Sam found herself squashed into a s.p.a.ce beside a man waving a handful of pa.s.sports.'I've got citizenship!' he screeched.'Let me in!'

A second man grabbed the first, pulled him round and punched him squarely in the face. 'Give me those!' he snarled, grabbing at the pa.s.sports.

A woman grabbed at the second man's arm.'Leave it Joe. They'll let us through. They'll have computer records.'

The man rounded on her angrily.'You heard them. Lost or stolen doc.u.mentation doesn't count.'

'But -'

Before she could finish the first man was on his feet, his expression furious. He dropped the pa.s.sports and began to turn.

He was holding a knife.

For Sam the next few seconds stretched out into unbearable infinity. In what seemed like slow motion, the first man swung against the second, made off balance by the woman trying to hold him back. The knife slid home. The second man - Joe, his name was Joe - swore, shouted at the first, turned to throw another punch, saw he was covered in blood, seemed to hesitate in confusion. He crumpled to his knees as the woman began to scream. The first man made another grab for the pa.s.sports. The woman threw herself at him, her fists, to Sam, a dreamy blur. The first man yelled hoa.r.s.ely as the punches connected with his face and groin. He folded. The knife fell from his hands. The woman was on him, ripping at his face, smacking his head against the ground. He curled into a ball and yelled for help. Someone grabbed at her from the crowd. 'You'll kill him!' The words seemed to stretch out for ever. The woman turned, looking for Joe. He was gone, swallowed by the crowd. She cried out. The first man rose, aimed a kick which had the woman down and yelling. The crowd surged, panicked, angered, hands reaching to help but only complicating, creating more confusion. Feet trampled Joe, the woman, the thief and the pa.s.sports indiscriminately.

Sam tried to back away.

The crowd wouldn't let her.

No!

She was being dragged forward. Towards the scene of the fight. The screams were horrendous. Danny gripped her head more tightly and began to cry again.

Sam tried to throw a punch, aim a kick, anything to get herself and the child out of this dangerous stream of people. Her balance was thrown by the extra weight she was carrying. She couldn't put her weight into a good punch or kick without overbalancing and tipping herself and Danny to the ground. The chances for either of them among all those feet were no chance at all.

She was drawn inexorably on, smashed this way and that by the crowd.

And then the inevitable happened. With hands grasping at her from all sides, she lost her balance, toppled, fell. Something cut loose inside her then. She lost all sensation in her body. Her arms were whirling dervishes, connecting with other people with bone-jarring thuds she did not even feel. Her legs moved like the legs of a robot, slashing, kicking in all directions. She struggled to her feet by dint of sheer b.l.o.o.d.y-mindedness. As she rose she felt curiously light, as if she weighed only half her normal weight.Was this the effect of a pressor field? Another ship coming in to land?

No.

It was Danny.

She'd lost Danny .

Sam found him a few minutes later - a few minutes for her but a lifetime for him. He lay on the floor, his limbs crumpled, his face bruised and smeared with crimson. He coughed and fresh blood flecked his lips.'Danny no! 'Sam was not even aware of screaming the child's name. 'You b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, oh, you thoughtless, careless w.a.n.kers!' She screeched at the crowd but no one heard, and no one responded.

She scooped Danny into her arms, moaned aloud when she felt his little bones grate together in his leg. He gasped. 'You're gonna be OK,' she said. 'You're gonna be just fine. We'll go and see your mum and you'll be just fine.'

Stupid. No point. He couldn't even hear her. The words were for her own benefit more than his.

But she knew the truth.

He was shaking in her arms. Shaking and crying. Crying and dying.

He was going to die .

Oh, you stupid, selfish, thoughtless b.a.s.t.a.r.ds I hope you rot in h.e.l.l!

She turned around, trying to locate the administration building. They had doctors there, they must have. They could help. There must be somebody there who could help!

Danny coughed blood.

The building poked above the crowd several hundred metres away. Sam began resolutely to force her way through the crowd. She lost no time with niceties, simply smashing through anyone in her way. A couple of times people turned on her but her expression coupled with the blood lathering her face and hands, and the child she carried, drove any potential aggressors away.

