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  Less than ten minutes later he was outside again with all his equipment set up, checked and ready to go. And now he wasn't just eager to get started, but he was desperate to get started. His adrenalin was at bursting point. He stood behind the row of gadgetry, panting, aching to begin, teetering on the edge of ecstasy. And the closeness of the thrill was a thrill itself. He would enjoy it for just a little while longer… 'Another minute,' he whispered to himself, and he let his eyes run over his cherished apparatus - again, for one very last time.

  It consisted of a small control panel mounted halfway up a tripod, and, at the top of this tripod, held on three separate arms, three separate tele-imagers, three separate state-of-the-art tele-imagers. And each of these tele-imagers was trained on one of those three cities down below. With these, Sereza could observe as much or as little of each conurbation as he wished. He could view their entire spread - with effectively no magnification at all, but with the crystal clear clarity that the tele-imagers provided - or he could use the epsylon zoom to study their smallest detail: the flag on Pei-enna's city hall, the awful Eros in the middle of Sasala's water garden, or a dog cocking its leg in a Raffa park - or even the collar of a dog cocking its leg in a Raffa park. Tele-imagers were truly astonishing devices. Sereza often blessed his luck that he'd been born into the generation that had spawned these magical machines. They were so experience-enhancing that they were now an indispensable part of his life. He couldn't imagine life without them; doing what he was about to do without his precious tellies, his vital spy-glasses, his super-eyesight courtesy of the mysterious epsylon technology. It really did make a difference.

  And now he was ready to use them! He'd teased himself for long enough. It was time for the real thrill to get under way - for the real show to begin. And it would be Pei-enna first!

  He placed his face against the eyepieces of the tele-imager trained on that farthest city and made a final adjustment to bring it to zero-mag. He now had the whole of it in his view. It was perfect. Gloomy, grey Pei-enna set in that gloomy, black valley. The sun was still in the sky, trying its best to breathe some light into the scene, but with little effect. This world's dullness could overcome even the brightest day. Without moving from the tele-imager he felt for the top of the control panel. His right hand located the first of a row of three buttons there. He caressed it. Then his fingers moved to the second and then to the third button. And then back to the first, Pei-enna's button. He caressed it again. His mouth dried. He felt a swirling sensation in his stomach, then a spinning sensation in his groin. He moaned. His every thought was on that button. Then his moan stopped and he started to squeeze the button, and as he squeezed it he pressed it. A shiver ran through his whole body, and in his tele-imager viewpiece, Pei-enna changed.

  At one edge of the city, there was the outline of an oil refinery, all arching pipes and great silos and the like. There was even a hint of brightness at its centre where the Caldak sun had coaxed some reflections from the grey metal of its pipework. As Sereza pressed that button, that most modest of glimmers was drowned instantly in a sheet of red light. Red light, two hundred feet tall. The red light of flames. A rare and savage brilliance in this dark and dreary world.

  It was going to work - just as Sereza had known it would. The beauty of his beloved fire, its sensual radiance. It was all going to be better than it had ever been before. It was the contrast, the fantastic contrast of that wonderful scorching light against those awful greys and blacks. It was going to be just perfect!

  As the red refinery was transforming itself into a red-black cloud of anger, oily soot belching into the growing inferno, yellow broke over the city. Pretty firework yellow. Glittering explosions of gold and yellow-white, shooting into the early evening sky - each firework an erupting tank of some gas or other. Pei-enna was full of them. The supply seemed simply inexhaustible.

  Sereza wriggled. He knew what was coming next. Pei-enna's acetylene plant. Then it happened. Ground-level lightning. A sheet of searing white fury bursting out from the far side of the city. It was stunning. Sereza could see pieces of Pei-enna being ripped apart in the wake of the blast, roofs flying off buildings, buildings flying off their foundations, and best of all, buildings exploding into his favourite colours: reds, oranges and yellows. Acetylene white was OK, but it was a bit clinical for Sereza's taste. Much better its aftermath: the growing arc of flaming city where the sheet lightning had bitten into its fabric.

