Moontrap

[swordznsorcery]

fandom_stocking fic for thisbluespirit.

Fandom: Blake's 7/Sapphire & Steel (crossover)
Characters: Avon, Tarrant, Dayna, Sapphire, Silver, Steel
Gen, c. 6500 words



Moontrap

For the first hour, they had argued. It was Avon's fault for frightening Vila into refusing to come along. It was Tarrant's fault for not being quick enough to stop the door from closing. It was Dayna's fault for not carrying any charge powerful enough to blast open the lock – at least without killing the three of them in the process. Between them they had also blamed Cally for operating the teleport, Blake for having originally planned the visit to the outpost, and the Federation for making it necessary in the first place. None of it changed anything. They were trapped, there was no way to open the door, and the power was gradually ebbing away from life support. By Avon's calculations, which none of them had any reason to doubt, they had about two hours left to live. Already it was growing darker, the power fading from non-essential systems as quickly as from the essential ones; the lighting and the heating vanishing with the oxygen into some inexplicable void. The arguing had stopped then. Two hours wasn't a lot when there were so many problems to solve. Their familiar rivalries and frictions seemed petty in the face of a slow and lingering death.

"It doesn't make any sense!" Giving the wall a hefty thump, Avon turned his back on the computer that he had been trying to access. "There should be a clue somewhere in the programming, but there's nothing. It's as though it's operating under some sort of remote control."

"Perhaps it is," suggested Tarrant. Avon shook his head.

"No. This entire base is completely isolated from the outside universe. It was necessary for the original experiments that went on here, you know that. It's why our communicators are no use."

"Well somebody must have done something!" Tarrant was leaning against the wall on the far side of the room, his arms folded, and his curly head pressed back against hard, brushed steel. Having to leave the lion's share of the work to Avon was deeply frustrating to Tarrant, who preferred to do everything himself. Avon was the computer expert, however. Avon was the one who was going to have to solve this. That he was finding it completely impossible was not doing anything for either man's limited patience.

"Nobody did anything. There's been nobody on this base since the Federation closed down Doctor Bede's project three years ago. Hardly anybody even knows that it exists." A computer, processing some strange thought of its own, beeped quietly, and Avon whirled on it in cold rage. "And you can shut up," he told it. Seated nearby, on the room's single, ancient, rotating chair, Dayna kicked thoughtfully at the floor.

"Could we have triggered a security program?" she asked. Avon shot her a glare that told her he had thought of that idea himself, and long dismissed the possibility. He shook his head, falling into an agitated pacing up and down the long bank of computers.

"If it was a security program, there would be some record of it in the computers themselves. There's nothing. I'm having no trouble accessing their files. Whatever is making these machines draw the power from the base, it's as though it were telepathic rather than binary."

"Orac," said Tarrant immediately. Avon threw him a sour look.

"Orac can no more access this base from the outside than anybody else. Besides, these computers are museum pieces. I realise that you're no expert, but you can surely see that. Doctor Bede was famous for collecting the things. I don't know that Orac could even find a common language with some of the computers in here."

"They can't be that old, surely?" asked Dayna. Avon turned in a rough circle, pointing to various of the computers.

"Twenty-second century. Twenty-fourth century. That one over there is one of the earliest that I've ever seen, from the twentieth century I think. Even I wouldn't know how to begin programming that, but it's busy processing something."

"That tall one with the rotating discs on the front?" asked Tarrant, striding over to the device. Avon joined him beside it, eyeing it up and down as though it were a particularly fiendish enemy. In many ways that was exactly what it was.

"Yes, that one. The rotating discs are reels of magnetic tape. How it's still working after all these years, I have no idea, but it certainly shouldn't be possible for it to work in conjunction with these others."

"It shouldn't be possible for it to work at all," said Tarrant, and pointed to the power cable, which was hanging in a loop from a hook at the side of the machine. "As you said, Avon, these are museum pieces. Doctor Bede's hobby, not part of his research."

