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  Rad blinked away the dust, and took stock. Grieves and Jones were up already, dust-covered but apparently intact. Rex was too, although unconscious in the broken "V" of the boardroom table, the marble slab split cleanly in two by the explosion. The Pastor himself was not only unharmed but hardly even dirty, having been shielded from the blast by the bulk of the robot's frame.

  The robot was a pair of legs with no body. The torso, head and arms were all now in separate corners of the room, and with a grimace Rad saw blood sprayed in an arc away from the window, covering the floor and nearby pillars nearest the metal legs. Whatever had hit the side of the building, the robot, nearest to the window, had taken the full force of the impact, square on. If Rad didn't know better, he would have said that was the intention. But the police wouldn't have lifted a finger, they would have happily circled the building in their blimps all night before anybody suggested they actually do anything, too terrified not of harming their Chairman, but of incurring his wrath. Rad doubted they had that kind of firepower anyway, unless a blimp or airship had crashed into the side of the building.

  There was a crackle and whine, which would have been deafening inside the boardroom if Rad's ears weren't already deafened and ringing from the explosion. A PA sprang to life, and a familiar voice cleared its throat before speaking.

  "Gentlemen, please remain where you are."

  Captain Carson.

  Rad rolled over with a wince and looked at where the glass wall had been. A stiff, ice-cold wind whipped around the edges of a large airship that hovered just a foot or two away from the lip of the precipice that fell one hundred and one stories to the street below. It was no sleek police blimp. This was a battered, bent, beaten mishmash, rusted and riveted, metals of different colours clashing as panels and patches overlapped each other.

  Rad smiled. Someone had been busy while he'd been away. The Nimrod was shipshape once more.

  The voice barked again. "I am sending my man across. Please do not move. You will each identify yourselves." In the window of the airship, Rad could see a vague outline of two men. One, a huge silhouette, began to move. Byron. The other remained still, bent over a control panel.

  The Pastor watched Rad, and followed his line of vision. Then he stood, broken glass tinkling to the floor from his body.

  "Captain Carson," he said.

  Rad turned to see him raise Jones's fat-barrelled gun.

  "Traitor!" He squeezed the trigger and his hand jerked back in recoil as the gun fired with a cloud of blue smoke.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  GRIEVES, PARTIALLY HIDDEN UNDER a small amount of debris in front of the Pastor, leapt up, his shoulder square on his target. As the Pastor fired, his aim was knocked off true and the bullet impacted the metal patchwork above the Nimrod's bridge window. Rad saw Carson duck instinctively, then wave a hand.

  "Stand clear," came his voice over the tinny speaker.

  There was a whoosh of compressed air, and a cable fired from the Nimrod and embedded itself in the rear wall of the boardroom. Retracting on a motor and pulley, Carson used the anchor to pull his ship snugly into the hole in the glass wall, causing what remained of the plate glass window to bulge alarmingly and sending another cascade of debris crashing down. But with the gap plugged, the chill wind was blocked, and Rad felt able to stand without being blinded by swirling dust.

  More noise, more industrial scraping of metal on metal, and Rad watched as the nose of the Nimrod unscrewed anticlockwise, partially, and swung open as a huge, airtight hatch. From within the craft, Byron stepped into the building, one hand pushing a gigantic hatch wheel almost a yard in diameter.

  The Pastor twisted in Grieves's grip, but the masked agent's hold was firm.

  "Carson! Carson, get your traitorous carcass out of here or I'll throw your gutted corpse off the roof myself." The Pastor's white hood puffed out from his face as he spat each word. He struggled continuously.

  Byron walked towards the Pastor, and seemed to regard him for a moment behind the opaque glass window of his faceplate. Then Byron walked over to check on Rex and Jones: the latter on his feet but battered, the former beginning to stir in the smashed cradle of the table. Apparently satisfied, Byron made his way over to Rad.

  "Do you require assistance, sir? The Captain is most keen to remove you from this situation and prevent the closure of the Fissure."

  Rad looked up at the voice, into the empty black window on the front of Byron's helmet. He stopped himself recoiling in fright, the story of Nimrod's dead batman at the forefront of his mind. Eventually he nodded and, leaning on Byron for support, walked stiffly with him towards the airship in its makeshift dock. Carson himself appeared in the airlock hatch, welcoming the detective with open arms.

  "My dear chap! Let Byron see to your injuries. I had begun to think you'd met a sticky end."

  Rad laughed, then stopped and straightened as he looked at Carson's face. It was amazing, truly amazing. Carson and Nimrod were the same person, clearly, identical right down to the bristling white moustache.

  "How did you know we were here?" Rad asked.

  The Captain's grey and yellow-toothed grin zipped open across his face.

