Inside the tube was a long bullet-shaped vehicle, with a sliding canopy which opened to reveal two small seats, set one in front of the other. Zoe noted the absence of visible controls, apart from a digital display and a few touch-b.u.t.tons in the front panel.

'Come on, then, let's try to stir up a bit of action in the Capitol,' Kully said, reluctantly squeezing his chubby frame into the cramped front seat.

After a momentary hesitation, Zoe climbed in behind him.

Balan leaned in and touched a sequence of b.u.t.tons. 'I will programme for the Capitol if you will allow me,' he said firmly.

'Afraid I might get lost?' Kully chuckled, watching Balan operate the route lock b.u.t.ton.

With a swish the transparent canopy and the hatch in the launch tube both slid shut.

'I hope you know how to fly this contraption,' Kully joked, as the capsule suddenly accelerated away along the tube and then abruptly tilted at a steep angle upwards.

Seconds later they were climbing at tremendous speed through dense white clouds, and the capsule was vibrating and gyrating sickeningly. Pale and silent, Zoe gritted her teeth and clung to her sear, convinced that she had left her stomach far behind her.

'Selectors are a bit worn,' Kully remarked casually over his shoulder, 'but you just sit back and relax. It'll be all right as soon we level off.'

After a while the capsule stopped vibrating and gradually levelled off. 'Does this thing land automatically as well?' Zoe enquired in a faint voice.

'Usually,' Kully chuckled. 'In the old days everything had to be done manually, of course. Must have led to a great feeling of pride and achievement.'

'And an awful lot of accidents!' Zoe added ruefully.

'Yes, but at least people exercised their individual skills and judgement. Now all that's gone.'

Zoe gripped her seat even more firmly. 'You... you mean you can't control this thing at all at all?'

Kully shrugged. 'There are switches here for emergencies... but I can't remember how to use them.'

The capsule suddenly dived sharply and then came level again.

'Very comforting!' Zoe muttered, clutching her tummy.

'Don't worry,' Kully cried gaily. 'Nothing will go wrong. Not on Dulkis. Father wouldn't allow it.'

'Why don't you for on with your father?' Zoe asked.

'Oh, her all right. I suppose,' Kulle admitted. 'He's just gone a little too far. He got rid of aggression and all that, but now curiosity's gone as well. There's no desire for adventure...'

Kully's words were swallowed up by a piercing whine as the capsule pitched abruptly into a steep nosedive. Zoe could not help screaming as it accelerated faster and faster towards the vertical and the clouds merged into a dizzy blur outside the canopy...

The Doctor and Jamie were rapidly growing weaker and weaker from the effects of the molecular adhesion pinning them firmly to the wall of the control centre. Helplessly they watched Rago and Toba setting up an elaborate testing apparatus on the central dais.

'For optimum slave personnel we shall require strength and obedience, but only sufficient intelligence to make them efficient and not dangerous...' Rago was saying.

Jamie grimaced. 'So they want to know how clever we are,' he whispered feebly out of the corner of his mouth.

'Or how stupid we are...' the Doctor muttered hoa.r.s.ely.

'That might be more to our advantage, Jamie.' He squinted at the device through half-closed eyes. It resembled a game board perforated with differently shaped holes and with a pair of earphones wired to a network of circuitry beneath it. Along one edge of the board was fitted a vertical plate containing two fist-sized apertures side by side. Along the opposite edge ran a tray filled with an a.s.sortment of small solid shapes rather like model building-blocks.

'You have to fit the shapes into the correct holes,' the Doctor explained under his breath.

'But a wee bairn could do that,' Jamie croaked, 'it's simple.'

The Doctor nodded. 'That's what worries me, Jamie. It's too simple.'

Jamie's dulled eyes suddenly brightened. 'Doctor... you nodded,' he gasped. 'You moved.'

'Dear me, Jamie, so I did, the Doctor muttered cautiously. He twitched his finger, clenched his hand, raised his arm and finally eased his body away from the wall. 'I'm free!' he breathed. 'How about you?'

Scarcely daring to try. Jamie eventually prised himself a few centimetre's away from the panel. 'Aye, me too.'

