Sister Ships and Alastair - Chapter 16

16. Saved by Nootrons

The sickbay was dark. Not completely dark - red jewels of idiot lights on items of electrical equipment, plus the regular green throb of machinery designed to tell doctors how fast the patient's heart was beating, gave out a soft light just bright enough to see by. The patient was sleeping soundly in his bed, his restraints removed now he no longer seemed to be in pain. In the bright light from the open doorway stood the shadow of an armed guard, a Gyrolite slung over his shoulder.

Slowly, deliberately, the patient began to slip out of bed. The hiss of blankets slipping off his legs alerted the guard, who turned round and smiled pleasantly.

"Oh, you're up, sir. How are you feeling?"

The patient frowned. "Kay? Why are you on guard?"

"Half our Terrenes are down on the planet looking for more survivors, sir. And half of them are up here on sentry duty in the engine room. Mr. Firth says someone tried to sabotage the C Plus system, sir. Luckily he managed to cobble together a replacement out of stuff we found on the Russian cruiser. Oh, but you won't know about the cruiser, will you, sir? It's been all go here these last few hours and no mistake -"

The patient inhaled and exhaled gently. "Very good, Mister Kay...by the way, your uniform is not in order."

Kay looked dismayed. "Not in order, sir? I put this one on fresh and ironed this morning."

"Let me help you with it." The patient reached up towards Kay's throat. Instead of straightening Kay's collar, however, he lunged forward suddenly with his right hand at the space between Kay's fifth and sixth ribs, directly over the heart. Something long and sharp flashed in his hand as he did so. As it connected with Kay's ribcage, however, there was a spark rather than a sound of penetration, and the patient fell forward into Kay as a circle of weapons suddenly emerged from round the doorway, safety catches clicking like a field full of locusts. Every weapon had a Royal Terrene Commando behind it.

"I'm afraid the game's up, sir", said Kay. "Under Part 24, Annex Y of Queen's Regulations, I am relieving you of command, sir."

Captain Pulsipher looked round himself slowly at the forest of gunbarrels, and cackled dryly.

"Part 24, eh? Well, Part 23 is Duties and Responsibilities of Meteorological Officers...I don't remember ever seeing a Part 24."

"It's the part covering being in league with alien amoeba monsters, sir. I could be picky and add the two counts of murder on top, of course. And the fact that you just tried to run me through with that screwdriver, sir. You did just try to run me through with it, didn't you? In exactly the same spot as you stabbed Corporal Pink and Able Spaceman Edwards, I believe." Kay pulled his uniform tunic away from his chest, revealing the solid steel plate glinting underneath it. "I'd imagine if Mr. Firth's tailoring was any worse, I'd have gone the same way as they did."

"Incidentally, sir", said Firth from behind Kay, "the part about the Spatchcock Flange is true. Black Prince is essentially an American Revere class cruiser, one of the first designs the Soviets copied. Both designs have been upgraded time and time again over decades, but the C Plus system at the heart of it all is the same simply because", Firth admitted sadly, "the Yanks' engineers copied it from the very first Roswell saucer they found, and they didn't dare change it; and, I imagine, the Russians' engineers copied theirs from American blueprints, and they didn't dare change them. So, sir, we have a replacement flange which my team are levering into place right now. In one hour's time, we will have a working hyperspace system again. Your attempt at sabotage was all for nothing."

Pulsipher sank back, beaten, against the gangway wall.

"Now, sir", said Kay, "you wouldn't mind telling me who you're working for, would you? We're dying to know."

Pulsipher smiled. He smiled, perhaps, too broadly for the trouble he was in.

"You have to volunteer to serve them for them to gain this much control", he said. "Most of us were too stupid to let them in - struggled, had to be moved around like puppets, like Crawshaw. I realized early on that struggling would do no good." He looked up at the ceiling and sighed. "Of course, there is a drawback. If they think they're at risk, they'll cut and run from the host. And", he said, looking up at the guns levelled at him, "I think I'm pretty much at risk now, don't you?"

He was breathing heavily now, backed up against the bulkhead. "They're small when they're implanted...into volunteers. But they soon grow big...big enough to fill the whole ventricular system. Big enough to make sure they'll make a big bloody hole when they come out. I'd stand clear if I were you..."

