Chapter Six

Galileo Galilei reached across the vegetable stall and rooted amongst the yellow peppers. "This!" he said, pulling one out and waving it at the stall's proprietor, "is a ripe pepper. This," and he waved the one that he had been given moments before, "is over-ripe. Even a dolt such as yourself must be able to tell the difference."

The stall's proprietor sighed. "Venetian peppers always look like that," she said. "And they taste better that way. Everyone knows that."

"Then everyone is foolish," Galileo snapped. "I will take five more like this." He waved the ripe pepper at her, just in case she decided to miss the point. "And I will risk the taste."

The proprietor shrugged, and raised her eyebrows at her other customers. As he watched her select more peppers that matched the one he had, he shook his head. Thieves! Venice was populated with thieves! Back home in Padua he would have left his cook to choose the food for a meal such as the one he had invited Steven and his friends to that night, but he didn't trust the cook he had hired that morning. All Venetians were in collusion to defraud the rest of the world: everyone knew that. He would choose the food, and present it to the cook as an accomplished fact.

He shuddered, remembering that the cleaners he had hired would be cleaning and airing the rented house even as he wasted his time wandering around the market. He just hoped that they wouldn't disturb any of his manuscripts. Or his spyglass. He had given them full instructions, but Venetians heard what they wanted to hear. They were a race apart.

"Have you heard about Galileo Galilei?" a voice said beside him. The speaker was a woman: a maid perhaps, or a cook's helper. He froze, his attention distracted from the peppers.

"No," her companion said: a common strumpet by her look. "What has he done this time?"

"Poisoned a man in the Tavern of St Theodore and of the Crocodile, so they say. Tommaso Nicolotti is furious. Apparently Galileo was attacked in the Tavern of the Angel by Tomasso's other son, but escaped with his life intact, if not his dignity."

The women laughed as Galileo pondered. Poison a man in a tavern he may have done, if only by accident, but he was sure that he would have remembered being attacked by another Nicolotti, no matter how drunk he might have been. And he'd never been in the Tavern of the Angel, he was sure of it.

He smiled. Of course: Steven Taylor had left his house wearing his clothes! The poor man...

The stall-keeper handed over his peppers, and Galileo was so amused by the fact that Steven had been attacked in error that he completely forgot to check them until it was too late to return them. And they were over-ripe: every single one of them.

"Doctor, isn't this wonderful?"

Vicki held the dress up against herself and pirouetted. The hem flared out as she spun, and the gold thread glittered in the candlelight, casting little points of light across the tapestries of their rooms.

"Hmm?" The Doctor looked over from where he was adjusting his cravat in the mirror. "Oh, yes my dear, I dare say it's very pretty. Very pretty indeed."

"You're not going to Galileo"s house as you are?" she asked.

"Yes, of course. I see no need to change." He ran his thumb behind the lapel of his jacket. "I find that these clothes suffice for most occasions, planets and time periods."

Vicki was about to press the issue when the door to their room opened and Steven walked in. "Almost ready?" he asked. "We don't want to keep Galileo waiting."

"You seem to have recovered somewhat since this morning," the Doctor observed.

Steven flushed slightly. "I've been walking it off," he said.

"There are some fresh clothes in your bedroom," Vicki said. "If they're anything like the ones that were laid out for me, then you'll look almost human."

Steven sneered at her for a moment, then crossed over to the door that led to his bedroom. "I hope there's some hot water too," he said.

As he vanished, Vicki crossed over to the window and gazed out across St Mark's Square. "It's beautiful here," she said wistfully, gazing at the wavering reflection of the moon in the lagoon.

The Doctor murmured something non-committal from the far side of the room.

Vicki's gaze moved across the crowds of the square to the brick bell tower that the Doctor had called the campanile. It seemed to be reaching up into the star-strewn sky, aiming for the heart of the moon. The air smelled of seawater and spice. Somewhere in the distance, someone was singing a pure, simple song.

Something moved on top of the campanile. Vicki glanced up, and caught a momentary glimpse of a pair of leathery wings stretching out from a hard, shiny body. She rubbed a hand across her eyes and looked again, but the campanile was empty.

"Sir?"

