Ace wanted to laugh in his face but it came out as a fond chuckle, and she bit her lip so hard her tongue tasted blood. ‘Sounds like the Wraiths deserved to be reduced to nothing more than endless possibilities. But you … you, Halogi-Kari, deserve one single outcome.’

‘To die, you think?’ He narrowed his dark eyes and smiled. ‘Come, Dorothy. Everyone deserves a second chance, don’t you think? At my charity, we believe it strongly. Yes, strongly.’ He sniggered. ‘Even the Wraiths deserve a second chance.’

Ace stared at him helplessly.

‘Let me show you, my dear.’ Halogi-Kari turned and waddled away once more. ‘And I will show you how you can help me.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

A low, tremulous clang carried through the Astingir ship, and Graham was on his feet in moments. He looked nervously at Ryan. ‘Sounds like this old crate has landed.’

‘At last,’ Ryan said, and seemed relieved.

‘How can this be good? Now the horsey-centaurs know we’ve hung out with Ace as well as the Doctor, they’re never gonna listen to us, are they?’ Graham sighed. ‘That Aquillon, she’s a right ’mare.’

‘Mare. Is that a horse joke?’

‘There’s nothing funny about this. We’re public enemies numbers one and two.’

‘No point having a rep if you don’t live up to it.’ Ryan pulled the torch from his pocket. ‘Now we’ve landed somewhere, and there might actually be somewhere to go, we can think about using this thing.’

‘Eh? Use a torch?’

‘Ace gave this to me, remember? There’s something inside.’ Ryan fumbled awkwardly with the top of the cylinder. ‘You do it. Top bit unscrews.’

‘What’s inside?’ Graham shook it.

‘Don’t!’ Ryan held out his arms in a stop-and-calm-the-hell-down! gesture, as what looked to be a milky-white marble fell into Graham’s palm. ‘That’s concentrated Nitro-90,’ Ryan whispered. ‘Magnetic. Force of impact sets it off on a three-second fuse. Little ball, big old blast.’

Graham felt the blood drain from his face as he stared down at the pellet in his hand. ‘How big a blast?’

‘I dunno. It’s not like Ace sat me down with a PowerPoint presentation.’

‘All right, so, what d’you reckon we should do?’ Graham asked him. ‘Blow our way out of here and leg it?’

‘Maybe. See what’s outside, at least.’ Ryan tipped out a further three spheres. ‘See, we’ve got four of these all together. Enough for a show of force, yeah?’ He looked up at Graham. ‘Once they see what we can do, we get them to throw down their weapons. Maybe we can reason with them – threaten to wreck something important if they don’t take us back to Earth.’

‘S’pose so.’ Graham sighed. ‘I don’t like this, mate. Too dangerous. Stuff could go wrong, people could get hurt.’