'Can you hear it?' Kathleen asked.

Sam suddenly remembered what the Doctor had said, when they'd been exploring the ziggurat together. 'Are you psychic, at all?'

The corridor opened out a few metres ahead of them. The room at the end seemed darker than the other parts of the ziggurat Sam had seen. Kathleen had already slithered past her, and now she was getting close to the entrance, slowly pulling herself to her feet. Sam hurried after her.

The room ahead was, in short, a vault. It wasn't as bad as the Faction's shrine, but it was getting there. The walls were the colour of soot, made out of what looked like slime-encrusted brick. Huge rusting nails had been hammered into the blocks, and hung with iron chains for no particular reason. It was supposed to look like a dungeon, Sam realised. The torches only seemed to illuminate the edges of the room, leaving a great puddle of darkness at the dead centre of the chamber.

And in the middle of the darkness was a casket. It glowed, but the glow only lit the box itself; the light somehow failed to reach the s.p.a.ce around it. The casket was silver, roughly the same size and shape as a coffin. Its sides were perfectly smooth, its lid engraved with two carefully carved symbols. Sam recognised them as Greek letters, but wasn't sure which Greek letters they were, exactly. The second one was probably "sigma", though.

It was the Relic. You could tell. You could tell, because everything in the ziggurat seemed to lead here, to this precise position in s.p.a.ce-time. Every centimetre of architecture, every word spoken by every one of Qixotl's guests, pointed to this vault like a neon sign. It all came down to this. The casket was the centre of the universe, and nothing else mattered.

Sam saw Kathleen step forward. She was walking normally now, except maybe for the slightest of limps. Sam got the feeling the casket was waiting for her, calling her over. Whispering. Even breathing.

The Lieutenant stopped in front of the box. Sam was sure she saw the casket flare up when Kathleen got within touching distance of it. Silver light washed over her hands as she raised them over the lid of the casket. The Relic was sucking in air, taking a deep breath. Antic.i.p.ating.

Kathleen put her palms on the surface of the lid. Ready to open up the box and release the Relic.

'Where's Qixotl?' hollered Mr Homunculette. 'Get me Qixotl!'

At the moment, n.o.body seemed to know where Qixotl was. Speaking for himself, Kortez wasn't particularly concerned. All things were one thing, he reminded himself, and all souls were one soul. The world of matter would move as it would move, regardless of the vain attempts of mortal flesh to disrupt its ebb and flow.

Although, to be honest, he was going to have to throttle Homunculette if the man didn't shut up soon.

Homunculette lay on the floor of the anteroom, his hands bound behind his back. One of the death-cultists stood guarding him, prodding him in the stomach whenever he tried to get up, but still failing to keep him quiet. The other cultist, the woman, looked on without feeling.

'Mr Homunculette attempted to a.s.sault me,' she explained, turning to face Kortez.

The Colonel nodded. 'Violence is a transient state of unilluminated physicality,' he recited.

'Quite,' said the woman.

Kortez had awoken from his meditation a few minutes earlier, to find himself alone in the guest room. Lieutenant Bregman had gone missing, presumably having been carried away by the aforementioned ebb and flow of material existence. The sound of caterwauling had led him here, to an anteroom close to the centre of the ziggurat.

'Animals! Heretics! s.a.d.i.s.ts!' yelled Homunculette. The cultist guarding him duly planted a foot in his groin.

Cousin Justine kept her eyes fixed on Kortez. 'I've been wondering about your place at this auction, Colonel. I mean no offence, but I think most of us were surprised to see humans in attendance here.' A faint smile appeared on her face. 'That is to say, representatives of the human race. Many of us still regard Earth as a low-interest world.'

'We've got a special interest in the property, Ms Justine,' Kortez told her. 'UNISYC has a long-standing appointment with the man in the box.'

'Cousin Justine,' the woman corrected him. 'But it's the nature of your bid that interests me, Colonel. I'm curious to know what Mr Qixotl is hoping to gain from Earth. Not technology, certainly. And not information, either. Earth has no temporal defences. If our host wanted to know anything about your culture, he'd find it out for himself.' Justine,' the woman corrected him. 'But it's the nature of your bid that interests me, Colonel. I'm curious to know what Mr Qixotl is hoping to gain from Earth. Not technology, certainly. And not information, either. Earth has no temporal defences. If our host wanted to know anything about your culture, he'd find it out for himself.'

