There Ain't Gonna Be No World War Three, Chapter 15

15. Give Her Another Half Minute on Defrost

"Are you going to introduce me to your friends?" said the girl. Her skin was white as milk; her hair was like spun gold. "They're hiding down there in the trees. I can see them."

Armand turned to look down the slope. Only Ant's face was visible.

"Er - hi", said Ant.

"Do you have a hairdryer as well?" said the girl. Her eyes were like stars, and not the universe's most common stars, dim red dwarfs. They were as big and blue as B spectrum supergiants.

"Yes", said Ant. "Armand is a keen stylist and hair technician."

"I am?" said Armand.

"Yes", said Ant. Out of the side of his mouth, he said to the bush right next to him: "Who am I looking at?"

"Commodore Drummond's office", hissed Turpin from behind the bush. "The picture on the desk."

"Your hairdryer looks fascinating", said the girl. "Can I have a look at it?"

Horribly, Ant could see Armand's chest swelling, and felt he could sense Armand's unmistakeable absolute confidence that another weak female heart had fallen to the irresistible charm of the A Dog.

"Sure", he said.

She stepped towards Armand.

"Oh my god", said Ant out loud. "Charity Drummond."

The girl looked up at Ant as if he'd slapped her in the face.

"You can have a real close look at my hairdryer", smiled Armand, and fired.

The girl's face broke into a grin. Her teeth were, of course, like pearls. They were like the sort of pearls that might be found at great blue depths, at the limit of a pearl diver's endurance, where he might put his hand into a clam and find himself unable to pull it out with only a few seconds of air remaining.

"Wow", said the girl. "What was that."

"Uh", called Armand uneasily. "TEDS. IT ENT WORKIN. TEDS?"

"I thoroughly approve of these emotional responses you bipeds go in for. Most stimulating! How did you do that? The models I've been occupying can't."

She continued to move towards Armand.

"Give her FRIT", suggested Ant. Armand spun the wheel and fired again. The girl's eyes widened. "Wahnsinn! This must be what you call fear. I'm actually having difficulty controlling my host. Fear and ecstasy, bittersweet, like iced coffee!"

"Your host", repeated Ant.

"Should I try ANGRY, Teds?" said Armand.

"Oh, please do", said Charity Drummond, shivering deliciously.

Although his heart wasn't in it, Armand sighted up on her and pulled the trigger again. Her eyes burned as if he'd lit a fire behind them. The teeth bared in something halfway between a smile and a snarl.

"Oh, that was so good. Anger, I take it. Though I've felt this one a good deal; my group of bipeds are so, so angry. They've been away from home a long time, and they've come back to find other men's boots and coats in their hallways. Do you have any other settings on your little wheel?"

"Er. I've got SAD", said Armand.

"Hit me", said the girl, composing herself.

"It's not having any effect", said Ant.

"HIT ME", snapped the girl. Blue rivulets of goop were snaking down her arms like varicose veins.

"Armand", said Ant. "Get ready to run."

"Oh, yes", said the girl, smiling serenely with her eyes closed. "Do."

Armand raised the Orgonizer again.

"CHARITY", said Turpin suddenly, rising from behind his bush.

The girl swayed on her feet, as if hit by something far deeper than the Orgonizer could deliver. When she spoke again, it was in a voice without the full, rich adult confidence it had had only seconds before.

"...Uncle Richard?"

"You were very small when I saw you last", said Turpin.

"My", said the girl. "How I've grown."

"Your father still has your picture on his desk", said Turpin.

The girl writhed, as if a hot iron had been held to her.

"Keep doin it", said Armand. "Whatever it is you're doin, iss workin."

"You were a very small girl", said Turpin. "I saw you off at the field. You and Hope and Faith always used to stow away on ships to see the universe, and I used to pack you back on board them home to Gondolin. I walked you up the ramp onto the ship. The Elysian Queen."

"You pretended to be a horrid dinosaur", said the girl, a tear shivering down her cheek.