"So it would seem." Avon unhooked the power cable, examining the strange, pronged device at the end of it, that would presumably once have slotted into a power source. He had seen pictures of such things, from time to time, but he had never actually encountered one. A curious half smile drifted across his face as he stared at the cable, and after a moment he gave a small, bitter laugh. Dayna, still seated in the rotating chair, turned it slowly around to look at him.

"Is something funny?" she asked. He glanced up, the laughter silenced and the smile gone, his eyes now hard and sharp.

"Not especially. I was just considering that it takes a particular kind of luck to wind up trapped in a room being systematically drained of power by seventeen impossible computers, some of which aren't even plugged in. I doubt there's anybody else in the whole of the galaxy who could manage it."

"Remind me to thank the angel of death when I meet him. I should have hated my death to be too passé." Tarrant slammed a fist against the side of the ancient computer, setting it rocking back and forth. The rotating tape wheels on the front turned on, undeterred. "Damn it Avon, this is ridiculous. Seventeen computers, none of them operating under any kind of detectable program. At least one of them not even connected to anything. And yet somehow they've locked this place down tight, and are drawing all available power into... into what? And why? How?"

"Why ask me?" asked Avon, somewhat acidly. Tarrant shot him a pointed look.

"Because as you keep telling us all, you're the computer genius. If anybody can figure this out, it's you. Preferably in less than two hours."

"Whilst I would ordinarily be touched by your faith in me, Tarrant, as I've already explained, I can't do anything. There is nothing to do. Nothing is controlling these computers."

"But you said—" began Dayna. He interrupted her.

"I said that it was as though they were being controlled telepathically. But if some of them aren't even plugged in to a power source, I can't believe that the answer is that simple." His expression turned sour. "If you can call that simple. What we're looking at seems more as though the computers have decided for themselves to do this. Even that wouldn't adequately explain it."

"Ghosts," said Tarrant, not really sounding as though he meant it. Avon, for once, offered no sarcasm.

"It's as good a theory as any," he said in reply. Dayna looked about.

"Would smashing them do any good?" she asked. Avon shook his head.

"If they don't need a power source, who's to say what else they can do without? If you want to try it, I shan't stop you, but you'll be using up precious air. We need to start thinking about conserving that. The longer we can breathe, the longer we can think up ideas."

"Perhaps Cally or Vila will start to worry about us," suggested Dayna. "If they try to contact us, or come looking for us and find the base in lock down—"

"Then they'll be stuck outside with no means of breaking in. This place was built to withstand a sustained missile attack."

"Vila could open the door," said Tarrant, suggesting a faith in their light-fingered crewmate that he would have been unlikely to display in Vila's presence. Avon looked over to the door, smooth and featureless, with no sign of a visible lock. It was the same on the other side, as they had seen when they had first arrived. He shrugged, clearly not sharing Tarrant's certainty.

"Possibly. Eventually. In under two hours it's unlikely though."

"It might be nice to try a little optimism," snapped Dayna. He turned to look at her, his habitual glare fading to resigned neutrality.

"If you like. Perhaps Vila will come looking for us, and open the door, and we shall all teleport back aboard the Liberator in precisely the nick of time. It's also possible that we shall be attacked by dragons, or sucked into Alice's wonderland. Let's not fool ourselves."

"It's not about being foolish. It's about not giving up." Tarrant turned his back on the huge old computer, with its revolving, chattering wheels, and paced back towards the row of other units on the far side of the room. They were alive with flashing, coloured lights, busy talking to each other and to the base's various systems, oblivious to the three humans in their midst. Avon's eyes narrowed back into a glare.

"I do not give up. I see no reason to persist in foolish speculation, however. Vila isn't here, so whether or not he could open the door is irrelevant. If we're to escape from this room before we suffocate, it's ourselves that we have to rely upon. That means conserving our air, and thinking of sensible things."

"I thought we had agreed not to fight," said Dayna mildly. His glare did not abate.

"We seem capable of little else."

"Not the best of epitaphs," observed Tarrant.

