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"There's someone staring at you," Cally said.
"Is there?" Avon glanced around the sleazy, smoke-filled bar warily.
"A woman," Cally said in a very disparaging tone. "She's dressed in the most extraordinarily impractical, diaphanous material."
"Is she?" Avon tried not to sound interested. His eyes followed Cally's pointed finger. "Good heavens," he said, "it's...." His eyes gleamed. "Er...an old friend."
"It's who?" Cally demanded, highly suspicious as Avon's normally cold expression became more and more animated.
"No one." The time-honoured, repressive response to the embarrassing question came glibly from Avon's finely sculpted lips but Cally had had sufficient experience, in more ways than she cared to tell others, of his finely sculpted lips that she was very vary of any ambiguous remarks that emerged between them.
"You wouldn't know her," Avon added eventually, continuing to eye the woman across the bar furtively.
"I'd like to," Cally said untruthfully. "Do introduce us."
"I'd rather not," Avon said warily. "She's not the type of woman you'd want to know."
"That's probably true enough," Cally muttered, staring in disgust at the filmy garments of the other woman and comparing them with her own trim, severely practical rebel gear. "You can see she's never done a stroke of honest fighting in her life."
"She doesn't need to," Avon breathed, gazing lasciviously at the diaphanous garments (or thereabouts).
"She's still staring," Cally said five minutes later. "What's wrong with her?"
"I think," Avon mumbled, "I'll go and...er...get another drink."
"You don't need another drink," Cally retorted. "You haven't finished the one you've got."
Avon seized his glass and downed the liquid hurriedly. "Now I do," he said and escaped before Cally could stop him. He took a circuitous route around the bar, hoping to confuse the Auron warrior, but Cally was no fool; her keen, fighter's eyes kept track of him through all the fug and the jostling drinkers and her mouth pursed with disgust as she saw Avon finally reach the mysterious damsel's side.
"Lord," cried the mysterious damsel (veil, she wasn't mysterious to Avon), "You came!"
"Of course." Avon caught Cally's eye on him and backed off behind a very large spacer. "Do you have another rocket waiting to be launched?" he enquired politely. "I do have a little time to spare...well, quite a bit actually, er...a few days...."
The spacer looked at Avon with concealed delight. "Cor," he grunted enthusiastically, "you offerin...?"
Avon edged quickly in another direction. Over the head of a diminutive alien from somewhere or another quite irrelevant to this story, he gazed at Meegat hungrily. "I don't only do rockets," he elaborated hopefully. "I'm also into quite a comprehensive cross-section of other technological areas...weaponry, communications, analysis, explosives...."
"Oh no," the damsel said, smiling at him sunnily, "I've finished with all that kind of thing."
"I can turn my hand to almost anything...." Seeing Cally advancing on him, Avon dodged behind another well-built tippler. "Embezzlement... I could advise on your investments...."
"No, thank you, Lord."
Cally was forcing her way through a group of Amagons. Avon hoped they'd decide to abduct her. He hopped sideways again. "Do you come here often?" he bawled. (He was now quite some way away from the damsel).
"No," she shouted. "But please come closer, Lord. I can't worship you from this distance...."
"I'd rather not." His latest shield moved and he found Cally staring straight at him.
"Well, well, darling, and who is this?" Cally enquired saccharinely. "Do introduce me."
Avon shot her a glare that would have frazzled almost anyone but an Auron warrior with telepathic powers. "I haven't the slightest idea," he said airily. "I bumped into her whilst passing and naturally I had to pause to apologise."
"No doubt," Cally said dryly. Her gaze swept up and down the diaphanously-clothed damsel thoughtfully. "I suppose you know," she said to the damsel with a bright, false smile, "that this is a dangerous and vicious terrorist whose closest friend is a psychopathic female with a neat line in slinky, slit-to-the-hip black silk dresses and totally impractical shoes. I suggest you keep very clear of him or you might end up uncomfortably dead. He has a bad habit of killing people off when he's got nothing better to do." She bared her teeth at the other woman with a creditable impression of Avon's favourite evil grin. "Come on," she said sweetly to Avon, "let us leave this decent, innocent woman in peace."
