At that moment Fitz arrived back and he too was gazing in astonishment at the man in white sleeves.

'Doctor!'

' Fitz! Fitz! ' '

They crashed in a tangle of limbs, and Fitz looked completely taken aback at the Doctor's enthusiasm.

'Doctor,' the older man was saying in the background, but the Doctor was too enthralled in his reunion with Fitz to hear. 'Fitz Fitz Fitz Fitz Fitz,' the Doctor was stammering, looking happy and sad and entirely confused. 'I'm so sorry. I thought. . . Well. . . I thought. . . '

' Doctor! Doctor! ' the older man repeated, his voice now urgent. ' the older man repeated, his voice now urgent.

Still grasping Fitz by the shoulder, the Doctor turned to see what he wanted, and Ayla saw that the children had collapsed to the floor. They were deathly white and torpid, struggling to sit up and reach out for help, as if the life had been abruptly sucked out of them. . .

Medicare seemed to have been completely abandoned, and they'd reached the cells without seeing a soul. Veta was like a missile, locked on to her target with fierce determination. She was hugging the rifle in the crook of her arm and Josef had no doubt whatsoever that she wouldn't hesitate to use it on anybody who might be unlucky enough to get in their way.

The cells were unguarded. Veta swept through the cleaners' storeroom and hesitated only a moment to work out the secret door disguised with stacks of 209 cleaning cloths. Then they were in, Veta slamming each door in turn to discover every cell empty.

Josef finally caught up with her in the last cell, where she was standing in the dark looking lost and afraid. There was the distant howl of wind, the buffeting of sand and rain against the outer walls. The cells were freezing cold, tiny s.p.a.ces without any source of light except for that from the connecting corridor outside. The air was rancid with the stench of uncleaned toilets.

He reached out to take Veta in his arms, and discovered her shadowed eyes gazing off into the blackness where there was nothing at all to see. There were hairline cracks appearing in her new resolve.

'We don't know they're dead,' he said, reading her mind like an open book.

Then he saw the tiny opening in the ceiling. The gaps around a rough square hole that he guessed had been cut from outside. The hole would have been just wide enough to take the bulk of a man, and the removed section had been quickly and very clumsily welded back into place.

Sensing his excitement, Veta saw the repaired hatch and the determination took up residence again in her features.

'I think we ought to review Peron's security 'grams,' she said, hoisting the rifle in her arms. 'Don't you?'

Gaskill Tyran was quite mad, Domecq was absolutely sure. It had probably been an insidious thing, creeping through him for the last few months while the Ceres project steadily collapsed. It was likely that the complete breakdown of the city-machine and the incident with Danes had both helped tip him over the brink. The insanity may well have had something to do with the influence of the creatures since Tyran had always been ultimately responsible for their treatment, but it was difficult to be certain, and now they might never find out.

His casual murders of the girl, the impostor and the creatures were irrational moves they would all regret.

'I think your work is finished here,' Tyran told him flatly.

'There'll be a full enquiry,' Domecq said.

Tyran's eyes flashed full of wild thoughts.

'I have two armed ships in orbit,' Domecq said quietly, tapping his com. 'An open channel since I arrived. My men have strict instructions. Don't think you can silence me the way you've silenced so many others. Earth Central were determined to get those creatures. You've squandered an extremely valuable opportunity '

'The valuable opportunity is Ceres Alpha,' Tyran insisted.

210.'We could have had both '

'The creatures were halting the work here. It was them or the planet. You couldn't couldn't have both.' have both.'

The argument would go round and round in circles. It was a moot point now the creatures were gone.

A call came through on Tyran's com. He pushed back in his seat and took it immediately. The head that materialised above his desk wore a military cap, but it wasn't one of the people Domecq recognised.

'Sir,' the head said in a state of obvious excitement. 'We're down in the hold with the alien box. I think you should get down here straightaway.'

'What's happening?'

'The impostor, sir. He's back. And so are the creatures.'

'I'm so stupid,' the Doctor was ranting as he scurried round the centre console flicking switches and taking readings. 'Stupid stupid stupid.'

'They're getting worse,' Bains said from his position kneeling by one of the strange children.

The Doctor was growing more frantic by the minute, and now there were more troops than ever crowding round the TARDIS. Fitz watched them on the scanner as they milled about in confusion, some of them preparing their rifles nervously, as if they expected the door to open and some giant force to come suddenly rushing out.

'I think they're dying,' Bains said.

'I think you're probably right,' the Doctor agreed as he continued to work.

'But why?'

