"Is something wrong, my child?" Bellarmine asked, concerned.

"I don't know," she replied. "I really don't know."

"Let's go through this one more time," Sperone Speroni said wearily. "Starting from when the coach stopped."

The flickering torchlight emphasized the haggard face of the soldier sitting opposite him. The man's eyes were wide, as if he had been drugged, and a muscle in his cheek was twitching. He was gazing at a point somewhere over Speroni's shoulder. "angels of the Lord descended from on high and took Cardinal Bellarmine from us," he whispered. "They were beautiful, and the sound of their voices was like honey in my ears."

Speroni ran a hand across the stubble of his scalp, wishing he was back in the a.r.s.enale, hammering planks of wood together and watching a ship's hull take form in front of him. Not sitting in a stuffy, torch-lit room, listening to the ravings of a madman. "Now how many of these angels did you say there were?"

The soldier's eyes flickered suspiciously toward him. "You don't believe me," he said. "You think I'm touched by the sun, or drunk!"

Speroni shrugged. "You say this happened last night? On your way to Venice?" The soldier nodded, and Speroni continued: "Well, I don't know who you had in the coach, but Cardinal Bellarmine has been a guest of the Doge here in Venice for the past few days, and the only incident that he has been involved in to my knowledge has been an attempted abduction by Turkish spies."

The soldier's gaze had strayed to a point above Speroni's head, but from the vacant look in his eye Speroni guessed that he wasn't seeing the wall, but something else entirely.

"They were beautiful," the soldier said.

"Then they can't have been Turkish spies," Speroni said. "And, as far as I am aware, no heathen Turk has ever been described as having a voice like honey." He shook his head, and wished to G.o.d that he might wake up and find that, the past ten years had been a dream, and he was making warships in the a.r.s.enale again.

Anything but this. Anything Anything but this. but this.

As the knife plunged toward Galileo's eyes, everything seemed to be happening slowly, as if he, the a.s.sa.s.sin, the Doctor and everybody else in the Tavern of Fists were moving through water, caught in weeds. He could see the way the light gleamed off the blade - the curiously pristine blade - and reflected on to the wine bottle, casting a red glow across the Doctor's face. He could see the way the a.s.sa.s.sin's face remained calm, and the way the shadows on his face didn't seem to match with the way the sunlight was streaming through the windows. Motes of dust spun slowly through the beams of sunlight, which themselves seemed almost solid enough to support the weight of the wall. Nothing mattered - time was as ma.s.sive and as immobile as a cathedral.

And then time speeded up, and the knife was hurtling towards him, and there was nothing he could do but die.

The Doctor's arm suddenly lashed out. His cane thudded home into the a.s.sa.s.sin's stomach - deep into the a.s.sa.s.sin's stomach - and the man bent double with a curiously high-pitched retching noise. Without conscious thought Galileo leaped to his feet, grabbed the wine bottle and brought it crashing down on the man's head. Shards of gla.s.s exploded across the table and surrounding floor and the a.s.sa.s.sin fell heavily along with them. The impact shook the boards of the floor. The patrons of the tavern moved back a few feet and, for a moment, the normal hubbub was stilled.

But only for a moment.

"Let's get out," Galileo said, "lest the Nicolottis send another of their paid men after me. They will never believe that I didn't poison that young cur. My life in Venice is not worth a holed florin now.

The Doge will never -"

"I think," the Doctor said, kneeling down beside the figure, "that this... man... was not sent by any human agency."

"What do you mean?" Galileo gazed wildly around. "Of course he was. The Nicolottis want revenge. It's as plain as the nose on your face."

The Doctor reached out to touch the stunned a.s.sa.s.sin's back, and Galileo gaped as the Doctor's hand seemed to plunge through through the man's clothes and skin up to the wrist. the man's clothes and skin up to the wrist.

"I... I don't..."

"No," murmured the Doctor, "you probably don't." He twisted his invisible hand, and with a sound that reminded Galileo of the cheep of a bird, the a.s.sa.s.sin's body shimmered and vanished. In its place was a figure so thin that it could have been built out of the branches of a tree. Its skin was blue and glossy, covered in wart-like b.u.mps, and from its head there sprouted a horn fully a foot long that had been broken in two by the wine bottle. It moved weakly, trying to rise, but its twig-like fingers kept slipping on the wine-soaked floor.

The Doctor's hand was resting on a small device of bright metal that was attached to the creature's belt. "As I suspected," he said, "a hologram generator. Did you notice the way the shadows on its face didn't accord with the direction of the sunlight? I do believe that this attempt upon your life was something to do with Envoy Albrellian, and the island of Laputa. And there, of course, we will find all the answers we seek." His nimble fingers undid the buckles that held the metal device. Pocketing it, he stood up. "I think we should follow your most excellent advice, and make ourselves scarce."

