Erosh was a tiny gray planet one-twentieth the size of Earth. There were no continents - or maybe there was just one, smashed into a thousand tiny islands and encircling the planet like the cracked shell of an egg.

Fry descended through the atmosphere into thick gray fog. Moisture coated the windscreen and turned the world soft-edged, but he kept going, following the blinking blue UPS light on the dash. The needle on the fuel gauge wobbled in the red zone, reminding him that he was running on fumes. If he didn't reach his destination soon the hovervan would drop out of the sky like a stone.

And kill him.

Fry couldn't muster the appropriate sense of panic about this. He knew it should be there, but he couldn't connect with the feeling. It registered a distant second to Captain Glottus bleeding out in the back of the van.

Three hours had passed since Fry threw caution to the wind and decided to follow the mystery co-ordinates. In that time, Glottus hadn't regained anything that could be called real consciousness. He seemed to rise to the surface sometimes, but the most he ever did was mutter feverishly about people Fry didn't know. Once he gasped out "Kid! Kid!" and tried to sit up, but the effort knocked him out again. Fry had opted to keep driving. Glottus used "kid" as a catch-all – he could have meant Fry, sure, but he could also have been hallucinating some raw recruit whose name he'd never bothered to learn. There was no way to know which it was, and no time to stop anyway. Glottus was living on borrowed time, and arguing about it wouldn't help.

Fry glanced back at him. The captain was muttering again, but the words were too jumbled to make out. His bandages were soaked red. That wasn't good.

Far below, Fry could make out shiny gray streets and the shapes of buildings. He was no longer the only vehicle in sight either. He passed food delivery trucks and shabby civilian hovercars as he made his descent, but most of what he passed . . . He swallowed, tightening his grip on the wheel, because most of what he was passing now was DOOP air traffic. Beat-up khaki hovervans that had seen at least a decade of service, and convoys of tired, dirty looking recruits with rifles slung over their shoulders. A swish new hovercar sped by and Fry made out two officers in velour ceremonial uniforms sitting inside the bubble, laughing so hard their jowls shook. They didn't spare Fry a second glance, but it was enough to make him nervous. Whatever this planet was, it had ties to the DOOP. The DOOP, who had framed Glottus.

Following the mystery co-ordinates was starting to seem like a bad idea, but it was too late to turn back now. There wasn't enough fuel left to thrust out of this planet's orbit – they had to land here.

As he got closer to the ground, Fry realized the shiny gray streets he'd seen weren't streets at all. They were water: deep canals threading between the buildings. He flew past a huge square of concrete, prefacing a building that had to be the town hall.

And then the thrusters failed and he hit the water.

Fry grappled with the steering wheel, yelling. He was hydroplaning now, careening out of control.

"You are approaching your final destination," the universal positioning system informed him calmly.

Fry hit a wall and lost his wing mirror.

"You are fifty feet from your final destination . . ."

His damaged airbag made a forlorn sputtering sound as it struggled to deploy.

"You are twenty feet from your final destination . . ."

Water fountained up on all sides, blinding him.

"You are . . . feet from . . . zzzt . . . zzt . . . "

The UPS fizzled as the windscreen cracked and water sloshed over the dashboard. Fry blinked through a face full of dirty water and threw his full weight onto the brake.

He was screaming, he knew, but his ears were too waterlogged to relay the sound back to him.

There was a house approaching at speed. It was tall and crooked, painted a dark inky blue, and there were two girls standing on the stoop.

Their mouths were open. Fry had the feeling they might be screaming too.

He yanked the steering wheel – furiously, desperately – and by some miracle the left thruster fired, spinning him off-course. He went into a tailspin, whirled 360 degrees then did it again, and again . . . the world blurred and the gorge rose in his throat . . . then there was a metallic crunch that shook him to his bones, and the spinning stopped.

Fry groaned.

His ears were ringing. His head ached.

Creeak. Creeaaaak.

Fry looked up in time to witness, in slow-motion, the moment the remaining windows fissured into a thousand tiny shards and caved in on him.

And then his lungs were burning and his world was water, as he remembered, too late, that he couldn't swim.

