text:
**STRONTIUM DOG**

**BAD TIMING**

The rock in front of Johnny disintegrated into a million tiny pieces. The force of the explosion knocked him from his feet. The tiny shards of rock scratched harmlessly against his body armour but left deep painful gouges in his face and hands. He kept his eyes screwed shut, protecting the one weapon he couldn't afford to lose.

When he opened them, O'Blarney was standing right over him. The robot shook his head. "Sorry about that, don't know my own strength sometimes."

Johnny glared up at him, preparing to roll, to spring, to do whatever he could - however futile - to survive the inevitable attack. "Never gloat before the fight's over, scumball."

O'Blarney laughed. He pointed his arm at Johnny. From the end, a thin, lethally sharp blade _snicked_ out. It was cruelly serrated, clearly meant to hurt as well as kill. "Scream if you want to, mutie," he said. "It'll give me a buzz."
**STRONTIUM DOG**

#1: BAD TIMING - Rebecca Levene

#2: PROPHET MARGIN - Simon Spurrier

#3: RUTHLESS - Jonathan Clements

#4: DAY OF THE DOGS - Andrew Cartmel

#5: A FISTFUL OF STRONTIUM - Jaspre Bark and Steve Lyons

**DURHAM RED**

-Peter J Evans-

#1: THE UNQUIET GRAVE

#2: THE OMEGA SOLUTION

#3: THE ENCODED HEART

#4: MANTICORE REBORN

#5: BLACK DAWN

_**MORE 2000 AD ACTION**_

THE ABC WARRIORS

#1: THE MEDUSA WAR - Pat Mills & Alan Mitchell

#2: RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINES - Mike Wild

ROGUE TROOPER

#1: CRUCIBLE - Gordon Rennie

_**JUDGE DREDD FROM 2000 AD BOOKS**_

#1: DREDD VS DEATH

Gordon Rennie

#2: BAD MOON RISING

David Bishop

#3: BLACK ATLANTIC

Simon Jowett & Peter J Evans

#4: ECLIPSE

James Swallow

#5: KINGDOM OF THE BLIND

David Bishop

#6: THE FINAL CUT

Matthew Smith

#7: SWINE FEVER

Andrew Cartmel

#8: WHITEOUT

James Swallow

#9: PSYKOGEDDON

Dave Stone

**_JUDGE ANDERSON_**

#1: FEAR THE DARKNESS - Mitchel Scanlon

#2: RED SHADOWS - Mitchel Scanlon

#3: SINS OF THE FATHER - Mitchel Scanlon

CABALLISTICS, INC

-Mike Wild-

#1: HELL ON EARTH

#2: BETTER THE DEVIL

FIENDS OF THE EASTERN FRONT - David Bishop

#1: OPERATION VAMPYR

#2: THE BLOOD RED ARMY

#3: TWILIGHT OF THE DEAD

_For my dad, Brian Levene, who taught me about writing and a lot of other important things._

Strontium Dog, Middenface McNulty and Durham Red created by **Alan Grant, John Wagner** and **Carlos Ezquerra.**

**A 2000 AD Publication**

**www.abaddonbooks.com**

**www.2000adonline.com**

1098 7 65 4321

Cover illustration by Greg Staples

Copyright © 2004 Rebellion A/S. All rights reserved.

All 2000 AD characters and logos © and TM Rebellion A/S."Strontium Dog" is a registered trade mark in the United States and other jurisdictions."2000 AD" is a registered trade mark in certain jurisdictions. All rights reserved. Used under licence.

ISBN(.epub): 978-1-84997-081-5

ISBN(.mobi): 978-1-84997-122-5

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

**STRONTIUM DOG**

**BAD TIMING**

REBECCA LEVENE
THE STRONTIUM DOGS

The Great War of 2150 devastated Britain, leaving it a nuclear wasteland with only thirty per cent of the population left to pick up the pieces. The killing was not to end there, however, as Nelson Bunker Kreelman, Civic Leader in New Britain's South-West Sector, implemented deadly anti-mutant legislation fuelled by his irrational hatred of those unfortunate enough to have been transformed by nuclear fallout. The Muties were eventually subjected to slave labour, and later systematically exterminated for their "differences".

Unbeknownst to the public, however, Kreelman hid an extraordinary secret in the form of his mutant son, Johnny. After suffering twelve years of abuse at the hands of his cruel father, Johnny was elated to discover that he did not have a fatal eye condition as he had been told, but was in fact in possession of great powers. Johnny ran away from home to join the rebel Mutant Army, who fought for the rights that were taken away by his own father. He eventually became a leading figure in the fight against his father's murderous campaign against the mutants.

Shortly after the abolition of the Mutant Extermination Bill, Johnny Alpha was exiled off-planet, and it was at this time when he got into the dirty and dangerous game of interplanetary bounty hunting. The job was perfect for him. He could use his alpha ray emitting eyes to break the will of his quarry and, in no time at all, Johnny was feared by fugitives throughout the galaxy. The Galactic Crime Commission's Search/Destroy Agents were commonly known as the Strontium Dogs. Johnny Alpha was to become the best of them...
PROLOGUE

Johnny should have known it was bad news when the messenger dropped dead right after delivering the invitation.

He'd tracked Johnny and Middenface McNulty down to a tavern in Jonesburg, a backwater settlement on the backwater planet of Aquarius Minor. The town was a dump, the bar was a hovel and the whiskey had been watered down so many times it wouldn't get a three year-old drunk, but it'd been a tough job and Strontium Dogs were used to taking comfort where they could.

Middenface, as usual, was downing his drinks like booze was due to get outlawed at sundown. As he drank, he idly brushed away some of the flies that were circling lazily round the five centimetre high lumps that covered the top of his head, the visible marks of the mutation that made him forever outcast from normal human society. The buzzing of the flies competed with the out-of-tune tinkle of the piano player. Personally, Johnny preferred the flies.

He ran a hand back through his untidy black curls and sipped at his drink as his strange, blank eyes scanned the bar warily. He'd been a Strontium Dog - a mutant bounty hunter employed by the Galactic Commission to hunt down the scum of the universe - more years than he cared to remember. But he'd never lost that slightly sick feeling he got at the end of a job, when the knowledge of what he really was hit home. Because the truth was he was a killer, and the fact that this was the only job society had left open for him didn't make the knowledge any more comfortable.

He didn't let this thought distract him from his careful scanning of the bar's unsavoury clientele. Middenface might be in his cups, but Johnny never let his guard down. He and Middenface had come to Jonesburg to collect the bounty on Father Jones, a psychopath responsible for scores of deaths on a string of worlds, and a tyrant to the townsfolk. Still, a couple of local boys had died in the crossfire. Johnny and Middenface were muties, and Father Jones - whose severed head, proof of the kill, and major source of attraction for the flies, stared blindly out from its place on the bar beside them - was a norm. Generally speaking, when something went wrong it wasn't norms who ended up taking the blame. Besides, no one ever died by being too careful.

So it was Johnny who spotted the guy first. He was old, his skin wrinkled like leather, but he looked like a mutie, and that drew Johnny's attention. As far as he knew, he and Middenface were the only Search/Destroy agents within five sectors of this slime pit. Then the old man caught Johnny's eyes, and Johnny saw the recognition in his face. He nudged Middenface with his elbow, nodding in the direction of the door, then let his arm drop back down right next to his blaster, in a casual kind of way.

But the old man lifted his arm in a wave, and called out in a voice so croaky it sounded like it hadn't been used in a decade. "Johnny Alpha, I've got a message for you."

Soon as they saw that the newcomer was connected to the bounty hunters, the townsfolk backed away, like he had some kind of plague. The piano player stopped on a bum note, which rang out loudly in the suddenly silent bar. Even the flies seemed to get the message and scrammed. Unsteady on his legs, the old man staggered towards the two mutants. "Message," he said again.

Johnny studied the man, sure that he had seen him somewhere before. He had a hood pulled up over his face, but there was something about the tilt of the eyes, the way his mouth quirked up at the corner in his unnaturally pale skin...

"Spit it oot," Middenface said impatiently. "We're busy men, ye ken, things tae do, people tae see, bevvies tae be drinking..."

"I've been sent to tell you about a job," the old man said. Up close, he smelt musty, like there was a whole load of dirt caught in the folds of his black robe, and none of it too fresh.

"I'm listening," Johnny said.

The old man's eyes locked with his, burning with a feverish brightness. "You're to go to the Rushmore Memorial Asteroid Field. You'll find it inside Hillary the Third." He grabbed Johnny's arm. His gun arm. "You got that? Hillary the Third!"

"Yeah?" Johnny said, trying to prise the old man's fingers loose, but shaking his head at Middenface when he moved to intervene. "So what's the bounty and who's the target? And why ain't the warrant coming through official channels?"

The old man shuddered, flecks of spittle flying from the corners of his mouth. "Can't tell you, Johnny. You'll get instructions in the asteroid. Just go there and you'll find out. Please Johnny, go to the asteroid. Please." In his desperation, his fingers clawed into Johnny's arm.

Middenface did move then, pulling the old man away with casual strength. "Jings! Calm doon, man. We'll no go onnywhere till ye gi' us some answers."

The old man opened his mouth, as if to reply, but instead coughed. It was a deep, painful sound, as if his earlier words had ripped something loose in his chest.

Johnny frowned, his earlier caution replaced by concern. "Take it easy, old timer."

The man wheezed in a breath, looking up with an almost preternaturally peaceful expression. "Johnny, I'm sorry," he said. And then he let out a very soft sigh and slumped to the ground. Dead.

"Helmaboab!" Middenface exclaimed. "I hope he isnae contagious."

Johnny knelt to check for a heartbeat. Nothing. "Just old age, I think." He reached up to close the corpse's eyes. As he did, the old man's hood fell back, and Johnny finally got a good look at his face and at the bald, crazily pockmarked landscape of his skull. He had been right. He did know him.

McNulty leaned in, recognition dawning on his face too. "Hold on! If I didnae ken better I'd say that was Craterheid Cleeg."

Johnny pulled back the man's cloak further, to reveal a battered Search/Destroy badge pinned to the front of his grubby armour. "It _is_ Craterhead Cleeg."

Middenface shook his head. "But Craterheid is just a wee laddie! How can he be dying o' auld age?"

Johnny stood, pushing his helmet over his head so that only the freakish light of his eyes shone out of its shadows. "I don't know," he said. "But I sure as hell mean to find out."
1 / HEAD SPACE

Johnny strode quickly over the weed-filled ground surrounding the ramshackle buildings that passed for a spaceport in Jonesburg. Middenface trudged dispiritedly behind him, cradling Father Jones's severed head in the crook of his elbow.

"I hadnae finished my bevvy. Leaving half a glass o' whiskey is tantamoont tae sacrilege in my book," Middenface muttered, wiping the sweat from his face with a blood-smeared hand that left a crimson stain along his cheek.

"Craterhead told us it was urgent," Johnny replied, neither turning round nor slowing his stride.

"He didnae tell us much else, though, did he? If this job's legit, I'll eat my lumps."

As they walked, the few townsfolk scattered around in the midday sun turned to stare at them, the hostility plain in their faces.

Johnny swept his gaze over them, and they quickly dropped their eyes, unwilling to issue an outright challenge to the bounty hunters. But one of them, a young, soft-faced man, turned and spat onto the dust, as if the mutants' very presence left a sour taste in his mouth. Johnny shrugged. Being liked got you more party invitations, but being feared kept you safer.

"Not like we're in the position to turn down work," he said to Middenface, as they entered a small compcrete building which advertised itself on a neon hoarding as offering "The best dang shuttles in the quadrant. Guaranteed not to implode, or half your money back." The sign fizzled and went dark as they pushed through the door.

"Tae true," Middenface agreed. "The Galactic Council's done nothin' but bring in new regulations ever since President Hillary got intae office. You'd think they didnae want us tae do oor job, jus' sit in the Doghoose fillin' in paperwork the whole day. I wish I'd never voted for her."

"You didn't," Johnny said. "Muties don't get a vote."

"Aye, I ken. But if I'd ha' voted, it'd definitely ha' been fer her. She's a proper wee bombshell. Her breasts are the size o' small moons, and as fer her-"

"Good morning... gents," the weaselly man behind the desk interrupted. He had to shout to be heard above the high-pitched throbbing of the air-conditioning, which someone had turned up far too high.

"We need to hire a long-range shuttle," Johnny said.

The man smiled, showing off his collection of jagged brown teeth. "You're in luck, we've had two just returned. How long will you be needing it for?"

Johnny shrugged. "Don't know."

The man's smile slipped slightly. "Right... And how will you be paying?"

Middenface reached out and put the severed head of Father Jones on the countertop in front of him. It was already decomposing, and a small maggot dropped out of its mouth and began to wriggle towards the clerk. "On credit," Middenface told him.

The clerk's smile had by now dropped completely, and a sweat had broken out on his face despite the arctic temperature of the room. "Right. And can... can I ask where you're going?"

"Rushmore Memorial Asteroid Field," Johnny said.

The clerk's smile re-emerged, looking sickly but determined. "Sightseeing trip?" he asked.

"No exactly," said Middenface, scooping Father Jones's head back into his arms as Johnny collected the shuttle power-key from the clerk.

The shuttle itself was small, but had warp capacity, which was all that really mattered. Middenface strapped himself into the co-pilot's seat, shifting uncomfortably as the webbing pressed him into the lumpy chair back, while Johnny checked over the ship's instruments.

"How's it looking?" Middenface asked.

"Like a heap of junk," Johnny growled.

"Is it gonna get us there?"

Johnny gave one of his rare smiles. "Guess we're about to find out," he said, and gunned the engines.

The ion drive leapt to life with an explosive boom that rocked the whole shuttle. Then, after a heart-stopping moment, the noise settled into a softer - if not exactly soothing - hum, and Middenface felt the rough hand of gravity pushing him back into his seat as Johnny nosed the shuttle off the tarmac and towards the outer atmosphere.

It took them five minutes to push their way out of the planet's gravity well. It would take a further three days to reach the asteroid field. Middenface wasn't looking forward to the journey at all. A childhood in the Scottish mutant ghetto of Shytehill, not to mention a stint in jail at the age of ten, had given him a horror of confined spaces that he hid as best he could but had never managed to conquer.

By the end of the first day, Middenface had explored every square centimetre of the shuttle, taken apart one of the food unit's control panels just for the hell of it, discovered that he didn't know how to reassemble it, then eventually with Johnny's help managed to get it back into something like working order. The only food they could now get it to produce was shepherd's pie, to which it always seemed to add a generous portion of raspberries, no matter how many buttons they pressed to try to get it to stop. After that, Johnny forbade Middenface to leave his co-pilot's chair.

By the end of the second day, Middenface was so sick of the sight of Johnny that he was contemplating changing partners when they got back to the Doghouse.

On the third day, Middenface started flicking through the hyper-space vid-channels on his viewscreen, never staying more than twenty seconds on any one channel. It was clearly annoying the hell out of Johnny, which was kind of the point.

Right now, the screen was showing a bland-faced reporter, who appeared to be standing at the epicentre of a small war, but was no doubt tucked safely in some studio miles from any danger. "And the anti-mutant riots have been gathering pace, as locals continue their campaign to oust local baker and mutant John 'the Bloater' Bignall from his shop. Controversially, Bignall has been accused by norm supremacists of baking the blood of norm babies into his bread-"

Middenface flicked the control on the panel, and the screen changed to show a different reporter, a woman this time, but still with that same bland smugness they seemed to teach in journalism college. She smiled, revealing startlingly white teeth. "Controversy continues over who exactly is responsible for the explosion six months ago of a time bomb on Epsilon 5, the planet now commonly known as 'Speed.' Conspiracy theorists blame President Hillary the Third, who-"

_Flick_. "Hillary the Third, who will be spending her vacation on the pleasure planet of Nuevo Ibiza, some say in a tryst with her mystery lover. The all-important question: what clothes will our president be packing for her trip? Our fashion expert has the low-down-"

_Flick_. "You low-down, double-dealing scoundrel. I'll take this company back from you if it's the last thing I do! And then I'll win back the love of my wife, and my beautiful baby girl-"

_Flick_. "Girl, I'm gonna get your love; like a force from above; like a falling dove-"

"Shut that damn thing off, will ya!" Johnny suddenly shouted.

Middenface turned round to argue, then saw that Johnny's body was leaning towards the viewscreen in a tense curve. He quickly flipped off the screen and tried to see what it was that had caught Johnny's attention.

The first thing he noticed was that they had reached the outskirts of the asteroid field. The huge rocks hung in the void, imposing and improbable, a few kilometres in front of the shuttle and utterly dwarfing it. Even though the rational part of him knew there was no gravity out here in the depths of space, Middenface kept expecting them to drop. Then he spotted what had troubled Johnny, and he stopped worrying about the asteroids. Coming up fast on their right-hand flank was a ship, far bigger than theirs, its sleek lines radiating power.

"Sneck!" Middenface said, and hurriedly set about getting their own vessel's inadequate defensive systems online.

Johnny reached out and stopped his hand. "Looks kind of familiar, don't it?"

Middenface frowned at the screen. Now Johnny mentioned it, it did kind of look like...

"Durham Red," Johnny said, into the shuttle's comms unit.

After a moment, a screen crackled into life, showing the face of the approaching ship's pilot. It was indeed Durham Red: fellow mutant, fellow bounty hunter, and - as far as Middenface was concerned - someone to be trusted about as far as she could be spat. She looked like a young woman, a flare of wild red hair outlining a face that was slightly too sharp to be beautiful, but certainly wasn't hard on the eye. But there was more to Durham than met the eye.

She smiled, showing the fang-like incisors that revealed the true nature of her mutation, the vampirism which made her an outcast even among mutants. "Why, Johnny Alpha and Middenface McNulty. What a pleasant surprise!" There was a laugh hidden just beneath the surface of her voice.

"Whit are ye doin' here, Red?" Middenface asked.

She cocked her head to one side. "I could ask you the same question."

Johnny sighed. "Yeah, and I guess we'd both give the same answer. So you heard about this job too?"

"Yeah," Red said. "Got the message five days ago. Didn't know there was gonna be any competition. Still," and here her smile broadened, becoming less humorous, more predatory, "I guess if the job's gone by the time you get there, you'll just have to find work elsewhere. If you can."

With that the screen went blank, and with barely a moment's pause, Red's ship swept away from them in a graceful arc and accelerated into the asteroid field. Johnny swore and thumped his hand into the console. Then he redlined their own drive and set off in pursuit.

The asteroids loomed on the forward screen, growing closer, and bigger, with alarming speed. Soon, just one was visible, blotting out the surrounding stars until nothing was visible on the viewscreen except its enormous form.

"Johnny-" Middenface shouted, scrabbling to do up his safety webbing.

"Hang on to your lumps," Johnny said, pulling so hard on the steering lever that his knuckles whitened. With horrible slowness, the shuttle veered up and left, so close now to the rock's surface that Middenface could see the marbled veining on its surface. He breathed a huge sigh of relief - then sucked it in again as Johnny turned the nose of the ship down, straight towards the rock.

For a moment, he thought they were going to die. But there was a cleft in the rock beneath them, narrow, dark and very deep. Johnny twisted the shuttle through ninety degrees, then accelerated down the length of the ravine, throwing the ship and its passengers from side to side as he negotiated the twists and turns. Then, suddenly, he jerked the nose up towards the twinkling sliver of sky.

They shot out of the ravine and away from the rock into clear space. Looming ahead of them was the first of the Memorial asteroids, the huge sculpted head of Galactic Commission President Jimmy McGuire. And behind them a good thousand metres, was Durham Red.

Middenface grinned. "Yer nae as cracked as ye look," he told Johnny admiringly.

But Johnny was still frowning. "We haven't won yet."

He was right. Metre by metre, Red was catching them up. Her ship might not have the manoeuvrability, but it sure as hell had the speed. Soon, they were neck and neck, racing towards the giant stone face of President McGuire. A few seconds later and Middenface could see the laugh lines around McGuire's eyes. Then they were so close he could make out the hollowed-out pits of the acne scars which the sculptor had faithfully dug into his cheeks. And still Red didn't change course.

It was only when they could see the hairs poking out of the giant edifice of the sculpture's nose that Johnny swore and swerved the shuttle to one side, almost grazing the granite cheek as he went.

But Red didn't swerve. She went in - plunging her ship into the sculpture's left nostril.

"Damn it!" Johnny said.

"How does she ken there's a way through?" Middenface asked, as the shuttle flew over the smooth whorls of the president's ear.

"Probably doesn't. But knowing her luck, there is," Johnny replied.

"Well, mebbe takin' this job wasnae such a good idea in the first place," Middenface said morosely.

Johnny spared him a quick, astonished glance as the ship traversed the smooth expanse of McGuire's bald scalp. "We ain't giving up yet," he said.

But they zoomed over the top of the sculpture to find Durham comfortably ahead of them and pulling further away. She was heading straight towards the head of President Nkobe, probably intending to perform the same trick again. Nkobe smiled serenely out at them, unconcerned with their petty rivalries.

"But she's ahead o' us, an' she's got a faster ship," Middenface pointed out.

"Yeah," said Johnny, "so I guess it's time to play dirty."

"Dirty?"

"What kind of guns has this hunk of junk got?" Johnny asked him, switching the ship briefly to autopilot as they shot forward through the empty space between the asteroids.

"Ye cannae be thinking o' blowing Red away?" Middenface said, horrified. "When all's said and done, she may be a bitch, but she's still a Strontium Bitch, ye ken what I'm saying?"

Johnny shook his head, still fiddling with the control panel in front of him. "Plasma torpedo. Good." He began to prime the launch sequence. "I'm not going to blow her up," he told Middenface.

Middenface relaxed back in his seat.

"I'm going to blow _that_ up," Johnny finished, nodding at the giant head of President Nkobe.

Before Middenface could do more than jerk forward in alarm, Johnny pressed the LAUNCH button, and a streak of fire shot out from the shuttle towards the giant sculpture. There was a tiny moment of stillness after it struck - then the giant head exploded in a bloom of flame and red-hot debris.

"Jings! Ye jus' blew up the eighth president o' the Galactic Commission!" Middenface shouted, clinging onto the sides of his seat as the shockwave of the plasma strike hit them. The entire shuttle vibrated so hard it felt like it might shake itself apart.

Johnny shrugged. "Never liked him much anyway." He flung the shuttle round to the left, narrowly avoiding a twenty-metre high lump of granite that looked as if it might once have been the large mole on Nkobe's chin.

Ahead of them, but losing ground, Red was having less success dodging the debris. The superior size of her ship might have given it greater speed, but also gave it greater inertia. As Middenface watched, she attempted to veer out of the path of a cluster of smaller rocks. She only half-succeeded, and the shrapnel from the explosion barrelled into the wing of her vessel. A small burst of white fire radiated from one of the points of impact and he saw her ship judder, then swerve, first one way, then another, as Red clearly fought to regain control.

Middenface smiled. "Looks like one o' her thruster's gi'en up the ghost."

Johnny allowed himself a tight smile. But it quickly dropped as the density of the debris storm increased. Avoiding any impact, even with Johnny's lightning-quick reflexes, became a near impossibility.

A cluster of rocks hurtled towards them. Johnny banked left, narrowly missing one, executed a complicated corkscrew drop that took them past two and three - and found himself staring boulder number four right in the face. He tried to swerve, but it was clear they wouldn't have time. "Now might be a good time to man the laser cannon," he said quietly to Middenface.

In a split second, Middenface realised the flaw in Johnny's plan. Red couldn't dodge her way round the rubble, but her ship could take the impact. It might be damaged by it, crippled even, but it - and Red - would live to fly another day. On the other hand, this shuttle wasn't built for war. It was a tourist run-around. One good impact and it would be bye-bye muties. Lunging desperately forward, Middenface grabbed the manual controls and swung the targeting helmet over his eyes. He had to fire before it had time to lock on, trusting to instinct and blind luck. For a second he thought he'd missed. Then the rock exploded into splinters. Even splinters, though, could be lethal at that speed, and Middenface listened with trepidation to the sharp sound of their impact against the shuttle's hull. But after a few moments, the pitter-patter of the pebbles' impact lessened, and apart from a slightly ominous burning-rubber smell coming from the rear generator, they seemed to have survived.

The rubble began to thin after that, and Johnny navigated his way through without any further help from the laser cannon. Middenface relaxed and grinned at Johnny. "Think the shuttle company's gonna gi' us oor deposit back?"

"We didn't pay a deposit."

Middenface's grin widened. "Aye. Just as weel, eh?"

Now that the worst was over, he risked a quick look through the rear screen. Durham Red was well behind them. She'd steered sideways to avoid the worst of the debris, but it had cost her time, time that her now pock-marked and scarred ship would find it hard to make up. "Looks like we won this one," Middenface said.

Johnny ran one hand tiredly over his eyes, the eyes that norms always found so disturbing, glowing with the fire of the alpha rays which sharpened his senses, sometimes allowed him to look beyond the flesh, into the minds of others, but which forever marked him as outcast, mutant. "Yeah," he said, "and now we get to collect the prize."

And there it was, floating in front of them at last, the kilometres-high head of Galactic Commission President Hillary the Third. Even from a distance of several thousand metres the scaffolding that surrounded the sculpture was visible, crawling all over the incomplete right-hand side of her face like a rash. As they drew closer, Middenface thought he could make out ships hovering around the statue's nose like droplets of mucus from a sudden sneeze.

"What are they?" he asked.

"Dunno. Workmen?"

Middenface shook his head. "Naw, have you nae heard? They stoapped workin' on her three years ago. Said they shouldha' been getting paid a day's wage every five hours cos that's hoo long the day is oan the nearest planet. 'Sides, they dinnae look like workmen's ships tae me."

Johnny cut the fusion engine's power as they neared the giant head, so close now that the sculpture's giant nose blotted out all the stars above them. The other ships hung around them, powerless and seemingly deserted.

Middenface scowled. "I dinnae like the look o' this. I say we get oot o' here sharpish."

That was when a blue-green tractor beam shot from the station and pinned their shuttle like a fly in amber.
2 / UNREFUSABLE OFFERS

Johnny wrestled frantically with the controls, but the shuttle simply wasn't powerful enough to break free of the tractor beam. After a second he leant back, thumping a fist onto the console in frustration. "Sneck!"

He looked behind them, and saw that Durham Red too had finally made it to the asteroid. She spotted their ship and - clearly keen to escape the same fate - quickly begun to swing round and away from the asteroid.

Not quick enough, though. A second beam shot out from somewhere inside the asteroid sculpture and snatched hold of Red's ship. Maybe, if she'd been at full power, she'd have been able to beat it. As it was, with all the damage she'd sustained in their recent race, she was as powerless as them.

"Now whit dae we dae?" Middenface said.

Johnny shook his head. "Don't know. But if they'd wanted to kill us, they've had their chance. Guess they'll tell us what they want soon enough."

A second later, their comms unit gave a sharp shriek as it leapt into life. "Welcome, Strontium Dogs," a voice boomed out, but the viewscreen remained dark, denying them a chance to identify its owner. "So very glad you came."

Middenface leant forward aggressively to shout into the unit. "Aye weel, if this is how you greet your guests, it's nae wonder ye dinnae get many visitors."

There was a light chuckle from the comms unit. "Don't worry, Mr McNulty. If you'd just care to step into the teleport beam behind you, I can assure you you'll be greeted with every courtesy once you arrive."

As it spoke, Johnny sensed a low hum, so deep in pitch it registered more in his stomach than his ears, and there was a sudden sharp ozone tang in the air. He snapped his head round. At the rear of the cabin, a metre-thick column of air was shimmering, distorting the view behind it like water.

Johnny eyed the beam warily as he spoke into the communicator. "And just why the hell should I trust you enough to step into that beam?"

"Now," said the voice, "what have I ever done to deserve that kind of attitude?"

Johnny grimaced. "If I knew who you were, maybe I could answer that question. But you haven't told us jack, about yourself or the job."

"Step into the beam and you'll get the answer to all your questions."

"Aye," Middenface interrupted, in a low grumble. "Or an end to all oor questions."

"Well, it's up to you, of course," the voice said calmly. "But I can tell you one thing: your ship isn't going anywhere." There was another harsh squawk, and the communicator went dead.

Middenface looked at Johnny. "Reckon we could use one o' yer time grenades to send us back before we got caught in the beam."

Johnny considered it for a second, but the grenade's blast wasn't wide enough to take in the whole shuttle, and without it a trip back in time would fling them out into the icy voids of space to die a quick, but still painful, death. "Nope," he said.

Middenface scratched his lumps, then sighed and stood up to face the teleport beam. "In that case, doesnae look like we've got a choice."

There was a moment of disorientation as Johnny stepped into the beam, the horrible sensation of his molecules being jerked apart, to be flung one by one through the hyperspace wormhole of the teleport.

Then his molecules reassembled themselves with a feeling like God clapping his hands, and Johnny staggered a moment, blinded.

When he straightened and his vision returned, he saw that he wasn't alone. Alongside Middenface, there were eight other people in the large antechamber in which he found himself. And, from their badges, they were all Strontium Dogs. Most wore the standard-issue armour, including a hugely fat woman who looked to be as wide as she was tall, and she was pretty damn tall. Johnny had never seen her before - he sure as hell would have remembered. There was one Dog he recognised, by reputation alone: a craggy-faced mutant dressed all in worn black leather who had a gaping void where his left eye should have been. One-Eyed Jack, they called him. Only mutation he had was a sixth finger on his right hand, but these days that was enough. Rumour had it he'd had chrono-surgery to send his other eye ten seconds into the future so nothing could ever take him by surprise.

Five of the others - standing huddled in tense discussion - were dressed in some kind of bright red, form-fitting uniform of their own. They looked jittery and uncomfortable. Johnny guessed they were novices, maybe on their first mission.

All the Strontium Dogs turned to stare at Johnny and Middenface as they arrived. "Well I'll be goddamned if it isn't Johnny Alpha!" said the nearest.

"Hot Rod! Thought you were cleaning up the western spiral arm," Johnny said to the gangly mutant, whose skin glowed an alarming, virulent shade of red.

"Got an offer of a job," Hot Rod said.

"Yeah, us tae," said Middenface. "Dinnae suppose any o' youse knows wha brought us here?"

One of the group of five stepped forwards, flicking her long black hair back from the icy perfection of her face, and smiling slightly condescendingly at them. Up close, Johnny saw that her SD badge had been modified, so that the letters stood out against an embossed black X. "We don't know any more than you do," she said. "We were just offered a job. And frankly, we weren't expecting company."

"Aye, weel, join the club," said Middenface.

Realising there would be little more he could find out from his fellow mutants, Johnny allowed his eyes to wander round the room, taking in and analysing every detail. It was maybe fifteen metres square, with a ceiling almost of the same height. The floor was paved in glistening, gold-coloured tiles. Johnny knelt and pressed his hand against the surface of one of the squares. It was cold, and just a little soft. Johnny realised that it wasn't just gold-coloured; it _was_ gold, stretching out over every square metre of the floor. Which meant that the elaborately etched, silver-coloured walls probably were silver. And the giant chandelier hanging from the centre of the ceiling, dripping with long strings of diamond-bright crystal, was probably worth more than every bounty Johnny had ever taken.

Despite the size of the room, it seemed cramped, overcrowded with furniture, much of it upholstered in brightly patterned fabrics that were so ugly they just had to be expensive. Scattered around the furniture were vases and statues and candlesticks and knickknacks from a hundred different worlds. So, there was at least one thing Johnny knew about their host. He had more money than either sense or taste.

His thoughts were interrupted by the subliminal hum of another transporter beam. It struck the floor beside Middenface, and he took a hasty step back as the unmistakeable figure of Durham Red materialised beside him.

"That was a dirty trick you played, Johnny," she said. "You damn near wrecked my ship and I only just had it repaired."

"Ain't life a bitch?" he said.

Red had just opened her mouth to reply when the huge double doors at one end of the room swung open, and the Strontium Dogs were given the first sight of their host. Eleven hands leapt to eleven holsters. And eleven people realised simultaneously that they were empty.

The figure walking through the door laughed. "Pardon my caution," he said, "but I took the liberty of arranging for the teleport to bring you down without weapons. I hope you don't think that rude of me."

Finally, he stepped into the light. He was tiny, little more than a metre tall, a small, pink, defenceless thing that looked like nothing so much as a baby bird, fallen from its nest far too young. He might have looked rather pathetic - if not for the four-metre-high exoskeleton in which he was housed. Or the huge multi-phase blaster clasped with casual strength in one of the exo-skeletal arms.

There was nothing pathetic at all about Don "Chick" Delater - mutant, psychopath, and the galaxy's most wanted crime boss.

"Well, I must say," he said. "You don't look very pleased to see me."

Without needing to discuss it, Johnny and the other bounty hunters began to spread out, moving to encircle Delater so that he couldn't cover them all with his blaster. But after a few strides, Johnny heard a sudden sizzle, and felt a sharp pain as his leg met an invisible but impenetrable barrier. A force field.

Secure behind this shield, Delater dropped his blaster to his side. "Now now, let's all be civilised about this. I am, after all, a potential customer. And isn't the customer always right?"

Middenface beat his fist against the force field, so angry that he didn't flinch as it spat sparks towards his face. "Ye ugly wee scunner! The only custom ye'll be getting aff us is a blaster bolt up the arse!"

Delater's small pink face scrunched up in simulated sorrow. "Don't you feel you may be rushing to judgement? After all, you've never actually met me before. For all you know I could be a terribly nice man."

Durham Red sneered at him. "Yeah, so nice you murdered five thousand colonists on Sigma Prime, just because they refused to let you perform medical experiments on their children to find a cure for your mutation."

"Well, they should have realised I wasn't going to take no for an answer," Delater said. "They had only themselves to blame."

One of the group of five, a huge furry lump of a man who looked like the offspring of a union between a bear and a weasel, lifted up a slow paw and poked it in Delater's direction. "I heard tell y'all done gone and killed a man jist fer forgettin' to 'bless you' when you sneezed."

Delater shrugged. "I've always said that manners maketh the man. But we really are wasting time, and time is the last thing we have to spare."

Johnny stepped up to the barrier, careful not to get too close. He stared straight into the crime boss's beady black eyes. The force field might stop solid objects, but it would be powerless against Johnny's alpha rays and after a moment Delater looked away, rocking back on the huge metallic feet of his exo-suit. Johnny smiled grimly. There wasn't a man, saint or sinner, who didn't have some secret he was afraid to see dragged out into the light.

"All right," Johnny said. "You got us here. You don't want us dead, or we'd be dead already. So just what do you want?"

The other Strontium Dogs stepped back a little, unconsciously accepting Johnny as their spokesman.

"Ah," said Delater, still keeping his gaze carefully averted from Johnny's. "A man after my own heart. Blunt, concise and to the point."

Johnny folded his arms over the hard plate of his chest armour. "I'm still waiting," he said.

Delater smiled without humour. "But I thought my messenger would have told you. I have a job that needs doing. A bounty that needs collecting and you seemed to be just the right people to do it."

Red stepped up beside Johnny, as if she alone was unwilling to let him take control. "Listen scumball, we hunt criminals; we don't hunt _for_ criminals."

"The lady's right," Johnny said - and Red shot him a glance, half gratitude, half annoyance. "If you think we're gonna do your dirty work for you, you'd better think again."

Pinned inside the exo-skeleton like a worm nailed to a board, Delater's delicate pink body wriggled with excitement. "But that's precisely it," he said. "The man I'm hiring you to find _is_ a criminal. In fact, he's a former associate of mine. You may have heard of him - he calls himself Bad Boy O'Blarney."

Middenface scratched his lumps. "Oh aye, he's the wee nyaff wha stole the crown jewels."

"No, you're thinking of Wicked Willy McWilliams. Bad Boy O'Blarney would never set his sights so low. He specialises in... how can I put this delicately? Terminations..."

"Terminations of mutants, from what I heard," Johnny growled.

"Yes," Delater admitted. "But I foolishly thought I could trust him. O'Blarney betrayed my trust, stole our earnings and disappeared. I want you to bring him - or at the very least his head - back. As for his hatred of mutants, I'm sure that will just give you more motivation as you hunt him down. That and the fact that I'm offering to give whoever finds him ten times the bounty that you'd be able to collect from the Galactic Commission."

At those words, several of the Strontium Dogs' ears perked up - literally, in some cases. Johnny shook his head though. "Nice try, but we ain't buying." He ignored the murmurs of discontent from some of the others at his words. "We ain't criminals. Job we do might not be pretty, but it's honest and we'll take the honest wage for it." He deliberately looked round at the ostentatious opulence of the room. "Might not make us rich, but least I get to sleep at night."

"Oh, believe me, Mr Alpha, I have no trouble sleeping. And I think you'll have no trouble taking this job, when you hear what the alternative is. You see, when I teleported you down here, I didn't just take you weapons away from you, I gave you something back in return..."

Johnny felt a horrible lurch in his stomach, the sort you get when you're just about to be given some very bad news. "Yeah," he said. "What was it - a good luck card?"

Delater stepped right up to the force field, his feet clanging loudly on the gold floor, leaving a slight imprint in the soft metal as they passed. "Close, but no cigar. In fact, you're each now the proud owners of a very small balloon."

"You whit?" said Middenface.

"A micro-balloon." Delater smiled, enjoying himself. "I had the teleporter rigged up to place one inside each of your chest cavities. If all went according to plan, you should find yours located somewhere between your lungs and your heart. One tries to be precise, but it's hard when working with mutant anatomy."

By this time, all the mutants had approached the barrier and were staring at Delaney with expressions that ranged from baffled to contemptuous. Only Johnny still felt the sour knot in his stomach, and it showed no sign of untangling. He was beginning to realise just what Delater's threat meant.

Hot Rod, though, clearly didn't. "A balloon!" he sneered, laughing with released tension. "Well, whoop-de-do - must remember to get it out when it's time for my birthday."

"You won't be able to get it out," Delater told him. "At least, not without some top-class surgical equipment, and at the first sign that you're using that... all it will take to blow up those balloons will be the push of one button." He gestured at the waist of his exo-suit, and Johnny saw what looked like a small control console strapped there. Several of the other Strontium Dogs were beginning to see the picture, and none of them were any happier about it than Johnny. Red had put her hand to her chest, as if she might be able to feel the little invader in her body beneath the bulk of her armour.

Only Hot Rod didn't get it. "So snecking what?" he said. "So you can blow up some balloons - I'm quaking in my boots!"

"Oh, you will be," said Delater. His smile broadened, revealing pointed little teeth and a sharp pink jab of a tongue. His hand moved towards the control console at his belt.

Johnny reached out his hand, pressed it against the sizzling surface of the force field. "Don't-" he shouted.

But Delater was having too much fun to stop. Johnny suspected that he'd hoped for this moment, longed for one of the Strontium Dogs to doubt his power over them so that he'd be given this excuse to demonstrate it. "Mr Rod clearly doesn't believe me. And I don't take well to being doubted."

With a tiny movement of his gleaming steel finger, Delaney pressed a button at his waist.

For a split second, it looked as if nothing had happened. Then Hot Rod's eyes opened wide with shock. "What the..." he said.

He put a hand to his chest, which was already expanding, pressing his armour away from his body. As the first strap on the armour snapped, Hot Rod realised what was happening and screamed. The other straps tore off one by one, till none were left and the armour plate fell from his body and clattered to the floor. The shirt beneath had already ripped, revealing the hideously distended skin of his chest.

Hot Rod's scream turned into a horrible gargle and blood frothed out of his mouth. His eyes caught Johnny's in a helpless plea. Instinctively, Johnny reached out to help him, but there was nothing he could do. When Hot Rod tried to speak, all that emerged from his mouth was a gush of scarlet fluid. And then the balloon expanded further, up through his neck, cracking his skull, and the life dimmed from his eyes.

All that was left of Hot Rod now was a round globe of skin, the doll-like remnants of the mutant's limbs hanging limply from it. From where he was standing, Johnny could still see Hot Rod's face, spread out over the surface of the balloon like butter on bread. It was all he could do not to gag.

Taking advantage of the bounty hunters' frozen moment of horror, Delater calmly switched off the force field, then strode forward - and popped the balloon with a long needle.

As the enormous pressure inside released, the balloon that had once been Johnny's fellow Strontium Dog whizzed towards the ceiling with a high-pitched farting noise that in any other circumstances might have been funny.

Delater turned to Johnny, and this time he did meet his eyes. "So," he said, "had any second thoughts about taking that job?"
3 / CRASH LANDINGS

Middenface had never thought he'd be glad to see the inside of that shuttle again, but it was amazing what seeing one of your mates brutally murdered could do to you. He'd taken the controls this time, leaving Johnny to sit beside him, chewing a thumbnail and scowling fit to curdle milk. Middenface knew his partner, so he didn't need to ask what was bugging him. Johnny was going over Hot Rod's death in his mind, wondering if there was anything he could have done to prevent it. It wasn't in Johnny's nature to stand by and watch an injustice be done. Come to that, it wasn't in McNulty's nature either.

He hated the fact that they were doing that lowlife scunner Delater's bidding, but what choice did they have? Delater held all the cards, with a few extra aces up his sleeve for good measure. And so here they were, setting out to capture one of the most dangerous criminals in the galaxy.

And, to make it worse, Delater had told them that O'Blarney had hidden away on one of the most dangerous planets in the galaxy: Epsilon Five, otherwise known as Speed.

The planet was only a few dozen light years away from the asteroid field that housed Delater's base, so it shouldn't take more than a few hours to reach it. But it wasn't the length of the journey that was worrying Middenface. He gazed out of the forward viewscreen, at the hypnotic vista of stars shooting past them like long, thin streamers of light, and tried to remember everything he knew about Speed.

Middenface wasn't a big one for watching the news - everyday life was depressing enough without finding out about all the other crap going on in the universe - but the accident on Epsilon Five had been such a big deal even Middenface couldn't avoid it. A time bomb had gone off there, a big planet-busting one, and there'd been a whole barrel of theories about who should take the blame. The media had been particularly keen on the story because a bunch of students from Sea of Sorrows University had been camping on the planet and they'd been caught in the blast. The parents of the most attractive girl had been shown weeping on the news, sitting in front of a hologram of their daughter. Middenface didn't really care about that, though. It was the effects of the time bomb that were the problem.

When the bomb struck, everything in its blast zone - which meant every single thing on the planet's surface - was speeded up to roughly four hundred times its normal rate. It was like someone reached out their finger, pressed fast forward, and then didn't let go. Of course, to someone down on the planet, nothing would have changed. From their point of view, it was the rest of the universe that suddenly took it into its head to slow right down.

What it would be like on the planet's surface was anybody's guess. Speed had been quarantined immediately after the accident to shield unsuspecting travellers from the unpredictable effects of the chronodiation. Or to cover up a vast government conspiracy if some of the nuts Middenface had seen on the viewscreen were to be believed.