"Epitaphs are for the living, not for the dead. The dead no longer give a damn." Avon arched an eloquent eyebrow. "And if I wish to spend my last few minutes alive being thoroughly unpleasant, I can assure you that I will."

"I'm sure that we're all looking forward to that already." Tarrant's pacing took him close to Dayna's chair, and he leaned on the back of it, silently choosing a side. "On the other hand, two against one says that we stop squabbling and do something."

"Such as?" Avon's voice rose in volume as surely as his tone sharpened to a hard edge. "We've tried the doors, the walls and the computers. Our teleport bracelets are useless, the computers are worse, and all that you two can suggest is for us all to hold hands and sing songs."

"It's better than killing each other," snapped Dayna. Tarrant gave a bitter laugh.

"Is it? You forget, Dayna, that we have two hours of air left between us – less, probably, since it's still being depleted by the computers. If there were to be fewer of us, then the air would last for longer. Right, Avon?"

"Clearly you had thought of it too," said Avon, with a small smile that spoke volumes. Tarrant's glare was withering.

"The difference is that I wasn't planning to act on it. Look, this is ridiculous. One of us has to be able to think of something. And killing each other doesn't count."

"I don't think that killing each other is a particularly advisable escape route anyway," said a female voice, and as the threesome whirled towards it, all reaching simultaneously for their guns, a woman strolled out from behind the oldest of the computers. She was tall and blonde, and her flowing blue dress did not look like the clothing of a technician or a security officer. Her appearance was entirely civilian; but the small, amused smile at the sight of three guns pointing her way was most assuredly not. "Oh dear," she said, very calmly and politely. "Have we come at a bad time?"

"When do we ever not?" came a second voice, and with that a new figure emerged from behind the computer; a man, blond again, and slightly smaller than the woman. He was dressed in very old fashioned attire; a grey suit and tie, of the kind not seen in Federation space for generations. Neither appeared to be armed, and the man was as unfazed by the weapons pointed toward him as the woman had been. "Hmm," was all that he said, before turning away and heading over to the computers. "I thought that Silver was supposed to be joining us?"

"He was probably delayed," said the woman, and went over to join him. Perplexed, the three outlaws exchanged a look.

"Who are you?" asked Tarrant, gun still aimed toward the pair. "If you have a working teleport, I'd suggest that we all use it. This place is effectively a tomb."

"Yes, it is, isn't it," said the blond man, and pressed a few computer keys, apparently at random. "And becoming more so all the while. How much air is there left, Sapphire?"

"When we arrived, about one hour and fifty-six minutes. With us here, considerably less. Perhaps one hour and seventeen minutes." She offered Avon, Tarrant and Dayna a rather charming smile. "We do tend to use less air than you. Good afternoon, by the way."

"Good afternoon," said Dayna, who was almost too baffled to be hostile. "Are you the people controlling these computers?"

"No," said the blond man, without elaborating. The woman smiled on, leaning back against a nearby console and folding her arms. She seemed hugely at ease, although neither Tarrant nor Avon had lowered their guns.

"You must excuse him. He can get a bit crotchety when he's working, and this one is a bit of a pressing engagement. My name is Sapphire. This is Steel. It's our job to stop these computers, but we're nothing to do with them, no."

"And our technician appears to have lost himself in transit," said Steel, his voice carrying a hard edge. "Still, it doesn't matter, I suppose. There's only the whole of the universe at stake, should we fail."

"Isn't there always?" asked Avon, somewhat superciliously. "Listen, I don't mean to get in the way of a good bit of universe-saving, but would one of you mind explaining what's going on? If you have some means of getting into and out of this room, then—"

"For us," said Steel, not bothering to turn around. "Not for you."

"It's a sort of personal teleport device, keyed to our specific body patterns," explained Sapphire, with a faintly apologetic smile. "I'm sorry if we gave you false hope. With luck we'll get all of this cleared up, and then you can probably leave."