  And there was flame all over the city now. Chunks of red-hot refinery piping and shards of white-hot gas tanks were raining down across the metropolis, and anything that could catch fire was doing so - with gusto. It was as though the whole place had finally become bored with the dullness of Caldak and wanted to join the light party of a lifetime - and as soon as it could.

  Pei-enna was a mess, a beautiful, burning, brilliant mess, a wondrous, gleaming torch in a sea of Caldak black. This contrast thing really worked. It was exquisite.

  Sereza had achieved something similar before - by painting his pictures at night. But that wasn't quite the same. It was somehow a bit two-dimensional. You just didn't get the depth that you got with a daylight performance - or all the detail the daylight exposed. Whereas this way you got the contrast and you got 3-D perfection and 3-D minutiae. And with your epsylon zoom, you could take it all in…

  Like the road that ran along the side of the refinery. Then the row of houses on this road. The row of houses burning brightly. And then people running away from these houses - some of them burning brightly as well!

  And then there was a tree near the refinery, an enormous tree. It must have been at least a couple of hundred years old. It was a very dark grey, a sombre monument to the subdued nature of Caldak's flora, an elegant understatement of colour at its best. But now, at the very end of its long life, it had been forced to abandon its principles, to forsake its very identity. Now it burned - brilliantly. It burned from ground to crown, a mass of dense dazzling yellow, as bright as could be on this brightest of days. And in its death it was fabulous - and for Sereza, hypnotic. He gazed at it long and until it was gone - and its brilliance had died to a glow…

  For Sereza, this was the best act in the show so far, and it almost made him forget his other responsibilities - but not quite.

  Time to visit Sasala. Time to paint another picture.

  He moved himself to the next tele-imager and his fingers fondled the buttons again. He was perspiring heavily now and his fingers were slicked with sweat. They slid over and between the buttons easily. And then around the edges of the second button: Sasala's button. And then onto its top. He hesitated, savouring this special moment. His fingers trembled. And then with shoulders arched and nostrils flared, he pressed down - and Sasala's button submitted willingly.

  The refinery in this city was thoughtfully situated near the city's centre. It was an old one, and the city had grown up around it and then engulfed it. But now something else was engulfing it: giant red flames, living, shooting-into-the-sky flames, terrible, blistering flames. Then the flames spilled out of the refinery and into Sasala's central park - and into its flammable vegetation. Then the timber yard. Then a paint plant. And then some gas tanks. Sasala was soon on its way to join the destruction already wreaked on its neighbour. It might have lacked the drama of Pei-enna's acetylene bomb, but it more than made up for this in its wealth of juicy, multicoloured flames. Whatever they'd used to build this place, it was superbly flammable, and even mundane houses and offices simply roared into combustion - and then burnt like fury - as though they had always wanted to. It was a real fiery frenzy, and Sereza loved it.

  But it was time to move on. He had another button to play with. Sweat dripped onto it as his fingers went to work once again. Raffa's pipeline terminal went first. Then two tanker depots. Then its major contribution to the evening's entertainment: its massive oil dump. A plantation of enormous grey cylinders set in seemingly endless rows - impressive, workmanlike and reassuring to the citizens of Raf
fa. But not any more. Not as the rocket range they'd now become.

  Everywhere there were flames and everywhere flaming missiles - and so many sights to delight. It was perfect. It proved itself a very worthy climax to the evening, but an evening that was now drawing to a close. After all, Sereza had been admiring his handiwork for almost two hours now, two hours of transportation into a state of divine pleasure, extraordinary super-sexual pleasure. But now it was time to leave. Time to quit before the bill arrived. Time to slip out by the back door before he got trapped. Those peasants down there might already be looking for him. And he couldn't take any chances. He might be an enthusiast, but he was a sensible enthusiast. That's why he was still able to enjoy himself.

  So he packed up his tele-imagers and the rest of his gear, stowed them into his skipper - and he was off. Up and away from Caldak as secretly and as silently as he'd arrived, leaving behind him a world that would be scarred by the events of this terrible day for years to come.

  But Sereza was simply unaware of such consequences. He just never thought in those terms. He was also unaware of just how close he'd come to being pounced upon by Meitchars and Renton.

