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  A relieved smile washes over Styx's features. 'You'd do that for me? Thank you, ma'am.' He offers Oslo the weapon. 'If I can ever repay you...'

  'You keep the gun, Styx. If you move, shoot you.'

  Styx steels his jaw. 'Ma'am, yes ma'am!'

  'Wait!' Peck is looking at a readout which is flashing a red warning light. 'The STiP's preparing for launch.'

  Eddie glances up at the monitor. Lewis still appears to be stacking boxes on the pallet. 'That must be an error. He's not even inside it yet.' But there's a shudder on the display, and Lewis jumps to a different position on screen. 'Damn the man! He's looped the display.'

  Peck looks up at the monitor. 'What?'

  'I don't know how, but he's hacked into the security camera and made it replay the same section of recording, over and over.'

  'That's not possible.'

  'Not possible? Father Lewis is something of an expert when it comes to electronic surveillance.'

  'I don't like the implications of your filthy slurs against that honest servant of the Lord, you cacodemon.'

  'Oh, stop it with your righteous indignation, woman. Save it for someone more worthwhile. Like a plague rat. The man's moral sewage. You must have worked out he's the one who erased the gas giant from the system plan.'

  'Get thee behind me.'

  Oslo narrows her eyes. 'Lewis is the saboteur?'

  'Who else?'

  'Why? Why would he do such a thing?'

  'Isn't it obvious? He didn't want everyone else to know how dire things really were. While you all still believed there was at least a slender chance you might save yourselves, he knew you'd be concentrating on doing just that.'

  'Leaving him to corner the market in escape vessels.'

  'Modules,' Styx corrects, his arms in the air in arrest mode.

  'Absolutely.' Eddie nods. 'He's probably been preparing this little trip for days, weeks even.'

  'Are you listening to the insanity this stooge of Satan is spouting, Bernadette? You'd take the word of an acolyte of the Antichrist over the word of a holy priest?'

  'Frankly, I'm not sure. I knew Lewis was lowlife, but this? Abandoning us all to save his own scrawny... That would be...'

  'There's obviously some kind of rational explanation. He must have some kind of saintly purpose we don't yet understand.'

  'Right. In the meantime,' Eddie manages a painful nod at the warning light on Peck's console, 'Saint Porno is warming up his engines. And by the time you decide that he actually is capable of deserting us, he'll be warming his toes in the natural hot springs of the planet Thrrrppp.'

  'He's got a point.' Oslo strides over to Peck. 'Override the STiP launch sequence.'

  Reluctantly, Peck turns and waves her hands over the controls. 'You're all wrong. I know it.'

  Eddie looks up at the display. He's not familiar with the readout, but it's clear some kind of countdown has been engaged. 'Faster!'

  Peck's waving becomes more frenetic. 'I'm trying!'

  'What's the hold-up?'

  'I don't know. It's... something's locked us out.'

  Eddie looks up at the security monitor, with Lewis's smug, calm face looped over and over. At one point, he looks over at the camera and winks. He's mocking them. He must have realized they'd latch on to his trickery sooner or later, and he took time out to mock them. 'He's a regular wizard with the old electronics, the good Father.'

  'What are you saying, foul incubus?'

  'I'm saying the smarmy bastard is always one step ahead of us.'

  'No!' Peck is waving desperately now, her hands actually blurring over the console, at least in Eddie's simmering vision. 'You lie, henchman of the horned one! The padre would never desert his flock. It's some kind of system error.'

  Henchman of the horned one? Is it Eddie's imagination, or is Peck starting to warm to him? He turns to Oslo. 'How long before it launches?'

  She glances up at the readout. 'Seven... Seven and a half minutes.'

  'There's an all-systems override, or at least there used to be.'

  'Yes. In the... in the Captain's office.'

  'How far is that?'

  'I don't know. What do you think? I'm a regular visitor? I'm dropping in for tea and crumpets every day, to inspect his collection of dried pustules?'

  'How far, damn it?'

  'Far. Seven minutes? Too far.'

  'Call him.'

  'Call Gwent? Are you...?'

  'If you don't call him and tell him to cancel the launch, Lewis will be cruising through the local system in our one remaining opportunity for survival.'

