‘Save it for Lord Krauzzen,’ Zarbotan said.
‘This is absurd!’ Pangborne protested.
‘No more absurd than it would be if we ignored this security breach.’
‘Zarbotan!’ Pangborne shouted. ‘Xorg needs me.’
‘Like he needs a crack in the hull of the Ellipsis!’
‘Let me prove it. That fellow there, Mossop. You can’t just take him. He has a family who’ll miss him.’
Zarbotan glanced at Harry, who felt a new depth of chill.
‘See for yourself,’ Pangborne said, lifting a keyboard to his knee.
Rows of digits flowed across the screen. Zarbotan and Zalizta perused them.
‘Zarbotan, please!’ Harry begged. ‘Not my family!’
‘I’ve never been inclined to separate loved ones,’
Zarbotan said at length. ‘Put him with the rest of the product.
‘You leave my family alone, do you hear!’
‘I hear,’ Zarbotan said dismissively. A hatch-like
door slid open in front of him, revealing an antechamber packed with incomprehensible, neon-lit gadgetry.
As Zalizta did something to the rear of the rack, and his manacles sprang loose, Harry leapt to his feet. ‘I’ll show you how incompetent I am!’
He aimed a punch at Zalizta, who was struck on the shoulder and knocked backwards. Harry swung around, looking for an exit, only for Zarbotan’s mechanical hand to clamp round his throat. Harry choked and gargled as again he was lifted from his feet. Zarbotan glared up at him, odd-shaped eyes gleaming with unnatural light.
‘Earthman… if you have no concern for yourself, think about your family. You have already condemned them.
But every action you take from here on will dictate how much, or how little, they suffer.’
Things went well for Rory at first.
It was, as he’d surmised, similar to the Earth game of Craps. All he had to do was wager on the outcome of the roll of a dice. He shot carefully, sticking to the etiquette he remembered from the movies: shaking in one hand, rolling cleanly down the table, ensuring the dice hit the back wall. It seemed to pay off. He won the first four rounds, choosing to bet with the dice, and each time doubling his money. His opponent was unconcerned by this. He was even complimentary.
‘You’re a natural,’ he said.
Rory was acutely aware of Amy’s disapproving presence, though she was watching with increased interest. More Torodon had gathered around the table, and were equally engrossed. Having amassed quite a pile of chips, Rory opted to press his bets, rolling past the point and doubling his money again.
And then, suddenly, his luck seemed to change.
He threw under the point and, for the first time, lost. •
‘That’s unfortunate,’ his opponent said, reclaiming all the bets for himself and taking charge of the dice.
Slowly but steadily, Rory watched his pile of chips dwindle, until, perhaps inevitably, he was placing his final bet. The gathered crowd were still rapt. He found this confusing. It was hardly a big deal; this had never been his money to lose in the first place.
‘Reparation throw?’ his opponent asked.
‘What’s a “reparation throw”?’ Amy asked suspiciously. She glanced towards the menial with the broom; he might only have been a janitor, but he clearly understood the way things worked here, because he was shaking his head.
‘Just do it,’ Rory said tensely, having placed his final bet. Surely this guy couldn’t win again - he’d just won nine times on the trot.
His opponent did win. He was throwing for an eight and that was how it came up - with two fours. Rory had heard stories that some high rollers were so skilled they could increase their chances of rolling certain numbers by the manner with which they threw. This was one reason, supposedly, why certain casinos would not allow players to bet only on their own throws. He’d thought it nonsense, but now he wasn’t sure.
‘This is my day, after all,’ his opponent said, sweeping the table clean.
‘Well played,’ Rory said. He turned to Amy, nodding that it was time to leave.
‘Wait!’ his opponent said. ‘You owe me a reparation throw.’
Rory glanced back. ‘What?’
‘We’re playing Dead Man’s Duel.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘The rules of the table, sir,’ the dealer explained in his sibilant tone. ‘In Dead Man’s Duel, the loser, regardless of his financial position, must give his opponent the opportunity to claim a reparation. You must bet again.’