"I had to get you on board somehow. You wouldn't get on the ship. You said it looked scary."

"It was scary", she said quietly. "You have no idea how scary."

"I know", said Turpin. "The ship never came back. We never even found wreckage. Your mother cried and cried. But it doesn't have to be scary any more."

The girl turned her face full on to him, a new light in her eyes. She began laughing, so hard that she threw her head back like a wolf baying at the moon.

"Charity's gone", said Ant. "The other one's back."

Quantrill rose from behind his bush. "Get away from her. Give me a clear field of fire." In his hands, he held a rocket pistol.

The girl looked up the barrel of the gun as if Quantrill had been threatening her with a lollipop. She giggled.

Quantrill shifted the aim up straight between her eyes. "Laugh all you want. I'm pretty sure this'll hurt."

"It might even kill her, Mr. Quantrill", said Ant. "But I get the feeling what's inside her doesn't really care."

"It's Charity, George", said Turpin. "Charity is still in there somewhere."

"But that's how they win, Richard", said Ant. "That's how they took the Xenophon, and New Dixie, and the Russian colony on Krasnaya 3. They rely on the fact that human beings won't kill their own loved ones. That's why they sent her. They knew people who knew her well might be here. Shoot her. It's the best thing you can do."

"If you shoot her", said Turpin, "whatever's inside her will slither out and be loose on Earth, and then we'll need to shoot every new person it goes into." He looked up at the castle walls. "And George - that drive note's changed."

Quantrill ducked back behind his tree in fear, looking up at the sky. "It's taking off."

The girl, oddly enough, also turned to look at the sky.

"No", she said. "Idiots! They should never have come so close to the ground!"

The drive note became a shriek; then there was a colossal BANG. Bright plumes of debris shot over the castle walls. A mottled, indistinct shape like a three-vaned dart rose from inside the courtyard, trailing a plume of smoke and sparks. Swastikas decorated all three lobes of the dart.

"Is that - ?" said Ant.

Turpin nodded. "What I saw out at Krasnaya 3. That'll only be a fighter or a light transport, though. There'll be at least one other ship, if your friend Jochen is to be believed. If there are that many of them."

The fighter hesitated tremulously in the air above the castle for a second, and then, instantly, was gone. It was gone so quickly that the sound of air rushing in to fill the gap where it had been made a sound like a colossal balloon bursting.

There was a yell and a sound of splintering softwood. Something was falling through the branches of a tall pine standing next to the castle gate. It was letting out a new yell with every fresh branch it hit. Finally, it ran out of branches altogether and crashed to the ground in a snowdrift underneath the tree.

Groaning, it dragged itself up onto all fours, spitting blood out onto the snow.

"That is the LAST TIME", it complained to itself, "that I SAVE THE WORLD from NAZIS. Oh my aching everything."

Ant ran forward through the trees, stopping just short of the gate. "...Harjit?"

The thing looked up. It was bruised and battered. "Stevens?" The thing squinted into the trees behind Ant. "There's a lady with a bad case of the Blues coming up behind you, Stevens."

Ant could hear a gentle pitter-patter of feet through the underbrush behind him. He turned just as Charity came to a halt ten metres from him, planted both feet together as if anchoring herself securely, convulsed, and vomited blue goop at him, aiming her mouth like the muzzle of a cannon. He jerked sideways behind a tree trunk in shock; the spot where he had been standing was spattered in blue gobbets which coalesced into a moving mass, already turning to ooze out arms of itself in his direction.

"I didn't know they could do that", said Harjit.

"Neither did I", said Ant.

Harjit was on her feet now. "Did she hit you?"

"I don't know", he said, patting his clothes and backing away. "I don't think so." Charity was moving forward again now, blue fluid dripping from her mouth, no longer angelic or beautiful in any way. "I hope not, or I'm dead. I'll kill myself before one of those things gets control of me."