Sam got to within fifty metres of the building before the press of bodies prevented further movement. People were crowding so close now she found it hard to breathe. Forward movement was impossible. Danny coughed more blood. His eyes rolled open and shut. 'Come on, Danny, stay with me. Stay awake! Time for sleep later, you hear me? Time for sleep later! Danny!'

His only response was to cough still more blood.

Sam found herself begging. 'Help. I've got a child. Please let me through. Please help. You have to help. Let me through or he'll die!'

No one heard.

No one moved.

No one cared.

Sam began to sob.

Danny coughed blood.

Burped.

Stopped breathing.

'No! ' Her voice was a scream. She smacked the child on the chest, heedless of any damage she might cause to already broken ribs.'I didn't travel half the galaxy and nearly get blown up on an exploding moon just so you can quit on me now! You hear me! Danny! You breathe you ungrateful little b.a.s.t.a.r.d, you breathe now you hear me you just breathebreathebreathebreathe! '

He coughed. A tired sigh escaped his lips with a bubble of blood. His eyes roEed open and shut, then open again, seemed to gaze forgivingly at her.

It's OK, they seemed to say. You did fine. I'm just gonna have a little nap now, OK?

'No, it's not OK!' Her voice was hoa.r.s.e, a witch's screech - she no longer knew if she was even speaking at all. The crowd ceased to exist. They no longer mattered. Only Danny. Only Danny mattered now.

He was dying, his limbs spasming against hers.

Dying.

Oh, please!

She felt hands take hold of him, lift him from her. She looked up, unaware she had even been kneeling. Looked up into a familiar face.

Saketh.

What? How had he - How could he - 'Help him. Please. Save him. I'll do anything. Just don't let him die. Please!' Her voice was a continuous drone.

And Saketh took a votive wafer such as she had seen him use on the moon of Belannia VI and tucked it between Danny's bloodstained lips. He stroked the child's throat until he swallowed in a reflex action.

Sam, still kneeling before the older man, waited.

She waited for Danny to die.

She knew he was going to. His injuries were too bad, his little heart wasn't tough enough to deal with the shock his body had sustained.

She waited.

Waited.

Then a voice.

She almost didn't hear it.

'Mum... '

She looked up, past his pale face to that of Saketh, smiling as he held the child cradled in his arms.

'Mum... '

A whisper of sound, like a dying breath through cold lips. But not dying. Growing stronger.

Sam blinked. She looked. She really looked.

His eyes were open.

He was looking at her.

He was looking at her and crying.

'Mum,' he said weakly, and held out a small bruised hand towards her face.

The word as much as the action provoked such an overwhelming emotional response that it was all she could do not to clasp Saketh's knees and giggle hysterically.

Then she realised that was exactly what she was doing, the position she was in.

Who cared?

She'd just seen her first miracle.

So had the crowd. They fell silent for the first time and the sudden quiet seemed to hammer painfully at her ears. Saketh lifted Sam to her feet and handed the child to her. Saketh let his gaze rake across the crowd. His voice was a rolling ocean of sound, his body dramatically backlit by the rising sun - a sun that seemed to fluctuate in brightness unhealthily even as she watched.'You're hurt. Angry. Frightened. There is no need. There is no need to fear anything ever again.Whosoever puts his faith in me and believes in me and follows me shall live for ever!'

Someone touched her arm.'Do you mind?' she snapped without turning. 'I'm trying to listen.' She stroked Danny's hair. He was already looking around with growing interest.

A familiar voice said, 'Well that's a fine h.e.l.lo, I must say.' She turned. The Doctor beamed delightedly at her. 'And it's the last time you ever persuade me to take breakfast on the beach.'

The Parliament building was an architectural statement of the psychology of the people who had designed it.

The Hanakoi loved s.p.a.ce and light. The building reflected this. It swept upward in glowing curves, translucent walls reaching into the sky with jubilant fingers of gla.s.s. Ornamental gardens surrounded the building; winding between them was a small river from which ponds spread out in scalloped layers.

Sam alighted from the cab that had flown them in from the s.p.a.ceport and stood beside the Doctor in the building's ornamental gardens.'It's beautiful.'

The Doctor shrugged. 'For the Hanakoi it's a statement of the unattainable.'