  'Wake up and sniff your gloop, Morton. What do you think Captain Dickwit will do when he finds out about our little coterie here? Hmm? When he finds out we had a little escape plan of our own, and, oh, by the way, he wasn't invited? Think he'll just laugh it off with that charming spittle-spraying snigger of his?' She mimics him again. '"Thuh-thuh-thuh"?' Gwent's giggle to a T, facial contortions and all. For a woman with such an avowed loathing for the lad, she's spent an inordinate amount of time observing his mannerisms. 'He'll have us put in jars, Dr Morton. He'll strip out our spines and pickle us before he can sprout another pimple.'

  'We don't have time for this. Trinity? Will you call Captain Gwent?' This is desperation indeed. Eddie is actually appealing to Torquemada's loonier sister to bring some kind of sanity to the debate.

  Peck looks from him to Oslo and back again. Her features streamline into her famous trademark sneer, and she speaks moving only her upper lip. 'If it's the Lord's will that Father Lewis is to be saved and we are to be cast into the infernal pit, then so be it.'

  So be it, indeed. Amen. Only Eddie doesn't feel quite ready for the infernal pit just yet. He looks at the coms panel. The mechanism is too delicate for his crude pincers to manipulate. Every time he's tried, he's crushed the machinery. And even if he could switch the damned thing on, how would he get the code to access the Captain? He still has one last hope. One very, very faint last hope. 'Styx?'

  Styx is still standing with his arms upraised, the barrel of his weapon angled awkwardly against his head.

  The sight doesn't swell Eddie's breast with unbridled confidence, but he has to try anyway. 'Styx. Can you please call the Captain, and put a stop to this madness?'

  'Sir, I'd like to help you, Dr Morton, sir. Unfortunately I'm under arrest.' And to emphasize the point he jabs his rifle against his temple, hard enough to make himself wince. Eddie thinks about trying to disarm him, to rescue him from himself, but decides against it. Crazy as it seems, the drone is probably capable of blowing his own brains out to prevent himself escaping.

  'Fine.' Eddie takes a step towards the coms unit. 'That is just spiffing. Top hole. Wunderbar. Thank you, one and all, for your magnificent co-operation.' He reaches out as gingerly as he can. His claw is poised above the switch. He concentrates hard. All it requires is a small movement, a little twitch, really, of the impulse that used to control his left thigh, in the days when he still had a left thigh. Gently, now. The pincer trembles. Good. And...

  And his elbow joint straightens with a sudden, astonishing force, sending his claw crashing down through the panel in a shower of sparks and slicing it in two. The speaker fizzles, exhales a final sigh of smoke and dies.

  Eddie would cry, if he still could. He'd cry big, green tears of frustration. What is wrong with these people? Why is staying alive so low in their priorities?

  He looks over at the countdown. The display is figurative, rather than alphanumeric -- a series of vertical bars reducing in height to a flashing base line -- so he can't judge precisely how much time they have left to abort the launch. Not much, though. Just a handful of bars left. As he watches, another blips off the screen and into oblivion.

  Oblivion.

  Eddie's new address.

  Another blip. Just two bars left now.

  Eddie keeps watching for the moment. He can't think of anything else to do. He feels like a passenger in a car that's about to crash, skidding
gracefully in silent slow motion into the path of an oncoming truck.

  And, for a while, nothing happens.

  Then nothing happens again.

  The penultimate bar should have blipped off by now. Surely.

  Oslo glances back at him, then up at the screen again. 'It's stopped.'

  'Are you sure?'

  Peck waves her hands over the controls. 'It wasn't me. I'm still locked out.'

  'Then what...?'

  The security monitor jumps out of its loop. The camera is focused on Father Lewis, in the pilot seat, presumably, of the STiP. He looks extremely puzzled. He is checking his readouts and randomly flicking ignition switches impotently.

  'Father!' Peck makes the sign of the cross. 'You're safe. Praise be!'

  Lewis jumps at her voice and looks into the monitor, his face struggling to find an expression beyond 'bewildered'. 'Trinity! Yes. I'm... I'm safe. Praise be indeed. What exactly... what happened, exactly?'

  'The STiP started up. We thought you were launching it.'

  'Me? On my own? Goodness, no. That would be... No. I was testing out the engines, of course. They haven't been serviced in a goodly while, and somebody had to do it, before we all... before we made the leap into the great unknown.'