"It doesn't matter whether she hit you or not", said Harjit. "Trust me. Get into the courtyard, back towards the café. And get her to follow you. I've a theory that needs testing." She raised her voice at George Quantrill. "HEY, YOU THERE WITH THE GUN. COULD YOU POSSIBLY SEE YOUR WAY TO SHOOTING THIS NICE LADY IN THE BACK, PLEASE?"

"It won't do any good", said Ant.

"It might bloody slow her down." Harjit waved her arms at Charity. "HEY, YOU! THAT SPACESHIP OF YOURS, THAT JUST GOT BLOWN AWAY? THAT WAS ME! ALL ME! YOU WANT YOUR REVENGE? COME GET ME!"

Moving with just as much difficulty as Charity, she backed away through the castle gate across the courtyard, which was now covered in bits of alien spacecraft and castle rubble. Tamora, Cubic Zirc, Sukhbir and Narinder were poking their heads out of the shattered castle entrance, looking wide-eyed at Charity, who followed Harjit, still grinning more broadly than a human being should. Blood was coming from Charity's mouth along with the blueness.

"Tamora, Zirconia, Sukhbir, Narinder", said Ant. "Hi. This is our friend Charity. She's a dangerous alien."

"That's right, that's right", said Harjit, still backing away and beckoning with her hands. "Just a little further. I promise you can have a piece of me once we're in the café. What can little me do to big old you? STEVENS, CHECK THE INSIDE OF THAT CAFÉ OUT, I DON'T WANT ANY SURPRISES." Charity planted both boots in the snow again; her entire body flicked like a cobra's, and a ribbon of blue goo flew out of her mouth, narrowly missing Harjit and Ant, who skipped away.

The café was deserted, flakes of snow drifting in through its still open door. No-one and nothing appeared to be hiding behind the bar, under the furniture or behind the giant plaster Labrador.

"Come on, now", said Harjit, backing away into the café as Charity advanced, picking up a table and holding it in front of her as a goop shield. "Keep coming. Keep coming. Stevens, get ready to grab her."

"GRAB HER? Are you INSANE?"

"I am not quite sure right now, Stevens. You take the left arm, I'll take the right." Charity's feet came together again; her stomach muscles began to tighten. Rather than backing away this time, however, Harjit darted forward, grabbed Charity's arm and twisted it, propelling her forward toward the bar.

"GRAB HOLD! GET HER HEAD IN THERE!"

Reluctantly, Ant took hold; Charity was hurled headlong into the open door of the unsafe microwave oven on the bar top, and Harjit reached out with her free hand, switched the oven to HIGH and dialed five minutes on the timer. The light went on; Charity thrashed around inside the machine. There was a horrible, inhuman howling that was coming from Charity's throat, but which Ant somehow knew was not coming from Charity. Ant watched the timer turn, all the time aware that he was holding another human being's head inside something which could make an egg explode inside a minute.

"Harjit, we've got to get her out of there."

Harjit shook her head. "It took at least ten seconds to kill the one inside the Black Forest gâteau."

Ant was not sure how to take this, but decided to continue to hold on. Eventually, Harjit nodded at him, and they pulled Charity back out of the microwave, sitting her down in one of the café sofas. She was breathing heavily. The blue goop round her mouth had crisped and blackened. Ant was impressed.

"How do you feel?" said Harjit.

Charity gasped up at Harjit as if she were mad.

"Do you feel like vomiting Brain Control Amoeba into my open mouth at all?" continued Harjit.

Charity shook her head at Harjit.

"She might be lying", said Ant.

"Maybe we better give her another half minute on Defrost", said Harjit.

Quantrill burst into the room, holding the rocket pistol on the back of Charity's head.

"NO, NO, DON'T", said Ant, holding up a hand.

Quantrill didn't. However, he clearly wanted to. The gun remained trained on Charity.

"Give me the gun", said Ant, holding out a hand.

Quantrill looked at Ant in clear and certain knowledge that Ant was an entire picnic short of a picnic.