Irving Braxiatel looked up from the book he had been reading. Outside the window the sun was setting in bands of crimson and gold. The light from the candelabra flickered over the bland face Cremonini, his manservant, in the doorway. "Yes?" Braxiatel said calmly. "What is it?"

"A visitor, sir."

Braxiatel closed the book. "Don't tell me: a special visitor."

"Indeed, sir."

Braxiatel nodded. "I'll be straight down." He sighed as he levered himself up out of the chair. The organization of this business was proving to be more problematic than he had expected when he had started out. It had seemed like such a simple idea, but putting it into practice had taken almost twenty human years. To his race that was a mere blink of an eye, of course, but he had found that his time on Earth had influenced him in strange ways. He had come to think like them, even to act like them at times. He hadn't been as polluted by their influence as the Doctor, of course, but if he ever went home he would have to make some changes in his manner.

Twenty years. As he walked down the stairs towards the salon, he remembered the problems, the setbacks and the unmitigated disasters that had befallen him in that time. The whole thing had been on the verge of falling apart at one stage, until he had suggested, albeit reluctantly, involving the Doctor. That had turned the tide. The Doctor was integral to his plans now, and he would not, could not stop. Not when he was so close to success. It was a shame that the Doctor's name was so symboloc, but Braxiatel was enough of a realist to accept it, and work with it. He didn't have to like it, though.

Szaratak and Tzorogol, his two Jamarian aides, were standing in the salon waiting for him. As soon as he entered, they turned off their hologuise generators and returned to their thin, horned Jamarian forms.

"What has happened?" Braxiatel asked immediately. "I wasn't expecting a report until tomorrow morning."

"We have located the Doctor," Szaratak grunted. "The real Doctor," it added, flicking its head back so that its horn whistled through the air. "He's making his way by coach around the coastline. He'll be in Venice within a few hours."

"By coach?" Braxiatel frowned. "Are you sure?"

"Of course we are sure," Tzorogol snapped. "He's exactly the way you described him: an old man with sharp features and white hair."

"This is the only other person for miles around who fits the description," Szaratak added. "We did a full scan. How many people do you want around here who look like the Doctor before you decide which one you want?"

"All right," Braxiatel said, irritated by Szaratak's near insolence, "send a welcoming committee of as many envoys as you can round up. Explain the situation to them first. Is the Doctor alone?"

Szaratak and Tzorogorol both shook their small heads. "He has company with him," Szaratak growled.

"Hmm," Braxiatel mused, "he does travel with companions, we know that, and his companions are used to dealing with aliens. Tell the envoys there's no point in using their hologuises. I don't want any misunderstandings on the Doctor's part, and besides, those things drain energy like nobody's business." He stared at the two Jamarians. "Was that it, or is there something else?"

They glanced at each other. "That's it," Szaratak growled.

"Then get going," Braxiatel snapped. The two Jamarians glared at him for a moment, then turned to leave. "And don't forget to turn on your hologuises before you leave the house," he shouted after them.

Jamarians. He shook his head sadly. To think that he was using a race too paranoid to develop anything more than a rudimentary civilisation. He'd have been better off using Ogrons.

"This is excellent," the Doctor said, waving his hand across the table. "A repast fit for a king."

Vicki smiled enthusiastically as Gallileo nodded his acknowledgement. "It's wonderful," she said. "What is everything?" Galileo took a swig of his wine, and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. "Red and yellow peppers in olive oil," he said, indicating a gaily coloured dish, "Tomatoes stuffed with anchovies, squid and a salad of mozzarella, aubergine and olives. A simple first course. There will be soup and potato dumplings to follow, then calves' brains and tongue."

Vicki looked over to where Steven was gazing morosely at the plate in front of him. Behind him, Galileo's dining room was in semi-darkness, with only the light from the candelabras illuminating the table and the food. In the shadows beyond, Vicki gained the impression of faded velvets and threadbare tapestries. "Isn't it nice, Steven?" she said brightly, just to see his reaction. She wasn't disappointed: he flinched, startled, then looked around the table.

"Er... that's right," he said, and slumped down again.

"You seem distracted, my boy," the Doctor said, spearing an olive with his knife. "Is there something you want to tell us?"

