There was nothing on deck two to interest Thomas for long. The laboratories and workrooms that would soon be filled to bursting with obscure and arcane equipment and apparatus were still bare and empty, and the small chapel that could be accessed from either the human or moon trog side had not even been consecrated yet. He spent a few moments exploring the invisible edge of the gravity field that would allow a moon trog to float in weightless comfort next to a human sitting comfortably on one of the curved benches before growing bored with it and wandering out again.

     He was on his way to the tiny, cramped wizards' laboratories to see how much room the ship's design had allowed him when he was brought up short by the scream of tortured metal. He froze in alarm, waiting to see if it would come again, and he thought of the cavern outside slowly being depressurised. The Ship of Space being exposed to vacuum for the first time. Could that noise have been part of the hull starting to give way under the strain?

     He was about to run back to the bridge to alert Saturn to the danger when the sound came again, and he was relieved to find that it didn't come from the outer hull. It was coming from the stairs down to the next deck. Probably just one of the workmen doing something, he thought, and he moved in that direction to see if he was right. He might be in the mood for a chat, he thought hopefully. Anything to relieve the boredom and make the time pass faster.

     The clay man was too busy in his task to hear the wizard descending the steps behind him. He'd managed to force the sword two inches under the metal hemisphere and it had taken all his strength to do it, but from that point on the sword remained a constant thickness so it should require much less force to push it the rest of the way. He was about to give it the final push when a movement in the corner of his eye caught his attention and he spun around just as Thomas's head was coming level with the ceiling. He and the wizard saw each other, therefore, at almost exactly the same time.

     Thomas gave a gasp of horror at what he saw. A tall, gangling creature wearing a Beltharan uniform much too small for it. Its upper body was powerful and muscular but the head, which still bore a resemblance to that of Bobby Fell, looked ridiculously small in comparison. It had partially reverted to its natural form as it concentrated on height and strength rather than appearance, and a pair of piggy red eyes glared out above a tiny pug nose. Somehow, the traces of Fell's appearance that it had retained made it more horrible than if it had been completely monstrous.

     They stared at each other for a moment, each as surprised as the other, but the clay man was the first to recover. With a snarl of rage it wrenched the sword free and hurled it with all its strength at the wizard. Thomas dodged instinctively, not fast enough, but the sword wasn't balanced for throwing and it spun as it flew through the air so that it was the hilt that struck him with numbing force in the side rather than the blade. The force of the impact threw him back against the bulkhead and his feet slipped out from under him, landing him on his bottom on the hard stairs.

     The clay man didn't wait for him to recover but threw itself upon him, its appearance already changing to mimic the wizard so that Thomas found himself staring into a pair of crazed blue eyes as his mirror image ran up the stairs towards him. He fumbled for the words of a defensive spell, any defensive spell, but he couldn't concentrate in his fear and the words refused to come. Instead his hand, thrust out to the side for balance, met the sword and, without realising what he was doing, he snatched it up in both hands and held it point outwards, towards the onrushing monster.

     The clay man paused, but only for a moment. Wizards don't know how to use swords, he knew. Their studies took up all their free time, leaving none left over for weapons training. If he gave the wizard time to compose himself, though, he would be able to bring the words of his spells to the front of his mind and the clay man would be finished. He knew exactly how much chance he would stand against a wizard calm and composed and ready to cast spells. None at all. With only a moment's hesitation to reach a decision, therefore, he threw himself upon the wizard, trusting the moon trog glass ceramic armour to protect him from injury.

     Thomas surprised himself by finding the gap between the front and back halves of the clay man's breastplate, but instead of sinking deep into yielding flesh the sword skidded along something hard and slippery. Then the creature was on him, its hands reaching for his throat and closing on his windpipe. Thomas's mind went white with pure terror and he could only struggle madly, but the clay man could summon the strength of an ogre, the largest creature it could mimic, and the wizard's struggles were quite futile. He dropped the sword, which slipped off the stairs and fell clattering to the floor, and he tore desperately at the thumbs digging deep into the soft spot beneath his voicebox.

