Consider Phlebas

the back of his head and the nape of his neck tingling with anticipation.

Nothing happened. Dorolow looked up from the table and said, 'What was that noise?' as Horza went past.

'What noise?' Horza said as he went through to the bridge.

Yalson watched Kraiklyn's back as he walked through the mess room. He said something to Dorolow, then he was through to the bridge. She let the stun gun down slowly; it hung in one hand. She looked at the gun thoughtfully and said to herself, quietly, 'Yalson, my girl, there are times when I think you're a little too loyal.' She raised the gun again as the cabin door opened just a crack and a small voice said, 'Is it safe out there yet?'

Yalson grimaced, pushed the door open and looked at the drone, which was retreating further into the cabin. She nodded her head to the side and said, 'Get out here and give me a hand with this bod, you liverless piece of clockwork.'

'Wake up!' Horza kicked Wubslin's leg as he swung back into his chair. Aviger was sitting in the third seat in the flight deck, looking anxiously at the screens and controls. Wubslin jumped, then looked round with bleary eyes.

'Eh?' he said, then: 'I was just resting my eyes.'

Horza pulled out the CAT's manual controls from their recess in the edge of the console. Aviger looked at them with apprehension.

'Just how hard did you knock your head?' he said to Horza.

Horza smiled coldly at him. He scanned the screens as fast as he could and threw the safety switches on the ship's fusion motors. He tried traffic control once more. The Smallbay was still dark. The outside pressure gauge registered zero. Wubslin was talking to himself as he checked over the craft's monitoring systems.

'Aviger,' Horza said, not looking at the older man, 'I think you'd better strap in.'

'What for?' Aviger asked quietly, measuredly. 'We can't go anywhere.. We can't move. We're stuck here until a tug arrives to take us out, aren't we?'

'Of course we are,' Horza said, adjusting the readying controls of the fusion motors and putting the ship leg controls on automatic. He turned and looked at Aviger. 'Tell you what; why don't you go and get that new recruit's kitbag? Take it down to the hangar and shove it into a vactube.'

'What?' Aviger said, his already creased face becoming more lined as he frowned. 'I thought she was leaving.'

'She was, but whoever is trying to keep us in here started evacuating the air from the Smallbay before she could get off. Now I want you to take her kitbag and all the other gear she may have left lying around and stow it in a vactube, all right?'

Aviger got up from the seat slowly, looking at Horza with a tense, worried expression on his face. 'All right.' He started to leave the bridge, then hesitated, looking back at Horza. 'Kraiklyn, why am I putting her kitbag in the vactube?'

'Because there's almost certainly a very powerful bomb in it; that's why. Now get down there and do it.

Aviger nodded and left, looking even less happy. Horza turned back to the controls. They were almost ready. Wubslin was still talking to himself and hadn't strapped in properly, but he seemed to be doing his part competently enough, despite frequent belches and pauses to scratch his chest and head. Horza knew he was putting the next bit off, but it had to be done. He pressed the ident button.

'This is Kraiklyn,' he said, and coughed.

'Identification complete,' the console said immediately. Horza wanted to shout, or at least to sag in his seat with relief, but he hadn't the time to do either, and Wubslin would have thought it a little strange. So might the ship's computer, for that matter: some machines were programmed to watch for signs of joy or relief after the formal identification was over. So he did nothing to celebrate, just brought the fusion motor primers up to operating temperature.

'Captain!' The small drone dashed back into the bridge, coming to a halt between Wubslin and Horza. 'You will let me off this ship at once and report the irregularities taking place aboard immediately, or-'

'Or what?' Horza said, watching the temperature in the CAT's fusion motors soar. 'If you think you can get off this ship you're welcome to try; probably Culture agents would blow you to dust even if you did get out.'

'Culture agents?' the small machine said with a sneer in its voice. 'Captain, for your information this GSV is a demilitarised civilian vessel under the control of the Vavatch Hub authorities and within the terms laid down in the Idiran-Culture War Conduct Treaty drawn up shortly after the commencement of hostilities. How-'

'So who turned the lights off and let the air out, idiot?' Horza said, turning to the machine briefly. He looked back to the console, turning the bow radar up as high as it would go and taking readings through the blank wall of the rear of the Smallbay.

'I don't know,' the drone said, 'but I rather doubt it would be Culture agents. Who or what do you think these supposed agents are after? You?'

'What if they were?' Horza took another look at the holo display of the GSV's internal layout. He briefly magnified the volume around Smallbay 27492 before switching the repeater screen off. The drone was silent for a second, then backed off through the doorway.

'Great. I'm locked in an antique with a paranoid lunatic. I think I'll go and look for somewhere safer than this.'

'You do that!' Horza yelled down the corridor after it. He turned the hangar circuit back on. 'Aviger?' he said.

'I've done it,' said the old man's voice.

'Right. Get to the mess fast and strap in.' Horza killed the circuit again.

'Well,' Wubslin said, sitting back in his seat and scratching his head, looking at the bank of screens in front of him with their arrays of figures and graphs, 'I don't know what it is you're intending to do, Kraiklyn, but whatever it is, we're as ready as we'll ever be to do it.' The stout engineer looked across at Horza, lifted himself slightly from his seat and pulled the restraining straps over his body. Horza grinned at him, trying to look confident. His own seat's restrainers were a little more sophisticated, and he just had to throw a switch for cushioned arms to swing over and inertia fields to come on. He pulled his helmet over his head from the hinged position and heard it hiss shut.

'Oh my God,' Wubslin said, looking slowly away from Horza to stare at the almost featureless rear wall of the Smallbay shown on the main screen. 'I sure as hell hope you're not going to do what I think you are.

Horza didn't reply. He hit the button to talk to the mess. 'All right?'

'Just about, Kraiklyn, but-' Yalson said. Horza killed that circuit, too. He licked his lips, took the controls in his gloved hands, sucked in a deep breath, then flicked the thumb buttons on the CAT's three fusion motors. Just before the noise started he heard Wubslin say:

'Oh, my God, you are-'

The screen flashed, went dark, then flashed again. The view of the Smallbay's rear wall was lit by three jets of plasma bursting from underneath the ship. A noise like thunder filled the bridge and reverberated through the whole craft. The two outboard motors were the main thrust, vectored down for the moment; they blasted fire onto the deck of the Smallbay, scattering the machinery and equipment from underneath and around the craft, slamming it into walls and off the roof as the blinding jets of flame steadied under the vessel. The inboard, lift-only nose motor fired raggedly at first, then settled quickly, starting to burn its own hole through the thin layer of ultradense material which covered the Smallbay floor. The Clear Air Turbulence stirred like a waking animal, groaning and creaking and shifting its weight. On the screen, a huge shadow veered across the wall and the roof in front as the infernal light from the nose fusion motor burned under the ship; rolling clouds of gas from burning machinery were starting to haze over the view. Horza was amazed that the walls of the Smallbay had held out. He flicked the bow laser at the same time as increasing the fusion motor power.

The screen detonated with light. The wall ahead burst open like a flower seen in time lapse, huge petals throwing themselves towards the ship and a million pieces of wreckage and debris flashing past the vessel's nose on the shock wave of air bursting in from the far side of the lasered wall. At the same time, the Clear