The Doctor hopped up the last few steps of the stairway, and found the gloom of the ziggurat giving way to the (frankly miserable) daylight of the rainforest. The roof of the building was smooth and flat, a square of off-yellow stone sixty feet or so along each side. Qixotl had done his best to turn the area into a pleasant little garden, compensating for the lack of soil by planting the flowers in bubbles of hydroponic liquid, which floated around the place on tiny antigrav cushions. The bubbles were very well behaved, never floating above eye level or wandering over the edge of the roof.

There was also a large puddle of liquid in the middle of the garden, where the black s.p.a.ceship had touched down and squashed all the bubbles underneath it. Some people had no respect for horticulture, the Doctor told himself.

Mr Qixotl appeared at his side, breathing heavily after the run up the three flights of stairs. As soon as he saw the ship, the man started straightening his tie and brushing the dirt off his lapels. The Doctor gave him a pitying look.

'No excuse for looking shabby,' Qixotl sniffed.

'I don't think they'll care much about your fashion sense,' the Doctor told him, matter-of-factly. 'Not unless you're wearing a personal energy dispersion field and three-inch-thick armour plating.'

Qixotl looked defiant, for once. 'There's not going to be any trouble here, y'know. Anyone attending the auction has to abide by strict rules of non-hostility, it says so on the invite cards. Absolutely no high-technology weapons allowed in the City, except for those that can't be separated from their owners' bodies.' He indicated the ship with a wave of his hand. 'Er... their guns are are detachable, aren't they?' detachable, aren't they?'

The Doctor shook his head. It was hard to believe even Qixotl could be this absurd. 'And how are you going to enforce these rules of non-hostility, precisely?'

'Not a problem, believe me. The City looks after that kind of thing itself.'

'Damping fields?'

'Yup. Energy weapons and combustive artefacts don't function properly inside City limits. Except for cigarette lighters, obviously. Listen, I know how nervous you must be right now. The guys... I mean, the clients on that ship aren't going to be too pleased to see you here, yeah? Maybe, y'know, you should get out of the way while you can.'

The Doctor wondered if that was supposed to be a threat. 'If the Daleks really are here, I want to be around to keep an eye on them. Don't worry, I'm quite good at making sure they don't kill me. I've had plenty of experience. Some of it quite recent.'

'What d'you mean, "if" the Daleks are really here? That's a Dalek ship, right?'

The Doctor took another look at the vessel that had parked itself on the roof. He hadn't paid much attention to the design before now, mainly because it wasn't very nice. Conventional s.p.a.ceships weren't much to his liking anyway, but the black ship was little more than an ugly lump of metal with ion engines welded to the underside. 'I don't recognise the shape,' he admitted. 'But black is a very Dalek colour. Let me think. Late twenty-first century... by now, most of the Daleks are scattered around the edges of Mutters' Spiral, trying to build up a decent galactic powerbase. The ones who got left behind on Skaro are just starting to think about putting together their own little empire. The "static electricity" phase of Dalek development, if I'm not mistaken. Still, my Dalek history's always been a bit rusty. It wouldn't be so bad if it didn't keep changing all the time.'

Qixotl's response to all this was drowned out by an unpleasant clanking sound from the bowels of the s.p.a.ceship. As the Doctor watched, a section of the hull detached itself from the ship's body. A hatch-c.u.m-gangway, although the mechanism was so clumsy, it made the craft look like it was falling apart at the seams when it opened out. A few dozen more flower-bubbles popped under the gangway's weight as it thumped against the ziggurat roof.

There was a long pause.

Nothing happened.

'I think they're waiting for us to go to them,' the Doctor said, out of the corner of his mouth.

Qixotl did another one of his little nervous shuffles. 'Erm... Doctor, you do realise that if we go onto the ship, the City systems can't protect us?'

'Oh, yes.'

'But then again, why would they want to hurt us, right? If they kill us, they won't get hold of your... they won't get hold of the Relic.'

'True,' said the Doctor, cheerily. 'Unless they torture us to find out how to bypa.s.s your security systems before before they kill us.' they kill us.'

The pause returned. And this time, it brought some of its friends along with it.

'After you,' said Qixotl.

'Fair enough,' said the Doctor, and strolled towards the gangway, waving a few of the flower-bubbles out of his path as he walked.

b.u.mp.

Bregman felt her head crack against one of the steps. She tried raising her hands to protect her face, but her arms were twisted behind her back. At least, she guessed her arms were twisted behind her back. She couldn't actually feel them, though, so they could have been anywhere.

b.u.mp b.u.mp.

That might have been her shoulder breaking. Bregman didn't notice the pain, particularly. She was too busy concentrating on the voice. It was the same voice she'd heard when she'd first arrived at the ziggurat, not exactly inside her head, not exactly outside her head. It was louder now. She guessed she was getting closer to its source.

b.u.mp. b.u.mp b.u.mp. b.u.mp.