Air.

Air.

Fry gasped.

"He's alive!" a girl's voice shrieked. She sounded young, but there was a trace of something heavy in her accent – German, or Dutch maybe. "Mort!"

This last word seemed to be a name. As Fry rolled over and vomited water, he heard footsteps. Strong arms pulled him upright and he found himself being stared at by a pair of eyes so dark the pupil blended near seamlessly into the iris. They belonged to a tall man with skin even darker than Glottus's – it was the deepest black Fry had ever seen, with a deep blue undertone that suggested something other than human in the man's ancestry. And he was bald. Not bald the way he would be if he'd shaved his head, but bald as if he'd never had hair. The surface of his skin was dusted with tiny white marks – they glittered when they caught the light, shifting like constellations of stars. They were stars, Fry realized suddenly. They were tattoos of stars, covering every available inch of his skin.

"You're lucky to be alive, boy," the man said.

Fry jumped. The voice was different – richer, deeper, like sedative turned into sound – but there was no mistaking the accent. It was the same as Captain Glottus's.

"G – Glottus," Fry gasped out. "You have to – you have -"

He doubled over, coughing up water.

"Mort!" the German (or maybe Dutch) girl screamed again. "Mort, he's bleeding, he's bleeding!"

Fry didn't stop to think. He ran in the direction of her voice.

Glottus was lying on the sidewalk behind him. He was out cold again, and looked as half-drowned as Fry felt. And there was blood seeping out from under his bandages. He was lying in a pool of pink-tinted water.

Please be alive, Fry thought numbly. Please.

The two girls were kneeling by Glottus. The first one was the one who had woken Fry. She was human, and white, but with the ruddy complexion of someone who had spent a lot of time outdoors. Her hair was long and wheat blonde, swinging down past her waist. She was wearing a spaghetti strap tank top and a tiny green pvc miniskirt. It looked like she'd been wearing a lot of glitter green eyeshadow to match, but that was now running halfway down her face. She was sopping wet, like she'd jumped into the water herself.

The other girl was Amphisobian, but more angular than Kif. She had a wiry build and thin features, and she was soaked wet too. She was dressed weirdly too, in a gold lamé jumpsuit with stitched-on gloves. Her feet were bare, but there were gold boots lying discarded on the sidewalk which probably belonged to her. They had soles six inches thick and they glittered. Blindingly. When she leaned in to try and stem Glottus's bleeding, water dripped off the end of her sharp green nose.

They were the girls he'd swerved to avoid, Fry realized. It looked like they'd thanked him for not killing them by saving him and Glottus from drowning.

"I think he was shot," the human girl said.

The Amphisobian girl was frowning.

"Mort," she said, "this is . . . this is . . ."

The man nodded.

"Eric," he said quietly. "Get Vondra, Tempest. Get her now."

The Amphisobian girl – Tempest - nodded tightly and took off running. Mort knelt down beside Captain Glottus and felt the pulse in his neck.

"The cards aren't wrong," he murmured to himself. "The cards are never wrong."

He straightened up abruptly.

"Candy," he said to the human girl. "Go find Johnny Four-Eyes."

Candy blinked, bewildered.

"The veterinarian?"

"The veterinarian. Try The Anchor down on Seventh, he drinks there. Find him. Tell him if he gets here in the next ten minutes, Vondra will clear his debts."

"All of them?"

"All of them. Do it. Go now."

Candy nodded, white-faced, and fled.

Fry shivered. The cold was beginning to set into his skin. He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten, or slept a sleep that wasn't caused by a blow to the head.

"You have to help him," he croaked.

The man – Mort – shrugged off his long black coat and laid it over Glottus, checking his pulse again with long thin fingers.

"I'm trying," he said patiently. "What happened? Who shot him?"

Fry swallowed.

"I . . . I . . ."

The words wouldn't come out. His mouth was still open, trying to admit what he'd done, when a woman strode out of the building.