"Give me the gun", said Ant again. "Armand, if he doesn't give me the gun, make him a very happy man. Mr. Quantrill, I am going to do something useful with the gun. You should trust me. Why won't you trust me?"

Quantrill turned and looked into the business end of the Orgonizer. It had Armand behind it. Armand made a convincing face at Quantrill.

With a sour face, Quantrill handed over the rocket pistol to Ant. Ant handed the rocket pistol to Charity.

"Shoot me", he said, "if you want to."

Charity looked at the pistol. Then she turned the pistol round, and pointed it at her own head. Ant and Harjit grabbed for it desperately, Ant managing to slide his own finger in between the trigger and the receiver. The gun did not go off. Charity collapsed sobbing.

"It's all right", said Ant. "It's dead. It's dead. We killed it. We killed it with microwaves. It's over."

"It's still inside me", sobbed Charity. "It's still in there, still in there, still there, still there, still there. It never goes away, you think it goes away, but it comes back."

"It's gone", said Ant. "And, and, if it isn't gone, we can make it go away. All we have to go is put your head back in the, the", he searched for a phrase, pointing at the microwave, "the magical mind control helmet, and leave it in for longer." He looked up at Harjit. "If this works, this means we can do Cleo too. Doesn't it."

Harjit nodded. "It had crossed my mind, Stevens. It had also crossed my mind that I might need it myself if one of those little blue globs crawls in my ear while I'm sleeping." She looked round the café. "Makes you think, after all, there could be any number of the things oozing around in here."

Quantrill, who had relaxed on a café seat, jumped up in sudden alarm.

"They live a long way away", said Charity. "They were alone out there so long, without shape or form."

"And darkness moved upon the face of the deep?", said Ant, quoting the Bible without thinking. Charity looked up at him without having appeared to find what he had said amusing in any way.

"They have no shape without a form to live in", she said. "They had lived in other forms, other creatures quite unlike human beings, long ago, so long ago that they can hardly remember how they first infected those creatures...and those creatures had taken them from star to star in ships. But one of their ships crashed far from anywhere, and they had no way of getting back to the other creatures they'd infected. After only a short time, the creatures that had piloted their ship died out, being vulnerable to heat and cold and hunger...they were more resilient, but they were reduced to lying in pools like common bacteria. Then, suddenly, after so long, so incredibly long, other creatures arrived...suitable creatures, with ships - primitive ships, it was true, but ships oddly similar to the same basic design as the ones flown by the things they had originally inhabited. What luck! They inhabited these new host bodies eagerly, and they, and they", she rocked backward and forward on her chair, tears streaming down her face, "they began to search space for more..."

Harjit put an arm round Charity, clasping her hand hard. "Erm. Come on, now. Chin up. Your brain's all shiny and new now, we've, er, washed it - "

Charity burst into tears, and any further attempt of Harjit's at cheering her up was interrupted by a sound like the sky tearing as black shadows flicked overhead with the speed of propeller blades. Snow shook from the trees, and compression waves swirled in the air. A window on one corner of the castle shattered.

Ant ran back out into the courtyard. Turpin was standing with one hand shading his eyes, looking up into the air.

"It's a -"

"Hawker Harridan A1", said Ant, following the sharp-nosed saucer as it back-flipped across the brow of the mountain. "It's Penelope, isn't it."

"Penelope Farthing?" said Quantrill, walking out onto the terrace, re-holstering his pistol.

Turpin nodded, not daring to take his eyes off the sky. His face was a solid mass of worry. "My glorious commanding officer, George. She must have been circling up there the whole time."

"With her fire control radar turned off", said Ant, "so they couldn't see her, same as you did at Krasnaya. Waiting for them to put a foot wrong. And now one of them's taken off with a bloody great hole in its side."

