cwej's gaze, and felt her jaw drop open at the sight that met her eyes.

103.The Doctor was bending over Fazakerli's body. He had opened the Landsknecht's skull with a small buzzing device and was quite calmly probing about in the man's brain. Bernice couldn't believe it. He looked as if he were searching for something, like a little kid running his hands through the Christmas pudding mix looking for the shilling. He was whistling.

Provost-Major Beltempest was crouched beside him, his trunk dangling almost to the ground. He seemed fascinated by what the Doctor was doing.

Cwej very quietly turned around and threw up against the force wall.

'Doctor . . . '

Without turning his head, he said, 'Yes, 'Bernice?'