"Probably?" asked Dayna. For the first time, Steel looked over at the three of them, eyeing them up as though somehow calculating their worth.

"We intend to stop these computers," he said. "Or more precisely, the force powering them. If we can do that, it might be possible to open the doors and allow you to escape. Or it might not."

"Encouraging," said Tarrant, in a tone that suggested the opposite. Avon gave his gun a small wave in the air, and moved a little closer to the two new arrivals.

"And what precisely is to stop us from killing you and attempting to adapt your teleport device to our own ends?" he asked. "We have precious little to lose. With you here we stand to suffocate in half the time that we had previously."

"There's nothing to stop you," said Steel, turning his back again to examine another series of computers. "But it won't do you any good. We don't have teleport devices; or if we do, we're them."

"Hence being able to access a shielded area," explained Sapphire, and as though to demonstrate, she vanished, reappearing again a moment later beside Tarrant and Dayna. "We're not exactly what you might call human."

"That still doesn't stop us from killing you," said Avon. She looked across at him, holding his gaze for just long enough to make it clear that she wasn't intimidated; then she smiled.

"No, it doesn't." He smiled at that; a small, quick smile that might easily have been missed. Snake-fast though it might have been, it seemed to signal a change in the status quo, and although he didn't put the gun away, he did lower it, heading over to see what Steel was doing. "You mentioned a technician," he said. "I'm one."

"Do you know anything about computers?" asked Steel, poking experimentally at the 'Enter' key on a keyboard that looked several hundred years old. Avon's thin smile returned for an encore.

"You could say that. I'm probably one of the few people alive in the galaxy who knows anything about computers this old."

"Really?" Sapphire began prowling around, running her hands over some of the larger, older computers. "They are very old. This one here came off the production line in 2218."

"Is it the oldest?" asked Steel.

"No," replied Sapphire and Avon in tandem. Sapphire smiled, pressing her palms against the oldest of the machines. Although the lights were still dimming, slowly but surely bringing twilight into the room, it was clear that her eyes were glowing a deep, rich shade of blue.

"This one was first operated in the spring of 1968." Her lips twitched in another smile. "By a man who smelt of particularly strong cigarettes."

"I would just have said the twentieth century," said Avon, and Steel grunted in a manner that suggested at something approaching laughter.

"She likes to show off. 1968. Hmm."

"Is that significant?" asked Dayna. Sapphire and Steel exchanged a long, wordless look. From their experience with Cally, the members of the Liberator crew got the distinct impression that there was a private conversation underway, being conducted somewhere in the ether. Whatever it was about, it was brought to an abrupt end when a man snapped suddenly into existence between them. He was tall and thin, with flyaway red hair, and as he stepped out of nowhere and into their midst, he was straightening a black bow tie. He frowned for a moment, clearly greatly disconcerted by the presence of the three humans, then gave a little jump when Steel tapped him on the shoulder.

"Ah! There you are!" The new arrival gave a huge smile of welcome, then turned in a smooth, graceful circle to take Sapphire's hand. He kissed it rather grandly, before clapping his own hands together with a sharp sound like the slamming of a door. "Well, this is cosy, isn't it."

"And getting more so all the while," said Tarrant dryly. "Are there any more of you? The oxygen is getting rather thin as it is."

"Oh no, I'm it I'm afraid." The new arrival raised his eyebrows, studying the threesome intently. "You're not really supposed to be here."

"We had rather come to that conclusion ourselves," said Avon. "Unfortunately something seems determined that we stay."

"It's these things." Steel poked at a few more computer keys, clearly none too sure what he was doing. "Silver, take a look at them. This is supposed to be your line."

"Yes, of course, of course." The new man, Silver, hurried over to Steel's side, frowning and tutting over the computers. "They're old. Some of them are very old indeed."

"Yes, we've already covered that," said Avon. "What I don't understand is why that seems to be particularly significant to you. I'd rather like to know what's going on."

