The bridge was rather cramped, Thomas thought.

     Four seats, padded with plush, crimson velvet, were placed with their backs to the curving bulkhead, facing inward towards a large scrying mirror that stood in the middle of the room. Behind the mirror was a small table around which three small chairs were placed to form a small conference area, although it had no privacy from the other occupants of the bridge. Under the table and along the walls were storage areas for maps, charts and reference material, all currently empty.

     The mirror was currently showing an image of the ship sitting in its cradle as seen from the entrance to the hanger cavern. Saturn was standing before it, studying the image, when Thomas entered. "They're aboard," he said, "and Butch is putting them to work."

     "About time," said the senior wizard gruffly. He spoke a word to activate a spell he'd cast earlier and the cavern was filled with a booming voice. "WARNING. THIS CAVERN IS ABOUT TO BE DEPRESSURISED. ANYONE STILL IN THE CAVERN MUST PROCEED IMMEDIATELY TO THE NEAREST AIRLOCK. DEPRESSURISATION WILL COMMENCE IN FIVE MINUTES."

     The message repeated itself as Saturn placed a Coronet of Farspeaking on his head. "This is the Ship of Space. We are ready to launch. Please begin depressurising the cavern."

     "Roger, Ship of Space," the harvour master replied. "Will do so."

     Soon, a dozen moon trogs were swimming around the cavern, searching for anyone who might still be in there and calling out an additional warning of what was about to happen. When they were satisfied that the cavern was empty they returned to the airlocks and the doors were closed for the last time.

     "This is Saturn speaking," the senior wizard then said, his voice carried by magic spells to all parts of the ship. "The hangar cavern is about to be depressurised. If you have to move about the ship, close any airtight doors behind you as you go. Be alert for any airleaks. This will be the first time this ship has been tested in vacuum, so keep your wits about you. That's all."

     In the meantime, the harbour master had given orders for a small tube to be opened, a tube that led from the cavern to the surface. Gradually, the air began to leak out. Very slowly and gradually, the air pressure in the cavern began to drop.

     "This will take a couple of hours," Saturn said, still staring at the image in the scrying mirror. "Nothing more's going to happen here until then, so I suggest you take the opportunity to familiarise yourself with the ship. This may be the only chance you get."

     "Yes, master," replied Thomas. "What should I do when the ship lifts? Where should I go, I mean."

     "Come back here," said Saturn after a moment's thought. "With only a skeleton crew on board there'll be a spare seat up here, so you might as well have it. Don't get used to it, though. You're unlikely to see the inside of the bridge when we set off on our real mission."

     "Yes, master," cried Thomas in delight, almost skipping with joy as he left. A seat on the bridge! Him! Able to see everything that happened, as it happened! He'd hoped. he'd known there'd be a spare seat until the man chosen to be the Captain came aboard, but it was still a thrill to have his hopes confirmed, to know that he'd be right in the middle of the action. Wait till Matt hears this, he thought as he almost floated along the corridor, his head buzzing with excitement and joy.

☆☆☆

     The four soldiers, meanwhile, were feeling less than wonderful.

     Butch had put them to work down on deck four, slapping grey paint on the bare metal walls, and they had almost fainted at the sight of the huge casks stored where the crew dormitory would one day be. Enough to paint a whole city by the look of it. The huge foreman had shown Stone how to mix the powdered pigment with pungent smelling sheep liver oil and fixative, had thrust horsehair brushes into the hands of the others and told them to get on with it while he strode off to do something else.

     The four military men found themselves wishing that the Colonel had bestowed the honour of this mission on someone else. "We've been training for over a year to do this?" grumbled Bakklan, scowling in disgust at the sticky grey stain that already covered the palms of his hands and that was slowly dribbling down his arm. "I'm a seaman. A good seaman. Not a bloody decorator."

     "We're all in the same boat," replied Matthew, wishing his position as commander of these men didn't forbid him from voicing the feelings that he shared. "The time will pass faster if we concentrate on the job. We're only doing this for a few hours a day, remember. We've still got our full training schedule to fit in."

     "What's the point of training if this is all we're going to be doing?" demanded Stone, resisting an impulse to throw a keg of oil against the far wall. "Let's face it lads, we're not going to be fighting anyone in space. There's no-one to fight! This is what we're going to be doing the whole bloody mission. This or something like it." Bakklan and Fell grumbled their agreement.