To top it all off, Delater had insisted that they leave all their time-weaponry behind. He'd said it might interfere with the time field on the planet's surface, cause what he'd called "a lethal chronal feedback that could wipe out the entire sector." Middenface thought that sounded like a load of bull, but Delater hadn't given them a choice. He and Johnny still had their blasters, of course, along with the net grenades they'd recently started using for takedowns, Johnny's beam polariser and short-range teleporter and the Electronux Johnny used for hand-to-hand brawling, but Middenface felt uneasy without the time grenades. They'd helped him and Johnny out of many a tight spot in the past.

"I guess it makes sense that O'Blarney chose Speed," Johnny suddenly said, startling Middenface.

"Och aye," Middenface agreed, though he had no idea what Johnny was talking about.

Johnny leant back in his chair, eyes closed, looking like he was sunning himself on a beach, not heading off on a potential suicide mission. But it was just Johnny's way. Underneath the relaxed surface Middenface could see that he was coiled tight as a spring.

"I heard anyone down there ages at the same rate as the planet," Johnny said.

Middenface frowned. "But I thought only what was there when the bomb hit got speeded up."

Johnny tilted his head towards Middenface, but didn't bother opening his eyes. "Yeah, but everything gets hit by the ageing effect. Something to do with the chronon fallout from the blast. Puts us at a double disadvantage - we move slow but die quick."

Middenface thought about that a little. "So hoo come this O'Blarney laddie's living doon there?"

Johnny eyes flicked open, as if surprised Middenface had to ask. "O'Blarney's a robot."

"A robot?" Middenface said, sitting up straighter. Artificial life forms gave him the creeps. "What kind o' robot?"

"The nasty kind. He was built by the Boer Five norm separatists to hunt down the mutant population. From what I heard, he loved his work. When the war there ended, the Galactic Commission wanted to put him on trial for war crimes."

"Didn't think they'd care aboot a few o' us muties getting taken oot."

"Generally speaking they don't," Johnny said, "But O'Blarney got carried away. Killed so many even the Commission couldn't ignore it."

"So I wouldnae be wrong in thinking O'Blarney's got some serious hardware an' kens hoo tae use it?" Middenface liked the sound of this less and less.

Johnny scratched a hand through his stubble. "Yep. He was built to fight. And he was built to last - could age five thousand years and still be as good as new. There's no limit to how long he can stay down on Speed."

Middenface had a sudden realisation. "Unlike us, ye mean," he said. "So jist how long can we survive doon there?"

Johnny shrugged. "Far as our bodies are concerned, a day on the planet lasts as long as a year. If the mission takes more than a month, we'll be old men by the time we get back."

Durham Red wasn't happy. The day had got off to a bad start when Johnny beat her in their race, then there'd been the revelation of their host's identity, the death of Hot Rod and now, to top it all off, she was having to hitch a lift to Epsilon Five. Johnny's little stunt in the asteroid field had left her own ship so damaged it was unlikely to make it to the nearest planet, let alone through a four-hour hyperspace journey. Delater had promised to repair it for her while she was gone. For some reason, she didn't believe him.

So here she was, in this scrapheap of a ship, a passenger of one of the oddest mutants Red had ever had the misfortune to meet. Red stole a look at her pilot now, peering at her from behind her veil of red hair. The woman had told Red to call her the Blimp, and it wasn't hard to see why. She was enormous. Fat didn't really do it justice - even calling her morbidly obese would be something approaching a compliment.

It started with her calves, which bulged out through the fabric of her trousers so that all that could be seen of her feet were the tips of her big toes. Her thighs wobbled with rolls of flesh, though much of them was hidden beneath the rolls of flesh on her stomach. Red doubted the Blimp had seen her own legs for a very long time. She probably hadn't touched them either. Her arms, prisoners of their own vast swathes of fat, stuck out from her sides like two giant chicken legs. She might possess a neck somewhere beneath her double and quadruple chins, it was impossible to say. Strangely, on top of all this sat a very small, almost pretty face. Its hair was a curly blond, and its eyes were a penetrating blue. They turned to Red now.

"What are you looking at?" she asked Red. Her voice was incongruously girlish, with a breathy catch in it that some men might have found sexy.

Red looked away. "Nothing," she said.

The Blimp laughed. "It's all right, sweetheart, stare away. I know I'm a sight you don't see every day."

Red smiled, warming to her. "We're all mutants," she said. "We're the last people who ought to be judging on appearances."

"True enough," the Blimp said amiably, sitting back from the flight console and stretching, pulling some of the rolls of fat a little tighter in the process. "When my mum saw what came out of her, she told the doctors I must be a freak of nature. But I reckon nature knew what she was doing. Come a fight, other people run out of energy before it's halfway over. But I carry around a spare battery - and once I get going, there's no stopping me. Most folks who judge me by appearances don't live to regret it."

"Well," Red said, "it never hurts to be underestimated."

The Blimp laughed, a jolly sound without malice. "So how come you're one of us, honey? I've been trying to figure it out, but last I heard red hair was an affliction, not a mutation."

Red hesitated a second, but the Blimp seemed easy-going enough. "I guess you could say I'm a real monster," she said. "The old-fashioned kind." She widened her smile, baring her fangs.

An expression of pure horror came over the Blimp's face, and she leapt back, putting as much distance between herself and Red as possible. "Stay away from me, you freak!" she shouted.

Red mentally berated herself for thinking even for a minute that the Blimp might be different from all the rest. At least Johnny, aggravating as he was, had always treated her like a person. "I'm not a _real_ vampire," she explained patiently. "Look-" She deliberately grabbed the jewelled cross which was hanging from the control console above the Blimp's chair. "Garlic doesn't give me so much as indigestion either, and the only thing that keeps me out of the sun is my complexion."

She took a step towards the Blimp and reached out an arm towards her. The Blimp lashed out, knocking Red's arm away with surprising strength. "You bring those fangs anywhere near me and you'll be getting root canal work you won't forget in a hurry!" she said.

Red felt her temper heating up. "Listen, you fat-assed moron. It's a mutation, same as yours, same as anybody's. If I'm a freak, what does that make you?"

Before the Blimp could respond, the ship, there was a loud blast. A shower of sparks shot out of the instrument panel, and the ship juddered violently, throwing Red against the back wall and tumbling the Blimp onto her back.

Red dived towards the controls, intending to steer them away from whatever the hell was attacking. Before she could begin to decipher the instruments, the ship gave another sickening lurch, flinging her face-first into the forward viewscreen. Through this, she was given a very clear picture of what was going on.

They had arrived. Speed hung beneath them, a deceptively pleasant looking planet, patches of green and brown sitting in oceans of a deep, dark blue. But the attack wasn't coming from the planet. It was coming from space, from the thousands of tiny military satellites that had been hung around this quarantined world, poised to protect it from any intruders. As Red watched, a blinding white laser beam shot out from the nearest, searing into the side of the ship. She was ready this time, and clung onto the sides of the console as the ship shook and lurched.

The Blimp wasn't so lucky. Still on her back, her arms and legs flailing uselessly in the air, she was flung against the back wall of the flight cabin with a jarring thud that left a large dent in the wall.

"How the sneck do you steer this thing!?" Red shouted at her, staring helplessly at the ranks of switches, dials, knobs and lights which faced her. Several of the green lights flicked to red. She assumed that was bad news, but who could tell?

"Get me up and I'll do it," the Blimp shouted back.

"There's no time!" Red said. "Just tell me how to get us out of here!"

"Fire the... Fire the rear left thruster on sixty-five deg... degrees forward," the Blimp shouted out as the ship lurched some more and she skidded over the floor like an upended tortoise. "But whatever you do, don't try to fire the central rear thruster - it's bust. Likely to blow."

Red looked at the instrument panel in frustration. She couldn't begin to work out which switches worked the thrusters, let alone the rear left ones. The cabin was now filled with a choking brown smoke. Somewhere hidden from view, she could hear the crackle of the fire that was causing it. She could hear this, because she could no longer hear the ship's engines. Some time in the last few seconds, they'd stopped working.

Swearing, she abandoned the instruments and leapt over to The Blimp. She reached down, grabbed her arms and pulled - but all that happened was that Red ended up flat on her front on top of the other mutant's enormous bulk. There was no way she'd be able to pull her up - it defied the laws of physics. Resolving instead to roll her over, she clambered to her knees, braced herself against the rear wall, and pushed, grunting with the effort.

The Blimp rolled about a centimetre, then flopped back down again.

The ship, continuing on its pre-set course, plummeted towards the planet. Red realised with a sudden, light-headed relief that they were through the main ring of the automated defence system. They might just make it down in one piece.

That's when, somewhere behind them, a military satellite locked on target, opened up its laser cannons, and blew the top right off their ship.

A few kilometres away, Johnny had his own problems. Unlike Red and the Blimp, he'd anticipated the defence system but it hadn't done him a blind bit of good. The shuttle simply wasn't built for this kind of action. Johnny pulled the ship to the left, to the right, to the left again, executing a complicated three-dimensional dance that took them safely past three laser beams that would otherwise have utterly destroyed them. Up ahead, though, the sky above the planet was filled with a cat's cradle of lethal energy rays. Johnny wasn't sure they were going to make it.

Middenface hunched beside him, his face set in a fierce grimace of concentration, firing plasma torpedoes at anything solid that came within range. As Johnny continued his desperate manoeuvring, his partner managed to take out one satellite in their path, then another whose laser cannon was swivelling round towards them. The planet's surface loomed ever nearer, filling the entire viewscreen, the details of jagged mountains and wisps of cloud getting clearer by the second.

Above them, the huge mass of another spaceship was navigating the minefield without difficulty. It wasn't even trying to dodge the laser blasts, just absorbing them into its matt-black surface. For a second, Johnny thought it would come to their aid, using its no doubt superior firepower to clear a path through the sky for the smaller vessel. But it just cruised casually past them as if they didn't even exist.

As the larger ship moved away, Johnny spotted another satellite, cunningly hidden in the highest layer of cloud. Its unblinking electronic eye fixed on them, and he opened his mouth to shout out a warning, but Middenface was on it already, lashing out with a lethal burst of plasma fire. But his aim was off, and the plasma streaked down the side of the satellite without taking out its heart. As the shuttle streaked past it, so close Johnny felt he could have reached out and touched it, it spat out one last laser burst, like a dying man determined to take as many of his enemies as possible with him.

Johnny twisted the shuttle sideways but he couldn't avoid the shot entirely. It raked over the side of the vessel and through the left wing, tearing it loose from the body of the ship with a horrible grating noise.

The controls jumped in his hands, as if the shuttle was a horse that had suddenly decided it didn't much like the reins. He tried to control it, compensating for the lost wing and using the thrusters to steady them, but it was no good. They'd simply taken too much damage.

Middenface was staring into the viewscreen with an expression of horror. Johnny didn't blame him. Beneath them, the planet's surface was rushing closer and closer, gravity pulling them down to meet its trees and lakes and jagged rocks just as quickly as it could. Johnny fought the controls vainly for a second longer, until they were wrenched out of his hands and the view began to twirl sickeningly around them as the shuttle went into an uncontrollable spin.

"Johnny," Middenface gabbled, "I've never told ye this-"

"Save it!" Johnny snapped. He'd be damned if he'd let it end this way. He'd be damned if he'd let himself get killed doing the work of a lowlife like Delater. If Johnny was going to die, it would be on his own terms. Snarling, he grabbed the steering lever again and pushed upwards with all his strength. Slowly, terribly slowly, it began to move. The thrusters spun round and fired back, pushing against the atmosphere in a desperate attempt to slow them down. Johnny used his last reserves of strength to hold the lever in position, then closed his eyes and prayed.

Incredibly, it worked. The view - now of nothing but trees and rocks and sky- circled slowly around them one last time, then steadied out with the sky very definitely up and the trees very definitely down. He had pulled them out of the spin.

Not a second too soon. Before he could draw breath, the shuttle struck the first of the trees, jarring them upwards with a force that snapped Johnny's teeth together and smacked Middenface's head back against his chair. The blows were constant after that as the shuttle ploughed through the top layers of the trees, branches snapping off as it passed, each slowing it down just a tiny bit, but none strong enough to resist its vast momentum.

There was nothing Johnny could do now but cling on for dear life.

Several kilometres above him, in the upper reaches of the atmosphere, clinging on was all Red could do too. When the entire top half of the ship had torn off, the contents of the cabin had whooshed away with it. As the wreckage plummeted towards the planet's surface below, the only thing holding Red back from certain death was the chair leg to which she was clinging with all her might. Beside her, the Blimp was holding on to Red's legs with an equal tenacity. Red felt like she was being stretched on the rack.

The Blimp shouted something to her, but her words were ripped away by the wind.

"What?" Red shouted back.

"Chutes!" the Blimp screamed. The words seemed to use up the last reserves of her energy, and her hands lost their grip on Red's legs. Frantic, Red twisted round and grabbed her arm, fighting the immense forces pulling against her. For once, the Blimp's body mass was a benefit, the softness of her flesh allowing Red's fingers to sink deep into it, securing a grip. It must have hurt like hell, but the Blimp didn't say anything.

"Where?" Red roared at her.

The Blimp looked at her, blank-eyed, paralysed with fear.

Red dug her nails even deeper into the other mutant's arm. "Where?!" she repeated.

After an agonising second, the Blimp shouted back, "Under... the... chair!"

Red turned her head, tried to peer underneath the seat that was her anchor. Around them, the air was getting warmer. The shattered remnants of the ship were beginning to burn, overheating as they tore through the ever-thickening atmosphere. Red and The Blimp would fry long before they smashed to death on the planet's surface. It wasn't much of a consolation.

But the Blimp was right. There was an anti-grav chute pinned beneath the chair. With it, Red might just have a chance. Trouble was, to get it, she needed a hand, and one hand was currently engaged in the crucial task of clinging on to the chair for dear life. The other was holding on to the Blimp.

Red only had to think about it for a moment. She let go of the chair, grabbed for the chute, and hoped.
4 / HANGING AROUND

His whole world was dark. It was also extremely painful.

After a few moments, Johnny realised that he must have been knocked unconscious. A few more moments and he remembered why. The crash. Which meant he must have survived it. But what about Middenface?

A loud groan followed by a stream of swearing from his left reassured him that Middenface was still with him, if not exactly fine. He decided it was about time he opened his eyes.

The first sight to greet him was a snapped-off branch, sparkling with shards of glass from its journey through the viewscreen, its jagged edge poised centimetres from his left eye. An icy flush passed through his body. If the shuttle had stopped just a few milliseconds later... Very carefully, he released himself from the security webbing which had save his life, and climbed stiffly out of his chair. His cheek scraped on the branch as he squeezed past. Beside him, Middenface was doing the same thing.

Once they were free, they both spun round, examining the damage to the shuttle. No doubt about it, it was a wreck. The branch that had smashed its way in through the front was just the most obvious piece of damage. The roof, miraculously, had survived relatively unscathed. But the floor was buckled and broken where it had scraped and bounced over the rock-strewn ground before finally coming to a halt. Every loose piece of equipment in the cabin had been flung against one wall or another, denting them and in some cases starting small fires which still smouldered as they watched. The instruments were very definitely dead.

"Weel," said Middenface, "looks like we'll be finding our own way hame."

From the outside - once they had blasted the jammed door open and eased their way through the smoking hole - the shuttle looked, if anything, even worse. And Johnny noticed something else, too. When he had first seen the trees of the forest as they plummeted towards them, they had been dusted with the vibrant green foliage of early spring. Now, the colour of the leaves was hidden behind the puffs of pale pink and purple and yellow blossom which hung from every branch. The air was heavy with the smell of pollen. Time was racing around them, and they couldn't afford to waste any more.

Middenface too was peering round at the dense jungle, a thoughtful look on his face. He turned to Johnny, having to raise his voice slightly to be heard over the hooting and tweeting of the invisible wildlife all around them. "I dinnae suppose we've still got the trackers?" he said.

Johnny held up the mangled remains of the device that Delater had given them. It had been intended to allow them to keep track of their position on the surface, to locate other members of the team if they got separated, and - most important of all - to home in on what Delater believed to be the location of O'Blarney's base.

There was no way in hell it would do any of those things ever again.

"I thought not," said Middenface. "So just how are we going tae find oor arses from oor elbows in this mess?"

Johnny shrugged. "Keep walking in a straight line till we hit something interesting."

"It's no' much o' a plan," Middenface protested.

"Got a better idea?" Johnny asked.

At that moment, the horizon was lit up with a brilliant streak of fire, as something hurtled from the upper reaches of the atmosphere into the jungle. Moments after it landed, there was the fierce explosion of fusion engines going critical. The sonic boom reached them about ten seconds later. Johnny figured that meant the crash site was only a few kilometres away from their present position.

"Aye," Middenface said. "I say we head that way."

Johnny, already sweating in the jungle heat beneath his constricting armour, frowned. "Why? No way anyone walked away from that alive."

Middenface looked at him, his face lit with a smile which made it look suddenly boyish. "Got a better idea?" he asked.

Durham Red watched, mesmerised, as the ship plunged into the foliage a thousand metres below. For a moment it was lost to sight - then a fountain of molten debris burst upwards from the exploding wreckage. The shock waves rocked Red as she floated downward through the air.

She was floating an awful lot quicker than she would have liked. But that's what happened when two people shared one anti-grav chute, and one of them weighed in at well over two hundred kilos. The chute was made of energy, not matter, so Red couldn't see it actually buckling under the pressure. But she could certainly imagine it.

Red herself was buckling under the pressure too. The Blimp was clinging to her body with such force that Red was struggling to breathe. She suspected that a rib or two might be cracked, and if the pressure didn't ease up she wasn't sure how much longer she could last. She struggled, trying to loosen the other mutant's grip, but the Blimp just squeezed her arms all the tighter.

Red opened her mouth to swear at the other woman, then stopped, as she realised that there was a burning smell in the air, and it wasn't coming from the crash site now only seven hundred metres below them. It was coming from the control pod of the chute that Red was clasping tightly in both hands. As soon as she'd registered the smell, she noticed that her hands were getting very warm. The pod was heating up. It was overheating.

"Sneck!" Red swore. Couldn't life cut them just one break?

Apparently not, for after only a few seconds, the heat from the chute became so intense, so painful, that Red had to consciously force herself to keep hold of it. She bit through her lip with the effort and her mouth was flooded with the warm copper flavour of her own blood. The taste instantly set her salivary glands flowing and an unhuman hunger started gnawing at her guts. It had been a long time since she'd eaten. Too long. She looked longingly at the Blimp's neck, white and exposed beneath her chin where the mutant's head pressed against her chest. It would be easy, so easy...

She snapped out of her bloodlust at the Blimp's scream of fear. At the same time, she realised that the burning sensation in her hands had stopped. The chute's control pod was now icy cold. Her moment of relief turned to horror as she realised that the chute had burnt itself out. Gravity would be able to have its way with them again.

She looked down as the mass of flower-strewn vegetation rushed up to meet them. They were still two hundred metres above the trees - but not for much longer.

Standing beside the beautifully crafted bulk of his ship, the _Warfly_ , Carl Kale looked at his team with pride. On the way down, they had seen the fate that befell the other mutants' ships, too ill-prepared or too ill-equipped to deal with the defences around Epsilon Five. Only the ship belonging to the dark-clad mutant called One-Eyed Jack had landed safely, but even that seemed to have caught some laser fire on the way.

That hadn't been a problem for Team X. After months of training together in the Doghouse - the home base for every Strontium Dog, housed in a satellite orbiting the Earth - he had melded this disparate group of mutants into a coherent and unbeatable fighting force. They were more than ready for their first mission together. Carl frowned. Of course, he'd rather they hadn't been undertaking it for the galaxy's most wanted criminal, but it wasn't as if they had much choice and - his frown lifted - they were hunting down another criminal, so that was probably all right.

He looked up at his team-mates, ranked in an orderly line ahead of him. "Stand easy, mutants," he said, and they all relaxed, but - he was happy to see - didn't slouch. Except for Min Qi Man, who didn't have much choice. The strontium radiation which had given each of them their unique mutation had endowed him with a simian form that didn't take well to standing upright.

Beside Min Qi Man stood the Sloth, a three metre-tall, muscular, fur-covered behemoth. As Carl watched, he stabbed a nail into the golden down covering his chest. He pulled it out with a small insect - possibly a tick - wriggling on its tip. His tongue darted out and licked the tiny morsel off. Carl shuddered, and turned his attention to Enigma, looking as beautiful as ever. Her expression half-bored, half-hidden by the sweep of jet-black hair that fell across her face, she was staring at a chipped flake of varnish on one of her nails. Beside her, Woman Man was nervously biting hers.

"Well," Carl said, striving for a jovial yet business-like tone, "we've landed."

"More'n we can say for those other poor souls," the Sloth said in his slow, deep voice.

Min Qi Man leapt in the air, performing a perfect somersault to land easily on his toes. "The world turns. Those who do not turn with it fall."

"Indeed," Carl said, nodding wisely, as if he had the faintest idea what his fellow mutant was talking about. "However, it should be a lesson to us too. We can't afford to become complacent. This planet is a very dangerous place, and if we let our guard down for a moment we're likely to suffer the consequences. I'd hate to lose any of you."

"That's so beautiful," Enigma said. After a moment of pleasure, he realised that she wasn't referring to his words. She was staring at a small, jewel-like bird that was hovering in the air an arm's length away from him. With his enhanced senses - a product of the enlarged nose, eyes and ears which marked him as a mutant - he could hear the faint, high-pitched buzz of its wings, and smell the sweet scent of the nectar on which it must have been feeding. Its wings were so blue they seemed to radiate the colour into the air around it.

He realised he'd been staring at the bird mesmerised for a few seconds, and shook his head impatiently. "Really," he said to Enigma, "I think we have more important things to worry about, don't you?"

As if it had heard him, the buzzing little creature spun in his direction. He had one moment to marvel at the tiny perfection of its beak and the twinkling pinpricks of its eyes. Then it shifted the angle of its wings and - faster than any eye, even his, could see - flew straight at him.

While the rest of Team X watched in paralysed horror, the hummingbird flew straight through Carl's body.

Milliseconds later, it emerged to hover the other side, its plumage now a deep scarlet. Carl remained standing for one second longer, a look of slight surprise on his face. He opened his mouth, as if to say something - but no words emerged, just a gush of blood. Then his knees buckled and he collapsed, dead, to the ground.

The last hundred metres of the fall were the worst. Red could see every single twig, branch and thorn that was about to be making contact with her flesh at approximately fifty-six metres per second. The Blimp - who, despite the futility of clinging on to Red when the anti-grav chute she held was no longer working, had refused to let go - was screaming continuously in her ear. The noise was swept away as it was uttered, lost in the howling wind of their descent.

Then the Blimp stopped screaming and a look of revelation came over her face. She opened her mouth to shout, but Red couldn't make out what she was saying, though it seemed to include the words "emergency" and "back-up." Realising she wasn't being understood, The Blimp reached out desperately with one meaty hand and wrenched the chute's control pod from Red's grip. She did something to it, pressed some button Red couldn't see, and a snow white, genuine silk parachute emerged from the unit to float beautifully above them.

A second after it had fully extended, they struck the trees.

The pain was worse than Red could have imagined, like a hundred hammers and claws banging and tearing at her flesh. To make matters worse, the emergency chute which the Blimp had remembered far too late had tangled them in its folds, making movement, any attempt to stop or ease their fall, impossible.

They tumbled through layer after layer of branches, each one slowing them a little, but wounding them more. Red felt a hot red agony in her side as one branch ripped through her armour and skin to tear open the flesh beneath. Tangled with her in the parachute, the Blimp seemed unconscious, maybe dead.

Finally they stopped. For a few seconds, Red merely tried to regain her breath, to steady her heart and head. It was some time before her eyes were able to focus, the green blur around her resolving into the riotous colours of the jungle canopy. She was, she realised, hanging upside down, facing the loamy floor of the jungle.

They were still more than twenty metres above the ground. Beneath them, there were no more branches to break the fall. Very carefully, Red tried to move. It was impossible. The parachute was wrapped tightly around her, pinning her arms to her sides. Even her head was held immobile in a tangle of wires and ropes. Suspended above her in the tree, she could feel the huge bulk of the Blimp.

Red shouted out the mutant's name. Silence. She thought the other mutant had probably been killed in the fall. In which case she was stuck in a tree, in a jungle, twenty metres above the ground, with a corpse. Gritting her teeth, she shouted again.

There was a muted groaning from above her. Then she felt the Blimp's vast bulk stir in its silk moorings.

As it did, the branch holding them creaked ominously. Red froze. Above her, she felt the Blimp freeze too. That branch was all that stood between them and death. As she listened, with bated breath, she heard it creak again. A little louder this time.

Very gently, being careful to move only her mouth as she did it, Red called out, "Help!"

Beneath them, out of Red's limited range of vision, One-Eyed Jack looked up at the two mutants hanging so perilously from the slenderest of branches - then shrugged and walked away.
5 / ANGER MANAGEMENT

It was a hard slog through the dense undergrowth of the jungle. The machete Middenface had been using to hack and slash a clear path in front of them was beginning to feel like a dead weight in his hand. The sweet smell of the blossom around him had stopped being pleasant and started being nauseating about half an hour ago, aided and abetted by the odour of sulphurous decay from the mulch beneath their feet. He paused for a moment to wipe the dripping sweat from his brow.

He was knackered. But more than that, he was no longer at all sure they were heading in the right direction. It was just so easy to get disoriented in the jungle, where visibility went little further than the tip of his nose, and every square metre of it looked like every other dank green square metre. The only way they'd be able to get their bearings would be by climbing a tree. Middenface looked up at the nearest, at its gnarly brown trunk stretching into the impenetrable canopy above them. He didn't relish the thought.

Behind him, Johnny stopped too. "Need me to take the lead for while?" he asked.

Middenface shook his head. "Naw, just gi' me a second, I'll be back tae fighting form." Middenface knew that for all Johnny's smarts and all his tactical skills, when it came to brute strength Middenface beat him by a whisker. And he'd rather do the grunt work now, hacking away at the jungle for as long as it took, so Johnny was sharp and ready for action when any real action came.

All his life, Middenface had relied on no one but himself. Then he'd found Johnny, and he didn't mean to lose him in a hurry - there weren't many men around you could trust to watch your back. Besides, he kind of liked the daft gowk.

Realising he'd been wool-gathering for a good few minutes, he shook himself like a dog and made to move off. The top half of his body obliged. The bottom half, which had become inexplicably attached to the ground, didn't - and he toppled forward onto his face.

"What in the name o' the wee man..." he shouted as he twisted round to see what had attacked him, his machete raised for attack. It took him a moment to register that there was no one there. And another moment to realise that the reason he couldn't move his legs was that they had been tightly wound around with vines. As he watched, the vines crept another two centimetres further up his leg. That's when he realised what was happening. The wee scunners were growing, four hundred times faster than they should. From their point of view, he must have been standing still for nearly a whole day.

Behind him, Johnny was carefully slicing away the vines that had imprisoned his own legs. Middenface used his machete to do the same, having to saw the knife to cut through the fibrous plants. "I've only been here an hour and I already hate this place," he said to Johnny.

"You never know, it could grow on you," Johnny said, straight-faced.

Middenface groaned. "You'll nae be gettin' many gigs wi' material like that," he said. Freed of the vines now, he clambered to his feet.

Johnny suddenly spun round, his body tense and alert. When Middenface opened his mouth to ask what was up, Johnny held up his hand, silencing him. Middenface looked around, straining to see or hear what was bothering Johnny. But as far as he could see it was just the same dull old jungle all around.

Then, faintly, he heard it. Drifting over the gentle breeze, almost drowned out by the cacophony of tweeting and screeching coming from the jungle's inhabitants, someone was calling out for help.

With renewed determination, Middenface raised his machete and began to slash a path towards the source of the noise.

Not far away, but totally out of sight, the remaining members of Team X looked at the fallen body of their leader.

The tiny bird that had killed him had flown off many minutes ago, oblivious to the havoc it had wreaked. But they had remained frozen in place, unable to countenance what had happened.

In the time they had been standing there, decay had already claimed Carl Kale's body. The huge lobes of his ears had been eaten away by invisible parasites, reducing them to a lacy network of cartilage. His eyes were long gone, the empty black sockets now staring up accusingly at his former team-mates. As they watched, a small maggot-like creature flopped out of one of the holes and scurried across his face to disappear into his nose. There was a tiny pause, then a horde of the wriggling white creatures emerged to crawl down their leader's corpse like the smallest, most chaotic army in the world. In their wake they left nothing but bone, and the tattered remains of his uniform.

It was when the maggots started eating Carl's tongue that Enigma suddenly broke out of her paralysis. She spun round, sank to her knees, and vomited the contents of her stomach into the bushes.

The cries for help grew louder as Middenface and Johnny hacked their way towards them. After a short while, the first voice was joined by another, deeper one. Middenface was pretty sure by now that the voices belonged to Durham Red and the huge mutant who had introduced herself as the Blimp.

Suddenly the voices weren't coming from ahead of them. They were coming from above them. Middenface looked up but there was nothing to see, just the usual dense layer of leaves and, hanging from one branch, what looked like an enormous white cocoon. Middenface didn't fancy sticking around to see whatever insect was going to emerge from that.

"Middenface, Johnny - is that you?" said a voice that he now definitely recognised as Red's. He peered intently into the gloom of the canopy, but he just couldn't see where it was coming from.

Johnny was looking up too, squinting into the darkness. Middenface recognised the intense expression on his face. Johnny was using the strange powers of his eyes, the alpha rays which could penetrate both solid objects and the insubstantial mysteries of the mind. After a moment, his expression cleared, and he shouted up, "I see ya, Red!"

"Where?" Middenface asked him.

"That white thing - I think they're tangled up in their chute," Johnny explained.

Middenface took a closer look at the cocoon. Johnny was right. Poking out from the bottom of it he could see the red-fringed white oval of the mutant vampire's face.

"Dinnae worry, lass, we'll get ye doon!" he shouted to her.

Even from twenty metres away, he could read the expression of annoyance on Red's face. "It's not getting down that's the problem, you moron," she said. "This branch is about to snap."

"Now then, honey," another huskier voice said from somewhere above Red, "there's no need to take that tone - the boys are only trying to help."

In the tree, Red twisted her face in an attempt to face her fellow mutant, but she was held too tightly in the parachute's silk grip. "Yeah, well we wouldn't need their help if you didn't weigh about five tonnes."

"See, there you go again, venting your anger on an innocent bystander. Now me, I have great self-restraint. It's one of my strengths as a person."

"Yeah, well, it's a pity that doesn't include self-restraint in the eating department," Red gritted.

Johnny shouted up again, forestalling any reply the Blimp might have made. "I reckon if you can get yourself free, the chute should break your fall. The ground down here's pretty soft. Long as you're not coming down too fast, you should be fine."

Red glared down at the circle of his head below her. It was barely visible from this distance, only his blazing eyes shining clearly in the gloom. "We can't get free," she shouted. "We're too tangled up."

"Leave it tae me, hen!" Middenface replied.

Before she could protest, the tiny stick of his arm lifted up and a bright flash emerged from somewhere around his fingertips. Almost instantaneously, Red felt the burning agony of a laser wound in her right leg, and smelt the horrible burning smell of her own flesh.

She cried out in mingled pain and anger. "Stop it! You're gonna kill us, you Scottish cretin!"

Far below, Johnny had already put his arm on Middenface's. "We can pile some more leaves down here to break your fall," he shouted to Red, "But you're gonna have to get yourselves free."

Red despaired. She'd felt such hope when Middenface and Johnny appeared so unexpectedly after an hour of fruitless cries for help. Johnny was arrogant and annoying and a hundred other negative things - but when it came to a fight, there was no one she'd rather have at her back. So to discover that he was as powerless as she... For about the tenth time that day, she contemplated the imminent possibility of her own death. It really pissed her off.

Then, as if she'd been paying no attention at all to the previous conversation, the Blimp said, "Of course, if I was angry, it sure as hell would make things easier for us."

"What?" Red snapped.

The Blimp shifted slightly above her, pushing Red's wounded leg further into the branch, which creaked a complaint and sank a little lower. Red was glad she couldn't see it more clearly. She suspected that it was now attached to the rest of the tree by little more than a splinter of wood.

"When I get angry, I get thin," the Blimp explained patiently. "It's like I was telling you, all this fat is just a reserve. My body uses it up when I get het up, kind of like fuel."

Red wanted to both hug and kill her. "So do it! Get angry!"

"Ain't as simple as that," the other mutant replied. "I've got to be provoked."

Red didn't think that should be too hard. "You useless lump of lard!" she shouted.

"No good," the Blimp replied calmly. "I've never been one to be sensitive about my weight."

"You're not just fat, you're ugly," Red said.

The Blimp laughed. "If I had a credit for every time someone told me that..."

Red groaned in frustration. Then, with a rush of relief, she remembered their argument aboard the ship, just before the crash. "I'm a vampire," she said. "To me all you are is a hunk of meat I can't wait to sink my teeth into. You're just food to me!"

The other mutant shrugged, pulling the silk chute tighter around them. "I know what I said to you earlier," she said, "but that was before you saved my life back on the ship. Far as I'm concerned, you can take all the blood you want, and my gratitude with it."

Red gritted her teeth in fury. "You useless, pathetic, stupid-"

Above her, the Blimp tensed. "What did you call me?" she asked in a suddenly menacing voice.

Red thought back. "Um... Useless? Pathetic? Stupid?"

From above her came a terrifying roar of rage. "Nobody calls me stupid!" the Blimp shouted in a voice that barely sounded human any more.

With a huge sense of elation, Red realised that the pressure on her body had relaxed. The weight pressing down on her, pulling the parachute tight around her, had lessened. She twisted round, trying to work herself free.

And came face to face with the demented creature that the Blimp had now become. The other mutant's lips were pulled back from her teeth, which were bared in a snarl of rage. All over her body, her veins were literally standing out from her flesh. Her muscles were knotted. As Red watched they seemed to writhe and grow, emerging from the shrinking flesh around them. With a fierce cry that sprayed spittle over Red's face, the Blimp lunged with her now skeletally thin hands and grabbed Red's throat.

Red felt as if her head was being squeezed from her body like toothpaste from a tube. She was utterly unable to breathe, her windpipe crushed shut. She clawed at the hands holding her, but couldn't shift them even a millimetre. The Blimp's strength was unbelievable.

Red tried to call out for help. Only a pathetic squeak emerged. She kicked out with legs, but she might as well have been hitting the other Strontium Dog with a feather. She could already feel her vision dimming as her body cried out for oxygen. With her last remaining strength, she kicked out again - this time at the branch above her.

Nothing.

Desperately, hopelessly, she kicked out again.

This time, it gave. With a sudden sharp crack, the branch broke away from the tree and the two mutants plummeted towards the earth, the freed chute blooming out above them in the humid jungle air.

When they crashed to the ground, the fall jarred the Blimp's hands loose from Red's neck and knocked her into unconsciousness. Red herself was semi-conscious from lack of oxygen, so her body was nice and relaxed for the impact. She spent a few moments with her eyes shut, revelling in being on the ground and - amazingly - in one piece.

When she opened them, it was to see the astonished faces of Middenface and Johnny peering down at her.

"Hey," she croaked, struggling to produce a noise through her bruised throat. "Don't tell me I don't know how to make an entrance."

Nearby, hidden in the jungle, a young woman peered at the frozen tableau in front of her. She had heard of the Glass People, of course - all the children in the village were brought up on bedtime stories of the humans who moved more slowly than the corn grew, and broke if you touched them. She had hoped, dreamed, that one day she might meet one, but she had never truly believed that day would come.

Never believed it, until she had watched the two strange women float down from high in the sky as gently as feathers. And then one of the two men, the dark-haired one, had turned so slowly towards her, and she'd got her first good glimpse of his ruggedly handsome face, his amazing white eyes. It was as if she'd been struck with a bolt of lightening.

It was at that point that something else she had never believed was possible had happened. At the age of eighteen, she'd fallen in love for the first time.
6 / FOLLOW MY LEADER

Every part of Red ached, and the parts that weren't aching were bleeding. Still, she was feeling a lot better than she had been ten minutes ago. Amazing what surviving a hideous plane crash followed by a near-terminal two thousand-metre drop could do for a girl's mood.

It was pretty amazing what the fall had done for the Blimp, too. Red glanced at the other mutant sitting beside her in the small clearing as Johnny led an impromptu council of war. The Blimp looked, quite literally, like a new woman. Her berserker rage gone as quickly as it had arrived, she was sitting cross-legged on the ground beside Red, idly running her fingers through her blonde curls. The reason she was able to sit cross-legged was that she had - in the course of her manic rage - shed roughly two-thirds of her body mass, eating up the excess fat to fuel her inhuman strength. What was left behind after the blubber had burned away was a curvaceous, quite stunningly attractive young woman. Middenface McNulty certainly seemed to think so - he, like Red, was staring at the Blimp rather than paying a blind bit of notice to what Johnny was saying.

Johnny frowned in annoyance at Middenface, then turned his attention to Red. "Don't suppose you managed to hang on to your tracking system in the fall?" he said.

Red's mouth twisted in annoyance. The heat, climbing to unbearable levels along with the sun, was making her irritable. "Yeah, that was at the forefront of my mind when I was plummeting to my death."

Johnny sighed. "Thought not."

"Tell you something though, honey," the Blimp said, "I sure got a good look at the scenery when I was coming down, and by my reckoning the mountains are thataway." She pointed to their left.

"That's where O'Blarney has his base, isnae that right?" Middenface asked, while continuing to look at the Blimp with a rapt expression.

"Yeah," Johnny said. "Assuming we're anywhere near where we're supposed to be, and not on another continent entirely."

"We'd better hope we're on the right land mass," Red said. "I don't care about the bounty, our ships are both toast. If we don't find O'Blarney we won't find a way off this planet."

"The lassie's right," Middenface agreed, briefly switching his attention to Red. "If we have tae cross an ocean to get tae the scunner, we'll be tae auld tae fight him."

"How far away were these mountains?" Johnny asked the Blimp.

"Hard to say," she told him. "Not more than a few days' travel, I reckon."

Johnny shook his head, then stood up. "Well, I guess we'd better get going. Not like we can afford to be wasting time."

Middenface also scrambled to his feet. "Least landing so far away should gi' us the element o' surprise."

Red pushed her sweat-soaked hair out of her eyes to stare incredulously at him. She'd never understood why Johnny - who was sharper than a micro-knife, and just as deadly - had chosen to pair himself with a dull blade like McNulty. "That's assuming he didn't see that little firework display we put on when we landed," she said.

"And that the first party of Strontium Dogs never made it far enough to tip him off," Johnny added, as he carefully checked the straps on his armour, tightening one on his shoulder with a sharp jerk.

Red looked at him, baffled. "First party?"

Middenface grinned at her, clearly delighted to have gained the conversational upper hand. "Aye, did ye naw ken? We had a visit from wee Craterheid Cleeg, looking just about ready for a telegram from the Queen o' England. Now ye might think he'd been using the wrong anti-wrinkle cream, but I reckon he was sent here before us, kind of an advance guard frae Delater. What do ye think, Johnny?"

"I think the same."

Red thought back to the meeting which had summoned her to this godforsaken place, and had a sudden moment of revelation. "Sneck!" she said. "I knew I recognised that messenger - it was Irish Meg."

"And he sent young Jiminy Cricket after me," the Blimp said. "Not so young any more, poor soul."

Red realised that her fists were clenched in anger. Irish Meg - a round-cheeked girl who looked like she ought to be milking cows, not hunting down criminals - had always been good to her. One of the few who was. "That bastard!" she said.

"Yeah," said Johnny, his eyes burning into hers. "You'll get no argument from me. So why don't we go and find O'Blarney before we end up the same way. And when we've dealt with O'Blarney, then we can deal with Delater."

For once, Red was in total agreement with Johnny. She checked her blaster, swung round in the direction of the mountains - then swung back round again, blaster raised, nerves quivering, to face the loud snapping sound that rang out from the thick jungle vegetation. Beside her, Johnny, Middenface and the Blimp had all done exactly the same.

Red's finger was poised over the trigger, millimetres away from sending certain death towards whatever was approaching. But even as she dropped to her knees to steady her aim, something prevented her from firing. The noise was just too loud; it was as if whatever was making it didn't care about being heard. Which meant either it wasn't an enemy at all, or it was an enemy so powerful that it had no reason to fear them.

Red had just reached the decision that it was probably the latter, in which case she might as well fire anyway, when she heard a voice float out of the jungle.

"Think they're... fifteen metres..." it said.

Middenface - kneeling to one side of her - instantly swung his blaster to aim for the voice's hidden source. Before he could fire, Johnny grabbed his arm. When Middenface looked questioningly at him, Red saw Johnny shake his head. But she noticed that he kept his blaster trained on the source of the voice as he did.

Then another voice came, clearer this time, and female. "I've walked through twenty kilometres of jungle. I've been bitten by about ten thousand insects, I've probably got leeches in places I don't want to know about. If this has been a wild goose chase, Min Qi, I am going to kill you."

Red relaxed. She recognised the voice.

A second later, its owner emerged into the clearing. It was the beautiful dark-haired Strontium Dog who called herself Enigma. Beside her were the two animal-like mutants - one huge and slow, lumbering on two legs, the other fast and monkey-like, scampering on four. Trailing behind them came a bland-faced, slightly ineffectual-looking woman.

As soon as they saw Red and the others, the newcomers stopped short. The monkey-like member of the team smiled. "As I told you," he said to his friends, "those who follow the path will never stray from the path."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Enigma said impatiently. Then she turned to Johnny with a suddenly brilliant smile. It was like someone had thrown a switch, lighting up her whole face. "Johnny Alpha, right?" she said. She moved up to him and put a hand on his arm. Red noticed that she let her breast brush against Johnny's side as she did, as if by accident.

"Yeah," Johnny said guardedly. "And you are?"

Enigma kept hold of his arm, while swinging round to point at the other newcomers. "The big guy calls himself the Sloth, that-" she pointed at the simian mutant, "is Min Qi Man. And that-" she waved at the pretty young woman in a way that was subtly but obviously dismissive "-is Woman Man."

The young woman stepped forward. "You can call me Jo," she said. "We're Team X."

The Sloth stepped forward, his movement so smooth and so slow he seemed to be flowing like treacle. "Brother, I'm mighty glad we found y'all. See, we've been a'talkin, and we reckon we'd like you to be our new leader."

Johnny didn't look overwhelmed with happiness at the idea.