'There's more to our existence than material concerns, Cousin Justine.'

Justine looked blank, although Kortez knew she understood him really. 'Then your bid...?'

'There are some powers in the universe that cannot be resisted,' Kortez intoned. 'The forces of karmic virtue and inner balance will be satisfied.'

Cousin Justine and her Little Brother exchanged glances. They looked confused, but Kortez knew it was only a front. Like him, they appreciated the fact that there were higher levels of existence, mysteries only the spiritually illuminated could fathom. If he'd for one moment believed he was alone in his understanding of the universe, he'd probably have gone mad.

The male cultist jerked a thumb in the Colonel's direction, then put a finger to his temple and twirled it around. Kortez guessed it was some kind of secret sign. No doubt the man had recognised him as a spiritual equal.

Without warning, the air was filled with a high-pitched screaming sound, which seemed to ring out from every corner of the room at once. The toucans, Kortez realised. Out in the forest, the birds were screeching in agony, and the architecture here had obviously been designed to let the noise reverberate through the walls. It wasn't the first time he'd heard the alarm since he'd been in the ziggurat, but now the toucans were practically squawking their lungs out.

Something brushed across the Colonel's spinal column. He looked down at his shirt, and caught sight of the letters moving around across the face of the UNISYC insignia.

THE CORE DEFENCES HAVE BEEN TRIGGERED, the Shift reported.

Cousin Justine had apparently seen the same message, though not necessarily in the same place. 'Meaning?'

THE DEFENCES PROTECTING THE RELIC. TWO LEVELS DOWN.

The other cultist hissed. 'Someone's after the stiff.'

THEN THEY'RE NOT VERY INTELLIGENT. THE DEFENCES ARE PROGRAMMED TO TAKE INTRUDERS TO PIECES. WHOEVER'S IN THE VAULT, THEY'RE NOT GOING TO GET OUT ALIVE. WAIT. I'M GOING TO TRY SKIMMING THE CITY'S SYSTEMS. I'LL SEE IF I CAN IDENTIFY THEM.

There was a pause, during which everybody started squinting around the room, to see if there were any messages in the stonework they'd missed. Finally, the Shift returned.

COLONEL KORTEZ, it said. I'M AFRAID I'VE GOT SOME BAD NEWS.

'You mean, this ship's been attacked?'

The Doctor kept moving his hand across the interior wall of what he a.s.sumed was the black ship's control area. 'I don't mean anything,' he muttered.

'But that thing... the dead thing, yeah?... it was a part of this ship's crew?'

'I should think so.'

'And something's killed it?'

'Mmm. Tell me, how many Daleks did you invite to this auction?'

There was a moment's shuffling. Outside the ship, the toucans had started shrieking again, but you could hear Qixotl's nervous twitches even over that racket. 'Just the two. The invites specify no more than two reps from any one, er, agency.'

The Doctor finally found what he'd been fumbling for. A square projection, set into the wall at waist height. He started fingering the mechanism. Sadly, it wasn't designed for anything with fingers. 'So. If we a.s.sume this was was a Dalek vessel, there should be another body somewhere on board.' He paused. 'Qixotl?' a Dalek vessel, there should be another body somewhere on board.' He paused. 'Qixotl?'

'Uh, yeah?'

'There's something I've been meaning to ask you. And stop shuffling.'

'What?'

'My body. How did you get hold of it?'

There was no reply. 'If my body's so popular, a lot of people must have been waiting for me to pa.s.s away,' the Doctor continued. 'I'm a.s.suming n.o.body thought they could take the risk of killing me themselves. My reputation must have been quite impressive, before the end.'

Qixotl mumbled what sounded like a "yes".

'I'd like to know how you managed to get your hands on it before anyone else,' the Doctor concluded. 'And I told you to stop shuffling.'

'I'm not shuffling,' Qixotl protested.

The Doctor fell silent. The shuffling went on.