"But what about...?" Galileo pointed to the creature, unable to finish his sentence.

"Oh, there will no doubt be some consternation when it is noticed, hmm?" the Doctor said, "but I'm sure it will manage to make its escape." He walked quickly towards the tavern door. Galileo followed, pausing only to take a half-empty bottle of wine from a table as he pa.s.sed. A commotion arose behind him as he emerged from the tavern into the bright sunlight by the side of a ca.n.a.l, but he couldn't tell whether it was because the creature had been noticed or because he had taken the wine. As he stood squinting beside the ca.n.a.l, a man in fine velvet clothes walked up to him. "Galileo Galilei?" he said.

Galileo tensed. The Doctor turned, his cane half-raised.

"Doge Leonardo Dona sends his apologies for the delay. He will see the most excellent device of which you spoke tomorrow morning at ten o'clock."

The man turned on his heel and was gone. Galileo turned to gaze at the Doctor.

"It never rains," he said, "but it pours."

"Doctor?" Steven pushed the doors wide open and glanced around the rooms in the Doge's palace that had been a.s.signed to the three travellers. "Doctor, are you there?"

n.o.body answered. A stray breeze from the window fluttered the corners of the tapestries and, outside the window, the voices of the crowd melded together into an incessant buzz. There was no sound from anywhere in the suite of rooms. The Doctor wasn't there.

Steven hadn't been with the Doctor long, but he knew that his mysterious companion was very rarely silent. Whatever he did was accompanied by a constant stream of "hmm?"s, "hah!"s and subvocalized murmurs. The Doctor seemed incapable of doing anything in silence.

Behind Steven, Marlowe and Shakespeare entered the room.

"Very impressive," Marlowe said appreciatively. "I would swear that even the palace of Good King James himself could not rival this for splendour, eh Will?"

Steven glanced back to see Shakespeare looking around the room. "Indeed not," the playwright said morosely. "Mostly the palace's walls are bare, these days, and we perform in draughty halls to an audience so m.u.f.fled in robes and coats that they can barely make out what we are saying."

"Times are harsh then?" Marlowe clapped a hand on Shakespeare's shoulder. "Word reached me that purse strings were being tightened and bellies were rumbling, but I put it down to jealousy and the tendency of all foreigners to malign our fair country."

Shakespeare shrugged. "The web of our life is of mingled yarn: good and ill together. I shall not complain. Good King James is a fair patron and a bonny monarch, but his largesse might lead one to believe that he had access to a dragon's h.o.a.rd. In his first year as monarch he made nine hundred knights of his friends and would-be friends. He gives them money, and favours, and all manner of privileges. A while ago one of his advisers, distressed at the flow of money from the King's coffers to the pockets of his favourites, ordered the latest round of 'gifts' to be counted out before the throne, coin by golden coin. It took three hours." As Marlowe chuckled, Shakespeare continued: "It helped, but not for long. Money is flowing from the Treasury as blood flows from a man with a cut throat."

"Can we cut the reminiscences?" Steven snarled. "I know you two guys have got a lot to catch up on, but we need to find the Doctor.

He has to know what you've both told me."

"And what is that, hmm?" a voice said from behind them all.

Steven blinked, surprised, as the Doctor swept into the room.

Reaching the centre of the room he turned to face the group. His face was imperious, and the light from the window back-lit his head, turning his long white hair into a glowing halo. "Now, before you say anything, I have something to tell you all, and it concerns - " He paused, and glanced from Marlowe to Shakespeare and back again. "Steven, who are these companions of yours? I hope you haven't been wasting time while Vicki is undergoing heaven knows what ordeals in drinking and carousing with disreputable companions?"

"Sorry?" Steven asked.

"I asked you -" He stopped and glanced to Steven's side. "Surely you are William Shakespeare, are you not?" he enquired.

Shakespeare bowed low. "Honoured to make your acquaintance, sir," he murmured. "And doubly honoured that you know my face, when I do not recall ever having met you. Although -"

"Yes?" the Doctor said.

Shakespeare frowned slightly. "You do not have a younger brother, do you? Tall, with curled brown hair and as strange a taste in clothes as your own?"

"I do not," the Doctor replied. "Why do you ask?"

"You put me in mind of him. I never knew his name, but he gave me some small a.s.sistance with writing out Hamlet when my wrist was sprained. I thought perchance he had described me to you."