"If he's so appalling," the decent, innocent woman said, dismayed that her attractive god was apparently likely to disappear again, "why do you associate with him?"
"I'm a member of the Intergalactic Salvation Army," Cally explained. "And my mission is to save him from himself--and, of course, to save decent, innocent women like yourself from a fate worse than death."
"You lie in your teeth!" Avon snarled tritely. "I've a good mind to kill you myself--right now."
"See what I mean?" Cally sighed pointedly. "You only have to offend him the teensiest, weensiest bit, and all he can think of it whip out a powerful handgun and mow you down. It's really appalling, the kind of people I meet in my job."
"Well!" said a cheery voice behind them, "if it isn't my favourite radioactive priestess!"
Avon groaned. It was Vila, beaming all over his face.
"There I was," Vila continued, "wondering what to do with the fifty-thousand I've just won at the gaming table, and what materialises before me but a vision of loveliness...."
"Fifty-thousand?" Avon repeated. "How did you manage to win anything... Have you brought Orac down here again?"
"Er...no, of course not. Wouldn't dream of it." Vila sidled away, one hand behind his back.
Avon seized Vila's arm, hauled it forwards (eliciting a screech from Vila and the inevitable insistence that his arm was being forcibly broken by a crazed brute). In Vila's hand, there was Orac (miniaturised, needless to say).
"You've made it even smaller than last time," Avon muttered anxiously, peering at the tiny Orac as best he could in the murky dimness. "There was no need to reduce it to less than a centimetre cubed. Suppose you lost it?"
"Me lose something?" Vila was affronted. "Don't be silly. I don't go around losing things. I--um--acquire them."
In his concern for Orac, Avon had for the moment completely forgotten about Meegat. Cally seized the opportunity to try and get rid of her rival. "This lady needs a protector," she said to Vila. "Since it's obvious you know her, you are the obvious person. Go away and have fun, Vila...AND TAKE HER WITH YOU!"
"But I don't want to go with him," Meegat protested. "I want to stay with my Lord."
"Oh, that's what he is, is he?" Cally retorted darkly. "I see...."
"You've definitely damaged Orac this time," Avon was fuming anxiously. He thought he was talking to Vila but Vila had hurried to Meegat's side and a thick-set, pink-haired third-sex deviant from Platon 73 in the Eighth Sector stared at him in amazement. "Look at it!" Avon continued frantically. "It can't even muster enough power to speak properly. I'll have to get back to Liberator straight away...."
"What a good idea," Cally said briskly. "Let's call Blake now."
Avon looked at her with sudden suspicion. "Wait a minute. Where's Meegat?"
"Who?" Cally enquired, eyes wide with innocence.
"The lady I--er--knocked into."
"Which part of her did you knock into?" Cally asked tenderly, clenching her fist, ready to sock Avon in the jaw if she didn't like the answer.
"I hadn't finished apologizing to her," Avon snapped. "Where is she?"
"No idea," Cally said blithely. "Find out."
Avon seethed. "I will. A...er...decent woman like that needs protection."
"She has protection. She has Vila. She couldn't possibly expect a thug like you to protect her."
There was no answer to that, so he made none. Grumbling to himself, he returned to Liberator to see to poor little Orac.
"It's about time you returned," Blake said when Avon appeared on the bridge shortly afterwards.
"It's your turn to stand watch!" Avon flashed, short tempered as always when faced with his leader.
"On the other hand," Blake said, "I am in charge here and I'm saying you've spent too long carousing down there. Cally's gone off shopping, Jenna's hobnobbing with the natives, Vila's associating with some unsuitable woman (going on what I've been hearing through the teleport bracelet since he forgot to switch it off)...."
Blake grumbled on. Avon turned to Orac (whom he could just see). "Deminaturise yourself," he commanded imperiously.
"I can't," came a faint, piping reply from the tiny lozenge. "My deminaturising circuits are so small that I can't find them."