"Most people prefer not to," said Steel, but after a moment's silent communication with his companions, he gave a brief shrug, and returned to his random poking. Silver flapped at him occasionally, to little effect, and it was left to Sapphire to explain matters. She smiled again, a particularly dazzling smile this time, and gestured about at the little room.

"This is a museum, in effect," she said. "A gathering of very old artefacts, dust-shrouded and forgotten. The sort of place where Time gathers in corners. A dangerous place."

"Museums aren't dangerous," said Tarrant, who lived the sort of life that expected danger to lie in other people; in dog-fights between spaceships; and in laser blaster shoot-outs on hostile planets. Danger did not mean cobwebs hanging on ancient machinery. Sapphire's very blue eyes softened.

"Danger comes in many different shapes, Tarrant." He gave a start at her use of his name, and she nodded. "Yes, I know who you are. I know who all of you are."

"If you have any intention of collecting the bounty..." began Dayna, but Sapphire shook her head.

"I can assure you that I have little use for money. And even if I did have, I don't imagine myself wanting to deal with your Federation. I know who everybody is. It's just one of my abilities." She frowned slightly. "Dayna Mellanby. If I wanted I could tell you every major landmark of your life, from the moment of your birth until the moment of your death. For now we'll just worry about the present, shall we? When many old things are gathered together, Time manages to focus itself. To slip through the cracks into this world, and work its mischief. It's our job, Steel's and mine, to stop it."

"You talk as though Time were a being," said Tarrant. She nodded.

"I suppose I do. And I suppose it sort of is, except when it isn't. It's not about beings, really. Not specific entities. Not usually. Anyway, Time is here, all about us, powering these machines, and causing them to drain all of the power from this base. It's a big complex, isn't it."

"Yes, very big." Dayna was frowning hard, her expression showing that she had no idea how much of this to believe. "It hasn't been used in many years though. I don't know how much power there is to be had in it."

"Plenty," said Avon. "There's a curium-powered generator at the heart of this place. In theory at least it has power enough to keep a billion such bases running for several lifetimes. It was abandoned because Doctor Bede became politically sensitive, not because there was anything wrong with the base itself."

"Quite," said Silver, who had pulled a long, thin metal rod from somewhere about his person, and was pointing it at various computers in turn. Every so often the end of the rod flashed brightly, as though some small silver light were hidden within. "And all of that power is being drawn upon as we speak, and directed at a region of space quite close by." He poked experimentally at a wall, and the long metal rod vanished into it, reappearing a second later with its silvery light aglow. "Hmm."

"We think that the plan is to blast a concentrated stream of energy into a nearby wormhole," said Sapphire. "In theory at least, the result would be a massive explosion, which would be felt not only in local space, but also throughout time. It could effectively destabilise space-time, and possibly the very fabric of the universe." She said it as though she were discussing the time of day, her warm smile never once fading. "So you see, trapping you in here isn't personal. The force that we're up against doesn't want to kill you in particular. It has far wider goals in mind. You're just collateral damage."

"That makes us feel a lot better, I'm sure." Avon was finally inspired to put his gun away, before reaching out to take away Silver's rod-like device. Silver showed no especial objection, and instead gestured politely with one hand, as though to give Avon his blessing. "What exactly do we do to stop it?"

"A very good question," said Steel, eyeing the device with what looked to be suspicion, as Avon gave it an experimental wave in mid air. "Computers are not my favourite devices at the best of times."

"That's why you invited me along," said Silver rather pointedly, and taking Steel by the shoulders, he gently moved him aside. Steel glowered at the gesture, and went over to stand beside Sapphire, looking very much as Avon frequently did whenever he had to defer to Vila or Tarrant. Silver, meanwhile, began humming away to himself, hovering a hand above screens and keyboards, light-pads and an ancient, long-forgotten mouse. "Hmm."

"What?" asked Tarrant. Silver smiled at him, the kind, slightly patronising smile of a benevolent teacher regarding a child.

"Once upon a time we did make at least some attempt to maintain a certain secrecy," he observed. Dayna looked indignant.

