'Into the forest,' said Kerstin.

Fitz ran, Kerstin ahead of him, hopping over feebly moving, dying creatures. She opened the gate. The field stretched out ahead of them, the dark line of forest some distance away. Could they make it?

He looked back, half expecting to see the tall figure of the Doctor running pell-mell after them. Instead he saw two white-suited figures run round the side of the blazing building and point something at them.

Without looking back further, Fitz ran. Something whizzed past his ear and he staggered. But they reached the forest in one piece, and once inside, in the warm, aromatic darkness, he felt safer; but he still kept running, stumbling through the undergrowth, just about keeping pace with Kerstin.

He looked back over his shoulder. The burning farmhouse was just an intermittent orange flickering through the trees now. He had no idea where they were heading. Away from the fire, that was the best thing. Away from the fire and away from the Doctor they'd shot him, he could be dead they'd shot him, he could be dead.

They ran into the dark forest, and behind them the farmhouse burned, the flames long and yellow in the pale night, flickering into the starless sky.

Book Two

Hope

Chapter Eight.

Under/Above the Sky-Sea.

Pain, before everything. Before she realised who she was, before she opened her eyes, there was pain. Distant at first, as if her whole body were numb. Then it sharpened to specific points, each one clamouring for attention: head, knees, elbows. She was lying on her front, on a slope, her head pointing downward, face pressed against something rough, like stone. She could feel it under her bare arms as well. She had the strangest idea that she had fallen from a great height. But, if she had, surely she would be dead, her body smashed and broken. But she clearly remembered now, falling as slowly as a leaf from a tree.

And then everything came back. She was Sam Jones Sam Jones and she was really p.i.s.sed off with Fitz. After two years apart, they'd ended up arguing. Arguing about the Doctor. Fitz had stormed out. Then a strange whirlpool of light had swallowed her, taken her from the TARDIS. and she was really p.i.s.sed off with Fitz. After two years apart, they'd ended up arguing. Arguing about the Doctor. Fitz had stormed out. Then a strange whirlpool of light had swallowed her, taken her from the TARDIS.

Taken her where?

She tried to move, awakening other pains, in her knees, her toes, her elbows, her chest, her face. She couldn't breathe properly, and her heart felt as though it were tripping over itself trying to keep up with her racing mind. She opened her eyes, but she couldn't see anything except a blurry image of pale-pink things against blackness. Was she blind? Her throat tightened in panic. Please, please don't let me be blind. Please, please don't let me be blind. She stared at the pink things, but they refused to resolve into anything recognisable. The image was all wrong, as if she were wearing someone else's gla.s.ses. She blinked, moved her hands to rub her eyes. The pale-pink things moved correspondingly, and a stinging pain registered in her palms. Ah. So that was what they were. Her hands. She stared at the pink things, but they refused to resolve into anything recognisable. The image was all wrong, as if she were wearing someone else's gla.s.ses. She blinked, moved her hands to rub her eyes. The pale-pink things moved correspondingly, and a stinging pain registered in her palms. Ah. So that was what they were. Her hands.

She sat up, rubbing her eyes gingerly. Her body was racked with the most excruciating pins and needles, and, though she was breathing more easily, she still felt a tightness in her chest, recalling a childhood bout of asthma. She still had an inhaler, somewhere, in case of a recurrence, but that was in the TARDIS, and the TARDIS was Was where where exactly? exactly?

She remembered sitting on her bed, staring into the whirlpool, clinging on, watching familiar objects twirling away down its throat. She remembered the sudden lunge when it had grabbed her, like that feeling you get in a lift, magnified a hundredfold. She remembered falling, the bed spinning away from her, its sheets billowing like cartoon ghosts. She remembered a sense of great speed, glowing walls of spiralling light whipping by like a million Catherine wheels. Dizzying, sickening. She must have blacked out.

Had it taken Fitz and the Doctor too? 'Doctor!' she cried. Her voice echoed, as if she were in an empty cathedral. 'Doctor, are you there?'

She listened to the echoes of her voice fade away slowly, surprised by its loudness. Stupid now anything nasty that might be lurking nearby knew she was here. She crouched tensely for a while, looking around, grimacing, ready for flight, wondering how she could run if she couldn't see properly.