Rory showed empty hands. ‘I haven’t anything to stake.’
The dealer regarded him blankly. The watching crowd were silent, including the heavies gathered at Rory and Amy’s back. All of a sudden the interest in this particular game was explained.
‘How can we bet with something we don’t have?’ Amy protested.
‘The normal form would be to produce an IOU,’ the dealer explained. ‘But it’s the winner’s call.’
‘And I don’t accept,’ his opponent said. ‘You’re not natives of the Outer Rim. You could be anywhere in the galaxy in a month.’
‘OK,’ Rory said. He threw a grubby string on the table.
‘I’ll stake the spare bootlace I carry in my back pocket.’
His opponent laughed. ‘Nice try, but not good enough.
A reparation must be something of significant value. That is also in the rules. But allow me to assist. How did you come here? You must have a spacecraft.’
‘Of course we have a spacecraft.’
‘Rory!’ Amy warned him.
Rory rounded on her. ‘It’s time we put this guy on his backside!’
‘That’s the stuff,’ his opponent said. ‘But you’ve no choice anyway. If you fail to make this bet, I can take you into servitude.’
‘That’ll be the day,’ Rory snarled.
His opponent laughed again. One of his henchmen lumbered up with a portable monitor, on which there was an image of the LP9 landing-pads. The TARDIS occupied the foreground.
‘According to the Port-Master, this is the only non-Torodon vessel in dock, Xaaael,’ the henchman said. ‘This must be it.’
Rory’s opponent, Xaaael, glanced across the table.
‘Well?’
‘That’s it,’ Rory confirmed.
‘Doesn’t look like much,’ the henchman said.
‘She’s fifty times the ship you came here in,’ Rory replied.
Xaaael shrugged. ‘I’ll take your word for it.’ He pushed his entire pile of chips forward. ‘I stake everything I have against your strange-looking spacecraft.’
Rory went rigid, uncertain what to do.
‘Rory, don’t you dare!’ Amy shouted.
Xaaael sneered at what he perceived to be Rory’s henpecked status. There was something smooth and dangerous about him, but there was also something boyish and immature - as if his entire life was about winning petty victories like this.
‘You’re on!’ Rory said.
Xaaael smiled, and shook his dice. ‘Winner’s privilege.
This is a reparation bet, so I’m shooting on the point, and I can name my own… seven.’
Rory’s heart sank. Lucky seven - though it wasn’t really luck, it was just that seven had more combination possibilities from a two-dice throw than any other number between one and twelve. ‘Eight,’ he replied, thinking that eight and six were the next most common numbers thrown.
But the dice landed on five and two.
Xaaael laughed aloud. Rory felt faint. His ‘Elton John’
glasses had already ridden down his sweat-slicked nose.
Now they dropped off altogether. He could still hear Amy shouting abuse in his ear, saying something about going and getting the Doctor. He stared helplessly at the two dice, willing one of them to flip over.
Xaaael came around the table, his henchmen in tow.
‘Perhaps you’d like to deliver my property to me in person?’
> Still dazed, Rory found himself being manhandled out of the casino in the vague direction of the LP9 landing-pads.
The Doctor was alone in a pitch-black room. His sonic screwdriver had been removed, so he couldn’t use it for a light. He knew that he was somewhere inside the LP9
police headquarters, but whether in a holding cell or an interrogation centre, he didn’t like to speculate. He reached out with his fingers, exploring his immediate surroundings - when there was a bass, gloating chuckle.
The Doctor was dazzled as an electric blind retracted on a panoramic window, and the glitz and glamour of the leisure platform flowed in. He had to shield his eyes, so it took him a second to twig that he wasn’t in a cell but in a plush office, which, as well as the usual high-tech fixtures - plasma screens streaming with data, intercom devices and so forth - was also filled with old-fashioned luxuries like leather-bound chairs and shelves lined with books.