He retched suddenly, his whole body jerking as if he were about to vomit. He fell to his knees. Crewmen moved to help him.

"DON'T TOUCH HIM", warned Cleo, who was at the back of the crowd. "And don't open fire either. I've a feeling guns won't do any good."

Pulsipher continued to dry-heave, moving backwards and forwards on his hands and knees like a dog howling at the moon. Then he began to cough out blood - first droplets, then gobbets, then a torrent. Finally, his mouth gaped open and he vomited out a stream of bright blue goop which, hideously, collected itself back together, flowing into a single coherent blob, before attempting to stream away in the direction of an airvent. It didn't make it to the vents, but dissolved in a cloud of noxious vapour after Lieutenant Jenkins poured a beaker of strong alkali over it, making sure he surrounded it with a circle of solvent so it couldn't shoot out a pseudopod to escape.

"It's trying to get away", said a crewman, fascinated.

"It's not its l-lucky day", said Jenkins, ending by pouring the remaining half of the flask all over the creature. Pulsipher, meanwhile, watched feebly, sprawled forwards on the desk, blood still seeping from his nose, mouth and, obscenely, eyes and ears.

"So softly", he said, "a supergod dies..."

His eyes glazed over; his breath froze in his throat. Blood continued to come out of him, but no air was going in any longer.

"What did he say?" said Callaway.

"It's a rock lyric", said Godrevy. "It's Bowie. David Bowie."

"How did it end up inside him?"

"I th-think I can answer that", said Jenkins. "The s-skipper was one of the only survivors of the wreck of the USS Sp, Sp, Spotsylvania. The Old Sp, Sp, Spot was an American t-training ship built early in the sp, sp, space programme to accustom crewmen from the US Air Force and Navy to sp, sp, spaceflight. When Britain joined the sp, sp, astronaut programme later on in the Fifties, the Sp-Spot was used to train British crews as well. B-but she was lost a in a deep sp-space accident caused by reactor failure in 1998. Only a handful of c-crew made it out alive after s-sending out a distress call. The Sp-Spot had the same model reactor as the USS Thresher, a n-nuclear submarine that was l-lost in 1963 when her r-reactor shut down unexpectedly, so the s-story was plausible -"

"What if it wasn't an accident?" said Cleo. "What if the Spotsylvania was attacked in the same way as the Beria, and New Dixie, and the Xenophon? What if the crew were taken prisoner, and persuaded to go back to Earth and act as spies?"

"It sounds", muttered Kay, "as if they were more than persuaded."

"That thing might have been in total control of him", said Prendergast. "If what he said was true, it was in his brain. That's what he meant by 'ventricular system'. The ventricular system is a set of cavities in the centre of the brain filled with cerebrospinal fluid, an ideal place for a fist-sized amoeba to hide. He might not have been responsible for his actions."

"How many other crewmen survived?" said Cleo.

"N-nine, I think", said Jenkins. "I d-don't like the way you're thinking, b-but I'm afraid I agree. All of those men will n-need to be checked out. I c-can't see any way they aren't as suspect as the skipper was. It won't be easy. They come from both our s-service and the Americans', and at l-least two of them are Admirals now. It m-might be a good idea to t-tread carefully."

"Alastair", said Cleo, "does treading carefully very well. You need to talk to Alastair."

"N-not my f-first choice of allies", said Jenkins ruefully.

Firth, meanwhile, had had his hand up to ask a question for some time. When Jenkins eventually noticed his raised hand, Firth said:

"When we say the captain was spying, who was he spying for?"

"I don't kn-know who the enemy is", said Jenkins, looking down at the chemically burned gangway surface, "b-but I know it'll die if I pour sodium hypochlorite all over it, and th-that's enough for me."

***

"It's okay. It's water. I think it's got oil in it, but it's water."

"That was really, really stupid, Lieutenant. Water would make an ideal hiding place for the Organism."

On the TV screen, Penelope was arguing with Alastair. Penelope's helmet cam now appeared to be being carried by Vladlena. The view on the screen was shaky. Penelope was knee-deep in the first few yards of a still pool of water that stretched away on either side like a castle moat.