  "You've been absent for a few days. We thought you'd perhaps encountered trouble, so Byron and I decided that action was required. We repaired the Nimrod, keeping one eye on the city in case Kane or anyone else reappeared. Once airborne we could monitor things a little better and we saw your little group travelling across town." The Captain jerked his thumb back towards the Nimrod jammed in the window. "That was more good luck than anything. We followed you until you entered the building, then just kept an eye on the boardroom."

  Rad nodded. He patted Carson's shoulder in thanks, then looked back at the others.

  "You're gonna have more passengers. The guy on the table is our murder suspect. You might want to check his fingerprints against the ones you took from me. And bring the Chairman, Pastor, whatever the hell he is I think he might be our main villain."

  The Captain smiled tightly at this, and nodded. "You leave the Chairman to me. I know all about him," he said, and strode briskly past Rad and into the middle of the room.

  "You must be Grieves and Jones," Carson said, nodding to each of the masked agents. "I've spoken to Nimrod. His temporal calculations indicate Fissure collapse in just a few hours. Are you able to assist? With Mr Bradley injured, we may require additional manpower."

  Jones walked up to Carson, stopping just a few inches from the old man's face. He brought his mask in close, moving his head around Carson's as if the Captain was some kind of statue or mannequin.

  "You look just like Nimrod," Jones said in his smoker's drawl. Carson smiled, and indicated the semi-conscious form of Rex.

  "Fascinating, I'm sure. Just like our Mr Bradley's doppelganger there." The Captain turned his attention to Grieves. Judge Crater now hung limply in the agent's grip, so limp that if Grieves were to let go the prisoner would surely drop to the hard floor like a stone.

  Carson pursed his lips. "Are we agreed?"

  "It's dangerous for us to stay here too long," said Jones.

  Carson's head snapped around. Jones flinched and turned to his fellow agent.

  Grieves looked at Jones, and then nodded. Jones held his hands up in surrender. Grieves jerked his head at Rex. Jones grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him to his feet, then hauled the semi-coherent man to the airship in a fireman's lift.

  Grieves remained where he was. Carson walked over to the Pastor, who snapped his head up. Carson sighed and pulled the hood off, revealing Judge Crater's face. The man looked up at Carson with an expression of insane, blood-vessel-popping rage.

  "Good evening, Judge Crater," said the Captain, quietly.

  At this the Pastor – Crater – jerked into life, rocking Grieves on his heels but remaining in his vice-like grip.

  "You'll pay for this, you traitorous shit. I'll kill you easy, old man."

  Carson raised a hand to his mouth
and coughed, almost politely. "Aside from the threat, I rather think that is the statement I should be making to you. We know that the Fissure will close in a few hours. How are you planning to do it?"

  Crater looked like a surprised child for a few seconds, then his face cracked into a wide grin.

  "What am I going to do? Nothing. Nothing at all! You're looking in the wrong place, old pal o' mine. I'm not who you should be worried about." Crater began to laugh, long and hard enough that his eyes screwed up into tiny, tight creases. Then he took a huge whoop of breath and screamed "Hallelujah! Amen!" at the top of his lungs.

  Carson frowned, and nodded at Grieves, who adjusted his hold on the prisoner and dragged him to the airship. The Captain stood in the boardroom, stroking his moustache and surveying the damage done to the room.

  Rad limped over to the Captain, left calf tightly bound in a cream-coloured bandage below the rolled-up leg of his suit.

  "Problem?"

  "Hmm?" Carson shook his head. "No, my boy, we are in crisis. 'Problem' as such is not an appropriate descriptor for our current situation." He went back to stroking his moustache and dropped his eyes to the floor, clearly lost in thought.

  Rad sighed. "If we're moving, we need to go now. Those police blimps aren't going to hang back forever. They may be a bunch of scaredy cats, but your ship is a sitting duck, stuck in the wall like that."

  The Captain considered, then nodded, patting Rad on the shoulder. "Yes, you are correct." He paused, and then said, "Did you hear what the Chairman said?"

  Rad nodded. "He said he's not the guy. Every crook says that when they get caught."

  "This is true, but I don't think he was trying to lay blame elsewhere. It wasn't a ruse, it was a boast."

  "You said Nimrod told you the Fissure was going to close in a few hours? How does he know, if it hasn't happened yet?"

  Carson nodded. "The Fissure will close. There is a time distortion between here and the Origin. It's hard to predict, and it can run in both directions, and sometimes, just sometimes, you can catch a glimpse of the future, or maybe a possible future..."

  Rad stopped him. "Yeah, the time thing. I know. I was in New York for a few hours, and it was a few days here."

  Carson met Rad's gaze with his own watery dark eyes. He smiled and dropped his voice to a whisper.

  "Yes... yes, of course. Magnificent, isn't it? So much space, so much life."

  "You been there too?"

  "No," said the Captain, shaking his head. "But I've seen it. I used to work for Judge Crater and the City Commissioners. I had the necessary expertise, and together we probed the Fissure and saw past it, into the Origin."