"No, no," the Doctor said. "I saw your face on the s.p.a.ce-Time Vis - ah -" he caught himself "- drawn in a pamphlet which came my way describing the great playwrights of London." As Shakespeare bowed again, the Doctor quickly turned to Steven's other companion. "And you, sir? Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?"

"This is Giovanni Zarattino -" Steven closed his eyes and sighed.

"No, it isn't. This is actually Christopher Marlowe, who apparently should be dead but isn't, and used to write plays but is now a spy."

"Well," the Doctor said, clapping his hands together, "thank you for making it all perfectly clear. I am the Doctor, of course, and this,"

he gestured towards the door, "is Galileo Galilei."

Steven turned again towards the door, and couldn't help smiling as he saw Galileo standing there, a half-empty bottle of wine in his hand. Galileo waved it at Shakespeare and Marlowe, and nodded at Steven.

"Now, Steven," the Doctor snapped before anybody could interrupt, "Galileo and I have traced the s.p.a.cecraft from the moon to a point out in the lagoon. We intend rowing out there tonight to determine precisely what is at that point. I antic.i.p.ate that we will find this Laputa of which Albrellian spoke, and I believe that Vicki will be held prisoner there. We fully intend to rescue her."

"Wait, Doctor," Galileo cried, and took another swig of wine. Tiny rills of red-hued liquid ran down either side of his mouth. Judging by the matted state of his beard, a lot of what he had already drunk had gone the same way. "I have an appointment with the Doge. I have a ... a spygla.s.s to demonstrate. Can't afford to miss it.

Doesn't do to make the Doge angry, you know."

"I need you with me, Mr Galileo," the Doctor said in a tone that brooked no argument. "Your incisive mind could prove to be invaluable. Steven can use the hologuise generator and pretend to be you while we are -"

"Doctor," Steven interrupted, "Marlowe and I saw a s.p.a.ce shuttle come out of a house here in Venice. There's a sort of bas.e.m.e.nt thing beneath the water level, and there's a gate that leads out into the ca.n.a.l."

The Doctor's bird-like gaze fastened on Steven. "Are you sure?" he asked.

"He speaks the truth," Marlowe agreed, stepping forward. "I saw it too. The house is owned by a man named Irving Braxiatel."

The expression on the Doctor's face didn't flicker, but the atmosphere of the room suddenly changed. The shadows were deeper all of a sudden, the breeze cooler, the silence more intense. "Braxiatel, you say?" He half-turned towards the window.

"Braxiatel, here here?"

"You know this man?" Marlowe said, stepping forward.

"Yes, yes," the Doctor fussed, waving his hand at the man. "Yes, Braxiatel is my... Well, well, well. Things are suddenly becoming a little clearer." He smiled, and it was not an expression that Steven liked. "Perhaps you should tell me everything."

Steven sighed. "That's what we were trying to - oh never mind."

As Braxiatel's skiff rose steadily into the air, Vicki watched the emerald foliage of Laputa fall away on the viewscreen with a shiver of recognition. The last time she had seen a sight like that, her father had been with her. They had been leaving Earth together, hoping to make a new life on one of the Outer Rim colony worlds after her mother died. He had joked about her eagerness as she pressed her nose against the viewing window. She could remember his laugh and the warmth of his hand on her shoulder.

All gone now.

They had taught her in school that matter and energy were neither created nor destroyed, but they were wrong. Mothers died. Fathers died.

Hope died.

Around the edge of Laputa a fringe of golden beach appeared and, around that, a line of pellucid blue water. The skiff rose farther and faster, and she could see layers of structure within the lagoon that sailors never saw: the sandbanks that came within inches of the surface but were invisible if you were floating on it, the blackened ribs of wrecked ships and the small specks of fish swimming between them, the gently waving strands of weed that bent over like a forest in a high wind. And then they were too high to make out the detail, and the sea was as it appeared from a few feet away: opaque and mysterious. Other islands crept in around the edge of the screen, but then they pa.s.sed through the first layer of cloud and the glorious sight of the unspoiled Earth was hidden.

"How long does the journey take?" she asked Braxiatel.

"A few minutes," he answered without taking his eyes off the controls. "We don't normally travel through the atmosphere very fast because we don't want to cause any sonic booms - might alert the natives, you see. Once we're above the troposphere we can speed up a bit. Are you enjoying the flight?"

"I am. Thanks for offering to take me out."

He smiled. "I was afraid that you might be feeling a little cooped up. I'll show you where the s.p.a.ceships are all parked, then we'll head back to Earth and tell the Doctor you're all right. I a.s.sume that he'll be worried."

"I hope so," Vicki said. "I'll be annoyed if he's not."