"The Organism won't come out here. There's nothing for it to eat. No people. And it doesn't like the forest."

On the other side of the moat, trees began. The first few were stunted and black, as if burned back deliberately by the Russians. Behind them, seedlings mere metres in height twisted into the sky, fat segmented boles anchored deeply in the earth, coppices of gnarled branches spreading from their tops. The branches were straight but knobbled at regular intervals, hanging low like grotesquely mutated weeping willow, clubbed and serrated at their tips. Behind the seedlings, the forest proper began - massive, thirty-metre trunks conspiring to blot out the sky.

"I'm not sure I like the forest", said Penelope.

"Water yis fyilled with dyiesel oil to kyill Leshiy", said Vladlena. "When Leshiy try to cross water, lyight flyamethrowers and Гаф!"

"Гаф", clarified Alastair, "is Russian for BANG."

"There's wire here under the surface too", said Penelope. "Barbed wire. Pass me that knife. It's got a wire cutter in the back of the handle -"

"I hate to say this", said Alastair, "but if we'd been wearing our suits -"

"- we could have trampled the wire down and gone straight across. It doesn't matter. We can't go back for them now. If we did, I suspect we'd find there was a Snake In Our Boot."

Alastair nodded. "A suit leg full of Organism. That wouldn't be good."

"I think I've cut through now...there's just one line of wire. You can follow, but quickly. Swim exactly where I swam."

"SWYIM?" Vladlena's voice was suddenly urgent, as if she had only just realized crossing water would involve swimming.

"You can't swim?"

"Yis here gulag. Pryison plyanet. You see here many yopportunities for water skyiing, skyin dyiving, and log flyume riding?"

"Surely they teach you to swim for safety reasons?"

"Yis here Krasnaya 3. Yis not your Earth Skyegness. Yis here safest to stay out of water altogyether. But we shyould not cross water! Leshiy are across water!"

"We know, we know." Alastair patted the triple barrel of a TP-82 carbine he had found in the Lysenko Institute. "Let's hope your Leshiy aren't bulletproof, eh?" His expression became suddenly concerned. "They, uh, aren't bulletproof, are they?"

The camera shook from side to side. Vladlena was shaking her head. "No. But how myany bullyets do you have in gyun?"

"Erm", said Alastair, checking the gun, "three, I believe. Though I have more in this ammunition carton."

Vladlena laughed hollowly. "Cyarton only holds thyirty. Will nyeed more than that."

"That's ridiculous", said Jenkins from the Bridge. "A f-forest couldn't hold that many l-large c-carnivores. There's the f-food pyramid to consider."

"We are not on Earth now, Myister Jenkins. We are on Krasnaya 3."

"But we have to get to the forest before nightfall", said Penelope. "You said so yourself. We don't have to go all the way in, just skirt along the edges far enough in for the goo not to want to follow. It seems to dislike native vegetation. Maybe the plants secrete some sort of resin that's poisonous to it -"

"Hyeavy myetal pyoison", nodded Vladlena bitterly. "Kyills slowly. Undetyectable. Fyirst colonists take a month, maybe two, to die."

"Look, take my hand", said Alastair. "The Organism will be here any minute. We have to be over this water feature when it is."

Reluctantly, Vladlena stretched out a hand. "Okay. But we are all gyoing to die."

"Eventually, that is true. I'm told there is a fluffy pink country on the other side, however, where lions lie down with lambs and so forth. Never believed in it much myself...my word, this water is cold..."

Vladlena and Alastair emerged dripping and shivering on the other side. Vladlena was hyperventilating; Alastair was breathing in heavy, disturbing gasps. Penelope, meanwhile, was ignoring them, looking directly up at the sky.

"There's a very bright star up there", she said. "It's moving. Moving fast."

"P-probably the c-communications satellite we're using", said Jenkins. "It's in a p-polar orbit."

"It's changing orbit", said Penelope. "That's not a satellite. It's a ship."

Jenkins turned to Godrevy sharply. "Mr. Godrevy, g-give me a screen image."

The image on the TV split in two. In the bottom half of the screen, Penelope was still standing looking up at the sky. In the upper half, against a blurred grey background where moving constellations left stripes across the image, was not a sedate, functional satellite, but a sleek steel disc threaded by a needle, with red stars gleaming on its saucer.

