An immortal time-traveller.

One of the Doctor's own people.

She'd walked into a trap, Trix realised. Had the Doctor already sprung it?

It was like Gaudi had built an aqueduct.

The Vore had pushed the Doctor, Marnal and Rachel up to a narrow bridge across a half-mile-wide cavern. It was as level as any human engineer using a laser and GPS could have made it, but its lines were organic, pitted and curved as though it had been built from the bottom up out of mud pies.

Now the Vore started herding them along the bridge. They hadn't come this way before. The Vore struggled to keep to the boundaries of the structure.

One fell off, making Rachel yelp, but it extended its wings and swooped up and landed behind them.

'Where are they taking us?' Rachel asked, before she had to stop speaking.

The smell in this place was terrible.

'Very few people know anything about the Vore,' Marnal said, still trying to excuse his earlier mistake. 'They've killed everyone and everything they've ever encountered. I am the only person who has ever seen them and survived.'

'I've seen them before,' the Doctor said casually.

Marnal shook his head. 'They track down everything that makes any contact with them.'

'They've attacked Earth, Doctor,' Rachel told him.

The Doctor looked over at Marnal, who confirmed what Rachel said: 'In a matter of weeks the human race will be extinct, along with every other life form on Earth.'

196.

The Doctor smiled rea.s.suringly at Rachel. 'We'll see about that. What's happened? Has one of their s.p.a.ceships appeared over London?'

Rachel nodded weakly. 'Something like that. What do they want?'

'They don't want anything,' the Doctor said. 'They're animals.'

'Capable of warp engineering?' Marnal sneered. 'Or even just building a bridge like this?'

'Spiders can spin webs and set traps, bees and ants can build themselves whole cities. They do it on instinct. The Vore are simply able to construct more complicated items. They have no individual intelligence.'

The Doctor patted the nearest Vore on the head. It hissed at him. 'Or conversation. They exist to consume.'

Marnal laughed. 'Of course. Yes. They're feeding. They'll grind all life on Earth into chyme, then transport it here.'

'Chyme?' Rachel asked.

'Sniff the air,' Marnal suggested. What does that smell remind you of?'

'It's like someone's been sick. A lot.'

'You've been sick in the past, haven't you?' the Doctor asked, so gently that the question threw Rachel a little.

'Er. . . I've thrown up, yes.'

'What you were bringing up was chyme, give or take.'

'Why not just say they want to eat us?'

'They don't,' Marnal explained. 'They want to turn the human race into vomit. They'll line their food caves with it, then plant fungal spores that will use it as fertiliser. The Vore will feed on that fungus.'

'That's horrible.'

'Your race is always looking for a purpose that will unite it. It looks like you've found it.'

'I hate to bring this up,' the Doctor said to Marnal, before looking apologetic, 'if you'll pardon the expression, but we really should be getting out of here.

We're heading away from my TARDIS, I know that. Are we heading towards yours?'

Marnal shook his head.

'The Vore brought us here, Doctor, in one of their warp corridors,' Rachel said, more helpfully.

The Doctor frowned at Marnal. 'You said your TARDIS was here.'

'You brought it here.'

The Doctor rolled his eyes. 'You meant my my TARDIS? I see. How very witty of you.' TARDIS? I see. How very witty of you.'

'You stole it, Doctor.'

'I took it back, yes.'

197.

'I mean all those years ago.' Marnal turned to Rachel. 'Centuries ago, when he was in his first incarnation. He stole it, fled.'

'Fled Gallifrey?' the Doctor asked. 'Why would I do a thing like that?'

'I only found out later, from my son. There were all sorts of rumours, but the real reason was because you '

'Your son?' Rachel interrupted. 'You have four daughters, all from your wives' previous marriages.'

'Not those parasites. My real son visited once, back in the Seventies. He couldn't stay long, but he told me. . . Oh, it doesn't matter. The Doctor stole the TARDIS. Everyone knows that. Who did he steal it from, though, eh? Me.

That's my Type 40. I recognised it the moment I saw it. We went through a lot together. It was with me when I first encountered the Vore.'

They continued along the bridge the monsters weren't giving them any choice. Rachel looked over at the Doctor, who was deep in thought.

'How high would you say this bridge was?' he asked.

'Seventy feet?' Rachel guessed. 'It's too dark to tell.'

'Hmmm,' said the Doctor, then pushed her over the edge.

Marnal turned and saw the Doctor leaping at him, grabbing for his jacket.

Before he could even raise his arm the Doctor had pitched them both over the edge, into the darkness.

HMS Ill.u.s.trious Ill.u.s.trious had left Portsmouth for the mid-Atlantic within a few hours of the first Vore attack, leading a five-ship task force that had at that stage had left Portsmouth for the mid-Atlantic within a few hours of the first Vore attack, leading a five-ship task force that had at that stage orders that talked loosely of counterattacks and last resorts. During the Cold War, these were the orders given in the event of a nuclear war, and they boiled down, essentially, to playing it by ear if the United Kingdom was wiped off the map and no one was left to send further orders. Launch a counterattack against the a.s.sumed aggressor, then make your way to Canada or if Canada had also ceased to exist Australia.

