'More a kind of blue box.'

Conaway blinked. 'A -'

- box, yes. Blue. Simulated wooden exterior, yes; bit battered but did look rather smart once, so I've a.s.sured myself. Of course, that was a much older me and somewhat less reliable, not to mention more biased towards the design, I shouldn't wonder, though I grant you there are a great many aesthetic considerations to be said for an antique-exterior dimensional map, not the least of which is that I'd have thought she'd be pretty hard to miss among all that boring grey rock. So,' he added without actually stopping in the first place, 'if you could see your way clear to arranging for a couple of fathoms of rope I'll just -'

The shoelace, which the Doctor had been spinning continuously, suddenly fell slack in his hand. Then the hand fell limp beside his body. A glazed, somewhat distant look spread across his face, as if his mind had suddenly found somewhere much less interesting to be, which it had. Then, under the delayed influence of Conaway's tranquilliser, he fell over and began to snore.

The snoring, like the finger-tapping before it, also took the form of a rather impatient, freeform jazz rhythm.

The city died.

Five hundred years it had lived, generations it had seen born, and live, and die. It remembered all of them. Every name, every birth weight, every height; it remembered the colour of eyes, the shape of faces, every cubic centimetre of air and water and food consumed. It remembered every job performed, the use to which every hour of every person's leisure time was put. It remembered work. It remembered art. It remembered everything.

Though it was not alive, had no conscious awareness of itself as a living ent.i.ty, nonetheless it was one. Though it did not generate a single spontaneous human thought, still it made decisions and cared for the people who lived within it. And, as a person was composed of the sum total of his memories, so too was the city composed of the sum total of its inhabitants. When the people died so it died with them. The catastrophic physical destruction that followed, the destruction of the moon on which it had been built, was merely inevitable detail.

The Doctor awoke once, much later, jammed in the hold of a medical frigate with several thousand refugees. His last woo2y sight before lapsing once more into unconsciousness was of the moon beginning to break up and shower down into the atmosphere of Belannia VI in flaming chunks - one or two as big as small countries. His last thoughts as his eyes closed and greedy sleep claimed him again were not of the TARDIS - it was after all, indestructible - but of Sam, who was not.

Chapter Two.

The first piece of debris struck the medical frigate while Conaway was preparing to amputate a crushed forearm. The patient was a nurse who'd been caught beneath a collapsed building, one of a team trying to free a number of refugees trapped there. The arm was as good as gone already but care had to be taken to ensure removal of the limb was conducted in such a way as to preserve as much nerve and muscle tissue as was possible in the event that a replacement limb, grown from the nurse's filed DMA, could be attached later.

That was the theory anyway. Practice was somewhat different -especially when there were large chunks of smashed-up moon colliding with the ship in whose medical bays you were operating.

'Atropine. Adrenaline. Anaesthesia: benzoprophyliticine, ten units per unit body ma.s.s. Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique , first movement. Bonesaw.'

The theatre shook to a dull reverberating clang as another chunk of moon sc.r.a.ped an inordinately large section of paint from the hull. The lights flickered. The power supply to the bonesaw kicked over to its emergency generator. The lights came back up to full strength but the 'Reveries and Pa.s.sions' of Hector Berlioz were abruptly struck dumb. The music was not on the emergency power circuit.

Conaway glanced irritably at the player and scowled. 'Never rains but it pours.' She picked up the saw.

The reverberating clang that had so annoyingly caused the abrupt cessation of the Symphonie Fantastique in the ship's operating theatre had a much more dramatic effect in the ship's main hold, where the Doctor was sitting up and looking somewhat distractedly around himself. The expression on his face suggested to one or two of the nearer refugees that he might have misplaced something. An item of luggage or a small child. The expression did not change, except that he became ever so slightly more interested as the reverberating clang developed quite suddenly into the hysterical screech of depressurisation.

'Clothes. Give me your clothes. All of them. Yes, right now. I I know it's embarra.s.sing but believe me the alternative is just a bit

more than slightly less pleasant.' Without waiting for any replies, the Doctor dived into the nearest group of refugees, grabbing clothing at every turn until, like an ant rolling a seed the size of a bowling ball back to its nest, he heaved a large ma.s.s of clothing towards the nearest of the half-dozen jagged holes that had appeared in the hold.

The huge ball of clothing wedged itself tightly into the gap. The scream of rushing air abated momentarily. The Doctor added, 'Come along, don't be shy. Just imagine you're on Brighton beach and it's midsummer - there's another five holes to plug yet.'