Outside the viewscreen the sky had turned the purple of a fresh bruise, and the line of the horizon was visible right at the edge.

"Mind if I reorient the sensors?" Braxiatel asked. "You might want to see where we're going."

"Go ahead."

Braxiatel caressed a control, and the screen blurred and reformed to show the battered surface of the moon ahead of them, sailing quietly through the black void. Vicki jumped as a sudden ping ping echoed through the cabin and a red light flashed on the control panel. echoed through the cabin and a red light flashed on the control panel.

"What's that?" she asked.

"Not to worry - we're just being scanned," Braxiatel said rea.s.suringly.

"Scanned by what?"

He pointed to a small speck, dark against the brightness of the moon's surface. It looked to Vicki like the fish that had been swimming in and out of the wrecks in the lagoon. "Scanned by that. It's one of my automatic sentry satellites. Everywhere within a light year of Earth has been declared a no-go area by my people for the duration of the Armageddon Convention. With anything this big, there's always the risk that a race like the Daleks or the Cybermen will attempt to disrupt it. Intelligence reports have already indicated an increase in activity around the Seventh Galaxy. Any ship coming within range of one of these satellites - and I have them scattered around the entire solar system - will be destroyed if it isn't expected or recognized."

"Very rea.s.suring," Vicki said quietly. "I presume it recognizes us?"

"I hope so," Braxiatel said, smiling quietly. "I'll be annoyed if it doesn't."

As they grew closer to the satellite, Vicki could make out more of its shape, and the more she saw the more she was reminded of a fish. The satellite was long and sleek, optimized for pursuit in s.p.a.ce or in an atmosphere, with a viciously pointed front end and a tail that fanned out into a broad, flat warp blade. Fins along its length held a variety of missiles and gun turrets.

"Nasty," she murmured.

"Very," Braxiatel agreed. "I couldn't use sentry satellites manufactured by any races at the conference or with a vested interest in seeing it disrupted, just in case they had been programmed with other instructions. Trojan horses, if you like. So I went back in time and obtained these from a race known as the Aaev. They were glad to sell the satellites to me - apparently the things had been sitting around for ages and never been used."

"And the Aaev aren't around any longer?" Vicki asked.

"No," Braxiatel replied, and coughed slightly. "I later found out that they were invaded and destroyed shortly after I left. No defences, you see."

Vicki glanced at his face, which was studiously directed towards the controls. "You're very much like the Doctor, you know?" she said.

"I should hope so," Braxiatel said, affronted, "after all, we are are -" He suddenly pointed toward the screen. "Ah, here we are - close enough to make out the landing field now." -" He suddenly pointed toward the screen. "Ah, here we are - close enough to make out the landing field now."

Vicki gazed towards the crater that Braxiatel was indicating. What initially looked like a collection of large rocks suddenly resolved itself into a group of s.p.a.cecraft of wildly different design parked haphazardly together in a crater. Some were rectangles, some cubes, some spheres, some tetrahedrons, some just collections of geometric shapes stuck together. All of them bristled with short-range weapons, and none of them looked as if they were designed to enter an atmosphere. Scattered around the perimeter of the crater were a number of small skiffs like the one that Vicki and Braxiatel were travelling in. As Vicki watched, one of the skiffs rose from the ground, sending great clouds of lunar dust puffing out in slow-motion around it.

"Aren't you worried that these ships might be seen from the Earth?" Vicki asked.

"Not particularly," Braxiatel replied. "One of the reasons that I wanted to hold the Armageddon Convention here on Earth at this precise moment in its history was that the human race is on the brink of great scientific discoveries which can be, or will be, perverted to military ends. The telescope is one of them. Galileo will persuade the Doge of its worth by stressing the advantage it will give Venice over its Turkish enemies - any invasion fleet can be seen much further away than before. That gave me a problem of course - anybody with a telescope was a potential threat because the ships on the moon are too far away to be seen by the naked eye. Fortunately there are only a handful of people on Earth with a telescope, and only one of those is interested in what's happening on the moon rather than the Earth."

"Galileo, of course," Vicki exclaimed. "So it was you that broke his lenses!"

Braxiatel nodded. "That's right - or rather, it was one of the Jamarians that work for me. I had to ensure that, for the duration of the conference, he posed no threat either to our security or to the blithe disregard that humans have for the existence of other races."

The edges of the crater had expanded beyond the confines of the viewscreen now, and Vicki could make out markings on the sides of the ships: ornate crests, thorn-like writing, portraits of the envoys being carried, lists of battles won and lost. The ships themselves were looking less and less like simple geometric shapes as their details became clearer, and Vicki could make out the fine traceries of pipes and spars that connected their various parts.