The Doctor glanced covertly across the huge chamber towards the elevator system which had brought them tip from ground level earlier.The Dominators were engrossed in their apparatus. A reckless idea flashed into the Doctor's mind...

But at the same instant, one of the Quarks' antennae sparked and the robot marched menacingly towards the prisoners. 'Adhesion expired. Are the specimens to be re-fused?' it bleated shrilly.

'Negative!' Rago snapped, turning sharply. 'Commence the test.'

Prodded by the Quark, the Doctor shuffled wearily across to the dais. 'What are you going to do to us?' he asked submissively.

Toba clamped the earphones to the Doctor's temples and thrust the Doctor's hands through the circular openings in the vertical plate. 'Quark!' Toba ordered.

The nearest robot connected its probes into the circuits at the base of the board and its antennae glowed blood-red.

The Doctor immediately contorted in agony, struggling to free his hands so that he could tear the screaming phones from his ears, but his hands were paralysed. After a few seconds the Quark's antennae stopped glowing and the Doctor sagged limply to his knees.

Tuba's face was a waxen mask of cruel enjoyment. 'The goad will be repeated regularly until the puzzle is rea.s.sembled,' he rasped malevolently. 'Begin!'

Powerless to intervene, Jam could only look on as the Doctor fumbled clumsily with the perspex shapes, trying to force them into completely unsuitable holes in the board.

'Come on, Doctor, the square hole... no, the square square hole,' hole,'

Jam cried as the Quark's antennae glowed and the Doctor dropped the shapes and twisted pitifully.

The Quark switched off the goad and the Doctor struggled to pick up the shapes in his horribly clenched hands again.

'Och ye canna be sae daft... the triangle triangle...' Jamie pleaded.

'Whatever's the matter wi' ye?'

But the Doctor kept fumbling and dropping the pieces.

A third time the goad was switched on and the Doctor sprang back, arched like a bow, with his swollen tongue trapped between gnashing teeth and his eyes crossing and bulging horribly in his lolling head. Frozen into silence, Jamie gaped in futile desperation at his tortured friend.

'Quark, terminate!' Rago ordered.

Toba wrenched the earphones from the Doctor's head, dragged his gnarled hands through the plate and shook him back to consciousness. Meanwhile Rago was staring intently at the specimen, almost as if he suspected that all was not as it seemed.

Boiling with rage, Jamie hurried over and supported the Doctor while he found his feet again. 'Are you all right, Doctor?' he murmured, peering anxiously into the flushed, contorted face.

'Yes, yes, I'm in the pink, Jamie. Just a little dazed though.'

'What are you up to? That puzzle was easy,' Jamie whispered.

The Doctor gave a shy wink. 'A stupid enemy is far less of a threat than an intelligent one,' he whispered, grinning mischievously. 'Just act stupid, Jamie. Can you manage that?'

'Aye, it's easy...' Jamie caught the Doctor's eye and realised he was being sent up. 'Och you're in the pink all right,' he mumbled shamefacedly.

They fell silent as they became aware of Rago's unwavering gaze on them. Nudging Jamie to follow suit, the Doctor meekly shuffled to the edge of the dais and sat with his legs dangling and a vacant expression on his face.

Suddenly Toba rapped out an order and the Quarks marched forward and connected their probes into the edge of the circular platform. 'Power,' Toba snapped. The two sets of antennae sparked in unison.

Rago watched the Doctor arefully as he looked around, nodding and grinning and patting Jamie's knee rea.s.suringly.

'Now stand up!' Toba boomed.

The Doctor obediently lowered his feet to the deck and immediately jumped back up onto the dais as a vivid blue flash exploded under his shoes.

'Stand up!' Toba repeated in an almost maniacal tone.

Gingerly Jamie edged forward and again there was a viscious crack as his st.u.r.dy hobnailed boots touched the deck, causing him to jerk his legs into the air as he rolled on his back on the dais.

'Get down!' Toba shrieked.

'Let's try over there,' the Doctor suggested in a ponderous voice, as if he were solving some fantastically complex problem.

'You are surrounded,' Toba snarled contemptuously.