"A F-F-Fantasm", said Jenkins, gazing rapt at the upper half of the screen. "Pretending to be s-something it isn't. N-no wonder the Russians c-could hear every word we said. Why didn't I g-get a visual? S-stupid, stupid, stupid -"

"It's changing to an equatorial orbit, sir. I think it may be going in to land."

"Erm", said Cleo, "it's not the only thing that's changing."

Behind Penelope on the TV screen, the nearest trees had flexed their branches and knuckled them down onto the ground. Pushing down using the purchase they now had, they were levering their own roots out of the earth. The roots went deep, and were held in the ground by fearsome arrays of stings and pincers that would have looked more at home on the bottoms of bees and earwigs. The trunks, now that they'd come out of the ground, looked less like trunks than abdomens. In seconds, the trees had metamorphosed into giant, stinging insects.

"Guys?" said Cleo. "Uh, remember the Field Pests poster? I think there's a whole load of artistic licence heading your way."

"Leshiy", said Vladlena, in a resigned, I-told-you-so voice. "Leshiy are foryest."

Alastair said a word he would never normally have been allowed to say on television.

"I didn't think you meant it literally", he said.

What interested Cleo most on the TV screen, however, was still not the forest, but the Fantasm. In particular, it was the number of cockpits the Fantasm had. It had two, arranged in line - one for a trainee pilot and navigator, one for a flight instructor. The red stars on the saucer were also gleaming a little too shinily, as if newly painted - and beneath them, not quite painted out, could be faintly seen the wheel of astrological symbols of the United States of the Zodiac. Cleo's heart leapt. Somehow, Ant and Richard Turpin were here, and were coming to the rescue.

"What should we do, sir?"

"What c-can we do? Start a sh-shooting match with a s-super heavy cruiser? P-provoke an international incident?"

"Protect our own, sir. They're still down there."

"Y-yes", said Jenkins nervously, "I s-suppose Mr. D-Drague qualifies as our own."

"I wasn't thinking of Mr. Drague, sir."

"It's our duty to save a foreign pilot in distress", said a crewman, pointing at Penelope on the screen. "Queen's Regulations, Part 25, Foreign Pilots In Distress, Rendering Assistance To, sir."

"That's after the part about hostile alien amoebas, I take it", said Kay, glaring at the rating responsible.

"Penelope looks in distress", commented another rating. Despite Kay glaring as hard as possible at the crewman for the next ten seconds, he still added, "it's what the Navy's for, sir."

"M-Mr. Weatherly", said Jenkins, "I d-do believe I distinctly remember that exact part of the regulations. B-battle stations, everyone. Mr. Callaway, instruct the Kolobanov that we are retrieving our crew from the planetary surface and do not expect interference. Mr. Godrevy, full sp, sp, speed for Krasnaya Three."

No! yelled a voice inside Cleo, inaudible to the Bridge crew. You're not supposed to do that! You're not supposed to be heroes! You'll ruin everything!

Godrevy nodded. "Laying in seven gravities of acceleration, sir. Brace for thrust."

"You m-misunderstand me, Mr. Godrevy. The full sp, sp, speed of which this vessel is capable."

Godrevy's jaw dropped. "But sir, if we use the C Plus system we won't be able to make an escape to hyperspace for another forty-eight hours -"

"I'm f-fully aware of that, Mr. Godrevy. Right now the Kolobanov's C Plus system is in forty-eight-hour recovery too, and the r-resolution of this situation depends on who g-gets to Krasnaya Three f-first."

"Unless they really do intend to blow us out of the sky, sir", reminded Kay.

"Unless they do, Mr. Kay. Unless they do."

***

"Back into the water!"

"We can't go in the water! The goop is in the water!"

"We can't go back into the trees! The trees are", Penelope searched frantically for a description of the clawed monstrosities heaving themselves out of the ground in front of her, "not trees!"

"The goop won't go into the trees!" reminded Alastair, spraying the shoreline at his feet, which was beginning to exude bright blue pseudopodia streaming toward his ankles.

"I know how it feels!" said Penelope, chambering three rounds into her TP-82 and firing them off in quick succession at a building-sized Leshiy, causing it to rattle its branches in rage. "It's no use! It's like firing at - well, trees!"