  "You know Nimrod is you, the 'you' of the Origin?"

  "Yes. We had a long chat. He mentioned your little visit."

  Rad closed his eyes and rubbed the memory of his visit away.

  "So what's going on? The Fissure is going to close. The Chairman set something running? Something to do with the robot. It came back on the boat from the Enemy... did it come back to kill the Chairman? Some kind of revenge, or reprogramming by the Enemy?"

  "Or reprogramming by the Chairman. But returning for what, I wonder?"

  "You can't be serious? The robot killed the entire building! The Chairman would do that?"

  "It depends," said the Captain, "on what the end result is. For the Chairman, the ends may well justify the means. The entire police force is out there in their blimps. The Chairman had placed naval officers in command of each. More robots. The curfew has been extended. The streets are deserted while the citizens quake in their homes. And this building is surrounded."

  Rad nodded slowly. "So if someone's going to attack the Battery, it's going to be now."

  "Indeed."

  "Was he going to use the robot to do it, somehow?"

  Carson brushed his moustache. "Possibly. But I think not. The robot may have been an intelligence gathering operation. Crater was obsessed with learning the Enemy's secret. Perhaps he needed to be sure..."

  Rad shook his head. "If the robot wasn't the tool in the box, then..." His eyes widened. "Kane said an Enemy airship had arrived, above the clouds. And guess what? Kane can fly now. Rockets and everything."

  Carson looked at Rad, forehead knitted in thought. Rad nodded.

  "And the Skyguard is strangely absent from our little party," he said. "Didn't even RSVP."

  The Nimrod's PA sprang into life with an electronic squall. Byron's voice, already mechanised by his suit, echoed oddly around the boardroom.

  "Gentlemen, there is another ship approaching the city."

  Rad and Carson looked at each other.

  "Police blimp?" shouted Carson back to the Nimrod.

  "Negative. Instruments suggest a large vessel, descending through the cloud deck. Destination estimated to be the Battery."

  Rad grabbed Carson by the sleeve of his tunic. "There it is. There's our Enemy attack. And I got a bad feeling about who's flying that thing."

  Carson raised an eyebrow, then nodded. "The Skyguard."

  Rad shook his head. "Kane Fortuna."

  "Byron," called the Captain. "Haul anchor and set full reverse!" He grabbed Rad and began to walk towards the hatch. "Your leg patched?"

  Rad nodded. "Byron's quite the expert."

  "He is indeed. Come, we have an airship to intercept."

  Rad entered the Nimrod first; Rad paused at the bulkhead just inside the hatch and Carson waved him on. Ahead of them, at the end of the short airlock passageway, was a ladder that led both up and down through hatchways.

  "Quickly, detective! Up!"

  Rad glanced past the Captain, back into the Empire State Building. The ship shook as the engines were throttled in preparation for departure.

  "What about the hatch?"

  Carson shook his head and waved again. "Byron can close it from the bridge when we pull out of our temporary dock. Now, go!"

  Heading up, the ladder took Rad into another dimly lit, steellined passageway which led back towards the front of the craft, where the cockpit sat above and slightly behind the protruding nosecone which was currently wedged into the side of the Empire State Building. As Rad stepped off the ladder, his weak leg gave out and he fell into an uncomfortable crouch in the corner next to something beige and soft. Curious, he moved his hands over the shape. Behind, he heard Carson clamber up the ladder and down the passage to the cockpit. The Nimrod shook again and Rad winced as the horrific sound of twisting and scraping metal reverberated inside the metallic interior of Carson's polar explorer as Byron attempted to reverse it away from the building.

  The beige shape moved under Rad's hands. He blinked, and pulled at one side, rolling the form over. As it moved, a flap of fabric flopped away, the corner of the trenchcoat sliding off to reveal a gas mask with one cracked goggle.

  "Grieves!"

  Ignoring his throbbing leg, Rad helped the agent pull himself to a seated position. Grieves moaned and clutched his head.

  "Crater escaped. Bastard was strong as an ox."

  Rad swore and glanced down the passage towards the cockpit. The Nimrod's control room was darker than the passageway, but he could see the back of Captain Carson's khaki jacket. It seemed he and Byron were concentrating fully on extricating their ship.

  "Hey!" Rad called out. Carson turned and Rad could see the Captain's eyes widen as he took in the scene.

  "Where's Crater?"

  Rad shook his head and the Captain's moustache bristled. The Nimrod shook again.

  Grieves grabbed at Rad's sleeve.

  "The hatch… Crater will be heading for the boardroom."

  "Ah, shit," said Rad. He swung himself onto the ladder and rattled down to the airlock passage. He turned as his feet hit the decking, but it was too late. The great airlock hatch was swinging slowly shut; beyond, the ruined facade of the boardroom's outer wall began to recede as the Nimrod pulled away.

  Carson's voice crackled from a PA horn in a corner near the hatch.