Conaway sent a nurse back within moments. 'It's Captain Bellis. She's trapped under the winch arm and some broken hull plates. We can't get her out because the plates are too heavy to move and the winch is broken. The surgeon major said to tell you she "wants the b.l.o.o.d.y mountain and wants it b.l.o.o.d.y now". Her exact words.' The nurse's quiet look suggested she did not hold out much hope for Captain Bellis - or Surgeon Major Conaway - if she persisted in using highly qualified personnel as message-carriers for this strange man with his head buried in the lifeboat engine compartment.

For his part the Doctor merely smiled a terse smile.'Do we have five minutes?'

'We have as many as you want,' said the nurse. 'Captain Bellis doesn't.'

The Doctor nodded, sucked on the end of a screwdriver and dived back into the engine compartment. 'I'll be there in three,' he said.

And so he was - nursemaiding a strange metallic shape which hovered in the air beside him. He guided the ma.s.s of equipment through the crowd of people, along the beach to where a number of medics cl.u.s.tered beside the largest of the wrecked sections of s.p.a.cecraft, and called out for Conaway.

'In here.' The surgeon major's voice rumbled out of the depths with a peculiar metallic echo. 'And be careful. This whole lot is balanced so finely one good sneeze could bring it down.'

The Doctor wriggled into the gap between two fractured metal hull plates, slipped sideways and continued his journey down. 'Ah,' he said when he reached the end of the channel. Conaway and two nurses were busy hunched over the crumpled form of Captain Bellis, who was trapped within the winch cabin, which was pinned beneath a section of hull. More bent sections fenced off the winch and sealed the cabin door shut. They could reach her by wriggling through the wreckage, but they couldn't get her out. Conaway fastened a drip into one arm and managed to turn to face the Doctor. 'She was using the winch. The section of hull it was fastened to collapsed. The whole lot caved in with her inside. We've got a drip into her but she's bleeding. I can't reach the site of the injury. We need to get her out.'

The Doctor was nodding. 'Yes, yes, I see... uh huh... yes...' He began to wriggle backwards.

Conaway said,'Got any bright ideas?'

'Oh... one or two, one or two.' The Doctor continued to wriggle. A few moments later he was standing back outside the ship. He ran to the still-hovering ma.s.s of equipment. 'Now then... calculating the tonnage... moment of inertia... coefficient of friction... I would imagine it would be the... yellow b.u.t.ton.'

He pushed a b.u.t.ton then jumped as the sudden crack of tearing metal came from within the wreck.

The medics and refugees standing nearby looked at him sharply, backing away from the wreck. He offered them a brightly rea.s.suring grin, which completely failed to rea.s.sure them.

The hovering equipment began to emit a high-pitched whine. Smoke wafted gently from its interior. It grew hot. The air crackled with ionisation. A tiny rainbow formed above the machine and drops of rain fell upon it, hissing - or rather they did not fall upon it. The Doctor was delighted to see that the drops did not actually touch the casing of the equipment. Instead they stopped, hovered impossibly a centimetre or two above the metal, spun in dizzying circles, and then flung themselves back skywards again at great speed, as if terribly embarra.s.sed to be caught doing something that no self-respecting matter, even matter such as that which composed rain, had any right to do.

And then with less fuss than a seagull taking advantage of a local updraft, the upper half of the medical frigate, a weight of approximately twenty-five thousand tons of metal, rose smoothly, silently and effortlessly, three metres into the air.

The medics ran forward into the now accessible hulk, rushing to help Conaway and her team start to free Captain Bellis from the wreckage.

It was while the medics were doing this that some refugees noticed what was to be the second interruption in the Doctor's plan - darkening the horizon in a line of charcoal grey against the lighter grey sky was the first of the gigantic waves that the Doctor had been expecting.

He watched the wave approach as he waited for the medics to bring Captain Bellis from the wreck. A moment pa.s.sed. Another. Neither medics nor patient appeared. Beside the Doctor the makeshift lash-up of equipment he had constructed from the lifeboat's engine began to shake. It grew hotter, and even more smoke issued from it. Three metres above the s.p.a.ce where the medics were working a ma.s.s of metal weighing twenty-five thousand tons began to hover as if considering seriously what it was doing there and why, and how, and, more importantly, why it should not actually a.s.sume its previous position much closer to the ground.

Between the two jagged ma.s.ses of metal the tidal wave moved swiftly towards the beach. Already the Doctor could see it was several kilometres closer than when he had last looked. The hundred or so refugees ranged along the beach began to run towards the tree line grabbing possessions or children, whichever happened to be closer, as they did so.