     As his consciousness began to fade, sanity returned and the words of his spells arranged themselves in an orderly fashion in his mind, useless now that he no longer had the breath with which to say them. He had one other weapon, though. Forcing himself to ignore the agony in his throat and lungs and remain conscious just a little longer, he fumbled for the knife he wore on his belt. The knife that had been given to him many years before by a trog called Shale Granore. Also a clay man, although Thomas had never discovered the fact and so was unable to appreciate the irony of it. His eyes began to close all by themselves, he was unable to keep them open any longer, and he had to find the knife by touch alone, unfastening the catch and drawing it slowly from its sheath. He wrapped his fingers firmly around the hilt, took a moment to gather his strength and then thrust it upwards as hard as he could into the creature's belly, just below the breastplate.

     Once again the point skidded along the glass ceramic and the wizard despaired. He could feel the life beginning to leave him, could hear the pulse hammering in his head. Something gave him strength for one last attempt, though, and he summoned the very last of his strength to raise the knife one last time, this time aiming for a part of the body not protected by the damnably impregnable moon trog armour. The effort caused him to black out, his last memory that of trying to raise the knife high enough to reach the creature's throat...

     He could only have been unconscious for a moment, because the next thing he was aware of was being splattered by some kind of warm liquid and a howl of pain and fury somewhere above him. The terrible pressure around his throat was gone and he sucked in air in great wheezing gasps, each breath as wonderful as the singing of a thousand angels. He lay there for a long, delightful moment before realising with a bolt of alarm that he was still in mortal danger and he sat upright so fast that it was almost a convulsion. The sudden movement almost made him black out again, but he clung to consciousness in the knowledge that if he lost it now he would very probably never wake again. He won the battle, just barely, and with a head that still felt dangerously light and unsteady he forced his eyes to open.

     The clay man had staggered a few steps back down the stairs and was clutching the side of its neck where pink blood oozed in small, jerky spurts. It was only a minor wound, though. The shock and surprise of being wounded had had more of an effect than the wound itself. Already the bleeding was slowing as the creature used its shape changing powers to close off the damaged vessels, and then it glared at the wizard with such malevolence and fury that he recoiled in horror, his skin literally creeping along his spine.

     The clay man lunged at him again, but this time Thomas was ready for it. Pointing a finger, he croaked the words of a spell and incandescent bolts of energy flew at the shape changer. The clay man screamed in agony as they burned themselves into his chest, penetrating breastplate and glass ceramic armour as though they didn't exist, and a convulsion ran through its body. Its skin rippled through all the colours of humanity from blue black, chocolate brown, sunburned red and creamy white while its hands swelled to gigantic size, like the talons of a giant eagle. Its face contorted into a shape from a nightmare. Thomas froze in sheerest terror, and if the creature had attacked him then he would have been helpless to defend himself, but instead the clay man turned and fled, disappearing down the stairs with a howl of fury and dismay.

     Thomas could only stare after it in profound relief until he felt hands pulling roughly at his shoulders and looked around into Saturn's angry face. "What in the name of the Gods is going on here?" he demanded furiously. "Answer me, man! I should think the whole ship heard you screaming like all the demons of Hell were..."

     "Clay..." croaked Thomas, and had to stop to massage his throat before he could continue. "Clay man. That way." He pointed the way it had gone.

     "What kind of blithering nonsense..." began the older wizard, but then he spotted the droplets of congealing pink blood on Thomas's face and clothing and he swore violently. "Stay here and guard the Orb," he commanded, and he ran back to the bridge.

☆☆☆

     Saturn knew that any attempt to follow the clay man was useless. He could only be heading for the teleportation chamber, the only way off the ship with the cavern outside almost in vacuum, and there was no way Saturn could beat him to it. The chamber's twin was in the moon city, only a short run from the cubicle leading to Tara, and if the clay man made it to the capital of Belthar it would disappear without trace into the teeming thousands of that city's population, beyond hope of detection and capture.

     Arriving back at the bridge, therefore, he snatched up the Coronet of Farspeaking and thrust it onto his head, issuing such a mental command to Pondar Walton that the other wizard nearly dropped the fragile crystal key he was examining.

     "There's a clay man 'porting through from the ship!" Saturn's mental cry told him. "Stop it getting back to Tara! At any cost!"

