'Like a snail,' she said. 'When it reared up to attack, did you see a mouth?'

'Can't say I was really looking,' Chalfont replied. 'But thinking back, no.'

Sam nodded.'Doctor's lessons are paying off, I think.' He did not know what she meant by that, but before he could ask, she carried on. 'I'll bet that they just ingest food - you know, without having to chew. Probably something in this sludge dissolves things.' She looked back at him again, with a thin smile.'Dissolves people.You.'

Chalfont shuddered. 'Not a particularly pleasant thought, thank you.'

He stopped suddenly and Sam looked first at him and then back towards the tunnel entrance.

Someone was standing there.

'Oh, great,' Chalfont muttered. 'Now the SSS agents have come to arrest us for trespa.s.sing.'

Kyle watched with horror from behind a rock as the slug creatures emerged from the tunnel entrance. He closed his eyes fearfully, and when he opened them, the creatures were gone. Kyle stared down the road where he had come from, but there was no sign of them.

He crawled around from behind his rock and noticed the pools of slime on the roadway. They coalesced into one large pool and then the trail led to the edge of the road, where it stopped. If they had crawled on to the sandy surface of the roadside, maybe the slime had dried out instantly or been absorbed.

Sam and the man she had been following had gone into the tunnels.

Maybe they'd seen those creatures...

Or been attacked!

Kyle ran full pelt towards the tunnel entrance and then stopped. Kneeling some way down, just visible in the rather useless low light, was Sam.

'Sam!'he called.

Another figure, probably the man, emerged from the right. 'Who are you?'

he called.

'It's OK, Torin,' Sam said. "That's Kyle. He's all right, as they go on this planet. Come on down, Kyle. The weather's lovely.'

Once again, he didn't actually understand what she was talking about, but he strode purposefully inside - and stepped into the sticky substance.'Ugh,'

he muttered and lifted his foot up.

'Don't touch it!'yelled Sam.'It may be dangerous.'

She ran up to him, carefully avoiding the slime. 'Hiya,' she smiled. 'Good of you to join us. Did you see -'

'Yeah,' said Kyle. 'But they just went on to the sand rather than stay on the road and I lost track of them. What were they?'

'No idea.' Sam started walking back towards the other man, Torin. (Surely not that boring newshound Torin Chalfont? Why wasn't he interviewing the d.u.c.h.ess or whatever it was he did?) 'But I'm sure the Doctor would know.'

Sam suddenly stopped and pointed at the hovering bag beside Kyle.'Hey,'

she said,'you got a container in there of any sort?'

'Lunch box?'

'Cool. Let's have it.'

Kyle opened his bag and removed his lunch box. It was a small red plastic cube and contained one small piece of fruit. Sam took it from him, removed the lid and popped the fruit in her mouth. 'Great. Starving. Thanks.' She then scooped a bit of the hardening slime up with her'sonic screwdriver which I half-inched from the Doctor' - whatever a 'sonic screwdriver' was, but she'd shown it to him earlier that morning - and flopped it into the box, resealing the lid. 'Keep that in your floating friend, will you?' she said. Kyle resealed his bag.

Torin Chalfont (yes, it was him - as his eyes adjusted to the light Kyle recognised him from the holos) offered a hand, which Kyle took and they introduced themselves.

'C'mon, guys, I want to get that sample back to the Doctor.'

They began to go back to the tunnel entrance.

Torin Chalfont relaxed. These seemed to be intelligent young people - Sam especially.

As she pa.s.sed him, he bent over to look at the slime again. To think, it could have enveloped him. If Sam was right, it might have killed him.

Tentatively he reached to it with his right hand, and poked at it a bit, but it was rock hard now.

All it did was make the tip of his finger tingle. As he drew his hand back, there was a minute resistance, bit like tacky paint or glue. But that was all.

'C'mon, Torin; called Sam.'What are you doing?'

'I hurt my ankle,' Chalfont lied, pretending to rub it, then stood up.'It's OK now, though.'

