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le hadn't passed the invitation on to him." Braxiatel smiled slightly. You could always count on the Doctor to arrive in the right place, give or take a few miles, at the right time, give or take a few days. His approximateness was one of his few endearing qualities. "Have you made contact?"
"Of course I didn't make contact!" Szaratak snarled. "You said you would rather do it yourself. If you wanted me to make contact then why didn't you say so?"
"Calm down. You did right: there's no sense worrying the poor chap unduly." Braxiatel turned towards the door, then turned back. "Oh, and you may as well turn the hologuise projector off. We don't want to waste the batteries."
The man reached down to his hip and fiddled with something hidden. As Braxiatel watched, the man's body shimmered and faded away. Within seconds, a stick-thin alien with a rapier-like horn and mottled blue skin covered with bumps was standing before him.
"You weren't seen, were you?" Braxiatel said. "It would scupper our plans completely if anybody saw you in your true form."
"No," Szaratak snarled, "I wasn't seen."
Steven had never seen anything like Venice before. He walked its alleys as if he were in a dream, trying to forget the rotting body dangling from the pillar, letting his feet take him where they would. The Doctor had assured him that it was impossible to get lost in the city. All one had to do was to ask any passer-by the way to St Mark's Square. He hoped that the Doctor was right. There were certainly enough people to ask. Crowds thronged the place, dressed in everything from rags to silk robes.
The haphazard arrangement of the alleys amazed him. They followed no plan or pattern, running in random directions and narrowing or widening for ho apparent reason, terminating in taverns, restaurants, houses or just dead ends. Sometimes they crossed dark, glittering canals that stank of sewage, sometimes they ran parallel to them. The canals seemed to form an alternate means of transportation: a