She didn't run. She looked like it would be beneath her dignity to run anywhere, for any reason. But her nostrils were flaring and there was a fire in her eyes Fry had only ever seen before in one person. Leela wore that look, very rarely, when someone really crossed the line. It was terrifying, because it passed through blazing rage and condensed into sheer, icy fury. You hurt someone who belongs to me, it seemed to say, and now there's nothing I won't do. It was a look that promised a world of pain for whoever had caused it.

The woman wearing that look now was dark-skinned. Her hair was black without a hint of gray, and twisted up into an elegant knot at the nape of her neck. She was wearing high-heeled shoes and heavy silver earrings, and a wraparound dress made of deep burgundy velvet. It was nice, but it had a plunging neckline and it clung to every curve. It was the kind of thing Fry had never seen Leela or Amy wear before dark. His brain was overcrowded with detail at this point, but some small part of it managed to connect this choice of outfit with the tiny skirts and high heels Tempest and Candy had been wearing, and marshal these facts into a realization.

Hookers, it said helpfully. They're all hookers.

Fry considered this for a second, then dismissed it as a concern for another time.

The woman was staring down at Glottus.

"So it's true," she said tightly.

"Vondra."

Mort put a steadying hand on her shoulder. Without his heavy black coat he looked less human. You could see how thin he was, how his torso was too long and his waist too narrow. But Vondra didn't seem to see him that way. She leaned into him and closed her eyes briefly, like she was drawing on his strength.

His voice brought her out of it.

"This is what I saw," he murmured. "You know that. It was in the cards. The twins." He gestured between her and Glottus. "The shipwreck." He pointed at the wreck of the hovervan, sinking slowly into the water. "The hanged man, Vondra. It's coming. You can't fight this."

Vondra jerked away, fury alighting in her eyes again.

"No," she snapped.

"The cards -"

"I know what the cards say. You're reading them wrong."

She set her jaw. It hit Fry in an instant then, who she was. He didn't need psychic human hybrids to confirm it for him. The stubborn set of her jaw was enough. She was Glottus's sister. His twin, if the cards Mort had been talking about were accurate. That was why they were here.

Relief flooded through him. Glottus had to have put in those co-ordinates, if this was his sister. It couldn't be a trap.

Unfortunately Vondra didn't seem to have such warm feelings about him.

"The hanged man could be anyone," she snapped at Mort. Her gaze settled, cool and confrontational, on Fry. "If this pipsqueak killed my brother, you won't have to look far for the noose."

Fry swallowed hard.

To his surprise, Mort rose to his defense.

"Von," he said warily. "You're angry. I understand that. But this boy almost killed himself trying to get Eric to safety. To you. Do you really think -"

"Guilt," Vondra snorted. "That's guilt, is what that is. Open your eyes, for God's sake."

She pushed past him to Fry, and pulled the delivery boy up by his collar. Then she grabbed his chin and turned his head to one side, exposing the ragged wound on his ear.

"That's a bullet wound," she said. "So, firefight. Now look at the back of his neck." She peeled his collar away from the skin. "Burned. At a temp so high he can't feel the glass bedded in there. My guess? Shrapnel. Something went boom and this kid couldn't run away fast enough."

"So Eric got himself in trouble," Mort started to say, but Vondra shot him down again.

"You think Eric just picked up a stray and kept him? He's not DOOP."

"What?"

"He's not one of Eric's recruits. They make the recruits wear those stupid helmets – chafes 'em bald behind the ears, remember? Just in that one spot." She scrubbed a hand through Fry's damp hair and let it fall again. "No little bald patch." She seized his hand and rubbed at his thumb. "No callus either. If he was one of Eric's recruits, he'd be doing forty hours a week rifle practice. He'd have skin like old leather from pointer to thumb. So." She dropped his hand, and stared hard at Fry. "Who are you, and why did you shoot my brother?"

Fry swallowed. He was still dripping wet, but his mouth had gone bone dry.

"I had to," he croaked. "But I don't want him to die. Please. You have to believe me."

"I don't have to do squat. Who are you?"

Fry opened his mouth. He could tell her. He could tell her his name and then . . .