  Just ten minutes after he'd left, their scudder screamed through the air over the Pei valley. They had missed him. But they had picked up his exit trace. And with a little bit of luck they might be able to lock onto his flight path…

  9.

  And to think, just seven hours before, Renton's thoughts had been entirely focused on his toe-nails.

  It was then the early morning of his first proper day as a Tickler. The anticipation of what might be in store for him on this maiden day had permeated his sleep, and he'd woken early. Then he'd risen early. And just as well. Because as he was about to leave his room, mentally and physically prepared for anything they might throw at him, he realised he wasn't one hundred per cent physically prepared after all. As he walked to the door, he felt the nail of a big toe snagging on his sock. He had to attend to it. Not only was it an irritation, but it also meant that all his other toe-nails needed cutting too. And he couldn't start his new life as a Tickler in such an obvious state of disrepair. It just wasn't on.

  Which is why, just a few minutes later, when Meitchars walked into his room, Renton was sitting on the floor with his socks off and a pair of scissors in his hand.

  Meitchars appeared not to notice, and simply nodded a brief greeting to Renton, and then informed him in a disconcertingly neutral tone that he and Renton 'had business', and that Renton was to join him at his ship in 'three minutes sharp'.

  Meitchars' face would have scored poorly on any aptitude test for expressiveness, and if there was any expression on it at all, Renton couldn't discern it before it turned away and left with its owner. But it didn't matter. The neutrality of tone in his voice and the very lack of expression on his face said everything. Renton knew exactly what he would be doing in three minutes time: he'd be off on his first real adventure - his first real foray into Tickler action! And so quickly! So promptly!

  His immediate thought was one of relief. He had just finished the very last toe-nail. So he'd not have to embark on this maiden voyage into excitement with the job just half done - an awful prospect! However, as he returned his feet to their dark confinement, his thoughts turned to what he was getting himself into: the danger, the unknown, the possible threat to his own person. And then he remembered something: his absolute distaste for violence - a distaste that had manifested itself on any number of those damn martial arts modules on his induction course. And by the time he met Meitchars at the entrance to his scudder, these thoughts of what he might have to face and what he had to face them with, had all but overwhelmed him. In fact, he was half blinded by them. And he was as nervous as hell. How could he go on? How could he possibly manage the prospect of real danger burdened with such a pathetically pacific pedigree?

  'We're after an arsonist,' announced Meitchars. And immediately, Renton was aware of something: he wasn't nearly as nervous as he'd been just a second before.

  'And first we'll have to find him,' his partner continued. And now he was aware of something else: incredibly he was now hardly nervous at all.

  Renton blinked. What was it with this Meitchars chap? How could he chase away Renton's fears quite so easily and quite so quickly? Was it what he'd said? Was it just his voice? Or was it something else?

  And then Renton realised he'd been looking into those eyes of his, those eyes that had inspired him with so much confidence when he'd first come across them. And they were doing it again - only in a subtly different way. Now they weren't just saying 'you'll be OK with me'. No, now they were saying 'you'll be OK with or without me'. They were somehow saying that he, Renton, should trust himself. Because he, Renton, warranted that trust. And when it came to the crunch, he'd be up to the job.

  Well, this all sounded rather implausible to Renton, not to say outrageously ridiculous. But, at the same time, he couldn't deny that he did feel remarkably more confident - in himself - and well up for whatever was in store. And there was more. As their journey got underway, and Renton began to see how Meitchars was treating him - as his equal, not as his junior - Renton's belief in his own abilities began to grow and grow. And this, despite the awe-inspiring demonstration of far greater abilities by Meitchars himself. And these abilities really had to be seen to be believed.

  When they had set off from Pandiloop, they'd had no clear idea where their quarry was, nor where he was about to strike. They had a microscopic needle in a very large haystack job on their hands - but one that Meitchars tackled with enthusiasm and with consummate skill. He calculated, he computed, he modelled, he scanned, he route-referenced, and ultimately, against all the odds, he found where the monster would be. This odd scarecrow of a chap was a phenomenon, a dedicated fanatic of a phenomenon with the ability to achieve the impossible. He was inspirational.