The Doctor and Jamie stared at each other and then shook their heads, lifting their feet and pointing hopelessly at their smoking boots like a pair of vaudeville clowns.

'These specimens are utterly useless,' Toba hissed, turning to Rago. 'That is are a.s.sessment.'

The Navigator's waxen nostrils flared and the red rims of his eyes brightened. 'Their behaviour is variance with information we already possess,' he said ominously. 'Those weapons we examined in the ruin could not have been devised by such apparent simpletons as these.' Rago turned to a Quark. 'Report to Fleet Leader. Fleet Refuel Project proceeds to plan. However, status of indigenous species is not yet determined.'

The Quark marched across to a communications panel and plugged itself in.

Rago surveyed his two prisoners cowering on the dais.

'Follow,' he ordered, turning abruptly towards the elevator.

'But we can't get off without... without...' the Doctor's plea trailed pathetically into silence.

'Jump!' Rago retorted.

it'arily the two captives got to their feet and stood gazing down at the deck as though it were a yawning chasm below them. Then the Doctor clasped Jamie by the hand, shut his eyes and they both jumped safely off the dais.

'A simple electrical circuit, completed by your bodies when you attempted to stand up,' Rago explained to the amazed pair. 'Evidently you know nothing of electricity.'

The Doctor frowned. 'Electricity? What is that?'

The Navigator strode over to the Doctor. 'Are you such a fool? You have intelligent eyes,' he rasped.

For a moment Jamie thought the Doctor was going to abandon his pretence, but he simply stared up at the huge Dominator with wide, innocent eyes. There was a spine-chilling pause.

'One final test...' Rago announced, striding over to the elevator. 'Bring them...'

4.

Heads in the Sand On the Dulcian mainland the Capitol basked in the warm clear light from Dulkis's modest yellow sun, its thousands of silver terraces gleaming and its endless windows reflecting the golden sky. Long cool galleries filled with lush green vegetation stretched in all directions and every few metres small fountains cast fine shimmering sprays of purified water in myriad colours. The atmosphere was relaxed and hushed. Everywhere, the tall inhabitants, moved about calmly in their loose light togas, conversing in quiet unhurried voices.

In the Council Chamber, high in the domed summit of the vast city, half a dozen elderly Dulcians were lounging in padded reclining chairs, each fitted with its own small vision screen and its individual refreshment rack laden with exotic fruits and colourful iced drinks. The Councillors had high foreheads and swept-hack hair and the skin of their long sensitive faces was lined but blooming. Around them, subtle combinations, of pastel colours endlessly mingled on the curved opalescent walls and softly soothing sounds floated continuously through the scented air.

Deputy Director Bovem arranged his flowing white robe and settled back into the cushions. 'Very well. It is agreed, subject naturally to the approval of Director Senex, that the area in question be developed for exclusively leisure and holiday activity,' he announced in a musical voice.

'But have the Councillors given all due consideration to the submissions of the Industrial Committee?' asked a florid member, sipping from a tall slim gla.s.s.

Bovem raised an elegant hand. 'Really Councillors, I do not wish to hurry you, but we have been debating this matter for several lunars and I feel sure...'

He was interrupted by a series of bell-like tones and then a quiet voice filled the Chamber: 'Citizen Kully has arrived accompanied by a stranger. They wait in the Antechamber.'

Bovem touched a b.u.t.ton in the arm of his couch. 'Let them remain there until Director Senex has been informed,' he instructed.

Without warning, a section of the well dissolved and Kully came bursting in followed by Zoe, both of them out of breath. The wall automatically re-formed itself behind them.

Kully stomped straight over to Bovem, scattering sand and wiping his shining face with the hem of his skirt. 'If you think we're going to kick our heels while you gossip away for hours on end you're mistaken,' he shouted.

Bovem rose to his feet with strained dignity. 'Inform the Director that his son is here,' he ordered. Then he gathered his robe in a cla.s.sically authoritative pose. 'This is an outrageous abuse of the Council's dignity,' he protested.

'Who cares about that?' Kully retorted. 'I've got vitally important news.'

The Deputy Director permitted himself a faintly ironic smile. 'What fairy tale have you concocted this time?' he demanded. 'And who is this young lady?'