     "If those are our orders, then that's what we'll do," replied Matthew, giving him a warning glance. "Come on lads, we're Beltharans, the best in the world. We don't mutiny over a little bit of painting." His men grumbled a little more, then returned to their work with a total lack of enthusiasm.

     "Where's the lav?" asked Fell, looking around the large, empty room. "I gotta go."

     Matthew gave a sigh of exasperation. "I don't know. Why don't you go look for it? But don't be long. The blonde giant will be back to check up on us before long. I know the type."

     "Right," agreed the Able Wingman, dropping his brush with a plop into his bucket of paint. "I'll be right back."

     He trotted out of the room, waiting until he was up the stairs and out of sight before allowing the sneer of contempt to show on his face. How easy it had been to slip aboard this ship. All their boasted security precautions had been for nothing. And as for that guard with his Helm of Telepathy, had they already forgotten the lessons they'd learned during the war? Had they forgotten the spells of mind protection, cast directly on his body by a Shadowwizard during the war and thereby avoiding the need for the giveaway amulets? Fools! Now they would pay for their complacency, and he would earn a small fortune from his new employers.

     He had been instructed to destroy the Orb of Propulsion, set in the deck dividing the bridge from the shayen living quarters. The Orb could probably be replaced easily enough, but the shae folk would think that a human wizard had been studying it, attempting to steal their magical secrets, particularly if he left the clipped off trimmings of a sharpened cockatrice feather near the scene of the crime. Lexandrian wizards used cockatrice quills to write in their spell books, so it would be a damning clue. An unconscious Bobby Fell would then be returned to the ship, so no-one would know there had ever been a clay man aboard. The other crewmen would assume he'd surprised the wizard spy and been struck down by him, his lack of memory of the incident put down to concussion. The shae folk would withdraw from the project in disgust and the Ship of Space would have to be abandoned.

     That was the felisians' plan, at least, but the clay man had other ideas. To reach the Orb of Propulsion he would have to go through the bridge and up into the shayen area, and to do that he would have to arrange a diversion. He didn't like the idea of that because there were too many chances for him to be discovered and caught. He could probably do it, but fortunately there was an easier way.

     One deck down from the Orb of Propulsion, in the floor of the bridge rather than the ceiling, was the recently installed Orb of Skydeath Protection, created by Saturn himself after months of studying the one he'd brought back from the Southern Continent. Deck three, the deck in whose ceiling the Orb was located, contained the officers' quarters and recreational facilities, such as they were, and with everyone else either up on the bridge preparing for the launch or down on decks four and five working to complete the ship, deck three was completely deserted. He could work in peace without fear of interruption, and when he'd finished he would make his way to the ship's teleportation cubicle and return to Tharia.

     The ship would lift as planned, with no-one knowing that there was anything wrong, and later, after a few unprotected hours out in space, they would all have fallen to the skydeath. Such a massive tragedy would kill the Rossem Project as surely as a shayen withdrawal, and with a much smaller chance of his being caught. It was perfect! He smiled evilly. The felisians wouldn't like it, of course. The weak minded fools hated killing. The accidental killing of Schoena Scull had sent them into a morass of grief and remorse and they'd ceased all their activities on Tharia while they reconsidered their position and their strategy. He could imagine how they'd react to the deaths of fifteen humans, two shae folk and four moon trogs, therefore, but they would pay what they owed him nevertheless. They would pay him, or he would reveal everything to the proctors.

     Deck three was divided into four quarters by the two corridors that crossed it from side to side, meeting in the middle where they widened out into a circular foyer containing the steps to the decks above and below. It was intended to contain a small grove of potted plants to give the place a bit of greenery and ambience, but at the moment it was bare and empty with a faint aroma of fresh paint. The clay man's eyes went straight to the ceiling, though, where a hemisphere of steel had been bolted in place to protect the fragile Orb inside. He smiled. It was a fairly good defence against humans and shae folk, perhaps, but against a clay man...

     He drew his sword and willed his malleable body to grow in height until his trousers rose up to reveal ten inches of pale, hairy shins. His curly brown hair now brushed the freshly painted ceiling and he was able to lay his sword flat against the ceiling, with the point touching the edge of the hemisphere of steel. The narrow gap between hemisphere and ceiling was filled in with paint, but it flaked away as he prodded it with the sword and then he was able to insert the point of his sword a short way into the gap. The strength required to push it any further in, so that it punctured the fragile Orb within, was far beyond that of any human being, but the clay man's clothes stretched and tore as massive muscles bulged under his skin. Then he paused for a moment to take a deep breath and gather his strength...