Under the Doctor's coaxing and the moan of depressurisation alarms, the refugees began to strip.

When a maintenance crew appeared moments later wearing cheerful green s.p.a.cesuits and carrying bright yellow canisters of foam sealant, they walked straight into the middle of a rugby scrum of half-naked people.

The technicians pulled off their s.p.a.ce helmets and looked round in bemus.e.m.e.nt. One scratched his head. The Doctor took both of the large yellow canisters of foam and, one in each hand, began to seal the holes properly. He sang l.u.s.tily as he worked.

'"There was I. Digging this hole. Hole in the ground. Big and sorta round it was..."'

Ten minutes later he returned the empty canisters to the technicians. The technicians glanced narrowly at the Doctor's fair skin and odd clothes.

' "The hole's not there. The ground's all flat. Underneath is the fellow with the bowler hat. And that's that." You know, Lorraine, I'm sure I've seen this before...' He added in a pa.s.sably good Richard Dreyfuss impression, using clawed fingers to sculpt four roughly parallel lines down the side of his mountainous foam creation as it quickly set. Abruptly he snapped his attention back to the green-suited figures. "That's right, I'm an alien.' He swept one arm in a grand gesture that encompa.s.sed both the seminaked refugees and the small hill of sodden material that was their clothing. 'Take me,' he added to the technicians with a faintly disturbing smile,'to your laundry.'

There was a disconcertingly loud bang, immediately followed by a great number of smaller bangs and several sc.r.a.ping noises. More debris. .h.i.tting the ship. Some of the refugees milled agitatedly. Somewhere a child began to cry.

'On second thoughts, perhaps you'd better just take me to your leader,' added the Doctor, more traditionally.

Captain Ruth.e.l.le Bellis gripped the deck rail of the bridge with one hand and a small photograph of her son and three-year-old grandson with the other, and asked the universe politely if it would stop throwing large rocks at her. All things considered, she felt she was too old for this sort of thing.

The universe clearly didn't agree with her.

The ship gonged and clanged on all sides, shaking to the sound of almost constant collisions, a sound that reached even here, the inertia-dampened, gyro-mounted bridge. The nervesphere of the ship completely enclosed the Captain's podium. Her position was located at its heart, surrounded on all sides by systems operators, all of them strapped tightly into their workstations, some of them muttering to themselves as people are wont to do when trying to coax impossible responses from stubborn machinery, and at least one praying. Ranged in a wide arc in front of her were a number of three-dimensional displays showing the exterior of the medical frigate and surrounding s.p.a.ce. The view panned and tracked in synch with her eyes as she looked left and right, up and down; everywhere she looked was rock. Smashed-up rock. Powdered rock. Gravel. Jagged chunks as large as mountains. Shattered plates which she guessed might be as big as small countries. Beyond the rock the grey-green hemisphere of Belannia VI was obscured by the glare of sunlight scattered through the cloud of fragments of pulverised moon. It was like a dazzling mist floating in s.p.a.ce.

Bellis glanced around. She didn't need to hear the reports from the systems operators to know what the situation was. NerveNet was useless. Main power to the engines was fluctuating wildly -one engine cowling was mangled - and there was a jagged hole five hundred metres long where the dorsal sensor array had previously been located.

She gripped the picture of her family more tightly, crushing the coated photograph against the deck rail, as if trying to impress the features of her son and grandson on to the skin of her hand. From the left and above the captain's podium, a jagged chunk of rock cruised sullenly towards her. Despite a lifetime's experience, it was hard to resist the impulse to duck. 'Asteroid defences,' she snapped. 'Quick as you like, Mr Ra.n.a.ld.'

The gunnery officer did not turn.'Tracking systems are still non-op, ma'am.'

I really didn't need to hear that.

'That last hit took out the secondary feeds from the back-up array.'

I really didn't need to hear that, either.

'Options?' n.o.body spoke. 'If anyone's got any wild thoughts regarding last-minute salvation, now's the time to air them.'

No one spoke.

The rock spun lazily closer. Bellis gripped the deck rail even more tightly. She was looking at her death. The death of everyone aboard the ship.

'Update!' It was a desperate demand; she didn't need to hear the strained reply to know the truth.

'No change.'

