The limbo girl failed to make it, overbalancing and winding up flat on her back. The flesh of her overripe body quivered with helpless laughter. One of the Hoorays poured champagne into her mouth straight from the magnum. She lapped at the foamy spray spilling down her cheeks, her mind light-years away.

Greg and Suzi tottered away from the revellers. Nobody was paying them a second glance.

"Lady Gee was right," Suzi said from the corner of her mouth. He could sense how tight her small body was wired, rigid with restless tension.

The Trinities had been, to say the least, sceptical when Gabriel began outlining the evening's events. Their agnosticism had been whipped in staggered increments as the prophecies unfurled with uncanny precision—the party, which crewmen would leave the Mirriam for the evening, the exact time Kendric and Hermione left for the Blue Ball, the fact that Katerina had been left behind.

Other couples had drifted into the seclusion of the quay beyond the party, exploiting the penumbra of privacy provided by covered gangplanks. Greg kept his eyes firmly on the Mirriam ahead; Suzi peeped unashamedly, chortling occasionally.

Mirriam looked deserted, lit only by the intermittent spectral backwash from the Amstrads. Yet Gabriel had said there were seven people on board, two of Kendric's bodyguards, four sailors, and Katerina. She'd even reeled off their locations.

Greg wished he could use his espersense to confirm, but that was a definite no-no. The anaemia which the neurohormones had inflicted on the rest of his body had lifted during the afternoon and physically he was shaping up, but another secretion would cripple his brain.

They reached the Mirriam's gangplank and folded into the midnight shadows it exuded. He checked his watch again.

"How about we go for total realism?" Suzi whispered with a giggle in her voice as she twined her hands round his neck.

"Twelve seconds," he answered. The gangplank was one long pressure pad according to Gabriel.

"Oh, Daddy, give it to me good," she yodelled.

He could feel her shaking with laughter and a crazy burn of exhilaration.

Right on time a voice said, "Hey, sorry folks, but you're gonna have to move along."

Greg was facing the quay so he couldn't see the speaker, but he recognised Toby's baritone rumble. Besides, Gabriel said it would be him. He carried on smooching with Suzi.

There was a faint vibration as Toby walked down the gangplank.

"I said—"

Suzi's Armscor stunshot spat a dart of electric-blue flame. Greg heard a startled grunt and turned just in time to catch Toby before he hit the gangplank. Asking himself why the hell he bothered.

Suzi was racing up the gangplank. Greg followed dragging Toby. The bodyguard's breathing was ragged, slitted whites of his eyes showing in the fallout from the silent twinkling light-storm overhead.

As always Greg experienced the conviction of operating under divine protection. With Gabriel's guidance he'd become omnipotent.