"She's smelt blood", said Turpin. "And she's going in for the kill. But there might be more than one of them up there. We were lucky at Krasnaya. They were overconfident. They only sent one ship. This time..." He waved his hands around helplessly. "Even one of those ships, badly damaged, might be a match for a Harridan. But more than one...she's taking an awful risk, Anthony."

"She's seen the enemy, she knows the enemy ship was attacking a surface position, and she knows we might be in that surface position, so she's engaging. She's doing what you would in the same circumstances."

For all the trail of smoke it was leaving, the mottled dart was flicking back and forth across the valley with unearthly speed and agility, being tailed quick as a fish by the Ace-of-Spades shape of the Harridan. The two ships bounced vertically upwards into a bank of cloud, and were lost to sight. Turpin licked his lips.

"We've got to do something", he said.

"We can't do anything", said Ant. "All we can do is wait. Now you know how we feel when you do this sort of thing."

Turpin looked down at Ant as if this had never occurred to him.

"I suppose you're right", he said. "Let's just hope there's only one ship up there. And hope that ship is damaged badly enough for Pen to keep hammering bigger holes in it." He frowned in deep concern. "She's flying in pure pursuit, with her nose locked straight on his tail. That won't work. It's a missile tactic, and she won't get a missile lock on him, those ships don't have a radar signature. She has to use guns. She needs to fly lead pursuit, with her nose ahead of him. To be quite honest, Pen has never really cut it as a combat pilot -"

There was a terrific detonation from the sky, and the entire bank of cloud glowed brighter than sunshine. A lump of debris that had once been a starfighter, bent ironically into the shape of a swastika, pinwheeled out of the cloud, spitting sparks, and tore into the hillside on the opposite side of the valley. There was a second explosion so bright it hurt Ant's retinas; the silhouettes of pine trees between him and the blast were etched onto his eyes.

The Ace of Spades shot out of the cloud, perfectly unharmed.

"She seemed to be doing all right just then", said Ant.

The Harridan drifted overhead, blown like a bungalow-sized leaf on an impossible hurricane, and settled down into the courtyard, landing struts reaching out for the snow. It was sleek and streamlined. It was armed and dangerous. It was being flown by an outstandingly beautiful woman. It was half the size of the courtyard.

"Roll me in bamboo shoots and throw me to the pandas", breathed Armand.

"Is that, loike, a Nunidentified Floyin Object?" said Zirc.

"I dunno", said Porsh.

"Cos if, loike, I know it is", said Zirc, "that means it ent, cos, loike, I can identify it."

"Your brain's overheating again, Zirc", said Harjit. "Think warm puppy thoughts."

"Warm puppy thoughts", repeated Zirc quietly to herself. "Warm puppy thoughts."

Penelope Farthing, now wearing the pips of a USZ Captain, jumped down from her cockpit ladder into the snow.

"Think I got that one", she said. She was breathing heavily.

"I think you probably did", said Turpin. "Unless he's really resistant to hitting hillsides at twice the speed of sound."

"I've come to rescue you", said Penelope.

"My heroine", said Turpin woodenly. "I, uh, bumped into someone." He moved aside, letting Penelope see George Quantrill, who raised a hand and waved in clear embarrassment.

Penelope stared.

"George? I thought you were...that is, we all thought you were..."

Quantrill nodded wearily. "Yeah, I thought I was too, for a while. You get that way, living in Enfield."

Boots crunched on snow and debris from the direction of the gate. Turpin and Farthing turned to see Wise and Jennings, rocket pistols at the ready, picking their way cautiously into the courtyward past the Harridan. Jennings, Wise, Farthing and Turpin locked gazes. Their gazes did not unlock. Wise's and Jennings' gun hands began to rise.

"GENTLEMEN", said Ant. "You are soldiers in the British Armed Forces."

Wise and Jennings looked at one another, as if wondering whether this was a trick question.

"Soldiers in the British Armed Forces", continued Ant, "are supposed to be the good guys. That means they don't fire unless fired upon."

"You wish", said Wise contemptuously. He cocked his pistol.