     "I'm on my way," Pondar replied, placing the crystal key carefully back into its padded box and closing the lid before hurrying out of the temporary laboratory he'd set up near the centre of the moon city. The eight Agglemonian noble houses that had lived in the moon city had brought dozens of rare and valuable magical items up with them, left behind after their hasty departure as part of the deal they'd made with the city's new masters, and the task of identifying, cataloguing and documenting them had only just begun. When the danger they presented to the world had been fully assessed they would be returned to Lexandria for permanent storage or disposal, but for the time being they were thought to be safer on the tiny moon, where any disaster they might cause would only affect a relatively small number of people.

     Pondar was still thinking about the crystal key, found in the treasure vaults of the luckless Laxu family, as he puffed down the bare stone corridor as fast as his arthritic joints allowed. What door did it open? Where did it lead? What other powers might the key possess? If he'd been concentrating fully on the task at hand he might have saved himself a lot of pain and embarrassment, but as it was his mind was so preoccupied with the key that he almost ran into the soldier before seeing him. He looked up in surprise, and had just enough time to notice the torn and ragged state of his uniform before the soldier swung a fist and knocked him to the floor.

     The clay man reached down to lift the unconscious wizard's shoulders and began dragging him towards a nearby doorway, but at that moment a pair of army engineers turned a corner and froze in astonishment at what they saw. "What happened?" demanded the first as they came running up. The clay man turned and fled and one of the engineer gave chase, suddenly certain that some mischief was being committed and determined to get to the bottom of it.

     Pondar regained consciousness just a moment later, to find the second engineer bending over him in concern. "Stop him," he groaned as the younger man helped him back to his feet. "Don't let him get away."

     "Don't worry sir," said the engineer reassuringly. "Cowen'll get 'im. He boxes for the regiment. You just rest and take it easy."

     "Alone?" cried Pondar in sudden alarm. "He went after him alone?"

     "Don't worry, sir. Cowen's the best..."

     "Gods!" The elderly wizard shook himself free and hobbled down the corridor towards the room containing the teleportation cubicle. "That's a clay man he's chasing! If he catches it..." His head began to swim and he had to pause, leaning against the cold stone wall until the dizziness passed. "Go after him!" He ordered the engineer. "Get anyone you meet on the way to help you. Don't let it get you alone."

     "What about you? I can't just..."

     "I'm a wizard! I can take care of myself! Now go!"

     The engineer hesitated a moment longer, then turned and ran after his friend.

     He arrived at the teleportation chamber to find Cowen staring in frustration at the shut door. "He got away," he said sullenly. "Now we'll never know what he was up to, unless the wizard knows."

     The other engineer kept his distance, though, glancing warily around the room for any sign of a body or a discarded uniform. "What is it?" Cowen demanded, starting forward.

     His companion backed away in sudden fear. "That was a clay man you were chasing," he said, searching around for anything he could use as a weapon. "They say they can change their disguise in just a few seconds."

     It took Cowen a moment to realise what his friend was saying. "You think that I'm... That's ridiculous!"

     "Just keep your distance, okay?"

     They were still standing there, staring at each other in mutual alarm and suspicion, when Pondar Walton staggered in a few moments later.

☆☆☆

     Up on the surface of Kronos, a jet of air was shooting out of a small hole in the ground between two jagged boulders. The moisture in the air froze almost immediately into a cloud of glittering crystals, only to evaporate again a moment later as they shot into the glaring rays of the yellow sun. Now and then a frond of fern or the tiny, frozen corpse of a bird shot out of the ground, hurled far out and away from the feeble gravity of the tiny moon to become independent satellites of the planet Tharia, doomed to drift through space for the rest of time.

     Gradually, though, the force of the escaping air was lessening, so that the frozen corpse of a mouse that was shot out a few minutes later fell back to Kronos after completing half an orbit, startling a moon trog as it thudded into one of the crystal panes of a farm dome. As the last of the air in the hanger cavern escaped, a few bits of greenery were moving so lazily that they settled back to the ground just a few yards away from the hole, where they would be found a few years later by a space suited moon trog performing routine maintenance.

     Two hours after the depressurisation had started, the movement of the incredibly rarefied air in the tube had become too slow to measure. The depressurisation of the chamber below was complete.