There was a long silence whilst Avon fought to compose himself. As usual, nothing of his rage/despair/shock/disgust/fury/horror showed on his cold, sardonic features. "Very well," he said at length when he could trust himself to speak calmly. "How is the problem to be resolved?"
"No idea," the lozenge replied in a mournful, tinny falsetto wail. "It's all I can do to stay switched on. Thinking is quite beyond me."
Avon managed,, with an effort, to remove Orac's incredibly minute key. He cellotaped the sliver to his Federation Express card. Then he cellotaped the lozenge on to a useful protuberance on his console. Finally, he returned to the teleport area. "Vila!" he exclaimed through the teleport link. "Emergency! Fifteen pursuit ships are surrounding us and we are about to leave. Return to the ship immediately."
"Not likely," came Vila's reply. "You can't escape fifteen pursuit ships. I'll be safer down here."
"I made a mistake," Avon said immediately. "It's just two. Even so--we're leaving."
Grousing, Vila returned to the ship. "Good," Avon said. "Mow, put me down on the same co-ordinates...."
"Wait a minute," Vila said. "What's the emergency?"
"It's of an intensely private nature," Avon replied as he disappeared.
Vila grinned, suddenly understanding. "What a shame I lost her ten minutes ago," he said cheerfully to the space where Avon had been.
Meantime, Avon was quartering the planet's main city on the lookout for ladies in diaphanous, impractical garments. After several hours of maddening frustration, he was just about to admit defeat and return to the Liberator when he spotted a slinky, svelte figure gliding across the road. "Ah," he breathed excitedly, "Servalan...." He hurried across the road and tapped the dazzling woman on the shoulder.
She turned. "Avon!"
"Er...." Avon backed hurriedly away. "Sorry. Thought you were someone else."
"Did you indeed," responded Travis. "But I'm not, am I? On the other hand, I know exactly who you are and with any luck Blake won't be far off... Seize him!" he exclaimed to a squad of mutoids who appeared from the shadows.
Gripped between two muscular mutoids, Avon glowered furiously. "What the devil are you doing, dressed up like Servalan?" he demanded.
Travis uncovered his teeth in a juicy leer. "I have this urge," he said lusciously, "to capture rebels. And it worked, didn't it!? And now--for a little fun." He cracked his knuckles meaningfully. "Where is Blake?"
Avon frowned. "Find out."
Travis sighed. "It's always the same with rebels," he remarked. "They never know when they are beaten. All you have to do is pick on their weakest point... Remove his teeth, one by one."
Behind his grimly-controlled expression of total immobility, Avon's mind seethed with horror. No teeth would mean no more evil smiles, no leering at unsuspecting women, no snarls when Blake annoyed him... "What do you want to know?" he enquired immediately.
"As I told you: the whereabouts of your foul companion whom I've sworn to kill."
Of course, Avon thought, if Travis kills Blake, I can get Liberator... Swiftly, he gave Travis the information and a teleport bracelet, plus precise details on how to persuade whoever was on duty in the teleport area to take him on board. Then he continued his search for Meegat.
Travis appeared in the teleport area after tricking Vila with a creditable imitation of Avon's sardonic tones over the communicator. Vila reacted in a very predictable fashion and hid beneath the teleport controls while Travis paced off to find Blake. Five minutes later, Travis was back. "I can't find him anywhere."
"I expect you forgot the obvious place," Vila said. "He's probably still in the medi-unit having his backrub. Every day, sure as clockwork, just around this time, he and Jenna...."
Blake was sprawled comfortably on a couch in the medi-unit, half-asleep and thoroughly enjoying the soothing motions of Jenna's ministrations with backsalve when the door flew open. "Prepare to die, Blake," snarled Travis.
Blake stared. "Servalan?" (He did not know her too well at this stage.) "How did you get on board?"
"Never you mind. I'm going to kill you--that's all you need to know."
Blake sighed. "Really, Servalan, why do you have to act like Travis? Can't we be civilized? Can't we--er--get to know one another?" He glanced at Jenna. "Why don't you leave us?" he suggested. "I'll sort out this little matter."