  Peck expels a long-held breath. 'We guessed it would be something along those lines, Father.' She shoots a triumphant sneer at Eddie. 'At least, some of us did.'

  Lewis's alibi is, of course, planned in advance, and impossible to disprove, but he still looks nonplussed. Flustered even. 'But I don't understand how... why you aborted the launch. Before I managed to do it myself, I mean.'

  'We didn't. We were locked out.'

  'Really? Locked out, eh?' Lewis's mind is racing, and he can barely be bothered to fake the surprise his alibi technically requires. 'Who, then?'

  The coms speakers suddenly start to vibrate with an echoing snicker, Thuh-thuh-thuh...', and suddenly, on all the monitors, the gleaming braces of the Captain's teeth are glaring down at them. 'Who then, dudes and dudesses? How about, say, me, then?'

  Eddie doesn't even have a moment to feel relief that the STiP is still on board. He's wondering exactly how long the little brat has been spying on them, and how much, exactly, he's overheard. Oslo locks eyes with him, worrying the same question.

  'Okayanovski. Let's all squeeze into the chill cabinet, peoples. No harm done. STiP safe and well. Oh, and by the way...'

  The navigation room doors slide open and a dozen heavily armed Styx drones yomp into the room, yelling blood-curdling imprecations against the wisdom of attempting movement, and then freeze, weapons cocked and trained.

  '... You're all under arrestovich.'

  35

  'What the hell are we waiting for?' Oslo is pacing the small holding cell in a dementedly small elliptical orbit. Peck, sitting primly on the bench beside the sprawling Father Lewis, crosses herself at the minor blasphemy.

  Eddie is standing by the cell door; not to ready himself for an escape bid, or even to peer through the small square of reinforced glass for signs of activity outside. Nothing so proactive. He's simply standing there because he doesn't have the will to move any further into the room. 'Standard procedure, isn't it?'

  'That's right.' Lewis lurches up off the bench and crosses to the sink. 'Leave us to sweat it out for a while, contemplate the consequences. Morale gets low, before long we're at each other's throats. By the time he gets round to interrogating us, we're queuing up to sell each other out.' He turns the cold tap on hard and thrusts his head under the torrent. He straightens and rakes his wet hair. 'Frankly, it's an insult to our intelligence.' He smiles in that innocent, winning way he has, and Eddie wonders how long it will take the good priest to sell them all down the Swanee.

  'I mean, mutiny?' Oslo slaps her forehead. 'Mutiny, for ship's sake?! What does he think this is? Treasure frotting Island? Does he think this is some kind of dumb-ass little-boy game? We are all going to die. Die! In a matter of days! And that's if we're lucky. We should be formulating some sort of strategy, not rotting in this festering dung pit.'

  'Actually,' Styx says, 'it's regulation restraining accommodation for officer-class detainees, complete with controllable air conditioning, a choice of superior snacks and refreshments and excellent private toilet facilities.'

  'Mr Styx?' Oslo smiles politely at the drone.

  'Ma'am, sir?'

  'Fuck off.'

  'Yes sir, ma'am sir.'

  'And put your frotting hands down.'

  Styx looks up at his hands, still held over his head. 'Ma'am, sir, if you say so, ma'am.' And reluctantly he drops them by his side. 'I just want everyone to know I'm still keeping a close eye on me.'

  'I mean, what's his plan?' Oslo resumes her pacing, still on the same orbit, her elbows pinned to her ribs, her hands upright, fingers wide and quivering, as if she's trying to crush an invisible beach ball. 'How does he intend to punish us, the suppurating little haemorrhoid? Make us walk the plank? We're all going to be crushed to death before the bloody weekend, anyway. What's he going to come up with that's worse than that?'

  Eddie coughs quietly and mumbles that Gwent may, in fact, be listening in. Probably is, in fact.

  Privately, Eddie is beginning to feel it's a little bizarre just how much everyone on board seems to be spying, pretty much all the time, on pretty much everyone else, and on him in particular. Clearly, Eddie is right at the bottom of the spying food chain. He doesn't get to spy on anyone himself, yet he even has people spying on the people who are spying on him. Welcome to the good ship Paranoia.