Vladlena clucked in annoyance, undid the flap on Alastair's TP-82 holster, slid out the carbine, loaded and cocked it, sighted up on a nearby Leshiy, and fired. The beast shrieked shrilly and reared upright, flailing about it with its leg-branches, balancing on its trunk-abdomen. Vladlena fired again. The cluster of leg-branches grew still.

"Have you killed it?" said Penelope.

Vladlena shook her head. "Hyave blyind it and syever nyerve connyection to lyegs. Nyerve and eye will grow back in tyime. Cannot kyill Leshiy so easily."

"Then what can kill Leshiy?" said Penelope.

Vladlena continued to glare grimly at the wounded Leshiy.

"Other Leshiy", she said.

Around the stricken beast, other tree-creatures were raising themselves up on thickly knurled branches, and gigantic serrated mouthparts were extruding themselves from the head-ends of their trunks. The mouthparts were sawing back and forth like logging blades. The luckless Leshiy continued to scream as its fellows tore into it, slicing it into sections more efficiently than any human chainsaw. There was sap everywhere. Penelope noticed that the blue goo retreated sharply wherever the sap fell.

"Krasnaya 3 is old plyanet", said Vladlena, reloading her TP-82 without looking at it. "Plyanet is so old, all cyarbon on plyanetary surface dyisappear underground long ago."

"The Carbon Cycle", nodded Penelope. "Life needs carbon to survive. Life is made out of carbon. But on really old planets, planets like this, all the carbon gets swallowed back into the planetary crust. Life can't continue."

Vladlena nodded. "But on Krasnaya 3, life cyontinue. Foryest nyever die. Nyever rot. Nyever cyatch fire. Nyever yeaten by yanimal. So all cyarbon ryemain in foryest. All trees in foryest same species, from Yarctic to Yantarctic. If one tree die, no pyart of tree is wasted."

Even though the cannibalized creature had been about to kill them, the sound of mouthparts whirring into rubbery flesh was sickening.

"Leshiy", said Penelope. "They must be millions of years old. It seems a shame to kill them."

Vladlena nodded, sighted up on another, smaller Leshiy, and fired. The Leshiy dropped, piping mournfully. Vladlena leapt up onto its fallen trunk. "Yis not dyead, you stay yaway from myandibles. But blood wyill kyeep away Yorganyism." She peered inside Alastair's box of cartridges. "Ah, we wyill nyeed highly yintelligent and yimaginative new plyan very soon, in time for runnying out of bullyets."

The blue goo was already spreading to envelop the Leshiy carcass. A Leshiy setting a branch too close to the water's edge alerted one of the perimeter guard towers and disappeared in a burst of flame as one of the automatic guns opened up on it.

"We could drag the carcass closer to the water", suggested Penelope.

"If we had a towbar and cable", grimaced Alastair. "Oh, and silly me. A jeep."

Penelope lined up her weapon on another Leshiy. "How do I hit the brain again?"

"Yis no brain. Nyervous system is decyentralized. Must hyit syensory cluster between syecond and thyird branches."

"There has to be a brain!"

"Does tree hyave brain?" Vladlena sighted up on a Leshiy and fired. It windmilled its limbs furiously.

"Erm...I suppose not...Vladlena?"

"Yes?"

"I have no highly intelligent or imaginative plan."

"I was begyinning to suspyect as myuch."

"STAY WHERE YOU ARE." The voice had come from directly overhead, along with a blinding light that now showed the Leshiy carcass to be an island in a sea of blue goop and black sap. Like oil and water, the sap and goop didn't mix, flowing round each other discreetly.

Penelope looked up, shielding her eyes with her hand. "...Richard?"

"STAND PERFECTLY STILL", said the amplified voice from above. "GLENN BOB HAS A PLAN."

Penelope squinted upwards, too confused to shoot at incoming Leshiy. "GLENN BOB? GLENN BOB LINKLATER?"

"HI THERE LOOTENANT FARTHING SIR MA'AM. WHEN A SAY THE WORD, A WANT YOU AND THEM OTHER FELLAS TO DIVE INTO THE WATER AN GO DEEP."