Perhaps the whirlpool had destroyed the TARDIS, and she'd managed to escape somehow. Or maybe she was still in the TARDIS, in some long-forgotten area. Gradually the pins and needles shrank away to a dull ache. And things were getting clearer, sharper. Soon, she was able to see everything clearly.

She was sitting halfway down a slope of black rock rough, porous, spongelike. It had chafed her face and arms, hence the pain. The slope ran down into a valley, and the other side of the valley rose up and up, in gentle waves, to meet The sky?

Sam's jaw dropped.

It wasn't like any sky she'd ever seen. It was a pink swirling ma.s.s, ever-changing, glowing and pulsing, like the biggest, grooviest lava lamp ever made. As she stared, it began to resemble a sea, which meant, she realised with a dizzying sense of dislocation, that she was looking down.

She shook her head. Up was up and down was down, whatever optical tricks this place played on her. She turned round, scuffing her jeans on the rock, her movements feeling strange and dreamlike. Perhaps this was a dream. But the pain in her hands and on her forehead was all too real.

Everything was bathed in a pink neonlike glow. There was a low background sound, a moaning, like the wind in a storm, which she supposed was being made by the strange 'sky'. The air was clammy, with a hint of something flowery.

So, she wasn't inside the TARDIS, unless it had somehow been transformed into something really weird. She stood up carefully, gently touching her forehead. There was a little blood, a slight graze.

She took a step forward and rose into the air, her feet pedalling to reach the ground. She yelled out, her stomach turning over as she sailed up and up, over the bottom of the valley to land gracelessly on the other side, b.u.mping her knees and elbows on the spongelike rock.

Low gravity. Well, now she knew how she had survived her fall.

She set off carefully back down the slope. Here and there were scattered some of the things from her room books, pages torn; CDs, strewn like forgotten Frisbees; the sheets from her bed and even the bed itself. The chessboard.

Fitz?

No sign of him or the Doctor, or any form of life.

She neared the bottom of the valley, and slowed down, aiming to land in the middle. She did, stumbling a little. The valley floor was covered in crumbled-off bits of black rock, like little lumps of coal. She set off along the bottom of the valley, which curved slightly to the left. In the low gravity, she could move quite quickly, but even so the valley seemed to go on for ever. At one point, she looked up to see that the 'sky' met a sh.o.r.e of bluish stuff like burnished metal.

Her brain boggled again. Now the 'sky' looked even more like a swirling pink sea. Which meant she was somehow walking upside down above it. She crouched down, fighting a wave of nausea. Taking a deep breath, she looked up. The blue sh.o.r.e curved down until it met the walls of the valley, the black and blue rock fusing in a disturbingly organic-looking web. Ahead, darkness. She was staring into a vast, wide tunnel where the light of the oh, what to call it? sky-sea did not reach. She could just make out stalact.i.tes, stalagmites and weird twisted spurs of rock. It looked as inviting as the business end of a Dalek gun.

She had an idea.

She ran up the side of the valley, until she was right underneath the sky-sea. Her perception adjusted itself, so she now felt she was standing beside the sky-sea, the bottom of the valley arching above her like a vast vaulted ceiling.

Up close, the glow of the sky-sea was intense, and she could hear a strange sighing as it lapped against the blue sh.o.r.e. She reached out tentatively. It wasn't radiating any heat, but she was loath to dip her fingers in. It could be anything. She picked up a black pebble and tossed it into the pink ma.s.s. It vanished soundlessly, with no telltale hiss. So it wasn't some sort of burning, corrosive acid, then.

She took out a tissue from her jeans pocket and dunked it quickly into the sky-sea. It emerged exactly the same, not even wet. Tentatively, biting her lip, Sam dipped a finger into the stuff.

She couldn't feel anything. It was though she'd dipped her hand into nothing, into pure light. She put her whole hand in and swooshed it around, creating swirling white patterns in the surface. Then she took her hand out and scrutinised it closely. No change.

Sam leaned backward on her haunches. She'd hoped to gather some of the stuff, use it to light her way. Oh well. She loped back down the valley, and, taking a deep breath, ventured into the tunnel. She squinted, trying to make out the shapes in the gloom. There was a sort of humped ma.s.s ahead. Had it moved just then, or was it a trick of the light? Swallowing, she walked deeper in. After a while, she could see an orange glow from up ahead. Fire? Presently, she emerged into another cavern, carpeted with tiny orange crystals which glowed with an inner light. The cavern floor sloped up in a steep bowl shape to meet a twisted landscape of arches, tunnels and b.u.t.tresses, soaring way above her head. Behind the arches came the glow of another sky-sea, this one neon-blue.