The Doctor glanced from the hovering contraption beside him back into the wreck of the medical frigate. Where were the medics? Where was Conaway? Where was Captain Bellis? With a rea.s.suring pat which resulted in a painful yelp and the sucking of burnt fingers the Doctor left his machine, ran across the beach and into the wreck.

A moment later he was standing beside a group of medics crouched over Captain Bellis. Her clothes were soaked with blood. She was moaning, her body struggling against the pain of her injuries.

'Shears! Get her uniform off. We have to find out where the blood's coming from.'

A moment later one of the nurses had broken out the field steriliser and was handing instruments to Conaway.

'Excuse me', said the Doctor. 'I don't know if now's quite the right time -'

'Clean! I need her clean. I can't see what the h.e.l.l I'm doing.' Conaway looked up in considerable irritation. 'Water. Where the h.e.l.l's the water?'

The Doctor pointed towards the tidal wave which, although it was yet only cresting the horizon, must already have been looming several hundred metres above them. 'I rather think there's more water there than you're quite capable of dealing with.'

Conaway did not look up.'She's bleeding internally. If we move her, she's dead.'

The Doctor nodded.'If we don't move her, she'll drown. And so will we.' He glanced back over his shoulder at the machine, which was now shaking dramatically and emitting colourful showers of sparks.'It might on the other hand,' said the Doctor with a glance up towards the huge tonnage of metal hanging a metre or so above his head, which was also shaking, 'be a dilemma that could well be redundant in another minute or two anyway.' And he swept aside the nurses, picked up Captain Bellis as if she were a rag doll and began to run back through the wreck.

Conaway swore. The rest of the medics glanced at the looming tidal wave, then turned to run after the Doctor. Gathering what equipment she could, Conaway followed.

The Doctor ran through the jagged maze of the wreck, leaping from hull plate to buckled hull plate, feet booming on the wreckage. Above his head the hovering ma.s.s of additional wreckage began to squeal. Bits of it suddenly began to fall, jagged slivers and chunks of metal lancing down to form a shifting maze through which the Doctor ran. He was aware of the medics moving less quickly behind him. He called instructions to them above the screech, directing them through the shifting maze of metal he himself was still navigating. 'Conaway, go left. No, right now, straight on, jump, right, left, jump, jump, now run !'

They ran.

The wave grew higher, closer. The jagged ceiling dropped until the Doctor was forced to run almost doubled over, making the task of carrying Bellis even more arduous. He was still calling instructions to the medics. All around him metal was slamming against metal; his ears rang with the sound so he damped their input. He pitched his voice above the concussion of debris and kept yelling instructions.

A moment later he burst from the wreckage on to the beach. He gently laid Captain Bellis on the sh.o.r.e and ran to the machine. It was throbbing, shaking, screeching with a demented electronic hum. Bits of equipment were shaking loose. One or two had already fallen off. 'Oh,' the Doctor said quickly, considering the detached items while working to hold the rest together. 'Well, maybe I didn't need those after all.' He glanced over the machine and then back at the trembling ma.s.s of hovering wreckage.

Then, making what might have seemed like the most insane decision in his life, the Doctor bolted back into the ma.s.s of wreckage.

The medics crawled and fell clear of the wreckage as the machine began to sputter. They stared back at the Doctor as he vanished into the wreckage. More metal fell as the Doctor's machine began to screech even more loudly. The Doctor reappeared, leapt clear of the battered hulk, and ran to his machine, stuffing something into his pocket as he did so.

He reached the machine. A batch of wires had pulled loose and was flapping around wildly, like a horse lashing its tail at flies. The Doctor spared the wave a glance and thought the a.n.a.logy particularly apt. The wave had sucked away the ocean, revealing a coral sh.o.r.eline which extended perhaps half a kilometre from the beach. The wave was already peeling across this newly exposed stretch of beach, curling and still rising. The Doctor's hands were a blur as he grasped the shaking machine and tried to reprogram it. He could not operate the controls because they were shaking so violently. Impatiently he slapped at a large red palm-sized b.u.t.ton and, after three attempts, managed to hit it. The machine shut down and fell on to the beach with a jarring thud. A split second later twenty-five thousand tons of metal smashed together with an awesome impact behind him.

Debris flew everywhere. The air crackled with the pressure of the approaching wave. The medics cl.u.s.tered around the machine, hushed and terrified. Only Conaway thought to attempt to stop Bellis bleeding. The Doctor began to reprogram the machine, his hands a blur across the controls, jamming leads back in here, tucking small items of equipment back into the cha.s.sis there. At various times he seemed to be holding pliers, spanner, screwdriver, spot welder, circuit tester, eyegla.s.s, tweezers, Johnson's cotton buds, various electronic probes and at least once his formidable-looking set of tyre levers. n.o.body was watching. Their total attention was fixed on the mountain of water roaring unstoppably towards the beach.