Jenna stared at him in disgust and then produced a gun of her own. "Not likely," she said. "She doesn't get you--except over my dead body."
"That," Travis said tritely, "can be arranged."
Jenna grinned. "Only if you can shoot first. Are you going to try?" Travis fumed, totally nonplussed.
Down on the planet, Avon had finally found Meegat and was just getting to the point of mentioning the whereabouts of her abode when a familiar voice purred his name. "Avon...."
Avon twisted round and stared. "Servalan?"
The grim figure in Space Commander's uniform put a gun to his head. "Your teleport bracelet--now!"
"Wait a minute!" exclaimed Meegat. "Who is that man?"
"Never you mind," said Avon. Much as he fancied Meegat, he fancied Servalan more, especially when she was dressed up at Travis. "How lovely to see you again," he breathed with a heavy effort at flirtation. "Can we go somewhere...private?"
"With HIM?" screeched Meegat, horrified.
Avon ignored her. Servalan's eye (the other was hidden behind an eyepatch of course) became cold with menace. "Just the bracelet," she said icily. "I don't need you, Avon...." She beckoned to a nearby mutoid (they do get everywhere...) "Remove the bracelet any way you like."
Servalan was the second person this night to threaten Avon with mutilation and since the very thought of being in any way...diminished...appalled him, Avon handed over a teleport bracelet (You didn't imagine a clever, careful, selfish selfpreservationist would go around with only one bracelet, did you? Naturally he'd take a pocketful every time...until Liberator ran out of them due to his persistently breaking them. But we haven't reached that stage of the saga yet.) Smiling delightedly (though evilly, of course) Servalan took the bracelet and snapped it on her wrist. "Good-bye, Avon." After an excellent imitation of Cally's dulcet tones, she disappeared in a shimmer of teleport effect.
"And who," demanded Meegat suspiciously, "was that...?"
"An intimate friend," Avon said, never imagining for a moment that anyone could mistake the voluptuous figure bursting out of the Space Commander's uniform for a man. "Now, shall we find that apartment of yours?"
"Don't bother," Meegat said. "You aren't my type after all."
"Oh no, not again!" Vila wailed as he disappeared under the teleport console for the second time.
Servalan glided across the floor and poked him with her foot. "A miserable coward," she said disparagingly. "I won't kill you just yet. You might be useful."
"Believe me," Vila declared ingratiatingly, "I am the most useful and helpful and willing and thoroughly accommodating individual you could ever wish to meet. Your every wish will be my command and I shall do my utmost to obey our orders to the letter at all times and in every possible and conceivable and imaginable circumstance you could possibly or conceivably or imaginably visualise...."
"Good," Servalan interrupted impatiently. "Now lead me to Blake."
"Who?" queried Vila, quivering abjectly. "I've never heard of that appalling, wicked, dangerous, disgraceful criminal, let alone his horrible band of unprincipled, thuggish associates. I haven't the slightest idea where he is and I am sure he'd be absolutely disgusted if I had as he could not possibly bear to be involved with a quiet passionately law-abiding person like...."
Servalan groaned (alluringly, of course). "Don't worry," she said kindly. "I'll find him for myself. You stay under that console and relax."
"Thanks," Vila said fervently as she made off.
Finally, she traced the uneasy trio in the medi-unit. "Well, well," she said, producing her gun and aiming it at Blake (the other two were fully occupied, after all.) "Now I know where my best slinky creation got to," she said angrily to Travis. "You've wrecked it."
Travis looked at her with equal hostility. "I didn't have much choice when my uniform disappeared. And look at it! You've ruined it. Look at the mess your bulges have made of the jacket. The middle button's come off, there are stretch marks all across the back, the trousers will never fit my slim, elegant hips now your...er...larger ones have been in them. And you look disgraceful. If you were under my command I'd have you court-martialled for slovenly turnout."