'I have a theory that fits the facts,' the Doctor said, attaching a small television-like box to the centre console. 'I think the whole biosphere of this planet is one giant sentient ent.i.ty. A kind of Gaia principle taken to its extreme.

You uncovered clear evidence that there was a previous civilisation here. I think they suffered a huge catastrophe, like you've had on Earth. Maybe a giant meteor strike. It was an apocalyptic event. All life almost wiped out.'

He was banging the top of the little attachment until it flared into operation and gave him some more readings that cast a green glow over his face, making him look sinister and alien.

'But the planet is rebuilding itself. Life is evolving and taking hold. It's in the process of repairing the damage. Since humans arrived the biosphere has been screaming out in the only way it knows how but n.o.body listened. It's been 211 trying to reject you. To stop you interfering with the process of. . . ' The Doctor searched for the word he needed. 'Regeneration.'

The screen had obviously given him bad news. He yanked it from its housing and dropped it with a clatter to the floor, then knelt beside Bains and began to examine one of the children, lifting it gently and gazing into its closing eyes.

'At your dig I think you disturbed a dormant psychic force. The life force of the planet's original sapient, powerfully telepathic inhabitants. Your discoveries came at the same time as these children were moving from the zygote into the embryo stage in their mothers' wombs. I think that force entered the nascent embryos and hijacked them, producing a bridge species in order to communicate with the humans who were ravaging the world.'

He lowered the child back to the floor with a look of despondency.

'These children aren't evil,' he said.

'They're not genetic monstrosities.

They're emissaries.'

Bains glared at him.

'But why are they dying?'

'The TARDIS forms a protective envelope. In here we're completely cut off from the outside world. We've stepped into a different dimension. We've cut them off from the planet. They can't survive without that intimate link. It's an elemental, crucial bond for them. You saw the effect it had when we buried Bustopher Jones.'

Fitz watched the monitor as two men arrived who weren't in military uniform. One of them was dressed in black with short black hair. He seemed to be in charge. Behind him was a taller man with blond hair who was suddenly arguing with the man in black. They were both staring and pointing at the TARDIS.

'I think the bigwigs are here,' announced Fitz.

The Doctor jumped to his feet and came to see, his face now more despairing than ever.

'I can't risk a short hop. The TARDIS isn't healed yet. We could end up anywhere, anywhen.'

Fitz found his eyes full of pain as the Doctor moved to the centre console and pulled the door lever.

And suddenly the TARDIS was crawling with troops.

The med unit blipped satisfactorily while Peron brought the windows online to check Kapoor's vitals. The phase rifle had caused ma.s.sive internal trauma, stopping the heart and disrupting even the autonomic centres of the brain.

212.Tyran had killed her in a fit of rage, but then instantly regretted it and gave Peron the job of reviving her. She was now the only link they had with the enigmatic alien box.

If it were up to Peron, she thought sourly, she'd have let her rot. The infiltrators were perfectly willing to kill people to get what they wanted. They didn't deserve to live. The box might be a loose end that Tyran was keen to tie up, but if it were up to her she'd take it out and bury it deep along with the impostor and the rest of his a.s.sociates Unexpectedly Kapoor gasped and her eyes snapped open. Peron was stunned to see they were completely black, flashing about, then settling directly on her.

Peron remembered with a shiver the pitch-black eyes of the creatures.

Kapoor was muttering under her breath, most probably delirious, suspected Peron. But suddenly she grasped Peron by the lapel and pulled her down to her face. The black eyes seethed with a fury so fierce that even Peron felt terrified in the face of it.

' Stop them Stop them,' Kapoor hissed.

Peron pushed her back to the bed and slapped her hard across the face, using the transient shock to force one of Kapoor's wrists into a restraint strap.

' No! No! ' Kapoor screamed, fighting with her free arm. ' Kapoor screamed, fighting with her free arm.

But Peron was too fast. She had both arms secure before Kapoor had chance to escape.

' Let me out Let me out,' Kapoor screeched, thrashing about wildly on the bed, sending equipment clattering and dislodging her sens-cables so that the med unit whined in alarm.

' They're dying. Let me out. They're dying. Let me out. ' '

Peron grasped the girl's jaw tight in the fingers of one hand, sneering into her hysterical face, deep into her oily black eyes.

' Shut up! Shut up! ' Peron screamed. ' Peron screamed.

The convulsions gradually subsided, and Kapoor watched her with gritted teeth and shuddering breath.

'I know you,' Peron told her fiercely. 'I know you. I've seen those eyes before.

I've felt them trying to get into my head.'