As he went to catch up with the other two, he froze. There was a voice.

Whispering.

He opened his mouth to ask Sam and Kyle if they had heard it but decided not to. No. It was his discovery.

He tapped his finger with his thumb, checking to see if it was still tacky. It was - a bit of the slime had attached to his finger. But it wasn't eating his flesh - so Sam had been wrong about that.

It just itched a bit.

Some way beneath the surface of the planet was the solar generator that powered everything on Micawber's World.

However, right now, a small but significant amount of energy was being bled off and serving another cause.

Attached to the generator was a vast ball of the Wirrrn larval mucus, with more spread over the walls and floor and cavernous ceiling. It covered everything bar the generator itself - about twelve centimetres thick.

Organic tubes had been burrowed into the generator and were attached at the other end to this wall of mucus. This gave the mucus a permanent orange glow, which pulsated as if it were breathing.

A metre or so above the generator, hanging but supported by numerous mucus membranes, was the wirrrn Queen. Amber eyes gazed down at the Swarm Leaders scurrying beneath her, carrying out her mental commands, broken occasionally by spoken chirps of anger or demands for extra attention.

She had travelled a long way - having been the Queen for many centuries, she had been there when the Wirrrn embarked upon their journey from Andromeda. She had colonised many planets along the way, leaving behind sp.a.w.n. Swarm Leaders and the occasional Secondary Queen. She had placed her eggs inside more alien species than she could have imagined existed within the confines of just one small galaxy.

And here she was, taking the opportunity to spread even more by impregnating members of hundreds of different species gathered together.

She had used the intelligence of some of the species she had encountered previously to add to her consciousness knowledge of this Federation. Of its people, planets, politics and history. This way, she had settled on the human Mason who understood the varying different species and used his memories, his knowledge, to create their new, subtle weapon.

And now, clinging to the last vestiges of his humanity, Mason would spread the seed of the Wirrrn anew.

Only then could he be given the reward he so desperately craved - to finally join with the Wirrrn, to become whole and complete. To lose the trappings of individualism and ego and to enter the pool of intelligence that was the Wirrrn race.

To become superior.

In her mind, she could see events throughout the planet from the various Wirrrn grubs, Swarm Leaders and agents she directed.

In her mind, she opened a piece of the consciousness she had absorbed from a human named Jean-Paul Cartwright. There was a species on Micawber's World that would object to her plan more vociferously than the others.

Foamasi they were called.

They would fight. But they would lose. They would be absorbed, their minds, their plans, their civilisation would be absorbed.

They, too, would become superior.

Nothing could go wrong.

Coordinator Simmer was flicking rolled-up paper b.a.l.l.s off his desk and at a rubbish bin (and missing) when Madox walked into his office. Madox caught one as it zoomed towards an area of wall nowhere near its target.

'Paper is very rare, Coordinator. I really don't think the Federation would approve of you wasting their resources this way.'

'Who are you, Madox? My mother? My wife?'

'So, how did your meeting with the Royal Family go, Coordinator?'

Sumner sighed.'She took me shopping, Madox. I mean, I can go shopping with my wife, should I ever want to. Indeed, I do go shopping with my wife.

And I hate it then. Imagine going shopping with someone who not only has the same tastes as my wife, but has the money to squander on those tastes. And therefore can afford to spend ten times longer in every shop than my wife. And, worst of all, I cannot even suggest however slightly that they might be overspending. Or buying c.r.a.p.' Sumner threw himself back against the rear of his chair and swung his feet on to his desk. 'Can you imagine how many planets' economies she could single-handedly have saved this morning? I can think of six or seven. h.e.l.l, she spent enough money to refloat the Liasici Bank! The Foamasi would have no bankruptcy problems!" He paused, reflectively.'Have you ever been to Liasici, Madox?'

Madox said he hadn't.