Servalan bristled. "What have you done to my dress? Where's the delicious bust line my personal designer provided? Why have you shortened the skirt--with a pair of garden shears, by the look of it? And why's there a slit in the waistline? You look ridiculous.
"It was all flaccid round the chest," Travis said shortly. "I had my mutoid pilot put in a few tucks. As for the skirt, I was sick of tripping over it. We hacked it off with a handy scythe."
Servalan shuddered. Still, there were more important things to think about than her clothes. (Not many things, mind you...) "Now that I've taken Liberator...." Travis bristled with annoyance but she ignored him. "...it's time to find out about Star One." She gestured at Blake. "Torture him," she commanded casually.
"Torture...!" Blake was mystified. "But why? And what's Star One?"
Servalan smiled at him sweetly. "Don't play games, Blake. Travis wants to kill you--and he will, but not until after you've talked." She looked at Travis thoughtfully. "Just remember to keep him alive long enough. You do have a habit of killing people by mistake."
"Rubbish!" snarled Travis, resenting the slur on his professional expertise (note how clever Servalan is,, inspiring him to do what she wants in spite of his urge to murder Blake on sight). "By the time I've finished with him, he'll be talking like a drain."
"IF he dies before he's talked, I'll pulverise you," Servalan said grimly. (Where have I heard that before?)
"If he dies before he's talked it'll be because he's too weak to call himself a rebel," Travis retorted disdainfully. "It won't be my fault. Rebels are getting a bit brittle these days, that's the trouble. They aren't what they were. Standards are dropping... it's a disgrace."
"You aren't doing anything," Jenna said, finally getting a word in. "I'm holding a gun on you, Servalan."
Servalan sighed. "We don't need you," she explained regretfully. "Shall I shoot you now?"
Gloomily, Jenna dropped the gun. Well--she had tried.
"You damned fool!" Avon expostulated furiously at Blake as he paced the small cabin into which the whole of Liberator's crew had been shoved unceremoniously whilst Travis prepared the torture instruments and Servalan played with Zen. "This is another mess you've got us into."
"What I want to know," Blake snapped back irritably, "is how Servalan and Travis got hold of teleport bracelets. The only possible source is...you, Avon. Have you betrayed me, Avon? Have you betrayed me?"
Wait a minute, Avon thought, anxiously. That doesn't come yet...and Blake shouldn't be saying it. Had Blake gone mad? Had they got into a tachyon storm? Had the scriptwriters become confused? "What can you mean?" he enquired cautiously.
Blake smiled nastily as Jenna and Vila launched themselves at Avon in a fury. When the melée had finally died down and Avon had finally emerged from the fray, bruised, scruffy and distinctly less heroic-looking than usual, Blake was ready to be magnanimous (after all, he'd won the argument). "Now," he said, "it's Vila's job to get us out."
"Avon betrayed us!" Vila snorted. "Let him do it."
"He can't," Blake explained, "at least not until we're out of here and he can get at Servalan and attempt to charm her in his usual heavy fashion. Get on with it, Vila."
"I can't."
"Why not? Where's your magic touch?"
"Tied behind me," Vila said. "I can't get at my probes."
Blake looked at Avon. "You're the hardhearted one," he said dispassionately. "Wrench off the ropes and be quick about it."
"Certainly not," Avon replied coldly. "I'll use the time-honoured trick so beloved of thriller writers and burn them off with a cigarette lighter."
"Cigarettes were banned six centuries ago!" Blake retorted.
"A match...."
"What would we do with matches in our advanced technological society?"
"It's amazing how you turn a simple operation into a total impossibility," Avon said sarcastically. "Very well; you release him."
"Try a knife," Blake suggested. "Saw off the bonds."
"It seems all ways I lose my hands," Vila remarked with gloomy resignation. "Mind you, I won't be able to release you then...."
"Gan could burst his bonds with a display of strength," Jenna suggested. "Or he could tear Vila's off with his teeth."
"Impossible." Gan was horrified. "I can't destroy my muscles, let alone my teeth, in such a disgusting fashion."