She saw other pieces of debris impacting against the surface of the larger rock. The viewing systems were pulling in a crystal-clear image which, bearing in mind the beating the ship was taking, would've had their designers turning happy cartwheels. A hi-fidelity digital image of her own death, the shatter of rock, the bright glare of discharged energy following collision. The rock sparkled as it moved towards her - a sun-bright death-glare, rippling with light as it moved unstoppably closer.

She tore her eyes from the sight long enough to look at the photograph of her family. The paper was crushed, a broken crease slashed across the surface between the faces. She murmured their names. It was a prayer against the night, the muttered joy and curse of all ship's crew in the face of disaster. She tucked the crumpled paper back into her shirt pocket and looked up at the savage, whirling wall of rock. Inside she was screaming. Something in her ship had died and something in her head had died with it. She lifted a hand, fingers clenched into a fist, opened the fist palm outward as if to ward off the inevitable. The gesture was almost ludicrously futile. The rock just got bigger.

The podium elevator rose into place beside her. She barely managed to tear her eyes from the mesmerising sight of death bearing down upon her. The doors opened. Inside the elevator were two maintenance technicians and another man dressed in a long coat wearing only one shoe. The man bounced out of the elevator. 'Pleased to meet you,' he said. 'Captain Bellis, I presume,' he said. He looked up at the approaching rock, which now appeared to fill more than half of the available field of view, and his eyes opened very, very wide. He blinked.

'Ah,' he said, and began to rummage frantically in his pockets.

Surgeon Major Conaway lifted away the detached limb, bagged it for later gene harvesting, and turned her attention back to the truncated arm. She closed the major artery, sealed all the smaller veins and capped the exposed, shortened humerus. She removed pockets of fatty tissue from the flesh surrounding the bone, folded the prepared flaps of skin together across the end of the arm and began to weld.

She operated quickly, her movements owing more to desperation than precision, dictated by the sound of rocks crashing against the ship's hull which replaced the Berlioz she would normally be listening to. She'd been awake now for about thirty hours, only the last ten of which had been spent working in the capital city of Belannia VI's moon. She pinched the bridge of her nose tiredly, noticing only after a second or two that the nearest nurse had taken the skin-welder from her hand before she could accidentally stab herself in the eye with the hot end. She nodded her thanks and felt a momentary dizziness. She blinked. She felt cold. She could feel a slight wobble in her left knee, indication of muscle fatigue - a sure sign that she needed to rest.

Well, that was the theory, anyway.

'Speed?' The nurse noticed her tiredness, extracted a capsule from a small tin and offered it helpfully.

'And then some.' Conaway took the capsule and swallowed it. A moment later the operating theatre clicked sharply back into focus. Her knee stopped trembling. Her heart hammered for a moment and the settled to a steady rhythm. She sighed, picked up fresh skin-welder and checked the focusing lens.

On the bridge Captain Bellis felt like a spectator at a zero-g tennis match. After introducing himself and gazing with some interest at the approaching chunk of rock the Doctor had leapt off the captain's podium and, brandishing a number of objects grabbed from his pockets like a caveman brandishing several bone clubs, was now leaping effortlessly in the zero-gravity from station to station across the nervesphere.

At each terminal he would beam delightedly at the console operator, remove the hatch covering the interior of the console and stick his head and shoulders into the works.p.a.ce thus revealed. He did this so fast and so consistently that soon a tangle of components and wires began to acc.u.mulate in the drift s.p.a.ce between the consoles. Bits of circuit board - and indeed the Doctor himself from time to time - occasionally shot through the projected three-dimensional image of the rock with which they were still on an apparently irreversible collision course.

At the console on which he was working, one of the Doctor's arms - shirtsleeve rolled up like that of a mechanic or cricketer -emerged briefly, just long enough to thrust a confusing tangle of tools, electrical components and a.s.sorted chocolates at the bemused technician, who only then realised that the Doctor was handing him the contents of his pockets and not the contents of the computer on which he was working.

'Don't suppose you'd mind just holding these for me for a moment, would you, there's a good fellow.' The Doctor's voice emerged metallically from inside the console. 'They're getting in the way, and I've a bit of a tricky patient here. Have to rea.s.sure it everything's going to be OK before we start amputating.'

From the captain's podium Bellis watched as the rock grew bigger still.

The Doctor stuck his hand out of the console clicked his fingers. 'Screwdriver,' he snapped. He grabbed the tool and vanished back into the console.

