This was a good read.  One of those stories where the universe in NOT in desperate peril.  A good ole adventure story.  I did not like the first person sections (especially the ones involving the Doctor).  I have to agree with the Virgin standards that first person for the Doctor should be OUT.  This book too humanizes the Doctor.  Other than that it was a good lighthearted story.

Iris is being filmed by Sam again.  Her silver blouse glints in the sunlight.  She shields her eyes.

'I love a good scrap.'


They were taken outside to stand against the bus and the day seemed hotter than ever.  A stiff wind had picked up, like the blast on opening an oven door, whirling loose bits of scrub grass and hard patters of sand into their faces.  They could feel the eyes of everyone in the roadside café on them, as well as the pink albino eyes of the guards of the Scarlet Empress.  They were herded and prodded and told brusquely to be quiet.  They had been quickly overpowered.  Iris's blaster proved less than useless - broken inside her bag and leaking fuel into the lining.  Gila had been forced to surrender his knife.  Iris tried to say that she demanded the meaning of this, but she was silenced with one curt glance from the leader of the tattooed men.

Here they were forced to stand in the baking heat.  The minutes ticked and trickled by.  The Doctor looked at Sam.  'We've left the café without paying our bill,' he said.  'That's a bargain.'

He was promptly hit in the mouth and, as he slipped to the ground, Sam flung herself at the offending guard.  She flattened him with surprise and Iris and Gila took their cues, Iris careering spectacularly into her own specially adapted Venusian aikido.

The Doctor struggled to his feet amid the pandemonium, in time to see the apparent leader of this mission raise his scimitar into a whirling, blinding arc of gold.  He prepared to bring it slashing into the exposed back of Gila, who was busy laying into another of the guards.  With a great shout, the Doctor leapt into the fray, coat tails flying.

They were embroiled in what seemed to Iris - even as she fought like a rampant tigress - the most disgracefully inelegant scrap.

And then the hot air cracked with the deadly sound of round after round of machine-gun fire.  Which brought the rumpus to a sudden end.

'Nobody move,' came a hoarse, unfamiliar voice.  They stilled themselves in the clouds of rank dust they had managed to kick up.  Gila took advantage of the hiatus to disarm his opponent, cracking the tattooed man's wrist in the process.  There was a wounded yelp.

One more burst of gunfire.  'Shut it!'

The bulky, grey-skinned waitress was wedged in the doorway of her establishment, squinting in the harsh light of day, with the ancient smoking weapon slung expertly at her vast hip. She bellowed at the scarlet-robed guards.  'We've never put up with your sort here.  The Empress holds no sway with the likes of us.'

Three of the guards promptly melted away like illusions.

'They soon gave in,' said Sam.

'They're sworn to protect their beautiful painted hides,' and Iris, picking herself up.  'The Empress goes to immense expense to have them  walking round like the living embodiment  of exquisite, aestheticised pain, and she doesn't want the them damaged.'

Gila kicked his own remaining, overpowered guard. 'What about this one?'

The Doctor said, 'His little T-mat thing isn't working.'

The panic-stricken guard was using his unbroken wrist to click a switch in his belt buckle.  His eyes were wild and pink.

The Doctor went striding towards the gun-toting Steigertrude, holding out both hands affably.  'Madam, you are a saviour...'

The woman growled low in her quivering, dewlapped throat.  'Just count yourself lucky,' she sneered.

'We do, we do,' he smiled.

'I think you should go now,' she grunted, and slipped the safety catch back on.  'That'll be seventy dirnars.  Service not included.'

The Doctor laughed.  'And what service!'  He turned to Iris.  'Well, pay the woman!'


Within minutes they were back on the road, with Sam at the wheel - refusing to let the Doctor argue her out of it - and their prisoner was trussed trussed up on the fold-out sofa.

'Why did you come after me?' Iris shouted, over the engine noise.  'What is that Empress of yours after now?  Doesn't she trust me?  Doesn't she think I'll go through with this?  What kind of treachery has she dreamed up in that withered, pestilential old head of hers?'

Gila nudged her.  'Let him get a word in edgeways.'