The voice reminded him of the way his late Siamese, Audrina, used to rub herself around his calves before settling down and going to sleep. And the face was 'It is Tom, isn't it?' she added sweetly.

He nodded, trying to convince himself that Bernice had been right and he really did know her. After all, there had been that Archery Club party at St Anne's... and the mid-term bop at the NukeSoc where he... hmm. He realized he could have given quite a few attractive girls his name and number in the past week without remembering it, and this one was decidedly interesting.

'Thanks,' he said. 'That's kind.'

His heart was beating fast. He had not forgotten that strange, unearthly feeling from the pub. The inside of the Mazda smelt of warm leather and Dior, and he smiled at her gratefully, only realizing now how cold and wet he had been.

'Are you... Did I see you at NukeSoc?'

'Where?'

'Nuclear Research Society. The dinner.'

'No,' she said, as the car moved off.

'Ah.' He tried again. 'English weather,' he said. 'Don't you love it?' It was a bluff, while he desperately tried to recall her name.

'Sorry, Tom,' said the girl, as she took them across to Beaumont Street. 'Amanda. You remember?'

'Er...' He was not going to remember even if he tried. 'I'm afraid not,' he admitted. Did we... er...'

'No.'

'Oh. Good. Well, when I say good, I mean oh, dear.'

'I know what you mean.'

He was warm and drying off, and in the company of an attractive woman who seemed to know him. Things, he reflected happily, had started going a little better for Tom Cheynor.

In his office, the President chuckled as he looked into the wet face of the young postgraduate on his monitor screen. After a couple of black-outs, Amanda's relay was working perfectly.

'Excellent, my dear,' he murmured, and took a sip of his 1953 Pinot Noir.

Chapter 10.

Force Majeure 'Captain,' said Larsen, 'I'm tracing the energy field again.'

Quallem, in the captain's chair, was tapping one fingernail against her white teeth, and did not appear to have heard him.

Cheynor turned.

'Captain?' he said.

'Range, Mr Larsen?' Her voice was a thin parody.

'Fifteen micro-traks. Closing on vector... two-four-nine.'

Quallem swivelled on her command chair. For the first time since leaving Q4, they could hear the rumble of the ship's engines. Cheynor held his breath.

'Evasive action, Mr Larsen.'

'Yes, ma'am.'

The relief was like the snapping of elastic. But something told Darius Cheynor it was not over yet.

'You see,' said Dr Mostrell, indicating the blow-up of his microscope picture, 'the atomic structure has undergone a chemical transformation.'

'As opposed to physical,' Ace said, almost to herself.

Strakk, examining readouts on the other side of the lab, looked up in surprise. 'So the crew-members' cells weren't just aged beyond repair?'

Mostrell replaced his gold-rimmed glasses and waved his pencil at Strakk. 'Precisely. Their bodies must have been bombarded bombarded with catalytic particles. Quite possibly a form of tachyonic energy.' with catalytic particles. Quite possibly a form of tachyonic energy.'

'And if you change the chemical structure,' Ace said, slowly, 'then DNA gets messed up. Corrupt cells aren't replaced.'

'Quite. Now...' Dr Mostrell went to his central computer and fed it some of his notes. 'If I enter equations of the presumed presumed reaction, we might find out what the weapon was.' reaction, we might find out what the weapon was.'

'It's Time,' said Ace. 'Whatever the equations say, it comes down to Time right? That's what the Doctor would say.'

'Time-breaks,' said Strakk, turning round from the spectrograph. 'That's what he was saying in that message! So when was it recorded and how?'

'Absolute rubbish,' said Mostrell dismissively, and met Ace's hostile stare. 'This Doctor fellow qualified, is he?'

'Suitably,' she answered, with ice and lemon. 'What makes you sure you can't use Time itself as a weapon, Dr Mostrell?'

'You can't talk about using something that you're subject to yourself. You get into the most dreadful recursive patterns. Everything must relate to Time.'

'But supposing,' Strakk said, 'that whatever has done this... doesn't doesn't?'

The argument was interrupted by the bleeping of the secondary alarm. The lights flickered once, and dimmed.

'Full alert! What the devil ' Mostrell checked his power gauges. 'A systems failure!'

The alarm was chirruping through the bridge too, where the lights had dimmed to red.

'Power drain on all systems,' Larsen reported. 'Diverting to keep life-support at full capacity.' He looked to the captain for confirmation, but it was left to Cheynor to give the signal.

'What the hell's happening?' Quallem snapped. 'I didn't order Full Alert '

'Mr Gessner,' said Cheynor, interrupting her with a rudeness that would have gladdened Ace's heart, 'check the auto-override, find out why the computer has taken us to Full Alert.' He turned to look at Quallem, who was gripping the rail of the podium so hard it looked as if her knuckles would crack. 'The first step in being captain,' said Cheynor calmly, 'is to know your ship.'