"We can't exactly leave you to it," she said forcefully, and Silver's smile softened.

"Yes, well. Perhaps. Anyway, I can regain control over each computer individually, without too much difficulty." He pulled a pair of wire cutters from one pocket, peered at them for a moment, then pressed them between his palms. There was a flash of silver light, and when he opened his hands again, the wire cutters had become a bright and slender laser scalpel. "That's the good news."

"What's the bad news?" asked Tarrant, who was eyeing Silver with a measure of mistrust. All three of the new arrivals might be strange enough to warrant suspicion, but Silver, with his smooth, suave ways, was very much a different character to either Sapphire or Steel. Tarrant was used to a different kind of person altogether. As though aware of the human's thoughts, Silver beamed at him kindly, in a manner guaranteed to make things worse.

"It's going to take more time than we have," he said, in a voice that was not quite as grave as it might have been. "Not wanting to spook anybody, but I think that our friend Time is aware that we're here. Things are speeding up."

"Yes, they are." Sapphire looked about the room, her eyes glowing more blue than before. The announcement was unnecessary. Even as she spoke, the lights dimmed further, throwing them all into a gloom lit only by the many computer screens. Sapphire produced a candle out of thin air, but it did little to chase the shadows away. "Given the present rate of acceleration, I would say that there are approximately twenty-five minutes of air left."

"And it's sure to take me a good thirty or more to disable these things. Given that Time is sure to object..." Silver's smile was now almost invisible, but it was more than audible in his words; kindly and yet somehow not. "The three of us might be all right of course, but we would get along a lot better if... Well."

"If we were not here sharing the air?" asked Avon, and pointed Silver's long rod device directly at its owner, tapping it against his chest. Silver backed off slightly, looking to Steel as though for protection. "I may be going to die anyway, but I assure you that I will meet any attempt to hasten the process with the utmost resistance. I imagine that Tarrant and Dayna here will do likewise. They tend to be the excitable sort."

"Nobody is killing anybody," said Sapphire, with a blue-eyed glare that momentarily lit the room. Steel's lips twitched in a little smile that showed up briefly within it.

"At least just yet," he added. "Very well, Silver. Begin your work. You." He gestured towards Avon, and Sapphire, voice cool and neutral, supplied him with a name. "Kerr Avon. You help him. You said that you were a technician."

"Hardly the proper sort," objected Silver, sounding put out. Sapphire moved over to give his shoulder a gentle squeeze.

"Needs must," she told him, whilst Steel glowered in the background. Silver smiled at her, and laid his own hand over hers.

"Quite," he replied, although he did not sound exactly happy. "And you?"

"If you're to get the work done in time, I shall have to run some sort of interference," said Steel, and peeled off his jacket, hanging it neatly over the back of the now empty chair. "Sapphire, keep watch. I need to know what's happening, and how fast the process is accelerating."

"Of course." She laid her candle down, and seated herself in the chair, eyes closed and expression blank. "You'll have to be quick, Steel. We really don't have much time."

"I don't intend to prolong matters." He strode over to one wall, laying his hands against it, his form lit on one side by the candle, and on the other by the faint glow of Silver's laser cutter. He seemed to be using it to slice through the air, rather than any specific computer components, pausing every so often to push a hand deep inside one unit or another, apparently without causing any damage. By now the light had almost gone, and Tarrant and Dayna, feeling somewhat superfluous, could see little of the frustratingly non-urgent action going on around them. Tarrant's hand found its way to Dayna's, and Dayna's fingers wrapped themselves around Tarrant's, and in the darkness they smiled at each other unseen. They were matching smiles, bleak and resigned, and the interlaced hands squeezed a little tighter as they faded away.

"Mr Avon," said Silver from out of the darkness. "If you do have any particular computer knowledge, I'd be obliged if you would begin typing instructions. Write a program for some of these units; the most complex and futile program that you can think of. It might help to form a distraction."

