The layout was identical to the Polar Lights Polar Lights, and he soon found his way to the c.o.c.kpit. All systems had been left ready to go so he went. Impulse power 90 only, but enough to get him clear of the station and its security.

'Message incoming, Falsh,' purred the computer.

Falsh waited a few moments before calling up the screen. Like he was relaxed about it. Then he called up the sphere.

The Agent's loathsome face appeared, fat and grey, its dead fish-eyes staring. 'Are you running from us, Falsh?' it asked softy, its voice like worms curling around old bones.

'I was headed home,' said Falsh calmly. The Agent's gill-ears quivered with each syllable as it processed his words; he hated that. 'It's been a long night.'

'Indeed.'

The Agent stared on, unsettlingly still.

'We want what you promised us, Falsh. We have invested heavily. We want a return.'

'You think I'm happy about losing out on this deal?' Falsh allowed a little anger to creep into his tone. 'You think I wanted wanted Carme blown to pieces?' Carme blown to pieces?'

'Yes,' replied the Agent with unsettling calm. 'I discussed the situation with the Blazar crew on Thebe. They all insisted the order for its destruction had come directly from you.'

'Lies,' said Falsh flatly. 'Trying to cover up their own incompetence.'

'Was it incompetence that prompted NewSystem Deconstruction to destroy Thebe soon afterwards?

An attempt to destroy further evidence of your treachery?'

Falsh held himself still and straight, trying to mirror the Agent's own body language. 'I resent and refute your allegation.'

A little smile seemed to hook up the ends of its tiny mouth. 'Others came looking on Thebe.'

'What?'

'A male and a female. They came in your ship.'

Somehow, Falsh kept his face neutral. 'They're my agents. I sent them to investigate Blazar because, like you, I was furious at their incompetence.'

'In your own, personal ship.'

'Yes. It is my own personal business, after all.' He cleared his throat. 'My executives know nothing of this deal you know that.'

'I thought perhaps they too were investors. Acting on behalf of another power.' The Agent was still smiling, and now it nodded. 'I thought perhaps you had sought to sell this weapon to them too, Falsh. And that, like me, they did not believe your lies about Carme's accidental destruction.'

'For heaven's sake '

'I imagined they had taken your ship against your will. Being human in appearance they could investigate more subtly than I.' It held out its hands.

'Whereas I must resort to force.'

Falsh licked his dry lips. 'Did you kill them?'

91.'Have they not reported back to you, Falsh?' He snorted. 'Then perhaps you did not tell them that NewSystem Deconstruction had been ordered to destroy Thebe. How negligent of you.'

'Now listen, I invested heavily in that inst.i.tute '

'As did we.' A sickly yellow glint had come into its dead eyes. 'And now its work is successfully concluded, you have a weapon you plan to sell for a higher price than you agreed with us while we have nothing.'

Falsh brought the full force of his gaze to bear, a look that had drawn tears from even the c.o.c.kiest execs. 'If you are correct, and I do have this weapon,'

he said quietly. 'Perhaps you should be conducting this conversation with a little more respect.'

The Agent regarded him coldly, but said nothing.

'We shall meet in person,' Falsh told him. 'I have evidence that proves there is no conspiracy against you. I promise you, you shall be satisfied I am telling the truth.'

'Very well,' hissed the Agent. 'Where can we meet?'.

Falsh pretended to consider. 'There is a FILOC-P under construction outside Joves.p.a.ce. I'll have the workers sent to Callisto to enjoy the demolition display tomorrow. The podule will be empty, and adequate for our purposes.'

'I shall be prepared for treachery, Falsh,' the Agent warned him. 'And remember, my masters will be awaiting the outcome of our meeting with some antic.i.p.ation.'

Once the Agent had uploaded the coordinates and killed the conversation, Falsh told the ship's computer to steer him back to the station.

The man and the woman. Two of the agitators, at least. First they'd breezed straight into the heart of his Empire, now they had been snooping around on Thebe and using his own ship to get there! What did they know, who was running them. . . ?

But from what the Agent had said, they must surely be dead now.

Unsolved mysteries Falsh could live with. But no one must ever know the truth of what was created at the Inst.i.tute.

92.

Chapter Twelve.

Trix felt her hackles rise as she caught a glimpse of movement along the gantry, about ten metres away. Scuffling, sc.r.a.ping, breathing hoa.r.s.ely, the creature. . .

What the h.e.l.l?

She stared in disbelief as a bizarre animal, looking like a fat bald turkey with bloated pig legs and a cow's rump, shambled into view. The parson's nose marked the spot where the head should've been.

'It's a chiggock!' The Doctor crouched down as if to meet it on its own level.

'Poor thing. Its back legs are broken.'

'I've served up one of those things in a salad!' said Trix. 'Where's its head oh no! It's never shoved up its '

'It doesn't have a head,' the Doctor said darkly. 'Just a breathing hole. It wasn't bred to look, or hear, or sense anything at all. It's a foodthing, alive only in the most technical sense.'

'So how come it's heading our way?'

'There must be neurons of some sort to keep the thing growing. Motor reflexes controlled from somewhere in its body '

'No, I mean, if it can't sense anything, how does it know we're here?'

'It doesn't,' said the Doctor. 'It's just '

The chiggock broke into a desperate limp and threw itself at him. The Doctor toppled over in surprise and the bizarre creature clambered up on top of him. He wrestled with it, but it was a heavy, meat-packed animal and he was hampered in the confined s.p.a.ce of the walkway. For a few seconds, Trix was struck dumb by the sheer weirdness of the a.s.sault, unsure whether to laugh or scream.

'Help me, then!' complained the Doctor, loud and cross in her ears.

Suddenly the thing started bringing down its front trotters on the Doctor's visor, as if trying to break the gla.s.s.