  'I hope he is listening.' Oslo throws back her head and shouts at the ceiling. 'I hope you are listening, you poisonous little splat. Keeping us locked up in here is killing all of us! You're killing yourself. Which, in actual fact, is the only part of your plan that makes any sense. Yes! Ha! I applaud that!' She starts clapping, loudly. 'Bravo, Captain Zit! Bravo!'

  'Look.' Eddie's worried Oslo is becoming borderline hysterical, 'think about it from the Captain's point of view. He's responsible for the entire crew. His ship is in terrible, probably insurmountable danger. And how do his trusty lieutenants support him in this darkest hour? They band together and try to purloin the only escape craft on board...'

  'Module.'

  'Thank you, Mr Styx. What's the lad supposed to do? Hand over the keys and wish you bon voyage?'

  'Well.' Lewis sits back on the bench, crosses his legs and smooths down the crease of his trousers. 'We can see which way the good doctor intends to cast his dice. Turn us over for the mutinous ingrates we are, and watch us hang as best he can with his tongue buried up the Captain's spot-encrusted rear canal.'

  'How sane is that, Padre? What have I got to lose that I haven't already lost? What's he going to do to punish me? Darken my gloop?' Actually, as soon the words are out of Eddie's mouth, having his gloop darkened does sound like an undesirably brutal punishment to him. He wishes he hadn't mentioned it.

  'You don't understand, Doctor,' and Lewis intones the word to make unmasking Eddie a blatant threat. 'There are greater considerations here than simply saving the entire crew. We have a larger responsibility; a responsibility to the human race. For all we know, we're the last representatives of our species in the entire universe. That's quite a burden to carry, eh? Don't you think we have an obligation to survive? Even if it's just a handful of us? Don't you think it's our God-given duty?'

  'I see what you're saying. You're saying that stealing the STiP and sneaking off in it was your sacredly inspired contribution to saving the human race from extinction.'

  'You're trying to make it sound inglorious, eh? But, yes. I was engaged in God's work, my friend. And surely you must admit even our revered Captain is outranked by God.'

  'And who am I to question a directive from the Almighty? What puzzles me, slightly, is quite why God instructed you to load up your little Ark with crates of pornography.'

  Lewis smiles, but there's a dangerous tremor in his upper lip. 'I though
t I'd explained...'

  Eddie's past the point where he could care less about the priest's threat to unmask him. 'Only, on the face of it, that would seem to contravene quite a few of the Commandments. Coveting neighbours' wives, for instance. Stealing. And isn't there one about not spilling your seed on the ground? Or is that one of those bizarre bits from Deuteronomy?'

  'I told you all...'

  The cell door lock whirls open, and a pair of Styx drones, I and O, step into the room. Then I Styx says, 'The Captain would like to request the pleasure of your company.'

  Like a damaged boxer reacting to the bell, Lewis turns, gratefully. The drone is standing stiffly to attention. He doesn't seem to have been addressing anyone in particular. 'Thank you, Ignatius. The pleasure of whose company, exactly?'

  The drone's eyes flit towards the Padre, then back. 'Father, sir, I believe that would be all of your... companies, Father, sir.'

  'All of us? At once?'

  'Father, sir, that would be correct, Father, sir. We're to accompany you all down there.'

  'Down there, eh?' Lewis rakes his nails through his thick fringe. 'Down where, exactly?'

  'We're to accompany you all to the Suspended Personnel Storage chamber.'

  36

  They are led to a larger than normal corridor kart, one with four banks of double seats. They climb aboard, grimly, in pairs. Oslo and Peck, Lewis and Eddie, with Apton Styx behind them, alone. The guard drones both sit up front, which seems like a procedural error to Eddie. Surely one should take up the rear, to forestall any escape attempts?

  The same thought appears to have crossed Lewis's mind, too. He keeps making discreet turns of his head to look behind, probably trying to assess how poor Apton might react if anyone were to attempt a leap off the kart and make a bolt for it. Would he class himself a guard or a detainee? Probably both. He'd probably give chase, foil the escape and then beat himself up for running off.

  The kart starts up and heads down the corridor at a surprisingly escapable moderate place. Oslo turns to Lewis, her voice a harsh whisper. 'I told you he was insane. But this is way out there.'