Sam was somewhere above her... below her... whichever way was up... trotting down the steps and calling out her name. Kathleen. The name sounded funny, for some reason. No one called her Kathleen any more. She was Bregman. Or, Lieutenant. Or, Miss Chicken-Legs, to the rest of the staff at Geneva.

b.u.mp b.u.mp.

When had she stopped being Kathleen and started being Bregman? No, look, that wasn't important now, and besides, the voice was telling her not to worry about it. It was staring into her eyes (yeah, so voices couldn't actually stare, so what?), smiling gently (and they couldn't smile, either, but again, so what?). All she had to do, the voice explained, was reach its body. It needed company. Human company. It had a message, from the future, but only a human being would be able to understand it.

No more b.u.mps.

She'd reached a landing, on the first floor below ground level. The stone underneath her was spattered with blood, probably her own. For a moment, she lost track of the voice, and that was when she noticed the pain. The nerves started untwisting in her shoulders and legs. She felt blood trickling over her lips. For the first time since she'd started falling, she seriously considered screaming in agony.

But then the voice spoke again. Down, it insisted. The next level down. Bregman peered across the landing, and saw the steps stretching out in front of her. She heard Sam stepping onto the landing behind her, breathing heavily.

'What are you ' Sam began, but she shut up when Bregman threw herself down the next flight of stairs.

Cousin Justine ordered Manjuele to help get Trask onto his feet, which didn't exactly put the little Brother in a good mood. Manjuele got a good whiff of the dead guy's BO while he was doing it. The stiff didn't smell of putrefaction or old meat or anything, but it wasn't a nice experience. Like sniffing chemicals. Kind of flat. Kind of stale.

Trask didn't even thank him, once he was up and about. He just said something about the Time Lord being dangerous, then stomped out through the doorway. Justine kept her eyes fixed on the zombie as he lurched off down the corridor. She looked like she was going to start s...o...b..ring any minute.

Wouldn't that be typical, thought Manjuele, if she had the hots for a stiff? b.i.t.c.h must have thought she was too good for anyone living and breathing. He'd been trying to get into the Cousin's pants for months, first by playing the humble-but-obedient servant, then resorting to the old rough-but-good-natured-street-urchin act. So far, no progress. Sure, she was his Cousin, she was supposed to be his elder in the family, but what the h.e.l.l?

'Got a present for you,' he said.

Justine noticed him, at last. Manjuele stuck his hand into his pocket, and pulled it out with the biosampler wrapped around the knuckles. He waved it in front of the Cousin's eyes, so she could see how full the collection valves were.

'Human girl,' he said. 'Found her in the shr'

'No.' Justine put her finger to her lips. 'Not here.'

Manjuele looked over his shoulder. Homunculette lay on the floor at the other side of the room, face-down in a puddle of his own spit. The Time Lord wasn't unconscious, as such, but his senses weren't going to be doing much work for the next couple of minutes. Justine had gone straight for the major neck nerves. They were big on Time Lord anatomy, back on Dronid. 'Don't worry 'bout him. He's not gonna hear a thing.'

'Not him.' Justine closed her eyes for a moment. Showing off, Manjuele thought, trying to look all serene and mystical. b.i.t.c.h. 'The Shift isn't here. Good.'

'Human girl,' Manjuele repeated. 'Found her down in the shrine. Lucky us.' The biosampler wouldn't work in the City, Manjuele had been told, but the shrine wasn't really part of the City, because it was in another dimension, or something like that. He didn't understand the technical stuff, but the principle was easy to figure out. The shrine was family territory. On family territory, you could do what you liked to outsiders, same as in little So Paolo. He could've done more to the UNISYC b.i.t.c.h than taken a biodata sample, but he hadn't been in the mood. Too skinny for him, anyhow.

'How good a sample did you get?' asked Justine.

'Deep as it gets. Deep as I could without ripping her up.'

'Enough for a control rite?'

'Yeah.'

'Good. Things are getting out of hand.' She glanced at the wrench, the one Homunculette had dropped on the floor of the anteroom. 'We may need another agent, soon.'

'Whatever,' said Manjuele. On the other side of the room, Homunculette started moving again, so Manjuele crossed over to him and stamped on his head.

The interior of the ship was black. Pitch black. Qixotl guessed he was standing in a short pa.s.sage, maybe an airlock tunnel, but the walls were sucking up the light from outside the hatch before it could reach his eyes. He'd waited a good two minutes before he'd followed the Doctor into the guts of the ship, waiting to see if there'd be a heart-wrenching scream from inside. Obviously, there hadn't been.

'Interesting,' said the Doctor. He was a little way in front of Qixotl, probably at the end of the tunnel.

Oh, great. Trust him him to get enthusiastic, all of a sudden. 'Why isn't there any light in here?' Qixotl mumbled. to get enthusiastic, all of a sudden. 'Why isn't there any light in here?' Qixotl mumbled.

'Mmm? Oh, there is. The walls are luminescent.'