Team X, Johnny soon found out, had been together for just three months. In that time they'd only been on one mission together, and that had been interrupted by Don Delater's summons before they'd seen any action. New recruits to the Strontium Dogs, they'd spent the remainder of their time training together, melding themselves into the kind of fighting team that would be feared by criminals the galaxy over. Or so their fallen leader had told them. Carl Kale had been a mutant with an idea. He'd been in the bounty hunting game a few months before the others. He'd even been on a mission - from which he'd returned without a perp, and without his left hand either.

Bounty hunting, he'd quickly realised, was a dangerous game. If you wanted to survive it, you'd better have back-up. So, as the other mutants had made their way to the Doghouse, he'd recruited them one by one to join his team. He'd persuaded them that together they could have something - discipline, a sense of belonging, a well-balanced mix of powers and abilities - which the other Strontium Dogs didn't have. It would give them an edge. It would keep them safe. The other mutants, green and scared, had leapt at the chance.

Then Carl Kale had got himself killed a few minutes into their first mission.

Now they wanted a new leader. Someone, Enigma acidly suggested, who actually knew what he was talking about.

Jo now smiled at Johnny encouragingly. "We've got a spare uniform and everything," she said.

Out of the corner of his eye, Johnny could see Red staring at him with barely disguised amusement. Middenface, on the other hand, was scowling. His partner seemed to think he might actually accept the offer.

"Look-" he said.

"Johnny dinnae need more partners," Middenface said hotly. "He's got me!"

Enigma scowled at him, her features suddenly looking petulant rather than pretty. "We weren't asking you," she said, then turned back to Johnny, her sultry smile instantly back in place. "Well?"

Johnny shook his head. "It's like the man said," he told her. Middenface grinned at him, looking relieved. It occurred to Johnny that McNulty liked their partnership, and didn't want anyone else sharing a piece of it. That was fine with Johnny: he liked their partnership too.

Team X, though, looked far from happy.

"Why not?" Woman Man asked. As she spoke, she glanced over Johnny's shoulder, eyeing the jungle nervously. All the rest of the team, Johnny noticed, kept darting nervous glances around them, jumping at the slightest sound. First battle jitters, Johnny thought. Some people learnt to deal with the fear, the constant presence of death hovering just over your shoulder, whispering into your ear that each second could be your last. Some people never did. It was too early to tell which way the members of Team X would go - and Johnny had no intention of nurse-maiding them while he found out.

The Sloth could clearly read Johnny's decision in his face. "We're one hell of a team," he said imploringly. "Second to none, Carl always said."

Red let loose with a throaty chuckle. "Yeah, I'm certainly impressed. Most people would wait at least an hour before getting their leader killed. I think you've set some kind of record."

Min Qi Man scampered up to her, his prehensile tail held high behind him in what Johnny guessed might have been a sign of anger. "The foolish man laughs in the face of the storm," he said to her. "The wise man builds a shelter."

Red's hand drifted closer to her blaster. "Are you calling me a fool?" she asked in a dangerously calm voice.

"I'm sorry, the answer's still 'no'," Johnny interrupted, before the situation could get out of hand. "Middenface and me work alone, and we'll catch O'Blarney alone. Red and the Blimp can tag along if they want-" he registered and enjoyed Red's irked look at this - "but rookies like you would just be dead weight. If you take my advice, you'll sit out the action here. We'll pick you up on our way back."

The members of Team X glared at him, even the previously imperturbable Sloth. Jo looked close to tears. "Well, of all the-" she said.

Then they heard the noise.

It was almost subliminal at first, a low dangerous hum that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once, as if the trees themselves were singing to them. But as they listened it became louder and louder, till it was almost painful. Blasters drawn, they spun to face the trees.

Nothing. There was nothing to see. But the noise was all around them. Whatever it was it seemed to be already among them. Where was it?

Middenface scowled round at the seemingly empty jungle. "Come oot, ye cowardly wee neep-heid!" he suddenly shouted, as if the tension had become too much for him. His brow was dripping with sweat. He raised a hand to wipe it from his eyes, and as he did, it seemed to stutter in the air, as if banging against some invisible obstacle. Middenface let out a cry of pain, and clutched his arm to his chest. Johnny could see a large red welt rapidly rising on the white flesh of his companion's wrist. The hum ratcheted up a notch, so that Johnny had to fight to stop himself clasping his hands over his ears. The sense of imminent threat was sending the adrenaline pumping round his body, quickening his heartbeat, knotting his gut and bringing out an ice-cold perspiration on his face.

Then, suddenly, he realised. "Bees!" he said.

"Where?" the Blimp asked, head turning from side to side.

"Everywhere," Johnny said. "They're all around us."

"But how-"

"They're moving too fast for us to see."

The Blimp spun round quickly, as if believing she might be able to catch one of the creatures in mid-flight.

"Stand still!" Johnny shouted at her. "If you move, you'll-"

It was too late. The buzzing around the blonde mutant heightened in pitch and - for a fraction of second - Johnny got a glimpse of the bee as it readied itself to plunge its needle-sharp sting into the Blimp's arm. The creature was huge, at least as big as Johnny's fist, its bulbous body marked with broad red and green stripes. The Blimp shouted and clutched her chest as the creature plunged in its sting, penetrating her thick body armour with ease.

She cried out again, and Johnny knew that another of the creatures had attacked her. Then another. From the size of the things, he guessed that each contained enough venom to paralyse a small animal. He doubted the Blimp could survive many more stings.

As the beleaguered mutant curled in on herself in a protective foetal ball, Johnny aimed his blaster at the air around her, but the creatures didn't stay still long enough to afford him a clean shot. And he feared that any attempt to kill one of them would merely enrage the others.

His mouth filled with bile, the bitter taste of his helplessness. A fellow Strontium Dog was dying in front of his eyes, and he could do nothing. And when the bees had finished with her, the rest of them were sitting targets. He glared into the air, alpha rays spilling like fire from his eyes, but their enemy remained invisible to him.

To his left, Enigma suddenly shouted out in pain and dropped to her knees. For a moment he thought she'd been stung, but then he saw the look of intense concentration on her face. Her hands were pressed to the sides of her head as if trying to hold it together.

"Whit's the matter, hen?" Middenface asked.

"Trying... to ... slow... them... down," the dark-haired mutant said, every word an immense effort.

For a moment, Johnny didn't understand. Then, he saw it, the air around them suddenly filling with red-green streaks. As he watched, the streaks shortened, finally resolving into the shapes of bees, flying quickly - but no longer unnaturally quickly - through the air all around them. There were hundreds of the creatures. Johnny flinched as two flew within millimetres of his face.

Somehow, Enigma was holding the bees with her mind. Her mutation wasn't outside her body, it was in her head: telekinetic powers stronger than Johnny had ever seen.

Enigma's face was very pale and a thin trickle of blood leaked from her nose. "Can't hold them for long," she forced out between gritted teeth.

Before Johnny could react, Min Qi Man went into action. The simian bounty hunter moved with an amazing fluid grace, twirling and spinning and jumping through the air almost faster than the eye could follow. In his hands he held two swords, one long, one short, which twirled and danced through the air with him, leaving a wake of light reflected from their burnished steel behind them. Everywhere the blades went, they found the bodies of the bees, slicing and dicing the creatures, dropping them in twitching lumps on the ground.

It was beautiful, and deadly, and quite incredible. The Strontium Dogs stood and watched with awe. The Blimp - free now of her attackers thanks to Min Qi Man - straightened and stared at her saviour in wonder.

Johnny used his blaster - the number three heat beam cartridges - to pick off a few more. But the other mutant didn't need his help and besides, if Johnny carried on shooting he was in danger of hitting Min Qi Man himself, who performed a startling triple somersault as Johnny watched, his swords flashing and chopping as he did, catching every bee in their path. Within a minute, their attackers were just a red-green pulp on the ground.

Min Qi Man landed on his feet, resheathed his swords and - hands pressed together in front of him - executed a small bow to his fellow mutants. He didn't even seem to be breathing heavily.

There was a moment's pause, then the Strontium Dogs let out a ragged, relieved cheer. The Blimp applauded loudly, and Middenface clapped Min Qi Man so hard on the back he nearly knocked him over.

Only Enigma failed to join in. She was still crouched, her face twisted in agony.

"It's okay," Johnny told her. "You can stop now."

The dark-haired woman shook her head. She tried to speak, but nothing emerged except a pained gasp. With what looked like a supreme effort, she tried again. "Still one more..." she said, her voice little more than a whisper.

Johnny looked up - and saw exactly what she meant.

There was one more. But it wasn't just another bee. It was huge - as large as a cow. Larger. Its sting alone was longer than Johnny and dripping with virulent yellow venom. And it was moving towards him, faster and faster, as Enigma's power finally gave out, unable to cope with an object so large and so strong. By the time he saw it, it was only an arm's length from him.

Johnny shouted to warn the others, raised his blaster and fired in one hyper-fast move.

The huge creature which could only be the queen bee, was faster still, and far too close. It barrelled into Johnny, knocking his blaster from his hand. The shot went wide, searing into a tree which burst into flame as Johnny was thrown to the ground. For one frozen moment, he saw the creature poised above him, its lethal sting ready to plunge into his heart.

His life didn't flash before his eyes. There was too much of it for that. But he had a very sudden clear memory of the father he'd disowned, that mutant-hating old monster Nelson Kreelman, and the look in his eyes when Johnny defied him for the first time. And Johnny thought: I stood up to you, I stood up for my people, and in the end that's what really matters.

Then the vast creature disappeared, swept out of his field of vision to be crushed against a nearby tree. Its body exploded, green goo splashing out from the corpse to splatter against Johnny's chest, burning acidly where it touched.

He looked up, to see the huge furry body of the Sloth standing over him. Clutched in one of the mutant's hands was an entire tree, one end covered in leaves and the other a tangle of brown and white roots still dripping soil. The Sloth had swatted the queen bee. Johnny, giddy with relief at his unexpected reprieve, found himself fighting not to laugh.

"Thanks," he said gruffly.

"Y'all are welcome," the huge mutant said. He leant down and offered a hand, pulling Johnny to his feet with casual strength. Johnny scooped up his blaster and re-holstered it, then looked round for Enigma.

He saw that the Blimp and Min Qi Man were crouched by her side. Enigma had managed to pull herself into a sitting position, but still looked pale and very weak. The Blimp started prodding her body, searching for damage.

Enigma irritably swatted the larger mutant's hands away. "I'm fine," she said. Then her eyes sought and held Johnny's. "Still want to leave us behind?" she asked.

Johnny allowed himself a small tight smile. "Reckon we can probably find a use for you if you want to come along," he said.

And then there was another rustling in the bushes. Every gun was drawn within a nanosecond of hearing it, nerves on high alert after the events of the last few minutes. Middenface was the nearest. Without a moment's hesitation he flung himself on the dark figure which pushed its way out of the foliage and wrestled it to the ground. His raised his fist, ready to smash it down into this latest threat.

Then, simultaneously, they all recognised the newcomer. It was One-Eyed Jack. Middenface halted his fist millimetres from the other mutant's nose. "Well, nice o' ye tae join us," he said, rocking back on his heels.

One-Eyed Jack scrambled to his feet and stared around at his fellow Strontium Dogs, his expression unreadable, his good blue eye as inscrutable as the eye which wasn't there. "Why?" he said. "Have I missed something?"
7 / OUT OF THE WOODS

It took them four more hours to leave the jungle behind them. It wasn't an easy journey. Vegetation sprouted minute by minute to block their path and they were constantly and uncomfortably aware of the jungle animals, unseen but everywhere around them. They'd been spared another attack and eventually the vast trees became smaller, less densely packed and the ground beneath them was beginning to show a few hints of green grass as sunlight was finally able to penetrate the canopy of leaves and nurture life on the jungle floor.

Soon, the trees became the exception and the grass the norm. The landscape around them was no longer jungle but a tropical savannah, a huge undulating field of grass, showing swatches of silver and yellow as the wind blew across it. For the first time since they had landed on the planet, the horizon became visible. In the distance, a glittering blue expanse of water could be seen. Their path, according to the tracking devices which both One-Eyed Jack and Enigma still carried, would take them in that direction.

It was almost beautiful. After the claustrophobia of the jungle, the huge expanse of sky above them should have been a welcome relief. But it made Middenface feel somehow too visible, like a bug pinned on a board for someone to admire. Still, it was good to be spared the endless racket of the jungle creatures. Here, the wildlife was bigger and - most welcome of all - slower. In the distance, Middenface could even make out the giant brown shapes of some sort of grazing animals drifting over the plain.

But it was an animal nearer to him that he found more interesting. As Johnny called a halt for lunch, Middenface manoeuvred himself to sit next to the Blimp. She smiled at him as he did, a friendly twinkle in her eyes. Her blonde curls glowed gold in the midday sunlight.

"In all the hurry, we havenae been properly introduced," Middenface said, holding out his hand as he made himself comfortable on a convenient rock. "The name's Archibald, but folks call me Middenface."

The Blimp took his hand in one of hers. Her skin was calloused from her weapons - as all of theirs was - but smooth and dry. "Can't see why anyone would call you that, honey," she said. "There's nothing wrong with your face from where I'm sitting."

Middenface felt himself blushing. He dropped his eyes but couldn't keep a pleased smile from his face. "Aye, weel - I wouldnae call you a Blimp either, hen. Is there another name I can call ye, somethin' mare pretty."

It was the Blimp's turn to blush. "My momma called me Rose," she said, "before she realised I was a mutant. After that, the names she called me weren't so nice."

"She was a norm, ye mam, aye?" Middenface asked.

"Sure thing," the Blimp said. "My pappa too. When I was born he disowned me and my momma, said she musta been playing around. She wanted him back, so soon as she could, she sent me to live in the Norleans ghetto. I was only five." She was silent a moment, then smiled again. "But everyone here must have the same story, or one very like."

"Aye," said Middenface, gazing into the distance. "It's a bottle o' bells tae a bent bawbee that nae mam'll be dancin' fer joy when she finds oot her babbie's a mutie." Suddenly, his eye was caught by something, a flicker of movement a few metres in front of him. For a second, he thought he saw what it was - a young woman, dressed in simple clothes, looking straight at him. Then, in the blink of an eye, she was gone. "Did ye see that?" he asked the Blimp.

"See what?" she asked.

Middenface squinted, but whatever it was he had seen was definitely no longer there. "Doesnae matter," he said. "Must ha' been a trick o' the light." Shrugging it off, he began unpacking some food from his backpack, spreading out an array of dried ration packs in front of him.

The Blimp eyed these hungrily but said nothing. Of course, he realised, she and Red had lost all their supplies in the crash. He held out one of the packs towards her. "Here, have one o' mine," he said.

"Thanks," she said, "I knew you had a kind face." She grabbed the pack, pulled the small silver lever on the side, waited a few seconds for the food to warm and rehydrate - then emptied the entire contents into her mouth and swallowed it.

She must have realised that Middenface was staring at her, stunned, because she gave him a sheepish grin. "Sorry," she said. "Need to build up my strength."

Middenface grinned. "Dinnae worry aboot it. I like a lassie wi' a guid appetite." He held out another two packs towards her, which she snatched and dispatched in equally short measure. Middenface's grin widened. "Just ya wait til I've had a chance tae do some brewing. Way things are doon here, I should be able to get some hame brew ready in nae time at all. And then ye and me can ha' a party!"

Johnny was already beginning to regret letting the members of Team X join their expedition. They might be good in a fight, but were they really worth the aggravation?

It didn't help that Red sat to one side of them, her expression slyly amused as she watched Jo pester Johnny with endless, trivial questions.

"So, do you think we should eat one food pack each now, or share one, or is it better to eat two to keep our strength up after the fight?" Jo was saying, peering into his eyes earnestly.

Johnny counted to ten before replying. "I think you should make your own minds up," he said.

"Carl always told us what to eat," Jo said in an accusing voice.

"I'm not Carl!" Johnny snapped.

"But you said you'd be our leader," Jo said. "What's the point of a leader who doesn't make decisions?"

"I don't wanna be your leader. I said you could tag along, that's all."

"But someone's got to make decisions, right? Someone's got to say when we stop, how we fight O'Blarney, that kind of thing, right?"

"I guess," Johnny admitted grudgingly.

Jo grinned. "In that case, how many packets of food do you think I should eat?"

Johnny couldn't stop himself from groaning.

Concerned, Jo put her hand on his arm. "Are you okay?" she asked.

To one side of him, Red saw the other mutant touch Johnny and frowned. It had seemed amusing at first, but if the woman was going to distract Johnny from the job in hand, that wasn't good news for any of them.

She continued to glare at Woman Man until a heavy thump announced the arrival of another figure beside her. It was the large, hirsute form of The Sloth.

"Don't worry," he said morosely. "She ain't about to thieve your man."

Red stiffened. "Johnny is not my man!" she said indignantly.

"Really?" said The Sloth. "Oh." He looked a little sad.

It occurred to Red that he'd been hoping that Johnny was taken and therefore not available. "After her yourself, are you?" she asked.

The Sloth sighed. "Kinda. But there's someone else."

"Another man?" Red asked.

"No, another woman."

"Right," Red said. Each to their own.

The Sloth turned his big brown eyes on her. Up close, they looked soulful and sincere. "I love her," he said. "Always have. First time I clapped eyes on her I was all shook up - know what I mean?"

"Yeah," Red said, her eyes wandering back to Johnny and Woman Man. "But if she can't be faithful to you, she isn't worth the trouble."

The Sloth rested his chin on one massive furry fist. "Oh, she's faithful all right," he said. "Faithful as a hound dog. The trouble isn't her - it's him."

Red frowned. "What, Johnny? But he's only just met her."

The Sloth looked at her. "Why do you think she's called Woman Man?" he asked

Red shrugged. "I don't know. Because she's as tough as a man?"

The Sloth snorted. Red looked over at the mutant in question, hands fluttering delicately in front of her mouth at something Johnny had said. She had to admit, it didn't seem likely. "Why then?" she asked.

The big mutant leant back on his elbows. "Just y'all keep on watching," he said.

Ten minutes later they were on the road again, walking across the great swathe of grassland, their progress impossible to discern in that endlessly unchanging landscape. Johnny was taking point, leading the group on. To his disgust, he was still being trailed by Jo. Suddenly, he spotted a flicker of movement a little way to his left. He spun to face it, pulling his blaster from its holster.

Jo looked at him in concern. "What's the matter?"

He waited a moment longer, but the grass remained unblemished. Nothing disturbed its wind-swept tranquillity, no further hint of movement. Maybe it had been his imagination - there was no doubt he was twitchy. "Forget it," he told her, holstering his weapon and resuming his forward march. "Just being careful."

Jo seemed to accept that without question. Her utter trust in Johnny should have been touching. Instead, it irritated the hell out of him. Wulf had trusted Johnny and look where it got him - dead. Now no one, not even Middenface, was allowed to rely on Johnny too much.

But Jo continued to look at him with big, guileless eyes. "You're from New Britain, aren't you?" she said.

"Spent some time there," he said, still looking straight ahead, scanning the horizon for possible threats. His past wasn't something he cared to talk about, even with his closest friends.

"I'm from the Isle of Sark MPC," she said.

Johnny, despite himself, was a little impressed. The Mutant Penal Colony of Sark was said to be a hellhole of the first order. The kind of people who got sent there were outcasts amongst outcasts, a group with a fair claim to the title Scum of the Earth. If Jo had survived a childhood there, she must be tougher than she looked. "Hear it's no picnic," he said to her, finally looking her in the eye.

Jo shrugged. "It was my home. I learnt to get by. My mutation helped, helped me... fit in, I suppose, be whatever I needed to be, or whatever people wanted me to be."

Johnny frowned. "So what exactly do you do? I think I've got the rest of them figured out - Enigma's telekinetic, pretty powerful too. Monkey Man's got some kind of kung fu voodoo going, Sloth's the brawn of the outfit." He eyed her thoughtfully. "I'm guessing you're not the brains. So what makes you so useful to the group?"

Jo looked sheepish. Then, after a moment, she mumbled, "I read objects."

"What?" Johnny said.

"I read objects," she said louder and more defiantly. "Give me anything and I can tell you exactly what it is and where it came from."

Johnny couldn't contain a dry bark of laughter. "You must really have the criminals running scared."

Jo scowled at him. "Carl said I'd be invaluable on missions. I could help with tracking people down and... and he said that sometimes criminals left booby traps and I'd be able to stop them because I'd know exactly what they were."

Johnny looked at her expressionlessly. "He told you that, did he?"

Jo was silent for a while. "I think he just felt sorry for me," she said eventually.

She looked on the point of tears. Johnny was annoyed to realise he felt ashamed. "Well, maybe he thought you had potential," he said reluctantly.

Jo beamed. "Do you really think so?"

Johnny tried to sound sincere as he looked her in the eye. "We can all change, right?"

Jo opened her mouth to reply and as she did, her face changed, distorting and stretching and growing, strange muscles bulging under the skin as it moved.

Alarmed, Johnny grabbed her arm. "What's happening?" he asked. "Are you okay?"

And then, in a second, it was over. The nauseating crawling motion of the other mutant's skin stopped, and the face beneath settled into a firm, steady shape.

A different shape.

A very male shape.

Johnny jumped back from the newcomer, drawing his blaster and pressing the barrel hard against the man's heart. "You got two seconds to tell me what's going on," he said.

The newcomer frowned, the expression sitting comfortably on his rugged, handsome face. "I'm Joe," he said.

Not seeming to care about the blaster still pointed at his chest, he turned away from Johnny and resumed the march, his dark eyes darting left and right, his hand poised twitchily over his holstered weapon.

After a second, Johnny got it. He strode after the other mutant. "You're Woman Man," he said.

The other man's eyes flicked to his. "Yeah," he said gruffly. He looked at Johnny, his mouth chewing, as if unsure whether to spit out or swallow his words. "Look, if that stupid tart gave you the impression I needed your help, that's her problem. I can look after myself."

Johnny grinned, reading the subtext of the other's words. "It's okay," he drawled. "She's not my type, and you sure as hell ain't."

The other man snarled at him, revealing large, white teeth. "If you think it's funny..." he began menacingly.

But Johnny had spotted something in the distance, a glitter on the horizon that didn't seem entirely natural. He grasped the other's arm to silence him. Joe's aggression instantly switched away from Johnny and towards the rest of the world. "What is it?" he demanded.

Johnny shaded his eyes from the midday sun, and peered into the distance. "Settlement," he said finally. "Can't tell much from here, but it looks old."

"Settlement?" Joe squinted into the distance, but his eyes could never match Johnny's. "I thought this shit hole was uninhabited."

Johnny dropped his gaze and prepared himself to wait for the rest of the group to catch up. "Apparently not," he said.
8 / GHOST TOWN

They approached the village slowly and cautiously, Red covering their right flank, the Sloth their left. It seemed quiet, dead almost, but appearances generally meant jack. As they drew nearer, Johnny was able to make out more and more details. He saw that the settlement was small, consisting of no more than a hundred buildings, separated by earth paths and grouped around a small structure - which looked like a well - in the central square. The buildings themselves were simple log cabins. Thin strings of smoke rose from some of the chimneys. Of the inhabitants there was no sign.

Beneath their feet, the ground had also changed. The flowing grass of the savannah had gradually given way to shorter cropped green scrub surrounded by low fences. Within these fields, scrawny sheep could be seen grazing, zigzagging and moving round the field at an absurd pace, like a film that had been speeded up for comic effect.

After the paddocks came the fields, filled with crops like wheat and maize, looking parched and brown in the tropical sun. And after the fields came orchards, hardy trees hung with fruit of every imaginable shade and shape, only some of them looking fit to eat. The Blimp took all of them, though, shoving as many as she could into her mouth and stuffing the rest into her pack. Johnny could hear the buzzing of insects in the branches, but they sounded small and safe, not like the titanic super-bees of the jungle.

They took extra care in the orchards, aware that the limited forward visibility would make an ambush very easy. The other Strontium Dogs hung back while Min Qi Man crawled forward on his belly to scout ahead. But the trees were as empty of people as the fields and paddocks had been.

Then came the village itself. Emerging from the trees, the mutants gathered in a huddle as they inspected the buildings in front of them.

As Johnny had surmised, they weren't much to look at. Little better than shacks, each probably large enough to hold only one room. Outside there were cooking pits, some with pots of what smelt like stew bubbling over their open flames. Elsewhere, between the houses, brightly coloured dresses and trousers hung from washing lines, slapping wetly against each other as they swung in the wind. But still no people.

The silence, which had been peaceful on the plains, was unsettling here. Haunting even.

"What the hell's going oan?" Middenface hissed. The hand which wasn't holding his blaster was rubbing the lumps on his head, a clear sign that he was nervous. "Can you see anything with yer eyes, Johnny?"

Johnny focussed the power of his alpha rays, sending them out from his eyes to scan the scene ahead of him, to peer through the walls of the houses, penetrating where ordinary vision could not. He saw tables filled with food, chairs, dried fruit hanging with bunches of dried flowers. There was a strange, subliminal sense of motion, like the flicker of movement on a vid-screen which hasn't been properly tuned in. But, apart from that... "Nothing," he told Middenface.

Min Qi Man too was scanning the village, crouched on all fours, his eyes wide and unblinking. "Does the old frog miss the fly because he is too blind, or because he is too slow?" His swords emitted a high-pitched metallic whine as he drew them from his scabbard.

Middenface looked at the simian mutant in disgust. "Dae ye ever speak plain English, man?" he asked.

"The monkey's right," Johnny said to his partner. "They may be here. They may just be moving too fast for us to see."

One-Eyed Jack had only spared the village a cursory glance. Now his bright blue eye, and the dark black pit beside it, focussed on Johnny. "Can't keep on moving forever, can they? Sooner or later, they've got to stop, and then we've got a clean shot."

Johnny shook his head angrily. "There'll be no shooting," he said, his voice hard, brooking no argument. He turned his head to encompass all the Strontium Dogs. "You got that?"

"Since when do you give orders round here?" One-Eyed Jack sneered. "Those losers-" he nodded dismissively at the members of Team X - "may have voted you their leader, but the rest of us are under no obligation to do what you say. I'll shoot whatever I damn well like."

"Fine, you do that," Johnny said, turning away from him. "And I'll shoot whatever I damn well please, and I'm telling you now, it won't be these villagers."

Behind him, he felt One-Eyed Jack's simmering anger, but he was confident the other mutant wouldn't let it boil over. Too many of the other Strontium Dogs were on Johnny's side. Johnny turned to them now. "We need to search this place," he said. "Spread out, go carefully, and don't disturb anything. The only thing we're interested in is any sign of O'Blarney."

The members of Team X all nodded, and prepared to move off - glad, Johnny suspected, to be given orders rather than be asked to think for themselves.

"And what if we do see anyone?" Red said. "What if we're attacked? Are we 'allowed' to fire then?"

Johnny narrowed his eyes at her, angry that she'd chosen this moment to play politics. She saw his expression and shrugged, her own softening a little.

"I'm not saying shoot first," she said. "I'm saying shoot when we have to."

"Thing is," Johnny said, "if these people are here and we can't see them, they can kill us whenever they want and we won't be able to do a damn thing about it."

"Helmaboab!" Middenface rolled his eyes good-humouredly at Johnny. "Cheer us up, why don't ye?"

"No, he's right," Red conceded. "If we can't beat them, best bet is not to provoke them in the first place. Right?"

Johnny nodded. "Right."

The other mutants, who had stopped in their tracks to watch the confrontation, visibly relaxed. Only One-Eyed Jack looked angry at Red's capitulation, his one good eye narrowed to a glittering blue slit. He didn't say anything, though. He knew when he was outvoted.

"All right, spread out, look in the houses," Johnny said. "If you hit trouble, shout out. Otherwise, meet on the far side of the village in an hour."

The Strontium Dogs nodded and headed off, fanning out through the village, most with weapons drawn. Red sketched a mocking salute to Johnny as she passed, then grinned. That damn woman he thought, you never knew what to expect of her from one second to the next.

Middenface was the last to leave. "Want me tae watch yer back?" he asked Johnny.

Johnny shook his head. "No point. If whoever lives here decides to attack me, there'll be nothing you can do."

"I wasnae thinking aboot them," Middenface said. "I was thinking o' that Jack scunner. He'd as soon mollificate ye as look at ye."

Johnny smiled slightly. "In that case, better off keeping an eye on _him_ , aren't you?"

Middenface smiled back at him. "Right ye are," he said, then loped off in the direction One-Eyed Jack had taken. Johnny was sure One-Eyed Jack would spot Middenface and would know he was being followed, but that didn't bother Johnny one little bit. He wanted the other man to know that he couldn't get away with anything on the sly. In his experience, a close watch kept many a villain honest.

The other Strontium Dogs had headed off to left and right, so Johnny took the path straight ahead, making for the well in the village centre. As he passed by the houses on either side, he felt again that subliminal sense of motion. Now and then he felt a breeze brush against him as if something small had whisked by faster than he could see. He felt his flesh rising up in goosebumps, the hairs standing to attention all along his arms and at the back of his neck. He knew he was being watched, that all around him invisible eyes were trained on him, and it made him feel twitchy and reckless. His hand itched to reach for his gun, to spray lethal incendiary rounds into the houses until they burned to a crisp and the invisible watchers with them.

But he didn't. Knowing that the most dangerous thing he could do would be to provoke the ghostly inhabitants, he carefully kept his hand away from his holster. He could only hope the other Strontium Dogs were showing the same restraint.

The Blimp had been holding her gun in her hand, spinning round to direct it at every slight noise she heard. Her trigger finger was so twitchy, though, that after a while she put the weapon away and folded her arms over her chest to keep them out of mischief. That Johnny Alpha had been right. No sense calling out to trouble when enough trouble was already on the road looking for you. She liked Johnny. He seemed like a straight-up guy, said what he meant and meant what he said. Wasn't so sure about Red, though. She owed her, no doubt about that, and she felt bad over the harsh words she'd said to her when they first talked. But that didn't mean she had to trust the other mutant. Didn't mean she had to forget the fact that the other mutant spelled "Danger" with a capital D.

Middenface, now, he was a different story. He was another plain speaker like Johnny. Not a deep thinker maybe, but a good man. And he was without that aura of sadness that Johnny had, that sense that his shoulders were weighed down with responsibilities too heavy for any one man to bear. Not that Middenface was frivolous, she thought, picturing the hard lines of his body, the confident way he held himself, and the lethal speed with which he could move when he wanted to. No, Middenface was...

She stopped her train of thought as she realised that for the last few minutes her nose had been playing host to just about the most appetizing smell she'd encountered in a long time. It seemed to be coming through the half-open door of the house in front of her.

Her stomach rumbled, begging her to fill it, and she unconsciously took a step towards the door. With a big effort, she stopped herself. They were supposed to be reconnoitring the territory, not shopping for lunch. But, without realising she'd done it, she took another step and a moment later she was inside the house.

The interior was far more homely than the outside, the walls hung with all manner of drapes and fabrics, in simple floral patterns. They were pretty enough, but she only spared them a glance. Because, sitting in the middle of the floor was a large polished-wood table. And sitting on that table was a feast. There were platters of steaming vegetables, dripping with hot butter. Beside them sat bowls of rustic bread rolls, giving off the delicious yeasty smell of fresh baking. And, the pièce de resistance, in the very centre sat a whole roast animal, something like a pig with horns, a large apple jammed into its mouth.

The Blimp's salivary glands went into overdrive. She fought her conscience for a moment, but not a very long one. The people here obviously had plenty to spare. And besides, the place was empty. Who would ever know?

Johnny had made it to the well. The sense of presence here was stronger, but the sense of menace less. It was no longer a feeling of being watched, more a sensation that people were getting on with their own lives somewhere just out of sight.

The well itself was a simple covered affair, made out of rough-hewn stone. Someone, though, had surrounded the base with a ring of little yellow flowers. Their nodding heads seemed to smile cheerfully around at the village. Johnny found himself relaxing slightly. Maybe he was making a big mistake, but he didn't think these people were any sort of threat to his mission.

He noticed that a large wooden trough sat beside the well, nearly half full of water. There was a dipping cup beside it, also wooden, its handle worn smooth and shiny from what must have been years of use. The sweat was dripping from Johnny's forehead, and his mouth felt parched and dry. He hesitated a moment, but then decided that the kind of people to plant daffodils round their well wouldn't be the sort to deny a thirsty traveller a draught. He dipped the cup in the water then poured it into his mouth; the liquid was wonderfully cool as it gushed down his throat.

It was when he carefully put the cup back down and raised his eyes that he saw her.

Careful not to make any sudden moves, Johnny rose to his feet. She was standing less than two metres in front of him. There was something almost out of focus about her, a slight blurring like a photograph taken by an amateur. But he could see enough to know that she was young, little more than a child. Her hair was an auburn brown, tied back from her face in two ponytails. The face itself was pretty but a little bland, as all faces are that have seen too little of life to have the personalities that inhabit them etched into their features.

The girl's mouth suddenly moved, a circle of darkness appearing and disappearing in its centre faster than his eyes could really follow. A strange, high-pitched buzzing emerged, but no recognisable words.

Johnny shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said, speaking slowly, "I can't understand you." Then he realised what a fool he was being - he needed to speak quicker, not slower, if she was going to hear his speech as anything other than a low drone. "We don't mean you any harm," he continued, forcing the words out as quickly as he could. "We're only passing through."

For a moment, he thought he saw an expression of frustration on the young woman's face. Then, as quickly as she had appeared, she disappeared.

A moment after that, Johnny heard a scream from somewhere on his left and then the sound of something heavy crashing into something breakable.

Swearing, he set off at a run towards the source of the noise, the strange apparition temporarily forgotten.

Ladybird pulled at her arm which was held in her father's vice-like grip, but it was no use. Steadily, he dragged her away from the man, the man who over the last few months had come to be the most important thing in her life.

He was heading away from the well now, looking towards the source of some commotion near the village hall. She had come to know his movements well, his strange slow ways, as she had watched him make his ponderous way towards their village. And so she guessed that, despite the fact that he was moving no faster than a snail, he was - by his own standards - running.

She would have watched longer, but her father tugged her round the corner and out of sight of the square.

A few more paces and her father stopped, spinning her to face him. His usually placid face was twisted in anger, the expression of a parent who fears for his child.

"I thought I told you to stay away from him!" he shouted.

"I did," she said mutinously, although it wasn't true. After her father had caught her sneaking away from the village when she should have been tilling the fields, he had instructed her sister to keep a close eye on her. And he had told her that if he ever caught her following the Glass People again, he would force her to postpone her sacred Gap Year, the time when her people traditionally roamed the planet trying - as the scriptures instructed - to "find themselves". Cancelling her Gap Year was the most serious threat he could have made, but it hadn't stopped her creeping out in the middle of the night to find her man and watch him for a few precious hours.

"Then what do you call that?" her father was saying now. "Endangering the whole village when we'd already agreed to stay out of their way."

"But he'll be gone soon," she protested. "It's my only chance to talk to him."

Her father's face twisted in fury. "I don't want you talking to him!" Then, as if realising that anger was getting him nowhere, he made a visible effort to calm down. "Sweetheart, you're young, you don't understand. These Glass People are dangerous."

"How do you know that?" she said, sticking her lower lip out on a pout. "You've never met one before. No one has. Until five years ago we all thought they were just a story."

"We know because Brother O'Blarney told us," he said firmly.

Ladybird hung her head. She knew there was no answer to that one.

Red was the nearest, so she got there first. Drawing her blaster as she ran, she barrelled into the door, dropped to her knees and took aim.

But the only thing she could see was the Blimp, slumped against the far wall, her eyes fluttering open and shut for a few seconds until, finally, settling on shut. The mutant's head slumped to her chest, and as her muscles slackened in unconsciousness her hands loosened their grip and the two large hunks of meat they had been clutching flopped wetly to the floor.

It wasn't difficult to guess what the Blimp had been doing before whatever had happened to her happened. The centrepiece of the room was a large table. Red could see that it had once groaned under the weight of a huge feast. Now it looked like the carcass of a wildebeest after the hyenas have finished with it: torn and bloody. Perched in the middle of all this was the skeleton of some pig-like creature.

It was clear where the meat which had once cloaked the skeleton was now to be found. The Blimp's stomach, moving slightly as she breathed, was twice the size it had been when Red last saw her. Although she was nowhere near the behemoth whom Red had first met, she was more recognisably the same person.

It seemed pretty obvious to Red what had happened. If she'd been the person who cooked that feast, she'd have been none too happy about what the Blimp had done either. The inhabitants of the room might just have meant to push the large mutant gently away from the table - but at the speed they were moving, a gentle push must have been like being hit by a ten-tonne truck. The Blimp was lucky to be alive. And, Red was sure, her attackers were still here, moving, watching.

Very gently, Durham Red walked towards her fallen comrade, meaning to grab hold of her somehow and haul her out of the room and away from further trouble.

She really did mean to do that. But when she got closer to the other woman, she saw the delicate trickle of blood which was oozing from an impact wound on the back of her head to puddle on the floor near her feet.

And she felt an overwhelming hunger of her own.

She shook her head, trying to banish these traitorous thoughts, knowing that feeding now could only lead to trouble. And, anyway, she ought to be feeding on the enemy, not on one of her own.

Except the enemy was a robot. There'd be no blood to take from him. Everything else on this planet moved too damn fast to hunt. Which meant the only thing edible within several hundred kilometres was lying, helpless, on the floor before her.

Before she knew it, she was kneeling at the other woman's feet, licking the blood from the floor, licking back along its path towards the wound that was oozing this amazing, life-giving substance. It was wonderful. It was like the first meal after a ten day fast. But it wasn't enough.

She looked at the Blimp's white, unprotected neck. Just one little sip, she told herself. Just one. Before she could change her mind, she plunged her vampire-sharp teeth into the other woman's flesh and began to drink.

Five seconds later, she was still drinking.

And five seconds after that, she was torn away from the other woman and flung against the far wall to land with a dizzying thump. She looked up through blurry eyes to see the furious face of Middenface McNulty glaring down at her. "Ye wiggy wee scunner!" he shouted, then launched himself at her, fists pummelling.

Dazed, trying to defend herself, Red grabbed his arms. He tore one free, but she managed to trip him, flinging him to the floor beside her. He bit the other arm with which she was holding him. She pulled it back, crying out in pain, but lashed out again, scratching her long nails across his face. He pulled back, narrowly avoiding losing an eye, and took the opportunity to launch another punch at her stomach.

Out of the corner of her eye, Red could see One-Eyed Jack leaning against the open door frame, watching their fight with undisguised amusement.

Then, just as Middenface had rolled on top of her, his hands round her throat, squeezing the life out of her, oblivious to the blows she was raining on his body, a dark-haired figure pushed into the room and tore Middenface away from her.

"What the hell's going on here?" Johnny roared.

Red tried to speak, but her throat was too bruised, and she ended up curling into a ball, coughing breath painfully back into her lungs.

"That dirty nyaff was drinking frae Rose!" he said. "One more minute an' she would ha' killed her!"

Johnny let go of his partner's arm and turned to glare at Red as she rose shakily to her feet. The other Strontium Dogs had arrived by now to witness the proceedings. "Is this true?" he asked her.

Red felt hot with shame, but she'd eat her own tongue before she admitted that to Johnny. "I didn't knock her out," she protested. "She'd been eating all the food and one of the natives must have attacked her. She was unconscious when I got here."

"So you thought you'd take her blood while she was down?" Johnny asked, his voice as cold and sharp as an icicle.

Red opened her mouth to protest, to explain that she'd only wanted one sip, that she had needs, hungers, that it was her mutation, that it wasn't her fault. But at that moment, everything went dark.
9 / NO SMOKE

There was instant panic. Someone screamed - Johnny thought it was Enigma - and from the far side of the room came a low groan followed by a mumbled, "Oh God, help me, I've gone blind." The Blimp, it seemed, had woken up.

"What's happening?" he heard Middenface ask from somewhere to his left. His sense of hearing sharpening in the absence of other sensory input, he could make out the sound of the Scottish mutant shuffling backwards through the rush-strewn floor, and then a soft thump as his back hit one wall of the building. Johnny smiled grimly. Middenface, at least, could be trusted to behave rationally in a situation like this. He'd positioned himself where no one could use the cover of the dark to sneak up behind him, and where he'd have a clear shot to anywhere in the room. Nearby, Johnny also thought he could hear the sound of Red dropping to her knees, steadying her aim and making herself as small a target as possible.

Others were not so composed. Before Johnny had a chance to take any defensive measures himself, he felt someone grab his arm from one side, then another person from the other. One of the two people was crying, loud wracking sobs that would reveal their position, and Johnny's too, to anyone who cared to listen.

He shook his arms impatiently, trying to free them to reach for his weapon. The grips were too tight though, one of them clawing in so deeply it was close to drawing blood. He risked a low hiss. "Let go!"

One set of hands dropped from his arm, allowing him at last to grab for his blaster. He was forced to use his left hand, though, with its weaker grip and less sure aim. The other pair of hands remained firmly clinging to his arm. "Help me," their owner said. "I'm scared." Johnny realised that it must be Woman Man reverted to her female form again.

He cursed softly, straining to see anything in the darkness, but it was black as space. He might as well be blind. Still, there had been no sign of an attack, no noise except that made by the ramshackle team of Strontium Dogs. If only he could see what was going on. He realised suddenly, he didn't need eyes for that. In his head he still had a clear image of the layout of the room, and of his position in it. And, most importantly, he remembered where the fireplace was, loaded with coals waiting to be lit.

He took aim three and a half metres to his left and a little in front of him. Then, hoping that no one was standing between him and his target - but knowing that it was a risk he had to take - he softly instructed his weapon's voice-activation unit, "Number three cartridge," and launched a heat beam into the heart of the coals.

A burning red beam shot out from the tip of the blaster, a beam that illuminated the room but blinded its occupants with its intensity after long minutes in the dark. There was a sharp spitting sound, a shower of sparks, and the fuel in the fireplace blazed up with a warm red-yellow glow.

The scene it illuminated was a curiously calm one. Middenface was indeed backed against one wall, his blaster and eyes scanning the room. Red was kneeling not far from Johnny, still shielding her eyes from the flare of the incendiary round. The Blimp had dragged herself to her feet, and was holding a hand to the tooth-wounds in her neck. She looked puzzled, as if wondering how she'd managed to injure herself there in her fall. The rest were scattered around the room in varying poses of readiness or panic.

There was no one else. No threat. No explanation for why everything had suddenly gone dark.

"Holly Hamish!" Middenface suddenly exclaimed. "Where the hell did they come from?"

He was staring at the opposite wall. Set into it were three beds, one above the other. And lying on two of the beds were a young woman and an older man, very human-looking and both seemingly fast asleep. Johnny had a sudden, absurd flash of the story of the Three Bears, with Middenface playing Goldilocks.