Behind a wide desk sat a middle-aged Torodon, broad-shouldered but rather paunchy, an effect enhanced by the tight silver-blue suit he was wearing - the under-uniform normally sported by offices who weren’t on outdoor duty. His head was shaven and he had a huge, walrus-like moustache, but his genial grin gave him an avuncular appearance; he could have been someone’s long-lost uncle.
‘Kobal Zalu,’ the Doctor said. ‘Well, thanks for scaring the heck out of me.’
‘A Time Lord alarmed by a darkened room? Things have certainly changed. Speaking of which, I see you’ve changed bodies again?’
‘Oh, several times since we last met.’
‘Several times? Not been looking after yourself. Mind, you appear younger, which is one thing. But your dress sense hasn’t improved. Sorry… preferred it when you had white hair and a pallor so ashen you could have passed for one of us.’
The Doctor pulled up a swivel chair and sat. ‘My pallor was ashen because I’d just been shot out of the sky.’
‘I said I was sorry for that.’ Zalu smiled, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. ‘Still righting wrongs wherever you go?’ ‘They don’t tend to right themselves.’ The Doctor’s smile was equally wintry. ‘Let me get this straight, Zalu…
Your goons arrested me as a joke?’
Zalu rubbed his moustache with his left forefinger, a gesture familiar from his younger days - it had usually signalled that he was under pressure. ‘Doctor, we need to talk. Care for a drink first?’ He hit a button, and a tray slid from a wall compartment, containing a stone bottle and two crystal goblets.
‘No thank you. And I’m surprised you’re having one on duty.’
Zalu was pouring a generous measure of smoky fluid, into his glass when he heard this. He whipped around.
‘Don’t presume to tell me my duty!’ Almost immediately he became placating again. ‘Not now I’m Chief of Police.
It wouldn’t be seemly.’
‘Zalu, why do I get the impression you’re not glad to see me?’
‘I’m always glad to see you, Doctor. You know that.’
Zalu looked sheepish. ‘And for your information, this is Abadonian lemonade. But if you won’t have a shot of the “hard stuff”, what do you fancy?’
‘I’ve always been partial to Torodon tea.’
‘Zylva!’ Zalu said into his desktop intercom. ‘Tea, if you would.’
‘What’s the problem?’ the Doctor asked.
‘Problem? There’s no problem.’
‘You seem on edge.’
‘It’s been a busy day.’
The Doctor glanced around the comfortable office.
‘Can’t have been as busy as the average day you had when you were a colonial marshal. Those were the days, eh? Weren’t they?’
‘I was younger then, wilder. The Outer Rim platforms were lawless hellholes. You needed a different kind of police officer in those days.’
‘Doesn’t really answer my question. What’s the problem?’
Zalu’s strained smile faltered, as if his charade of bonhomie was becoming too much for him. ‘Do you still insist on interfering everywhere you go?’
‘Only where it’s needed. So, OK, yes.’
‘It isn’t needed here.’ Zalu’s expression hardened.
‘Look… I’m in charge on LP9, Doctor, and you know me well enough to understand what that means. Nothing happens here without my say-so. Whatever the rumours on the street.’
‘What rumours?’
‘Why have you come here?’
‘To see an old friend.’
‘I know you, Doctor. If you don’t go looking to solve problems, you bring problems with you.’
‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’
A door slid open and a Torodon female - very slim and pretty, again with rainbow-coloured hair - sashayed in, carrying a tall beaker filled with a creamily frothing brew. She placed it down.
Zalu waved her out. The door slid closed, and he rounded again on the Doctor. ‘If this is genuinely a passing visit, you can drink your tea and go!’
‘So nice to be made welcome.’
‘Because you’re not welcome,’ Zalu asserted, though again, almost immediately, he seemed to regret it. ‘I’m sorry, but what more can I say?’ He produced the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver and pushed it over the desktop.
The Doctor pocketed it. ‘Well… I appreciate your candour.’ He sipped his tea. ‘And your tea. Reinvigorating as always, but there’s no point in staying if I’m causing you grief.’ He stood. ‘And there are no biscuits. So I’ll say goodbye.’
