[image]

The saucer had steadied itself by now, and Seskwa climbed from his webbing and shuffled across the s.p.a.ce between them. 'I have no interest in your external coverings.'

'Oh,' said the Doctor, looking at the ground. He noted again how much noise Seskwa's internal machinery made.

At times the squeaking was almost painful. And the leathery-old-shoes smell of all Chelonians was particularly p.r.o.nounced in Seskwa. 'You need some oil in those joints.'

'You will accompany us to the base,' said Seskwa. 'The General will turn your clacking tongue to sense.'

The Doctor pointed to the gun. 'I thought you were going to kill me.'

'That was before.'

'I wish you'd make up your mind. I don't like hanging about wondering if I'm going to be killed or not when I could be doing something more interesting.'

Seskwa made the gurgling noise that was his species' equivalent of a chuckle. 'Soon you will crave the luxury of extinction. You will scream for mercy when you are placed in the Web of Death!'

The Doctor gasped. 'The Web of Death?'

Seskwa nodded. 'You know of the ritual?

'No,' said the Doctor, 'but I thought you might like it if I looked impressed. I can imagine the sort of thing you mean. I'm an old hand with webs.' He grinned. 'And you do paint a very vivid picture.'

Seskwa growled and motioned him against the wall with the gun.

Romana was trying to catch up with K9 and his newly elevated position, and trying to ignore Stokes, who was cowering in a corner of the guest suite with his hands over his ears and protesting regularly - roughly in rhythm with the bomb blasts - that they were all going to die. She had given up telling him that, by her estimate of the resistance of alluvially formed rock to plasma bursts in ratio to the consequent release of atmospheric disturbance, they were in the safest place on the whole planetoid.

The worst of it seemed to be over, and now Stokes was uncurling himself and pinching the bridge of his nose as if this could in some way return his breathing to its normal rate. 'This,' he said, 'has got totally out of hand.'

But Romana was listening to K9, who had reached the end of his dissertation on the history of Metralubit and its political system.

'Const.i.tutional privilege, a precept established in the chivalric past of the Diurnary period of the Helduccian civilization on Metralubit, permits any being in political or military life to take up the position held by the deceased being whose existence they attempted to preserve.'

'You could have said no if you'd wanted,' pointed out Romana.

K9 waited a moment before replying. 'My reasoning circuits extrapolate that a position of authority will allow freer access to resources necessary to locate the Doctor Master. This was the primary motivation for my decision.'

Romana arched an eyebrow. 'The chance to show off never came into it, of course.'

'Charge refuted, Mistress. This unit's awareness of self is non-qualitative.'

Stokes started shouting again. 'In a full-scale conflict we don't have a hope.

The Chelonians are better equipped and better drilled. They haven't let themselves slip.' He shuddered. 'What if they've been planning this from the very start, for over a century? Cunning. Because all they need is to hit this place hard and we're done for. I could be buried alive.' Stokes made a fist and slammed it against the wall, which wobbled. 'This place might as well be made out of cardboard. We're all going to die.'

'Information, Mistress,' said K9.

'What is it, K9?'

He motored himself around a half-circle. 'My visual apparatus perceives an anomaly in this environment. Certain technological developments do not tally.'

This interested Romana far more than Stokes's witterings. 'Yes. I noticed a few things. Plasma missiles alongside primitive radio communicators.

Attrition of war?'

'More, Mistress.' K9 nodded upwards. 'The Metralubitans possess a Fasts.p.a.ce link between this planetoid and their homeworld, yet they have no transmat technology.'

This did shock Romana. 'That goes against all recognized rungs of development theory. Short-range transmats should come first. The leap to warp engineering is a natural progression from the discovery of vecificated disa.s.semblers. You can't really come at it any other way.'

Stokes snorted. 'You've not changed, either of you. In the midst of certain doom you sit there calmly and talk drivel.'

'Our conversation's been quite productive,' said Romana.