By now, the others had spotted the newcomers too. The Sloth, who was nearest, took a step towards them. As he did, Johnny suddenly became aware of that familiar, neck-prickling sense of motion, of activity taking place just beyond the threshold of his awareness. And he realised why there were only two people in the beds, and why they were able to sleep without fear of the strangers in their midst.

They had left a guard, a watcher. Now, as if his alpha rays were able to see this sentinel, to look into his mind, Johnny felt the watcher's attention shift to the hairy mutant. He felt a sudden, strong sense of threat.

"Stop!" he shouted out to the Sloth. He wanted to run to the other, to grab hold of him, but he was afraid that any movement on his part might provoke the guardian further.

Fortunately, the Sloth was living up to his name, moving so slowly that the motion was all but undetectable to Johnny's eyes, let alone to someone whose normal frame of reference was nearly four-hundred times faster than his. Slowly, very slowly, the Sloth turned his head to look at Johnny. "What's up?" he asked in his low, growly voice.

"We're not alone."

Red rose awkwardly to her feet. "Give the man a cigar."

"Not them," Johnny said impatiently. "There's someone else here."

He felt a current of unease run through the room. Enigma flicked her head quickly to one side, spooked by a ghost noise, her long hair swirling round her face and catching in her mouth. Woman Man - who was, indeed, a woman again - had opened her eyes so wide with fear that they looked in danger of falling out of her face.

"How do ye ken that?" Middenface asked. He was frowning at Johnny, puzzled rather than challenging. "I thought yer eyes couldnae see these wee gowks?"

"They can't. I just... know," Johnny said.

That was enough for Middenface, but the others weren't so ready to take Johnny at his word.

"Is the fool the man who speaks or the man who trusts the fool without knowledge?" Min Qi Man asked.

To Johnny's surprise, it was One-Eyed Jack who came to his defence. "Alpha's right." He glared round at the others, his good eye a narrow blue slit of mean. "There is someone else here. I can feel them moving. You would too if you'd spare the time to listen to your ears rather than your fear. I say we get the hell out of here."

"But what if they're waiting for us outside? What if this is all an ambush?" Woman Man said, her voice high and panicked.

One-Eyed Jack shrugged. "What if they've surrounded the house already? What if they're about to set fire to it and us inside it?"

Johnny could have kicked him. The panic which has subsided when they had finally been able to see where they were flared up again full force. Enigma let out a small _eep_ of fear, and Min Qi Man leapt three metres in the air, spun round, landed on all fours and scampered in three circles before finally coming to rest on his haunches, looking, if Johnny was reading his animalistic face correctly, slightly embarrassed.

One-Eyed Jack just laughed. Then he strode to the door, wrenched it open, and stepped outside.

A strong, almost blinding beam of light blared in through the door. Johnny shielded his eyes, unwilling to step out into the blaze until they had adjusted. All around him, the others froze in place, waiting for the sound of gunfire, of screams, of any evidence that One-Eyed Jack had sprung a trap.

There was nothing.

And then there was the sound of One-Eyed Jack laughing. Unlike his earlier, mocking outburst, it sounded as if he was genuinely amused. Johnny, finally able to see a little in the glare, stepped outside.

After a moment, he couldn't help laughing to. The reason for the sudden darkness which had descended on them was abundantly clear. And ridiculously simple. Over every window of the house, a thick, wooden blind had been fastened. Of course, Johnny suddenly realised. From the point of view of the house's inhabitants, the sun only set once a year. If they wanted a peaceful, unlit night's sleep, they would have to create their own artificial darkness.

One by one, the other Strontium Dogs filed out and made the same realisation. Middenface shook his head. "What a bunch o' neep-heids we are."

Johnny looked round at the assembly. "Any reason why we shouldn't get the hell out of here?" he asked.

The Blimp, still slightly shaky on her feet, blinked round at her surroundings. "Well, I guess it is still possible O'Blarney's hiding out in a cow shed somewhere."

There was relieved laughter from everyone. And then they turned their back on the village, set their sights on the mountains, hovering blue and white on the horizon, and got the hell out of there.

Ladybird, who had managed to sneak out of bed to watch the Glass People roam through the town, watched them leave it now with a mixture of disappointment and relief. The disappointment seemed to be sitting somewhere near her heart, making it ache with a pain she had never before experienced. She knew that, if her father had his way, she would never see the love of her life again.

And yet she also knew that if the visitors had not chosen to depart, had continued their exploration of the village, then her people would have had no choice but to kill them.

They would have been the first murders in the recorded history of her village. Their holy book, the book handed down from the first settlers on this planet, the blessed _Trevor's Travel Diary_ , explicitly forbade violence. As it said: "If you, like, hurt another person, then you're kind of hurting yourself if you look at it one way, you know what I mean?"

But the building just to the left of the one the visitors had entered, the one that looked like little more than a cowshed, housed something more important even than their most revered scriptures. Inside it were the fruits of their co-operation with Bad Boy O'Blarney. And her people would kill - and worse - to protect them.

Which meant that Ladybird was going to have be very careful indeed if she wanted to take it for herself.

Outside the village, once they had left the farmland and orchards behind them, the Strontium Dogs found themselves back on the never-ending plain. Except that now, the end was finally in sight. The grassland was beginning to give way to scrub, stunted bushes and scraggly weeds dotted over an increasingly bare and hard-baked earth. The mountains were clearer now, their tops snow-capped, their bases obscured by the foothills whose gentle slopes began not many kilometres in front of the bounty hunters.

The season had changed, too. Summer had been and gone while they walked the plains, and now the air was beginning to moisten with the first hint of autumn. The leaves were drooping on the trees and the animals that dotted the plain were wearing the thick body fat that must last them through the lean winter - which, on this world, would seem to them like four months of darkness.

Woman Man was back in his male form, moodily chewing on a wad of tobacco and eyeing Enigma with thinly disguised desire, so Johnny was able to walk alone, lost in his own thoughts. He was on the left flank of the party, which was spread out in a rough wedge-shape in front of him. The point of the triangle was Red, who'd volunteered to take the lead and scout out the territory for the others. Johnny suspected that she really wanted an excuse to stay as far away from the Blimp as possible. It hadn't taken the other mutant long to figure out where those mysterious wounds in her neck had come from, and she'd been after some blood of her own when she realised what Red had done to her.

Red, unusually for her, had apologised and had even sounded sincere, and the Blimp hadn't chosen to pursue it further. The blonde-haired bounty hunter seemed to Johnny to have her head screwed on in just about the right position. She knew that they needed to concentrate on O'Blarney for now. Any scores could be settled after they took him down. Still, if Johnny had been Red, he would have been watching his back.

Middenface was walking beside the Blimp at the rear of the group. He was supposed to be on lookout, but as far as Johnny could see, his eyes never left the Blimp. Even from a distance of a hundred metres, Johnny could see that his partner's face was wearing an expression of puppy-like devotion with a hint of dog-like lust. That was Middenface all over. No half-measures. No caution. His affection, like his hatred, was strong and enduring. When he fell, he fell hard. It was one of the things Johnny valued about him. And also what often made him a pain in the arse and general liability.

The remaining three members of Team X were walking together. Enigma was talking ostentatiously to the Sloth, seemingly oblivious to the glances Joe kept stealing at her. Johnny was damn sure she knew she was being watched, though. He'd already pegged her as the kind of woman who thrived on male attention, and took "hard to get" as a form of religion. The Sloth looked unhappy, obviously all too aware of the game that was going on between the woman beside him and the man who was sometimes the woman he loved.

Johnny shook his head. Why did people have to make things so complicated for themselves? He preferred simplicity. It was one reason he was so good at his job. Give him a mission, a bad guy to track down, and he was as happy as a pig in shit. It was all the other stuff life threw at you that he hated: the petty politics back at the Doghouse, the church that preached love and hated mutants, the people who weren't good or bad but somewhere in between...

He felt his eyes drift back over to Red. He supposed, in a way, that was why Red bothered him so much. He couldn't fit her in a neat category, file her away as "friend" or "foe" or even "mutant". She didn't quite belong in any group, and where her loyalties really lay was anybody's guess. He wished, heartily, that she weren't on this already messed-up mission with him.

He was broken out of his reverie by the sound of a twig snapping under a heavy boot beside him. It was One-Eyed Jack, sauntering up to match his stride to Johnny's. Johnny didn't acknowledge the other mutant, and he walked for a few minutes of silence beside him, so close that their shoulders almost brushed. Johnny didn't like that at all, it made him feel vulnerable. The other mutant's eye, the missing one that lived ten seconds in the future, would give him the advantage in any fight.

As if sensing Johnny's thoughts, Jack suddenly said, "Don't like me much, do you?"

Johnny gave him a long, considering look. "Don't know enough about you to like or dislike you. Don't know enough about you to trust you, either."

"You've seen me around the Doghouse. You know my reputation, same as I know yours."

"I know you've got one of the top kill rates in the Stronts," Johnny said calmly. "I know you're so good you've been hired at least twice to do secret work direct for the Office of the President."

"So?" One-Eyed Jack said.

"So even presidents get it wrong, sometimes. The only thing I set any store by is what I see with my own two eyes." He subtly emphasised the word _two_.

The other mutant chewed on an unlit cigar. "Fair enough." After a moment, he sparked up a match, got the end of the cigar glowing a cherry red, then threw the match away behind him.

Unseen by him, or Johnny, the little stick of wood let out a wisp of smoke as it landed on a small patch of dry grass. After a moment, the wisp thickened into a tendril. The tiny red dot of heat at its heart fed on the fuel beneath it, and grew.

Johnny and One-Eyed Jack walked on, oblivious. They both watched in silence as a strange pink light streaked through the sky above them and disappeared. Johnny guessed that it might have been a vast flock of flamingos passing overhead. After several more minutes, Jack said, "I expect what you've seen with your two eyes is that I've got no regard for anyone but myself."

Johnny glanced sideways at him. The other mutant wore a slight smile, more self-deprecating than Johnny would have expected. "Yep," he said.

One-Eyed Jack's smile twisted. "Well, you're right. I spent forty years looking out for other people, and all it got me was a bunch of scars and a nice deep grave for my wife and child. Now I make sure there's no one in my life I wouldn't happily see out of it in a second."

Johnny suddenly found that he couldn't meet the other man's eye. This matched too closely Johnny's own thoughts earlier in the day. "I'm not asking for your friendship," Johnny finally said to him. "I'm asking for your loyalty. I want to know that when I turn my back on you, I won't end up with a knife sticking out of it."

"I can promise you that," One-Eyed Jack said, his craggy face revealing little about his thoughts.

"But more than that," Johnny said, "I want to trust you to guard my back, to make sure no other son of a bitch goes sticking a knife in it either."

One-Eyed Jack smiled slightly. "People in this group seem more likely to saint you than knife you."

"Still..." Johnny said.

"You have my word," Jack replied. "We're a team, here. We'll hang together or hang apart."

Johnny nodded. "That's about the length of it."

The other man looked off into the distance. "Just don't ask me to die for you," he said. "That I won't do."

"Don't worry," Johnny told him. "I'm through asking people to do that."

"Then we're-" the other mutant began.

And then they both smelled it. The faint, wood-smoke odour of burning carried on the breeze from somewhere behind them.

As one, they spun to face the source of the scent. To their left, the other Strontium Dogs were doing the same.

So they all got the bad news at once. Behind them, stretching to left and right as far as the eye could see, was a great wall of fire.

It was heading straight towards them.
10 / STAMPEDE

No one had to give the order to run. They just turned and fled. In the brief seconds it took them to make even this decision, the fire leapt nearer, loudly spitting sparks as it gobbled up the bone-dry vegetation.

It wasn't, Johnny realised immediately, moving at the speed of life on this planet. It was moving at the pace of a perfectly ordinary brush fire.

Which was still far too fast.

With his rangy legs and superior strength, Johnny had managed to sprint ahead of most of the rest of the mutants, who had instinctively clustered together in the face of this new threat. But Johnny knew instantly that even he didn't have a hope in hell of outrunning the fire. The ground was just too dry. And the sky was an empty, perfect blue, untroubled by a single wisp of cloud, offering no distant hope of rain. All Johnny could hope to do was live a few seconds longer than his fellows.

In the far distance, torturing him with a promise to save him that it couldn't keep, was a vast swathe of water.

There was no way they would reach it in time. Already, the flames were roaring loudly behind him, the first sensation of heat licking against his back. He heard the crackle of a huge stand of trees being consumed by the voracious fire.

Then he heard something else. He didn't know what it was at first, this pounding that shook the earth and vibrated up through his stomach and into his ears. He assumed it must be some other effect of the inferno behind them. But then he heard another noise, a high-pitched, terrified screech.

He realised instantly what it was. A herd of animals, fleeing the fire, stampeding in panic away from the flames. Dumb animals, obviously, or they would have realised that the flames had no chance of outpacing them. They would be passing Johnny in a few seconds.

If he was lucky, the animals would run around him, seeing him as a stationary object in their path no different from a tree. If he was unlucky, he would be trampled beneath their feet. Which, he supposed, might be preferable to burning alive.

Except that alive was very much how he intended to stay. And he'd suddenly had an idea about how he might achieve this. It wasn't a very good idea, but it was the only one he had.

Before he had a chance to think better of it, he spun round to face the others, pulling a net grenade from his jacket all in the same motion. For a moment, all he could look at was the vast wall of flame looming less than two hundred metres behind them. It was unstoppable, monstrous, and strangely beautiful. There was something hypnotic about it, about the way it writhed and twisted as the yellows and oranges grew and mingled within it. It seemed somehow alive. The smell of burning wood it gave off was like the primeval musk of an ancient predator.

With an effort of will Johnny tore his eyes away from it. As soon as he did, he was confronted by the panicked faces of his companions hurtling towards him. They were sweat-soaked and streaked with soot. Middenface was in the lead, but had slowed down when he saw Johnny stop. As a consequence, the rest had bunched up behind him, so close they were in danger of tripping over each other. It looked like a human car wreck in the making.

Good.

The instant they were in range, Johnny drew back his arm and flung the net grenade against Middenface.

He saw his partner's astonished, hurt face for an instant - unable to believe that Johnny had betrayed him in this way. Then the grenade detonated, and a fine wire mesh shot out, encasing all Johnny's fellow mutants in a silvery cage. A moment later it tightened, drawing them into a tight ball of humanity.

The hoof beats of the approaching beasts were louder than the crackle of the fire, physically shaking the ground and Johnny with it. He estimated that he had less than a second left.

In that second, he grabbed the mono-fibre rope that draped from one end of the net, hurriedly looped the far end into a lassoo - nearly dropping it as his fingers fumbled with haste - then turned and stared at the approaching herd of beasts.

There were so many of them that their speed didn't render them fully invisible. He could see them spreading over the scrubland in front of the fire like a grey stain. A grey stain that was very nearly upon them.

More strongly than he ever had before in his life, Johnny forced alpha rays from his eyes, pushing them at these creatures, desperately trying to make a connection with one of them, with whichever one would reach them first.

He almost felt it, a flicker of consciousness, of an intelligence far weaker than his own. It started to slip from him and - with a mental effort of will harder than any physical exertion - he grabbed on to it and held tight.

There it was. He knew the creature totally now. Its needs: food, water, safety from predators. Its desires: to mate, to protect its young, to survive to see another winter. He saw it: a great grey scaly thing, five times bigger than an elephant and twenty times as strange. Its mouth was surrounded by a double ring of flailing tentacles and it moved forward with a strange undulating motion, propelled by four pairs of clawed legs.

He saw it. And he knew exactly where it was. Johnny knew that he had to time this to perfection, that failure would mean death not just for him but for all his companions. Heart thumping, he held the noose in his hands and, as the creature surged towards him, flung it towards its neck.

All he could do then was hang on to the rope and hope. For a moment, he thought that he'd missed. The noose of the rope seemed to snag over one of the creatures tentacles. Then, mercifully, the creature's forward momentum combined with the weight of the Strontium Dogs netted on the end of the rope to pull it down over the creature's neck.

As soon as it had settled, the noose tightened, snapping the rope taut and flinging the net bundle behind it into the air. Johnny clung frantically to the edge of the net. Some of the people trapped within were screaming. As Johnny's fingers dug into the mesh, trying to find purchase, he felt one press into something soft and fleshy, and there was another scream, this one more urgent. Johnny hastily repositioned his hand. He knew that the next few seconds would be crucial. He had calculated that, at the speed the creature was travelling, the net and its inhabitants would remain airborne. If he was wrong and the net simply scraped along the ground behind the great grey behemoth then none of them would survive this journey.

Not that Johnny was sure he could survive it anyway. Unlike those inside the net he wasn't securely fastened. He'd found all the purchase he could, but the air was slicing past him harder than a force twelve hurricane, whipping his hair into a frenzy, freezing the skin on his face, and constantly, relentlessly, trying to tear his grip away from the net.

He tried to press down into the surface of the net, to present as small a surface area as possible to the lethal gale. He almost thought he'd succeeded, until the creature dragging them in its wake suddenly altered its stride, maybe trying to leap some obstacle in its path. The creature's head jerked upward and the ball of netting which was attached to it jumped up in turn.

It was so fast, Johnny had no time to react. Both his feet were flung upwards, and the force of the motion jerked his left hand loose from the netting.

Now five fingers were all that were holding him on to life. His body whisked out behind his hand like a pennant flapping in the breeze. He couldn't see anything, his eyes filled with tears from the stinging wind. He struggled with all his strength to hold on, but he knew that he was losing his grip. His little finger was the first to let go, then his middle finger tore lose from its hold.

Now only three fingers were holding on, and soon he knew it would be two. He blinked his eyes, wanting at least to see the end when it came. And as he did, he realised that the grey-blue blur in front of him wasn't caused by the moisture in his eyes. It was a real body of water, the lake that he'd seen in the foothills of the mountains.

He realised that the creature was slowing, as he and the net he rode on began to overtake the great beast, flying serenely over the waving tentacles of its mouth. For a moment, he found himself looking directly into its small, unthinking eyes. In the moment of freedom he had before the rope snapped taught in front of the creature, Johnny somehow dragged his free hand to his side, drew his blaster, called for a number four cartridge, and shot through the rope tying him and the other Strontium Dogs to the creature's neck.

Freed of its binding, the ball of netting sailed out across the ground in front of them. It passed over the near lake shore and kept on going, over the gentle breakers, over the deep blue water at its centre, then gradually slowing, gradually falling until it finally plummeted into the water at the lake's far side.

As they struck the water, Johnny fumbled with the release catch of the netting, setting his fellow mutants free to sink or swim. Then the impact slammed into him like a fist, knocking the breath from his lungs and turning everything temporarily black.

A few seconds later, Johnny felt consciousness returning in slow, painful throbs. Then he felt it ebbing away again, floating on the sea of cool liquid that was pouring into his mouth, down his throat and straight into his lungs.

With a huge effort, he forced himself awake, coughing up the water that had nearly killed him. He tried to breathe in to replace it, but realised that there was no air to breathe. He was surrounded by water. He was underneath it. He opened his eyes, but all he could see around him was dark blue flecked with white bubbles. He flailed in useless, instinctive panic for a moment, trying to get the surface. Trouble was, he had no idea what direction the surface was in.

He had to stop moving, though every instinct he had was telling him to move, to do anything to find air. For one brief moment he forced his desperate body to hold still. And in that moment, he watched the bubbles which were still filling the water around him. He saw them sailing downward, sinking into the blue depths beneath him. But of course, they weren't sinking, they were rising. He was the one who was facing downward.

Light-headed with relief and lack of oxygen, he flicked himself over then thrust towards the surface. A few seconds later, he broke through. His upturned face was bathed in the red glow of the setting sun as he gasped air into his lungs. Beside him, he could hear others doing the same.

As soon as he'd recovered, he swam to the shore, only a hundred metres or so away, then collapsed backwards on the sand, too exhausted to do anything else.

After a few moments, he forced his aching muscles to push him into a sitting position. His head spun for a moment, and the world lurched crazily. When it had settled back into something like an even keel, he looked around him. The other mutants were now sharing the small beach with him. All but Red were still lying slumped where they had first pulled themselves out of the water. She had managed to pull herself into a sitting position and had started to wring the water out of her red hair.

Johnny did a quick body count. Astonishingly, everyone seemed to have survived the journey. He looked around some more, scanning the scenery. If it hadn't been for the untidy bodies littering the beach, he decided, it would actually have been a perfect scene, like the kind of thing people sent each other from holiday, to show what a great place they'd found, and didn't the person who'd got it wish they were there too.

The sun was setting over the far shore of the lake. As it touched the water, it was as if a dye leeched out of it and stained the surface a deep red. The fire had already burned itself out against the water's edge, and the great herd of creatures with which they had travelled was silhouetted in black against the falling sun. In the opposite direction, the mountains were looking aloof and mysterious, shadows already creeping up their lower slopes, their peaks muffled in dense black clouds.

Red caught his eye. "You're a crazy son of a bitch, you know that?"

Johnny laughed, not just at her words, but with the mad joy of relief.

After a moment, Red joined in. The sound echoed round the beach, joining with the merry chuckle of the waves against the shore.

Then O'Blarney attacked them.
11 / BAD BOY BLUES

The first sign of the attack was a laser cannon blast that missed Middenface's head by only a couple of centimetres. It barrelled into the ground with a fierce electronic whine, kicking up a violent spray of sand and debris.

Middenface leapt back with a shout. Johnny could see blood flowing from cuts on his face and arms where the shrapnel from the blast had caught him. Sluggish with exhaustion, the rest of the Strontium Dogs were slow to react. Most of them hadn't even drawn their weapons when the second blast hit. It was aimed at One-Eyed Jack this time, but he had already started rolling before it struck. Forewarned by his future-living eye, Johnny guessed. Still, the grizzled veteran was nearly buried under the geyser of sand thrown up by the cannon hit.

That second blast had allowed Johnny to draw a bead on the source of the attack. Johnny reckoned O'Blarney - if it was him, and he was damn sure it was - was hiding in a jagged stack of black rocks a eighty metres to their left. As Johnny scanned them with his keen eyes, he saw a small bright flash from somewhere towards their base. He'd flung himself aside before he even registered that it was another shot firing off. The blast hit a second later, right where his head had been.

Johnny didn't stop to celebrate his near-miss. As he rolled, he flung his beam polariser into the air to absorb the energy of a laser blast which O'Blarney had sent his way. As the polariser worked its magic, drawing O'Blarney's laser beam from Johnny to itself, he took aim on the rocks, shouted out "Number three cartridge" and sent an explosive round straight down O'Blarney's throat.

The explosion blasted apart the rocks the robot had been hiding behind, revealing him fully to the Strontium Dogs. O'Blarney himself seemed unharmed, his three metre-tall burnished steel figure glowing redly in the setting sun. Johnny could have sworn he saw the snecker smile mockingly at them.

The rest of the party had finally woken up enough to act like professional fighters. They dived for cover left and right, all now blasting away at the revealed figure of their enemy. Only Red held her fire. Her antique weapon, which shot lethal bundles of monofilament wires, was more use at close range. She was using the cover provided by the other's fire to circle towards the rocks, trying to outflank O'Blarney. Johnny could see Min Qi Man - who as far as Johnny knew carried no weapon except his swords - perform the same manoeuvre on the lake side. The lithe mutant slipped gently into the water, and began to swim towards O'Blarney, leaving barely a ripple in his wake.

O'Blarney was a standing target. Every shot they fired hit him. The air around him looked like a firework display.

Trouble was, O'Blarney himself remained completely unscathed. In fact, he was walking towards them, and now Johnny could definitely hear that he was laughing. "Would you believe it?" the robot shouted out, his mechanical amplified voice audible even over the deafening roar of blaster fire. "You don't see a Strontium Dog for a month, then ten come along at once."

He was near enough now for Johnny to make out the details of his design. It was clear that he'd been created by people with only one thought in mind, and that thought wasn't a pleasant one. His arms bristled with integrated weaponry. Even his feet seemed to house rocket launchers. His hands were a collection of spikes and blades and pincers. His face, strangely, was strikingly handsome. Sitting on that body it seemed like a bad joke, like the cartoon smile that warship pilots sometimes painted on their vessels.

Their shots weren't even hitting him. They were bouncing harmlessly off some sort of force field flickering a few centimetres from his body. And as he drew nearer, they were being deflected towards the Strontium Dogs themselves.

"Cease fire!" Johnny shouted. No point wasting ammo. And no point letting their shots reveal their position to the enemy. As soon as Johnny had loosed off his last round, he backed up and ran, hunched, to shelter behind another rock. He only hoped the others had the sense to do the same.

He peered out cautiously from behind his cover, but found that the figure of O'Blarney had suddenly faded into its background. For a moment he thought it might be some camouflage field of the robot's. Then he realised that the sun had finally finished setting over the lake. What light there was left was being blotted out from the masses of grey clouds roiling down from the mountains towards them. In the distance, he could see blue flickers of lightning.

"What, not gonna come out and say hello?" O'Blarney shouted. He was revealing his position - Johnny could just make him out now, only twenty metres away - but he obviously didn't care. "Well, like they say, if Mohammed won't come to the mountain..."

He saw O'Blarney reach down and press some sort of switch on his chest. Instantly, Johnny felt an invisible, incredibly powerful force pull on the barrel of his blaster. He braced himself on his heels, tried to drag the weapon backwards, but it was useless. He felt his feet being wrenched through the sand. If he resisted much longer, he'd be pulled into the open, an easy target for O'Blarney.

The second before it could pull him from cover, Johnny let go of the gun. It flipped a somersault through the air then clanged against O'Blarney's chest where it hung, quivering, until the robot pulled it away and gazed at it with feigned surprise.

"Stone the crows! If that isn't a Westinghouse variable cartridge blaster. Which means, if I'm not mistaken, that Johnny Alpha must be hiding somewhere behind those rocks."

O'Blarney turned to face him, and Johnny snapped his head quickly back round behind the shelter of his rock. He gritted his teeth and resisted the urge to run for new cover. He was sure that was exactly what the robot wanted him to do.

"Dearie me, Johnny. Guess you should've had a gander at the design specs of your little weapon. See, not many people know this, but the central core is made of solid steel. Which means getting it to stick to my turbo-magnet here was as easy as falling off a log. Though definitely a lot more fun."

Johnny used their enemy's long speech - the snekker certainly did like the sound of his own voice - to sneak round to the other side of the rocks. His gut was clenched in a tight knot, and not just because he'd lost his best weapon. O'Blarney knew who Johnny was. He knew what weapon he carried. He knew, in fact, far more about Johnny than anyone who hadn't met him before had any business knowing.

Johnny peered round the rocks to see that O'Blarney has also moved during his speech, sneaking forwards another few steps towards Johnny. The sky overhead was pitch black now, even the stars blotted out by the heavy banks of clouds. The only thing illuminating O'Blarney was the inhuman green glow of his eyes. Then a spear of lighting lanced down only a few hundred metres behind him, and for a moment he was silhouetted by a brilliant blue light. It made him appear taller, more menacing and more jagged, like an illustration of an evil spirit in the kind of children's book that used to scare the socks off Johnny when he still thought he was a normal little boy.

In the same flare of light, Johnny saw a strange, many-limbed shape leaping towards O'Blarney's back like a giant spider. After a moment, Johnny realised what it was. Min Qi Man had finally outflanked the robot and was launching his attack. His two swords were outlined in a fierce white glow which left vapour trails of colour behind as they streaked through the air. They looked sharp enough to cut through anything, even O'Blarney. And they were heading right for O'Blarney's head.

When they were less than a metre away from their target, O'Blarney reached back with a gesture so casual it almost looked slow and pulled the swords from Min Qi Man's hands. Min Qi Man himself, thrown off his balance by O'Blarney's move, sailed through the air above the robot's head. He no longer looked graceful. His arms and legs were flailing in a useless attempt to stop or slow his flight towards a large heap of granite rocks. And towards Middenface, who had just crept round the same rocks, prepared to launch his own assault on O'Blarney.

Min Qi Man flew into the Scottish mutant with a bone-crushing thud. Middenface's head was thrown back against the rocks behind him. His body went limp, and he slid down the rocks to sit slumped at their base. Min Qi Man sprawled beside him, twitched a moment, then went ominously still.

O'Blarney, though, wasn't finished yet. He held the swords for a moment, seeming to admire their clean lines and lethal sharpness. Then he flung his arms wide and sent the two weapons soaring away from him, one flying as straight and deadly as an arrow, the other spinning end over end like a metal boomerang.

The first sword landed point-first in the sand, in the exact spot where One-Eyed Jack's head had been three seconds before. Jack had rolled away the moment O'Blarney began to move, as if knowing exactly what he was going to do. Which, of course, he did.

Durham Red wasn't so lucky. Slinking in the shadows as she did best, she too had begun to make her flanking attack on the robot, inching over the sand on her stomach, her Burstin Auto-Chetter held before her, ready to release its lethal barbs against O'Blarney as soon as she was in range. The sword, hilt-first this time, struck the hand holding her weapon with the force of a sledgehammer. Red cried out in pain and clutched the wounded hand to her chest. Her gun flew into the air, landing some five metres behind her along with the sword.

Johnny saw the remaining three members of Team X, who had been readying themselves to make a frontal assault of their own, cower back down behind a rock. They looked terrified, even the Sloth. Johnny knew how they felt. Nothing prepared you for your first real battle, for the almost unbelievable knowledge that the person in front of you really was trying to kill you. And that they might succeed - that these horrible, bloody, sweaty noisy minutes might be the last few minutes of your life.

Of the Blimp there was no sign at all. Maybe she was off working herself up into her berserker rage somewhere. Johnny wasn't going to count on her. He never counted on anyone but himself.

Another lightning strike forked down, closer now. The thunder followed immediately after, echoing out over the still waters of the lake.

O'Blarney waited for silence to return before he spoke. "Blimey, that's better. Thought we'd never get a moment's peace."

Johnny still didn't reply. He'd been goaded too many times in his life by scum like O'Blarney to rise to the bait now. Instead, he pulled the Electronux over his hand and prepared to slug it out with O'Blarney at close quarters. He braced himself. The moment he saw an opening, he would launch himself at O'Blarney, hoping to get inside the reach of his weapons before O'Blarney could react. His legs quivered with tension, the adrenaline of a fight coursing through him, making everything sharper, brighter, clearer.

The lightning strikes were almost continuous now. One jagged white line struck a tree just twenty metres away. It burst into flames, lighting the scene of battle with an incongruous, homely glow. The air was filled with the smell of plasma blasts, ionised air, burning wood and sweat.

"You know what, I don't like these long distance relationships," O'Blarney was saying now. "I like to do my business boat race to boat race, know what I'm saying? Why don't you just come out and we can talk this through like gentlemen."

Even as he spoke, every single weapon in his very impressive arsenal was trained on Johnny's position. The green glow of his eyes had intensified, perhaps with anticipation of a kill, illuminating the smooth metal planes of his face. His voice was filled with amusement, but his face remained immobile, serene.

After a moment, O'Blarney shrugged. "Oh well, don't say I didn't ask." Somewhere in his left arm, a servo-motor whirred, and a missile smaller than a gnat and more deadly than a swarm of giant bees shot out.

The rock in front of Johnny disintegrated into a million tiny pieces. The force of the explosion knocked him from his feet. The tiny shards of rock scratched harmlessly against his body armour but left deep painful gouges in his face and hands. He kept his eyes screwed shut, protecting the one weapon he couldn't afford to lose.

When he opened them, O'Blarney was standing right over him. The robot shook his head. "Sorry about that, don't know my own strength sometimes."

Johnny glared up at him, preparing to roll, to spring, to do whatever he could - however futile - to survive the inevitable attack. "Never gloat before the fight's over, scumball."

O'Blarney laughed. "I like a man who doesn't know when he's down," he said. Then his laughter cut out sharply. "'Cause that means I get to kick him some more."

He pointed his arm at Johnny. From the end, a thin, lethally sharp blade snicked out. It was cruelly serrated, clearly meant to hurt as well as kill. "Scream if you want to, mutie," he said. "It'll give me a buzz."

Another lightning bolt flashed down, but O'Blarney's eyes were glowing brighter even than the awesome power generated by the storm.

"Here, snecker," Johnny said. "Catch."

He threw his beam polariser gently towards O'Blarney.

Reflexively, O'Blarney caught it in his free hand. He looked at it, puzzled, for a second. "What..." he said.

And then the full force of the storm tore into him with a ferocity only untamed nature could manage. Drawn irresistibly by the beam polariser, ten different lightning bolts struck, not where they had originally intended, but straight through O'Blarney himself.

The robot let out a very small sound, almost like a cough.

A microsecond later it was drowned out by the incredible roar of the thunder. Johnny clapped his hands over his ears, afraid that his eardrums would burst.

O'Blarney didn't move. The electricity surged through him, penetrating past every defensive barrier he had. It burned out circuits, fried weapons guidance systems. Johnny saw the knife still protruding from O'Blarney's arm soften and bend like putty. Molten metal dripped from its end into the sand.

Johnny, at last, managed to struggle to his feet.

After the thunder, there was the loudest silence Johnny had ever heard. Then, slowly, a creaking sound filled the air and O'Blarney began to topple. He wobbled forward, back, forward. His knees, fused by the lightening, remained rigid and straight. Finally, he fell backwards and kept on falling. When he landed, he made a soft thump, and small cloud of sand flew up into the air.

Johnny moved to stare into his fallen enemy's eyes. They were still glowing a very faint green.

"There's just one thing I want to know," Johnny said, "With a name like O'Blarney, what are you doing talking in that damn stupid Cockney accent?"

O'Blarney's lips moved, but it took a second for any sound to emerge. "I was manufactured in Kilburn..." he whispered. Then the light in his eyes died completely and the only illumination left on the beach was the erratic blue flash of the thunderstorm.
12 / PARTY LIKE IT'S 2179

There's no party like the party people have when forty minutes earlier they all thought they were going to die.

Amazingly, O'Blarney hadn't managed to kill even one of them. Min Qi Man was the worst off. He was still suffering the after-effects of concussion, his speech making even less sense than usual. The little mutant had also clearly broken a couple of ribs, and Middenface guessed he'd bruised everything that wasn't broken, but the hairy wee guy wouldn't admit it. Maybe it was some sort of zen nonsense.

Or maybe he really hadn't hurt himself too badly because Middenface had managed to cushion his fall. Middenface rubbed his own sore noggin and winced. Nature had given him enough lumps already without any need to go out and collect some more.

Still, there was one thing he knew that could cure everything that ailed them, and Middenface was in the process of making a huge great vat of it.

Booze. Maybe not the Famous Grouse, but beggars couldn't be choosers, and Middenface thought his idea was pretty bloody brilliant, even if he said so himself. For once, he'd found a way of using this godawful planet's ways against it. If everything was speeded up, he'd reasoned, if every natural process got accelerated, then if there was any justice in the world that had to apply to fermentation too, didn't it?

It, as it turned out, did. With the help of the pile of fruit which the Blimp had harvested from the village trees, and a pile of sugar which had come out of Middenface's own supplies, he was brewing a bowl of hooch big enough to knock out the entire Scottish rugby team.

He stirred the evil-looking concoction and grinned in anticipation. "Here, Johnny, come an' ha' a taste o' this," he said.

"In a minute," Johnny said absently. He was still staring grimly down at O'Blarney's body. One-Eyed Jack had inspected it carefully before declaring it lifeless. Then Johnny, who never was the most trusting mutant in the house, had done the same. But there was no denying it, the robot really was dead. Time to celebrate, Middenface reckoned, but Johnny didn't seem to agree. He looked like someone had just run over his puppy.

Still, at least everyone else seemed to be in the party mood. And if they weren't now, they certainly would be after a dram or two of this wee brew. Middenface's eyes drifted over to the Blimp. Not that he'd ever use booze to get a lass in the sack, you understand, but it never hurt to relax them a little...

The Blimp, who was deep in conversation with Min Qi Man, was looking the least damaged of all of them. She'd told Middenface that she'd been sitting under cover, trying to work herself up into a useful rage, but there simply hadn't been enough body mass on her. Or maybe she just wasn't feeling angry enough, she hadn't been able to tell. She caught Middenface's eye now, and smiled, then returned her attention to the slightly glazed-eyed mutant beside her.

The rest of Team X were all laughing and congratulating each other. Rather too much, Middenface thought, for folks who'd actually sat out of the whole fight. Enigma had somehow, in the brief time since the fight, managed to brush her hair and reapply her make-up. She looked like she was about to be taken out on an expensive date, at the end of which she'd let the man pay, then kiss him on the cheek, tell him she'd love to see him again, and never return any of his calls. Middenface knew her type. Woman Man was female again, and was talking to the Sloth. They were standing slightly too close to each other, as people who are in love will. Every so often, the Sloth reached out and lightly touched Jo with his hand, gently resting his fingers on her arm, or brushing a lock of hair from her face. Middenface smiled: they were good kids, he thought. Worse than useless in a fight, but their hearts were in the right places.

One-Eyed Jack, catching his smile, sauntered over to him. Unlike Team X, he'd actually seen some action in the fight, and had the wounds to prove it: a deep, jagged gash on his left cheek where a rocky shard of shrapnel had grazed him, and a bruise on his right, livid and swollen. "Young love," he said to Middenface, nodding over at Woman Man and the Sloth.

Middenface glanced up briefly at him before returning his attention to the crucial matter of his hooch. "I'm fer it myself."

"Yeah?" One-Eyed Jack looked surprised. "Didn't have you pegged as a romantic."

Middenface looked round at the Blimp then leered jokingly at One-Eyed Jack. "Who said anything aboot romance?"

The other man laughed, a surprisingly girlish giggle.

Middenface dipped a ladle into the vat before him and poured a generous dram into his mouth. A second later, he doubled up, coughing. The stuff was stronger than firewater, searing down his throat to settle in his stomach like a burning lump of radioactivity.

It was ready, all right. He began to drain the alcoholic nectar from the fruit mulch which had produced it. They didn't have any proper glasses, but Min Qi Man had used his swords to whittle away some containers out of the bole of a tree that had been struck by lightening. As Middenface poured the liquid in, he saw that Min Qi Man had delicately carved the shapes of dragons and other exotic creatures into the sides of the goblets.

"C'moan an' get it!" he shouted out. "It's nae the Famous Grouse, but it'll dae the trick."

Before the others arrived, he handed a goblet to One-Eyed Jack and took one for himself. "Cheers!" he said, clinking goblets with Jack.

"Here's luck to us and painful deaths to our enemies," Jack said, before draining his entire draught in one.

Middenface, impressed, refilled his goblet. "I think we've aready got the second yin o' those."

Jack looked over at the fallen body of O'Blarney, its perfect silver surface now cracked and blackened, the handsome face twisted into an expression that looked almost like real pain. "You can run out of most things in life," he said, "but if you're a Strontium Dog, you'll never run out of enemies."

"Too true," Middenface said as Jack wandered off and the rest of the group arrived to pick up their drinks.

"This isn't too strong, is it?" Jo asked. "Only I've never been very good at holding my drink." She took a gulp of the liquid and immediately spat it back out, choking and coughing.

"Don't y'all worry now," the Sloth rumbled affectionately, patting her on the back until her coughing stopped. "I'll look after you."

"Yeah," Enigma said acidly, "Right up until the point he changes back into a man, starts drinking like it's going out of fashion, picks a fight with everyone in sight, then staggers over to me and tells me he's always loved me before throwing up and passing out unconscious on the ground." She took a goblet of her own and sipped at it delicately. "Cheers, by the way."

Team X walked away, the Sloth and Jo casting sour looks at Enigma as they went.

The Blimp was the next to approach, gently supporting Min Qi Man, who was still a little unsteady on his feet. Middenface felt a flash of jealousy, until he saw the warm smile she sent his way. "Here," he said, offering her a dram. "Get yer jaws round this. It'll put hairs on yer chest." He glanced at Min Qi Man as he handed him his own goblet. "Fer those that need them, anyway."

Min Qi Man took a small drink from his glass. A flash of pain crossed his face, so at least his taste buds were still working. "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," he said, vaguely. Then, eyes glazed, he wandered a couple of paces before suddenly sitting down cross-legged and staring intently into his hooch as if he'd lost something in it but couldn't quite remember what.

Rose stayed with Middenface. He began to get his hopes up.

"Not bad," she said of the drink. "I've tasted worse."

"Really?" Middenface deadpanned. "Ye must ha' been in some terrible bars."

The young woman laughed heartily, her whole body shaking with it. Since the fight, she'd managed to stuff another huge meal into herself, including some fish they'd caught in the lake, so there was quite a lot of flesh to shake. Middenface liked that. A man needed something to hold onto while he...

"Any left for me?" Johnny's voice said beside him, snapping him out of his fantasy. His partner didn't look any more cheerful than he had earlier.

"Aye," Middenface said, "plenty fer all."

Johnny looked at Rose, then at Middenface. "I'd like a word," he said.

Rose smiled good-naturedly. "Sure thing, I'll leave you boys to it."

"Naw, he dinnae-" Middenface began.

"Preciate it," Johnny interrupted before he could finish, and Rose moved away, sending a last sultry smile Middenface's way.

"What did ye dae that fer?" Middenface demanded of his partner angrily.

Johnny shook his head. "Sorry, but that can wait and this can't."

"Who says?" Middenface grumbled, but he left it at that. Johnny looked serious, and anything Johnny was serious about usually meant trouble. "Whit is it? Are ye fretting aboot how tae take on Delater now O'Blarney's oot o' the way?"

Johnny frowned. "Yeah, I'm worried about that. But I think we've got a more major problem." The white slits of his eyes darted left and right, making sure they weren't being overheard.

"Weel spit it oot, man, dinnae keep me in suspense!"

"O'Blarney knew too much about us," Johnny said. "I don't like it."

Middenface relaxed. Nothing to worry about, after all, just Johnny's excessive caution. He had to admit it had sometimes saved their bacon in the past, but sometimes it was just aggravating. And, he thought - looking over at Rose, who was chatting and smiling with One-Eyed Jack - this was one of those times. "Calm doon," he said to Johnny. "Nae need to worry just because we're world famous!"

Johnny didn't look satisfied. "It wasn't just me and you. He seemed to know about all of us. And he knew far too much. He even knew what weapon I was carrying. He knew its design specs. That's not something I tend to advertise."

Middenface shrugged. "So he was spying on us. Didnae dae him much guid, did it?" He nodded over at O'Blarney, dull green eyes staring sightlessly up at the star-filled sky.

Johnny still didn't look satisfied. "I don't think he was spying on us," he said, shooting bright glances round at the rest of the group. "I think one of us was spying for him."

"Jings, that's the daftest thing I ever heard!" Middenface said. "Who'd hire one o' this bunch o' neep-heids fer a spy? And anyway, if someone was spying fer him, they've probably decided to change sides now, ye ken what I'm saying? Now, if ye'll excuse me, there's a lassie over there who's dying fer the pleasure o' my company."