'Watch it, we've got a pumper.' Conaway dropped the needle and stuck out her hand peremptorily. 'Cauteriser.' She grabbed the instrument and began to work on the artery. 'Anyone know the Kyrie from Faure'sRequiem ?' She sang as she worked and smiled as she sang.

The Doctor's hand emerged from the console again. 'Tyre lever.' His head emerged briefly, just long enough to glance at the approaching rock and grin rea.s.suringly at his startled audience. 'Anyone know the Kyrie from Faure'sRequiem ?' He sang as he worked, his voice emerging with a nasal timbre, and flat, from the innards of the console.

The clatter of debris against the ship's hull beat an unusual but not inappropriate accompaniment.

To this somewhat less than sacred rendition of the Doctor's favourite piece of sacred music, the asteroid defence systems sprang eagerly to life and, to the sound of spontaneous applause from the bridge officers, blew the approaching rock into an countless number of mostly harmless pieces.

The Doctor extracted himself from the console, closed the hatch, glanced in minor puzzlement at the double handful of circuit boards he was still holding, shrugged, stuffed them in his pockets and beamed at the console operator beside him. 'Soft centre,' he snapped, holding out his hand and waggling the fingers impatiently. 'A congratulatory coffee cream I think. Have one yourself.' Munching happily, he retrieved his tools from the console operator and stuffed them back into his pocket with the already forgotten circuit boards.

He looked at Captain Bellis and grinned with immense satisfaction, much as she imagined a small boy would grin after finding something utterly unsavoury in the local tip, while showing off afterwards to his mates about how tasty it was.

'How did you do that?' Bellis couldn't stop the question coming out in a rather high-pitched voice.

'Oh... you know.' The Doctor shrugged modestly.'Centuries of life experience, a degree in the psychology and social dynamics of machine intelligence, a two-week apprenticeship at Kwik-Fit...' Bellis stared.'And what about the engines?' 'Engines?' The Doctor stopped in mid-chew with a second coffee cream halfway to his mouth.'n.o.body mentioned anything was wrong with the engines .'

On any normal day the surface of the southern hemisphere of Belannia VI was generally considered even more attractive up close than it was from orbit. The ocean was a deep tropical blue and sprinkled with a fine dusting of gorgeous atolls. The fish went quietly about their business and the sea-birds were busy poking their noses - and beaks - into it.

A normal day.

Today, however, was, most a.s.suredly, anything but a normal day. Five hundred kilometres closer to the equator than the capital city was a chain of mildly active but nonetheless beautiful volcanic islands, scallop-shaped cones of volcanic pumice with hot sandy beaches and abundant wildlife produced regularly whenever the local tectonic plates could not decide which had the more legitimate claim on the surrounding geological area. Local conditions, therefore, were seldom what might be considered temperate. Today, however, was a day that would put even the most violently active of geological events into the shade. There had been indications of the approaching planetary disaster for some time but these had gone largely unnoticed by the local population of holidaying Belannian politicians and statesmen who were, in the main, here to get away from the stress and bustle of their everyday lives.

The firstmajor indication that there was trouble afoot - on a scale that would make the problems of Noah seem like so many bathtime fairy tales - was when a large s.p.a.cecraft carrying several thousand refugees fell crazily out of orbit and smashed into the ocean, producing a Shockwave that killed ocean and sky dwellers alike for some very considerable distance from the site of impact. The second major indication was when several large chunks of Belannia VI's moon began rapidly to follow suit.

His name was Father Alexis Denadi, and he was a priest. It had taken Sam a while to figure this out. What she thought were a cowl and habit had in feet been the loose plastic folds of an emergency environment suit. As the air pressure reached dangerously low levels he had taken another suit and bundled her into it. The suits were very little more than basic life-support mechanisms - they had small emergency beacons but no radios.

With the air gone Sam had no choice but to follow the priest through the still-shaking outer suburbs of the city in the hope of finding an area that still held pressure.

For Sam, the journey had been a shocking experience. As if the shaking of the ground and the almost continuous collapse of the buildings between which they moved wasn't enough, she also had to contend with the bodies. There were so many, those who had not made it clear of the depressurising section of the city. They were mostly adults, but some children lay scattered across her path, bodies bloated and bruised from internal haemorrhaging, limbs outstretched as if grasping for life, or curled around themselves as if attempting desperately to prevent its escape.

Sam had no clear idea how long the journey had taken. She didn't become aware that the air in her emergency suit was becoming stale and hot until Father Denadi took her by the shoulders and unzipped the helmet. Only as she breathed in fresh air laced with the scent of damp gra.s.s and pond flowers did she realise that the tiredness and blurred vision that she had been experiencing were due not to exhaustion but to oxygen deprivation.