"I would also draw your attention", said Ant, "to the three gentlemen behind you with rolling pins and baseball bats, who have been creeping up on you while you've been good enough to listen to me."

Wise and Jennings turned around slowly. Anton, Stefan and Herr Schieß bared their teeth at them happily.

"Made you look, made you stare", said Ant. "And looking back this way for a moment, I would draw your attention to the three people now pointing handguns at you."

Wise and Jennings turned round again to look up the barrels of three Personal Orgonizers in the hands of Turpin, Armand and Farthing.

"You've seen these weapons work before", said Ant. "You know what they do."

Wise looked at the Orgonizers and bit his lip nervously.

"Yeah", he said. "It was actually quite nice."

"We've changed the technology. Imagine something as nasty as that was nice."

Jennings breathed in for a long time. Then, he raised his hands, finger hooked into the trigger guard of his gun. "Hey, okay, okay. Truce, truce. We came up here from the cellars. There's some really bad stuff going down down there. Sort of blue nazi stuff. Like your normal nazi stuff, but, you know, bluer."

"We know", said Ant. "We've been trying to convince Mr. Drague of it for a very long time. We have a girl in there", he said, pointing back into the café, "who knows where these things come from. Knows where we can find them. If you can tell us where Mr. Drague is..."

Wise and Jennings looked at each other.

"Er", said Wise.

"Mr. Drague's still down there", said Jennings.

"You left your commanding officer downstairs", said Ant in undisguised contempt, "with some Really Bad Stuff."

"He gave us a direct order", said Jennings defensively. "Told us to get up here with the boy."

"The boy", said Ant.

Wise turned round and pointed. "Yeah, this -"

He gawped at an empty courtyard.

"There was a boy", he said.

"He vent srough zere", said Herr Schieß, pointing in through the main door to the castle.

Jennings swore. "The Shield", he said. "He's gone to get the bloody Shield." He turned to look at Ant, and shook a quivering index finger at him. "The Shield's what you're here for as well. Don't try to deny it."

There was a tinkling sound of pottery shattering from inside the café.

"EXCUSE ME", said Harjit. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"

"This is my house", said Jochen's voice. "I am doing what I please with my property."

Ant met Jennings' gaze one last time, then sidestepped off toward the café, at first trying half-heartedly to keep his Orgonizer trained on Jennings, then turning and running. Jennings and Wise followed, along with Turpin and Farthing.

Inside the café, the floor was littered with fragments of garishly-glazed porcelain, the remnants of the life-sized labrador dog that had stood in one corner. Jochen was standing over the shards, holding something in his hand. It was circular, about the size of a dinnerplate, though rather thicker, and looked like a more stylized version of a fossil ammonite, a segmented spiral with occasional studs on its surface that might have been controls.

Jennings raised his gun again instantly. "THAT IS THE PROPERTY OF HER MAJESTY'S GOVERNMENT OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND AND YOU WILL HAND IT OVER NOW!" Spittle was flying out of his mouth onto the laminate flooring.

Jochen shook his head. "I don't think so. I don't even think it ever really belonged to us either. The people who made it, you see, they came back to get it."

"What do you mean?" said Ant.

Jochen turned the device over in his hands, feeling the studs with his fingers. He looked up at Charity. "This has been in my family a very long time, I think."

Charity, who was looking at the device like a priest at the bones of Jesus, nodded slowly. "Your ancestor, Wolfram, found it. It was the only working fragment of the first ship that crashed."

"The first ship?" Ant was getting horribly confused. "How many crashes have there been?"

"Only two", said Jochen. "And I think we made the second ship crash ourselves. Am I right?"

"Yes. The first ship crashed over fifteen hundred years ago. A German tribesman named Wolfram found the wreckage."

"Then where is the wreckage?" said Ant. "Surely archaeologists would have found it."

Charity shook her head. "Could I have a drink of water, please? My throat hurts."