"Obviously, there's nothing for it but to do as Vila suggested and remove his hands. A pity. Will you perform the honours, Avon?"
"By all means, if you provide the knife."
"Any sharp edge will do. Preferably with saw teeth, to avoid too much difficulty with the bones...."
Poor Vila yelped and wriggled out of the ropes with dazzling speed. Avon grinned mirthlessly. "Amazing what a few threats can do," he murmured spitefully.
"Be assured," Vila snapped, "that I shall release you last of all."
"Right," said Travis as he sharpened a huge knife with a whetstone, "wheel in the first victim."
"OK, boss," said the dutiful mutoid. "How about the puny coward?"
"No...he won't be much fun. Let's have the women, and then the Neanderthal. I don't suppose any of them will talk, so we might as well get them out of the way. Keep Blake until last--he's probably the only one who knows where Star One is anyway...."
"I am a warrior and trained to withstand torture," Cally said proudly. "I shall tell you nothing."
"You don't have to speak," Travis told her. "Just scream at the appropriate moments. Try to make it sound authentic--for the sake of my reputation as a brutal sadist."
"I have long adored you secretly," Jenna told him hopefully.
Travis groaned. "Not another worshipper...I haven't time for that sort of thing."
"How did you know the most fervent wish of my life is to lose six inches?" Gan demanded cheerfully as he was strapped to the rack. "How can I possibly repay you?"
Travis told him.
"Star One? No trouble. Visit my uncle on Goth, say 'A fool knows everything and nothing' and he'll give you the co-ordinates straight off. Sorry I can't tell you myself but I've no memory for figures...."
"Do you seriously expect me to believe a ridiculous story like that?" Travis groaned. "Take him away."
"You know what I want," Travis said evilly to Avon. "Talk...."
"No chance," Avon sneered. "Do you really think you can break me, Travis?"
"Your teeth...." Travis breathed unkindly.
Avon talked immediately, but he didn't have the answers Travis wanted. "Put him back in the cell," Travis commanded irritably.
"Wait a minute," said one of his mutoid helpers, "you haven't tortured and beaten and degraded him yet."
"No need. We'll chuck him out of an airlock later...."
"But it is not only your feelings you have to consider," reproved the mutoid. "You have five loyal mutoids here, and we are all expecting to have a good time. You hardly touched the Auron, you didn't attack the pirate, you hardly hurt the big one, and now you aren't even slicing up the computer expert. And what about the perversions readers want to read? Everyone likes torturing Avon...."
"Suppose you have him for tea? We'll get the writer to give graphic details...."
"We have the violence, and then eat him? What do you think we are, vicious? We only want job satisfaction."
"You see how it is," Travis said to Avon. "It's not me--it's them. I don't really approve of torture."
"That's it," said the mutoid. "As shop steward, I am of this moment calling an indefinite strike. No torture, no work. No perversion, no boiling oil. No imaginative epithets, no hot coals. No sadism, no thumbscrews."
Travis sighed. "Oh, all right, get on with it--but make it quick."
"Why is it," Avon demanded unhappily as the disgusting business proceeded, "that I am always the one subjected to the appalling indignities? Can't you be original and choose someone else?"
"Impossible," Travis said. "The readers wouldn't stand for it, and I can't manage without the mutoids. Just hold on a little longer. They'll get tired eventually."
"Did I ever tell you," Avon enquired conversationally, "that I am a raving masochist. This is the most marvelous experience of my life. You are a true friend, Travis."
The mutoids looked at one another. "Waste of time," said the shop steward regretfully. "No point in proceeding further...."
"Now look here," Avon protested as he was wrenched off the rack, dragged unceremoniously past (not over) the hot coals and flung over (not in) the boiling oil, "you can't do this to me. I insist you put me back on that rack. I insist you torture me. I insist you degrade me. I want to lie quivering and broken, bleeding on some chill stone floor. I enjoy agony, I...."
"You won't find any cold floors here," Travis sneered. "They're all tastefully warmed by that computer of yours. All right, let's have the puny coward. Surely one of this lot must prove a satisfying experience for a true sadist."