Without giving Johnny the chance to argue further, he topped up his glass then headed over towards Rose.

"Just be careful," he heard Johnny say, but he didn't pay him any mind. Wasn't he always careful?

Johnny watched his partner walk away, already a little unsteady on his feet. He shook his head, annoyed. Middenface usually had better sense. But then, as soon as people started thinking with something other than their heads, trouble was sure to follow.

And talking of trouble... Durham Red sauntered up, looking around at the other Strontium Dogs with contempt. "Well, this is fun," she said dryly. Johnny ignored her and carried on studying his fellow bounty hunters, wondering which of them it was, who had sold them down the river. He narrowed his eyes, itching to use his alpha rays on every one of his companions, strip bare the secrets of their minds and expose them to the light. Trouble was, it took energy, more energy than he had left after that fight. Even then, he could only scan one person every few hours without leaving himself so mentally depleted he'd be vulnerable to any sort of attack. Once he started doing that, the traitor would know he was suspected. No knowing what he'd do then.

At that monet, a horrible screeching sound tore through the air.

Johnny's head snapped round in alarm. But it was only One-Eyed Jack, who had dug out an ancient-looking fiddle from somewhere in his pack and was regaling the gathered mutants with something that could only loosely be described as music. The others didn't seem to mind. As soon as the tune - Johnny guessed it was a jig - started up, the Sloth pulled Jo into his arms and began spinning her slowly round the campsite. A few seconds later, Middenface persuaded the Blimp to join him. The blonde-haired mutant was laughing, her curls bouncing on her head as Middenface twirled her through the air. His face was flushed, with happiness as well as the booze, Johnny thought. Even Min Qi Man seemed to be getting into the spirit of things. Still sitting cross-legged on the ground, he had started to wave his arms woozily above his head, like some ancient, slightly brain-damaged god. None of them was in time with the music, but they all looked like they were having fun.

Maybe Middenface was right, maybe he was just being paranoid.

He dipped the ladle into the drink, topped up his glass and poured one for Red, who was still standing silently behind him. "Here," he told her, "you look like you need it."

"Thanks." She took a small sip and looked down at O'Blarney's corpse. "I guess I can see what they saw in him," she said after a moment.

"What who saw in him?" Johnny said, puzzled.

Red turned to look at him. "The women, the human women he carried on with."

"He was a flesh freak?" This was news to Johnny. Robot-human unions were illegal, very illegal. Most norms hated that kind of behaviour even more than they hated mutants, and that was saying something.

Red smiled, bitterly. "Why do you think they put him on trial? For killing mutants?"

"That's what I heard."

"Well you heard wrong. They gave him a medal for that, pinned on his chest by President Hillary herself. It was only when the Commission found out he was a human love god as well as a mutant killing machine that they started gunning for him."

Johnny shook his head, wearily. "I guess it figures."

Red looked at him, suddenly serious. "You ever wonder why we do it, Johnny? Why we take their orders and catch their criminals and let them treat us like we're worth less than shit?"

"All the time," Johnny said, looking out into the darkness.

Red smiled, not very pleasantly, and handed him back her goblet. "You know what," she said, " I need a drink - and this isn't it." Her fangs glittered red in the firelight.

"Don't even think about it," Johnny growled warningly at her.

She laughed. "Don't worry, I was thinking of hunting further afield. Reckon you can probably spare me now the job's done." Without another word she turned tail and loped away into the darkness, as silent and as lethal as a panther. Her form melted into the night, leaving only her hair to glint redly from the shadows before that too disappeared from sight.

Johnny grimaced. He knew Red couldn't help her hunger any more than he could help his eyes or McNulty could help his lumps. But he didn't like the thought of urges people couldn't control, needs so strong they overrode everything else. Because when someone had those needs, those urges, they weren't in charge of themselves anymore. He could never entirely trust Red, because he knew there was nothing she wouldn't do, nothing at all, to get her daily fix of blood.

His eyes narrowed, suddenly thoughtful, staring into the darkness beyond the campfire. But he couldn't see anything, and he was starting to think round in circles.

The rest of the night passed slowly for Johnny and quickly for everyone else. He rejoined the rest of the group, but he was careful not to drink too much, not to let his senses become too blunt. He was determined not to let his guard down.

Middenface didn't seem to have any such concerns. He was concentrating all his energies on the Blimp, hanging around her like a shadow all night. She didn't seem to mind, and a few hours and few drinks into the festivities, she let him put his arm around her. Kisses followed, and then Johnny noticed that the arm which Middenface had rested outside her clothing was slowly creeping its way inside. It might have gone further, if both hadn't passed out in a drunken stupor some time after midnight.

The rest of the party didn't last much longer. Middenface's brew was a lot of things - disgusting for one - but it certainly wasn't weak. The Sloth and Jo curled up together near the fire. One-Eyed Jack fell asleep cradling his fiddle like a baby and Min Qi Man passed out where he was, legs still crossed, his upper body bowed over so that his forehead rested on the ground. Only Enigma bothered to get her bedding out, but she fell asleep lying at right angles across it, the long ends of her hair perilously near the dying embers of the fire.

Johnny tried to stay awake himself, to keep a watch, but by dawn his exhaustion proved too much and his eyelids fell shut and didn't blink open again.

He woke, two hours later, to piercing screams.

It was Jo. She had leapt to her feet and was staring at the ground beside her in utter horror. Her screams roused the others, and everyone rushed towards her, weapons drawn. After a second, they saw what the problem was. Weapons were holstered as everyone took a nauseated step back.

The Sloth, it seemed, had fallen asleep over a small sapling. It was now a properly-formed tree. And it was growing straight through the hairy mutant's chest.

The Sloth was undoubtedly dead. A dark crimson stream of blood had spewed from his mouth onto the ground beside him. Some of it seemed to have spattered over Jo, who continued to scream hysterically. Enigma looked on the point of fainting too, even the normally imperturbable Min Qi Man was wearing an expression of horror.

There was a moment of inaction, then Red - looking sated and happy - jogged back into the camp from the direction of the foothills. Her expression fell as she approached them.

"What the hell happened?" she shouted.

"Fell asleep on a tree," Johnny told her, nodding at the Sloth's corpse.

"Not him," Red said impatiently. "O'Blarney."

It was only then that they realised O'Blarney's metal body had disappeared.
13 / SECRETS

Ladybird tried to peer round the bodies of her fellow villagers to get a look at the figure lying on the bed in the Temporary Leader's house. She would have asked people to move aside, only she wasn't meant to be there in the first place, and if she drew any attention to her presence someone else might realise that too and kick her out.

There was a lot of activity going on, much of it self-important, but little of it purposeful. It wasn't the first time Ladybird had noticed how useless her people were when it came to a crisis. Three years ago, a stray spark from the blacksmith's forge had caught in the thatch of Brother Sunflower's cottage. Her people had run around like headless chickens and by the time anyone had thought to set up a line to pass water buckets from the well to the fire, two more cottages were ablaze and the whole village was in danger of burning down. Perhaps it had something to do with the sacred Weed which their holy books insisted be smoked as often as possible.

Finally, she managed to force her way to the front of the crowd. Her father, who was standing at the head of the bed, shot her an annoyed look but chose not to say anything. She imagined he would wait until they were back home before giving her his usual lecture. Didn't matter. She got to stay and watch and that was what mattered.

Not that there was much to see at the moment. The figure on the bed was absolutely still, lifeless. Of course, like the Glass People, he had always moved far more slowly then them - but now he wasn't moving at all. Painful as it were to contemplate, it seemed that Brother O'Blarney was dead.

Her father, rather half-heartedly, was attempting to give him the kiss of life. It didn't seem to be having any effect. Ladybird wasn't surprised. Whatever Brother O'Blarney was, she didn't think he worked the way normal people did. And when he'd been alive, she'd never noticed him breathing, so she didn't see any reason why he'd start now that he was dead.

And then there was a screeching buzz, and a blue arc of electricity shot out from O'Blarney's body and connected with that of her father, flinging him back against the far wall. O'Blarney's eyes snapped open, throwing out a grass-green light.

"Oh," he said. "Nice one."

It took over a day for O'Blarney to return to normal. At first, his words were slow, slurred. His injury had apparently damaged his miraculous ability to speak quickly enough for them to understand him. But after they'd provided him with the tools he requested, and he'd spent some time poking ponderously around in his own chest, he seemed to return to normal. Ladybird was fascinated to see that his insides looked as strange as his outsides. He seemed to be composed entirely of wires, and lights and nuts and bolts - nothing organic at all. You'd almost think he was a machine, but of course that wasn't possible. By that time Brother O'Blarney was ready to tell them what had happened, Ladybird's father had also recovered from his electric shock. Only the slight singing of the hair around his temples remained as evidence of his injury.

"Brother O'Blarney," her father said now, "we're so glad to see that you appear to be cured."

"What happened?" O'Blarney asked.

The villagers exchanged looks. "Actually," Appleseed Smith said eventually, "we were hoping you could tell us."

He sat up, even more slowly than usual. There was a slight creaking sound from his joints and he seemed to be in pain, if he felt pain. "Well, where the hell did you find me?" He sounded impatient.

"With the Glass People," Ladybird said. Her father frowned at her, but it was she who'd found O'Blarney, creeping out in time to see the final slow moments of his battle with her soul mate and his companions. "You were lying dead in the middle of their camp. They were all asleep so we came in and took you out."

Brother O'Blarney was paying her undivided attention now. She found the intense gaze of his flat green eyes rather disconcerting. "And what, exactly, did you do to them?"

Her father came up behind Ladybird and rested his hands on her shoulders. The gesture probably looked protective but she knew it was as much to shut her up as anything else. "We left them alone," he said. "As you had instructed us."

"Of course," O'Blarney said, bowing his head in a gesture that hid his expression from those around him.

"So..." Her father coughed delicately, as if about to raise a painful subject. "What exactly were you doing in their camp? I thought you told us they were dangerous?"

O'Blarney looked sad. "And I was proved right, 'cause there I was minding my own business, communing with the beauty of nature, and they come along and attack me. There was nothing I could do, no way I could fight back without hurting them, and you know I'd never do that."

The villagers all nodded. It was one of the things which had helped them to trust Brother O'Blarney, his utter devotion to all living things. In fact, they had first stumbled across him as he'd been trying to set the broken wing of a tiny baby bird, blown out of a tree in a storm. The bird had died, but the action had won him a place in the villagers' hearts. He refused to eat meat, claiming that he didn't need it to live and wouldn't let any animal die to feed his appetite. He even cared for plant life, avoiding any meal which had required the death of a living creature.

A few of the villagers had tried followed his example, living only off berries and fruits which could be taken without killing the trees from which they came. A few weeks later, near starvation, they had given up. Which only increased their respect for Brother O'Blarney further. Clearly, he was capable of a level of self-denial far above their own. That was when people began to whisper that he might be a new prophet.

Then, when he offered them a way off this planet, a way to cure themselves of their strange affliction and rejoin the wider society from which they had been exiled for so long, they were sure. He _was_ the one. It explained everything: the way he moved like one of the Glass People but spoke like one of the villagers, the fact that he looked like a statue but lived like a man. He was the link, the bridge between their world and the greater universe beyond.

Except it was all taking rather longer than they had expected.

"Indeed," her father said now to O'Blarney. "Indeed, all life is sacred." He paused a moment, but it was clear there was something else he wanted to ask, and also clear that he didn't quite know where to begin. "Now, I realise that this may not be the best time, that you may still be feeling under the weather. In fact, I shouldn't even be talking about it at all, forget I even mentioned it..."

Ladybird's father ran a hand through his grey-flecked beard, a nervous habit she knew well. The other villagers all looked at him, willing him to speak, but unwilling to fill in the silence for him.

O'Blarney narrowed his eyes, spilling the green light over the silver curves of his face. "You want to ask about the project," he said.

Relieved, Ladybird's father nodded. "I wondered if there'd been... any progress."

O'Blarney nodded, then put out a hand to steady himself as if the move had disoriented him. "The mining is going well."

Ladybird's father was now running a hand through his hair while the other one continued to play with his beard. "Yes, yes, it is. The miners have been working very hard. And we sent more, as you requested, even though it's meant we've been very short-handed for the harvest."

It was true. So many of the young men from the village were now working in Brother O'Blarney's mines that there'd been a danger the fruit would rot on the trees before it could be brought in. Even the little children, as young as six, had been taken out of their lessons to help.

"And don't think for once second that all your efforts aren't appreciated," O'Blarney said.

"Well...' Ladybird's father hesitated again but this time decided to plough on. "It's just, people are beginning to question. The miners are beginning to wonder..."

"When will the processing be done?" Ladybird finished for him. "When will the ore be ready for us to use?"

Her father glared at her, but the other villagers were looking at her with approval, glad the question had finally been asked.

O'Blarney smiled. "The directness of youth warms the cockles of yer heart, don't it?"

"Indeed," Ladybird's father said through gritted teeth.

"Soon," O'Blarney finished. "Refining the ore hasn't been a piece of cake, but I've nearly cracked it."

"So you'll be able to cure us soon?" Ladybird asked, eagerly. "We'll be normal, just like the Glass People?"

O'Blarney smiled. More of a grin really. Slightly feral, Ladybird suddenly thought - an abrupt baring of his silver teeth. "Yeah, darling. I promise you, in less than a day you'll be in exactly the same state as them."

There was a hum of pleasure through the room, and several of the villagers turned and hugged each other. Even Ladybird's father smiled at her. Ladybird herself felt an elation so acute it was almost painful. It really was going to happen! Very soon, she and the man she loved would be able to be together, properly, forever. She realised her hands had clenched into fists so tight that her nails were drawing blood from her palms. She felt like she had to keep them closed, to hold on to her joy, her hope, or it all might float away like mist.

"Oi, sweetheart!" O'Blarney said, and she realised he'd been talking to her for some time.

She smiled at him, so overflowing with gratitude she almost felt like she loved him, too. "Yes?"

"I've got a small favour to ask you. Just a little errand that needs running. Will you do that for me, darling?"

"I'll do anything you want," Ladybird told him. "Anything at all."

As soon as Johnny had been able to restore some sort of order, he'd ordered the Strontium Dogs to spread out and search for O'Blarney. This time no one, not even One-Eyed Jack, questioned him taking command. They all seemed to feel the need for a little leadership. Or they were simply too hung-over to think for themselves.

Johnny been prepared to let Jo stay at the camp, since she was clearly in no state to join in the hunt. But as she'd been clinging on to the Sloth's corpse, crying enough to flood the lake, her body had suddenly convulsed and the strange change had occurred which turned her into a him. As soon as he was in his rugged male form, Joe had pushed the other mutant's corpse from him in disgust. He'd insisted that he be allowed to join the search, that O'Blarney's disappearance was far more important than the death of a dim-witted mutant who should have known better than to fall asleep over a tree shoot. Johnny had been unable to tell if he really meant it, or if it was some kind of macho act to cover up his real feelings.

Still, Johnny wasn't complaining. They needed every able body for the search. O'Blarney's disappearance could only mean one of two things, neither of them good: O'Blarney had allies who had sneaked his body away, or O'Blarney wasn't dead at all. When they'd spread out to search, Johnny had told everyone to keep visual contact with someone on each side. He had that twitchy feeling that told him trouble was coming.

He'd chosen to put One-Eyed Jack to his right and Red to his left - the two people he most wanted to keep a watch on. His eyes flicked to them as often as they scanned the ground, searching for traces of O'Blarney, and gazed at the horizon, looking for the first sign of an attack. Nothing doing on any front, though.

The air was bright with birdsong and soft with the smell of a million flowers. Dawn, as it did here every day, had brought spring back to the world. Winter itself had passed in the night. The leaves, which they had seen fall from the trees as their day progressed, had been lying on the ground in untidy red-brown heaps as they fell asleep. Now they were gone, melted away to nothing, absorbed into the ground to provide the fuel for the riot of growth which was sprouting all around them.

The riot of growth which had killed the Sloth, Johnny quickly realised, had covered up any tracks that might have been left by whoever removed O'Blarney. It was probably hopeless, and if they searched much further they'd be separated and vulnerable.

He ran his hand back through his hair, sighing. He was just getting ready to shout out an order to regroup when the figure of a young woman materialised in front of him.

He recognised her immediately. It was the woman he had seen earlier, standing in front of him in the village square. There was something different about her this time, though. At first he wondered if it was her hair, which seemed longer than the last time he'd seen her, or even her face, which was beginning to lose the puppy fat of youth. Then he realised, and as soon as he did his finger tightened on the trigger of his blaster and he carefully centred the barrel on her chest.

There was nothing blurred about her. No subliminal sense of movement. She was there. She was really there, in the same time frame as him. As he watched her, she blushed under his scrutiny and ducked her head as if trying to hide her face from him.

"Hello," she said, and this time he could understand her perfectly. "I'm Ladybird." Her voice was light, slightly breathless. She sounded nervous.

Johnny relaxed his finger slightly but didn't lower the gun. "Alpha," he said. "Johnny Alpha."

She smiled, shyly. "That's a funny name."

Johnny relaxed even further. Whatever this girl was, he was damn sure she was no threat. "Yeah, shame I don't have a normal name like yours," he said dryly.

Her expression fell. Johnny realised, alarmed, that she was on the point of tears. "You think my name's strange?"

"Your name's just fine," he said hurriedly.

She smiled sunnily again, all hint of tears gone. "I think your name's wonderful," she told him. "I knew it would be."

Johnny frowned. "You know me?"

She nodded eagerly and moved closer, closer than Johnny was comfortable with. "Oh yes, I've been following you."

Johnny's finger tightened unconsciously on the trigger, and he stepped back. "Who told you to do that? Who asked you to spy on us?"

Ladybird looked hurt and tearful again. "No one. I'd never do anything to hurt you, Johnny. I love you."

"You what?" Johnny felt like he was having half of an entirely different conversation to the one she was holding.

But the young woman wasn't deterred by his tone. She stepped up to him, rested her hands against his chest, and leaned forward so that their lips were almost touching and he could smell a faint odour of mint tea on her breath. "I love you. I want to be with you for the rest of our lives." Then she pressed her lips against his and kissed him.

For a moment, Johnny was too shocked to know what to do. Then he grabbed her arms, pulling them away from his body and tore his lips away from her mouth. "Look, girl, I don't know who you think I am, but you don't know me, and you sure as hell don't love me."

The girl did start crying now, big fat tears that slid down her cheeks and dripped from her chin onto her light, flowery dress. "This isn't how it's supposed to go!" she said. "I've waited a whole year to speak to you, and now you're acting like you don't even know me!"

Johnny let go of her hands and stepped back, eyes narrowed. "Yeah, and how exactly are you speaking to me? Last time we met you were in a whole other time frame."

Ladybird shrugged, swiping the tears impatiently away from her eyes. "The chronite. I've only got a little bit, and until Brother O'Blarney works out how to refine it, it only lasts-"

Johnny grabbed her arm again, gripping tight enough to hurt. He saw her face screw up in pain but he didn't care. "You know O'Blarney?"

"Yes," Ladybird said. "Brother O'Blarney's our friend. He's trying to cure us."

Johnny shook her, trying to shake some sense into her, or some answers out of her. "Is he still alive?"

She nodded, a look of fear on her face.

"Where is he? Was it you who took him?"

Ladybird struggled to get away, but Johnny was too strong. "Let me go - you're hurting me!"

"I'll let you go when I've got some answers," Johnny growled, ignoring her feeble attempts to claw his fingers away from her arm.

"Fine," she said. "Come back to the village with me and I'll explain everything. And then tomorrow we can get married."

"Married?" Johnny said incredulously, feeling the conversation slipping away from him again.

The young woman stared at him with big, pleading eyes. "I know this seems quick to you," she said. "I'm not mad or anything. But to me it's been a year. I know you're the one for me. This isn't just some stupid teenage crush, I'm nearly nineteen. If you come back to the village I can get some more chronite and you can get to know me too and then you'll see that we're made for each other." She smiled winningly at him, as if sure that she'd just won the argument.

Johnny released her arm and stepped back. "Look..." he said, then paused, really not sure how to go on. Give him a battle, put him against an enemy, and he knew what to do and didn't hesitate to do it. But this... "Listen," he continued after a moment. "I can't come with you. I've got a job to do. I don't know what you think O'Blarney is, but he's a killer and he's no friend to anyone but himself."

"You're wrong!" Ladybird said fiercely. "O'Blarney loves us. And I love you!" She stamped her foot, like a child having a tantrum. "Oh! Why won't you listen to me? Why won't you just come with me?"

Johnny's attention was suddenly caught by a flicker of movement to his left. He snapped his head and gun around, only to see that it was Red. He guessed she must have heard the sound of Johnny's argument with Ladybird, and was heading towards them, her own gun drawn. Johnny help up his hand, motioning her to stop. He didn't feel in any danger from Ladybird, and he didn't think Red joining the conversation was going to help any.

Once he saw that Red had halted - though she continued to look at him with a puzzled, and slightly suspicious expression - he turned back to Ladybird.

"I can't-" he began. And then he realised that she was gone. He spun round, searching the surrounding bushes for any sign of her, but she seemed to have vanished like a wraith into thin air.

"Sneck!" he muttered, angry with himself for letting her go, for frightening off the one person who might have been able to lead him to O'Blarney. Now she was gone he knew exactly what he should have said to her, how he should have played along with her strange fantasies about him until he'd got all the information out of her that he wanted. He'd messed up. But who could blame him? Why did women have to be so emotional and so damned unreasonable?

Thinking of which, he turned back to Red, wanting to explain what had happened, so see if she could make any more sense of it than he had.

Except that she, too, had gone.

He ran to where he had last seen her, gun drawn, pulse racing, but she had disappeared as completely as Ladybird and far less explicably.
14 / WHEN GOOD LOVE TURNS BAD

Red, it quickly became apparent, really was gone. Johnny scanned the horizon, pulsing out alpha rays in every direction, trying to pick up any trace of her, any lingering hint of her mind, the focussed, predatory energy of it that Johnny had come to know so well over the course of their missions together. But there was nothing. The rapidly heating mid-morning air was stirred only by a breath of breeze, and it carried no noises on it save for the cawing of the gulls which flew invisibly fast round the lake's shore. Even the lake itself, nearly a kilometre behind Johnny, seemed oppressively silent and still. Untroubled from this distance by even a hint of a ripple, it looked like it had been painted onto the surrounding landscape, a broad stroke of blue in the prevailing muddy browns and greens.

"There a problem here?" a voice suddenly said at his shoulder, and he realised that One-Eyed Jack had loped over to join him.

He thought for a moment about covering up, but what was the point? If Red really had taken off, then One-Eyed Jack would find out soon enough. "Red's gone," he said.

One-Eyed Jack stared at him in silence for a moment. His jaw worked, chewing a wad of tobacco and then spitting out the juices. "So, now we know who took O'Blarney out from under our noses."

Johnny shook his head. "We can't be sure about that."

The other mutant scratched a hand through the stubble on his chin. "Sure, and we can't be sure the sun is gonna rise tomorrow, but we can take a damn good guess."

Johnny would have argued further, but he had to admit that Red's disappearance did look as suspicious as hell. And it wasn't like he hadn't been harbouring a few doubts of his own about her ever since they'd landed on the planet. Still, there was something about her disappearance that didn't sit quite right in his mind. If she had indeed spirited O'Blarney's body away from the compound - presumably in conjunction with Ladybird's people - then why had she come back afterwards? Why risk being caught? Unless, of course, there was something else she had wanted to do, some other havoc she intended to wreak before she left for good. In which case...

Johnny holstered his blaster and turned back towards the camp. "We'd better regroup," he said to One-Eyed Jack. "We ain't gonna find anything and wandering around out here just makes us easy targets."

One-Eyed Jack nodded, and without needing to be asked set out in the opposite direction to help round up the remaining members of Team X. Johnny in turn picked up Middenface and the Blimp. They came together at their old campsite.

For a second, it shook Johnny to see the large, bleached white skeleton sitting in the centre of the camp. After a moment, though, he realised that it was all that remained of the Sloth after the planet's native scavengers had had a clear hour to work on him. Growing up through the skeleton's ribcage was a silver-barked tree. The ground was covered in the confetti of pink, sweet-smelling petals which had fallen from its branches.

Johnny felt a twinge of regret that the big, gentle mutant was gone, but found it easy enough to put to one side. He'd lost so many comrades over the years, as each one fell he'd come to care that little bit less. And if that made him seem hard - well, it was either that or go insane with grief, and where was the profit in that?

Woman Man, he saw, stared at the remains with horror, frozen on the spot for a second. Then he swallowed visibly and sat as far away from it as possible. Min Qi Man's reaction was more muted, his face giving little away, but Johnny saw him flinch when a petal from the tree floated down to land on his arm. Enigma looked more angry than upset, glaring at the tree as if holding it personally responsible for all their troubles. Only the Blimp seemed unbothered, positioning herself in the tree's shade and piling up the fallen petals into a soft seat to cushion her now considerable bulk.

"Well," Johnny said when they were all seated. "Looks like we've got ourselves a problem."

Enigma flicked a glance round all the faces, then back at Johnny. Her forehead creased in a puzzled frown. "Where's Durham Red?"

Johnny nodded. "Yep, that's the problem."

"Ye're nae telling me she's goan and run off?" Middenface said.

"Sure seems that way," One-Eyed Jack said.

"We don't know what happened," Johnny corrected. "One minute she was there, the next - gone."

"Well," the Blimp said, "I don't like to speak ill of the absent, but it seems highly suspicious that she'd just happen to up and leave when everything's started to go wrong round here."

Middenface nodded. "The wee lassie's right."

Joe was scowling, and Johnny could see that one of his hands was mindlessly pulling grass out of the ground around him, leaving him marooned in a patch of bare earth. "If she killed the Sloth I'm gonna rip off her head and spit down her neck!"

Johnny leaned forward, staring into the other man's eyes, hoping to get through to him. "Nobody suggested the Sloth dying was anything but an accident. And we can't afford to go running off chasing phantoms or looking for revenge. We've got more important things to be worrying about."

"More important than one of our friends being killed?" Enigma said angrily.

"Yeah," Johnny said, "more important than that."

Min Qi Man's head snapped up and for the first time Johnny saw an expression like anger in his eyes. "Must the metal grow cold in order to become hard?"

Johnny smiled wryly, getting his meaning, agreeing even, but Middenface leapt to his defence. "Hold yer wheesht!" he snapped at the small mutant. "Johnny kens what he's talkin' aboot."

"So," One-Eyed Jack drawled, "what _are_ you talking about?"

"I'm talking about O'Blarney."

One-Eyed Jack's one good eye widened, then narrowed. "You're saying he's alive?"

Johnny nodded. "Alive and well and up to no good whatsoever."

"How do we know that's true?" Enigma demanded. "How do we know it wasn't you who took O'Blarney's body away?"

Middenface looked at her with contempt. "And why would Johnny do that?"

It was clear Enigma hadn't thought that far.

"I didn't take O'Blarney's body," Johnny said, "but I can tell you who did, or at least who was behind it. The people from that village."

"How can you possibly know that?" the Blimp demanded.

Johnny ran a hand wearily back through his disordered curls. "Because one of them told me."

"You spoke to one of them?" Joe jumped on his words like a dog latching onto a fresh bone. "When? How?"

"A few minutes ago," Johnny replied. "But the second one's the important question. 'Cause I think the answer could cause us a whole heap of bother."

"So, what is the answer?" Enigma demanded impatiently.

Johnny looked round at his companions' faces. They looked, tense, angry even, and several of them were glaring at him with undisguised dislike. Good. Better that than the lost, scared look they had held straight after the discovery of The Sloth's body. "The answer's chronite," Johnny told them. "O'Blarney's got them mining it from the mountains. I'd guess it must be ground zero of the time bomb strike up there. The chronite's formed by the fallout from the blast."

Middenface was frowning, still not getting it. No one else seemed to either. It occurred to Johnny that Red would have worked it out immediately. It was what made her so useful, and so dangerous.

"But hoo come O'Blarney can speak tae these folks?" Middenface said.

Johnny shrugged. "Being a robot, I guess his mind can work at their pace and talk at it, too. The point is, O'Blarney's got the villagers thinking the chronite can cure them, get them back to normal speed."

One-Eyed Jack looked interested. "And can it?"

Johnny shrugged. "Maybe. The stuff's full of chronodiation. Treated the right way it can alter pretty much anything to do with time. Speed it up, slow it down, twist it round. We thought O'Blarney came to this place to hide out from Delater, but I don't think he's hiding at all. He was after the chronite all along, and now he's got his hands on a pile of the stuff, there's no knowing what he'll do with it."

The others looked at him, horrified. Johnny sympathised - he wasn't too happy at the prospect himself. "O'Blarney's a psychopath," Johnny said. "A stone killer. We can't afford to let him get off-planet with power like that. It's not just about Delater anymore." Several of the other Strontium Dogs put their hands on their chests, as if feeling for the tiny bomb hidden inside their flesh. "O'Blarney's got to be stopped, and we're the only ones who can do it."

"And what aboot Red?" Middenface asked.

Johnny shook his head. "Whatever's happened to her, Red's on her own."

Durham Red was getting tired of being unconscious. More precisely, she was getting tired of the pounding headache and shooting pains behind her eyes that accompanied the end of unconsciousness and the return to wakefulness. She tried to bring up her hands to shield her eyes from the glare of the sun, but didn't seem able to lift them. After a few seconds of useless tugging she realised that they were tied up. As were her legs.

She was spread-eagled on the ground like a rabbit skin left out to dry. She tried to remember what had happened to her, but it was all a blur. The last clear memory she had was of looking over at Johnny... She struggled, to bring some details back, to remember why she had been looking at him, what it was that had attracted her attention, but it was gone. After that, a vague memory of pain, a sudden, unexpected blow - and then nothing.

Gradually, wincing at the pain, she forced her eyes open. Her head had been fixed so that she was staring directly at the sun. Looming over her, dark and featureless, outlined by a glare of light that denied further detail to even Red's sharp eyes, was a human figure. It was sinister, menacing, like a living shadow.

Then the figure spoke, and its voice was high-pitched and young. If Red had to guess, she'd say it belonged to a teenaged girl. The shadow seemed to shrink on itself, falling back into the shape of a human woman no larger than Red herself. "Don't bother trying to escape," the figure said. "I've tied those knots really tight, and even if you do get away I've got a gun pointed at your head."

Red tried to think of something clever, then settled for the obvious. "Who the hell are you?" Her own voice sounded strange to her ears, a dry croak.

"All you need to know is that I'm your rival and that I'm going to win."

"Your rival? For what?" A leaf from the trees above fell onto Red's face, and she blew it off impatiently. It moved a tiny way to settle on her cheek, its touch was infuriatingly light and tickly.

The figure finally stepped out of the light and, after a moment of blindness, Red was able to make it out. She almost laughed. It was only a girl, a young girl, no older than twenty. Her hair was tied up in bunches with little clasps in the shape of tiny birds, and she was wearing a floral-pattered skirt and a light top which hung loosely over the small buds of her breasts. Red felt, somehow, that she'd seen her before, but couldn't imagine where. "For Johnny, of course," the young girl said.

This time Red actually did laugh. "Johnny? Johnny Alpha?"

The young girl's face darkened. "Why are you laughing? Do you think I don't stand a chance with him? Well you're wrong! I love Johnny, and with you gone he'll realise that he loves me too."

Red looked at the girl incredulously, but she seemed to be entirely serious. "I think there's been a misunderstanding," she said eventually. "A big misunderstanding."

"No! You're the one who doesn't understand!" she girl said heatedly. "Johnny's _mine_. He and I are meant to be together." And then her expression seemed to soften, taking on one almost of pity. "I don't blame you for wanting him, I don't even hate you. But I want Johnny for myself and I'm not prepared to share him."

Red breathed an internal sigh of relief. If this was all it was about - hard though it was to believe - then it would be easily sorted out. "Sweetheart," she said, "you can have him."

The girl look stunned. "Really?"

"Really. You're more than welcome to him."

But then the girl's face scrunched up in an expression of almost comical suspicion.

"No. You're just trying to trick me. You're trying to get me to release you so you can kill me while I've slowed myself down to talk to you, and then you'll have Johnny all to yourself."

"I'm not-" Red began to protest.

But the girl interrupted. "It's no good. I've made up my mind. Anyway, you wouldn't be able to find Johnny again. I carried you quite a few kilometres on my horse to get here." Red heard the animal in question whinny softly somewhere behind her and she realised that the air, and her clothing, was indeed infused with a musty equine smell. "You'd never find your way back," the girl continued. "And besides," her expression hardened, "you're not going to have the chance."

Red's patience, never a plentiful commodity, ran dry. "Listen, you crazy bitch! Johnny and me are nothing to each other. I don't know why you think you love him, or how you think he loves you, but if he does it's got nothing to do with me!" She tugged against her bonds, but all she accomplished was to tighten the leather cords painfully around her wrists.

"Don't lie to me!" the girl shouted. "I know there's something going on with you and him!"

"How? How the hell can you know that? I mean, have you tried asking Johnny?"

The girl shook her head angrily. "I don't need to ask him - I saw the way he looked at you." Red opened her mouth to argue further, but the girl shouted over her. "Shut up! Just shut up! There's nothing you can say that's going to save you."

For the first time, Red felt an icy stab of fear. "Save me?" she asked. "Save me from what?"

"From dying, of course," the girl said.

"You're going to kill me? Over Johnny?" Red couldn't believe the words even as she said them. She'd often thought Johnny might be the death of her, but never like this. It would have been a tiny bit more bearable, she thought, if Johnny actually had loved her. If she weren't about to die for absolutely nothing. But she quashed that idea as soon as she thought it, Johnny had no feelings for her at all, and this girl must be soft in the head to think otherwise.

The girl was wearing a suddenly guilty expression. It didn't look like the kind of guilt that someone contemplating murder ought to be feeling. She looked, instead, like a little girl who'd been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. "No, I'm not going to kill you - that isn't allowed."

Red felt a rush of relief.

"The fire ants I've staked you out over will do that," the girl continued. "They've been hibernating for the winter, but they should be waking up right about now."

Red gazed into her eyes, desperately hoping she wasn't serious. The lingering guilt in the girl's face convinced her she meant every word.

"You don't have to do this, you know," she said, making a huge effort to soften her voice, fill it with understanding. "It won't help you get Johnny. I'm not his lover - you're wrong about that - but I am his friend, and if he thinks you've killed me then he'll never forgive you."

The girl frowned in thought, then smiled. "That's OK, there's no way he'll ever find out. Sorry," she said at Red's expression, "I really can't talk anymore, the chronite's about to wear off. Must dash, I've got a mission to run."

As she spoke, her movements begun to speed up, her voice become faster, more high-pitched. A second later, she'd disappeared, the only evidence that she'd ever been there the faint sound of a horse, galloping into the distance.

Some distance away, in the direction the hoof beats had vanished, a group of Strontium Dogs was struggling uphill through the scorching mid-morning sun. Behind them, several kilometres now, a blue lake was glittering in the sunlight. But the bounty hunters weren't looking at that. Their attention was focussed forward and upward, towards the mountain whose peak they would have to ascend before the end of the day.

Their leader, a dark-haired, handsome man with the strangest white eyes, was also looking to left and right, bright gaze boring into the lightly wooded landscape around him, as if willing it to give up its secrets, to tell him where his enemy was hiding. But it revealed nothing, and as he and his companions left the grassy plain behind them, ever-thickening vegetation hid more and more from view.

The trees here weren't like the jungle, dripping with moisture and crawling with life. This was a far hardier forest, towering conifers whose needles crunched beneath their feet and whose lower branches were hung with dead-brown growth so that the trees seemed to be wearing their own shrouds.

One of the mutants, a red-faced man whose entire head was covered in tumour-like growths, looked around him unlovingly, as if he found the trees personally offensive. Perhaps they reminded him of a home he'd rather remained forgotten. Beside him, a large, blonde-haired woman seemed happier, perhaps glad of the shade. Her white face and thick neck were already painted a livid red with sunburn. As she walked, she chatted merrily with the man beside her, and he smiled and chatted back.

Behind them walked the one member of the group who looked like he should be entirely at home here, his brown-furred skin and prehensile tail eminently suited to an arboreal environment. But his eyes seemed to be gazing inward, not outward, gazing on an inner landscape which was giving him no pleasure. He didn't speak to the dark-haired woman beside him, nor did she appear to want him to. The ruggedly handsome man beside her seemed to welcome conversation even less. All three were clearly lost in their own dark thoughts.

At the back of the group, a one-eyed man was also alone with his thoughts, but seemed to be enjoying them far more than the others. Occasionally he'd look at his companions, and his good blue eye would narrow, considering, as if sizing them up.

Only their leader, the blank-eyed mutant with the careworn face, seemed to notice when a breeze stirred the forest around him. His head snapped round and his hand dropped to the blaster at his belt, but after a second he relaxed and continued moving forward.

This was a pity. Because if he had continued looking he might have spotted her as she appeared, the indistinct figure of a young woman. Like a mirage, she blinked out of existence a second late. But before she did, she appeared to press something, some small package, into one of his travelling companion's hands.

Without looking at it, the mutant tucked the gift carefully away and carried on walking.
15 / RIVER DEEP

Red struggled against her bonds, struggled so hard that the rough leather sawed through her wrists and drew blood. Any other time, the smell would have set her stomach rumbling with hunger but the fear knotting it left no room for that.

Damn it, that stupid bitch! Red wasn't sure if she was berating herself or her captor. Even in her panic, she knew that she had handled it badly, that she had antagonised the girl more, and that if she had somehow found the right thing to say she might have been able to talk her way to freedom.

Too late now. She struggled one final, convulsive time against her bonds and then slumped back against the ground, defeated. Her head was resting sideways, giving her a good view of the surroundings. In other circumstances, she might have thought it pretty, idyllic even. The girl had tied her in the centre of a small clearing in a forest. It was covered in short, emerald green grass, broken up in places by a darker, patchier moss. As Red watched, a host of multi-coloured wildflowers grew and blossomed in the meadow. She supposed she ought at least to be grateful that the girl hadn't tied her down over any fast-growing plants. At least she would avoid the Sloth's fate. But then, she thought, the Sloth's death had been quick, and probably painless. Red didn't know what a fire ant was, but if the name was any clue then her end was likely to be neither quick nor pleasant.

As soon as she thought about the ants, Red imagined she could feel them, crawling under her clothes, skittering over her skin, searching out her most vulnerable parts, her tender flesh... She felt a bubble of panic building in her chest and ruthlessly squashed it. She couldn't afford to panic. She had to think.

But what was there to think about? She'd pretty much run out of options, and to top it all off there was a sharp stone digging right into the small of her back, so she wasn't just going to die in agony, she was going to die in discomfort too. It was only as she thought this that it occurred to her to wonder how sharp exactly the stone was. Whether, for example, it might be sharp enough to cut through leather. And it was only as she thought this that she became consciously aware of a noise she'd been subconsciously registering for some time. It was a strange high-pitched sound, like a million tiny imps gossiping. Or like the sound of a million fire ants waking up and getting ready to go out and get themselves some food.

With every ounce of energy she possessed, she began shifting her body, moving it backwards and forwards the short distance her bonds would allow, desperately trying to work the lump of stone beneath her out of the ground, to push it towards her hand. For an agonising few moments, it remained in place, stubbornly refusing to give up its place in the earth. Then she felt it move. Redoubling her efforts, she hunched her body and released, hunched and released. She knew she must look ridiculous but she didn't care, it was working. Gradually, the rock was making its way over to where she wanted it. In a few more seconds she'd have it in her hand and then freedom really might be possible.

Except that she didn't have a few more seconds. She didn't even have one. Because a few centimetres from her nose, a red-brown volcano of bodies was erupting from a hole in the ground. They must have been moving slowly at first, sluggish, maybe, with the end of their hibernation, because she actually got a good look at one of them. It was only a few centimetres in length, but half of that length was taken up with a pair of razor-sharp pincers. A nip from one of them might hurt a little. A bite from a hundred, a thousand...

As she thought it, she felt the first agonising nips on the skin of her hands, and she knew that there really was nothing she could do.

The walk was less of a stroll in the woods now. Imperceptibly, the foothills had given way to the mountains proper and now with every step Middenface was conscious of fighting against gravity, which would have liked nothing better than to drag him all the way back to the jungle from which he'd started less than a day ago. It was a tiring thought.

The trees had thinned out as the soil became too poor and rocky to support much growth. The granite bones of the earth were on show here, poking through the ground in tall, jagged outcroppings. The air was thinner, making breathing harder and seeing easier. The sun's rays were scalding, spearing down at them through only a thin layer of atmosphere. In the shadows a sudden and sharp chill descended.

And then there was the river. Middenface guessed it must be one of the tributaries which fed into the great lake, now far below them. They had seen one, a kilometre or so from their campsite, flowing sedately into the blue water. There was nothing sedate about this one. As susceptible to the pull of gravity as Middenface himself, it was roaring and dancing down the mountain faster than his eyes could really see. It looked like a great, white rushing blur. Proving, Middenface supposed, that with enough patience and effort you can achieve anything, it had cut a deep ravine in the surface of the granite. The river itself was at least ten metres wide and God knew how deep. Jumping it or fording it would be absolutely impossible. It was too far even for Johnny's short-range teleporter to work.

So now, at Middenface's suggestion, they were trying to bridge it. Johnny had found them a suitable tree on the banks of the ravine and a few well-placed blaster shots had felled it. But carrying it down the steep bank was proving far harder work and they still had a good hundred metres to haul it to the river. Middenface was already regretting offering to take the front. All the weight was, unsurprisingly, pointing downwards, and only by bracing his feet in the soft mud of the riverbank and pushing backwards with all his might was Middenface able to stop himself being flung into the river. He cursed now as the massive tree-trunk jerked forward suddenly, and his feet skidded out from under him.

He fell to his knees, and the top of the tree plunged into the ground, missing his legs by about two centimetres. "Ye daft gowks, hold on will ye!"

"We're trying!" Johnny gritted from behind him.

"Well try harder!" Middenface snapped.

He looked back to see that the rest of the Stronts had also fallen to their knees as the tree trunk crashed to the ground. Only Johnny was still on his feet, apparently bearing half the load single-handedly. The Blimp was taking the rest of the weight on her ample stomach where she had fallen beneath the trunk. Middenface hurriedly scrambled to his feet and picked the end up again, heaving it back into the air with a joint-popping effort. After a moment, Woman Man joined him, his bristly face set in a grimace of effort. One-Eyed Jack, at the very back, also regained his footing, and heaved the thick trunk onto one of his shoulders.