She began to take off the suit. Father Denadi placed a hand on her arm, stopping the movement. He unzipped his own helmet, and his expression told Sam that they weren't out of the woods yet. This much was true, Sam realised. The ground underneath her feet was still shaking. All right, the movement wasn't as strong as before but it was definitely there, and showed no signs of going away.

Sam's eyes remained fixed on Father Denadi's craggy face as she became aware of voices surrounding her. She caught her breath and looked around. She was in another park. This one was much smaller than the one in which she had nearly been killed, more a kind of ornamental garden really. Small trees that looked a bit like weeping willows formed arches of rustling green across a transparent roof through which the stars shone unchangingly. I Ornamental bushes wound between the willows in a leafy maze. [ A pond bordered with cracked stone flagging snaked between the bushes. As the ground shook, water slopped over the stone and soaked into the gra.s.s, carrying with it a bedraggled tide of lily pads. Between the trees, Sam could see the shattered remains of a number of buildings, their jagged stumps lit by fitfully flickering windows, their upper ramparts silhouetted against the bulk of the grey-green planet she had seen earlier, itself now shrouded in darkness and reduced to a thick crescent by its own advancing terminator.

Sitting or standing nearby were a group of perhaps twenty or thirty people. They were huddled together beneath the largest of the willows, whose branches sc.r.a.ped and swayed above them. The sound she had heard was that of their devotions. Their voices were low, continuous, a fog bank of prayer drifting through trees and across the damp gra.s.s.

Sam felt something scuttle across her foot and jumped. She looked down. A frog. She sat down suddenly on the gra.s.s, put her head in her hands and began to giggle. The giggles quickly turned into laughter, the laughter to tears. She screwed her eyes tightly shut and knuckled her fists against her eyelids, trying to shut out the memory of the faces of the people she had pa.s.sed, the people who had not made it to the garden, and life. She wondered briefly how many other pockets of people there were in the city, trapped in areas of pressure, isolated from death by the thickness of a wall or window, waiting in fear for the trembling of the ground to increase again to killing strength.

Sam did not know how long she cried, only that she felt better when she stopped. Which was stupid when you thought about it - the ground was still shaking, the people were still praying. Only the frogs had gone.

She looked up. Father Denadi had joined the group of people and was moving among them, smiling, his presence clearly rea.s.suring them. He touched the face of a young child and the child stopped crying. In fact, now that she noticed it, Sam was surprised to see that the people were in the main calm, almost tranquil. She saw none of the panic or fear she had witnessed in the last hours with those who had died. She got stiffly up from the damp gra.s.s and walked curiously towards the group. As she moved closer she realised that their numbers had increased. She saw other people emerging from between the trees and ornamental bushes: single adults, others with children, occasionally a lone, puzzled child; clumps of people who had clearly come into the garden from different entrances from the one she had used, and who were now moving to join the throng, drawn by the sound of prayer, the sound of peace among all the violence.

As Sam moved closer, she began to hear the words spoken by Father Denadi to the congregation - she found herself thinking of the group in that way - and she frowned.

'... death is among us... but do not fear... death is our friend... death frees us from the prison of our lives... death is the doorway to our Endless State...'

A large man dressed in a neat suit with a neatly trimmed beard said in a small voice, 'How do we know that we won't be left behind?'

Father Denadi smiled. 'For those with faith the doorway stands ever open.You may walk through it at any time.'

The man sighed with relief and began again to pray. Father Denadi offered something to the large man. A votive wafer. Sam realised that a number of the group had similar wafers. The large man took the wafer from the priest. Sam thought she saw tears on the large man's cheeks as he placed it into his mouth and swallowed.

She moved closer. Father Denadi turned, saw her, waved her nearer still. 'Come,' he said. 'Join us.' Sam hesitated.

Father Denadi took a step closer. His smile was tranquil yet something of the tranquillity struck Sam as infinitely threatening. She took a step back. 'You are scared.'

'You're right there! We're in the middle of an earthquake, the city's falling down and G.o.d knows how many people have died already...'

Sam became aware that the people had fallen silent around her, their prayers dissolving into startled muttering. A child pointed at her.'She used the G-word!'

Sam glanced around. Suddenly the group of people seemed more like a crowd. A crowd whose attention had been directed at her.