"BUT THE GOOP -"

" - AIN'T IN THE WATER WHERE I'M SHINING THE SPOTLIGHT NOW, MA'AM." The patch of light moved off across the water. "A KIN SEE THE BOTTOM CLEAR AS THE NOSE IN FRONT OF MA FACE. MIND, A KINT SEE THE NOSE IN FRONT OF MA FACE TOO GOOD, ON ACCOUNT OF BYNOCULAR VISION, SO THE ANALOGY DON'T HOLD UP NONE UNDER DETAILED ANALYSIS, BUT -"

"WHY HAVE WE GOT TO GO IN THE WATER? WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?"

"NO TIME TO EXPLAIN MA'AM. ON THE COUNT O'THREE - THREE!"

Penelope dove into the spotlight, grabbing Alastair and Vladlena by their collars and jerking them underwater. Almost instantly, the water suddenly warmed, and bubbles steamed upwards past their faces. A sickly green illumination fell across the bottom, and Penelope actually saw the blue goop cowering into the bottom murk like a second water surface, shrinking away from the light. Vladlena and Alastair tried to come up for air; Penelope held their heads down, despite their struggles, and despite Vladlena sinking her teeth into Penelope's hand.

The green light winked out; Penelope surfaced, still attached to Vladlena. Vladlena, faced with the dilemma of whether to breathe or continue biting, chose to breathe.

"YOU HANG ON THERE MA'AM, LOOTENANT TURPIN'S COMIN DOWN TO YA."

The saucer of the Fantasm lowered gently, and crew boarding ladders unfolded and dropped toward water level. Penelope caught the rungs of the flight instructor's ladder and heaved herself upward, pulling Vladlena up with the other hand. Further for'ard, Alastair clung to the pilot's ladder.

"EVERYONE ON BOARD?"

Penelope looked to Alastair, who nodded feebly.

"GO", she said - and then added, with another look back at Alastair, "BUT TAKE IT GENTLY."

The Fantasm lifted with an acceleration gentle as an elevator's. All around the dying Leshiy, other Leshiy were frantically digging themselves into the earth with massive, powerful branches, the 'stings' on the ends of their abdomens pushing down into the ground like piledrivers. Fountains of sap-contaminated earth were showering the saucer.

"WHAT ARE THEY DOING?" said Penelope.

"HIDIN", came Glenn Bob's voice through the amplifier. "FROM THEIR OWN SUN. ROSS 248'S A FLARE STAR, JUST LIKE BARNARD'S STAR BACK HOME. TAIN'T LIKE THE EARTH'S SUN, NOR LIKE OUR YELLER SUN AT GONDOLIN NEITHER - IT DON'T SEND OUT NO CISSY GIRLY SOLAR FLARES THAT'S ONLY A MILLION MILES LONG. IT SENDS OUT BIG UNS. ONES THAT MEAN DEATH TO ANYTHIN LIVIN ON THE SURFACE."

"When flyare alyert sound", said Vladlena, still clinging to the instructor's ladder, "we go to dyeep lyevel shyelter, one hundryed myetre byelow ground lyevel."

"AN THAT'S PRETTY MUCH WHAT FOLKS DO - UH, DID - ON NEW DIXIE. AND THE CRITTERS ON NEW DIXIE, JUST LIKE THE CRITTERS HERE, THEY MAKE 'EMSELVES THEIR OWN DEEP LEVEL SHELTERS. SO I TURNED OUR SAUCER DRIVE UP TO MAXIMUM IDLE AND SENT OUT A WHOLE BUNCHA NASTY-ASSED FAST NOOTRONS, AN THESE FELLAS THOUGHT THEIR SUN WAS FLARIN AND WENT TO GROUND. UH, ABOUT THEM NOOTRONS - YOUR HAIR AIN'T FALLIN OUT NONE, IS IT?"

By now, only the trees' frantically working branches were still visible above ground level. They were now filling in the pits they had dug, burying themselves alive, covering themselves in mounds of upthrown earth.

"Nootrons?" said Alastair.

"Neutrons", translated Penelope. "Stopped easily by water, though they'll go straight through steel. We were perfectly safe, but neutrons will leave an ionization track the same way solar protons will. The Leshiy could sense so much radiation they assumed there was a solar flare and hid underground. Smart move, that Dixielander."