Min Qi Man and Enigma were the last to get to their feet. The simian mutant still seemed disoriented from his fight with O'Blarney. Middenface was beginning to think the blow to the head had done him some permanent damage. Enigma was probably the most healthy of all of them, and also the one putting the least effort into the whole endeavour. Probably worried that she'd break a nail, Middenface thought sourly.

Finally, they were ready to move again, and Middenface took the first tentative step forward. As soon as he did, there was a loud yelp from Min Qi Man and the trunk smashed to the ground again, this time landing square on Middenface's foot. Only the softness of the earth stopped him from getting a collection of broken bones. And he now had a boot full of mud. He cursed colourfully.

"This isn't working," Johnny said. Thats the the understatement of the century, Middenface thought.

"Yeah," the Blimp agreed, panting. "At this rate, we won't need to worry about drowning in the river. We'll be dead before we get there."

Enigma perched delicately on the trunk and crossed her legs. "Even if we do manage to get it down there, what are we going to do? It's not like we can throw it across the river, is it?"

Middenface glared at her. "What, and ye couldnae ha' mentioned this earlier?"

Enigma smiled sweetly at him. "I assumed you had it all planned out. I mean you wouldn't have got us to drag this thing all the way down here for nothing, would you?"

Both Woman Man and One-Eyed Jack were glaring at Middenface now. So was Johnny.

"What exactly are you planning, partner?" he asked Middenface, not making much of an effort to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

Middenface shrugged. "Toss it."

None of the others looked any the wiser. "What?" Enigma said.

"Toss it," Middenface repeated. "When we reach the bottom we can lean it up against the bank here, then I can heave it ontae my shoulder an' toss it over the river. Like a caber," he added at their blank looks.

"And this was your plan?" One-Eyed Jack said incredulously.

"Aye," Middenface said. He glared round at all the others. "Why, is anyone sayin' I'm nae man enough tae dae it?"

Nobody answered him directly. They didn't have to; their expression spoke for them.

Middenface sighed. "Folks ha' got no faith these days. Awright, if ye're all tae feeble too carry it any further, I'll take it from here and dae it myself."

He thought they'd argue with him. But to a mutant they folded their arms and looked at him.

"Fine," Johnny said. "Go ahead." His cheek was scratched and coated with mud where the trunk had brushed it on its last descent. He looked very thoroughly pissed off and as if he would like nothing better than to see Middenface try to carry the tree on his own to the riverbank and somehow toss it over.

"Fine," Middenface said, his face mulish. He folded his own arms and glowered at his so-called comrades in arms. "I will!"

Red was in agony. She felt like she was being eaten alive - and if she didn't manage to free herself, she would be. But the stone was in her hand now. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she sawed at the leather tie around her wrist with the last of her strength. She felt it give, slightly, but she was finding it harder and harder to concentrate, to keep sawing... The pain was so intense it would be so easy just to drift away from it, float away, float somewhere warm and safe...

Her eyes reopened a second later with a snap. The pain returned full force, but she was grateful for it, glad of this sign that she was still alive. The ants were all over her arms. They felt like they'd been dipped in burning hot flame. The material of her jerkin had long ago been eaten away by the voracious creatures.

Unable to stop herself, she let out a small whimper. She wasn't sure how much more of this she could take. Desperately, she continued to hack away at her bonds, but she was weakening, each stroke of the stone less powerful. She wasn't even sure if she was cutting through the leather at all any more.

Her eyes were streaming with tears of pain and frustration. Her vision was blurring, a grey-brown streak moving across it at random intervals. She blinked her eyes, trying to see more clearly, refusing to slip back into unconsciousness.

The grey-brown streak remained. It was, she realised, slowing down. The pain was lessening too, the constant buzz of agony gradually breaking up into discrete little nips of discomfort. For a moment she thought that she was passing out again and fought against it. But she could still feel the pain of the old cuts, and the raw sunburn on her face. It wasn't her consciousness which was disappearing - it was the ants.

She looked more closely at the streak, and as she did it slowed and stopped until she found herself eye to long snout with a waddling, armour-plated thing. It was, she realised, an ant-eater. Its tongue suddenly flicked out, and she flinched back, afraid that it was about to make her its next meal. But it just flicked along its prehensile nose, cleaning off the last few ants, then slid back inside its mouth. The creature continued staring at her. It almost looked like it was smiling.

Red smiled back and began to work again at her bonds with the stone.

Middenface had never lifted anything so heavy in his entire life. He thought his shoulder was going to break under the weight of it. He thought it was going to push him all the way into the ground like a hammer banging a nail into a piece of wood. He thought he'd never be able to breathe again.

He thought what an incredibly stupid idea this had been.

Johnny, who might have been pissed off with him, but clearly didn't want him to come to any actual harm, gazed at him in concern. "Why don't you put it down," he said. "We can find another way."

"Naw," Middenface gasped. "I'm doin' just fine." He staggered a few steps to the right. The top of the tree trunk, pointing into the air above him, wobbled alarmingly. Middenface staggered a few desperate steps to the right and the trunk mercifully righted itself.

"Right," he said. "Wish... me... luck!"

"Just be careful," Johnny said, frowning at him as if wondering whether he should let him go ahead with this.

"Yeah, we wouldn't want you to hurt yourself," Enigma said sweetly but obviously insincerely.

Middenface turned towards the river before Johnny could make up his mind. It looked impossibly far away. Intellectually he knew that it was less than thirty paces, but with a two-tonne weight wobbling precariously on his shoulder - not to mention digging splinters into both the hands he was supporting it with - every metre was an additional burden of impossible agony.

With an enormous effort of will, he lifted one foot, then let it drop a few centimetres in front of him. Then, with another great effort, he lifted the other foot and did the same. After that he had to stand still for a few moments until he was able to gasp enough breath into his body to stop his head spinning like a top. At this rate, it would be nightfall before he reached the river.

Gritting his teeth, Middenface forced his legs forward, not waiting till one had landed before he lifted the next.

Slowly, painfully, he gathered momentum. After a few seconds, it became easier. After a few more seconds, he realised why. The huge log was slowly falling forward, its top plunging towards the ground.

Desperately, Middenface called on reserves of energy he didn't know he possessed to run even faster, to try to keep the bottom of the log in line with the top and to stop it plummeting to the ground.

It felt like trying to empty a bucket with a sieve. For every step he took forwards, the top of the trunk moved two. He couldn't keep up with it. It was falling... falling...

Then he realised that he was there. That the river bank was only a few paces in front of him. With a huge grunt of effort, he pushed up and out with both his arms and flung the log towards the far bank. The sudden loss of the weight made him feel so light he thought he might float away. Only the agony of his arms - which both felt like they'd been torn out of their sockets - kept him anchored to the ground.

But it was a perfect toss, the kind of toss that would have won him first prize in the Highland Games, if they'd ever let mutants compete in them. The huge branch flew through the air in a graceful arc, then splashed back to earth, its centre spanning the river, the ends embedded in either bank. An ice-cold sheet of water splashed up into his face.

There was a stunned moment of stillness from the other mutants, then they rushed up to the river to see what he had done. When they realised that he'd succeeded, they looked stunned. Then the Blimp grabbed him, hugged him so tightly he thought he might burst, and kissed him long and hard on the lips. "My hero!" she said.

Middenface would have replied but he was too busy kissing her back.

When they both finally surfaced for air, it was to see that the others had already walked across the thick wooded bridge to the far bank. Middenface grabbed the Blimp's hand and joined them. The water spat icy spray at him as he crossed, as if angry that he had outwitted it.

Only when he reached the far bank did Middenface's adrenaline-fuelled strength desert him, and he fell abruptly on his backside. The Blimp looked down at him in alarm. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, hen. Just need a few minutes to recharge the auld batteries."

One-Eyed Jack unhooked a cooking pot which was hanging from his backpack and thumped it onto the ground. "Reckon we could all do with a square meal before we get any nearer O'Blarney," he said. "Why don't you all give me some rations and I'll cook us up a nice stew."

As the others dug out ration packs and scavenged food from their packs, One-Eyed Jack started chopping ingredients into his pot. He was taking out small packets of spice from the folds of his jacket and biting his lip in concentration as he poured out carefully measured dollops into the mix, looking as intent on cooking them a perfect meal as a chef in a fine restaurant.

Johnny, who generally regarded eating as refuelling, not something to be treated as a fine art, gave himself the job of finding some firewood.

So he didn't see the extra ingredient a hand slyly dropped into the pot: the small sachet of white powder which Ladybird had delivered a few hours ago.
16 / BETRAYED

Johnny looked over at One-Eyed Jack for the tenth time, but he was still hunched over the stew pot, stirring it with an expression of concentration that seemed out of proportion to the difficulty of the task. Johnny grimaced. They needed to be getting on, getting moving, and this lunch stop was a waste of time. While they were sitting around waiting for One-Eyed Jack they weren't getting any younger - and O'Blarney was probably using every moment to get back up to full fighting fitness.

Not that anyone else seemed to care. Johnny had tried to get things moving along, but the other Strontium Dogs were clearly glad of the break. Even Middenface had been unwilling to get moving. Johnny could see him now, sitting next to the Blimp, no room to slip a cigarette paper between them. Johnny sighed. He didn't like having Middenface distracted. He didn't like his team exhausted. Whatever Middenface thought, he was convinced there was a traitor among them and it wasn't Red.

Then there was Red herself, maybe hurt, maybe captured by O'Blarney. Maybe worse. Johnny didn't like the thought of that, didn't like to imagine the fiery mutant lying somewhere like the poor Sloth, nothing but cold white bones. Red was too alive to be dead.

He wasn't the only one with dark thoughts. Standing by the river's edge, Joe was looking into the roiling white water as if he'd find some kind of answer to his problems there. Throughout their trip, he'd remained in his male form. Perhaps, Johnny thought, it was easier to deal with his feelings that way, locking them up behind an uncaring front. Johnny knew what that was like, but it didn't mean the feelings weren't still there, or that they didn't hurt like hell.

As he watched, a strange, all-over ripple suddenly passed through the other mutant's flesh, and when it had gone the person standing by the river was smaller, female. Johnny was sitting on rocks only metres away, so he saw the expression of agonised grief that seized Jo's face as soon as the change was finished. And he also - a second before she did it - realised what she was going to do.

Further up the bank One-Eyed Jack finally shouted out, "Food's up!"

But his voice was drowned out by Johnny's roar. "Don't!"

The grieving woman on the riverbank didn't listen. For a second, she squeezed her eyes shut, as if in prayer, then she opened them again, wide and tearless now, and walked calmly out into the racing river.

Alerted by Johnny's shout, the other mutants spun round. Middenface leapt up and ran towards him. Min Qi Man and even Enigma did the same. But they were further away than Johnny, and Johnny was already too late.

The water snatched up Jo's body and flung it violently downstream.

As if in response to the mutant's act, the sun abruptly disappeared behind a bank of clouds. The landscape instantly flipped from a cheerful collage of sparkling greens to one composed of dull greys and browns. An icy chill swept over them.

Johnny waded knee-deep into the water, struggling to resist its fierce pull. He reached an arm desperately towards Jo, but she was already in the centre, swirling away in the current, and he knew if he went any deeper he risked death himself.

He chanced another step, plunging thigh-deep into the water, flung out his arms as he fell forward - and then, suddenly, stuck fast. His legs burned with a cold pain, before going entirely numb.

It was only when he looked down, baffled, that he realised what had happened. His legs, from the thigh down, were hidden beneath a gleaming white surface. The water, the entire river, had frozen around him. Further out, Jo too was frozen in place. She looked disappointed.

The other mutants had arrived at the riverside by now.

"Holy Paloojie!" Middenface said. "Ye dinnae see that too often!"

"Are you okay?" Enigma asked, sounding as if the answer was a matter of supreme indifference to her.

"I'm fine," Johnny said. "Bring Woman Man back here. And make sure she doesn't pull any other damn fool stunts on the way."

"Hold on, I'll get ye both oot," Middenface said. Before Johnny could stop him, he pulled his blaster and shot a burning beam into the ice beside Johnny.

The ice instantly boiled into steam and scalding water, which splashed straight towards Johnny's face and eyes. Johnny flung his arms in front of him. "Stop!" he shouted, barely containing a scream of pain as the boiling hot liquid struck his bare hand.

"Sorry! Sorry!" Middenface said, hastily reholstering his weapon. "I should ha' thought that through."

"You don't say!" Enigma said dryly.

Middenface scowled, but was stopped from replying by Min Qi Man who walked up to Johnny, drew his swords and bowed. "Where the dragon's breath has failed, perhaps the monkey's claw might succeed."

Johnny nodded. "Be my guest."

Min Qi Man bowed again - then sprung into motion so fast that for a moment he looked like a native inhabitant of the planet. His swords whirled around him in a lethal grey blur. They passed so close to Johnny's face that he felt the breeze and imagined that he could smell the oil on the steel.

It only lasted a few seconds. When it was over, Johnny was standing in a shallow basin of ice, with only a thin layer covering his legs. He bent his knees, the ice cracked, and he clambered out of the hole.

As soon as he saw that Johnny was free, Min Qi Man moved off to do the same for Jo.

Middenface leant over and offered an arm to help Johnny off the icy surface of the frozen river. "Och, now that was just showing off!" he muttered. He sounded upset, but Johnny knew Middenface well enough to know that he didn't really mean it. Once Johnny was beside him, Middenface's expression became more serious, and he lowered his voice. "Trying tae kill herself, was she?"

Johnny nodded.

"It's a right wee bunch o' neep-heid's we've been landed wi' here, eh, Johnny?"

"She was grieving."

Middenface shook his head impatiently. "We've all lost folks. You dae ye grievin' oan yer own time. There's nae room fer it on a mission like this one."

"I'll talk to her," Johnny said. "And as for the rest, they've had their uses."

"Aye, an' a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day. Face it, Johnny, Woman Man wants to kill herself when she's a lassie an' he's such a pain in the arse you want to kill him when he's a mannie. Min Qi Man was addled before he got hit on the heid, an Enigma's aboot as much use as a chocolate fireguard."

Johnny shrugged. "You work with the material you've been given."

Middenface didn't seem reassured. "They're more trouble than they're worth."

"Get no argument from me," Johnny said. "But what can we do, leave them behind?"

Middenface grimaced. "Dinnae think I havenae considered it," he said, but Johnny knew it was just for show. Middenface was no more capable of leaving the other mutants to almost certain death than he was. The conversation stopped for good as Min Qi Man helped an unsteady Jo onto the bank beside them.

"I'm sorry," she said shakily to Johnny. "I slipped."

He didn't bother arguing with her. But as they walked back towards One-Eyed Jack's fire, he examined her pale face, the blue-black shadows under her eyes, and thought that at the first opportunity she'd probably try it again. Middenface was right. They were more trouble than they were worth. "Don't worry about it," he told Woman Man gruffly. "Let's get some food inside us. We'll all feel better."

"Erm," said the Blimp, who was standing by the pot. "Actually..."

Johnny stared into the pot. It had been licked clean.

One-Eyed Jack looked furious. "You stupid bitch, I only left it for ten seconds."

"I'm sorry," the Blimp said, shrugging. "I was hungry."

Red sat back up and licked the blood from her lips, savouring the last taste of it, then reluctantly let the corpse of the anteater drop to the ground. It flopped wetly down beside the stone she'd used to cut herself free. She shouldn't have eaten it, she supposed, not after it had saved her life. But when she'd reached out to stroke it in gratitude, it had stayed still, and it had felt so warm, and she had sensed the blood pumping just beneath the furred skin... It had simply been too much to resist. Anyway, at least it had died happy, with a bellyful of ants inside it. She mentally dismissed the creature and went back to considering her own situation.

It wasn't looking great. She'd been unconscious for the ride over to this place, which meant she had absolutely no idea where she was in relation to the others. She didn't have a tracking device on her, so she had no idea where she was in relation to O'Blarney either. The ship she'd come in on was a wreck, but even if it hadn't been she had no idea where to find that. She was, in short, lost.

She looked around her, but surrounding the small clearing she could see nothing but trees, thick with late-spring leaves. She sniffed experimentally, trying to pick up some trace scent, anything that might give her some clue to where she was. She could easily recognise the delicate smell of the wildflowers whose heads she could see nodding merrily in the short grass of the clearing. More powerful than that, the ripe odour of her already decaying kill. Beyond that, nothing.

The ground was flat but the air felt thin, so she guessed she was probably somewhere up in the mountains rather than back down near the plains. Not that that helped very much. It wasn't a small mountain range, and if she was on the wrong side of it, she could wander for months before finding O'Blarney or the others. Not that she had months. In a few weeks, she'd be dying of old age. Damn it! This was all Johnny's fault!

She looked at the trees nearest her, smooth-barked silver birches. Whatever the answer was, she knew she wouldn't find it down here. She needed some perspective and she'd only find it in the tree tops where she might be able to get a view of something other than yet more trees. But the trunks stretched up a good ten metres before they sprouted any branches. And despite her recent meal Red was still feeling weak and disoriented from the blow to her head. She didn't think there was any way she'd make the climb. Angry at her helplessness, she rubbed at the raw red mark where the leather cords had dug into her flesh.

A sharp spike of pain shot into her head from the wounds and seemed to dislodge a thought. The leather cords themselves were about the only thing around that could help her. Tied around her hands and feet, they might provide the friction which would allow her to shin up the bare trunk.

She looked up at the tree, all twenty-five metres of it, and sighed. It wasn't going to be a hell of a lot of fun, but at least it was just about possible.

Twenty sweaty and curse-filled minutes later, Durham Red pulled herself onto the first branch of the tallest tree in the clearing. Her muscles were screaming at her, and her clothes were ripped, but she'd made it. She paused a moment to catch her breath, then scrambled inelegantly up the remaining branches and poked her head up through the canopy of leaves.

Then she laughed.

She was, as she had thought, in the mountain region, in a high valley between two enormous, snow-capped peaks. It was very beautiful. Small goat-like creatures were grazing its slopes, while a bright stream danced and weaved through its centre. It all looked very pastoral and idyllic.

Except, that is, for the ugly growth which had sprouted out of one side of the mountain like a giant wart. It was clearly man-made, so new that it was like a scar on the landscape. It wasn't quite as large as she'd expected, perhaps the size of a small castle, but the huge heaps of rubble which surrounded it suggested that there was far more, hidden iceberg-like beneath the surface. It was brown and ugly and industrial and there was only one thing it could possibly be: O'Blarney's base.

Red grinned wolfishly. Looked like she'd got to the finish line well ahead of the rest of the field. That meant that she got to claim the prize, and didn't have to share it. If she played her cards right, the bounty on O'Blarney could be all hers.

Johnny didn't want to waste any more time cooking, so they ate their own cold rations. The other mutants - One-Eyed Jack most of all - glared at the Blimp. Only Middenface had been willing to forgive her. He was sitting beside her chatting now, though it looked to Johnny to be pretty one-sided. The Blimp was probably using up so much energy digesting her vast meal, she didn't have much left over for conversation.

When he'd finished his own food, Johnny hesitated a moment, bracing himself, then sat down next to Jo, who was leaning against a tree, picking at the peel of a green fruit. Its sharp smell stung Johnny's nostrils as he approached. She gave no acknowledgement of his presence, though he could tell from the subtle stiffening of her body that she knew he was there.

"Hurts like hell, doesn't it?" he said.

Her head twitched towards him, but she still wouldn't meet his eye.

"And you know something?" Johnny continued after a moment of silence. "It won't stop hurting for a long time, and whatever anyone tells you, the pain never completely goes away. There's always a dull ache somewhere inside, like some vital part of you is missing and no matter how hard you try, you can't get it back."

Now she did meet his eyes, a tear trickling out of the corner of hers. But her face was twisted into a slight smile. "That's the shittiest pep talk I've ever heard."

Johnny shrugged. "Thing is, you owe it to them to carry on. Doesn't matter how little you want to. The people who die are the lucky ones. We're left carrying the burden they left behind."

Without looking to see her reaction, he eased himself to his feet and shifted his pack into a more comfortable position on his shoulders. "Come on!" he called out to the others. "Past time to get moving."

The Strontium Dogs scrambled to their feet. After a second, Jo did too. He had just turned to head off when he realised that the Blimp was still sitting on the ground. "Hey, didn't you hear me?" he asked.

The Blimp didn't respond.

Middenface, who was standing beside her, leaned down. "Come oan, hen," he said.

There was still no response. Her eyes stared at them, unblinking, unseeing.

"Whit the hell's the matter with her?" Middenface shouted, crouching down in front of her. He might as well have been invisible for all the attention she paid him. Middenface placed his hand on her chest. "Sneck, Johnny, she isnae breathing!"

Johnny rushed over. Middenface was right. Her chest wasn't moving. But when he placed his hand in front of her mouth, he felt the very faintest stirrings of breath. And, as he watched, her eyelid began to move down agonisingly slowly.

"The stew!" Middenface shouted. "Some wee scunner's poisoned her!"

"Not poison," Johnny said, remaining crouched beside Middenface, using the cover of his body to draw his gun where the other mutants couldn't see it. "Chronite. Someone's slowed her down, and if she hadn't eaten all the food, they'd have slowed us all down."

As soon as he realised this, he knew that the attack was coming. But by that time, the pyro-bullet from O'Blarney's gun was already heading straight towards his undefended back.

Ladybird had run away from home. It was the only thing she could do. With Johnny moving further and further away from the village, she was no longer able to sneak out and see him in a night. Particularly since her father had caught her returning on her horse after she'd taken care of the red-haired woman. She felt a brief twinge of guilt as she thought about the other woman, but over the last few weeks she'd had some practice hardening her heart against what she'd done, and she did it again now. Anyway, the other woman would have done the same to her given half a chance, she was sure of it. She'd seen the fury in her eyes.

But her father had caught her and grounded her, and this time he'd made her move to the bed in the deepest corner of the house so that if she wanted to sneak out she'd have to climb over her father and two sisters to do it. So, one day when she'd been told to walk out to the furthest field and mind the yearlings, she'd just kept on walking. She had to leave. It wasn't about Johnny. Ever since the red-haired woman, Ladybird had felt cut off from the rest of her people. They carried on walking around in their bubble of niceness, flushing with shame if they accidentally said a harsh word to anybody. And here was she, a murderer. It made her feel different. Special.

She knew Johnny would understand. He carried a gun, she was sure he must have killed people too. What had happened could only bring them closer together.

She was thinking this happy thought as she finally found Johnny, heading towards Brother O'Blarney's castle as she had expected. But the happiness faded as soon as she saw what was going on.

For a second, she couldn't believe it. Brother O'Blarney, the spiritual leader of her people, who had preached peace and love since before she was born, was firing a strange weapon at another human being. It was only after she thought this that she realised who exactly this human being was.

Johnny.

And, as she watched, the bullet gently flew another couple of centimetres towards Johnny's unprotected back.

Almost without thinking, she flung herself forward, barrelling into Johnny and pushing him out of the path of the bullet. In her haste, though, she forgot the effect that someone going at her speed could have on someone going at his. Johnny was flung a good five metres away from his position, towards the frozen river which she had crossed less than a minute before. Johnny didn't cross the river, though. He landed on it, then, as she watched in horror, began to slide rapidly downstream along the frictionless surface of the ice.

There was only one thing she could do. She flung herself onto the river after him.

It all happened faster than Middenface could register. One second, he and Johnny were kneeling in front of the Blimp, the next, Johnny had flown through the air, and was sliding away down the frozen river at a terrifying speed.

The second after that, Middenface realised they were under attack as a bullet thudded into the ground near his feet. He drew his weapon and spun to face O'Blarney, who was looking as good as new, though as puzzled by Johnny's disappearance as the rest of them. Middenface took the opportunity to let off a blaster round at O'Blarney, but the robot quickly ducked behind the cover of a tree.

Middenface dropped to his knees in front of the immobile Blimp, shielding her with his body as best he could, and continued firing, determined to keep O'Blarney pinned down, hoping that his covering fire would allow one of the others to outflank their enemy.

Except, he realised, the others weren't joining in. He chanced a quick look back, and saw that the members of Team X were all looking downriver, where Johnny had disappeared. In a split second, he knew what they were thinking: if their leader had decided discretion was the better part of valour, why should they stay and fight?

Before Middenface could do anything, Enigma had flung herself after Johnny down the frozen slide of the river. Min Qi Man and Woman Man followed moments after. One Eyed-Jack watched them dive, looking as horrified as Middenface felt. His head swung between O'Blarney and the river, like a man weighing up odds. Then he shrugged and flung himself onto the ice chute.

Middenface cursed as the last of his allies zoomed out of sight. When he looked back round, O'Blarney had stepped out from behind the tree.

"Oh dear," the robot said. "looks like they've scarpered and left you all on your tod."

Middenface let loose another round of blaster fire, but it splashed harmlessly off O'Blarney's silvery carapace, not leaving so much as a scorch mark. Then, calmly, O'Blarney marched up to him, snatched his blaster from his hand, tied the barrel in a knot and flung the weapon contemptuously behind him.

"Looks like me and you are gonna be getting better acquainted," he said. His hand swung lazily back to connect with Middenface's head, and everything went black.
17 / GOING UNDERGROUND

After a few seconds of utter confusion, Johnny realised what was happening. Somehow, something had knocked him onto the surface of the river. He tried desperately to slow himself down, or at least to straighten himself out, but it was hopeless. He was travelling too damn fast. The scenery to either side was whizzing by in a confusing blur of green and brown and the occasional flash of blue as he spun briefly onto his back and caught a glimpse of the sky.

After the initial impact, the journey itself was actually relatively painless. The surface of the ice was smooth as silk, and he glided along it, buoyed on a thin layer of water until the river entered an area of steep-sided ravines cut into rock and the pain came back full force as Johnny was bounced like a pinball from the cliff sides.

Then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over. Everything around Johnny went dark, as the river plunged through the mountainside into an underground cavern. As the river took a sharp turn to the right, Johnny kept on going straight, and was flung away from the ice and onto the gritty surface of the cavern floor. He skidded a good ten metres, scraping his trousers bare and his hands raw - before, finally, slowing to a stop.

He had a few seconds to enjoy the sense of stillness, before four more bodies were flung out of the river to land straight on top of him.

Red would have liked to wait for cover of darkness before approaching O'Blarney's base. But she wasn't prepared to give up six months of her lifespan to do it, so she made the best of a bad job and used every ounce of stealth at her disposal as she crept up to the ramshackle structure.

The landscape was on her side, for once. The cratered, rocky surface offered plenty of hiding places. The sun had disappeared behind a cloud, leaving everything painted in shades of grey. Red knew that to any observer she'd look like just another monochrome blob in the dull landscape.

It all seemed too easy to be true, until she got close enough to make out the features of the base itself. Embedded in every surface, she could see the gleaming silver orbs of spy-cameras. She thought, as she often had before, that life would be a lot easier if she really were a vampire, unable to cast her image on film.

But she wasn't, so she'd have to do this the hard way. Sitting back on her haunches, she settled down to watching the cameras, following the tracking motion as they cast their electronic eyes over the landscape around them. After a second, she saw it, the small blind spot that, for two brief seconds, wasn't covered by any camera.

That was fine. Two seconds was all she needed. She rose to her feet and prepared to make a run for it.

Ladybird couldn't believe the bad luck. Of all the places to land, right in the middle of Brother O'Blarney's chronite mines would have been absolutely the last place she'd choose. It was, unusually, empty at the moment, but she knew that the miners, the menfolk of her village, would be back soon. She had to get Johnny out of there before any of her people betrayed him to O'Blarney, or before they saw her and let her dad know where she was.

She looked over at Johnny and his companions, all jumbled together in a pile near one wall of the large chamber. In the flickering glow of the torchlight, she saw them begin to make their slow, slow way to their feet.

She needed to talk to them, to warn them. And, most importantly, she needed to let Johnny know about the package she'd delivered to one of his companions. Because she was beginning to realise that the mission Brother O'Blarney had sent her on might not have been as innocent as it appeared.

She didn't have much chronite left, but she hoped it would be enough. Anyway, she was in the right place to find some more if she needed it. She took the package out of her skirt pocket, and prepared to swallow the bitter white powder within.

Because she was concentrating on that, she didn't notice the miners returning until it was far too late. Before she could do more than take a step back, her Uncle Badger had grabbed her arm. "There you are, young lady!"

"Let me go, I'm here on important business for my father," Ladybird said haughtily. She couldn't believe after all she'd been through, all she'd done, that she could be stopped now.

Her uncle obviously thought otherwise. "Really?" he said, with heavy sarcasm. "Funny that your dad sent us a messenger bird, then, begging us to tell him if we'd seen his little girl anywhere." He looked into her eyes and his expression softened a little. "He's worried sick about you, you know!"

"Well, you can tell him I'm fine, and that I'll be back just as soon as I can," Ladybird said.

The other miners, who had returned along with her uncle, murmured and shook their grimy faces.

"You're going nowhere," her uncle said sternly, "except straight back home where you belong."

"No!" Ladybird shouted. "I won't! You can't make me!"

But her uncle could. Even though she dug her heels in and pulled back with all her might, he began relentlessly dragging her out of the chamber and away from Johnny. She thought - in a sudden flash of fury - that she would have to kill him too. But she didn't have a weapon and he was far too strong for her.

There was only one thing she could do to stop him. She stopped her resistance, moving forward so that her arm was no longer pulled taught. And in the brief moment before her uncle realised what she was doing, she flung her hand up and threw the dregs of the chronite powder into her mouth.

There was a horrible wrenching sensation, as if her eyes were being turned back to front. "Johnny!" she shouted out. "Watch out for-"

Seeing his niece suddenly freeze, Badger took a moment to work out what was going on. As soon as he did, he flung her over his shoulder, and marched out of the chamber. She seemed to be trying to say something, but so slowly that he couldn't make out a word.

He sighed in exasperation and handed the unresisting body of his niece over to two of the other workers. "Better put her in chamber two till she thaws out. When she's moving properly again we can take her back to her father." He looked at the motionless girl and shook his head sadly. "She used to be such a lovely little thing. Shame they all have to grow up."

Back in the chamber, Johnny snapped his head round as the figure of the native girl who had told him her name was Ladybird materialised in the middle of the chamber. "Johnny!" she shouted as she appeared. "Watch out for-" and then she disappeared again.

"What the hell was that?" Enigma said. She looked around the chamber, frowning. "And just where the hell are we?"

Johnny glanced around, too. Everywhere he looked he could see mining equipment, hard hats, vast conveyor belts and the well-oiled drills. And everywhere shards of a strange, rainbow-coloured rock that could only be raw chronite. "I'm guessing the chronite mine," Johnny said.

"Oh, so that's why you brought us here," Jo said, sounding relieved. "We thought you were running away from O'Blarney."

"I didn't run, I was pushed."

"Oh yeah, who by?" Enigma asked sceptically.

"That girl you just saw," Johnny replied irritably, "must have thought she was saving my life," he said, thinking out loud.

"Why would she do that?" Jo said.

"Reckons she's in love with me," Johnny said uncomfortably.

The others all looked at him unbelievingly, even Min Qi Man. One-Eyed Jack laughed. "Best excuse for turning tail I ever heard."

Johnny shrugged. "Believe what you want - makes no odds to me." He turned away from them and began scanning the chamber for exits. There was one on the far side, the massive cage of a lift. With any luck, it might lead all the way to the surface. Johnny strode towards it, leaving it up to the others whether they followed him or not. After a moment, they all did. Johnny smiled grimly. They thought he was a coward and still followed him around like puppies.

"You said it was O'Blarney running the chronite mine," Enigma said. "Are you saying we've found his base?"

"Only one way to find out," Johnny said, stepping up to the lift and wrenching open the heavy mesh door of the cage. He nodded into the lift cage and, after only a moment's hesitation, the other Strontium Dogs walked in.

He waited till they were all inside, then stepped up to the doorway, blocking their exit. At the look in his eyes, all but One-Eyed Jack took a small step back.

"What's wrong?" Jo asked tremulously.

"What's wrong is," Johnny said, "my partner's missing, the Blimp's been poisoned, and someone here did it."

If he was expecting a flash of guilt from any of the other Strontium Dogs, he didn't get one. Jo looked shocked, Enigma dubious. Min Qi Man was as expressionless as usual.

Only One-Eyed Jack looked like he believed Johnny. "Yeah, I've been thinking the same thing."

Johnny kept his face expressionless. "Really?"

Enigma frowned. "Seems to me it's obvious who the traitor is. I mean, who stayed behind to be with O'Blarney?"

But One-Eyed Jack shook his head. "Nope, Middenface isn't the type. I reckon he stayed to take care of the Blimp. If anyone betrayed us, it was that Red girl. She must have put the poison in the food, then left before she could get caught in the act."

Jo turned to Johnny. "Is that really what you think? I thought Durham Red was a friend of yours."

Johnny shook his head. "Durham's not... she's not a friend. But she's not a traitor either. See, the thing is, I don't think whoever poisoned the Blimp meant to poison just her, I think they meant to poison all of us. Leave us all defenceless when O'Blarney attacked."

He left it hanging in the air, waiting for them to figure it out. After a moment, Jo said hesitantly, "So what are you saying? Are you saying it wasn't any of us after all?"

Johnny shook his head and - without being too obvious about it - dropped his right hand to blaster level. As he did, he knelt and picked up a small lump of rock in his right. "I'm saying whoever did it didn't expect there to be any witnesses left." He rose slowly to his feet, never taking his eyes off the others for a second. "Which meant whoever did it didn't bother to cover their tracks. Right?" And, with a quick flick of his wrist, he flung the stone in his hand at One-Eyed Jack.

The other mutant was too startled to respond in time. The stone cut into his cheek, drawing a thin stream of blood. "What the hell are you-?" One-Eyed Jack began.

Then he saw the drawn blaster in Johnny's hand, pointed straight at his chest.

The other mutants backed away, leaving a clear space around One-Eyed Jack. Their eyes flicked between him and Johnny, nervous and undecided.

"Funny, isn't it," Johnny said, his voice hard and very cold, "how a man with one eye in the future didn't see that one coming."

"I was distracted," One-Eyed Jack said, but his voice lacked conviction. Johnny knew the man knew that he was caught. Which meant he was the most dangerous he'd ever been.

Johnny didn't let his gun waver even a millimetre from its target. "Yeah, that's possible. I guess it must be pretty distracting, pretending to be someone you're not." He let that sink in, then added, "All I want to know is, when did you replace the real One-Eyed Jack? On the journey here, or before we even met Delater?"

One-Eyed Jack glared at Johnny. Then he relaxed, and smiled. "On the journey here," he said. His voice sounded different. More precise, and softer than it had been. "One-Eyed Jack's ship is the fastest in the Doghouse. He got here in plenty of time for me pull the switch, and you never knew a thing about it."

Jo let out a small squeal of shock. Johnny, despite himself, flicked his eyes over to her for a fraction of a second.

It was all the imposter calling himself One-Eyed Jack needed. He flung himself forwards, grabbed Enigma and pushed her violently towards Johnny, then slapped his hand down hard on the control panel of the lift. There was a squeak of protesting machinery and the lift shot upwards, leaving Enigma clinging desperately to the half-open door and Johnny on the ground below.
18 / UNMASKED

Johnny didn't have any time to think about it. He grasped the short-range teleport at his belt and pushed the controls to send him up as far as it could.

It almost wasn't far enough.

He popped into the air three metres above the ground and just below the bottom of the lift. He lashed his arm out, but only the fingers of his right hand were able to grasp the bottom of the cage. The teleport device fell away to smash on the floor below. The lift continued accelerating upwards, nearly jerking his arm out of his socket. For a heart-stopping moment, he could feel his grip slipping. The ground was twenty metres below him, and getting further away by the second. He clawed his fingers desperately around the thin wire of the cage. It felt like the metal was cutting his fingers in half, chopping them off at the joints. But, somehow, he held on.

Damn it! he thought. This lift is for the natives, it's moving at their speed.

To either side of Johnny, the chronite walls of the lift shaft streaked by in an eye-bending multi-coloured blur. Accompanying the motion was the long drawn-out scream of Enigma, as she swung from the still-open door. In the cage itself, the other Strontium Dogs had been thrown to the floor by the sudden motion. They remained pinned there by the immense G-force. A few centimetres from Johnny's hand he could see Jo's terrified face pressed hard against the wire mesh. Her eyes stared beseechingly into his. To one side of her, another eye stared into Johnny's with a different expression altogether. It was One-Eyed Jack, and as Johnny watched he began to creep his hand towards the blaster hanging at his waist.

Gritting his teeth against the pain, Johnny held on grimly with his right hand and, fighting against gravity every millimetre of the way, began to pull his other arm towards the cage.

As soon as she made it through the door, Durham Red realised why Bad Boy O'Blarney hadn't bothered defending the outside of his base. He didn't need to, the inside was a death-trap.

Luckily, she'd expected some sort of automatic defence to spring into action as soon as she forced open the door, so as she slipped through, she dropped and rolled, narrowly avoiding the two tensile steel spears which thudded into the door behind her. She remained where she was, lying on her stomach to one side of the door, to regain her breath and take stock of the situation.

This side door, she found, had let her into a narrow corridor, lined along the walls with head sculptures of O'Blarney and of a woman she vaguely recognised but couldn't immediately place. The floor was a simple tiled affair in a black-and-white check. It looked strangely unmarked, as if not many people ever came this way. But it didn't look dangerous.

Keen to get on with things, to find O'Blarney before he realised she was there, she clambered to her feet and prepared to head down the corridor. Her left foot landed on one of the black tiles.

Only her super-sensitive hearing saved her. She heard the muted click of something triggering and flung herself back and down.

Shrapnel from the blast thudded into her chest, a shower of horribly sharp fragments. It was stopped by the thick body armour she wore there. If she'd remained directly above the tile, the explosion would have ripped her legs to shreds. She couldn't contain a shudder as she picked the twisted metal carefully out of her breastplate. Then, after a moment more to collect herself, she climbed carefully to her feet, and retrieved her gun from where it had skidded out of her hands.

She looked back at the tiled floor. The tile which had exploded beneath her was black. Which suggested that O'Blarney - with a robot's binary neatness - had mined the black tiles and left a clear path through the whites.

She had her foot poised to step onto the first white tile when it occurred to her that as well as being a robot, O'Blarney was also a deranged psychopath. He'd probably mined all the tiles.

She stepped back from the floor again, took a spare ration pack from her backpack and threw it carefully on to the first white tile. There was an instant of stillness - then the pack was blown apart in a shower of sparks.

Red smiled grimly and looked around the spartan antechamber for more things to throw.

Middenface was woken by the sound of an explosion. For a confused moment, he thought they were still fighting O'Blarney and made to grab his weapon, to rejoin the fray.

Then he realised two things. Firstly, the explosion didn't sound quite right. It had the slight tinny quality of a recording. And secondly, he couldn't grab his weapon, couldn't move at all, because someone had tied him down against a hard, cold surface. His mind, for some reason, thought of an operating table, although operating tables weren't usually tilted at a forty-five degree angle like this one. This must be something else.

At that point, memory returned in an unwelcome flood. O'Blarney had caught him. It was O'Blarney who had tied him up and who was no doubt going to perform something like an operation, but infinitely more painful, on this hard forty-five degree surface.

Middenface realised instantly that O'Blarney was somewhere in the room with him. He couldn't have said how he knew. Just some sixth sense that Strontium Dogs developed over the years telling them when an enemy was near. He kept his eyes carefully closed, not wanting to let the robot know that he had regained consciousness.

But O'Blarney must have had some sixth sense of his own. "Nice to see you're back from the land of nod, Mr McNulty," he said.

Sighing, Middenface opened his eyes. The robot was standing little more than an arm's length away from him, not even looking at him. Instead, he was facing a bank of screens. The one he seemed to be gazing at intently showed nothing but a black-and-white checked pattern. Then something small flew across the checked pattern and the whole screen flared white as the sound of another explosion echoed through the room.

O'Blarney turned away from the screens, shrugging. "Oh well, some you win..." His smooth silver face twisted into an unpleasant expression. "She's made it through the first room. Let's see how she copes with the next ten."

Middenface slipped his eyes away from O'Blarney to scan his surroundings, looking for weapons, escape routes, anything that would help him out of his current situation. The room he was in was clearly O'Blarney's control centre. Beside the wall of monitors, there was another, equally large, filled with instruments, dials and read-outs.

But the place also seemed to be some sort of laboratory. The smooth silver walls were hung with various gleaming instruments that might have been medical devices or torture implements, or both. They were also lined with shelves and shelves of jars. Many contained the remains of organs and limbs, some recognisably human. There were also cages containing live animals, some looking half-starved, others as if O'Blarney had begun to vivisect them, then grown bored halfway through the operation. Peeled back flesh revealed glossy red musculature while lidless eyes stared at Middenface with numb hopelessness. The largest cage was covered, so that it was impossible to see what it contained, but a low, ominous groaning came from inside. Over everything hung a sickening smell of antiseptic and blood.

"So, what do you think of my gaff?" O'Blarney asked.

"I dinnae like the colour scheme," Middenface replied with studied nonchalance. He could see now that he was being held down by a series of metal bands over his arms, legs and chest. He pulled experimentally against them, but they didn't budge a millimetre.

O'Blarney saw what he was doing and smiled. "If you want to get out, you'll have to do me a little favour first."

"Aye?" Middenface said cautiously.

O'Blarney came closer. "Yeah. I need you to get on the dog and bone and tell my old mucker Chick that I've shuffled off this mortal, know what I'm saying?"

Middenface frowned. "And just why should I do that?"

O'Blarney shrugged and pressed a small button on the instrument panel beside him. There was a low buzzing sound, and the black drapes hanging over the last cage pulled back.

Inside, was Rose. She sat up, head in hands, moaning with pain.

"Oh," said O'Blarney, "It's up to you, obviously. But imagine exactly what I'm going to do with your bird if you don't."

Slowly, agonisingly, Johnny pulled himself hand over hand across the bottom of the cage. Above him, One-Eyed Jack had also managed to lever himself upright, and slowly - but not as slowly as Johnny - he crawled over the floor towards him.

Desperately, Johnny swung out his left arm. The fingers brushed the edge of the cage, but failed to grasp anything and his arm was dragged back down by the relentless acceleration. He gritted his teeth and tried again. And again.

On the fourth try, he managed to grip onto the edge of the doorway. Before he could lose momentum, he released his right arm swung it forward. The tips of his fingers brushed the inside edge of the doorway. Desperately, he clung on. Above him, Enigma was hanging onto the doorframe for dear life. She saw Johnny and her mouth opened and shut as she shouted something out to him, but her words were snatched away by the rushing air.

Johnny didn't have the energy to work it out. All his effort, all his concentration, was focussed on levering himself up, pulling himself almost by force of will alone towards the doorway of the lift and safety.

Then One-Eyed Jack reached him. His booted foot rose up, and crashed down directly onto Johnny's unprotected fingers.