Then it hit, smashing against the sh.o.r.e, cresting across the ma.s.s of wreckage which had once been a s.p.a.ceship and blasting it into deadly jagged missiles. It smashed against the beach, ripping up chunks of coral as big as houses and flinging them across the tree line. The sound was like a continuous blast of thunder. Beside the Doctor everyone was screaming or shouting - it made no difference: their voices were gone, whirled away in the maelstrom of sound in the split second before the wave smashed into the island.

The Doctor was punching controls on the device he had made when the wave hit.

Or ratherdidn't hit.

For, as the machine leapt back into protesting life, the wave - all several thousand tons of it - simply didn't get any lower than about thirty metres. It washed over them, hovering just above the tops of the palm trees edging the beach. The Doctor sighed. He looked up at the watery roof hanging over the island. The water itself was still moving at tremendous speed, smashing with all the force of enraged nature against the invisible barrier. The machine began to shake again. It was putting out an awful lot of energy. Far more than it had when supporting the wreckage of the ship. But fortunately it would have to last only a few minutes this time. The Doctor looked out across the beach. The sand, the trees, everything was coloured a muddy green-brown by sunlight filtering through the wave hurtling past overhead. Further inland the tops of trees were neatly sliced off at lower and lower heights as they climbed the volcano slopes. The volcano itself vanished into the water as a rippling cone of rock and trees. The wave spread itself thinly across the force field at this point, allowing more sunlight to fall through. The quality of the light was for a few moments some of the most glorious the Doctor had ever seen, as if the forest, even the island itself, were inside a giant cathedral whose walls were made of water instead of stone. A slow smile spread dreamily across his face. His eyes crinkled. Thoughts chased themselves through his head in disconnected streams.

Beside him the machine emitted a single embittered sigh and shut down. The Doctor glanced upward in alarm. Fortunately the wave had almost completely pa.s.sed, but it rained pretty starfish and hideous smelling seaweed for almost five minutes.

Conaway had not stopped working on Captain Bellis. The Doctor would not have been surprised to learn she hadn't even noticed the wave as it pa.s.sed overhead. Now she looked up.

'She'll live.'

The Doctor nodded, pleased. He looked around and found a number of medical staff staring at him. A nurse marched up to him, grabbed him by the collar and yanked him off his feet. 'We could have died! Your machine saved us! Why did you go back into the wreckage? '

The Doctor blinked, rummaged in his pocket, drew forth a battered piece of paper. 'Captain Bellis dropped this. A family snapshot, I presume. I thought she might like to see it when she recovered.'

The nurse gazed at the Doctor in astonishment bordering on insanity. 'You're mad,' he whispered, letting the Doctor regain his footing. The Doctor waited but there was no apology. The nurse simply turned and walked away.

The Doctor pursed his lips sadly. A moment pa.s.sed. He became aware of a presence beside him. Conaway was looking out to sea, to a second huge wave gathering on the horizon. At a rough guess this wave was twice as large as the first. 'We need to get off this island. How the h.e.l.l are we going to do that?'

The Doctor glanced from the dripping remains of the weed-covered machine to the second lifeboat salvaged from the medical frigate where it had come to rest with other wreckage high up in the tree line. His eyes alighted on the smashed tree trunks, which added their lengths to those already brought from inland, and a wild light shone behind his eyes as connections, formed some while before, began to solidify.

'Tell me, Surgeon Major,' he said with a grin, 'have you ever had occasion to "catch the perfect wave"?'

Sully s'Vufu ignored the demands of her staff to get to the hoverlite, Madam President, we have to leave now! She knew she had to get clear of the city. She owed it to her government and to the people who had elected her to office. But, staring out of the picture window of the Greyhouse's Octagon stateroom at the approaching mountain of water which towered over the city, she found she could not in all conscience abandon her people to their fete.

'I'm not coming,' she said simply.

Her aide all but wrenched at her arm. Are you mad?' His voice was a hysterical screech. 'We have to get to the ship.'

'I put my faith in G.o.d,' she said. "The G.o.d who placed me here in this room, here in this office, this position of responsibility. I cannot abandon my people.'

The aide blinked, jumping from one foot to the other. 'Madam President, if there's one thing I can guarantee you it is that you will be b.u.g.g.e.r all use to your people when you are dead! So please will you just come with me now to the hoverlite and we can get to the ship before it's too late?'