  And Renton was being carried along by this inspiration - delivered, it seemed, first through Meitchars' two saucer eyes and then through his manner. So much so, that when their scudder screeched over the burning horrors of the Pei valley, Knight Tenting was quite sure that should he have the good fortune to make the acquaintance of the perpetrator of that barbarity down there, he could now quite easily set aside his aversion to any sort of confrontation - whether of the violent variety or otherwise. And he genuinely hoped that his superhero partner beside him could come up with some more magic to allow him to put this belief to the test. In short, he was looking for danger and spoiling for a fight…

  …which as well as constituting a fairly radical change in his thinking, also meant he'd now become entirely focused on the chase in hand. Indeed, even more focused than he'd been on his toe-nails just seven hours before…

  10.

  Meitchars was incensed. Not furiously incensed, but more sort of slapped-in-the-face incensed, deeply affronted - and dismayed, dismayed that his professionalism hadn't been quite good enough. It had fallen just a little bit short of what had been needed to prevent the abomination they'd just witnessed. And that hurt.

  It wasn't as though he hadn't been impressive. Indeed, on any normal measure, he'd been amazingly bloody impressive. But in his own mind he should have exceeded the amazingly bloody impressive if that was what was required. And he hadn't. He had failed his own dauntingly rigorous standards. And failure required amends - as soon as possible. Like extinguishing that rotten psycho-firebug before his next attack of the pyrotechnics - and while there was still a real chance - even if it was a slim chance. He had to go to work on that exit trace. Pronto. But it wouldn't be easy.

  Technology still had some startling limitations, and none more so than in the science of tracking space vehicles through hyper. Then poor old technical wizardry had to lean on that almost redundant pair of old stagers: sentient experience and its venerable but steadfast partner, sentient intuition. Fortunately Meitchars had both in plenty - and a couple of extra senses - and something else that bordered on the psychic. And he
'd need all of them. Trying to gauge from a brief exit trace, which path some lunatic had taken into hyperspace, and then, through hyper-simulation, where he might have emerged from hyper and gone to ground, was something that most people regarded as virtually impossible. Likened to long-range precision pissing - just as tricky and just about as likely to be accurate. But Meitchars wasn't most people.

  Renton already knew this. And when their scudder came out of hyper next to a dreary looking planet that, according to the charts, rejoiced in the name of A-402-C, he knew Meitchars had cornered Sereza. And, of course, Meitchars knew it as well. One could see it in his eyes.

  'Why's it got a name like A-402-C, Meitch?' asked Renton. 'Not exactly lyrical, is it? I mean, I think if I'd been asked to name a planet, I'd have come up with something a bit more memorable than that. You know, Rentonworld… Ren-terra… errhh… Brownsville. Anything but a string of numbers and letters. I mean, it doesn't say much for people's imagination, does it?'

  'It's a resource-world, Renton. And they never get a name. That way, they're easier to steal from.'

  Meitchars' response was clinical and accurate. 'Of course,' thought Renton, 'it's one of those poor old globes spinning around in space that nobody wants to colonize but everybody's happy to plunder - for whatever special commodity will help the so called civilised universe live out its days in the manner to which it's become accustomed. But I wonder what's so special about this one? It doesn't look very remarkable.'

  'It's a halogen world,' announced Meitchars, as if he'd been reading Renton's thoughts. 'It's mostly covered in an ocean. But not of water - just neat hydrofluoric acid. And the atmosphere's humid with the stuff. And free fluorine. And bromine as well. It's a valuable place. But not a very hospitable one - as you might imagine.'

  Renton had no problem whatsoever in imagining just how inhospitable a world would be where hydrogen fluoride had replaced hydrogen oxide as the aqua vitae of everyday life. It would mean there wouldn't be any life. At least none of the sort experienced by ninety nine point nine nine nine per cent of organisms in the universe. It would be a near sterile environment, with only the odd halogen-phile virus floating around the planet's grim atmosphere, or maybe some bizarre halogen based amoeba bobbing about in its corrosive ocean. But for “real life” there'd not be a chance.