'Return to your post, Mr Cheynor.'

The deadlock was broken by Rost, the pilot. 'Losing manual control, Captain.'

'Go to auxiliary,' ordered Cheynor. He met Quallem's eyes with a calmness he knew he could not keep up for long.

She was shivering. He thought he almost saw her smile. Pleadingly.

'Don't take it away from me, Darius...' she whispered.

'I'm relieving you of command.'

Her smile was crooked, on another plane of reality. 'You can't do that, Mr Cheynor. I still have Security. I'll place you under arrest.'

'Then do that,' he said. 'It'll hardly matter when we're both dead.'

'Energy field now ten micro-traks,' said Larsen, 'And closing.'

The strain was showing on every face on the bridge. They could hear the tortured engines now, and the comforting hum of the machinery had become a cacophony of squealing and chattering.

Like a thousand restless voices.

Cheynor, taking command, swung around. 'Power in the warp engines, Mr Rost?'

'Less than fifty per cent, sir.'

'Continue evasive. Give it your best shot.' He patched in the intra-ship channel to his console. 'Cheynor to all stations We have a Full Alert, I repeat, we have Full Alert. Deflectors and weapons crew on stand-by.'

'The ship won't take it!' Quallem screamed.

He swung on her, seeing no salvation now in her twisted, livid face. 'Then give a better order Captain Captain.'

'Energy field on visual,' Larsen reported.

They all saw it now. Like a giant cloak of lights, sparkling and fizzing. Like huge, crackling jaws chewing up Time.

Heading straight for the ship.

On the podium behind Quallem, a shape was starting to form.

The engines of the starship gave one last asthmatic wheeze of flame and died.

Around it, the lights gathered like an army of fireflies, weaving their web. In a matter of moments, the ship was immobile.

On the bridge, the intruder was flickering into being, bathed in green like an effect from a phantasmagoria. It seemed unable to maintain itself for more than a second at a time, as if slowly gathering strength, but with each flicker it grew stronger.

'What is it?' Larsen's voice was barely more than a whisper as he gaped over his shoulder at the entity.

'Monitor your post, Mr Larsen.' Cheynor was at the edge of the podium, sidling closer to the strobing light. Quallem hovered behind him, her body tense.

Cheynor, shading his eyes was attempting to make out the details of the phase-shifting shape at the heart of the column of light. He saw humanoid limbs, a mask like an animal's snout... Then the sound of breakers on a jagged shore filled the back of his mind, insidious, yearning. There was something about the light and the sound which he thought he ought to recognize...

The voices continued to report. People, doing their jobs as normal, hoping that if they carried on that way it would be part of just another routine survey assignment. And imperceptibly, the reports had begun to address themselves to Second Officer Cheynor.

'Completely immobile, sir. Losing power on all systems.'

'Intruders on Decks E and F, sir,' reported a female TechnOp.

This, at least, was something for which Quallem was trained to react. 'Patrols one and two down, McCarran. Tell them to shoot to kill.'

The spell was broken. Cheynor backed off from the glowing intruder. 'That's madness. You're sending men to their deaths.'

Survey Corps TechnOp (Second Grade) Rosabeth McCarran was not, by nature, indecisive. But Terrin had been a good captain, a strong leader who gave orders and stuck to them. Now she had come to that crashing realization that hits many in the field of battle, especially those for whom battle is an unfortunate side-effect of what they have been trained for namely, that her leader was as frightened as she was, and that a strong order was not necessarily going to get them out of this alive. Rosabeth's brother was the leader of Patrol Two. If she punched in Quallem's order, she knew where she would be sending him. Her eyes, unnaturally large against her thin face, were determined.

'I won't do it, ma'am.'

Listrelle Quallem could feel the impact of thirty gazes on her. Her body tingled.

'McCarran,' she breathed, 'Do you want us all to die?'

'Intruders now advancing to Level D, sir.' Larsen heard his own voice quiver. Just keep going, he was thinking, as if everything were perfectly normal.

McCarran was still, impassive, as Captain Quallem stepped over to her console.

One finger stabbed down on the control that McCarran had not wanted to touch.

Deep in the lower decks of the Icarus Icarus, alarms sounded. Within seconds, the echo of booted feet was clanging along walkways and up ladder-shafts.

'It's over,' Quallem breathed. 'You're finished.'

'No, Listrelle,' said Cheynor. 'You are.' are.'

She turned, looked into the barrel of his gun. The fluttering began to echo through the bridge again. Pictures flashed into Cheynor's mind, images of hell, images he had seen relayed from Station Q4.

'This is mutiny, Mr Cheynor,' she said with a smile. Quallem was confident she had won now. She knew he had finally gone too far.

'Yes,' said Darius Cheynor. 'I'm afraid so.'

He only pulled the trigger once. The recoil from the Derenna kicked up his arm.

Captain Quallem was still smiling when the shot slammed her up against McCarran's console.