OK, this had gone beyond a joke. She shoved at the creature and rolled it away. Its broken legs cracked nastily as it fell backwards. But moments later it was coming at them again.

The Doctor scrabbled quickly up. 'What was all that that about!' he complained. about!' he complained.

'I was sticking up for you!'

'Come on,' said Trix, seriously weirded out. 'If it wasn't brought on side by your touching compa.s.sion, what's it going to do when it finds out I carved up 93 its mother back at Falsh's station?'

They backed away. The chiggock was still coming for them. As Trix reached the edge of the chute, a thought struck her. 'Doctor! We found Klimt at the bottom of this chute.' She leaned in through the hatchway, but no air rushed up to meet her, and no force seemed to be controlling her descent beyond gravity. 'Oh great! The chute's not working!'

The Doctor thrust her aside, peering about the chute himself. 'Oh dear.'

'Can you fix it?'

'No. Powerlines must be fractured on this level. That's why the lighting's so erratic. Coming up is one thing, but getting back down. . . '

The chiggock was getting closer. Then it paused, as if watching them with creepy imaginary eyes. She shivered.

'In our suits we're bulkier than Klimt was. We should be able to brace ourselves between the sides of the chute and work our way down gradually.'

'And what about that that?'

The chiggock had started its advance again. The Doctor rushed swiftly forwards and grabbed hold of it. It kicked up its legs and struggled indignantly, like a bizarre maiden defending her honour in the arms of a brute. The Doctor's gasps and grunts tore through Trix's ears as he wrestled with the animal and finally managed to overturn it. It lay on its back, rocking from side to side and kicking its two working legs. The others just twitched, b.l.o.o.d.y and useless.

'Come on, quick,' panted the Doctor. He launched himself into the chute like a big silvery spider climbing down the waterspout. Gingerly, with her back pressed up against the gla.s.s, and her feet splayed against the opposite side, Trix tried to copy his swift, shunting movements. But the thought of Arnauld Klimt's frozen, bloodied corpse at the bottom of the chute kept slowing her down. Of course, if she slipped now the Doctor would give her a softer landing, but if she broke his neck it wouldn't exactly improve her chances of long-term survival. How far down was it now? She glanced up, hoping to gauge the height.

'Oh G.o.d.' Above her, at the top of the chute, a turkey's a.r.s.e came into view.

A fat leg tested the freezing air.

'What is it?' the Doctor's voice came crackling in her ears.

And then came the crackling-in-training.

Trix shrieked as the animal launched itself into the chute, braced herself. It used her as a safety net, landed in her lap. Then it was trampling its working legs into her ribs, nuzzling into her armpit. She slipped and slithered a short way down the shaft, barely able to support their combined weight. What if this thing tore a hole in her s.p.a.cesuit? How would she get back?

'Drop down, Trix!' the Doctor yelled. 'I'm waiting!'

94.A trotter scratched against her helmet visor. She twisted around, trying to dislodge it. The chiggock scrabbled at her but couldn't hold on. Finally it fell away, legs still kicking, landing with a heavy crunch.

Body trembling, breath shaky Trix determinedly worked her way down to the bottom of the chute. The Doctor helped her out.

She looked at the chiggock, lying on its front, legs splayed, beside Klimt's body.

The Doctor sighed. 'I couldn't save it.'

'Save it?' said Trix shakily. She forced a smile. 'That's the b.l.o.o.d.y secret weapon, that is! What the h.e.l.l got into it?'

'Traumatised by whatever happened here?' the Doctor wondered.

'If it had this effect on an animal with no brain, then the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who worked here are better off dead,' Trix declared.

The Doctor looked pensive. 'Well, I'll just add these fragments to our growing stock of evidence against Falsh, then I think we should be on our way. Our fuel's almost critically low, we can't afford to burn it all up escaping Jove's gravity.'

'Doctor. . . ' She grabbed hold of his wrist. 'Do you think Falsh has got his hands on whatever they were building here?'

'I think somebody has,' he replied. 'The question is. . . what are they going to do with it?'

Trix waited for him to finish, watching the frost thicken on the plastic walls, the broken gla.s.s windows, the bloodstained floor. The heaps of bodies outside.

She didn't look back at Klimt or the chiggock when it was time to go.

But she did take Klimt's jacket.

On the long, slow autowalk back to the Polar Lights Polar Lights, she draped it over her helmet so she didn't have to see another G.o.dd.a.m.ned star or another oh-so-b.l.o.o.d.y-awesome view of Jupiter. She wished Halcyon would blow the whole lot sky-high.

In her dark little world, shuffling along at a snail's pace, she grew crosser and crosser with herself for imagining that ridiculous chiggock was behind her, somehow trailing along on its shattered legs.

Tinya was in the Hub, thanking the new young security chief for his kindness and discretion, when she saw Falsh leaving on one of the bubblecams. She cut things short, said she'd see him sometime, adjusted her clothes and made tracks for Falsh's office.

Her beloved Director had been in a hurry. He hadn't locked up behind him.

And at this hour of the morning, who would he be expecting to be around?

Not sure how long she had, she began to search his records. She'd been given clues what to look for, and trained in the technique. And while Falsh 95 had clandestine meetings in his ship, he didn't keep any of the details there; she knew that for a fact, she'd turned the Polar Lights Polar Lights upside down searching for them. Not that anyone would be able to tell. . . upside down searching for them. Not that anyone would be able to tell. . .

With a low, ominous chime from the computer, she broke another protocol and prised open some files. The bubble buzzed and lost colour, but the detail was sharp enough. Razor sharp.

Here it all was.

She licked her lips. 'Got you.'

Fitz woke up and wondered where the h.e.l.l he was. Bare blue walls, a stone floor, a weird wiry mobile in the ceiling. . . Arty but unfriendly.