Penelope's, Alastair's and Vladlena's feet were hanging a hundred metres over a blood red landscape.

"The town looks normal", said Penelope. "All the lights still on."

"It probably wanted it that way", grunted Alastair, shifting his grip on the ladder. "The Organism...it couldn't have got everyone at one go. There would have been people still out in the woods - logging teams, transport drivers, surveyors - and it had to catch all of them..so it left the lights on. Let them think everything was still all right at home...it's what I'd have done, if I'd been a gargantuan blue amoeba. Can we hurry up and land somewhere, please? I don't know how much longer I can hang on..."

"NOT LONG NOW", said Glenn Bob. "THAT CLEARED AREA."

A bare patch opened below them in the forest, like a wound in the hide of a living organism. Dead stumps and amputated branches littered the ground. In the centre of a kilometre of devastation, a single pointed-nosed saucer, the shape of an Ace of Spades, was already settling to earth. A single long dorsal fin protruded backwards from its cockpit, forming the base of the Spade - what looked like radio aerials, pitot tubes and cannon muzzles jutted from the Spade's point. The saucer's sides were painted with the astrological wheel of the USZ.

"That is my ship, Mr. Turpin", said Penelope. "You have been flying my ship."

"I COULDN'T HELP MYSELF", said a voice through the loudspeaker. "IT FELT SO WRONG, BUT IT FELT SO RIGHT. WE NEEDED BOTH SHIPS TO GET YOU ALL OUT OF HERE." The loudspeaker switched off, and Turpin's head poked over the lip of the instructor's cockpit. "Actually, Glenn Bob's been driving it. I haven't touched it."

"You let a cadet fly a star fighter?"

"Hardly a fighter, Pen. It's only a Harridan A1, it's thirty years out of date. This, meanwhile", he continued, effortlessly pirouetting the Fantasm round to park it next to the other saucer, "is a fighter."

Penelope dropped from the ladder to the ground and rushed over to the second saucer. "Oh, my poor baby. Have those horrid men been inside you, flicking your switches, playing with your joystick." She looked up at Glenn Bob in the Harridan's cockpit with a face threatening retribution and said: "I bet you've adjusted the seat. You have, haven't you."

"I was warned not to, ma'am", said Glenn Bob. "I was told it was more than my life was worth. I just made myself comfortable with it down here in all this open ground and sat and waited for Lootenant Turpin. He was pretending to be a Communications Satellite."

Behind Glenn Bob, Glenn Bob's pet, Truman J. Slughound, attempted to sink furtively out of Penelope's gaze, making himself the same colour as the Harridan's upholstery.

"That thing", said Penelope, jabbing a finger at Truman. "You've been letting that thing fly in my cockpit."

"Aw, ma'am, he's been real good. He ain't eaten any of the controls or nothin, and they're all polypropylene, an that's his favourite."

Truman J. went an indignant shade of scarlet and pulsated angrily. His thicket of eyestalks rose to their full height and as one, looked away from Penelope in disgust.

Penelope turned round in a circle. "And you did all this with my Harridan, didn't you. You've been using my beautiful ship's beautiful cannon to clear forest."

"Was done by Soviet labour", said Vladlena with immense satisfaction, "not cyannon. Cyentre of circle is cleared by droppying dynamyite from yaircraft; wounded Leshiy at cyentre are yeaten by Leshiy all around them. Then byigger circles are clyeared around cyentre, and more Leshiy are wounded and yeaten, and more, and more, until whole yarea is clear. Any Leshiy lyeft over are shot with bazooka. Nyeed only hyandful of yexplosives. Vyery yeconomical."

Alastair, his face looking grey after the journey, sank hugging his head onto a nearby treestump, which was not quite dead and thrashed feebly. Vladlena finished the treestump off with the TP-82, cursing at it in Russian; the gun boomed, and bark and sap flew in all directions. Alastair fell into a cross-legged position on the earth, still holding his head, his hands now shaking.

He looked up through his fingers. He was looking at Richard Turpin. Turpin was glaring back.

"Mr. Drague", said Mr. Turpin.

"Mr. Turpin", said Mr. Drague.