Steven glanced up and flushed guiltily. His eyes flickered towards Galileo. "No, I... What I mean is... "

The Doctor's steely gaze fastened on Steven. "We have all had strange experiences since we arrived here in Venice," he chided. "Vicki and I were almost abducted by..." He paused, and coughed. "By persons in disguise, and Vicki has had a dream that turns out to have been more than a dream. When this is added to the invitation we received, well, it makes one think, does it not?" He leaned forward. "If you have anything to add, and I would be surprised if you didn't, then I suggest you add it now. The more we know about whatever is happening here, the better off we will be!"

Steven opened his mouth to answer, but Galileo beat him to it. "Don't blame your friend, Doctor," he said. "I am the one he is protecting." He looked from the Doctor to Vicki and back again. "But before I begin, I assure you that I am blameless in every way."

The Doctor nodded. "I will accept that assurance - for the moment."

"Very well." Galileo took a deep breath. "The first 'occurrence' as you put it was... No, let me tell you about the second one. I will demonstrate the first after dessert. The second was when my wine was poisoned in a nearby tavern."

"How do you know it was poisoned?" the Doctor queried sharply.

"Because when I threw it into the face of some oaf who insulted me, he died of poisoning," Galileo replied.

"Seems fairly convincing to me," Steven murmured to Vicki.

"The third occurrence," Galileo continued, "was when your friend Steven and I discovered a dead body not far from here."

"Poisoned?" Vicki asked.

"No, my dear lady," Galileo replied with a smile, "stabbed through the heart with a long, thin blade. A rapier, perhaps, although the ribs were crushed, indicating that the blow was a forceful one."

"Did you know either of the murdered men?" the Doctor asked.

"The first, no. The second, yes." Galileo waved a hand at the shadowy room around him. "He was the owner of this fine house, and thus my landlord."

"To be at the scene of one murder can be accounted a misfortune," the Doctor said with a slight smile. "To be at the scene of two begins to look like carelessness. Do you have any suspects?"

"For the first death - the poisoning?" Galileo shrugged. "Only the man who bought me the wine. He was an Englishman with long grey hair and a deep scar running down the side of his face -"

Steven, who had just picked up his flagon of wine, suddenly jerked in his chair, spilling wine over his lap.

"Sorry," he muttered. "Sudden chill."

"- Although I suspect that he may have been employed by my enemies, of whom I have many." Galileo smiled, rather proudly. "Not only among my contemporaries at the University of Padua, but also among the wider philosophical community. I have proved the valued theorems of many distinguished thinkers to be less worthy of consideration than the maunderings of a village idiot, and they do not thank me for it. I think it would be fair to say that I have many enemies."

"You surprise me," the Doctor murmured. "Is there any more of this fine wine, by the by?"

The crickets were rasping in the bushes and the grass as Cardinal Roberto Bellarmine's coach halted. Disturbed, Bellarmine paused in his reading of the Bible and glanced out of the window. Ahead of him the soldiers were conferring and examining a map. The moon glittered on the waters of the Adriatic and, from their position on top of the rolling hills that swept down toward the shore, Cardinal Bellarmine could just make out the dark bulk of Venice on the horizon, pinpricked with the red spots of torches. To Venice's left the island of Murano lay sleepily: to its right the long line of the Lido separated the lagoon from the sea. Down near the beach, Bellarmine could see a ramshackle collection of huts and, a few yards into the water, the bobbing hulls of fishing boats. There was a fire lit, and a group of fishermen were sitting around it singing and eating. His mouth watered as the smell of cooking fish drifted up the hillside towards him. Perhaps in the name of God these simple fishermen would offer them food and shelter for the night, and carry them across the lagoon to Venice in the morning.

Then again, given the well-known Venetian feelings about the Pope, perhaps not.

As the soldiers conferred, Cardinal Bellarmine took up his reading where he had left off: chapter two of the Book of Hosea. "Rebuke your mother, rebuke her," he intoned, "for she is not my wife and I am not her husband. Let her remove the adulterous look from her face and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts." He paused for a moment, turning the words over in his mind, searching for meanings within meanings, hidden symbols, links with passages elsewhere in the Bible. Bellarmine firmly believed that the answer to any question was hidden within the Bible, couched in obscure language and poetic imagery. It was the task of theologians such as himself to tease out these answers and apply them to the secular world.

