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The cargo doors swung shut and the tank engine's turbine coughed into life. Achmed heard it cycle up to half power and watched as the tank engine reversed out of the station. He turned and ran after the drones.

'Come on,' he told Deirdre as he passed her.

The first drone stopped at the crash barrier, it was unpacking its crates with its forward arms. The front end of a hologram projector was beginning to emerge from one of the crates. It was a big one, the kind used for stadiums.

'Hey, drone,' said Achmed, 'what are you doing?'

The drone ignored him and extended manipulators with waldos as fine as human hair. Achmed looked for identification flashes and saw a row of pictograms spaced along its access panel.

'Korean,' said Deirdre.

'What do they say?'

'It's the gardener, from Pei Hai park,' said Deirdre.

'It's a long way from the Forbidden City,' said Achmed. 'Where did the others go?'

'Into the hole at the end of the station.'

Achmed walked over and looked into the hole. The electrical cable had been laid along the left wall, held against the rock with hooped steel staples at three-metre intervals.

'What's the loading on a cable like that?' asked Achmed.

'About a gigawatt,' said Deirdre, 'at least.'

'I knew that,' said Achmed. 'I just wanted to be sure that you knew that.'

They followed the cable into the hole. Deirdre pulled a billy lamp and gave the passage a professional once-over. 'This should have collapsed,' she said. 'I wonder what's holding it up.'

There were duckboard ramps laid over the vertical maintenance shafts that bisected the hole. Deirdre let Achmed cross them first, to test the weight she said.

'I knew this was going to be a bad week,' said Achmed, 'when I heard the President was dead.'

'The President's dead?' asked Deirdre.

'You didn't know?'

'I don't keep track of politics,' said Deirdre.

'Don't you watch TV, read a fax?'

'What for?' asked Deirdre. 'I've got better things to do with my spare time than read fax.'

'To learn important things,' said Achmed, 'like the President being killed.'

'I didn't vote for him,' said Deirdre.

The power cable came to an end in a mess of equipment that stood in the centre of a natural cavern. The three remaining drones were clustered around the mess, manipulators working fast enough to blur. An assembly was taking shape between them; at first Achmed thought it was a data-gathering probe but the feed cables were too robust for data transmission. They looked more like the cables you'd use to hook up a big drilling laser.

Beyond the assembly was something like a blue door set into the cavern wall. There was white lettering above the door which said 'POLICE BOX' in English. The business end of the assembly was definitely aimed directly at the door.

The important question, Achmed realized, was which way would the power go? Would the assembly collect power from the doorway or would it be pumped at it? Whichever way it went, judging from the insulation, it was going to be in the megawatt range.

'What the hell is this supposed to be?' asked Deirdre.

'Bad news,' said Achmed. 'Really bad news.'

Acturus Terminal (Stunnel Terminus)

They were watching the sensors go dead along the Central Line one by one.

'Christ in a bucket,' said Lambada in admiration, 'that sucker is fast.'

'When they get here,' said Dogface, 'you can ask them how it works.'

'They ain't going to get here,' said Old Sam, 'because I'm going to close down the extension gateway before they do.'

'Can you do that?' asked Blondie.

'I built that gateway, boy,' said Old Sam, 'and I always put in a backdoor override.'

'You shut it down when they're in the tunnel, Sam, and they'll disassociate,' said Credit Card.

'That's what I'm counting on,' said Old Sam.

'There'll be an energy plume,' said Lambada.

'Good,' said Old Sam. 'Then we'll know we got them.'

'Yeah,' said Credit Card, 'We'll be right in front of it.'

'I'm too young to glow in the dark,' said Lambada.

'So