And then the Brainspawn would find out he was here. If his name – Philip J Fry – got out, if it got on the DOOP frequency or the TV or anything . . . the Brainspawn would use it to track him down. They'd notice the dead Brain soon enough, and the explosion, and they'd figure it out. Fry was the only person in the universe who could resist them. They'd know it was him. Once they figured that out, they'd try to find him, and once they found him . . . they'd use everyone around him to take him down.

These were good people. They were Glottus's family. Fry couldn't let anything happen to them.

"I can't tell you," he said mournfully.

"We'll see about that."

Vondra kicked him in the shin.

"Argh!"

Her footwear made it feel like being stabbed with a five inch plastic knife. Fry went down hard. He was still seeing spots when he felt her force his arms behind his back, then there was the cold click of metal around his wrists and he realized he'd been handcuffed.

"Put him in the blue room," he heard Vondra say. "And make sure he stays there."

The blue room was, well . . . blue.

It was definitely blue.

There was a blue glazed urn in each of the room's four corners, and heavy velvet drapes (also blue) covered the window. The focal point of the room was a huge four-poster bed, onto the blue satin sheets of which Fry had been unceremoniously dumped.

It didn't look like Vondra intended to come back any time soon.

Fry wriggled around, trying to see more of the room. It was difficult, because he was cuffed to the bed, but eventually he managed to rotate himself into a semi-upright position.

He stared up at the ceiling. There was a chandelier of some kind. The floating lights in it were blue, and the glass was tinted blue too. There was a plush blue carpet on the floor, and on the wall directly opposite him was something that looked like a painting made of fabric.

A tapestry, his brain supplied.

The tapestry was all in shades of blue, and depicted a lot of blue aliens having sex with each other in what looked like a big, blue alien orgy. It was the kind of thing Bender would have called high art back on Earth, and stolen from the Museum of Erotica to put in the apartment bathroom.

He'd heard snatches of laughter and music when he was brought up here, but the room itself must be soundproofed, because he couldn't hear anything now. And an hour of angry yelling hadn't produced a response, so it looked like no-one could hear him either. If he wanted out of here, he'd have to do it himself.

Fry tugged on the bed frame, hoping to find a weak spot in the wood. It was solid oak (or some wood that resembled oak) and unyielding, but the action did rattle the cuffs on his wrist.

They were loose. Not loose enough that he could slip out of them, but looser than they should be. Fry frowned. He'd lost weight since he left Earth, and he'd been wearing borrowed clothes. Mort obviously hadn't realized how skinny he was when he cuffed him. Fry could use that, maybe.

He twisted his fingers into a point and pulled hard on the cuffs. They made it halfway up his hand - scraping away most of the skin and making him yelp - but got stuck at the knuckle.

No good.

He swallowed, braced his feet against the headboard, and did the only thing that made sense – pulled harder.

There was an audible pop sound and a flash of pain.

Fry fell back on the bed with a scream.

When he held up his hand, his pinky finger was hanging at a creepy, crooked angle. He tried to shift it back into place and yelped again. Probably better not to touch it, he decided.

His finger was dislocated, but it seemed an acceptable trade-off for being free, so Fry decided to ignore it. He scrambled off the bed and ran for the door.

It was locked, but up until recently Fry had spent ninety per cent of his free time with Bender. Getting past locked doors was a skill he'd picked up in the first year of their friendship. Bender had a whole set of tools he kept in his compartment for this purpose – he could probably have picked the big iron lock in a minute. Fry didn't have so much as a hairpin on him. But he did have Bender's way of looking at the world. Bender would have picked the lock first – because it was flashy and a real movie-heist thing to do, and Bender loved to show off. If he couldn't do that, he'd break the door down. But he was a lot stronger than Fry. So option three, if the door was steel or some other metal he couldn't get through . . . he'd look for a work around. A cat flap or an air vent or . . . the sheet of blue stained glass above the door.

It looked expensive.

Then again, so did the urn Fry had turned upside down and climbed up on, scuffing the glaze with his shoe prints. He'd shot her brother, he figured. It wasn't like Vondra could hate him any more than she already did. So he balanced on one foot on top of the urn, slid off his sneaker and smashed the fancy glass.