"....and what I always say is, I love Federation officers. I can't think why I didn't take up that chance to be a pilot. Mind you, I was really a bit too clever, like that Del Tarrant bloke I met while I was studying, before they moved me on to more secret work. I was too intelligent, you see, for piloting. Pilots have to be morons--I mean, wouldn't you if you had to stay with your ship till the last bitter moment? No one wants to die. I don't want to die... It's much more fun talking to you, Travis. No one ever listened to me before... It's terrible living amongst these rebels. They all condescend to me...me, with an IQ of 5000+. I don't know how I stand them, really I don't... Do you think you could get me a command, Travis? Field Marshall would do for a start...."
Travis shuddered. "Dump him! I can't stand the sound of his voice a moment longer."
"Even you," Vila wailed, "have rejected me. There's just no one I can talk to--they are all so stupid. It's what comes of being the most intelligent being the universe has ever seen."
"Poor devil," Travis said snidely. "Put him with Servalan--she likes the sound of her own voice too. They can infuriate each other. Now--let's hope Blake doesn't want me to make a martyr of him...."
"My life has lost its purpose," Blake said sadly. "My colleagues have all abandoned me, even Jenna. I can't find out where Star One is. Everyone I convert to the Cause betrays me eventually, or ends up dead trying to betray me. Avon hates me. You've captured me without any effort to speak of. I've lost my flair, that's the truth of it. Just kill me and be done with it. I bequeath my Cause to you, Travis. Betray us all to your Andromedan friends and obliterate humanity--that'll destroy the Federation for ever.
"This is a farce," Travis said as he dispatched Blake back to the cell. "He's even wrecked my scheme to torture him until he pleaded for mercy. I can't win!" Gloomily he went back to Servalan. "It's useless," he said. "They are all off their heads."
"Dispatch them into the void," Servalan said. "Use the teleport--it's so imaginative. Just leave the thief here."
"He's the worst of all--never stops talking."
"He's very good at card tricks," Servalan smiled. "But even more important, he's valuable to us. You see--he's just swallowed Orac and we...I...need Orac."
"Well," Blake said as they landed back on the planet where Avon had rediscovered Meegat (Travis didn't understand the teleport controls and omitted to reset them to "the void"), "that's my Cause wrecked."
"No, it isn't." Looking very self-important, Vila proceeded to expound. "While you were all griping and being pretty useless, I did something sensible. I got on to the flight deck and retrieved Orac."
"Ha!" Avon exclaimed delightedly. "Hand it over."
"Gladly," Vila said, but a little hesitantly. "Er...you'll have to wait for a bit."
"What do you mean!?" Thwarted, Avon reacted in his usual violent fashion. He seized Vila by the neck and proceeded to half-throttle him.
Vila gagged, went limp and sagged heavily. "Now you've killed him, you fool," Jenna said scathingly.
"He's so weak," Avon said disparagingly. "It's not as if I really tried...." Disgusted, he dropped Vila to the ground.
Vila took a deep breath and got up again. "It always works," he remarked. "You should know by now that I'm used to thugs and bullies. Playing dead is the best way to get rid of them. As for Orac... It wasn't easy, appropriating him. I'm afraid I had to swallow him."
Blake groaned. Cally sighed. Gan looked admiring. "Thirty-six hours," Jenna said gloomily. "It'll be a long wait."
"It'll probably be useless when it eventually--er--returns to us," Avon remarked, the enthusiastic voice of doom as usual.
"And Servalan will be billions of miles away by the time we can use Orac," Cally added sadly.
"No," Jenna smiled suddenly. "You've forgotten one thing. Zen won't take orders from her. We aren't defeated yet!"
Using her personal communicator, Servalan contacted a colleague. She would probably have called him a minion, but that's not how he saw it. "I'm on the ship, but it won't obey my orders."
"The computer's probably voice coded," her contact replied. "Don't worry. You can override it with Orac."
Servalan hesitated. She did so hate admitting any kind or error. Well, it wasn't an error, really, was it, or at least, not her error!? It was undoubtedly someone else's fault. "Travis has lost Orac," she said shortly.