There was a scalpel on the med unit, and she grasped it suddenly, sweeping it in front of Kapoor's quivering face. The blade glinted in the soft yellow light.

'Tyran might need you alive,' she hissed. 'But he doesn't need your eyes.'

Kapoor looked horrified as the scalpel edged closer.

' If thine eye offend me If thine eye offend me,' Peron hissed with sick humour, manic grin stretching across her hot face.

213.

Then she saw the muzzle of the rifle. A centimetre from her head.

'Move back.'

She did as she was told, and found the Manni woman observing her with a face entirely vacant of emotion. Her eyes weren't black, but they might as well have been. The rifle went off and Veta's merciless expression was the last thing Peron ever saw.

They'd been roughly ejected from the safety of the TARDIS, and Fitz found himself once again a man with far too many rifles being pointed directly at him. The Doctor had tried to help the soldiers with the bodies of the children, but for his efforts he'd received a bloodied eye from the b.u.t.t of yet another rifle. Fitz and the others were herded into lifts that soared upwards with a velocity that made him feel sick. Finally they were thrust into a vast office which contained a huge desk big enough to hold a meeting of the rulers of the universe.

The room was full of guns and men in smart black tunics. Fitz was constantly amazed at the Doctor's capacity to drop them continually into such deep and desperate trouble. They seemed to spend their entire lives racing from one giant catastrophe to another without a moment to catch their breath in between.

The bloke in expensive-looking clobber with uncommonly dark eyes Tyran, the Doctor had called him perched on the edge of his gargantuan desk while the scary-looking bodyguard stood only a few feet away pointing a stubby black pistol straight at the Doctor's head.

Fitz was on the other side of the desk along with Ayla and Bains, right where the handful of military types with rifles had told them to stand. There was a palpable tension in the room.

Tyran was holding a short truncheon, slapping it repeatedly into his hand, smiling amicably in the Doctor's direction.

'I'm not going to waste my time with the mind probe,' he announced. 'I know how extremely resistant you can be to its effect.'

He hurled the instrument on to the desk and it landed in the middle with a thump. Fitz noticed that the Doctor followed its progress with a little relief.

'I think we'll just. . . chat,' Tyran said, for all the world as if he were a friend catching up on old times. 'Perhaps you'd like to start by telling me where you got this. . . TARDIS from,' he suggested.

'I made it,' the Doctor said. 'From old washing-up bottles and some odds and ends I had knocking about.'

214.'I'll tell you what I think,' Tyran said, ignoring the Doctor's little joke. 'I think you're working for another organisation who've stumbled across some alien technology. And I think you're going to tell me all about it.'

'You're very wrong, Mr Tyran. I told you before, we're simply travellers.'

'Then perhaps you could explain to me how you managed to crash-land here on Ceres Alpha at this particular moment in time?' Tyran asked politely.

The Doctor ran a hand through his hair and gazed off into s.p.a.ce lost in thought. Fitz could almost see the cogs going round in his head. Then he could almost see the light bulb appear above it.

' Of course! Of course! ' the Doctor erupted suddenly. 'Of course. . . of course. . . ' the Doctor erupted suddenly. 'Of course. . . of course. . . yes yes!'

He jumped to his feet and began to pace up and down, taking the bodyguard by such surprise that Fitz thought he was going to shoot the Doctor dead there and then. When he stopped pacing he started rambling, the words crashing out of him one after another in a furious barrage that Tyran listened to with growing irritation.

'The children were all born simultaneously, despite the fact that they were spread right across the planet. It was a combined effort that brought them into the world, and the shared birth trauma would have been immense. They're part human but part. . . indigenous indigenous. The indigenous part has powerful telepathic abilities. The TARDIS has telepathic circuits. They're mostly redundant at the moment. I really need to get round to looking at them, one day. We were travelling through the local vortex. There must have been a colossal psychic blast that wreaked havoc in the only telepathic receiver in the vicinity. The TARDIS. The blast would have ripped through, causing immense damage. That might explain the viral manifestation in the TARDIS systems.'

'That might explain,' Tyran said suddenly, 'absolutely nothing. Sit down Sit down, Doctor.'

The Doctor did as he was told, but he continued to look excited, perched on the edge of his seat as if he were on the brink of jumping up again.

'Who do you work for?' Tyran repeated.

The Doctor shook his head, and Fitz saw the look on his face. The look of a frustrated schoolmaster who's just explained a beautifully elegant theory to the school bully, only to be asked when rugby practice begins.

'We. . . ' the Doctor said, the exasperation now obvious in his voice, '. . . are. . .

travellers.'