He squeezed through the gap and dropped down onto the other side, on top of the pile of broken glass. It was lucky the hallway had hardwood floors, or this would have been like dropping into a pit of spikes. As it was the floor had shattered most of the glass on impact, so it was more like landing on sharpened sand. It was only as he brushed it off and eased his shoe back on that Fry realized a smarter person would have pushed his jacket or one of the cushions on the bed through that gap first, to soften the landing.

The other rooms in the hallway were locked, but there was music floating up the stairwell. Fry followed the sound.

The stairs opened out into a bar area. It was dark and there was a haze of thick sweet smoke hanging in the air. Though the room was packed with people, Fry couldn't make out any faces. He pushed his way through sweaty bodies and racous voices, searching for someone who could take him to Glottus.

Someone was strumming on a guitar, and there was a guy standing on the bar, singing into the neck of a beer bottle while the crowd whooped and hollered.

"Oh mother, tell your children not to do what I have done," he rasped. "Don't spend your life in sin and misery, in the house of the rising sun . . ."

Fry stuck his hand in a bucket of ice to take the edge off the pain while he stared around. No-one bothered to look his way.

"I got one foot on that platform, and another on that train . . . and I'm goin' back to New Orleans, to wear that ball and chain . . ."

There was a flash of green on the other side of the room. The Amphisobian girl? It was worth a shot. Fry pushed through the crowd again and followed her into another hallway. This one was dimly lit, and the steps at the end of it seemed to lead down again, onto a basement level.

The girl – Tempest – had changed into another catsuit, this one black leather. There was a whip stuck in her belt, and she was carrying a bucket of ice.

"Hey! Wait!" Fry cried.

The girl turned round.

"Sir," she purred, "the dungeon is currently occupied, but if S&M is your thing, that can be arranged elsewhere. I assure you we can be quite creative – holy shit!"

She jumped about a foot into the air as she caught sight of his face. Ice cascaded over the floor and she swore violently. Her seductive voice had vanished.

Fry held up his hands.

"I just need to know if Captain Glottus is okay," he pleaded. "Then I can go. I have to go . . ."

He was feeling woozy again. Tempest was staring at his finger.

"The fuck did you do to yourself?"

Fry ignored her.

"Is he dead?" he demanded. "Did I kill him?"

"I can't tell you."

"You have to!"

"No, I don't, genius. I don't see you threatening me." Tempest rolled her eyes. "Seriously, I don't think you get how this works. Did you even have a plan here? I don't think you do."

"I got out. I found you. That was my plan."

It was a poor plan, Fry realized belatedly. He sucked at this. Really, really sucked.

"And now you found me and I won't tell you shit," Tempest pointed out. "So now what?"

Fry considered. Time for another rash move.

"This," he decided.

He kicked the ice at her and ran the other way when Tempest dodged, ducking past her and skidding for the steps.

"Vondra! Mort!" she yelled out. "He got free!"

She grabbed hold of his leg and tried to pull him back, tripping him up. Fry yelled, and she yelled, and in amongst all the yelling two doors banged open – one down in the dungeon and one in the hall.

Zaaaaappp.

A current of electricity spasmed through him and Fry stopped struggling. Someone had put a taser to his neck.

Someone wearing shiny patent shoes and a DOOP officer's ceremonial uniform.

"My, my," a supercilious voice declared. "What do we have here?"

The accent was British, and the man who owned it had a Clark Gable comb-over and neat mustache.

Tempest got to her feet, panting. Suddenly Fry could feel the panic rolling off her.

"Nothing, Captain," she said. "Sir. Captain. Sir. Nothing at all. I spilled some ice, but I'll get it all cleaned up."

The captain looked her up and down.

"You spilled some ice," he repeated. "Is that all?"

"Yes, sir."

"I don't think so. I think there was something of a scuffle here. I think there was trouble." He stepped closer. "Was there trouble, girl?"

"No, sir. No trouble."

"Because you know how I feel about trouble."

"We all know how you feel about trouble, Captain," Vondra's voice interrupted.

She sounded smooth and unruffled – in stark contrast to Tempest, who looked like she wanted to step out of her own skin. Vondra came up the stairs behind Fry, cast him one brief look and then ignored him, focusing her professional smile on the strange DOOP captain.