'I don't understand.' In her arms, Danny was sleeping restlessly. She touched his face. He sighed and began to snore.

The Doctor said, 'The aspiration towards perfection. Every aspect, every curve of this building depicts the aspiration to perfection of those who designed and built it. Yet its very existence denies the reason for which it was built.' The Doctor scuffed the toe of his shoe along the paved edge of the nearest pond.'That a Parliament building exists at all is a statement of the aspiration to peace, the perfect state. The fact that the building is still used suggests that state has not yet been achieved. Perfection cannot be achieved until the building that embodies it no longer exists. Ironic, really. Also quite sad, don't you think?'

Sam blinked. 'I just said it was nice to look at. I didn't ask for a lecture.'

The Doctor nodded sagely. 'Of course, I'm sorry. I was worried about you, you know. Disappearing off on your own like that. Didn't know what sort of trouble you mightVe got into.'

'Don't patronise me, Doctor.' Sam frowned.'Anyway, it wasn't me that blew up the beach.'

The Doctor cleared his throat with some embarra.s.sment.'Hmm, yes, well, needs must when the devil drives and all that.'

'Which means exactly nothing, of course.'

'Well, what I meant was that the TARDIS had got caught in the same anomalous gravitational disturbances as this solar system. Now things like that don't normally affect the old girl, so it was a fair indication that something fishy was afoot. Anyway, I had to act quickly or else... well, you get the picture.'

Sam said, 'Anomalous gravitational disturbances.' She waited for the inevitable explanation.

The Doctor frowned. 'Something's going on here, Sam. Something quite odd appears to have gone wrong with the local sun. The TARDIS is probably getting all maternal about stars with problems, you know... Gravitational fluctuation on the order of which we're seeing here... It shouldn't exist.' He uttered a puzzled sigh. 'No self-respecting main-sequence star should be able to get up to the sort of lethal shenanigans this one is apparently getting up to. But Bel, bless her little photonic cotton socks, seems to be positively showing off about it.'

Sam shook her head.'Meaning?'

'This entire solar system is in deep trouble. The disturbances generated by the sun are getting worse, spreading in waves like ripples in a pond.' He flipped a small stone into the ornamental pool with his toe. 'None of the intelligent species here has interstellar flight yet, so, unless I can find out what's wrong with the sun and make it better, everyone within five thousand astronomical units or so is going to die.' He added, staring intently at the surface of the pond, 'Lovely lilies, don't you think?' He reached down, grabbed a handful and stuffed them into one of his pockets. He looked sheepishly at Sam.'Just in case.'

Parliament was a room full of people from two species and seven different inhabited worlds. They were as different in physical appearance as chalk and cheese. But they all had one thing in common: they were all behaving like children. Spoilt children. They were shouting, arguing, waving reports around, competing for attention and showing off. The noise was at least as loud as the noise at the s.p.a.ceport - and for a reason that wasn't entirely dissimilar. At the s.p.a.ceport the people had been desperate, angry and frightened. Here the people were indulgent, angry and frightened. The refugees blamed everyone except themselves for their problems. So did the Parliament of Worlds.

Sam held on to Danny tightly. Somewhere on this madhouse planet his mother was looking for him. She wanted to make sure they were reunited without too much fuss.

The miracle of his seeming resurrection was already beginning to wear off.

She took a seat in the spectators' gallery and watched as the Doctor took the stand to speak before the a.s.sembled members of seven different worlds. How he'd managed it she had no idea, but he looked around, tucked his thumbs into his lapels - which stretched a little as if unused to the gesture - and began to speak. ' "Friends, Romans, countrymen." ' He grinned charmingly. 'Don't worry. I'm not going to ask you to lend me your ears. I Ve got quite enough of my own.' He waggled his ears to prove his point.

His humour was greeted with dead silence, particularly from the Hanakoi members, who, as far as Sam could see, had no ears to wiggle or do anything else with.

He continued with an almost total lack of embarra.s.sment. 'I understand you have a bit of a problem with your sun.'

The silence continued, in fact deepened.

The Doctor said, 'Well I might be able to help you there - I'm not altogether inexperienced in the area of solar engineering, you understand - and hopefully before too many more of you die.'

Parliament listened, agog.