A half-smile played about her lips as she turned from the window.'Geoffran,' she said, and her voice melted him, as it always did,'we've known each other a long time. And there's no time to discuss this, you know that. No more afternoon tea and theosophical chats over iced biscuits. I cannot go. You on the other hand can - and must.' She touched his cheek fondly. 'If you don't, who will look after my successor?'

He gulped.

'What do you want me to tell Catheline and Jonaghan?'

'Tell them I love them. Tell them I hope that one day they will understand what I did and the reasons I lt;lid it. And give them these, for me will you?' She opened a drawer and brought out two small gift-wrapped packages. A word of advice. Never forget your children's birthdays.'

Geoffran wiped a tear from his cheek, took the packages and ran from the room.

She turned to face the wave. It curled above the city and its noise drowned the screaming of the people, the crashing of vehicles, the roar of the hoverlite's engines as it took off from the Octagon roof. The building was shaking with the force of the water. Plaster cracked from the ornamental ceiling and smashed against her desk, the Belannian flag set into the marbled floor. Plaster dusted her hair and the Arnelli rugs.

The wave grew higher. She could see vague shapes moving within it, hills and valleys of water glowing green and grey and sparkling in the brilliant sunlight.

She wondered how long it would take to reach her.

She wondered what it would feel like to die.

In front of the window, she got down on to her knees and began to pray.

A moment pa.s.sed.

Another.

Her prayer finished, her thoughts moved to her children. Jonaghan, freckled, fair-headed like his father, Catheline, a bundle of flame-coloured hair topping a tranquil personality. Her kids were the best. Her life was the best. Nothing to do. No regrets. A curious calm stole over her. Gallows-calm she had heard it called.

The moment before death. She looked up.

The wave had not moved.

She frowned.

The shaking had stopped.

She narrowed her eyes.

There was no sound at all.

Just a sigh of wind.

And a chirpy voice. 'Hm. Well, I'm sure there are many who would find such behaviour flattering but, really, there's no need to kneel.'

She refocused on the immediate landscape of the room. Hovering outside the window was a man. He had long hair and a smile as big and bright as the sun. She rose, inadvertendy fulfilling his request, and took a step closer to the window. Ranged behind him was the most incredible sight she had ever seen. Fifteen hundred soaking-wet people stood or sprawled on a platform which seemed to be made of bits of wrecked machinery and several hundredtrees . The... thing and the people... were hanging unsupported above the ground just below the level of the window.

'Who... ?' she gasped. 'Who are you? How did you get here?'

The man offered his hand.'That's a bit of an existential question, isn't it? I'm the Doctor.' He glanced back at the still-motionless wave.'And obviously I surfed.'

Behind him, below the platform, a triumphant cheer rose from the city.

'Now, pardon me for being presumptuous but there are two rather important things we need to discuss. First, can we please have permission to land?'

'Of course. And second?'

'Well, it's a wee bit embarra.s.sing, actually. I hardly care to mention it, except... well... except that I seem to have acc.u.mulated somewhere in the region of five hundred and eighty-three quadrillion ergs of potential energy that used to belong to that... er... wave over there. Now... I don't suppose you have anywhere I could, well,put it all , do you?'

Chapter Three.

The capital world of the Bel system was a planet of light.

The northern hemisphere of Belannia VIII was currently shrouded in night, but millions of lights blazed in the darkness, sketching the skeletal shapes of cities and skyways, shining through a scattering of dark cloud in threads of fire, the connections of life across the planet never more easily shown.

Night here was a thing of legend, banished generations before by the combined efforts of the Hanakoi, to whom the Belannian refugees were now turning for help.

Help.

Not a thing to be lightly sought, nor easily given.

Not from the Hanakoi.

Father Denadi stood alone in the observation lounge of the private yacht pressed into refugee service by the Belannia VI government and stared out at the glimmering bulk of the planet that hung above him. He leaned against the window, resting his face against the gla.s.site and trying not to surrender to the confusion he felt in his mind.

Alive.

Eldred Saketh was alive.

Father Denadi watched the lights of Belannia VIII brighten as the yacht dropped down from orbit and thought back to his first meeting with the man who had come back from a molten world on which he should have died Father Denadi made the sign of the Ankh to atone for his blasphemous thought. Saketh should have attained his Endless State. Instead he'd apparently brought a blasphemous new religion to the people of Bel. A new religion for them - and fear for Father Denadi.

Fear was not a stranger He had been taught to embrace it. To love it, to cherish it. Fear was the motivation that drove all to their Endless State. It was fear of life that drove them. Fear of death was no fear at all.

Denadi could not resist peeping out from beneath bis acolyte's robes. The church was silent. All prayer was done now. The only sound was the sputtering of candles among the cold stone arches and the distant drone of the police flyers surrounding the church.