'It's a lovely world, you know. Destroyed by nuclear war years ago by some thugs called the Argolin. All gone now, of course, thankfully. The Foamasi, for all their vices such as organised crime and insider dealings, have actually rebuilt Liasici beautifully. Right now, it needs a ma.s.sive cash injection to make it bankable again and, perhaps understandably, no one actually wants to refloat them. And there's this d.u.c.h.ess of Auckland - ever been to Auckland, Madox?'

Madox had no idea where Auckland was, so Sumner told him.

'Anyway, she spent more on new dresses and fur coats - fur coats , I ask you, inthis weather! - than I have ever seen.'

'You didn't enjoy yourself, then?'

Sumner sighed. 'No, Madox. I did not enjoy myself.' He saw diat Madox was carrying a datapad. 'What's that for?'

'A report, Coordinator. It seems there may be a little problem growing that could threaten the safety of the d.u.c.h.ess of Auckland. And, indeed, the Games.'

'Give it to the SSS then. Commandant Ritchie is in charge of security, I seem to recall.'

Madox pa.s.sed Sumner the datapad and, with an exaggerated sigh, Sumner read the message. After a moment he licked his lips, which had suddenly dried.'I see. Uh-huh. Right. Well, I suppose it is up to me - us - to do something about this after all.'

He got out of his chair and grabbed his jacket. 'Madox, get me the Federation Rules Database will you. I'd so hate to get my facts wrong.'

Sam kicked at the blockade, but it didn't give.

'How did they do this so quickly?' Kyle reached out to touch the solid wall of mucus that blocked the tunnel entrance. It was blended into the tunnel walls - they would never get it down from inside.'And why did they want to keep us in?'

Sam tugged Kyle's arm back. 'Survival Rule Number One: never touch weird, alien gunk. You never know how lethal it might be.'

'Do you really think it could be lethal?' asked Torin, standing, slightly out of breath, behind them.

Sam shrugged. 'Dunno. But the Doctor says it's better to be careful.'

Kyle suddenly gave her an odd look. "This Doctor. You're always talking about him. Is he important to you?'

Sam considered this. Not so much the question, but the odd way Kyle asked it, and the inappropriateness of his timing. 'Yeah, he's my friend, OK? Now, can we try to find another way out? I don't want to be trapped here for ever.'

Sam produced the sonic screwdriver and aimed it at the blockage, then shook her head.'d.a.m.n, he never showed me how to use it as a laser cutter. I only know how to make it work as a, well... sonic screwdriver.'

Kyle took it from her, fascinated by the device, while Torin wandered closer to the tunnel entrance, peering at the solid wall.

'We could shout. Maybe someone outside could find a way to lever that stuff off.'

Sam shook her head.'I'll bet that no one would hear us through it. And anyway, anyone near enough to hear us would have been got at by those creatures.' She looked further into the tunnel that she and Torin had started exploring.'Shall we go?'

'Let's not go back the way those... things came,' muttered the journalist.

Sam agreed, suggesting they explore the cavern she and Torin had hidden in. "There were loads of small tracks and tunnels leading away from that.'

'They were dark.'

'We'll have to be careful then, won't we?'Why did it always fall to her to become leader? Since when did she get voted Brown Owl? Sam nevertheless led the way. She threw a quick glance back at Kyle, and he was staring at his feet as he walked. Was it her imagination or was he avoiding her gaze? Surely he wasn't sulking about their tiff earlier.

Of course, if he'd had a sheltered upbringing by the likes of Reverend Lukas, he might be taking things a bit too seriously. Perhaps he was sour after their conversation last night about G.o.d, evolution and the universe.

She dropped back, letting Torin take the lead.

'You OK, mate?'

Kyle finally looked at her. 'Yes. Yes, I'm fine, Miss Jones. Thank you for asking.'

'Whoa!' She put a hand on his chest.'What's with the formality? Last night it was "Sam". This morning it was "Sam". Now it's "Miss Jones"? You been talking to Reverend Lukas again?'