Red was prepared for the worst now; adrenaline had flooded her system in a jittery rush. She felt sharp, fully alive, like the world was suddenly in better focus and all her senses were on high alert.

Despite this, she couldn't figure out what was wrong with the next room, where the trap was. She hesitated in the doorway, sniffing the air, but there was nothing to smell: not the slight hint of dynamite that she had been able to detect in the previous room once she knew to search for it, no whiff of O'Blarney's distinctive machine smell, nothing. Maybe it was because of the strange structure of the place. The whole place, the walls, the floor, the delicate chairs and tables scattered throughout it looked like they were made of glass. In other circumstances, she might have found it pretty. Now it looked ominous, as blank and featureless as an architect's line drawing of a room.

She carefully threw a small fragment of flooring from the previous room ahead of her. It landed on the floor without anything - explosive or otherwise - happening. She wasn't surprised. O'Blarney wouldn't set the same trap twice.

She was about to step into the room when it caught her eye, a slight twinkling at the edge of her vision. If she hadn't been so keyed-up she might not have noticed it. But now she looked, she could see it more clearly. A white rime of frost on the small fragment of tile she had thrown into the room.

She put her foot carefully back down on her side of the doorway. Delicately, she took a corner of her sleeve, and poked it through the doorway.

When she brought it back, it was frozen solid. She flicked her thumb against it. The cloth snapped cleanly in two. The temperature in the room must be near absolute zero.

Now that she looked, she could see them, the small force field generators in the sides of the door that kept the air of the two rooms separate, but would no doubt allow a person through.

She stepped back further, took out a small fusion grenade, and threw it in. As she expected, the force field at the door protected her from the blast. So she was able to watch as the heat from the blast penetrated the furniture, the floor and the walls. Slowly, they all softened, warped - melted.

Soon, the room was simply a silver-walled chamber with a thin layer of water sloshing across its floor. Red smiled and stepped forward.

The walls of Rose's cage were linked to an electric generator. When O'Blarney flipped a switch beside him, they briefly sparked a vicious blue and Rose screamed in agony.

After that, Middenface did exactly as O'Blarney told him.

He set his face in a carefully happy expression and, as O'Blarney held the camera of the vid-com in front of him, he told Chick that the mission had been successful, and although there had been some losses, O'Blarney was dead. Chick asked where the body was, if they'd kept O'Blarney's head as he'd instructed, and Middenface - following an offscreen nod from O'Blarney - said yes. Then Chick smiled, told Middenface he'd been waiting in orbit for this news and that he'd land shortly, and then the screen went blank.

"Middenface, you shouldn't have," Rose said. "When Chick gets here and finds out you lied he'll kill us all."

"Oh, I don't think so," O'Blarney said smoothly. He stopped for a moment, ostentatiously studying the Blimp. Then he turned to Middenface. "You know, I don't get what you see in her."

Middenface flicked his gaze to Rose. She had risen to her feet and was grasping the bars of her cage, glaring at O'Blarney. "None o' your business." Then he turned to Rose. "Ignore him. He's only tryin' to wind us up."

Rose though, barely seemed to be listening to Middenface. She glared murderously at O'Blarney. "No one insults me in front of my man!"

"No, but really," O'Blarney continued to Middenface, ignoring Rose entirely. "She's no oil painting, is she?"

Middenface growled with anger and strained against his metal bonds. "Hold yer wheesht, yer dirty wee nyaff!"

O'Blarney frowned. "Come off it. You're not telling me you haven't noticed she's about the size of a bus and half as pretty?"

There was a sudden roar of rage from Rose, and a metallic clang as she flung herself against the bars of the cage. Middenface turned to her, to tell her to calm down, that he thought she was wonderful and it really didn't matter what O'Blarney said. But then he saw her face, snarled in rage, all traces of rationality gone, and he knew that it would be pointless.

"Dear me," O'Blarney said. "I seem to have given her the hump."

Johnny couldn't take it any more. As One-Eyed Jack stamped his foot down on his fingers for the third time, he let out a grunt of pain and loosened them from the bars. He felt the wrench in his right shoulder as that arm took all his weight. And now One-Eyed Jack was moving again, raising his foot to stamp it down on Johnny's other hand.

At that moment Enigma raised her hand and slammed it down on the lift controls. There was a deafening shriek of brakes. Sparks flew out and struck the rainbow coloured walls as they rushed past.

The G-forces, which had been pushing them all down, suddenly started pushing them up. One-Eyed Jack, Enigma and all the members of Team X were thrown hard against the roof of the lift.

Johnny was flung against the bottom edge of the lift. His stomach caught on the corner, knocking all the breath out of him, and he flipped over and begun to fly upwards.

The next room Durham Red found was full of statues. They were of beasts, some strange, some that she recognised, all ferocious, fangs bared and claws slashing. Red tried everything she could to work out what was wrong. She tested the floor, she sampled the air, but everything seemed perfectly normal.

It was only when she stepped through the door and the statues sprang to life that she realised what the trap was. But by that time her gun had been knocked from her hand by the first beast, and two more had pinned her to the ground. Their yellow eyes glared into hers. A fourth lowered its jaws towards Red's neck.

O'Blarney's voice could barely be heard above Rose's bestial snarls. She flung herself again and again against the walls of her cage. Each time, the impact was a little quieter, as her rage literally ate away at her. Already, she was thinner than when Middenface had first met her.

And still O'Blarney carried on. "Course, you're nothing to write home about, but even you can do better than that. Or is that the plan, you dirty dog? Get her to keep home for you, and shag something more appealing on the side?"

Rose cried out in fury and her body shuddered and twitched as a fit of anger consumed her.

"Rose, please hen, stop! Fer God's sake, stop!" Middenface screamed, but she was far beyond hearing.

O'Blarney smiled, and carried on.

At the last minute, Johnny grabbed the door of the lift. His body flipped over in a somersault and landed on top of Min Qi Man on the inside of the cage roof. The little mutant above him grunted out in pain. As the lift slowed down, the G-forces were decreasing, but Johnny still felt like he was carrying a ten-tonne weight on his shoulders.

With a huge effort, he tried to push away from the ceiling, to stop himself squashing the life out of Min Qi Man.

Before he could move, One-Eyed Jack fell on him, knife raised to plunge down into Johnny's heart.

Rose was gone. Middenface had seen the moment when the light died in her eyes, and she slumped to the floor, eaten up by her impotent rage. She couldn't have weighed more than twenty kilos by the end.

Middenface knew that tears were pouring down his face, tears of fury and grief, but he was beyond caring. "I'll kill ye! I'll rip out your eyes and spit in the sockets!" he shouted at O'Blarney.

O'Blarney shook his head. "I just don't get it," he said. "I guess love really is blind."

At the last second, Johnny twisted his head to one side. The knife missed him by a millimetre. One-Eyed Jack began to pull his hand back for a second blow, but Johnny grabbed his wrist. As the imposter struggled in his grip, Johnny used his other hand to fumble inside his armour. One-Eyed Jack tried to use his other hand to prise Johnny's fingers free, but Johnny kicked it away with one of his feet.

He could feel the upward pressure decreasing second by second. Soon, the lift would stop completely, and they would all plunge back to the floor. He had a second at best.

And then he found it. His fingers closed on the Electronux hidden inside his jerkin. He slipped it over his fingers, pressed the "on" switch then punched it as hard as he could into One-Eyed Jack's face.

"This is all about love, when you think about it," O'Blarney said thoughtfully. "See, I'm not doing any of this for hate, or revenge, or profit. Everything that's happened here has been for the love of a good woman. Trouble is, it's the wrong woman."

As Johnny plunged the Electronux into One-Eyed Jack's face, the face melted. The flesh shrivelled and burnt and fell away.

It was a mask.

Beneath the mask was the face of Galactic Commission President Hillary the Third.

Johnny had one moment of open-mouthed shock.

Then the lift shuddered to a halt, and four Strontium Dogs and the leader of the free universe plunged to the floor.
19 / THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE

Johnny was ready for the fall. He rolled with it, so by the time he was on his feet his blaster was in his hand and pointed straight at Galactic Commission President Hillary the Third.

She was on her knees, her own gun already half-drawn. When she saw Johnny's finger tighten on his trigger, she dropped her arm, allowing her gun to fall back into its holster. She rose slowly to her feet, arms out to her sides, palms forward. She smiled at Johnny. It was, he thought, a politician's gesture: at once supplicating and commanding, entreating and insinuating.

He studied her in silence for a moment. The fake body of One-Eyed Jack still encased her from the head down, its tattered remains hanging around her neck. Her head, her real head, looked too small in proportion to the rest of her body. Her hair, perfectly coiffed in short auburn curls when he had last seen it on the news-vids, was flattened to her head, greasy and limp. Her face was dripping with sweat. No doubt it had been hot under the mask. Her eyes were scored with tiny crow's-feet, the legacy of more than forty years of life, and there were deep laughter lines around her mouth, where she had smiled at babies once too often. Despite all this, she was still remarkably beautiful.

"Well," Johnny said, "this is certainly an unexpected surprise."

Hillary took a small step towards him. "Young man," she said, in One-Eyed Jack's deep, gruff voice. She frowned, and reached up to remove the small voice-synthesiser still attached to her throat. "Young man," she continued, in a soft, feminine tone. "As your president, I'm ordering you to put down that gun or I'll have you arrested for treason."

Johnny grinned ferally at her. "Yeah, well, as the man holding the gun, I'm ordering you to tell me just what the hell is going on or I'll blow your presidential brains all over this lift shaft."

The other Strontium Dogs had regained their feet. Enigma and Min Qi Man were looking between Johnny and President Hillary in stunned disbelief. Jo sat, leaning against the side of the lift, staring at her fingers. Johnny reckoned she'd had about as much as she could take, and probably more.

Hillary took another small step towards him. "Really..."

Johnny pushed his blaster barrel into the centre of her chest and tightened his finger on the trigger. "You got about two seconds."

O'Blarney smiled as he reached up to the wall and pulled down a gleaming silver implement with a sharp-toothed edge. "Well, mustn't dawdle. Things to do, mutants to eviscerate."

Middenface tore his gaze away from Rose's corpse. Her face was still locked in a bestial snarl. He hated that. It seemed to rob her of dignity even in death. Middenface could feel blood trickling down his arms where he'd pulled against his restraints so hard that the metal bands had cut into his skin. He didn't care. He'd do anything, take any pain, to pay O'Blarney back for what he'd done. He snarled up at the smooth-skinned robot. "I'm no' afraid o' ye, ye evil scunner. Do whatever ye want tae me."

"I will," O'Blarney said. "But don't worry, fear isn't what floats my boat. It's the pain that gets my juices flowing, know what I mean?"

He pulled a lever on the side of the slab to which Middenface was tied, and it tilted smoothly down into a horizontal position. Flat on his back now, Middenface could no longer keep sight of Rose's corpse. All he could do was watch helplessly as the robot pressed a button on the silver implement he was holding. It buzzed and the blades started rotating faster and faster, untill they became nothing but a silvery blur. Slowly, he lowered it towards Middenface's prone body.

"I'll nae tell ye anything!" Middenface told him defiantly, through teeth already gritted against the pain to come.

O'Blarney frowned, two perfect creases forming in his smooth silver forehead. "That's okay, I don't expect you to grass up your mates. This is strictly for fun. Now-" He looked at Middenface thoughtfully, mouth pursed. "I think I'll start with those ugly lumps of yours. Take it from me, you'll be a lot more likely to find some new totty without them."

Middenface felt a cold sweat prickle on his face as the whirring blade descended.

Then, suddenly, O'Blarney swung away. His hand opened and the silver implement clattered to the operating table beside Middenface. It began to slide slowly across it, propelled by its still-whirling blade. O'Blarney ignored it totally, his attention focussed on the bank of screens. Middenface strained, but couldn't make out what had caught O'Blarney's eyes in the panoply of images.

"Sneck! Not now - it's too soon!" O'Blarney said. He rushed out of the room without a backward glance.

Beside Middenface, the silver implement buzzed away, continuing its inexorable journey towards his unprotected face.

"You're making a big mistake," the President said quickly. Her face was flushed red, and she looked considerably less composed with Johnny's blaster digging into her stomach. "I'm not the villain here."

By this time, Johnny had backed her out of the lift and into the mine shaft. The walls around them were glowing with a soft red light. It made his companions' faces look strange, almost demonic. After a few more moments of indecision, Enigma and Min Qi Man had placed themselves either side of Johnny and Hillary, weapons drawn, facing outwards, maintaining a defensive perimeter. Their backs were to the main action, but Johnny was damn sure they were listening in.

"Really?" he said. "How about you explain to me just why the hell I should believe you."

Hillary drew herself up. She looked genuinely affronted. Johnny knew she was from an old-money family, no one had probably ever taken that tone with her in her whole life. "If the word of your President isn't good enough for you, I don't know what is," she said haughtily.

Johnny shook his head. "President or not, your word means nothing to me. See, the thing is, it's like I told you when you were pretending to be someone else. I only trust what I see with my own two eyes. And what I've seen is a person who lies, cheats, and betrays her friends. So, one last time, why exactly are you helping a lowlife like Bad Boy O'Blarney?"

Hillary stared at him a moment. She licked her lips; a quick, nervous gesture. Then she seemed to make a decision. "He's my lover," she said.

Enigma and Min Qi Man snapped their heads round, mouths hanging open in identical expressions of shock.

Johnny stared at her, sure he'd misheard. "He's what?"

Hillary looked round at all of them, staring sincerely into their eyes as only a good politician can. "I love him. Believe me, I didn't ask for this. But the first time I met him, when I pinned that medal on his chest, I looked into his wonderful green eyes and I knew he was the one for me."

Johnny narrowed his eyes, letting alpha rays spill out, deep into her mind. She gave a cry of pain, resisted, but then the barriers tumbled and he was in, swirling in the multi-coloured rush of her thoughts. He looked, searched out for O'Blarney, and there it was, the moment she had met him, the sharp shock, the sped-up heartbeat, the dryness in the back of her throat. Falling in love, for the first time in forty-three years. The shock of it. The incredible euphoria.

Johnny blinked his eyes, and his mind snapped back into him. Hillary gasped in relief as her thoughts became her own again.

"So you started doing the horizontal mambo with the tin man. Still doesn't explain all this." Johnny jerked his chin sideways, as if taking in the mines, the planet, the whole mission.

"It was Chick Delater," Hillary said. Her confession seemed to have returned her confidence. She was almost smiling at Johnny now. "We did everything we could to keep it secret. Balthasar was-"

"Balthasar?" Johnny said.

Hillary nodded impatiently. "O'Blarney. He went into business with Delater, nothing major, just a small smuggling operation. But Delater didn't trust Balthasar. He had him followed. And so he found out about us."

Johnny nodded, beginning to get it. "He's blackmailing you."

Hillary shook her head. "He _wants_ to blackmail us. He doesn't have enough evidence. That's why he wants Balthasar's..." she swallowed, and sudden tears welled in her eyes. "Balthasar's head. With the information stored in there he'd have enough to get me executed ten times over."

Johnny shrugged. "Doesn't seem such a bad idea to me."

"Have you never been in love, Mr Kreelman? Oh yes - I know exactly who you are," she added at Johnny's look. "Have you never cared about someone so much that you don't mind what you have to do to protect them?"

"Maybe," Johnny said. "Difference is, if I screw up, it's just me down the pan. Not the whole galaxy."

"If you care about the galaxy, you ought to want Delater stopped. Or do you really think a man like him should be given the power to blackmail the galactic president? Try to imagine for one minute what he might do with that power." She reached up and put her hand on Johnny's chest. Her eyes were imploring, earnest.

Johnny grabbed the hand and twisted, forcing her down to her knees. "Whatever he'd do with that power couldn't be any worse than what you're doing with it," he said.

Hillary looked around at the mutants, at Min Qi Man, who was gazing at her impassively, and Enigma, who was looking at her incredulously.

A certain light, perhaps hope, seemed to go out of her eyes. Then they widened as something behind Johnny seemed to catch her attention. She smiled and a moment later a bolt of laser fire thundered into Johnny's back and flung him bodily down the mine shaft.

The blades were so close to Middenface's cheek now that he could feel the breeze they made as they spun. A moment later, he felt a light tickling as the first sawed tooth sliced off the whiskers on his face. At least, he thought morbidly, he'd get a good shave before he died.

He closed his eyes, and started praying to a god he didn't really believe in.

A second later, when he realised that the blades still hadn't advanced any further, he opened them again.

Durham Red was standing over him, holding the silver saw in one hand. She found the "off" switch, then threw the thing away from her as the blades buzzed slowly to a stop.

Middenface grinned broadly at her. "Hen, you're a sight for sore eyes and nae mistake."

Red smiled back at him and began working at his restraints, fumbling for the catch that would release each one. Actually she was a sight, full stop. Her face was covered in hundreds of tiny scratches and a couple of what looked like bites. There was another deep one on her throat. By the look of it, she'd been lucky it had missed her jugular. She'd definitely been through the wars since he'd last seen her. As Middenface thought that, he remembered exactly why he hadn't seen her for a while, and the smile turned into a snarl. "Ye double-crossing bitch!"

Red stopped her work to stare at him, baffled. "What have I done?"

"Betrayed us tae O'Blarney, that's what! Because of you, my bonny Rose is lyin' there deid!"

The vampire turned to stare at the Blimp's corpse. She shook her head. "I'm sorry she's dead, Middenface, but it was nothing to do with me."

"Is that so?"

"Yes, it is so," Red said impatiently. "If I'm on O'Blarney's side, why exactly am I letting you go?" She returned to his restraints, clicking open the one that bound his chest. As she did, she looked around the room, like a predator sniffing out the territory. Her fingers paused as she spotted something, staring at it intently.

Middenface frowned. He had to admit, she had a point. "Well, mebbe ye're-"

Then, as hastily as she'd been releasing him, Red began snapping the restraints back round him again.

"What the heel are you doin? I thought you was lettin' me go?"

Red shook her head as she left him strapped to the table and walked over to the far wall. "Actually, there's something I need to do first." She held up a razor-sharp medical instrument. "I'm afraid this may hurt quite a lot."
20 / OPERATION

By the time Johnny got to his feet, President Hillary had fled down a side tunnel. Enigma made to follow her.

"No!" Johnny bellowed. "We can't afford to split our forces!"

As he spoke, another wave of fire lashed out towards his head from a tunnel above them. He rolled out of the way just in time and it splashed against the iridescent rock beneath him, leaving a black stain and the sharp smell of plasma in its wake.

Enigma got the message. She fell to her knees in one of the side entrances to the tunnel, her gun trained on the source of the fire. Johnny could see it now: ten metres above them in the lift shaft, hidden in the shadows of another tunnel entrance, the silver gleam of a smooth robotic body. Johnny saw a small flash and a millisecond later an explosion knocked him off his feet.

Even as he fell, his mind was working at the accelerated rate that it only seemed to achieve in battle, assessing options, strategies. He could see instantly that it was hopeless. O'Blarney had the high ground and he had cover. Even if he'd been exposed, they'd already discovered their weapons to be worse than useless against him. If they remained where they were, they'd be sitting targets.

He used the roll to carry him further into the tunnel, then leapt to his feet. "With me!" he shouted back at the others. "Retreat!"

He ran on without pausing to see if they were following, but after a second he heard the clatter of pursuing feet. Another sweep of white-hot laser fire followed them, then nothing.

Woman Man ran up beside Johnny. He was a man again. Perhaps the heat of battle had triggered the change. "Where are we going?" he panted as he ran.

"No idea," Johnny said, not slowing his pace.

"It's no good," the other mutant continued. "This is his place. He'll always be able to find us, and he's got the advantage of home turf."

Johnny gritted his teeth. "I know."

"Then why... the... heeeeellllll." Joe's speech slowed, slurring and distorting.

For a second, Johnny thought he'd been hit, but when he snapped a look at the other man, he saw his whole body warping, distorting. His nose seemed to be a metre long, pulled out of the front of his head by some invisible force.

A moment later, it snapped back into place, and everything returned to normal.

Johnny skidded to a stop. Joe ran on a pace. Then, realising he was alone, spun round and faced Johnny. "What?" he said. "Why are we stopping?"

Johnny realised that from the other man's point of view nothing had happened. He began to understand. "Time distortion," he said. "You were caught in a pocket."

"I didn't feel anything," Joe protested.

Johnny shrugged. "Well, take it from me, something definitely happened. I guess we must be near ground zero of the bomb strike. Bound to be more serious fallout effects round here."

Min Qi Man and Enigma had caught up with them by now. As they passed through the field, the effects caught them too. Min Qi Man's tail stretched out behind him into infinity for a second, then snapped back into place with an eye-bending twang.

Joe turned to Johnny. "See what you mean," he said dryly. "Is that gonna hinder or help us?"

"Oh, hinder I reckon, don't you?" said a voice in front of them.

It was O'Blarney. He was standing in the centre of the corridor, thin silver lips twisted in a smile, gun hanging casually at his side. He seemed entirely oblivious to the four weapons which instantly centred on his head.

Johnny yelled "Hold fire!" a moment too late. Every gun but his sprayed out a hail of bullets and fire towards O'Blarney. A second later, the hail of bullets and fire was spraying back toward them, reflected by the mirror screen which had been projecting O'Blarney's image.

Johnny threw himself at the other three, bowling them over like nine-pins. He felt a searing wash of heat above them and smelt the nasty charred scent of his own burning hair. Above him, he saw Joe's face bubble and blister. The smell of burnt hair was joined by the sickening odour of cooked human flesh.

The image of O'Blarney laughed, then blinked out of existence.

Johnny pushed himself to his feet. Enigma rose beside him. Her flowing locks had been reduced to a ragged shock of black, sticking up from her head like a fright wig. Joe remained crouched on the ground, hands over his wounded face, rocking slowly backwards and forwards. Now that he was standing, Johnny could feel his own injury, the small hole in his calf where a lava-bolt from Enigma's gun had passed straight through him. There was no blood - the heat of the bolt had sealed the would as it passed. Only Min Qi Man was unscathed. He bounded up to the now blank holo-screen, and pulled his two swords from it. They had landed point first and with perfect precision exactly where O'Blarney's two eyes would have been.

Johnny turned to Enigma, who was muttering softly and staring at the ground. She looked shell-shocked. "Have you got an aneastho-jab?" he asked her.

She looked up and after a moment her eyes blinked and seemed to focus on his face. She nodded.

Johnny gestured at Joe. "Then give it to him."

She remained staring at him, immobile.

"Hurry!" Johnny said. "Unless you want to wait around for O'Blarney to finish the job."

That, finally, seemed to snap her out of her trance. She rushed over to Joe, pulling a dermo-needle out of her pack as she went.

Min Qi Man returned to the group. His swords remained unsheathed in his hands. "The spider sits in the centre of his web," he said, "so that he may watch the fly struggling."

Johnny nodded. He thought Min Qi Man was right. O'Blarney wouldn't want to see them die from a distance. He'd like it up close and personal.

Min Qi Man smiled, then looked Johnny in the eye. "Twice now you have risked your life to save my friends."

It took Johnny a moment to process the fact that this wasn't one of the little mutant's riddles. When he did, he shrugged. "They'd have done the same for me."

Min Qi Man held Johnny's gaze. They both knew that wasn't true. Then the other man executed a shrug of his own. Like all his movements, it was fluid and curiously graceful. "I know they are in safe hands." He rocked back slightly on his heels. Then he ran straight at Johnny. Before Johnny had a chance to flinch, Min Qi Man had run up his torso, executed a handstand on Johnny's shoulders, then back flipped over his head and plunged feet-first towards the solid wall behind him.

But the wall didn't stop him. His feet passed straight through the seemingly solid rock. They didn't stop till they connected with the startled face of Bad Boy O'Blarney, which was peering out at them from behind a bank of instruments. The holo-image of the cave wall in front of him wavered and then died.

Johnny spun round and trained his blaster on O'Blarney, but it was impossible to get a clear shot. Min Qi Man had settled with his legs wrapped firmly around O'Blarney's neck. The robot was trying to dislodge him, but faced the same problem as Johnny - he couldn't fire any of his built-in armaments without risking blowing off his own head. Instead, he was forced to resort to the old fashioned method of clawing Min Qi Man off with his bare hands. But the simian mutant was stronger than he looked and his prehensile tail gave him an added advantage. Although Johnny could see blood matting his fur where O'Blarney's metallic nails had torn viciously at his flesh, he clung on to the robot like a particularly bloody-minded limpet. And, unlike O'Blarney, he could use his weapons. The swords glowed with a blue fire as they slashed down and bit deep into O'Blarney's silver carapace.

O'Blarney's finger tightened reflexively on the trigger of his gun. A wild spray of plasma fire shot out, arcing across the room towards the other two members of Team X.

Enigma dived out of the way. Joe, almost comatose from the tranquillisers which had been pumped into him, stayed where he was. A splash of fire headed straight towards him.

Desperate, Johnny dived in and grabbed O'Blarney's arm. He pushed down, hard, and the arc of the fire moved away from Joe. "Get him out of here!" he shouted at Enigma. "Find some cover!"

As the two mutants hobbled out of the chamber, O'Blarney tried to shift his aim to fire after them. Johnny pressed down on O'Blarney's arm with all his weight. It was as immovable as stone. He gritted his teeth and, feeling as if his muscles were going to be torn from their moorings on his bones, forced all his strength into his arm. Agonisingly slowly, O'Blarney's gun moved downward. The plasma fire followed a descending path towards them. O'Blarney tried to grab at Johnny with his other arm, but it was tangled up in Min Qi Man's tail. And now the plasma fire had reached O'Blarney's feet.

O'Blarney cried out in anger and released his finger from the trigger. Johnny shifted his grip, trying to press O'Blarney's finger back down.

"Get your filthy hands off me!" O'Blarney shouted. He shook himself violently, like a dog getting out of a pond, but all that happened was that he lost his grip on his own plasma rifle and it went spinning across the floor with a metallic ringing noise. His eyes glowed green with rage. "I'll bloody kill you, you freak!"

Johnny dived to retrieve the gun. O'Blarney realised was he was doing, and stamped a large metal foot down towards his head. Johnny just had time to notice that MADE IN KILBURN was stamped on the heel before he rolled out of the way. O'Blarney's foot slammed into the floor just where his head had been. Then it rose again and slammed down, leaving a deep dent behind it. Johnny was anticipating it this time, and got out of the way easily enough. O'Blarney realised he was never going to get Johnny and concentrated on getting the gun, swinging his foot to kick it out of Johnny's reach. Min Qi Man chose that moment to strike down at O'Blarney's thigh with his sword. The stroke swung wide and whistled through thin air, but the momentum threw the robot of balance, and his foot missed the gun by a wide margin.

Johnny grabbed it a second later, swung it round, and fired a blast of plasma fire straight into O'Blarney's foot. The splashback from the blast singed his eyebrows and scorched his skin but he didn't care. In his experience, people never carried weapons that couldn't do them serious injury. It was simple psychology. If you knew you were immune to your own weapon's effects, how could you be confident that your enemy wasn't too?

Clearly, this psychology went for robots as well as people. O'Blarney gave a weird, inhuman scream of pain and leapt away from the plasma fire. Behind him he left a stream of molten metal. His feet were melting.

Johnny gave a smile of triumph and began to play the fire up O'Blarney's legs.

Just as he reached the robot's knees, O'Blarney finally managed to tear his other arm free of Min Qi Man's grip. With a triumphant smile of his own, he raised it and sighted along the embedded barrel of the integral acid-flechette gun straight towards Johnny's head.

Then the smile dropped from his face as his arm detached at the shoulder, and dropped clanging to the ground.

Johnny caught Min Qi Man's eyes. The little mutant was in a sorry way. His fur was more red now than brown. Two fingers from one hand had been ripped free - Johnny could see the ragged white remnants of the bones poking through his knuckles - and one eye was gone forever, a ruined cavity. But the other closed in a small wink as he waved his tail towards Johnny. Clutched in its dextrous tip was a small screw driver.

O'Blarney's face twisted in a snarl of rage. "I'm gonna kill every sneckin' one of you!" he said.

Then, Min Qi Man still clinging to his shoulders, he turned on his half-melted heel and fled.

Johnny set off after him, back through the hidden chamber and further into the depths of the mountain. But, even injured, O'Blarney moved faster than any organic thing could. Johnny followed him through a left, a right, another left, wildly splashing plasma fire at his feet as he ran. Another left, and Johnny skidded to a halt at a crossroads. O'Blarney was nowhere in sight. He could still hear the robot's clanging footsteps, but the sound echoed weirdly round from all sides, obscuring its source.

Johnny cursed. He scanned the walls, but the jagged white rock gave nothing away. Defeated, Johnny dropped his gaze and saw the trail of molten metal leading down the left-hand fork. Grinning, he set off in pursuit again.

The corridors all looked the same. For all Johnny knew he could have been running in circles. O'Blarney could have been leading him back into a trap. But Johnny owed it to Min Qi Man to follow. He just hoped it wasn't too late.

Then he rounded another corner, and realised that it was. For Min Qi Man, and for O'Blarney.

The pair lay collapsed on the floor, Min Qi Man flattened beneath O'Blarney's bulk. Johnny rushed up, checking pulse, breathing, but he knew it was useless. The little mutant's eyes were glassy and unseeing. When he knelt beside him, Johnny saw that the entire back of his head had been caved in. Perhaps O'Blarney had managed to smash him against one of the cave walls.

O'Blarney had paid a high price if he had. One of Min Qi Man's swords poked up from the robot's chest plate. It was still glowing a dull blue and sizzling with occasional bursts of electricity.

O'Blarney's eyes were dead and flat, but Johnny wasn't leaving anything to chance this time. He put his hands to O'Blarney's head, preparing to detach it from O'Blarney's body. But the moment he touched it, the head came away in his hands. Johnny smiled. O'Blarney's arm wasn't the only thing Min Qi Man had been unscrewing.

He leant down and brushed the other mutant's eyes shut with his hand. Then he dropped O'Blarney's head into his backpack and headed back towards the others.

Middenface screamed in pain. It wasn't very manly, he knew that, but what else were you supposed to do when someone was performing surgery on you without benefit of an anaesthetic? "Will ye get off o' me, woman!" He bucked against his restraints, but they didn't budge.

"Don't be such a baby," Durham Red said. Her voice was muffled by the micro-scalpel she had clasped between her lips while her hands dug deep inside Middenface's chest.

"That's easy fer you tae say, ye're nae the one havin' yer innards pulled out!"

"I can't help it if O'Blarney didn't have any anaesthetic, can I? He obviously wasn't intending to perform these operations for health or humanitarian reasons!"

Middenface had a pithy response ready for that, but settled for letting out another groan of pain as Red's ministrations tore open the wound on his chest another centimetre.

"Don't worry, I've nearly got it..." Her voice trailed into silence as her fingers continued to probe the depths of his chest. "Yes... Yes... I've got it!" She smiled triumphantly, and held her fingers up in front of his face. Middenface squinted through the haze of pain, and could just make out something small, round and black clasped between them - the micro-balloon which Chick Delater had implanted in him.

He gave a weak smile of his own. "Nice one." Then he fainted.

By the time he woke up, Red had sewn him back up and undone his restraints. The first sight that greeted him was her pink tongue lapping out to lick his blood from her fingers.

He screwed his face up in disgust. "Will ye stop that right now!"

Red shrugged and carried on licking. "Just be grateful I'm not drinking straight from the source."

Middenface sat up, meaning to grab her and make her stop. But as soon as he moved, a white-hot lance of pain shot through him, and he thought he might pass out again.

He lay back down again, then, once his head had stopped swimming, eased himself very gently to his feet. He felt terrible. Still, all things considered, it was a miracle he didn't feel worse.

"Right," Red said, heading towards the operating slab. "My turn."

Middenface shook his head. "Dinnae be daft, lassie. I'm in nae condition tae be operatin' on any one. I'd probably chop yer heid off by mistake." He started staggering towards the door.

Red hurried up to him and grabbed his arm. "Where the hell do you think you're going?"

"Tae help Johnny!" Middenface said. "I think he's doon in the mines. I've got ta let him know O'Blarney's after him!"

Suddenly, a loud klaxon started blaring out in the room, and a melodious computer voice announced. "Perimeter alert! Perimeter alert! Large unknown vessel approaching. Repeat, large unknown vessel approaching."

"That'll be Chick," Middenface said, stumbling through the doorway.

Red stood her ground. "All the more reason to operate on me so the two of us can take him on."

Middenface paused to turn back to her. "Jings, will ye hurry up, hen! We've got tae warn Johnny. Besides, I reckon I can handle Chick by myself. He didnae look that tough."

He disappeared through the door. After a moment, Red reluctantly ran after him.

Outside, a very large spaceship settled with surprising gentleness on the ground. A huge cloud of dust blew up around it and settled on its surface, marring the matt black finish for which Chick Delater had paid a great deal of money.

After a second, there was the hiss of well-oiled hydraulics, and a door hinged open in the side of the craft. It was easily thirty metres high but the figure that emerged still had to stoop to get through it.

It was a vast structure of metallic struts and armour plating. Hanging in its centre, dwarfed by the awesome machinery around it, was a tiny pink blob. Only when the structure walked casually towards O'Blarney's base did it become obvious that it was an exo-skeleton. A slightly larger one than Chick's everyday suit, but then he was expecting trouble.
21 / BAIT AND SWITCH

It took Johnny longer to walk back than he'd expected. O'Blarney's head was heavy on his back, and his thoughts roiled in his head, heavier still. Min Qi Man had said he trusted Johnny to take care of Team X, but he didn't seem to have taken very good care of anyone lately. Red, missing. Middenface was captured, maybe dead. The Sloth, the Blimp, Min Qi Man himself - all gone. Johnny could hardly have done worse if he'd been trying.

He wondered bitterly why it had taken him so long to identify One-Eyed Jack as the traitor. But of course, President Hillary had chosen her disguise well. Jack had seemed as suspicious as hell, which was exactly why Johnny had dismissed him as a candidate for the position of traitor. A real traitor, he'd reasoned, would have made more of an effort to ingratiate himself. He would have been less obviously out for himself. Idiot!

Now he'd finished off O'Blarney, but their problems were far from over. Chick Delater would be coming to collect his prize, and Johnny didn't think there was a bookie in the galaxy who'd give good odds on the crime boss honouring his word, paying the bounty and removing the bombs from their bodies. Besides, there was no way they could let Chick have O'Blarney's head. Hillary had been right about that, if nothing else. The information inside it was far too dangerous to be allowed to fall into Delater's hands. Johnny wondered grimly how many more would have to die before this mission was ended, whether any of them would leave Speed alive.

Finally, he returned to the chamber in which O'Blarney had attacked them. It was a wreck. Bullets had drilled through the glittering rock walls and shattered the banks of equipment. What wasn't shattered had been scorched by the washes of plasma fire from O'Blarney's gun. And, splashed everywhere, tere were red droplets of blood and black flecks of oil.

Enigma and Joe were nowhere in sight, but the sound of muted groaning led Johnny to them. They hadn't got far, they were in no state to. Enigma must have caught some plasma fire as she dragged her companion away. Her left leg was blackened, the shreds of her trousers fused into her flesh. Joe was in a yet worse state. His eyes were glazed with drugs and pain. His face was mutilated almost beyond recognition. At first Johnny thought it was just the blistering which made it look so odd, then he realised that it was changing, constantly shifting between male and female. The other mutant's body too was growing, twisting, then shrinking again. It was as if he was trying to escape from his great pain by metamorphosing, but there was nothing he could turn into that wasn't in equal agony.

Still, he smiled when Johnny dropped the O'Blarney's head in front of him. Then he saw the expression on Johnny's face, and his smile faded. "Min Qi Man?" he croaked.

Johnny shook his head.

Enigma let out a sob. She turned her face away, as if embarrassed by this show of emotion. Joe staggered to his feet beside her. He looked down at the head in front of him for a moment. The eyes were flat and lifeless, but O'Blarney had died with a smile on his face. His thin-lipped mouth grinned up at Johnny and Joe as if mocking them both. Joe let out a low, animal snarl of rage and kicked O'Blarney's head against the far wall.

"Can you walk?" Johnny asked him.

Joe nodded. The motion distorted his face even further. His skin crawled, like an army of cockroaches was fighting a battle beneath it.

"We'd best get to the surface then," Johnny said. "There's nothing more for us down here."

He crossed to Enigma and offered her his shoulder. She shrugged him off. "Why? What's the point?"

"Min Qi Man didn't sacrifice himself for you to give up now," Johnny told her.

She looked angry for a moment. Then she slung her arm over Johnny's shoulder and they hobbled towards the lift. Johnny paused to scoop up O'Blarney's head on the way.

As soon as they got to the elevator, Johnny released Enigma's arm and she slumped tiredly to the floor. Woman Man slumped down beside her. He wasn't sure how much longer either of them could last. They certainly wouldn't survive another hyper-velocity trip up. Fortunately, the lift's controls were very simple and after a few seconds Johnny succeeded in setting them on ultra-slow. Even so, when he pressed the switch to get them moving upward, the speed was such that the G-force pushed on his body like an anvil. He resisted it a moment, then shrugged and let himself sink down until he was sitting beside his two companions with his back against the wall. He tipped his head back and allowed his eyes to slip closed.

He only realised that he'd fallen asleep when he was jerked awake by his own snore. Blearily, he opened his eyes. He couldn't have dozed off for more than a few seconds. The same view was flashing above him, the unending, unchanging white of the lift shaft. Except, he realised an instant later, something had changed. There was something... odd... about the shaft above him. It seemed to be ballooning out, then shrinking in. It was almost - he thought in a dreamlike, half-waking way - as if the lift shaft was a gut, and they were a lump of food being forced along it, being digested.

A moment later, his eyes shot fully open as he realised what was really going on. Hanging above them was a huge bubble of time distortion, and they were heading straight for it.

He leapt to his feet and slapped his hand against the big red stop button, but it was far too late. The lift was only just starting to slow as the leading edge of the chronodiation hit it. Johnny experienced it as aphasia, a jumbling of his senses. He could smell the citrus tang of the white rock, underlaid with the rose-petal odour of his Westinghouse variable cartridge blaster. Enigma opened her mouth to speak to him, and a rainbow stream of colours emerged from her mouth. The wire mesh of the lift, he suddenly realised, was composed of hundreds of tiny number threes sewn together with yellow cotton. Disoriented, he held his own hand up. It seemed to be made of string and it smelt of the colour blue.

Finally, the lift stopped. Right in the middle of the time distortion. Johnny spun his head - on a neck that felt far too loose - to search for his companions. Joe seemed to be melting across the floor. Enigma had rolled herself into a ball of flesh. As Johnny watched, it started to shrink.

Painfully, he pushed himself to his feet. His legs felt like they were made of jelly. When he looked down, he saw that they were. He reached out his hand towards the start switch. As he did, his fingers started to drift away, floating towards the top of the lift. He glared at them and, after a moment, they snapped back into place. He flicked the switch.

For a second, nothing happened. Perhaps, he thought vaguely, the lift engine had turned into a porcupine or a cucumber. His legs shook, but when he looked down at them, he saw that they were flesh and blood again, which meant they must be shaking because the lift was moving.

A few moments later, it had picked up enough speed to clear the far edge of the time distortion. Everything snapped back into place.

Johnny, heart thumping, ran a quick check of himself: hands, feet, fingers - which he then used to carefully feel the surface of his face and head. Everything seemed normal. He breathed a sigh of relief and turned his attention to the others.

Unlike Johnny, they hadn't escaped unscathed. Woman Man's face was a mess, a lurid red, leathery mass of lumps and craters. It wasn't shifting any more, but it was so badly scarred it looked neither male nor female. Johnny staggered towards the other mutant. "You okay?" he asked.

Woman Man nodded, and smiled. The expression looked hideous on his mutilated face. "Best I've felt for a long time," he said. His voice sounded like bricks scraped over sandpaper. But, Johnny realised, he actually did look better. The scars might be disfiguring, but they were healed.

Woman Man's smile broadened. "You certainly know how to show a girl a good time." Johnny realised, as he helped Jo to her feet, that she was female again.

Johnny offered a small smile of his own. "Guess we were due some luck." He glanced over at Enigma. She was still curled into a small ball. But he could see her back rising and falling as she breathed, and she wasn't making any noises of distress.

He frowned. Something wasn't quite right. As the lift finally ground to a halt at the top of the lift shaft, and the first sunlight he'd seen in hours crept in through the bars, he realised what it was. Her hair, which had been turned into a short mop by O'Blarney's plasma gun, was once again flowing black and healthy over her shoulders. Shoulders which, he suddenly realised, were far too small.

"Enigma?" he said. There was no response, and he noticed that she was crying very quietly. He stooped to touch her shoulder gently. "Enigma!"

She rolled onto her back and stared up at him out of big, tearful brown eyes.

She couldn't have been more than eight years old.

They had locked Ladybird in a store cupboard, left her among the picks, battered hard hats and sticks of dynamite. She couldn't believe it. To come all this way, only to be locked in a cupboard like a naughty child! And meanwhile Johnny was out there, in danger from a traitor he didn't even know about, and she could do nothing.

Worse, as soon as they realised that the chronite had worn off, they would drag her back to her to the village and her father and she would never see Johnny again, and the rest of her life would be dark and meaningless and empty.

She leant her forehead against the small barred window of the door and gazed out despairingly into the tunnel outside. The torches which were the only form of lighting this deep in the mine cast dancing shadows on the walls. As her eyes blurred with tears, she could almost imagine that they were the figures of people, giants coming to rescue her from her cruel family and return her to her one true love.

She blinked the tears from her eye and they slid, warm and wet, down her cheek. Her vision cleared. The dancing figures became shadows again.

Except for the one that didn't. It remained, solid and black, moving away from her down the corridor, its hunched shape and hurried walk announcing louder than words that it was up to no good. Its arms were cradled protectively around a large, round object. A glint of light reflected from it as it passed underneath one of the torches.

There was, Ladybird realised, something very familiar about the figure, about the way it moved, the way its black leather coat flapped around its feet. Only its head seemed wrong, oddly shaped, too small somehow...

As it disappeared round the corner, she realised where she had seen it before. It was the one-eyed man. The man who had tried to kill her Johnny. Who was probably still trying, if he hadn't already succeeded.

With an impotent cry of rage, she flung herself against the door. It shook, but didn't budge. She did it again. And again. And again. She heard a crack as something dislocated in her shoulder. And still the door hadn't moved. She knew it was useless. Everything down here was built strong enough to withstand an explosion.

An explosion.

Her eyes were drawn to the sticks of dynamite behind her.