Sam stared. It looked forbidding, unwelcoming. There was no sign of life. And the arches and tunnels offered at least twenty different routes. Sam chose a tunnel at random, her trainers crunching on the fiery crystals. She had no idea where she was going, but at least she was going somewhere somewhere.

Fitz ran through the forest, his breath coming in ragged gasps, the smoke he'd inhaled making him cough and splutter. He felt so unfit. There was a st.i.tch in his side which sang with pain each time he breathed in. He could just hear Sam now, telling him that if he had never smoked he'd be able to run without wheezing like a faulty TARDIS.

Ahead, Kerstin stumbled through the ferns and bushes. She was sobbing, a high keening sound tearing from her throat with every breath. They were making so much noise between them that he was surprised they hadn't been found.

Fitz stopped and leaned against a tree to get his breath back. 'Kerstin!' he gasped. 'Slow down.'

Kerstin came back to him. Her eyes were wild, unfocused. 'I've had enough, I've had enough.'

The pain in his side was easing now. 'Look, so have I,' he snapped.

Kerstin blinked and frowned, wiping tears and snot away from her face with the back of her hand. She seemed embarra.s.sed by her tears.

'We've both been through a lot,' he said more gently. 'But we've got to think. We've got to find out what's going on.'

The silence all around them was spooking Fitz, as if the whole forest were listening in. Above, he could see dark-blue shards of sky through the branches.

Kerstin's face was pale in the gloom. 'They burnt the farm. They'll do anything. They'll kill us!'

Fitz didn't respond. It was probably true. What the h.e.l.l should they do now? Go back to the TARDIS? Fitz remembered Sam telling him that there was a spare key above the P in the police box sign but the Doctor had said the TARDIS had reverted to its original form so presumably there was no way in, even if the spare key was still there.

'We have to go back,' said Fitz.

Kerstin visibly tensed up. 'No.' She waved a hand in the air. 'We'll go to the town, to the police they'll sort everything out.'

'Look,' said Fitz. 'We've got to go back for the Doctor. He might not be dead, and he's the only person who could sort out what's going on. And he's my pa.s.sport home.'

Kerstin put her hands on her hips and stepped closer to Fitz. 'Right. I've had enough of this man-ofmystery stuff. Who are you? Who are you really working for?'

She was shouting, her voice echoing loudly through the forest, and Fitz shushed her frantically. 'All right, all right! You may as well know the truth.' Fitz took a deep breath, wondering what to tell her first. 'Well, for a start, we don't work for anybody. And the Doctor well, he's not like us. He's a thousand years old and not even from this planet. The TARDIS is his ship. It travels in time, which is how come I'm here. I'm from 1963.' He gestured to the forest around them. 'This is my future.'

Kerstin was staring at him as if he was mad. 'Your future?'

'Yep,' said Fitz. 'Not too different, really,' he added lamely.

Kerstin's eyes had grown distant. 'A time time machine?' She shook her head. 'I don't know machine?' She shook her head. 'I don't know what what to believe any more.' to believe any more.'

A noise in the distance alerted Fitz and he motioned for her to be quiet.

There was someone in the forest, heading straight for them.

'Quick, over here,' whispered Fitz.

They hid in bushes as three white-suited figures walked past. When they were a safe distance away Fitz let out a long breath of relief.

Then an idea popped into his mind. He almost wished it hadn't. 'We'll follow them,' he whispered.

'You're mad,' said Kerstin. 'We go to the police.'

'This is bigger than the police,' argued Fitz. 'Those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are operating outside the law. If you go to the police you'll only come up against some cover-up. They'll say the fire at the farm was an accident. Even that Bjorn did it himself for insurance purposes, and got caught in the flames.'

Kerstin looked pensive. 'Then who are they? The government?'

'The only way to find out is to follow them.'

Kerstin slumped against the trunk of a tree. Fitz watched her anxiously, realising that he was acting towards her as if she were Sam. Tough, capable Sam, who could take anything in her stride. Almost anything. But could Kerstin take any more?

'Fitz?' said Kerstin, her voice tinged with fear.

'Yes?'

Her face was set, resolute, and he could tell that she was thinking about Johan. 'All right. We follow them. Find out what's really going on.'

