The centaur pressed the fast-forward.

'Now dolphins, blah blah blah. The Irish coastline. Still no worries. Look, her locator comes into shot. Captain Short is scanning for magic hotspots. Site fifty-seven shows up red, so she heads for that one.'

'Why not Tara?'

Foaly snorted.

'Tara? Every fairy hippie in the northern hemisphere will be dancing around the Lia Fail at the full moon. There'll be so many shields on, it'll look like the whole place is under water.'

'Fine,' grunted Root through gritted teeth. 'Just get on with it, will you.'

'All right. Don't get your ears in a knot.' Foaly skipped several minutes of tape. 'Now. Here's the interesting bit… Nice smooth landing, hangs up the wings. Holly takes off the helmet.'

'Against regulations,' interjected Root. 'LEP officers must never remove — '

'LEP officers must never remove their headgear above ground, unless said headgear is defective,' completed Foaly. 'Yes, Commander, we all know what the handbook says. But are you trying to tell me that you never sneaked a breath of air after a few hours in the sky?'

'No,' admitted Root. 'What are you? Her fairy godmother or something? Get to the important bit!'

Foaly smirked behind his hand. Driving up Root's blood pressure was one of the few perks of the job. No one else would dare to do it. That was because everybody else was replaceable. Not Foaly.

He'd built the system from scratch and if anyone else even tried to boot it up, a hidden virus would bring it crashing about their pointy ears.

'The important bit. Here we are. Look. Suddenly Holly drops the helmet. It must land lens down because we lose picture. We've still got sound though, so I'll bring that up.'

Foaly boosted the audio signal, filtering out background noise.

'Not great quality. The mike is in the camera. So that was nose down in the dirt too.'

'Nice pea-shooter,' said a voice. Definitely human. Deep too.

That usually meant big.

Root raised an eyebrow.

'Pea-shooter?'

'Slang for gun.'

'Oh.'

Then the importance of that simple statement struck him.

'She drew her weapon.'

'Just wait. It gets worse.'

'I don't suppose you would consider peaceful surrender?' said a second voice. Just listening to it gave the commander shivers.

'No,' continued the voice. 'I suppose not.'

'This is bad,' said Root, his face uncharacteristically pale. 'This feels like a set-up. These two goons were waiting. How is that possible?'

Holly's voice came through the speaker then, typically brazen in the face of danger. The commander sighed. At least she was alive. It was more bad news though as the parties exchanged threats, and the second human displayed an uncommon knowledge of fairy affairs.

'He knows about the Ritual!'

'Here's the worst bit.'

Root's jaw dropped.

'The worst bit?'

Holly's voice again. This time layered with the mesmer.

'Now she has them,' crowed Root.

But apparently not. Not only did the mesmer prove ineffective, but the mysterious pair seemed to find it amusing.

'That's all there is from Holly,' noted Foaly. 'One of the Mud People messes around with the camera for a bit and then we lose everything.'

Root rubbed the creases between his eyes.

'Not much to go on. No visual, not even a name. We can't really be a hundred per cent sure that we have a situation.'

'You want proof?' asked Foaly, rewinding the tape. 'I'll give you proof.'

He ran the available video.

'Now watch this. I'm going to slow it right down. One frame per second.'

Root leaned in close to the screen, close enough to see the pixels.

'Captain Short comes in for a landing. She takes off her helmet. Bends down, presumably to pick up an acorn, and…there!'

Foaly jabbed the pause button, freezing the picture completely.

'See anything unusual?'

The commander felt his ulcer churn into overdrive. Something had appeared in the top right-hand corner of the frame. At first glance it seemed like a shaft of light, but light from what or reflected from what?

'Can you blow that up?'

'No problem.'

Foaly cut to the relevant area, increasing it by 400 per cent. The light expanded to fill the screen.

'Oh no,' breathed Root.

There on the monitor before them, in frozen suspension, was a hypodermic dart. There could be no doubt. Captain Holly Short was missing in action. Most probably dead, but at the very least held captive by a hostile force.

'Tell me we still have the locator.'

'Yep. Strong signal. Moving north at about eighty klicks an hour.'

Root was silent for a moment, formulating his strategy.

'Go to full alert, and get Retrieval out of their bunks and back down here. Prep them for a surface shot. I want full tactical and a couple of techies.You too, Foaly. We may have to stop time on this one.'

'Ten four, Commander. You want Recon in on this?'

Root nodded.

'You bet.'

'I'll call in Captain Vein. He's our number one.'

'Oh no,' said Root. 'For a job like this, we need our very best. And that's me. I'm reactivating myself.'

Foaly was so amazed, he couldn't even formulate a smart comment.

'You're…You're…'

'Yes, Foaly. Don't act so surprised. I have more successful recons under my belt than any officer in history. Plus I did my basic training in Ireland. Back in the top hat and shillelagh days.'

'Yes, but that was five hundred years ago, and you were no spring bud then, not to put too fine a point on it.'

Root smiled dangerously.

'Don't worry, Foaly. I'm still running red hot. And I'll make up for my age with a really big gun. Now get a pod ready. I'm leaving on the next flare.'

Foaly did what he was told without a single quip. When the commander got that glint in his eyes, you hopped to and kept your mouth shut. But there was another reason for Foaly's silent compliance. It had just hit him that Holly could be in real trouble.

Centaurs don't make many friends and Foaly was worried he might lose one of the few he had.

Artemis had anticipated some technological advances, but nothing like the treasure trove of fairy hardware spread out on the four-wheel drive's dashboard.

'Impressive,' he murmured. 'We could abort this mission right now and still make a fortune in patents.'

Artemis ran a hand-held scanner bar over the unconscious elf's wristband. He then fed the fairy characters into his PowerBook translator.

'This is a locator of some kind. No doubt this leprechaun's comrades are tracking us right now.'

Butler swallowed.

'Right now, sir?'

'It would seem so. Or at any rate they're tracking the locator — ' Artemis stopped speaking suddenly, his eyes losing focus as the electricity in his cranium sparked off another brainwave.

'Butler?'

The manservant felt his pulse quicken. He knew that tone.

Something was afoot.

'Yes, Artemis?'

'That Japanese whaler. The one seized by the port authorities. Is she still tied up at the docks?'

Butler nodded.

'Yes, I believe so.'

Artemis twirled the locator's band around his index finger.

'Good. Take us down there. I believe it's time to let our diminutive friends know exactly who they're dealing with.'

Root rubber-stamped his own reactivation with remarkable speed — very unusual for LEP upper management. Generally it took months, and several mind-crushingly dull meetings, to approve any application to the Recon Squad. Luckily, Root had a bit of influence with the commander.

It felt good to be back in a field uniform and Root even managed to convince himself that the jumpsuit was no tighter around the middle than it used to be. The bulge, he rationalized, was caused by all the new equipment they jammed into these things. Personally, Root had no time for gadgetry. The only items the commander was interested in were the wings on his back and the multiphase, water-cooled, tri-barrelled blaster strapped to his hip — the most powerful production handgun under the world. Old, to be sure, but it had seen