"It's just Avon," said Avon, his voice a sharp knife through the darkness. A moment later the sound of typing filled the room, as an ancient keyboard was brought back to life. Computer code long forgotten by most of the rest of the universe scrolled in neat, orderly lines up a screen that by rights should have ceased to function hundreds of years before, its components long beyond the limit of their natural lifespan. Around him Silver worked on, the laser pointer occasionally flashing, the long rod turned now into a sheet of silver material, and draped over the oldest computer in the room. The reels of tape whirled on, showing up as ghostly manoeuvres beneath the sheet, every time that Silver caused some sudden light to flash.

On the other side of the room, meanwhile, Steel was prowling. Hands held out before him, the fingers stiff and braced, he had the stance of a man readied for a fight. Every so often he made some darting move, shadow boxing almost, feinting and sparring against the blank, expressionless walls. Somehow it did not seem foolish, and as Tarrant and Dayna watched him – or, rather, the dark smudge of shadow that hid him – they saw something that appeared to scuttle across the wall. It was a small, round patch of light, softly yellow and gently pulsing, that skittered away to hide within another wall. Steel's body tensed, and over in the chair, Sapphire whispered words that the humans could not hear. Her eyes remained closed, but a faint blue light showed in the crack beneath the lids.

"We're accelerating again," warned Silver, and his laser cutter burned a hole in whatever air was left. Beside him, Avon's typing moved faster, and the whirring chattering of the computers grew more laboured. A plume of smoke drifted almost unseen from the back of one of them. Steel drew a deep breath, and striding over to the door, braced himself against it. His body rocked with the force of some invisible altercation, and a cold wind blew through the long strands of his pale yellow hair. Again the patch of light appeared, racing over him this time, and causing his fists to clench. Even though the door was several inches of solid, unyielding metal, it dented beneath his fists; damp cardboard rather than galvanised steel.

"What is that thing?" asked Dayna, and Tarrant shook his head, at a loss. At some point they had ceased to hold hands, drawing their guns instead, and the narrow white cylinders of the weapon barrels roamed the room. By unspoken agreement they were attempting to track the circle of light, but it seemed to both of them that the weapons were heavier than they should have been. The room was growing darker still, colder, and the air somehow lighter and less substantial. Avon's rapid typing hesitated briefly, and his breath showed up as a rush of vapour in the light of Silver's darting scalpel. When the clicking of the keys started up again, it was slower, and far less rhythmic than before.

"Suffocation of the humans is likely to occur within two minutes," said Sapphire from nearby. "And I can see it, Steel. To your right, where the shadows are darkest."

"I can't see anything," said Steel, but he moved as she directed anyway. Sapphire, her eyes still closed, had gone rigid in the chair.

"It's gathering power. It's frustrated, Steel. Be careful. It plans to attack when the oxygen is gone, and there's far less resistance."

"And I plan to have defeated it by then." Turning slowly, eyes tracking across the near invisible wall, Steel reached out once again, pressing his hands against cold, hard metal. A second later, driven by his questing power, the little circle of light once again appeared. By now sagging against Tarrant, her smaller form less able to withstand the depletion of oxygen, Dayna struggled to bring her weapon to bear. Nonethless, she managed it, sheer determination lending strength to her weakening limbs. Tarrant's gun moved alongside, and as the little circle of light leapt into an open space on the wall, both humans fired. The twin blast of energy caught the circle dead centre; once, twice, three times. Splintered laser light ricocheted in tiny beads that scattered like firework rain; and the circle of light shattered. Steel darted forward, and plunged his hands into the wall where the biggest shard pulsed and quivered.

"Thirty seconds," said Sapphire, and Dayna slumped sideways. Tarrant caught her, but he struggled to support her weight, sinking to his knees in an effort to keep from dropping her. Avon's typing had slowed, but against the darkness of the room, the darker black of his clothing showed him struggling to remain upright and at his post. Close by, Silver's laser scalpel lit up again, stabbing down at a tiny piece of the light circle as it tried to scuttle away beneath a keyboard.