Ant nodded to Harjit, who moved to the sink and filled a glass of water. Charity accepted the water gratefully, swallowed with evident pain, and said:

"Wolfram was a very intelligent man, rather like his descendants. That's a compliment, by the way", she said, looking up at Jochen. "I was supposed to bowl you over with my irresistible feminine charm."

"You have only failed because I know nothing that good ever happens to me", said Jochen gallantly.

Charity smiled. "Wolfram pulled that device out of the wreckage. It was the only component he could make work. That component, however, immediately made him headman of his tribe, a man to be feared. It won him great success on the battlefield - his men continued to fight when they would have left any other leader, believing him to be filled with the power of Odin. Under Wolfram, the Thuringii and Alamanni, the two most powerful local German tribes, drove back the Huns from Spitzenburg at the battle of Hunnenfeld. Fearing, though, that other parts of the wreckage might bring other people equal power, Wolfram ordered the rest of the ship buried, and kept the Shield with him at all times. The knowledge of what the Shield was and what it did was passed on from father to son, a family secret."

"Until great-grandfather Otto passed it on to Kurt", said Jochen. "And it was no longer a secret."

"Yes. It was now the twentieth century. Men now worshipped science, not pagan gods. Kurt believed what his family possessed was not a magic talisman, but a technological artefact made by supermen from another world. Kurt was, you see, an out-and-out nazi. He believed that, if superior intelligence existed on another world, it would be bipedal and blond.

"All of this was then passed on to a fussy little Jewish gentleman the nazis had imprisoned but not dared kill, because they knew he could build them weapons more terrible than any they could dream up themselves - Konrad Belzer. Using threats and promises, the SS were able to get Belzer to work on the Shield, and on the other components of the ship they were able to excavate from beneath Spitzenburg castle. Belzer came to believe that the Shield was not only useful as a weapon - he thought that when in operation, it would light up like a beacon, giving away its position across light years to anyone who might be watching and possessed the same technology. And the SS absorbed this, and made their own plans.

"They turned the Shield on for four years solid underneath Spitzenburg. The Shield was still the only component they had been able to get to work, and they knew they needed more. And they got it. At the end of the fourth year, an alien ship arrived, no doubt to answer what its crew probably saw as a distress call. It settled down to land on the Hunnenfeld, and was greeted by little blonde girls bearing garlands of flowers and the heads of the local SS and Hitler Youth, all smiles. Earth's friendly greeting committee."

"The only trouble was", said Jochen, "what came out of the ship was not blond."

"No. Nor, indeed, human. The creatures looked quite unlike humanity. The nazis were distraught. All this implied, after all, that they themselves might not be the high point of human evolution. They carried on greeting the newcomers with smiles and their Sunday best and the very finest china for another two days, and then lured them into the castle cellars and massacred them with machine gun bullets. Some of them they kept alive for study, interrogation...dissection. Some of them were dissected while still alive. One of them, who they nicknamed Langer Hans, survived right to the end of 1944, but most of them wasted away rapidly - their bodies needed amino acids that weren't produced by any organisms on Earth.

"Now they had a working ship, albeit one with a few machine gun holes in it, and from that ship, they were able to start putting together the bits they'd dug up from under the castle..."

"To make a second ship", said Ant. "That ship was what the Americans found when they took the castle. It wasn't a proper working model. That was why it took them so long to figure out."

Charity nodded slowly. Nodding quickly seemed to be too much effort for her right now. "Hermann knew Kurt had betrayed the family secret. He took the Shield from the ship, and hid it deep in the castle." She looked across the café floor. "Inside a rather horrible plaster dog, as it happens."

"He is a model of grandmother Ilse's dog", said Jochen. "He was shot by an American soldier, quite by accident. She was very upset."

"All very interesting", said Jennings. "That still doesn't change the fact that you are going to hand that device over to me right now."

"Easy, Pete", said Wise at Jennings' elbow. "We don't have to hand it over to Drague. Drague might be dead. We could make a pretty penny out of this."