"I heard", said Mr. Turpin, "you were looking for me."

"He saved my life back at the town", said Penelope. "Leave it, Richard."

"Do you think that'll make any difference, if we let him get back to Earth? We're still rebels, criminals and thieves to him. He'll pull us in off the street first chance he gets, and do to us what he did to George Quantrill, maybe pack us off to summer camp on Alpha Four. Well, Alastair? Will it make any difference?"

"We're at war", croaked Drague. "You have stolen government property from over twenty-five sites. On five separate occasions, you have stolen entire spacecraft. Your every visit to Earth comes close to making the Secret public, to letting the man on the street know colonies exist in space -"

"You saved my life", repeated Penelope.

"I saved your life because I needed a pilot to get off this godbedevilled rock. It's nothing personal."

Turpin looked at Drague as if at a very small insect.

"Well, it's your lucky day", he said. "There's still someone of ours on board Black Prince. We need you alive to exchange for her. It's nothing personal."

"Richard", said Penelope, "if we let him go he'll be on your tail every time you land on Earth. Maybe even in between too."

"And you think someone just like him wouldn't do exactly the same thing if he wasn't available?"

"Richard, he's good at it. He nearly caught you this time. And, and, I think he might have an idea of where Gondolin is."

Turpin gaped in shock. He looked at Drague. "Is this true?"

Drague shrugged. "It's a low-gravity world orbiting a yellow star. And it's closer than I think."

Turpin's face was ashen. He was physically trembling. "We should kill him. We have to keep Gondolin's location secret. But we have to get Cleo back as well."

Drague smiled humourlessly. "A terrible handicap to have to do the right thing by everybody, isn't it, Richard? You should just give it up and be a bad guy, like me."

Turpin's knuckles ground together in frustration. "Glenn Bob, warm up the Harridan. We've got some garbage to exchange for gold."

Glenn Bob, still perched in the for'ard cockpit of the Fantasm, his eyes fixed upward at the sky, said:

"Uh - Lootenant Turpin, sir - I think we might not have that option no more."

Turpin, Alastair and Penelope turned and looked up. While they had been arguing, a ten thousand tonne interstellar cruiser had crept up on them.

Its Forellen turbines gently humming, Black Prince hung overhead like a great grey solid cloud out of which lightning might come at any moment. Ten or eleven gun turrets were already rotated down to bear on their position.

"We could run for the fighters", said Turpin, biting his lip.

"Are you kidding?" said Penelope. "At this range, if she even turns her engines on full, we're finished."

"Not quite yet", said Turpin. Penelope's TP-82 was out of its holster and in his hand before she could object, and trained on Alastair's head. The cocking mechanism clicked.

From the sky, speakers bellowed - speakers so unbearably loud that everyone on the ground cowered and shielded their ears, and the dust whipped up into clouds like sand on a drumskin:

"USZ CREW, L-LAY DOWN YOUR WEAPONS."

Turpin, one hand clapped over one ear, one shoulder jammed into another, his free hand still covering Alastair shakily with the weapon, yelled back:

"SHAN'T! AND YOU CAN'T MAKE ME."

Penelope, her fingers in her ears, yelled:

"IF YOU WANT YOUR MAN BACK, YOU'LL GIVE US OURS AND A FREE PASSAGE OUT OF HERE."

The cruiser was momentarily silent.

"DO YOU THINK THEY CAN HEAR US FROM DOWN HERE?" yelled Turpin.

"YOU DON'T NEED TO YELL AT ME", yelled Penelope. "I'M RIGHT HERE. I THINK YOU MIGHT HAVE GONE A BIT DEAF."

"PARDON?"

"I SAID, I THINK YOU MIGHT HAVE GONE A BIT -"

She was interrupted by a crack of thunder from the sky, and dived out of instinct for the dirt, hands over her head.

"THEY'RE SHOOTING AT US!"

Turpin, meanwhile, forced to stay upright to keep his gun trained on Alastair, was watching a flower of fire blossom out of the back of the hovering cruiser, and a fountain of glowing metal spiralling downwards out of the explosion. Every piece of debris hit the ground beneath with the force of a bomb.

"I DON'T THINK SO, PEN. I THINK SOMEONE'S SHOOTING AT THEM."