Consider Phlebas

He flipped the ship over again. Wubslin, his arms and legs waving weakly, was dumped onto the CAT's bridge ceiling and stuck there like a fly while Horza did a section of an outside loop.

The ship was racing, powering away from the Orbital port area and the big GSV, heading for space. Horza remembered about Balveda's gear, and quickly reached over to the console, closing the vactube circuit from there. A screen showed that all the vactubes had been rotated. The rear screen showed something flame inside the twin plumes of plasma fire. The rear radar pinged insistently.

'Goodbye, stupid!' the voice in the headrest speakers said. Horza threw the ship to one side.

The rear screen went white, then black. The main screen pulsated with colours and broken lines. The speakers in Horza's helmet, as well as the speakers set into the seat, howled. Every instrument on the console flashed and wavered.

Horza thought for a second they had been hit, but the motors were still blasting, the main screen was starting to clear, and the other instruments were recovering, too. The radiation meters were bleeping and flashing. The rear screen stayed blank. A damage monitor indicated that the sensors had been knocked out by a very strong pulse of radiation.

Horza started to realise what had happened when the rear radar didn't start pinging again after it recovered. He threw back his head and laughed.

There had indeed been a bomb in Balveda's kitbag. Whether it had gone off because it was caught in the CAT's plasma exhaust or because somebody — whoever had been trying to keep the ship on board the GSV in the first place — had detonated it remotely the instant the fleeing craft was far enough away from the Ends not to cause too much damage, Horza didn't know. Whatever; the explosion seemed to have caught the pursuing police vessels.

Laughing uproariously, Horza angled the CAT further away from the great circle of brilliantly lit Orbital, heading straight out towards the stars and readying the warp engines to take over from the plasma motors. Wubslin, back on the deck, one leg caught on the arm of his own chair, moaned distantly.

'Mother,' he said. 'Mother, say it's only a dream…'

Horza laughed louder.

'You lunatic,' breathed Yalson, shaking her head. Her eyes were wide. 'That was the craziest thing I've ever seen you do. You're mad, Kraiklyn. I'm leaving. I resign as of now… Shit! I wish I'd gone with Jandraligeli, to Ghalssel… You can just drop me off first place we get to.'

Horza sat down wearily in the seat at the head of the mess-room table. Yalson was at the far end, under the screen, which was switched into the bridge main screen. The CAT was proceeding under full warp, two hours out on its journey from Vavatch. There had been no further pursuit following the destruction of the police craft, and now the CAT was gradually coming round to the course Horza had set, into the war zone, towards the edge of the Glittercliff, towards Schar's World.

Dorolow and Aviger were sitting, plainly still shaken, to one side of Yalson. The woman and the elderly man were both staring at Horza as though he was pointing a gun at them. Their mouths were open, their eyes were glazed. On the other side of Yalson the slack form of Perosteck Balveda was leaning forward, head down, her body pulling against the restraining straps of the seat.

The mess room was chaotic. The CAT hadn't been readied for violent manoeuvring, and nothing had been stowed away. Plates and containers, a couple of shoes, a glove, some half-unravelled tapes and spools and various other bits and pieces now lay strewn about the floor of the mess. Yalson had been hit by something, and a small trickle of blood had dried on her forehead. Horza hadn't let anybody move, apart from brief visits to the heads, for the last two hours; he'd told everybody to stay where they were over the ship PA while the CAT headed away from Vavatch on a twisting, erratic course. He had kept the plasma motors and laser warm and ready, but no further pursuit came. Now he reckoned they were safe and far enough away to warp straight.

He had left Wubslin on the bridge, nursing the battered and abused systems of the Clear Air Turbulence as best he could. The engineer had apologised for grabbing at the controls and had become very subdued, not meeting Horza's eyes but tidying up one or two bits of loose debris on the bridge and stuffing some of the loose wires back under the console. Horza told Wubslin he had nearly killed them all, but on the other hand so had he, so they would forget it this time; they'd escaped intact. Wubslin nodded and said he didn't know how; he couldn't believe the ship was virtually undamaged. Wubslin wasn't undamaged; he had bruises everywhere.

'I'm afraid,' Horza said to Yalson once he had sat down and put his feet up, 'our first port of call is rather bleak and underpopulated. I'm not sure you'll want to be dropped off there.'

Yalson put the heavy stun pistol down onto the table surface. 'And just where the hell are we going? What's going on, Kraiklyn? What was all that craziness back on the GSV? What's she doing here? Why is the Culture involved?' Yalson nodded at Balveda during this speech, and Horza kept looking at the unconscious Culture agent when Yalson stopped, waiting for an answer. Aviger and Dorolow were looking at him expectantly, too.

Before Horza could answer, the small drone appeared from the corridor leading from the accommodation section. It floated in, looked round the mess room, then sat itself bodily on the table in the middle. 'Did I hear something about it being explanation time?' it said. It was facing Horza.

Horza looked away from Balveda, to Aviger and Dorolow, then to Yalson and the drone. 'Well, you might as well all know that we are now heading for a place called Schar's World. It's a Planet of the Dead.'

Yalson looked puzzled. Aviger said, 'I've heard of those. But we won't be allowed in.'

'This is getting worse,' the drone said. 'If I were you, Captain Kraiklyn, I would turn back to The Ends of Invention and surrender yourself there. I'm sure you'd get a fair trial.'

Horza ignored the machine. He sighed, looking round at the mess, stretched his legs and yawned. 'I'm sorry you're all being taken, perhaps against your will, but I've got to get there, and I can't afford to stop anywhere to let you off. You've all got to come.'

'Oh we do, do we?' said the small drone.

'Yes,' Horza said, looking at it, 'I'm afraid so.'

'But we won't be able to get anywhere near this place,' Aviger protested. 'They don't let anybody in. There's some sort of zone around them they don't let people into.'

'We'll see about that when we get there.' Horza smiled.

'You're not answering my questions,' Yalson said. She looked at Balveda again, then down at the gun lying on the table. 'I've been zapping this poor bitch every time she flicks an eyelid, and I want to know why I've been doing it.'

'It'll take a while to explain it all, but what it boils down to is there's something on Schar's World which both the Culture and the Idirans want. I have… a contract, a commission from the Idirans, to get there and find this thing.'

'You really are a paranoid,' the drone said incredulously. It rose off the table and turned round to look at the others. 'He really is a lunatic!'

'The Idirans are hiring us — you — to go after something?' Yalson's voice was full of disbelief. Horza looked at her and smiled.

'You mean this woman', Dorolow said, pointing at Balveda, 'was sent by the Culture to join us, infiltrate… Are you serious?'

'I'm serious. Balveda was looking for me. Also for Horza Gobuchul. She wanted to get to Schar's World, or to stop us from getting there.' Horza looked at Aviger. 'There was a bomb in amongst her gear, by the way; it went off just after I rotated it out the tubes. It blew the police ships away. We all got a blast of radiation, but nothing lethal.'

'And what about Horza?' Yalson said, looking grimly at him. 'Was that just some trick, or did you really meet him?'

'He is alive, Yalson, and as safe as any of us.'

Wubslin appeared through the door from the bridge, still with an apologetic look on his face. He nodded at