'Productive? You just don't understand do you?' He jabbed a fmger at the ceiling. 'All it's going to take is one well-aimed strontium shot and we'll be pulverized, blown to atoms.' He shook himself and made for the door. 'Oh, what's the point? I must see Dolne. My contract didn't cover this. I'll demand immediate pa.s.sage.' The last few words echoed back down the corridor after he flounced out.

K9 waited until he was out of earshot and said, 'Mr Stokes is non-contemporaneous, Mistress. Inference time travel.'

'It's a very long story. Ignore him, anyway. This place should stand up to quite a battering.' She stood up and examined the wall Stokes had struck.

'This looks like megalanium. Is it?'

K9's head fell and his tail drooped. 'Regret cannot reply, Mistress. My sensors. . .'

Romana felt guilty. She had the feeling K9 was trying to compensate for his incapacity by being extra helpful, and this touched her. 'Sorry. I was forgetting.' She patted her lap. 'Come here.' He crossed the room and she bent down and stroked his sides.

'Misunderstanding of the functional nature of this unit,' said K9. 'Petting unnecessary.' But he didn't pull away.

With the launchers disabled and the satellite ticking over as per normal, Dolne had called a small conference - just himself, Viddeas and Cadinot - in a corner of the Strat Room. 'Now, I don't like this one bit. Did everyone take leave of their senses? Viddeas, what happened then?' Viddeas was staring blankly at the floor. 'Report,' hissed Dolne. 'I'm coming very close to losing my rag.'

Viddeas snapped to life. 'Seemed to be a technical failure, sir. A temporary confusion. Probably an offshoot of the Chelonians' own jamming signals.'

He jerked like a puppet and became more animated. 'I suggest we send out armed patrols with instructions to-'

Dolne raised a hand to silence him. 'I'm looking for sensible input, not militaristic nonsense. Now. Do we think anyone was hurt in that business?'

'There are at least five active enemy units in the strike range,' said Cadinot, 'including Dekza's.'

'Oh, no.' Dolne had done lunch with Dekza only a fortnight before. 'I'll prepare an official apology.'

Viddeas flared up. 'Admiral, I must protest.'

Dolne chose to ignore him. 'And start a full check on all our gadgets and instruments and things,' he ordered Cadinot. 'I wouldn't be surprised if this whole affair was down to a mix-up with the computers or something.' He reached up and loosened his collar. Something about Viddeas's stare unnerved him.

'Are you all right, sir?' asked Cadinot.

'Yes, it's...' Viddeas was staring at his neck, he realized with a jolt. 'It's all I can do to breathe. So very stuffy in here. Right, well, keep a sharp eye out, Cadinot, and keep trying to raise Jafrid.'

There was a munnur behind them as somebody entered the Strat Room.

Dolne turned to see Stokes, who looked his normal ebullient self, if a little flushed and more reddened. 'Ah, the wonderful Strategy Room. What an admirable scene of military dedication you present.'

'No,' said Dolne.

Stokes pounded across, his heavy shoes clattering on the metal flooring.

'Now listen, Admiral. As you seem to have curtailed your madness for the moment would you please see to arranging my immediate departure from this theatre of devastation as, unlike you and your officers, I have no desire to exchange my present state as a living organism for the dubious condition of being a scattering of molecular dust on the wind. And don't even think of confining me. Your clodhopping deputy has already broken the martial code by doing so.'

Dolne was not in the mood to indulge Stokes. 'Get him out of here,' he said.

'I don't care who does it or how.'

Immediately a couple of men stepped forward and took hold of Stokes. 'I'm not without powerful friends back on Metra, Admiral, he cried as he was thrown out. 'I'll let them know how you treated me and then you'll...' His voice trailed off.

'Right,' said Dolne. Saying 'right', he had found, covered all sorts of situations. 'Constant scan, all of you.'

He nodded to Viddeas and indicated the annexe. 'A word. Now.'

The Doctor felt the saucer level out, and watched the Chelonian base come into view on the large curved forward screen. The base was about a mile in width, and consisted of a random a.s.sortment of yellow blocks scattered on a high mountainside. This explained the need for flying craft, as it would have taken a strong man a mighty effort to climb so far. Wisps of dirty cloud clung to the sides of the highest buildings, which had jagged, almost crystalline facets, staining their sides with iron deposits.

