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There was a tiny pause which agRaven just knew was the two drones communicating at machine speeds; she hated it when they did that. Then aM!xitsa spun around and hurtled back up the path.

'Let's go,' said kiKhali.

'Just like that?' asked agRaven.

'I'm not going head to head with aM!xitsa,' said kiKhali. 'No secret could possibly be worth that.

We're not going to get near that cove while it's on guard.'

'Give us a lift then.'

'AgRaven, you know I hate carrying people on my back, it's so undignified.'

'Well, I'm not walking back up that beach, I've got enough sand in my shoes as it is.'

KiKhali reluctantly extended its dorsal field and lifted her onto its back. 'I told you to wear the sandals. Sometimes I really envy the barbarians. I bet Roz Forrester wouldn't have taken no for an answer.'

'Have you reported to !C-Mel yet?'

'Just finished.'

'What did it think?'

'It got all excited and started talking to the other ships,' said kiKhali. 'You know, I think our wonderful ship knows more than it's telling us.'

'What a surprise,' said agRaven.

What struck Chris about the S-Lioness, apart from its sheer scale, was how unlike it was to any other type of spaceship he'd ever seen. The S-Lioness was a VAS, the people's top of the line warship and had served in several major engagements and countless skirmishes during the war.

He found himself strangely disappointed. Intellectually he'd known that the S-Lioness was entirely run by its machine intelligence but he'd expected something a bit more, well, dramatic, than a series of pleasant living areas complete with two swimming pools and an arboretum. S-Lioness didn't need a bridge or an engine room but Chris felt obscurely that something was missing without them. And if they didn't have to fly the ship or fire the weapons or even flush the toilets for themselves, what exactly did the six hundred plus crew do?

'Keep me company,' said S-Lioness. 'No, Roslyn, not like pets. If I'd wanted to I could have filled the place – up with dumb animals or taken no crew at all.'

Roz frowned. One of S-Lioness's little eccentricities was answering questions before you asked them. Chris could tell that the habit was driving Roz berserk. That the ship was doing it on purpose and that Roz knew she was being manipulated just served to make it worse. Calling her Roslyn probably didn't help either.

'Of course I remember vi!Cari,' said S-Lioness. 'Nice little machine, I thought, one of the more promising drones of its generation. Well, they say that about it now but it wasn't like that before.

There was a nasty incident and vi!Cari sustained some psychological damage, but then it was war.

Plenty of other machines had worse experiences but came through it all right. Your friend aM!xitsa, for example. You've met the enemy, I believe, at the party, very polite people they are, even during the war and they have such a wonderful sense of rhythm.'

'Did –' started Ros.

'Yes, feLixi was on board, at the same time as vi!Cari but I wouldn't say they were friends although VAS crews tend to be a bit clannish, all that shared sense of danger.'

'But –'

'Landing parties, especially on low-tech worlds like yours, where machines would be conspicuous. Operations like that could be quite hairy, especially if the rules of engagement were tight. It was considered bad form to blow away a planet just because one of your crew got killed.'

'Did that really –'

'Once, an asteroid facility called Omicron 378,' said S-Lioness. 'But there were extenuating circumstances. And in answer to the question that you are resolutely not asking: it wasn't me.

That's true, Chris, vi!Cari did have a peculiar talent for ferreting out secrets; nothing to do with its design, more like a quirk of its personality. And to save time, Roz, you don't mind if I call you Roz? I was completely shut down on the night of the murder. The Doctor's theory is sound, if you can explain why vi!Cari had its defensive shields down and where the extra power came from.

FeLixi is wrong. He tends to consider too many possibilities when