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The drone asked the Doctor if he'd heard about the murder.

'Heard about it,' said the Doctor, 'I'm investigating it.'

'Well, it wasn't me,' said aM!xitsa. 'I was playing a game of long distance brownian motion with a GPS. It can vouch for me.'

'Did you win?' asked the Doctor.

'Against a ship, are you kidding?'

'Then why play?'

'I keep hoping I'll get lucky,' said aM!xitsa. 'It wouldn't be a bad idea if you visited me sometime soon. Our mutual friend is getting a bit frisky.'

'Oh,' said the Doctor. 'Nothing too severe I hope.'

'Nothing I can't handle,' said aM!xitsa.

'I'll drop by later,' said the Doctor.

'Fine,' said aM!xitsa, 'I'll see you then. Nice to meet you, Adjudicator Cwej.' The drone peeled off and dropped back down towards the coast.

'Who's this mutual friend?' asked Chris.

The Doctor didn't answer. Instead he instructed Chris to turn ten degrees to port. 'That should put us over the murder scene in about twenty minutes,' he said.

'What then?'

'I don't know,' said the Doctor. 'Depends on what we find. I'd like to start by retracing vi!Cari's course into the storm and then we'll take it from there.'

'Your friend aM!xitsa was the same design as kiKhali,' said Chris, 'which means it's a defensive drone. I know kiKhali said that God would have detected a drone making an attack but what if it didn't? What if a drone figured out a way of using the storm as camouflage? That's something that God or IDIG hasn't thought of.'

'Good point,' said the Doctor. 'You'd better check that out when we get back.'

Chris kept an eye on the coast. Within minutes he saw the unmistakably jumbled shape of the villa and pointed it out to the Doctor.

'We'll use the villa to mark one side of our search perimeter and use it as a reference point,'

said the Doctor. 'I memorized the relevant co-ordinates last night.'

Starting from a position midway between the villa and iSanti Jeni, the Doctor directed Chris to turn out to sea and climb to an altitude of eight hundred metres. They flew straight and level until after half an hour the Doctor told Chris to turn around and fly back the way they'd come but at half the altitude. As they approached the coast for the second time Chris thought he saw some sort of animal sprinting along the beach ahead but it was gone before he got close enough to be certain. He did see somebody on the beach. He recognized the small upright figure despite the distance and imagined the automatic scowl on her face as he waggled his wings in greeting. In response she lifted her arm in a desultory half wave before turning and walking off towards the town.

'Was that Roz?' asked the Doctor.

'Yes,' said Chris.

'Did they teach you how to do a dog-leg search pattern at that academy of yours?'

'Just the theory,' said Chris, 'in case we were ever assigned to a frontier world.' There not being a hell of a lot of open space left on Earth in the thirtieth century, even the oceans had churned, sluggish with pollution, under the grey shadow of the overcities.

'I want you to double back over our last course,' said the Doctor, 'but this time I want you to perform a dog-leg pattern, about six hundred metres on each leg.'

'How high do you want us to be?'

'The operative word is "low",' said the Doctor. 'I want us down at six metres.'

The biplane didn't like flying that low and kept raising its nose as the wings interacted with the surface effect of the water. It got harder when the Doctor, grumbling that Chris could have chosen a more appropriate aircraft, climbed out of his cockpit for a better view. He took up position on the left wing near the root, leaning with the wind, one hand hooked casually into his waistband, the other grasping his umbrella which was hooked around one of the wing's bracing wires. Even his slight weight unbalanced the biplane, forcing Chris to keep the joystick partially heeled over in the opposite direction. He had to be careful not to overcompensate; the biplane was far too eager to follow