Another action clicked behind Ant's head, always a bad place to hear an action clicking. He turned around slowly. George Quantrill was pointing his own pistol at Jochen.

"I'm afraid I'm taking that thing myself", he said. "Hand it over, son."

"George", said Turpin, horrified.

"Mr. Quantrill", said Ant. "I don't think you heard what I just said about us being the good guys?"

"It's them or us", said Quantrill. "Either we take it off him, or they will."

"There is", said Jochen, "a third alternative."

His hands moved on three of the control studs on the ammonite. Immediately, a shimmering sphere of green light surrounded him - soundless as a soap bubble, with emerald crackles of silent lightning linking the surface of the sphere to the ammonite.

"Also gut", said Jochen. "Feuer doch, Herren."

Jennings fired. The bullet he fired splashed into nothingness on the soap bubble. Jennings fired again, repeatedly. He was pointing the gun directly at Jochen's head, but each bullet was somehow missing its mark. Ant saw a spray of molten leaden droplets spatter the plaster on the ceiling where they had been deflected from their target.

"This is what has made my ancestors invincible in battle", said Jochen. His voice sounded markedly lower than it had been before the Shield had been turned on, as if something was distorting the soundwaves. "It looks as if it works, don't you think?"

Quantrill, his eyes round, put up his gun.

"The Shield, you see, is quite impenetrable. It is not possible to fire into it." Jochen crossed the room, the sphere of light around him crossing chairs and tables and the edge of the bar. "Now", he said, putting the Shield down on the cake counter and fishing a massive metal shape from under the bar top, "let us see whether it is possible to fire out of it..."

The metal shape was a weapon, and not any mere pistol either. It was huge, and glittering, and had a long magazine that promised to hold many, many bullets. Jochen polished its handgrip fastidiously with one of the cloths on the bar top. "One has to keep one's weapon clean..."

While Jochen's back was turned, Jennings began backing away hurriedly towards the door. Quantrill began sidestepping in that direction to join him.

Jochen turned round - and the green fire died.

He looked up in confusion into the face of Alastair Drague, whose fingers were on the control studs for the ammonite. Eyes as green as impenetrable shields looked back at him.

"How - ?"

Drague snorted scornfully. "Good grief, young man. You were able to walk across the room! Tables and chairs were passing through your shield quite easily. I deduced from this that, while bullets and, presumably, Hunnish arrows, wouldn't pass through the shield, very slow-moving objects such as unhealthy middle-aged men would." Drague picked up the ammonite and tossed it in his hand. "So this is it. So much trouble for a thing so small. You can put down that gun now. It was made in the 1940s. If you fire it it will probably explode."

"Drague", said Penelope, "you must know that we can't just let you walk out of here with that."

"How do you know", said Drague, "that I haven't already summoned a squadron of Auroras that might be hovering over the castle right at this very moment?"

"Because if you could have", said Penelope, "you already would have. You're here on your own. You can't call up a wing of fighters, because you're doing all this on the quiet. Because you thought you'd sneak down here, find out where Wolfram's Shield was, take it back to Britain and then let your American allies beg for it. So you came up here without backup, with only a few goons, a robosheep and the gift of sarcasm. And now you're outnumbered."

"Ah, but numbers mean little." Drague was breathing heavily, as if he had been working physically hard. The legs of his trousers were soaking wet. He grinned and held up the Shield. "You can't shoot me now, after all."

Penelope walked up to Drague, very slowly, and looked down at him from a threatening height from a distance of several inches.

"I must concede that you have a point", said Drague wearily. "However, physical violence would be very impolite, as I've also brought you a present. One Cleopatra Shakespeare. She does not appear to be herself right now, however. I've left her on the floor in the kitchen -"

Ant ran from the room without further prompting. Harjit followed him.

Drague lurched toward a chair, and his legs seemed to suddenly collapse underneath him. He looked like an old, old man.