'They're black, Doctor.'

'Yes. Luminescent black. Humanoid eyes can't pick up the frequencies.'

Qixotl remembered how the guest room he'd prepared for the Daleks had looked. The room had been black, as well, the walls covered with b.u.mps and nodules Qixotl hadn't understood the purpose of at all. He'd hoped, really really hoped, they hadn't been anything to do with s.e.x. There were some things he didn't want to have to imagine.

'Yeah, well, my eyes are pretty much humanoid at the moment, and I'd kind of prefer it if I could see where I was going, y'know?' he murmured.

'Don't worry. There should be a secondary lighting system on board somewhere. When they see we're coming... hmm. Now, that really is interesting.'

Qixotl realised the Doctor was going to keep saying "interesting" until someone asked him what he was talking about. OK, whatever made him happy. 'What's up?'

'Touch the walls.'

Qixotl hesitated. 'I'm not going to get a shock or anything, am I?'

'Just touch them.'

Nervously, Qixotl extended a hand, and brushed the nearest wall of the tunnel. It was cold. Very cold. There was even a thin layer of frost on the surface.

'That isn't frost,' the Doctor said, making Qixotl wonder if the psychic dampers he'd had planted in his skull were playing up. At least three of the powers he'd invited to the auction were known to have rudimentary telepathic abilities, so the dampers had seemed like a wise precaution.

Qixotl sc.r.a.ped some of the not-frost off the wall, and crunched it between his fingers. 'More like crystal, right?'

'Stand back. I'm going to open this door.'

'Er, what door?'

There was a high-pitched squealing sound, followed by a drawn-out mechanical groaning. Even in the blackness, Qixotl could make out the wall at the end of the tunnel irising open. There was a wider area on the other side of the opening, presumably the control section of the ship, although it was too dark to be certain.

A squat pillar-box shape stood in the middle of the opening, a dark silhouette about the same height as Mr Qixotl. For one horrifying moment, Qixotl saw himself as a cyborg might see him, a contour map of heat traces and biological functions.

'Interesting,' the Doctor said, irritatingly. 'Here. Come and see.'

Qixotl didn't move. 'Doctor, look, I don't think you should... y'know...'

'Oh, there's nothing to be worried about. It's quite dead.'

'Dead? You're sure?'

'I'm sure. Take a look.'

So Qixotl took a look.

In fact, when he was within spitting distance of the shape, he even convinced himself to reach out and touch it. The surface of the thing was as cold as the wall had been, and coated with the same kind of crystal-frost. Qixotl couldn't be sure, in this light, but he couldn't see the tell-tale markings of a member of the Dalek race. No eye-stalk, no sucker-arm, no b.u.mpy bits around the base. 'Is it a...?' he began.

'I don't know.' Qixotl sensed the Doctor was frowning. 'It was alive, or partly alive. A life-form with an outer metallic sh.e.l.l and an organic interior. But in this state, it's impossible to say for certain what species it belonged to.'

Qixotl kept prodding the surface of the shape. He felt the dome at the top of its body crack under his fingers. 'What happened to it?'

'Its cellular structure has been totally reconfigured. The outer sh.e.l.l's brittle, the casing's been turned into semi-solid crystal. There, you feel that?' The Doctor grabbed Qixotl's hand, and forced him to stroke one side of the dead thing's body. Qixotl felt an enormous hole there. 'Something's forced its way into the interior and extracted the bioma.s.s inside.'

Qixotl pulled his hand away. 'What are you saying here, Doctor?'

The Doctor patted the corpse on the top of its dome. 'I don't know whether this started out life as a Dalek or not. But whatever it was, it's effectively been peeled and eaten.'

Kathleen was still moving, in spite of the obvious minor injuries. Sam was out of breath by the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, but the Lieutenant, who'd effectively taken the non-tiring way down, still seemed quite active. There was blood all over her face, and the stuff was still seeping out of the cuts on her forehead. The way she crawled, Sam guessed most of her joints had been twisted out of position.

Sam trotted up the corridor ahead of her, and stopped right in the woman's path. Kathleen came to a halt at her feet. Her face was terrifying. Battered stupid, but still determined as h.e.l.l. She looked like she'd just seen the oasis on the horizon.

'He's here,' Kathleen croaked.

Sam crossed her arms. 'Kathleen, you've just bounced down two flights of stairs on your head. You're lucky you didn't break your neck.'

'No. He wouldn't. He wouldn't let it happen.'

'Who wouldn't?'

'The voice,' said Kathleen.

She was listening out for something, Sam realised. So she listened, too. I never give advice, never, thought Sam. But there are terrible things in the universe, things that... wait a minute, she was thinking rubbish. Concentrate, she told herself. You're getting distracted. But if you could touch the alien sand, and hear the cry of strange birds, and watch them wheel in another sky, then we'll burn that bridge when we come to it, until it seems that I'm some kind of galactic yo-yo...