She walked over to him. 'Doctor?'

He glanced down at her, but his eyes were elsewhere. 'Nothing to be scared of,' he muttered absent-mindedly, patting her arm.

She sighed. 'I'm not scared, Doctor. p.i.s.sed off, yes, a little freaked out, maybe. But not scared.'

The muscles around his eyes twitched, a tiny change of expression. 'No sorrow? Not even a little bit?'

She opened her mouth, about to justify her actions yet again, but the expression on his face froze her. It was pure rage, not the bl.u.s.ter of Wolstencroft, but a calm, silent disdain.

'There's nothing you can say.' He turned and walked away briskly.

d.a.m.n. She'd probably lost him for good now She watched him talking to Wolstencroft. To her amazement, the soldier seemed to be listening. She walked slowly around the room, seeing what she could salvage. On closer inspection, the damage wasn't too bad. Mostly desks and papers; the broken gla.s.s part.i.tion made things look worse than they really were.

Her main concern was the generator itself. She walked up to the control desk and sat down. Error messages crowded the screen. She tapped a few keys, tried to cancel them. Nothing happened. She sighed, and took her gla.s.ses off. The world turned into a blur as she cleaned them.

The Doctor came to stand beside her, his manner still aloof. His long fingers danced over the keys. The computer gave a surprised sounding bleep! bleep! and the screen lit up blue. and the screen lit up blue.

Nagle put her gla.s.ses back on with shaking hands. She breathed in slowly, holding her breath. The main menu. The generator was still on line.

She turned to thank the Doctor, but he was striding towards the ravaged gla.s.s part.i.tion.

Nagle followed him, her shoes crunching on broken gla.s.s. She wanted him back on her side, badly. She looked up at the impaled creature. 'Wonder where it came from.'

The Doctor didn't acknowledge her presence. He just kept staring at the creature, his face shadowed and sad. 'Don't know. Pity, in its way it's quite beautiful.'

Booted feet crunched on gla.s.s behind them. Wolstencroft. 'Rubbish. It is was a hostile alien '

The Doctor rounded on the major. 'There is no evidence at all that its intentions were hostile! How would you feel if you were s.n.a.t.c.hed from your home world and catapulted across the stars to a strange and alien environment?'

It looked like a full-scale slanging match was developing. Nagle felt a headache coming on. She stepped over the remains of the gla.s.s part.i.tion to get a better look at the generator. If the frame supporting the silver p.r.o.ngs was damaged in any way, it would need to be realigned. Remarkably, it looked unharmed. She walked right into the generator, underneath the point where the p.r.o.ngs converged. She stared up. Yes, they were perfectly aligned she'd have to run the troubleshooting program to be sure, but she allowed herself to hope.

Then something cannoned into her, sending her sprawling. She landed on her front, gla.s.ses slipping down her nose, chin b.u.t.ting the floor. There was a needle-sharp pain in her jaw and ear. She rolled on to her back, pushing her gla.s.ses back into place, drawing in breath to scream Standing over her was a green-skinned alien in sh.e.l.l-like armour, with a froglike head. She caught a glimpse of green wings, folded and rustling. It was aiming a black weapon, like a harpoon, right at her face. The jagged point filled her vision.

Nagle screamed, scrambling backwards, hands encountering bits of broken gla.s.s.

A shot, from behind her.

The thing fell, clutching its side, and she rolled out of its way. She felt a stinging pain in the palm of her hand; there was a triangle of gla.s.s hanging from it and blood everywhere.

The Doctor ran over, his face dark, his voice bellowing. Ignoring Nagle, the Doctor bent over the creature, his green velvet coat falling over its twitching green limbs.

She saw the tall figure of Wolstencroft striding towards her, gun pointed at the Doctor and the alien. A snarl of anger curled her lips. Was she invisible all of a sudden? 'Hey!' she yelled. 'Little help here?'

Fitz screamed. It felt as though his body were being pulled in all directions at once, and then compressed to nothing. His breath was torn from him and his vision seemed to revolve inside his head. Blinding, swirling lights stung his eyes, reaching in to fry his brain.

This was what Sam had gone through, in every sense. He fully expected to die at any moment.

And then, suddenly, he was in free s.p.a.ce, spinning in blackness, the lights gone. Something thwacked against his back and he spun away. He looked up, saw a shining black wall, the lip of a swirling white whirlpool spitting and churning above him.

He hit the black wall and began to slide down, scrabbling at the sheer surface. His vision was fuzzy, out of focus. Below was something blue the ground? He was sliding very slowly was that because he was concussed?

Kerstin. He was sure she'd been with him when he'd dived through the node. Where was she? He looked up at the node and it closed, suddenly and silently, like the switching off of a light.