The door slid open again.
‘Doctor!’ Zalu said.
The Doctor turned.
‘We’re still friends, I hope. I’ll always hold you in high regard. But I don’t want you here at the present time.’
‘Fair enough,’ the Doctor said. ‘But you didn’t need tot have your men rough me up and then refuse me biscuits to get that message home.’
‘If they were overzealous I’ll have them reprimanded.’
‘I see. So… being rude to an old friend, and now punishing your underlings for carrying out your orders.
Doesn’t sound like the Kobal Zalu I once knew.’
‘I told you, those days are over.’ Zalu turned gruffly to one of his screens. ‘Wherever it is you’re going, safe journey.’
None the wiser, the Doctor left.
When Amy left the casino, it was raining hard again, and the kaleidoscopic colours of the towering structures refracted through the downpour in an incandescent blur. Torodon folk blundered past under waterproof canopies, laughing and enjoying themselves. When she tried to speak to them, none seemed interested. Now that she needed one, there was no sign of a police officer.
‘Excuse me, miss?’ came a voice from behind.
She turned and saw the little, grey-skinned janitor who had watched the game. His mouth was out of shape, his eyes on different levels. The few hairs on his withered scalp were lank and lifeless. She had to resist backing away.
‘Miss… you need to go with your friend.’
‘Why?’ she said.
‘He may be in more trouble than you think.’
‘Hell be in more trouble than he’s ever been in in his life when I get hold of him. First, I’ve got to find a
policeman.’
‘A policeman?’ The janitor looked sceptical.
‘Yes. I know you have them. I’ve seen them.’
‘There’s a police help-point over there.’
He indicated a cylindrical steel tower at the junction of several thoroughfares. Amy hurried over to it. There was an arched recess at the bottom, but when she stepped inside there were no internal doors.
‘Yes?’ a brusque voice boomed from an intercom.
‘We’ve just been cheated in one of the casinos.’
‘You’ll need to give me a little more detail.’
‘My husband has got on the wrong side of some bad people. Please help us.’
With a whooshing rush of air, the small chamber Amy wa
s standing in - clearly some kind of elevator - rocketed up to the top of the tower, and she found herself stepping into a small office cluttered with visual display units and complex circuitry. It looked state-of-the-art, but was stuffy and scruffy, and felt rather lived in. A Torodon police officer, clad as if for outdoor duty, spun around in a swivel chair. On seeing a non-Torodon, he removed his helmet - to reveal that he was actually a she. She had handsome but refined features. Her lustrous white hair was bound in tight coils.
‘Who are you?’ the officer asked.
‘My name’s Amy Pond, but I’m sure that… Look!’
Amy’s eyes had alighted on something over the officer’s shoulder. ‘There!’
One of the screens depicted a grainy image of the landing-pads. The TARDIS sat on the nearest, and several figures were gathered around it. One of these was Rory; another was the man called Xaaael, though he’d now dispensed with his silken gown for an exoskeleton of heavy space armour. The rest of the group, his sidekicks, were equally ironclad. All now carried weapons.
‘Look at their body language,’ Amy said. ‘You can’t tell me Rory’s with that lot because he wants to be.’
The officer adjusted a switch and raised the volume on that particular screen. Amy watched and listened with growing dread as one of Xaaael’s larger henchmen attempted to force the TARDIS door with a crow-bar, but failed. Xaaael turned to Rory. ‘Do you think us fools?’
Rory shrugged. He still looked dazed. ‘I told you, I don’t have a key.’
‘You can’t access your own spaceship?’ Xaaael scoffed.
‘Search him again!’
They did, slapping Rory down, turning his pockets inside out.
‘Nothing,’ one of them said.
Xaaael looked furious but remained calm. ‘Earthman, if this is a ruse to make us leave your craft on LP9, it’s backfired. All this means is that you come as well!’
The officer watched her screen intently.
Onscreen, Rory seemed to wake to his predicament.
He tried to dart away from his captors, only for one to draw a pistol and hit him across the head.
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