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Another slight atmospheric buffeting tilted the skiff to one side, and Steven leaned the other way to compensate. Marlowe's eyes didn't move: staring now at an empty bulkhead.

"Marlowe?" Steven could hear the rising panic in his voice, but he couldn't quell it. "Marlowe, talk to me!"

But Marlowe was dead.

As the Doctor and Vicki vanished through a nearby arch, Braxiatel pointed the box at the mirror. The view shifted again to show a conference chamber that looked to Galileo remarkably like the one he usually lectured in at the University of Padua. Creatures of different aspects and visages lined the seats around the steep walls. Rather than nausea or shock, Galileo felt a sudden and completely unexpected wave of nostalgia wash over him. It took a few moments to work out why, and then he smiled as he realized that the creatures reminded him of nothing so much as the masks and costumes that the Venetians wore during Carnival time.

A man who, at a passing glance, resembled the Doctor stood at a lectern in the centre of the chamber. He appeared to be moderating an argument: several of the creatures were on their feet - or other appendages - and shouting at him. He was smiling.

"Is that Cardinal Roberto Bellarmine?" Galileo asked.

"Yes," Braxiatel replied. "Why, do you know him?"

"Our paths have crossed."

"He thinks he is dead," Braxiatel said.

Galileo smiled slightly. "If only he would stay that way," he muttered.

Braxiatel adjusted the virtual screen to show the beach on Laputa where the humans with the - what had the Doctor called them? -

the meta-cobalt fragments had gathered. The sun had set, but the moon was casting its sterile light across the sand. The humans were all huddled together now in one huge mass of flesh and clothing from which limbs stuck out in odd directions and the occasional blistered face peered blindly at nothing.

Braxiatel sighed and turned to where Envoy Albrellian was slumped on the floor. Galileo was astonished to see him kick Albrellian's shell as hard as he could. The envoy rocked backwards onto his rear set of legs. "Envoy Albrellian! Will you please pull yourself together!"

The arthropod stirred, and extruded an eyestalk. "The point what is?" he said. "As soon as the fuse arrives, all doomed are we."

"Well," Braxiatel said grimly, "it's possible that the fuse is going to turn up late, rather than not turn up at all. We need to get these people off this island and separated as soon as possible. With the Jamarians gone after Shakespeare we haven't got enough muscle to accomplish it ourselves. Can we use the device you called them all together with to split them up again and move them off the island?"

Something moving in the depths of the mirror attracted Galileo's attention. "Forgive me for interrupting this fascinating, if incomprehensible, discussion," he said, "but it would appear that one of your celestial chariots is on its way back to the island."

Shakespeare stepped from the curtained booth onto the stage. His legs shook with strain, and he could taste bile in the back of his throat. The hand holding the letter -just a sheet of blank parchment, but the audience wouldn't be able to tell from that distance - shook so hard that, had anything actually been written on it, he would have been hard pressed to read it. The flickering torches illuminated the audience of assorted nobility and courtiers who sat on the hard benches out in the Great Hall. On a raised dais at the other end were two rows of padded seats, and in them sat King James and his Danish wife, Queen Anne, along with a few favoured friends such as his astrologer, Doctor John Dee.

James's sallow, bearded face was enraptured by the action on stage, and Shakespeare felt a little tingle of pride run through him.

The King was wearing a doublet that was padded so heavily against knife thrusts that his head and arms looked ridiculously small sticking out of it. His tongue - too large for his mouth, or so the gossip