"What do you mean, I've...." Travis spluttered furiously.
"Shut up," Servalan interrupted imperiously. "So what do we do now?" she inquired coldly of her contact. "It's your plot. You think of something."
"Oh, I have," her contact replied coolly. "Be patient. I'll be in touch."
Servalan frowned as her contact cut the connection. Still, the man was useful... She'd forgive his insolence, this once. She turned back to Zen. "Obey me, you useless hunk of....**!!!***," she snarled.
"Try again," Zen advised kindly. "The chances against your imitating a correct voice pattern are astronomical, but you never know with chance. You could hit it right quite quickly...."
Servalan chucked a teleport bracelet at Zen, who tut-tutted. "Yet another one broken," it remarked. "You are getting as careless as Avon."
Back on the planet, Servalan's contact gestured languidly at a sulky-looking companion. "Now's your chance," he said. "Use the thing."
The sulky-looking companion quivered. "You do mean it?" he said eagerly. "You really want me to... On them... I mean, on her...?" He licked his lips with excited anticipation. "If only I could see it... If only."
Servalan's contact frowned slightly. "Do it!" he commanded, a hint of menace creeping into his usually cool voice.
"You aren't joking?"
"Do I ever joke?"
"Mow that I think about it, you don't," the sulky one agreed. Then the sulks disappeared and a beatific smile spread across his face. "To think of it! Me, a Beta, inventing the most powerful weapon in the universe...."
Carnell sighed. "Don't get too conceited," he said as Coser pressed the trigger of IMIPAK. "There's a man called Egrorian...."
"I've heard of him. He's mad." Tenderly, Coser stroked IMIPAK.
"That's what we're going to find out next," Carnell said cheerfully. "Now, hand it over...."
"No!" Coser wailed.
"Do you imagine I'll risk you marking me too? Do you imagine I'm as easily fooled as Servalan and Travis? Do you imagine I haven't checked out the scripts and discovered some idiot decided I was to make a mistake....!" Carnell grinned. "A scriptwriter, tricking ME....! Is it likely?"
"Hardly," Coser agreed as he handed over the weapon's component parts. "But you haven't got Liberator."
"I don't want it. Anyone who gets near that ship ends up dead... I've investigated its history, you see, and calculated the fate of all Blake's people. You can't imagine what's waiting for Blake and Avon on a measly planet called Gauda Prime...." Still chatting, Carnell guided Coser towards his waiting ship. "I'll leave you to invent lots more exciting weapons, while I check out his Egrorian. A tachyon funnel sounds most interesting. What fun I could have firing it backwards in time, though the implications are mind-bending. It'll give me something to do on the journey, calculating the results...."
"It just serves Servalan right," Carnell added as the ship got under way for Malodaar. "Do you know, she's stranded on an alien planet surrounded by unfriendly natives."
"She can't be!" Coser exclaimed. "She's dead. I killed her...."
Carnell sighed patiently. "Would I let you loose with the real IMIPAK?" he inquired. "Furthermore how could I kill off the audience's favourite villains?"
Coser's annoyance faded slightly as he remembered something. "Of course, my previous invention--transportation through time and space. But it didn't work."
"You underestimate yourself," Carnell replied. "It works very well. It's time you got rid of that Beta inferiority complex." He glanced across the flight deck at his other companion. "So you've done away with that little problem at last?" he remarked conversationally.
"Oh yes, Lord," Meegat smiled happily. "I really don't fancy that kind of man at all. I would never have believed...!"
Carnell laughed. "You aren't his type," he said. "You need a man who understands women."
There was nothing, Carnell thought as the ship sped through the sea of stars, like manipulating people. You didn't have to kill them off--just twist their lives a bit and see what they made of it. When Blake found Star One, even Carnell might become a little excited. He could do with some drama, to relieve the boredom of normal, every day manipulations. Meantime, there were the stars to contemplate: infinity was...amazing. Even he could admit that.
the end
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