'I'm impressed,' said the Doctor. 'Your people have lost none of their skill for construction and camouflage.' During previous encounters with Chelonians, the Doctor had witnessed their architectural skills, which relied on small blocks that could be used for many purposes. Once, he had seen a small city made of sections of a s.p.a.cecraft.

His praise was not appreciated. The Environments Officer, who had put on a large pair of earphones that gave him a comical air, turned from his position and told Seskwa, 'I have contact with base, sir. I've told the General that we're bringing in a prisoner.' His eyes flicked over to the Doctor. 'The Web of Death is being prepared.'

'I'm flattered,' said the Doctor. 'You really shouldn't be going to all this trouble just for me.'

At the heart of his sanctum, which was contained in one of the smaller blocks at the base's edges to confuse the enemy, General Jafrid was putting the last touches to a letter of protest, his stylus hovering over the parchment screen as he selected the last few words. Despite all that had happened in the last few hours, including that beastly missile attack (miraculously, n.o.body had been seriously hurt), he felt only puzzlement, not anger. Dolne had probably been pushed into these rather pitiful displays of power by Harmock, he reasoned. As long as it stopped now, then no harm was done.

He read out the last lines to the a.s.sembled company, which was made up for the most part of technicians and other advisors. '"... and so we protest our surprise and outrage at your continued flouting of the Bechet Treaty, and warn you that further transgressions will be met with equal, if not greater, force." There, that should do it.' He signed the doc.u.ment with a flourish and pressed the transmit b.u.t.ton. The enemy post would receive it instantaneously, so long as communications over the zone stayed clear. As Jafrid watched the letter vanish from the screen his olfactors twitched involuntarily. There was suddenly an awful smell, like a plate of boiled smasti nuts left uncovered in the sun. He turned to the base's head technician. 'By miff, hasn't that valve been fixed yet?'

'It should come clear very soon, General,' came the reply. 'The team are working hard to locate the blocked inlet.'

'I should hope so.' Jafrid swiped at a small flying creature. 'These infernal insects flourish in this atmosphere.' He had returned to the base to find the atmospheric recycling system out of order, and the air-conditioning had failed soon after, making the place almost unbearably dry and hot. As a ranked officer he possessed internal sprinklers, but even they had little effect, and Faf knew how the juniors could stand it.

The smell seemed to get even worse when the door of the sanctum opened with a low hum to admit his First Pilot, who tramped in, his joints clanking, with a look of near-manic pride. He saluted. 'General.'

'Ah, Seskwa returns,' said Jafrid. 'I've read your report. Very amusing.

Plague war, indeed.'

'I speak truth,' Seskwa said. 'The enemy has turned against us. And here is my proof.' He tugged at a length of chain wrapped around his front foot, and a human was pulled in, nearly losing his balance in the process. 'My prisoner. It calls itself the Doctor.'

Jafrid enhanced his ocular range to study the newcomer. The human was adorned distinctively, with a long, soil-coloured main covering and an odd, purpose-less length of twine draped many times around its upper half.

Some sort of ceremonial regalia, perhaps? 'Doctor, eh?' He was intrigued by the human's large eyes, which shone with intelligence and alertness, and by its mouth, which was curled upward in the way Dolne's did when he was being amiable. 'Bring him forward.'

Seskwa tugged the chain and the human came crashing in. He was flung before Jafrid with unnecessary force. 'Greetings, General.' He raised an upper appendage and said gruffiy, 'Kyaz rat jarrii guya-ch.e.l.l.' 'Kyaz rat jarrii guya-ch.e.l.l.'

The General's jaw dropped in amazement.

Seskwa, feeling left out, tugged roughly on the chain. 'What's that you say?

Do not mock us or you will face certain death.'

'I thought I was facing it anyway.' He addressed Jafrid again. ' Paz corlik Paz corlik vench.' vench.'