He was trapped.

He continued to slide down the wall, turning to face outward, squinting. There was something golden and glowing in the distance, almost sunlike. He blinked. Yes, his sight was definitely improving. Now he could see the creatures above him.

He gasped. There were hundreds of them, their spiderlike bodies floating in the air of the... cavern, he supposed, though he couldn't see the ceiling for the ma.s.s of orange and black creatures. Had they seen him?

Fitz landed softly, on something soft. He reached down, his fingers touching sand. He looked up. The black wall towered behind him, and the creatures above looked as small as pennies.

He was not alone. Crouching on the blue dunes around him, pointing deadly looking harpoons, were a group of green-skinned aliens with bulging blue eyes. They looked straight out of pulp SF and Fitz thought he was hallucinating at first.

'h.e.l.lo,' said Fitz. His legs felt like jelly and there was a terrible pins-andneedles feeling over his whole body.

One of the creatures jumped down, aiming its harpoon at Fitz.

A wave of weakness washed over Fitz. Mad laughter bubbled up inside him. 'Take me to your leader!' he giggled. Then he pa.s.sed out.

Kerstin screamed. It felt as though her whole body were being stretched into a thin line. She was ma.s.sive, omnipresent; and then tiny, insignificant. All she could see was a golden-white blur. Fitz was gone, and, thankfully, so was the creature from the generator room. Just when she thought she was going to pa.s.s out, she felt her body swerve, as though she were on a roller coaster, and then everything stopped stopped.

A moment of giddiness, of nausea it felt as if her stomach were trying to climb up her throat and she squeezed her eyes shut. The sickness pa.s.sed, and she opened her eyes. And saw It was like looking into the biggest kaleidoscope ever made. A golden-white tunnel, rippling and surging in a way that seemed to tug at her mind. It was a calming sight. Somehow she knew it wouldn't hurt her. And at the end of the tunnel something tantalised her, never quite forming, first one thing and then another. Sometimes it was a field. Sometimes it was a pile of books. Sometimes it looked like nothing she had ever seen before.

She couldn't move, couldn't feel her body, didn't know if she was breathing, couldn't feel the beat of her heart. Couldn't feel where the soldier had hit her with his gun. Was she dead? Perhaps everyone who had ever died was here. She just couldn't see them, that was all.

Dazed by the golden light, her thoughts drifted back to the past. She'd been stationed with a horrendous family in the West Midlands of England on an exchange programme when she was eighteen. They'd used her as a slave, and the husband had made advances towards her. You could see it in his eyes, the petty l.u.s.t; all Swedish girls were nymphos, weren't they? And this one was just a blonde bimbo without an idea in her head.

Disgusted with herself, she'd cut her hair brutally short and run away and lived in London with James, a sociology student a couple of years older than her. She'd met him on the train, when she'd had no idea where to go or what to do. Looking back, she'd been lucky. James was kind and considerate, and never even dreamt of taking advantage of her it was Kerstin who'd made the first move.

He'd had wiry brown hair, the palest blue eyes she had ever seen, a quirky face and a skinny body; he'd been poor and lived in an awful bedsit in London; he drank sickly sweet tea and ate ghastly fried food. Living with James and mixing with his friends really opened her eyes. Before, she'd lived in the shadow of her parents' old-fashioned views, their inward-looking, overprotective natures hiding the real world from her. They believed that neutrality was all and Sweden was a cool and haughty outsider, its society a well-oiled machine, its culture and people rich. Peripheral to world affairs.

At home, Kerstin had fallen in line with this; it was easy, and excused her from having to care about anything or anyone outside her immediate family. But living with James, she'd gradually realised what she knew all along she couldn't detach herself from the world; Sweden was as much a part of 'Western' culture as England and the USA. She had found in herself a yearning for travel, and a desire to put the world to rights.

So, after a month, she'd returned to Stockholm, vowing to return to James as soon as she could.

Her parents hadn't understood, of course. Her new views were alien to them. Her father had raged about her duty to her country, how she must study for her medical degree and oil the wheels of society.

She could have run away again; but she decided to bide her time. She concentrated on her studies, waiting for the day she could escape, truly escape, a fit and qualified woman, into the world. To do good or bad, she couldn't tell, but to do something something.

She never wrote to James again. He'd been merely a catalyst, setting her on her way. She went to Uppsala and studied, studied, studied. Her father had wanted her to do a four-year medical degree and become, like him, a doctor they'd argued about this, as everything, and in the end Kerstin got her own way. Linguistics, politics, sociology and psychology were her subjects. She wanted to understand how people worked, how the world worked.

And now she didn't know.