'Oh,' said Qixotl.

'Ah,' said the Doctor.

He reached into his jacket pocket. Over the years, people had often commented on his ability to produce exactly the right item from his pockets at exactly the right time. Some had speculated that his pockets were extensions of the TARDIS, others had guessed he was just lucky. But then, they'd never read Yeltstrom's Karma and Flares: The Importance of Fashion Sense to the Modern Zen Master Karma and Flares: The Importance of Fashion Sense to the Modern Zen Master. They didn't appreciate the things a sentient life-form could achieve, if he was totally at one with the lining of his jacket.

The Doctor pulled a sink plunger out of his pocket, thrust it into the mechanism in the wall, and twisted it a little.

The secondary lighting system, the one the ship's original owners would have used whenever they had organic company/prisoners on board, was engaged. The Doctor turned. The control section was circular, twenty feet from side to side, lined with black display panels and even blacker navigational systems. At the far side of the area, in the position the Doctor knew had to be the pilot's "seat", was another lump of crystallised metal and bioma.s.s. Seen in direct light, the thing was hideous, like a particularly extreme piece of modern sculpture. The Doctor was reminded of a half-used, half-melted candle.

Straddling the dead thing was a decidedly alive thing. At first glance, it looked a lot like a spider, a heavy body supported by narrow, over-extended legs. Most of these legs were planted on the floor of the control section, although a couple were draped across the display panels. The limbs, the Doctor realised, were shafts of flexible crystal, each one no thicker than a piece of rope. The torso was a shapeless lump of the same substance, much more dense than the legs, topped by a geometric "head" made up of precise triangles and rectangles. The thing had no face, although several delicate sensory extensions were arranged around the cranial unit, gla.s.sy blue feelers that swayed from side to side as if tasting the air.

A single tendril extended from the underside of the being's torso, short but powerful-looking. The tendril had punctured the dead creature's sh.e.l.l, and the Doctor could see transparent vein-like tubes running along its length, some pumping digestive acid into the corpse, others transporting liquefied bioma.s.s up into the crystal creature's body. The bioma.s.s was green when it left the cadaver, but by the time it reached its destination, it had crystallised and turned bright blue.

Everything finally clicked into place.

The creature wasn't really spider-like, not in its natural environment. But it was adaptable. The only solid parts of the being were the "head", which contained the central nervous system, and the tendril. Whenever the creature moved from one kind of environment to another, it would shatter the rest of its body from the inside, then use the tendril to absorb fresh bioma.s.s say, from any organic life-form unlucky enough to be in the vicinity and use it to grow itself a new sh.e.l.l.

The being had attacked the ship, forced its way on board, and killed the original crew. The Doctor couldn't see it standing up to the crew's weapons with just its tendril, so he guessed the intruder had been armed. It had spent the trip here slowly absorbing its prey, saving up enough raw material for a new body when it arrived. The spider form was what it wore during s.p.a.ce flight, ideal for low-gravity conditions, but looking more than a little shaky now it had reached Earth. Its legs trembled as it sucked the last of the organic matter out of the ship's pilot.

The Doctor took in the rest of the control area, and noticed two things of interest. One was the look of sheer nausea on Qixotl's face. The other was a small crystalline growth, attached to one of the navigational computers. The intruder had planted a sub-organic control device in the ship's systems, making the vessel obedient to its own will.

The Doctor had expected this, for the simple reason that he'd met these creatures before. But the last time he'd seen them, they'd been wearing much stockier bodies, better suited to life on a high-gravity world.

The crystalline thing looked up, or rather, it twisted its feelers towards the hatchway. Its head spun on top of its body.

'You-are-the-be-ing-called-Qix-ot-l?' it groaned. Its voice was a monotonous electronic gurgle, like a man with a throat full of nails.

The Doctor pointed to Qixotl. Qixotl whimpered.

'I-have-come-to-att-end-your-auc-tion,' the intruder announced.

'Erm... do you have an invite?' The intruder's head spun a little faster, so Qixotl raised his hands defensively. 'I mean, not that you're not welcome. But the security around here, y'know, if you're not on the guest list...'