A noise from above made him pause - a great roaring, as if the mother of all lions were showing its wrath. He glanced out of the coach's window, and gasped as he saw a red star falling from the sky to the Earth, casting its fiery light all around. Smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace, and the sky and the stars were blotted out by its passage. A torrent of noise like a trumpet blast blotted out the wild neighing of the horses and the shouts of the soldiers, and made him cover his ears and cower.

His coach suddenly began to shake as the horses jerked in their harnesses. Bellarmine shouted to the driver to calm them down, but the man did not answer. Perhaps he hadn't heard over the roaring. Perhaps he had fled, or fainted. Bellarmine shot a concerned glance out of the window to where the red glare illuminated the hillside and the now deserted beach with the light of hell. If the horses took it into their heads to plunge down that grassy slope then the coach would certainly tip over and smash into firewood. Bellarmine gathered his robes up and, throwing the door open, jumped out just as the coach began to move. The door caught his foot as the horses pulled away, pitching him to the hard ground. As his shoulder and knees hit the earth simultaneously a wave of nausea passed through him. His bible slipped from his grasp and spun away.

The noise and the light ceased. The rasp of crickets in the underbrush gradually began afresh: one at first but soon too many to count.

The coach was receding into the distance and the soldiers had fled; he could see their horses galloping frantically along the path, the riders clinging to the reins. Or perhaps the horses had bolted and the riders were attempting to regain control. Either way, he would receive no help from that direction. Slowly, fearfully, he turned his eyes to the nearby hillside, and a prayer rose unbidden to his lips.

On the hill nearby, on the side away from the beach, sat a glowing wheel, twenty feet across, set around with small hubs that looked like eyes. Bellarmine's legs suddenly gave out, and he sank to his knees. Confusion filled his mind. Surely this was the very object that Ezekiel had written about - the chariot sent by God? What could this mean? Was he being called to Heaven to meet his Maker, or was this one of Satan's tricks?

A section of the great wheel slid aside like a curtain. White light spilled out, so bright that Bellarmine had to shield his eyes. In the midst of the light, four creatures emerged from the wheel. One was taller than Bellarmine, heavily muscled, and had the face of a lion. Another walked on all fours, with a heavy, anvil-like face that bore two short horns. The third had a face like a man, but was taller and thinner than any man had ever been that walked the Earth. The fourth was feathered and winged like an eagle. They were familiar to him. They were like old friends. How often had he turned to those passages in Ezekiel and Revelations, seeking out their secret meanings? Why had he never suspected that the passages might have been literal truth, and that God's Angels bore those forms?

"We have come for you," the Angels said in unison."You are expected."

And Cardinal Bellarmine broke down in tears.

"An excellent meal," the Doctor said. "My compliments to your cook." He reached out and speared a chunk of cheese from the plate in the centre of the table."I always say you can tell the quality of a civilization by the food it eats, don't I, my boy?"

"Yes, Doctor," Steven dutifully responded. In fact, there were so many things that the Doctor always said that he was beginning to lose count.

"This dessert is wonderful," Vicki said, spooning more of the thick yellow liquid into her mouth. "What is it?"

"Zabaglione," Galileo replied. "A confection made with eggs, sugar and marsala wine. I am humbled that it meets with your approval. My modest fare is exalted by your glorious beauty. In fact -"

Steven coughed warningly and, when Galileo glanced over at him, Steven shook his head. He'd seen what Galileo was like when he had a few bottles of wine inside him, and he'd had quite a few over dinner. So had Steven. In fact, his head was beginning to swim.

"You said earlier on," the Doctor mused, "that there was an unusual occurrence that you would demonstrate after dessert. Am I permitted to know what it might be, or do you intend keeping me in the dark for a while longer?"

Galileo gazed thoughtfully at the Doctor. Despite his prodigious consumption of wine, his gaze was still sharp and watchful. "Before I do," he said abruptly, "I must break one of my personal rules, and discuss religion. You and your companions are, I presume, English: you have that look about you. That may indicate Protestant leanings. However, your perfect grasp of Italian may suggest a long residence in our fair land, leading one to believe that you have Catholic tendencies. But then again, what is Catholic in Venice has been considered heresy in Rome, and vice versa. So, you see, I can come to no firm conclusion concerning at which altar you worship."