Or rather, she knew that this world wasn't all there was. There were other worlds, alien creatures, time travellers, and it was all frightening and exciting and she wanted either to forget it completely or become a part of it for ever.

But she couldn't do anything right now. She was stuck here, staring down this impossible tunnel, trying to make sense of what she was seeing, trying to make sense of her life.

Sam hung in the sky-sea, unable to move as the bullet-shaped thing drew nearer. It was approaching too fast.

The thing stopped in front of her. It was a very dark green, like some giant seed pod. She fully expected a mouth to open in the end and eat her whole, but instead a hatch opened in its side to reveal the yellow-clad figure of Itharquell.

Sam's heart lifted instantly and she kicked her legs, propelling herself towards the hatch.

Itharquell helped her inside.

'Am I glad to see you!' she said, sitting down on a leaflike seat. 'I thought you'd been n.o.bbled by the Ruin.'

Itharquell shook his head. Sam heard his whispering voice in her mind.

I came across a patch of Blight. It's blocking the way in the opposite direction.

'So, how did you get hold of this dirigible?' said Sam.

I grew it. I always carry a spare seed or two.

'Oh,' said Sam. 'Right.' Then she remembered the whirlpool in the cavern. 'Itharquell, what would you say if I told you that I have seen the way out of the Dominion?'

There is no way out of the Dominion.

Sam sighed in exasperation. 'Look, you don't know where the Blight came from, right?'

Itharquell nodded.

'You can't explain it at all.'

It is beyond understanding.

Sam leaned forward, the leaf-seat adjusting to her change in position. 'Then why won't you accept that there may be other things beyond your understanding? Like me, for instance? And the possibility of life outside the Dominion?'

Itharquell sat back and pushed his feathery hair from his eyes.

I have been giving a lot of thought to what you have said. It is difficult for me to understand, but there may be something in what you say. Some of the words you used... What are planets?

Sam briefly explained what a planet was. 'I think this Dominion could be a planet one so big that you just haven't discovered the surface yet.'

No. The Dominion is infinite.

Sam let it ride, for now. Her wishes had been answered and she now had a dirigible, a means of escape. Then she thought of the T'hiili Nest. There were hundreds, thousands of the creatures. 'Itharquell, we can rescue your people! If we go back to the Nest, we could bring them to the cavern I told you about, fight our way past the Ruin '

A single word, crisp and chill in her mind.

How?

Sam told him about the winged T'hiili she had seen.

At this, Itharquell seemed to perk up a little.

T'vorha, fighting the Ruin... that means the new Queen could be nearby.

'So, we go back to the Nest? Try to save your people?'

The way is blocked by the Blight.

Sam ground her teeth. Things were closing in on them. 'Is there another way back to the Nest?'

There may be. We would have to search to find it. And there is not much time.

Sam stood up, and the leaf-seat furled closed behind her. 'Then let's go!'

In the generator room, Major Wolstencroft had taken charge and, in his opinion, it was about time. The wounded alien had been taken to the laboratory. d.a.m.n thing must have been hiding in the generator room. Almost got Professor Nagle.

She sat on a swivel chair next to the Doctor, nursing her bandaged hand. Captain Rogers sat nearby, pistol held casually in his lap. Wolstencroft paced up and down in front of them, watching the Doctor carefully. Couldn't trust him an inch.

'I think it's about time we had a little chat,' he said.

'Why did you shoot that poor creature?'

Wolstencroft glared at the Doctor. 'To save Professor Nagle.'

'Yes, to save me,' said Nagle.

The Doctor just kept staring at Wolstencroft. 'I must examine the alien. It's our only link with the other end of the wormhole.'

'All in good time. Now tell me, what did you think you were doing in here?'

'He was trying to help us,' said Professor Nagle.

Wolstencroft gestured to the wreckage in the room. 'And do you think even in your wildest dreams that this has helped in any way?'

'Look,' said the Doctor. 'There's no need for us to argue. The situation is very simple: if the wormhole isn't closed, then Earth will be destroyed. We haven't got much time!'

Wolstencroft stopped pacing in front of the Doctor. 'I only have your word for that.'

Professor Nagle looked up at him, imploring. 'It's true,' she said. 'I've checked his calculations. The wormhole is consuming energy at a tremendous rate. It will soon be big enough to swallow this planet whole.'

Wolstencroft considered. If this was true, it put a whole new dimension on things. He'd acted responsibly as far as he was concerned, in shutting the operation down. Maybe the Doctor was right. Maybe that wasn't enough.

'So we can't just evacuate, and blow this place up?'

The Doctor laughed. 'Absolutely not! Did you seriously think that would solve everything?'