A feeling of relief washed over Fitz, until he realised that he'd been half hoping for her to say no.

Still, they were committed now.

Together, they crept through the forest.

The Doctor sat up suddenly. He gasped as a stinging pain radiated from a spot on his chest, from where he'd been shot. He could feel the drug in his bloodstream a dragging, dulling impurity. Some sort of tranquilliser. His body was working overtime to get rid of it. There was a nasty taste in his mouth and his skull felt several sizes too small for his brain.

He stood up, looking around. The room was large, airy, tastefully decorated. There was a pastel-pink three-piece suite arranged in front of a large stone fireplace. Underfoot, sanded pine floorboards. A fresh, artificial tang laced the air, and the slow whine of an air-conditioning unit was the only sound. There was no visible door. No window. So. However plush, this was a prison cell. Under different circ.u.mstances, the Doctor would have admired the items of minimalist art reproductions, of course adorning the walls.

But not while he was locked up.

He hated being locked up. Hated it. Hated it. Hated it. Hated. It. Hated. It.

He tried to calm himself, his breathing becoming ragged and wheezy. His respiratory bypa.s.s system was contracting, as it often did in times of stress, or when it thought he was going to be knocked out. So perhaps he should let the panic out, externalise it. But was he being watched? If so, by whom?

Questions whirled inside his head. He had to be seen to be calm, unflappable, a force to be reckoned with. Never let the enemy see your vulnerable side. Hands shaking, the Doctor wandered around the room, feeling in every corner, peering behind every picture. He even tried to lift up one of the chairs, only to find that it was fixed to the floor. What he was looking for he couldn't exactly say. A hidden microphone or camera, a secret door, anything.

He thought of Fitz and Kerstin. He hoped they had run, quickly, and in a sensible direction. Maybe they had been captured like himself. He hoped they were safe. To lose one companion was bad enough, but to lose them all, and and the TARDIS... that smacked of carelessness. the TARDIS... that smacked of carelessness.

The Doctor squeezed his eyes shut. Calm, calm, calm, Doctor. You've been in worse sc.r.a.pes than this.

The Doctor opened his eyes, rubbed them and resumed his search. The fireplace was false, its flue blocked off. That left the mirror on the far side of the room. It ran the whole length of one wall and he knew somehow that it was a two-way mirror, that he was being watched.

He stood before the mirror, hands on hips, arranging his features in a way he hoped would be imposing and threatening. 'I demand to know why you have brought me here and what you have done with my companions!'

Silence.

A sliver of doubt; perhaps there was no one behind the mirror. Perhaps they were all too busy, and had dumped him here to deal with later. The Doctor swallowed, his mouth dry with panic. He fought the emotion down, curdling it into anger. How dare they treat him like this?

Anger. Good. In its most positive form it was an energy, and it was about time he turned it to good use.

But it was no good without something to vent it upon. Turning round on his heel, the Doctor scowled at the plush sofa, and with a roar of rage gave it a hefty kick in the pillows.

Sam had lost track of time. She'd been walking and climbing and floating through her strange new environment for what seemed like days. Her main aim was to find the surface, get out in the open air, but she was beginning to lose hope. She was tired, hungry, and her arms and legs were aching. She hoped this was from the effects of low gravity. She had no way of knowing what radiation her body was soaking up.

The planet if it was a planet seemed to consist of a series of interconnected caverns, all with a sky-sea providing illumination at wildly different angles. These sky-seas varied in colour. Some were pink, others blue, others a burning yellow like the sun. Sam wondered if they were some bizarre form of life.

Life. There wasn't much of it around. It was as though the place were deserted, abandoned; it had an air of neglect. She saw the odd insectoid thing an elongated black dragonfly with four orange wings and a round, gaping mouth but, apart from that, nothing.

She had got the hang of the strange gravity, though it took some getting used to. There really was no 'up' or 'down' here, not in any conventional sense. Gravity seemed to be strongest on the edges of the caverns, and weakest in the middle. A thrown pebble would sail away from her outstretched hand, its velocity decreasing visibly, until it came to a standstill somewhere near the middle of the cavern. So, some sort of rule of surface tension seemed to prevail, but she was blowed if she could work it out. What it meant in practical terms was that, wherever you were standing, your personal 'up' would be 'down' for someone standing at a point opposite you on the far side of the cavern.

Mental.