Setting them off in here, when she was only metres away with nothing more to shelter behind than some old crates of mining equipment, would be suicide. The blast would probably do more damage to her than to the door. And even if she did survive, she thought, she'd be in no state to go after Johnny's enemy.

But even as she was thinking it, she was carefully laying out the sticks of explosives against the door.

Johnny walked out of the lift, cradling the small form of Enigma in his arms. They emerged into an antechamber, with bare white walls and a small skylight in the ceiling. The quality of the sunlight pouring through it told Johnny that it was now late afternoon. They'd only been down in the mines less than two hours. It felt like an eternity.

When he heard voices from the door ahead of him, he drew his gun wearily. Beside him, Jo did the same. At the sight of the weapons, Enigma let out a small whimper of fear and buried her face in his chest. He could feel her warm breath through the cloth of his shirt.

Johnny braced himself, and prepared to die.

The door sighed open. Johnny found himself face to face with Middenface McNulty and Durham Red. "Sorry we're late," said Middenface. "But we had a wee spot o' bother on the way."

Red held up the corpse of what looked like a cross between a wild pig and a wolf. "O'Blarney's got strange taste in pets." She licked a drop of blood from her lips.

" _Had_ a strange taste," Johnny said, holding up O'Blarney's head. He could feel his face splitting into a wide, happy grin. It made his jaw ache, as if it wasn't accustomed to that particular motion. He handed O'Blarney's head back to Woman Man and caught Middenface up in a big bear hug. "I thought you were dead."

When Johnny released him, Middenface was blushing at this unexpected display of affection. "Aye, weel..." he said. "Reports o' my death've been greatly exaggerated."

"Much as I hate to break up this touching reunion," Red said, "but Chick Delater's just landed, and if we don't go out and deal with him, reports of his death won't have been exaggerated."

Johnny nodded, and turned back to Woman Man. "Guess we'd..."

Then he noticed the other mutant's face. Jo was staring down at the gleaming silver head in her arms with an expression that was gradually transmuting from puzzlement to horror.

"What is it?" Johnny asked.

Jo looked up at him. A strange light shone in her eyes, the light of her mutant gift, the gift Middenface had mocked, which let her know exactly what things were. "It's a trigger," she said.

"A trigger for what?" Red said impatiently.

Jo dropped the head. It clattered onto the floor - then rolled to a stop at Johnny's feet. "A bomb," she said.
22 / THE BOMB

President Hillary smiled down at the head of her lover cradled in her arms. The green light of his eyes shone up at her face. He looked so handsome, she thought, so much more perfect than any human man she'd ever met. "How are you feeling, darling?" she asked him.

Balthasar's beautiful silver mouth twisted into a wry grin. "Legless."

Hillary laughed, the sound echoing sharply from the white stone of the corridor. They were nearly there now, at the ship that would take them away from this planet to a new life without fear of discovery. She couldn't believe that it had all worked out according to plan. Well, not precisely - if all had gone as planned, the muties would have been dead long before now - but still...

She had already arranged for O'Blarney to be granted a full pardon and employed as leader of her guard detail. With him installed on the White Planet, they should have no problem carrying on their affair. Given time, she'd be able to change the law so that their relationship could emerge blinking into the light of day. Admittedly, the Galactic Commission was proving stubborn on the matter, but a few well-placed bribes - or, if necessary, well-targeted assassinations - ought to change their minds. After all, she'd managed to arrange for the time bomb accident on this planet without anyone, apart from a few conspiracy nuts, suspecting a thing.

The corridor ahead of her broadened, sunlight suddenly splashing in, sparking multi-coloured twinkles in the white rock, and there it was: the ship that was their secret escape route off-planet. It was tiny, just eight metres long, a little shuttle that looked as if it would barely be able to make it out of the atmosphere.

But as Hillary knew, looks could be deceptive. She pressed the door release on the ship's dull grey hull and a doorway irised open to let her pass. This ship wasn't going anywhere. It was, however, going to a very particular when: three hours in the future when the effects of the bomb would be long past, the planet would be thousands of kilometres away in its orbit, and her waiting deep-space vessel would be able to rendezvous and take them to safety.

She put Balthasar's head carefully onto the co-pilot's seat, then began to type the time-coordinates into the control panel.

"Need any help with that, sweetheart?" Balthasar asked her.

Hillary frowned. "Are you saying I'm not capable?"

Balthasar swivelled his eyes to look at her. "I'm saying if you get it wrong we could end up in the heart of the sun. And I'm saying that, as a mechanical sentient entity, I'm a bit better at the old arithmetic, know what I mean?"

Hillary's frown softened, and she picked her lover's head up and held it over the control panel. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to snap. Does that look okay?"

Balthasar's eyes scanned the instruments carefully. "Yep," he leered at her. "Nothing wrong with your figures." He kissed her palm as she placed him back down on the seat, then smiled at her, but she only smiled faintly back. "Everything all right, darling? Not having any regrets, are you?"

She hesitated, feeling a strange discomfort. After a moment she realised that it was her conscience, jabbing her with a pinprick of guilt. So many deaths. But, she reminded herself, the Strontium Dogs were killers themselves. And the people on this planet? Well... it was a pity, but what kind of life did they have here? Besides, she was Galactic President. She was above the petty moral concerns of ordinary people. And everything she was doing, she did for love. How could that be a bad thing?

"No regrets at all," she said, then leant forward and pressed the button that began the ignition sequence. Thirty seconds later, the time engines would power up and then she'd be in a future in which the explosion had already happened, too late for second thoughts.

Except that, twenty seconds before that, something ran into the side of the shuttle.

Anything normal which had done that would have bounced straight off the reinforced synth-steel of its hull. Not this thing, though. This thing was moving so fast that it passed through the hull as if it was no more solid than tissue paper. There was the hideous screeching noise of metal ripping. A great wind rushed in through the ruptured hull and something, some terrible, terrifying creature, rushed in with it.

Hillary would have been very surprised to discover that this thing also believed it was acting out of love.

The creature grabbed Hillary and held her up effortlessly by the lapels of her leather jacket. For a split second, Hillary saw its face. It was the face of a young girl. She looked puzzled. Then, impatiently, the girl tossed Hillary aside, through the ragged hole she had torn in the shuttle's side.

The jagged metal of the hull ripped a chunk out of her arm as she flew past, and the impact smashed her head against the solid rock of the tunnel. For a moment she thought she was going to pass out. But Balthasar was still inside the shuttle with that, that girl. A native inhabitant of this place, she supposed. And if she was, and had discovered what they were planning to do to her homeworld...

Determined to rescue Balthasar, Hillary tried to push herself to her feet. She got no further than her knees before collapsing back to the ground, groaning in pain. But she'd be damned if she'd give up. For god's sake - she'd been prepared to commit mass murder for his sake. She could do this. She must. With a supreme effort, she forced her bruised and battered body to its feet.

She had only staggered one step back towards the shuttle when a figure materialised in front of her. It was indeed a young woman, no older than twenty. She was bringing one hand back from her mouth, as if she had just swallowed something. Hanging from her other hand was Balthasar's head.

Hillary drew her blaster and trained it on the girl's chest. "Let him go, you little bitch!" she said.

"Not until you tell me where he is!" The young woman lifted Balthasar's head until it was directly in Hillary's line of fire. "If you don't tell me, I'll kill him." Her voice was menacing, but beneath it there was a waver which suggested she was unaccustomed to delivering threats.

Hillary was sure she could beat her; all she needed to do was distract her long enough to get a clean shot. "Who?" she asked calmly, taking a sidling step forwards.

The woman skittered back nervously and Hillary stopped moving for the moment. "The one-eyed man. You're wearing his clothes. You must know where he is."

Hillary smiled. "He's right behind you," she said.

Unbelievably, the woman glanced back, swinging O'Blarney's head round as she did. Hillary would have wondered how anyone could be that gullible, if she hadn't been too busy shooting the girl in the exposed soft flesh of her stomach.

After that, three things happened at once.

Balthasar's head fell from the young woman's suddenly slack grasp.

The young woman gave a muffled cry of pain and crumpled slowly to the ground.

And, behind her, the small shuttle that was their only means of escape reached the end of its ignition sequence and blinked out of existence.

The other Strontium Dogs stared at Jo in horror. The little room was so silent, Johnny could hear each individual breath everyone took, and the slight rasping sound as Middenface absently scratched the lumps on his head.

"Are ye sure?" Middenface asked.

"No, you cretin, she's just joking around," Red snapped at him.

"Dinnae take that tone wi' me!" Middenface snapped back, holding up his fist and advancing menacingly towards her.

Enigma started crying again. "Make them stop shouting," she said to Johnny.

"Now look what you've done!" Red said to Middenface.

"Ye're the one who-" Middenface began.

"Will. Everyone. Be. Quiet!!" Johnny yelled furiously.

Middenface and Red turned offended eyes on him, but at least they stopped talking.

"Thank you." Johnny turned to Jo. "This bomb. Where is it?"

She screwed her eyes shut, concentrating. "It's here," she said eventually.

Middenface snapped his head round the antechamber, but save for them it was entirely empty. "Where?"

"Everywhere," Jo said.

With a sick feeling, Johnny realised what she meant. "He's turned the whole planet into a bomb?" he asked.

Woman Man nodded.

Johnny took a deep breath, forcing down the bubble of panic that was trying to push the air out of his lungs and a desperate scream out of his throat. There'd be time enough for panicking once they were dead. "What sort of bomb?"

Jo's eyes widened in horror, as if only just realising herself. Perhaps she was, perhaps her mutant gift didn't work until she was asked. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out except a dry squeak. Only on the third attempt did she manage to get the words out. "A time bomb. When it goes off, the whole planet and everything on it will be destroyed at every point in time."

"Well what the hell does that mean?" Red asked angrily.

"It means," Johnny said, "that not only will it cease to exist, it never will have existed."

"Doesnae do things by halves, does he?" Middenface said with an attempt at nonchalance that would have been more impressive if his voice had been an octave lower. "I mean, most folks would settle for just blowin' it up."

Johnny thought he was finally getting it. He had to concede that Hillary and O'Blarney's plan had been brilliant. Brilliant and deadly. "It's not overkill, I'd say it's just the right amount of kill. See, O'Blarney's been having an affair with Galactic President Hillary the-"

"He's been what?" said Middenface.

Johnny shrugged. "It's a long story. Thing was, Chick Delater found out about it, and he was planning to blackmail Hillary with it - that kind of hold over her, he could pretty much write himself a blank cheque. Only thing he needed was some evidence - the kind of evidence O'Blarney would be carrying around in the memory circuits in his head."

"I get it," said Red. "Which is where we came in."

Johnny nodded. "Exactly. Except that Hillary and O'Blarney were one step ahead of Chick all the way. He didn't track O'Blarney here, O'Blarney meant for Chick to come here all along, the one place where he could build a bomb powerful enough to wipe Delater out as a threat. In fact, I'd bet any amount of money it was Hillary who got the original time bomb set off here in the first place."

Middenface looked doubtful. "Do ye really think they've been planning this for so long?"

"Why not?" Johnny said. "You don't get to be Galactic President by thinking small. So they came here. O'Blarney got the native people to help him excavate the chronite. Told them he was working on a cure for them, something that could slow them down. But he didn't care about them he just needed to stockpile enough pure chronite to make sure that once a chain reaction was set off it would take the whole planet. Then he sat here and waited for Chick to arrive. Only Chick didn't arrive. He did what O'Blarney couldn't have guessed. Hired himself some Strontium Dogs.

"O'Blarney must have panicked then, hidden himself away from the first party of Stronts till they'd aged to the state we saw them in. But by the time Delater sent us, Hillary and O'Blarney had Plan B in place. Hillary swapped places with one of the Stronts - lucky for her, One-Eyed Jack had already been on her payroll, so getting him to co-operate was a piece of cake. They pulled the switch on the way to the planet. I guess she used military espionage technology for the disguise."

"Hang oan a minute!" Middenface said. "You're telling me One-Eyed Jack was Hillary...?"

Johnny nodded. "From the moment of planetfall, yeah."

"Holy Hamish," Middenface said, "to think I was hobnobbing with the galactic elite without even realising it!"

"Point is," Johnny continued impatiently, "it let O'Blarney keep an eye on us, make sure there was never any chance of us sneaking up on him. My guess is they intended to keep just one of us alive to tell Delater that O'Blarney had been killed."

Middenface blushed. "Aye, well, I guess that would have been me."

Johnny shrugged. "Don't sweat it. I let O'Blarney pull a bait and switch on me - run off and swap his real head for the trigger while I'm too busy worrying about Min Qi Man to guess what he's up to. So thanks to us, while Hillary and O'Blarney head off into the sunset, Chick turns up to find a welcome he wasn't expecting."

During the course of this, they had all unconsciously stepped away from the thing they had believed to be O'Blarney's head. It stared up at them now, its dead gaze mocking.

"But," said Red, "I still don't get why they went to all this trouble. Why not just leave a nice dirty nuke behind?"

"Because," Johnny replied, "they couldn't be sure that Delater hadn't told anyone else what he knew. They didn't know if he'd stored the information somewhere, to be released to the public in the event of his untimely death. But with a time bomb, Delater wouldn't just be dead, he'd never have been alive. He'd never have found out about Hillary and O'Blarney so he never could have told anyone else. They'd get away with it scot-free."

There was a moment's silence as they all absorbed this.

"So I guess the question is," Red finally said, "what sets off the trigger and how do we stop it happening?"

"I know what I'd do," said Middenface. "You wouldnae want to go to all this trouble, only to ha' it go aff without Delater here."

Johnny nodded. "I think so too. I think the bomb's been set to trigger when Delater touches the head."

"Well, what are we waiting fer? Let's blow the wee thing away now!" Middenface drew his gun and pointed it at the head.

Johnny hurriedly grabbed his arm. "No! Too risky. For all we know, destroying the trigger might set off the bomb."

"Then what do we do?" Middenface demanded.

"There's only one thing we can do."

"Let me guess," said Red dryly. "Make sure Delater doesn't touch the head?"

Middenface grinned. "Weel, that's awright then. Piece o' cake!"

His grin slipped as the room filled with a terrible grinding, tearing sound. It was the loudest thing Johnny had ever heard. He clapped his hands against his ears in agony. Then he ducked, as a rain of debris shook free from the ceiling, which suddenly seemed far further away than it should be and was getting further away still.

In a moment, the ceiling was gone entirely. Johnny squinted against the sunlight glaring in from the suddenly exposed sky. A moment later, the light was blocked out by an enormous metallic skeleton. Somewhere in its centre, a tiny pink figure could be made out.

"Oh good," said Chick Delater. "You've got him."

The huge, piston-powered exoskeletal hands flung the ragged remains of the roof casually away and reached in towards the thing that looked exactly like Bad Boy O'Blarney's head.
23 / GROUND ZERO MARK TWO

"Don't touch it!" five different voices screamed simultaneously.

The giant form of the exoskeleton paused, mid-stoop. Its outstretched hand was only a metre away from O'Blarney's head. "Why?" Chick Delater said. His voice, hugely amplified, boomed around the small chamber.

"It's a trap," Johnny said. "It's the trigger to a bomb."

The vast metallic head swung to face him, mimicking the much smaller motion of Chick's own body. Johnny felt two pairs of eyes boring into him: huge glowing red ones, and smaller, paler pinpricks. Neither set looked convinced. "What bomb?"

"That dirty wee nyaff O'Blarney's turned the whole planet into a time bomb," Middenface said. As he spoke, Johnny could see his hand drifting slowly, almost imperceptibly, towards his holstered gun. "If ye touch yon head, it'll be a trip to the jam factory for all o' us."

The huge head swung towards Middenface. "Ah, Mr McNulty, I thought I recognised your dulcet, albeit near incomprehensible tones. I'm delighted to see that you've managed to live through to the bitter end. However-" the volume of the voice suddenly increased dramatically, so that they all took an unconscious step away from Delater - "if your hand moves any nearer to that gun of yours, please rest assured that you won't be living for very much longer. Do you understand?"

Middenface hesitated for a second.

Moving unbelievably fast for something so huge, Chick's burnished steel fist flew through the air towards Middenface's head. Johnny could feel the wind of its passage from three metres away. He leapt towards his partner, not sure what he intended to do, just that he intended to protect him whatever the cost.

But the fist stopped a few centimetres in front of Middenface's nose. It was the same size as the Scottish mutant's entire body. Close up, Johnny could see the level of detailing that had gone into creating it the silvery mounds of the knuckles bisected by the strong, thin line of the bone, the glittering skin pocked with tiny pores.

"I said," Delater continued in a bored voice, as if nothing had happened, "do you understand?"

Johnny saw Middenface gulp visibly. "Aye," he said. He moved his hand away from his holster, holding both arms stiffly out at his sides like a self-conscious ballerina.

"Now," Delater continued, "far be it from me to suggest that there might be an element of dishonesty creeping into our discourse, but I can't help feeling that you might perhaps have ulterior motives for preventing the completion of this mission..."

As he spoke, Johnny saw Durham Red slowly sidle round his side. He frowned, trying to warn her to stay still, to prevent her from putting them all in danger. Middenface, Johnny knew, was lucky to still be alive. If Delater hadn't been such a fan of theatrics, he could just as easily have disposed of the Scottish mutant by detonating the small device hidden in his chest. And if he started with Middenface, there was nothing to stop him moving on to the rest of them. Now that Delater believed O'Blarney was dead, their usefulness to him was over.

So Johnny frowned at Red, willing her not to do anything stupid before he had had time to figure a way out of their problem. She caught his eye, saw his expression and smiled. Then she pointed at her own eyes, and pointed at Johnny's. It took him a second to work out what she wanted. She was suggesting that Johnny read her mind. He hesitated. What was she playing at? No one ever wanted their mind read, it was too much of a violation.

As Johnny tried to figure out what Red's game was, he realised that Delater was still talking. Johnny supposed he should be glad that the little mutant was so fond of the sound of his own voice. He had risen from his crouch again and was looming over the Strontium Dogs, hands on hips, like a giant statue of some ancient admiral. "Don't fear, though," he was saying now with mock solicitousness, "that your usefulness to me might be over. I rather like having Strontium Dogs at my beck and call. I might, if you're very good, even consider paying you some of the bounty I promised. Although, frankly, I wouldn't hold your breath..."

Johnny realised that he really didn't have a choice. Red might not be the most trustworthy Dog in the House, but he'd take her over Delater any day. Careful to show no trace of it in his face, he tuned out Delater's voice and focussed in on Red, on her eyes, into the dark depths of her pupils. He focussed all his attention down on those two little points, looking at them, through them and into the depths of her mind...

Red paused a moment in her silent movement around O'Blarney. Two small parallel frown lines appeared on her brows, as if she felt Johnny's alpha rays as a small annoyance.

Johnny felt the momentary blinding pain that always accompanied any use of his powers. But it passed quickly, and he was in, the journey more smooth than he was used to because for once he was being welcomed, guided to the memory that he needed to see...

He needs to see this, Red thought. I need him to distract Delater, to do whatever it takes, while I do what I have to do.

It was a very strange feeling, inviting someone into her mind this way, even stranger to be able to feel him there, a ghostly presence that was like an itch somewhere behind her eyes. But she ignored the discomfort as best she could and concentrated instead on feeding him pictures, of what she and Middenface did earlier, and of what she intended to do now. She wasn't sure if she'd succeeded, if her visualisations were clear enough for him, but after a moment she felt him withdraw. His mind, strong and warm and angry, was suddenly gone from her, leaving her alone with her thoughts. She felt an unexpected sense of loss.

But she didn't have time for that. Johnny's eyes locked fiercely with hers, then looked back at Delater's vast exoskeleton. She didn't need to be a mind reader to know what he meant. He had understood. She could trust him.

She continued her slow, careful manoeuvring to place herself directly behind Delater, out of his field of vision. Every little step she took, she expected him to turn to face her, to send his fist flying at her as he had at Middenface, only this time there would be no reprieve, no stopping, and the fist would smash her into pulp.

"So, in short," Delater was saying, "I am afraid I am going to ignore your warnings, imaginative as they are, and collect the prize for which I've come such a long way."

Sneck! Red thought. No more time. She wasn't where she had intended to be, she'd barely made it round to the side of Delater's hulking silver leg, but it would have to do. Now, all she needed to do was climb it. Only now she was here, it didn't look so easy. From a distance, the exoskeleton had looked as if its complex mechanics would provide plenty of handholds. But up close, she could see the sleek surface of the outer material. The workings were all hidden within the skeleton, well out of her reach. She put a hand against it. It felt as smooth as it looked, and much colder.

Slowly, the leg began to lean forward. Delater was crouching down, she realised, preparing to pick up O'Blarney's head. The other Strontium Dogs were shouting at him to stop, but he ignored them. The exoskeleton's leg was at eighty degrees, then seventy, then nearing forty-five. And though the silvery slope of metal still looked forbiddingly steep, Red knew she must move now, or Delater would touch the bomb's trigger and it would all be pointless anyway.

She took one deep breath and launched herself onto the giant silver bone in front of her. For a horrible second, her feet failed to find any purchase and she began to slide straight back off again. But then the leg lowered still further, her foot settled into the metal, and she began to force herself upwards, trying to keep going through momentum and sheer strength of will.

Below her, she could see Delater's hand reaching for O'Blarney's head. As she reached the knee joint, his fingers were less than a metre away from it. Come on, Johnny! she thought. I'm doing my bit - do yours!

And he did. Seconds before Delater's fingers reached their target, Johnny Alpha leapt in, reaching for the head himself. Red, knowing he could only buy her a very little time, began to force herself up the inside of the silver thigh, pushing herself up by leaning against the thick central bone, and pushing her legs against the thinner bone which lay beside it. Little by little, she began to make her way towards Delater's hips.

Below, she saw that Delater was too quick for Johnny. One of his fingers flicked out and knocked Johnny aside, flinging his body into the wall with force enough to break bones.

Red stifled a despairing cry as Delater's fingers continued their motion towards the small robotic head.

But they never reached it. Somehow, the head was floating into the air of its own accord, lifting up, then flying towards Johnny.

Red realised it was Enigma. She saw the mutant, the woman who had become a little girl, being cradled in Woman Man's burnt arms. Woman Man was whispering something in Enigma's ear, and the girl had her arm out, pointing at O'Blarney's head, directing the power of her mind which, thankfully, seemed to have survived her strange de-aging.

Johnny, clearly shaken by the fall, still managed to catch the head and hug it to his chest.

Delater let out a vast amplified roar of rage and spun towards Johnny.

Just beneath Delater's hipbone, Red spun helplessly along with him. Her feet lost their grip on the silver bone. Her hands were ripped from their grip by the force of the movement. She was ten metres up now. The fall would kill her.

Gasping, she flung out her arms. Her fingertips connected with something. She pressed them down desperately, forcing them almost into the metal. She felt the horrible snap of nails breaking, and a warm trickle of blood down her arms. But, somehow, she managed to cling on, hanging from the side of O'Blarney's hip by one hand.

Then Delater let out an even loader roar and flung himself backwards as quickly as he had moved forward.

Below her, Red saw that Johnny had drawn his blaster and had his finger pressed hard against the trigger, the barrel pressed to O'Blarney's forehead.

Then Delater's motion caught her, she was flung up, her arm lost its weak grip entirely, and she was falling, falling...

... to land, seconds later, on the broad, complex landscape of the exoskeleton's hip.

Her landing made a loud, bell-like clanging noise.

Loud enough for Delater to hear.

His giant head began to move, tilting down towards her position, following the motion of his tiny pink head, which was now only five metres above her. There was nothing between her and him now but the network of wires supporting him within and transmitting his movements to the exoskeleton which held him.

In another second he would be able to see her. And unlike Middenface, she still had a balloon implanted in her chest. He only needed to press one tiny button on the control console she could see beside him, and she would be dead.

"Delater!" Johnny shouted. "I'm gonna blow this damn thing up if you don't let us go!" Johnny's voice was a rough croak. The fall had clearly hurt him badly.

But Delater heard it. His head swung away from Red and towards Johnny. "I'll kill you if you do," he said. "Just give O'Blarney to me, and we'll say no more about it."

Red knew Johnny couldn't keep this bluff up for long. But she was nearly there. Slowly, carefully, she began to creep towards the centre of the vast silver plane of Delater's hips.

"Those little bombs of yours take a few seconds to get going," Johnny was saying. "Plenty of time for me to pull the trigger before I die."

Delater shrugged, feigning nonchalance. "Why should I care? The head is only a symbol, after all. What I really wanted was O'Blarney's life."

"Really?" Johnny drawled. "I could've sworn what you were really after was evidence of O'Blarney's affair with President Hillary. Evidence you can only get from this head."

Delater let out a roar of rage.

Red was finally in the right position, with a clear view of Chick's chest. If he'd looked down even a tiny bit, he would have seen her. But he was too focussed on Johnny. She took out the tiny blowpipe and raised it to her lips.

"Looks like stalemate to me," Johnny said.

Delater smiled. "Not quite," he said - and a thin red laser beam shot out from the huge red eye of the exoskeleton and into the barrel of Johnny's blaster. The gun was flung away from Johnny's hands, glowing with heat. Then the laser moved to his other hand.

Johnny let out a helpless gasp of pain and dropped O'Blarney's head.

Above him, Red pursed her lips and blew.

And Middenface, who had been watching Red's progress with great care, drew his own gun and shouted. "Pick on someone yer own size, ye wiggy wee scunner!"

Delater spun to face him. He looked at the gun with contempt, and sighed. "I'm afraid you've tried my patience too far, Mr McNulty," he said.

Red saw the tiny pink form above her reach out a delicate hand and press a button on the control panel in front of it.

The instruction to expand went out. The balloon, which had been created for this precise moment, obeyed. The balloon, which was no longer inside Middenface McNulty, the balloon which Red had just blown into Delater's own chest, began to grow.

For a second, Delater didn't realise what was happening.

Then he let out a cry of pain, and looked down at his own body. Instinctively, his small pink arms moved in to cradle his chest. The giant exoskeletal arms mimicked the motion. Johnny and Middenface flung themselves out of the way of the flailing limbs.

Delater, weeping with fear, dropped to his knees. The exoskeleton did likewise.

His pink skin was growing, tearing, rivers of blood leaking from the fissures. Then, with a final whimper, Delater expanded to the size of large pink balloon and exploded.

Deprived of any control at all now, the exoskeleton began to collapse.

Red flung herself against the silver surface of the hip bone and clung on for dear life as it moved from horizontal to vertical in a few seconds.

Woman Man and Enigma barely avoided being squashed beneath one giant hand.

It was almost over now.

Middenface and Johnny, clear of the wreckage, turned to watch the exoskeleton's death throes.

Watched as the torso collapsed like a felled tree trunk, straight downwards, clanging deafeningly against the metal of the floor, creating a vast, man-shaped dent beneath it.

Right in the centre of the whole structure, the tiny burst form of Delater's fleshy body floated to the floor, landing directly on top of the severed head of Bad Boy O'Blarney.

Somewhere inside the head that was really a trigger, a countdown started counting down.
24 / THE END OF THE WORLD

Johnny launched himself at O'Blarney's severed head, diving through the silver cage of the fallen giant's ribs, but he was far too late. It was enveloped in a swathe of Delater's wrinkled pink skin. Delater's head, severed from the rest of his body by the force of the balloon exploding inside him, rested on the ground, attached to the shroud of skin by one thin tendril of flesh. The whole thing was surrounded by a pool of dark scarlet blood, reflecting the sun and sky above them.

Johnny tore O'Blarney's head lose from its nest of skin, and began frantically searching for an "off' switch on its seemingly smooth surface. He was prodding its eyes with his finger when a green light suddenly flared inside them. Then Johnny felt a horrible squirming motion beneath his fingers. After a second, he realised that it was the thing's jaw muscles moving.

"All right, Chick me old mucker," the head said in O'Blarney's voice. "Sorry this is a recording and all that, but I didn't want to stick around for the explosive finale." The mouth twisted beneath Johnny's fingers into a smile. "If that last sentence alarmed you, it was meant to. Course I should have just blown up and have done with it, but I couldn't resist a last gloat. Cause you've fallen for it hook, line and sinker, mate. So think of me, and how I've outwitted you completely during the last-"

The mouth suddenly stilled. Then the eyes widened, and the figure "30" appeared, glowing in the centre of each green iris.

"-seconds you have remaining," the mouth finished, then went permanently still. The little counter in the eye ticked down to _29_.

Johnny looked up to see that he was surrounded by a ring of horrified Strontium Dogs.

"Turn it off!" Middenface shouted. "Turn it off now!"

"He can't, you cretin!" shouted a voice from the other side of the room.

It was O'Blarney's other head, the real one, cradled in the arm of Galactic Commission President Hillary the Third.

The number in the eyes of the head cradled in Johnny's arms ticked down to _25_.

As soon as they saw her, the Strontium Dogs reached for their weapons. But it was too late. Hillary was pointing the barrel of a very large plasma thrower straight at them.

The number ticked down to _23_.

Hillary strode a few paces nearer.

Red glared at her. "Doesn't coming to gloat in person kind of defeat the object?"

"We wouldn't be here if we had a choice!" Hillary spat back.

"Well then, would you mind disarming the bomb?" Woman Man said. "If it's not too much snecking trouble!"

The eyes told them they had eighteen seconds left.

"I can't," O'Blarney said.

"You what?!" Middenface shouted. He looked ready to leap on O'Blarney, plasma thrower or not.

"I can't," O'Blarney repeated, through gritted metallic teeth. "It can't be disarmed. I didn't want to give Chick any way out."

Thirteen seconds now.

"You-" Middenface roared.

_Twelve_.

"I can," Johnny interrupted him. "I know how to disarm it."

_Ten_.

"How?" Hillary shouted, moving forward and thrusting her plasma thrower straight into his face. "Tell me how!"

_Seven_.

Johnny didn't blink. "Give me the gun and O'Blarney's head and I'll show you."

_Five_.

"He's bluffing!" O'Blarney shouted.

_Four_.

Johnny shrugged. "What've you got to lose?"

_Three_.

Hillary hesitated. O'Blarney's green eyes burned into Johnny's white ones. The other Strontium Dogs remained frozen in place. The only sound was the nervous scratching of Middenface's hand through the lumps on his head.

_Two_.

Hillary handed the gun to Johnny. He didn't move. After a moment's more hesitation, she handed him O'Blarney's head too.

_One_.

Johnny stepped back, holding the real head and the fake head together in the crook of one arm, and the plasma thrower in the other. And then he did nothing at all.

The bomb exploded.
25 / THE END OF THE WORLD (SLIGHT RETURN)

The entire planet, every living thing on it, and everything else too, ceased to be.

And that was just the beginning.

The planet of Epsilon Five had never been hit by a time bomb and renamed Speed. It had never been discovered by a party of human explorers. It had never coalesced out of the dust which spun round the Type Three sun at the centre of its solar system. The dust itself had never formed in the Big Bang which began it all and the life forms which until a moment ago had been crawling all over its surface, they had never existed either. Glasgow had never been terrorised by a strange little boy with bumps all over his head. Two ordinary parents had never screamed in horror as their baby's first smile revealed two tiny, perfect fangs. And the mutant revolution had failed, failed utterly, because a boy called Johnny Alpha had never been born to lead it.

Chick Delater had never existed. Bad Boy O'Blarney had never existed.

The bomb itself had never existed.

It had never exploded.

In a fraction of time shorter than any human being could conceive, the world snapped back into existence.

All the people on it regained their futures, and their pasts. Durham Red lived to break the hearts of her parents. Middenface McNulty was the terror of Scotland. The mutant revolution almost succeeded with Johnny Alpha at its forefront.

Chick Delater discovered Bad Boy O'Blarney's secret and set out to blackmail the President of the Galactic Commission.

The President of the Galactic Commission and Bad Boy O'Blarney built a bomb to stop him.

The bomb exploded.

The world ceased to exist.

The bomb ceased to exist.

So the world didn't cease to exist.

Faster and faster, there, not-there, there... Only each time the circle of destruction a little smaller.

First only a continent was wiped out. Then only a thousand square kilometres of land. Then only a hectare. Only O'Blarney's base. Only the roofless room which contained the bomb itself.

Until, finally, only the bomb itself blinked out of existence.

And didn't return.

The world was still there. It included a Scottish mutant called Middenface McNulty and a vampire woman who went by the name of Durham Red, both of whom were staring at Johnny in shocked disbelief. It also included the two remaining members of Team X. They were cowering on the floor, the larger form of Jo wrapped protectively around the childish figure of Enigma.

It included Galactic President Hillary the Third.

And it included Johnny Alpha, holding the head of Bad Boy O'Blarney in one arm. In the other was a large plasma thrower, its barrel pointed directly at President Hillary's heart.

"What the hell...?" said virtually everyone.

Hillary took a step towards Johnny.

He waved the gun threateningly at her. "I'd stay right about where you are if I were you."

"What's going on?" she hissed at him.

Johnny shrugged. "Told you I'd disarm it."

O'Blarney's voice spoke from beneath his arm. "But you didn't do anything!"

"Didn't need to," Johnny said, keeping his eyes - and his gun on Hillary. "The bomb never could have worked. Because if it did, it never would have existed, and never could have blown up. The only way out of it was for the trigger to self-destruct. Anything else created an impossible time paradox." His eyes flicked down briefly to O'Blarney's. "Guess you're not as smart as you think."

"You tricked us!" Hillary said, disbelief and then fury chasing themselves over her face. "I should have listened to what they told me and put you all in camps!"

She glared viciously at Johnny. Johnny glared right back, focussing the full force of his rage on her. After a moment, she dropped her eyes, and Johnny turned to Middenface. "Do me a favour," he said. "Tie her up."

Middenface hesitated a moment, still shell-shocked. Then he shook his head, like someone dispelling a bad dream, pulled some rope out of his backpack and headed over to the President. Johnny noticed him wrenching the knots on her arms tighter than was strictly necessary and she gave a sharp cry of pain. Johnny didn't blame him. He knew they couldn't kill her - mutants killing the Galactic Commission President would have given too many mutant-haters the excuse they were looking for - but that didn't mean they had to treat her like royalty. When he'd finished binding her, Middenface pushed Hillary down to her knees beside him.

"Get your filthy mutant hands off her!" O'Blarney said. His disembodied voice, lacking a chest in which to resonate, was considerably higher pitched and less threatening than it had been before.

Johnny grasped the robot's head between his hands and held it out before him, so that he could stare into its bright green eyes. "Listen, buster," he said, "if you want your girlfriend to get back to Earth in anything like the shape she left it, you won't say another word for the rest of the journey. I'm sick of the sound of your voice."

"You wouldn't dare hurt her - she's the Galactic President," O'Blarney said, but he didn't sound entirely convinced.

Johnny shook his head. "Not for much longer." He looked O'Blarney right in the eyes. His alpha rays didn't generally work on non-human life forms, but O'Blarney flinched anyway. "See, this is how it's going to be. You're coming back to the Doghouse with us. There's a bounty on your head and I mean to collect it. Now, when it comes time to hand you over, I'll probably feel obliged to tell them about all that juicy information concerning you and Hillary that's hidden away inside your circuits. Of course-" he switched his gaze to Hillary, kneeling on the floor beside Middenface - "if I find that by the time I'm back in the Doghouse it's been announced that Galactic Commission President Hillary the Third has retired to spend more time with her family, well, I might just keep quiet and let them throw O'Blarney here straight in the incinerator without looking inside that nasty head of his first."

Hillary stared him right in the eyes, suddenly looking interested rather than frightened. She understood the choice he was offering her. If she was prepared to watch her lover die, she could lose her career but keep her reputation, maybe live to stand for government another day. Johnny didn't like giving her that chance, but if the truth got out, the scandal could destroy the Galactic Commission - and it might take the Strontium Dogs down with it. Johnny wasn't willing to take that risk.

"So, what do you say?" Johnny said now to Hillary.

"I think it's time I took a break from public life," she said. Her eyes, he saw, were very carefully avoiding O'Blarney's.

"What?" O'Blarney shouted. Johnny considerately turned his head round so it was facing towards Hillary. "You're gonna let them kill me?"

Hillary looked pained. But it was a political kind of pain, carefully calculated. "What can I do? I don't have any choice."

O'Blarney's silvery features twisted into an expression of hurt disbelief. "You could tell the truth! You could tell them about our love, try to convince them there's nothing wrong with it!"

"What's the point?" Hillary said, her tone sweetly reasonable. "People will never accept us. If this gets out it will destroy me, and they'll kill you anyway."

If O'Blarney had been able to produce saliva, Johnny reckoned he would have been frothing at the mouth. "You bitch! I'm not letting you do this to me. If you go down I'm taking you with me! I'll tell everyone what we did together!"

Hillary shrugged. "Tell them what you like. You're a murderer and a wanted criminal. I'm the President of the Galactic Commission. Who do you think they'll believe?" Then she turned away, dismissing him.

Johnny saw the green light in O'Blarney's eyes flare up with rage, then slowly fade away. It was, the Strontium Dog thought, the only time in his life he'd seen the precise moment when love died.

He looked round at the ragged remnants of his band. At Middenface, arms folded, watching Hillary with undisguised glee. At Durham Red, who was watching Johnny with an expression that might almost have been admiration. And at Jo, scarred but alive, cradling the small body of Enigma in her arms. Enigma had been crying, but now her tears had dried and Johnny could hear her asking Jo if she would brush her hair for her.

It had been, Johnny decided, not a bad two days' work.

Halfway down the mountain, on the long trek back to Team X's ship - their only means of transport off the planet - Red suddenly smelt a familiar smell. It was the coppery tang of blood, but more than that, it was the scent of a person she recognised.

She smiled, baring her fangs, then turned to Johnny. He was at the rear of the party, taking it in turns to help carry Enigma. From the pained expression on his face, Red guessed that the telekinetic mutant was no more pleasant company as a little girl than she'd been as a grown woman. Or maybe it was the abuse being shouted at him by O'Blarney that was getting to him. Johnny had thrown the robot's head into his backpack, but its muffled mechanical voice could still be heard, keeping up a constant stream of insults as they walked. Hillary, being pushed along at the head of the party by Middenface, was keeping far quieter. But then, Red thought, she must know she was getting off lightly. If it had been up to Red, Hillary wouldn't be making it off the planet alive, but it was Johnny's call. Besides, Red had other fish to fry.

"I'm just going to take a little side trip," she said to Johnny as he drew level. "I'll catch up with you at the bottom of the mountain."

Johnny frowned at her. "What are you up to, Red?"

She smiled, careful to keep her teeth veiled behind her lips. "I've got some unfinished business, nothing you need to worry about."

She could see that Johnny didn't trust her, but he was tired, and the mission was over, and she sensed that he had little energy left for a fight. "Food, Red?" he asked.

Her smile widened. "Just desserts," she replied, then sprinted into the surrounding woodland before Johnny could ask any more awkward questions.

It didn't take Red long to find her target. She was lying in a pool of her own blood, about ten metres from the mouth of a small tunnel. A trail of blood led back from her to the wreckage of a small shuttle craft. It looked like she had crawled from the craft to the spot, nestled in the mossy roots of a small birch tree, where she now lay. There was a smear of white powder round her mouth, and as Red watched, her tongue flicked out and tried to lick the remains from her lips. She had the bright, carefree features of a young woman who had yet to see much of life. It didn't look, now, like she ever would. Her hair had escaped from its pigtails and was plastered to her face with the sweat of pain and fear. Her arms were clasped around her stomach, desperately trying to stop any more blood from leaking out of the ragged wound in her chest. It was a futile endeavour.

Red walked up and stood right over her, positioning herself so that she was right in her line of vision. "Hi," she said. "Remember me?"

The young girl didn't reply, but a flicker of something that might have been recognition briefly replaced the agony in her eyes.

Red knelt down beside her. "It's okay, I know you can't talk. That chronite you've taken may have slowed things down, but there are some things you just can't stop. You're probably too far gone to understand me, either, but what the hell... I just want you to know that Johnny's fine. We're heading off-planet now, me and him. He hasn't asked after you. I guess he doesn't really care. But if he does, I'll be sure to tell him that you and I had a nice meal together."

Then she lowered her head to the girl's neck and began to drink.

A little further down the mountain, Middenface approached Johnny. His friend nodded at him, but remained silent. Perhaps he didn't want to wake the young child who was sleeping in his arms.

Ahead of them, Woman Man was leading Hillary along, jerking on her ropes occasionally so that the soon-to-be-former Galactic Commission President would stumble and almost fall. Woman Man was in her female form, as she'd been ever since the transition through the time distortion had left her face a mass of red scar tissue. Perhaps the time field had also affected her mutation, stopped the endless see-sawing between male and female which she'd previously been unable to control.

Middenface kind of hoped so. It seemed like that might make the other mutant's life easier. Not that walking around with a face like a plate of spaghetti bolognaise was going to be fun, but as Middenface could attest, looks weren't everything. Woman Man had told him that she planned to start a new Team X as soon as she got back to the Doghouse. She would lead it. She felt, she'd told him, that she owed it to the memory of her fallen comrades. Middenface's first instinct had been to laugh. But afterwards, when he'd thought about it, he'd realised that it might not be such a bad idea after all. Woman Man wasn't the same woman - or man - as she'd been when she set off. She'd learnt from the trip, and from being around Johnny. He wouldn't even mind having her cover his back in a fight.

She'd also told him that she planned to adopt Enigma, raise her as her daughter. Middenface hoped she'd bring the spoilt brat up better than her original parents must have.

Johnny, Middenface now saw, was lost in thought. Probably thinking about everyone they'd lost. He was always one to look on the dark side, Johnny, to beat himself up about what he hadn't done rather than pat himself on the back for what he had. Middenface's own expression darkened, as he thought about Rose, and how she'd died. But the person responsible was a captive, and would pay the full price for his crimes. They'd done what they could, no point brooding now - best just to concentrate on the next mission. Only... there was one thing he still wanted to know.

"Johnny," he said.

His partner turned to look at him, raising one dark eyebrow questioningly.

"I've been wonderin', about that time bomb..."

Johnny's white eyes bored into him, but he remained expressionless. "What about it?"

"Well," Middenface said. "I ken how it didnae work noo, but at the time I thought we'd really been got by the sporrans. How did yer ken it wasnae gonna blow us all tae kingdom come?"

Johnny shrugged. "I didn't." Then his face split into one of his rare, wide smiles. "But hell, who wants to live forever?"

**ABOUT THE AUTHOR**

Rebecca Levene was born in Essex, raised in Suffolk and now lives in London. She has worked variously as a researcher for a Labour Shadow Cabinet member, an editor of media tie-in fiction, and the story editor of television soap opera _Emmerdale_. She is currently a freelance writer, with credits on shows such as _Family Affairs_ and _Is Harry on the Boat?_ Together with her writing partner Gareth Roberts she has one sitcom in development with the BBC and another with Tiger Aspect.

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