"In a long and eventful life," the Doctor said eventually, "I have experienced nothing that I could not account for by the laws of physics, chemistry or biology. If a God or Gods exist, and I cannot rule out the possibility, then I can only presume that He, She or They take no active part in the lives of the many and various creatures that populate this extensive and wonderful universe of theirs." He picked a crumb of cheese from his plate and swallowed it. "In addition, I have seen countless races worship countless Gods with attributes which are mutually incompatible, and each race believes itself to be following the one true faith. While I respect their beliefs, I would consider it arrogance for any race to try and impose their beliefs on me, and if I had a belief of my own then it would be equally arrogant of me to impose it on them. In short, sir, I am currently an agnostic, and by the time my life draws to its close, and I have travelled from one side of the universe to the other and seen every sight there is to see, I firmly expect to be an atheist. Does that answer your question?"

"That and several others," Galileo said. "You and I have more in common than I had thought." He stood up. "Follow me. I have something that might interest you."

He led Steven, Vicki and the Doctor away from the table, strewn with the remains of their meal, and out into the stairwell. For a moment Steven thought he was going to take them down into the alley outside, but instead he headed upstairs. At the top he climbed up a ladder and threw a trapdoor open. The others followed him up onto a wooden platform which crowned the house. The sky above them was so bright with stars that Steven could have read a book by them, most of them lying in the thick band of the galactic disc. From far below he could hear the lapping of water.

"Careful," he muttered to Vicki, "don't lose your footing."

"Don't worry," she said. "I'm as sure footed as a - Oh!" He caught her arm as she stumbled. She pulled her arm free. "I can look after myself, thank you," she said.

"You couldn't get much wetter if you did fall in," he whispered to himself as she moved closer to the Doctor.

Galileo and the Doctor were standing beside a shrouded shape. Galileo pulled the covering sheet off with a flourish. Steven couldn't see what the fuss was about: all that was underneath was a crude, low power telescope on a tripod. It looked as if it was made out of brass covered in red leather.

"With this spyglass," Galileo said proudly, "I can bring objects sixty times closer. The principle is complex and difficult to explain, and I laboured mightily to produce it. The Doge will pay heavily to obtain it."

"The principle of refraction is simple enough," the Doctor said. "The power is limited, of course, by the distance between your lenses. If you can reflect the light from a concave mirror at the end here -" he indicated the eyepiece, "- and then reflect it out of the side of the spyglass using an inclined plane mirror halfway up, then you could almost double the length and greatly increase the magnifying power. I could suggest other -"

Galileo's face was thunderous. "There are no improvements to make to this spyglass," he interrupted. "I have perfected it."

"If you say so." The Doctor smiled at Steven.

"Is this piece of glass meant to be broken?" Vicki said. She was peering into the far end of the telescope.

"What?" Galileo pushed her out of the way. "What have you done, girl?" He peered at the end of the telescope. "The lens has been smashed! It took days to produce one to the right specifications, and now it's ruined!"

"I didn't do anything!" Vicki protested. "It was like that when I found it!"

Galileo whirled around as if he expected to find the saboteur on the platform with them. "Whoever did this will rue the day that their paths ever crossed that of Galileo Galilei," he shouted.

"Yes, yes, that's all very well," the Doctor fussed, "but I presume that you wanted to show me something through this simple device. Can you not at least tell me what it was that you saw?"

Galileo sighed, and turned back to the Doctor. "I can do better than that," he said, still angry, "I can show you a sketch I made." From beneath his coat he brought out a roll of parchment and handed it to the Doctor. As Steven watched, the Doctor unrolled it and glanced at whatever illustration it contained.

"I saw it last night," Galileo said. "It was travelling between the moon and the Earth. I swear so."

"I believe you," the Doctor said. He turned the parchment toward Steven, who drew in his breath sharply. The sketch on the parchment was rough, done in charcoal, but showed a disc like a flattened egg with circular holes along the side.

"Do you recognize it?" the Doctor asked quietly.

Steven met his worried gaze. "It's a spaceship," he said tersely.