"Ten seconds," said Sapphire. Steel pressed his head against the wall, his whole body straining with effort. Very slowly and deliberately, Sapphire went to stand behind him, resting her hands on his arms. Whatever strength she leant to him, it made a difference, and his hands began to glow with a soft, grey light.

"Time's up," said Sapphire, as Avon pitched forward over the keyboard, and Tarrant, still trying to cradle Dayna's head, slid slowly down to the ground beside her. Steel's fingertips pressed deep into the wall, and Silver plunged his laser scalpel deep into the heart of the final computer. His fingers darted in after it, twisting and melding, sending sparks skittering away across the floor. The last remnants of the circle of light blinked out of existence. In the icy darkness, silence reigned.

**********
Avon awoke to clouded grey sky, cold, uncomfortable, and with the familiar, pressing sensation of imminent danger. He sat up, but wherever he was, it was not in a small, dark room beneath the earth. Relief chased away the alarm, and he took a deep breath just because he could, becoming gradually aware of chilled, hard pebbles beneath him, and a bleak, grey sea rolling back and forth to his left. He stood up, legs uncertain beneath him, but grateful to no longer be lying on the beach. He could still feel the pebbles as icy circles imprinted into his skin, and he stamped his feet in an effort to shake away the cold. Nearby were Tarrant and Dayna, sprawled beside each other in a tangle of torso and arm that might have seemed enviably comfortable, had they been anywhere else. They were stirring, and Avon left them alone to find their feet.

"Where are we?" asked Dayna, accepting Tarrant's offer of a hand up. "Where are the others?"

"No idea," said Avon. "I assume they did what they set out to do, and went on their way. At any rate, the universe appears to still exist."

"It would be infinitely easier to celebrate that fact if we were in a more cheerful part of it," observed Tarrant, and Avon smiled faintly. He didn't like to admit that he was cold, and perhaps getting a little too old to be finding himself splayed indecorously upon icy beach pebbles, but the fact that Tarrant and Dayna looked none too happy about the experience cheered him immensely. He sighed.

"I suppose we should get ourselves out of here," he said, and reached for the teleport bracelet hanging loosely around his wrist. "Unless there are any objections?"

"Emphatically not," said Tarrant, and Dayna nodded her agreement. Avon's smile, for once, was quite warm.

"Cally, Vila, bring us up," he said to the bracelet; and a moment later, the warm, familiar tingle of the teleport beam embraced them. Avon was still smiling as he disappeared.

**********
"Well that's that then, I suppose," said Silver, and with a press of his hands, the laser scalpel was gone, in its place a single, silver-coloured rose. He handed it to Sapphire, who took it with a smile, as Steel glared at them both.

"It was a close one," he observed. "Those three are lucky to still be alive; and if it had taken too much longer, we'd hardly have been better off."

"But we won," said Silver, and with a bright, merry smile, he disappeared. Steel sighed, pushing his hands into the pockets of his jacket. This was no place for thin suits. Beside him Sapphire looked cold as well, her blue dress even less protection against the weather.

"A strange place in which to fight for the universe," he said, as they turned around and began to trudge back up the beach. "It scarcely seems worth the effort."

"But the people always are," said Sapphire, and linking her arm through his, she twirled her silver rose around in her hand. He glanced back briefly, to where the three humans had disappeared, in their strange, inorganic teleport.

"And have we saved them for some grand future?" he asked. "What lies ahead for them now?"

"Many things," said Sapphire, but she did not sound happy about it. Frowning at her for a moment, he did not persevere.

"Time to go," he said in the end, and she nodded. Two more steps up the grey beach, beneath the grey, washed out sky, and they were gone, walking back into the abyss. Behind them they left a perfect silence, on an empty, forgotten moon, where the waves of a cold grey sea rose and fell. Caught between two pebbles, the lone silver rose lay on its back, its petals spread and unfurled, its thorny stem pressing into thin, grey earth. Alone on the moon, it struggled for life, as the universe stumbled on, oblivious.


The End