'This-vess-el-was-int-er-cept-ed-in-mid-flight. I-have-taken-poss-ess-ion-of-the-in-vit-at-ion. I-have-al-rea-dy-trans-mitt-ed-my-bi-o-da-ta-to-your-Ci-ty's-sys-tems.'

'Oh. Well. That's all right then.' Qixotl shot the Doctor an anxious glance. 'Does this mean...?'

'It means any Daleks you may have invited are a no-show,' the Doctor told him, flashing a quick smile at the crystalline creature. 'The Krotons have come to take their place.'

MR QIXOTL'S STORY

Traducersville, Dronid, local year 15367

22:55; one can down, no ill effects so far.

The club was called Shockley's Den of Almost Limitless Iniquity, and it was starting to get on Mr Qixotl's nerves. OK, so the decor was nice. All the rooms were half-lit and shady-looking, and the b.a.l.l.s in the pool rooms were artificial intelligence jobs, so they consoled you in teeny squeaky voices whenever you missed a shot. And yeah, there were plenty of side-cubicles where you could do deals in private, and yeah, the drinks were cheaper than battery acid. The problem, in Qixotl's view, was the clientele.

They were all Professionals. Professionals with a capital "P". Qixotl had been hanging around the underworlds of Mutter's Spiral since he'd been a tube-squirt, he'd dealt in everything from stolen time capsules to illicit cloned body parts, but never before had he seen a planet that took its criminal operations so seriously. If you worked for one of the organised crime networks on Dronid, you were considered to be a career-minded citizen. The Professionals were the kind of people who'd put "thug" or "hired killer" on their pa.s.sports and be proud of it.

In theory, the set-up should have suited Mr Qixotl down to the ground, but in practice, it was getting to be a pain in the neck. Most of the Professionals crowding around the bar area were wearing suits, for a start. Not cla.s.sy designer numbers, like Qixotl's; old black-tie-and-jacket numbers. Some of them probably dealt in hot DNA for a living, but they looked like a bunch of accountants. All much, much too formal for Qixotl's liking. He was a wild card, a one-off, a free spirit...

His discomfort had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that these people made him feel like an amateur. No no no. Nothing at all.

Behind the bar, a girl leaned over to take the order of the Professional standing next to Mr Qixotl. Another suit, Qixotl noted. 'Two gla.s.ses of Tequila Mockingbird,' the man said, raising his voice above the I-bet-I've-shot-more-people-than-you-this-week hubbub around him. 'And where can I get hold of some dystronic explosive?'

The girl checked a chalkboard on the wall behind her. 'Twelve denaris for the drinks,' she said. 'And... erm, no one's in tonight who does dystronic weapons. Will Klutterbug missiles do?'

The Professional frowned. 'I can live with 'em.'

'You want Mr VenFaxil. He's in pool room number three. Two denaris service charge, please. Thank you.'

The man's drinks, when the girl finished mixing them, turned out to be bright blue, with two thumb-sized genetically engineered flamingos wading around in each gla.s.s. Cra.s.s, thought Qixotl. He waited until the Professional had moved away from the bar, then raised his hand.

'Another can of Blue Dog,' he said. 'And I'm looking for some high-level propulsion systems here, yeah?'

23:07; two cans down, still sober.

Mr Qixotl sat in one of the side-cubicles, opposite a man who, according to the girl behind the bar, was generally known as "Mr Gabriel". From what Qixotl had gathered, the man was a Gabrielidean, one of the many off-worlders who'd come to Dronid looking for an easy pinch. Gabrielideans didn't have proper names back on their own planet, so Qixotl couldn't help feeling that the handle this one had chosen for himself wasn't too original. In Qixotl's opinion, meeting a Gabrielidean called "Mr Gabriel" was like meeting a Dalek called "Mr D Arlek" or someone from Earth called "Harold Human".

'Let me make sure I'm on your wavelength,' Mr Gabriel said. 'What you want, and I'm not going to mince words here, is a new dematerialisation circuit. Is that what you're saying?'

Qixotl looked over his shoulder, even though there was nothing behind him but the wall. It was a kind of gut reaction. 'I wouldn't, y'know, put it like that,' he said.