At the sight of her, something twitched in the captain's expression.

"I just broke up a fight on your premises. That sounds like trouble to me. The sort of trouble that might shut this place down. Or do you disagree, Madam? I can't have violence against my men, as you well know."

"Of course not." Vondra's smile was artificial. "But I think you'll find this was a misunderstanding, Captain."

"Is that so?"

"Yes," Tempest said hurriedly. "I mean, yes sir. It was a misunderstanding."

"I wasn't asking you," the captain snapped. "I don't expect the truth from your ilk. You like to close ranks, don't you? Keep each other's secrets. Loyal to the last, aren't you?"

Tempest looked at the floor.

"There are no secrets here," Vondra said. Her tone had grown imperceptibly colder.

The captain raised an eyebrow.

"I should hope not," he chided her. "There are certainly enough secrets in your family history. What makes a man a murderer, I wonder? What made your brother turn on his own men? Hmm?"

Vondra had gone very still.

"I couldn't tell you," she said stiffly.

"Well, naturally. What explanation can there be for madness?" The captain leveled her with a smug look. "But you would certainly tell me if you knew, wouldn't you? You would certainly do your civic duty."

"Of course."

Vondra sounded as if she was forcing the words out through a clenched jaw.

"How reassuring." The captain twirled his baton idly between his fingers. "Now that that's out of the way, I think we can hear what really happened here. Don't you?" He turned to Fry. "Care to explain this, boy?"

Fry stood up slowly, his heart beating in his ears.

This was his chance. If he told this captain he was a prisoner, he could get out of here and head back to Earth. He could warn Leela and his friends about the Brains, and they could come up with a way for him to stop them. He'd be free.

But then the DOOP would find Captain Glottus.

If Fry told the truth now, he'd be handing Captain Glottus over to a man who hated him so much he was trying to get at him through his sister. A man who was a bully, and a bad one, if the way Tempest had suddenly gone quiet was anything to go by. Who was high up in the DOOP and maybe even knew Glottus was being framed, but hated him anyway.

If Fry handed Glottus over to this man . . .

Glottus would die.

He made up his mind.

"It's like she said," he told the captain. "It was a . . . a misunderstanding."

"A misunderstanding."

"Yeah. Yeah, it was . . ." Fry cast his gaze about. It fell on the whip. "We were doing freaky stuff," he invented wildly. "Getting our freak on, y'know? She was beating me up." He gestured at his battered face. "It was hot, and uh . . . I wanted some ice . . . and uh . . ." Running out of fuel for the lie, Fry fell back on the safest and easiest option. "I forgot we couldn't do that stuff in the hall. Because I'm stupid. I'm a moron."

There was a long silence as the captain absorbed this tale.

Then suddenly Vondra snapped into action.

"Well," she said smoothly. "This is embarrassing, but I can assure you it won't happen again." She took a hold of Fry's arm. "If you can't respect the rules, you're out." She nodded at the captain. "I'll escort him out personally. I'm sorry your evening was disturbed, Captain. Tempest, set up a tab for the captain at the bar. He drinks for free tonight."

Fry kept his face as blank as possible while the captain tried to read his expression. This was harder than it should have been, because Vondra was leaning hard on his arm. She wasn't just holding onto him for show, he realized. She was in real danger of falling down.

Luckily Fry made a convincing idiot, and the captain seemed to buy it.

"See that it's done," he said. Then he snapped his fingers at Tempest and sauntered off in the direction of the bar, the girl trailing after him. She kept shooting worried looks at Vondra back over her shoulder, but Vondra waved her off.

When she rounded the corner, Vondra slumped against the wall.

Fry hesitated.

"Are you . . . are you okay?"

Vondra groaned.

She rolled up the sleeve of her fancy dress, and for the first time Fry could see what had been hidden by the dark velvet. There was blood seeping from the crook of her arm.

"My brother," she explained when she saw him staring. "My blood. He needed a lot."

She hauled herself up and began to head down the stairs again.

"Come on if you're coming," she said tiredly.

Fry didn't stop to think about it. He followed her.