Four light beams pinioned him. Kendric's hovercraft was turning down into the street. He froze into place. Too exhausted to run. Besides, he could never have left Gabriel.

The hovercraft approached at a cautious unhurried pace. Greg shielded his eyes against the glare. Kendric was standing in the prow, in front of the Perspex windscreen. The epitome of the great white hunter, electromagnetic rifle cradled in a light grip, one foot on the gunwale.

Greg saw it coming, reading it straight from Gabriel's mind. Genuine telepathy. His mouth gaped, and he pointed high into the western sky.

Kendric's mind registered sublime contempt that Greg would try such a pathetic stunt. Then vacillation set in, precisely because it was so unlikely. He looked round to follow the direction of Greg's accusing finger, just in time to see a frigid saffron dawn expand across the sky above Wisbech.

The light source was directly above them, a cold dazzling star which crawled through the genuine constellations at an infinitesimal pace. Its radiance was throwing shadows as sharp-edged as daylight. Greg could see wisps of fluffy cloud gusting high overhead, they must've been kilometres away.

Gabriel began to laugh.

The false star was as intense as noonday sunlight, then brighter. It began to elongate. Brick walls glared scarlet. Dew-mottled algae sparkled like a diamanté ice floe.

Intuition whispered into Greg's brain. He knew. The Merlin. Then his far-flung espersense delivered the final shock, a single band of incendiary thought originating from the spaceprobe's bioware nodes: Philip Evans's unholy vengeance glee as he hurtled inexorably towards Leopold Armstrong.

The Merlin descended at orbital velocity, boring a vacuum-tunnel through the lower atmosphere. A purple-white plasma comet with a rigid incandescent tail of superionised air, stabbing down like some monstrously overpowered strategic defence laser.

Greg flung his arms desperately over his face, trying to save his eyes. There was carmine blood-light, then sable blackness.

The blast wave was a white-noise tsunami. It plucked Greg out of the mire and sent him spinning through space. He could see the street's houses disintegrating, slates taking flight, bricks avalanching. The air had become a blizzard of giant splinters and powdery fragments.

He saw the tower. Rather, where the tower had been: a thick column of fusion-hot air fountaining up into the darkening sky. Its flickering vermilion fluorescence was sheathed by ragged braids of ebony soot-clouds. Garish blue-green static webs discharged around its mushrooming crown.

For a liquid, the water was incredibly hard.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Greg woke to peace, body and mind. Blissful. He could feel his entire body except for his left hand, and nothing hurt, nothing felt abused. There was just warmth and softness.

Makes a bloody change.

He opened his eyes. Even the light was gentle, pale pearl.

Rapid blinking resolved the blurred shapes around him.

He was lying on his back looking up at an ivory-coloured ceiling with inset biolum strips. A young man in a white medical-style coat was removing an electrode hoop from his forehead.