It had transpired that the Vore threat was of a different nature. UNIT personnel were seconded to the ship and the task force was sent new orders: to head to the West African coast to look at a mountain. Most of the crew knew the area. Less than five years ago they'd been sent to stabilise Sierra Leone.

There were satellite images of a new mountain in Guinea-Bissau. It hadn't been there a week before. Communications around the world were more erratic than normal, and the lines to Bissau were never the most reliable. The country was lowlying country its highest point, according to the reference books, failed to reach three hundred metres. The new mountain was nearly two kilometres high. It was generating heat and it even had its own magnetic field. The satellite pictures, though, were hard to interpret and the UK, the US and Europe had little in the way of human intelligence on the ground there.

198.

That the mountain needed investigating was obvious. When Ill.u.s.triou Ill.u.s.triou s got within a hundred miles of the coast Harriers were sent out on a reconnaissance mission, entering Guinean airs.p.a.ce at 500 m.p.h. It wasn't hard to spot the mountain. The Harriers gave it a wide berth on the first pa.s.s, then swept around and returned to their ship on a course that gave them a closer view. s got within a hundred miles of the coast Harriers were sent out on a reconnaissance mission, entering Guinean airs.p.a.ce at 500 m.p.h. It wasn't hard to spot the mountain. The Harriers gave it a wide berth on the first pa.s.s, then swept around and returned to their ship on a course that gave them a closer view.

That fly past was completed without any enemy retaliation. The pictures were relayed back to Ill.u.s.trious Ill.u.s.trious, then on to London.

British helicopters had landed in the capital city, Bissau, and diplomatic contact had been made with the National People's a.s.sembly. The people here had experience of locusts, and feared that the Vore were breeding. If they were like their terrestrial counterparts, each Vore could lay nearly three hundred eggs. When the locals were asked how they fought ordinary locusts, they said they used hoes and brushes. Insecticide was rarely used, because it was ineffective rather than because it was expensive.

In London, experts in insects and insect behaviour had been brought into military planning meetings within hours of the first Vore attack. They warned that there would be millions of Vore in the mountain, and that the structure would extend deep underground.

The Ill.u.s.trious Ill.u.s.trious waited for further orders. waited for further orders.

Marnal crashed, softly, into a pile of grey mush, catching his leg on something harder. The Doctor landed right next to him. Rachel was already standing, dusting herself off.

'We should be dead,' she said.

'Low gravity,' the Doctor explained. 'We can fall six times further than we could on Earth. We knew it would be a soft landing.'

'The Vore will just fly down for us,' Rachel complained.

'No,' said the Doctor, pointing at the floor. 'We landed in the mushroom patch. We smell like food now.'

'They'll eat eat us?' us?'

'Not here they won't. The Vore follow strict patterns. They don't have thoughts in the way we'd understand, just a set of internal instructions, ways to react to stimuli. They can't take the initiative or use their imagination.'

The Doctor pointed over to a line of Vore trudging through the mush, carrying what looked like twice their weight of it, which they'd collected. 'They eat elsewhere, probably in specially designated refectories.'

There were other Vore dotted around, tending to the mushrooms.

Marnal drew his gun, set it to kill and shot one of the lone Vore. It fell down.

The Doctor looked horrified.

'What the h.e.l.l are you doing?' Rachel shouted.

199.

'Testing a theory. Observe.'

None of the other Vore reacted.

'They can't sense us,' Marnal concluded. 'We can move around undisturbed.'

'Do you smell that?' the Doctor asked.

Marnal sniffed the air. There was a new scent mingled with all the others.

'Tetramethrin?' the Doctor asked.

Marnal shrugged.

A Vore landed close to them. Marnal raised his gun again, but it started walking in the other direction, towards the one Marnal had shot. Without hesitation, it bent down, grabbed the dead insect's abdomen, lifted it easily and then flew off, vanishing into the dark.

The Doctor had watched the whole process, fascinated.

'We have to get out of here,' Marnal said.

'Well obviously we have to get out of here,' the Doctor replied testily.

He turned to see Marnal pointing the gun at him.

'Do you know, I think I recognise that gun,' the Doctor said. 'Just like I recognise this place.'

'Your memories are coming back?' Marnal asked.

'I hope not,' the Doctor said, before quickly adding, 'No, it's not that. More recent. So much has happened in the last couple of days.'

The Doctor snapped his fingers. 'Of course. It didn't look like you. You were older, a man with white hair and beakier.' The Doctor drew a nose in the air.

'That's what threw me. But it was you, wasn't it?'

Marnal backed away. 'What do you mean?'

'The Shoal. A Time Lord launched an unprovoked attack on these creatures.

Barely escaped with his life. It was you. And was that my TARDIS you were in?'

Rachel frowned. 'Wouldn't an attack like that break the laws of time?'

The Doctor grinned. 'Yes. That's a very good point. A little hypocritical of you to paint yourself as an innocent party, let alone as the judge of my actions.'

'I learnt a lesson,' Marnal spat.

'Before or after the Matrix projection?' the Doctor asked.