'You have the luck o' the Irish about you', sir. That you do. For I like you.

And better still, they like you. Now away with you, Collins and Shaw, to your cargo. The sooner we stow the baggage, the sooner the night will get interesting, am I right?'

'Aye Aye, Captain Stuart,' I said quietly. I smiled as the crewmen led me from the deck. But the smile was a sad one. For I liked Stuart. He was a good man. Well travelled, obviously, but not a braggadocio. And he had people skills. That was important. I hoped we would get a chance to talk properly before he died, though I suspected that my wish would remain unfulfilled. Such is the curse of the long-lived. It's one of the reasons Earth is my favourite planet. Somehow humans manage to cram so much into their b.u.t.terfly lives - so much feeling and achievement that even I, who've acc.u.mulated a gnat's whisker shy of a millennium's experience, can scarcely articulate it.

I turned to Collins and Shaw. 'Gentlemen, I commend you, for you have the privilege to belong to one of the most heartwarming species it has been my very great fortune to encounter.'

'Oh aye?' said Collins.

'Z'at so?' added Shaw.

'Wanna drink?' they finished together.

They both proffered hip flasks. I grinned. This was going to be fun.

It stopped being fun about two minutes later, when I realised the TARDIS, which we were intending to load on to the Tweed, Tweed, was not where I had left it. And that there was a conspicuous length of empty jetty where there had once been a somewhat down-at-heel sailing vessel. was not where I had left it. And that there was a conspicuous length of empty jetty where there had once been a somewhat down-at-heel sailing vessel.

The inference was obvious.

I grabbed the nearest dock handler. 'The boat. The one that was here.

Where is it now?'

The man thought for a moment. 'Well, it's gone, ain't it?'

'And the blue box? There was a blue box here. About this high.' I gestured.

'Well, it ain't here now. All the crates that was here, we loaded 'em on to the ship. If your box was here it's halfway across the Channel b'now.'

'Going where?'

'India.'

I stared unblinkingly at the dock handler, as if that would change anything, as if I could bring the boat back by sheer force of will. The handler just shrugged unhelpfully.

I sighed. 'Oh well. The Old Thing always did have a hankering to travel.'

I turned to Collins and Shaw. 'Gentlemen, my luggage will be travelling by a different route.'

'That right, then?'

'Changed y'r mind, have we?'

'Less work for us.'

'We'll be off for a drink, then.'

In a moment I was alone on the pier. I listened to the water lapping greasily against the wooden supports, then turned sharply on my heel towards town. Losing the TARDIS was inconvenient, but not a disaster.

We'd run into each other again soon; it was a small enough planet. In the meantime I had other business to conduct. And two hotel rooms to book.

I left the docks and began to walk towards town. The buildings were low, mostly made of wood, and set close together on narrow streets. I could hear all manner of sounds. Dogs barking, women shouting, clothes flapping damply against walls. Once, several children ran past, giggling and yelling at each other. They all stopped and asked me for spare money. I gave them some humbugs.

One of the children - a girl with shadowed eyes and pale skin - looked up at me. 'Can't buy m.u.f.fin wiv sweets, mister. You sure you ain't got no bra.s.s?'

I stopped, crouched beside the little girl. I touched the hand she was holding out, the bioelectric field a fractal detail of her short life. Nine, maybe ten years old. Low to medium IQ. Rickets. I gave each child a gold piece. They ran off squealing with delight. The little girl looked at me solemnly for a moment. 'They're rude, that lot,' she said. 'Me mam allus told me ter say ta.' She grinned, exposing teeth that were already beyond hope. 'Ta, mister!' She bolted.

'Eat your greens!' I expect I sounded like her mother. She didn't look back.

I continued through town. By now afternoon was drawing to a close.

The air was damp and a fog was drawing in. Moisture ran from nearby walls and made the road slippery. The sounds I could hear - which now included the clattering of horse-drawn carriages and the more distant cries of gulls - seemed to recede among the grey shadows. I imagined the sounds were playing hide-and-seek, visualising each as one of the children I had seen. The clatter of a carriage was a dirty boy, clothes flapping in the fog. The screech of a gull marked the impatience of the gang leader. The distant bark of dogs was the angry shout of a girl who'd been bullied. The slap of washing against walls was the hanger-on, trailing the rest in flapping shoes. The fog thickened. The sky swept down as if to grasp my hat. I watched it, noting the subtle shift of airborne particles, a cloying mixture of smoke and water vapour.

I started to look for an inn. Something small. Un.o.btrusive. With a good vintage lemonade.

I heard footsteps. Behind me. Pacing me. m.u.f.fled in the fog.

Soft. Deliberate. A hunter's footsteps.

I did not turn. Instead I increased my pace. Soon I was striding at what would be a fast trot for a human.

The footsteps faded. I slowed. Probably it had been nothing. But you can never tell. And in parts like these it made sense to play it safe. The local villains might have ambitions somewhat less grand than control of the universe but they would kill you just as quickly for your small change. I didn't want to risk being stabbed for the sake of a bag of mint humbugs, a yo-yo, a s.e.xtant, an African charm carved from an elephant tusk, a bottle of teak oil, a bottle of radish sauce, some penicillin and sulpha, some silicon chips, some grade-one diamonds, and a slightly soiled handkerchief with a knot in one corner. Among other things.

Breathing a sigh of relief that I hadn't had to resort to violence - even aggressive humans are more fragile than they realise - I turned a corner in the fog, and ran head first into someone running the other way.

I felt hands grasp at my shoulders, pulling me closer. No. This wasn't right. It was too controlled. An accidental collision would have provoked anger or apologies. Not silence. I showed the man that I knew more about his properties of balance than he did himself. He hit a nearby wall with a satisfying thump, slid to the ground, groaned and lay still.

Hm. The walls around here weren't that hard. Was he trying to trick me? To lure me closer?

Taking chance by the hand I bent over the man. I saw a narrow face with greasy hair and stringy musculature. His clothes were of very poor quality. His eyes were closed. He was barely breathing. Blood flecked his lips. I examined him more closely, distasteful though that was. The fellow had a knife, a short dagger. He had fallen on it.

I examined the wound. The smell of blood was clean and pure beside the stink from his clothes. If I left him here he would have an infection in the wound by the time he awoke -if he awoke, and wasn't finished off and robbed by some other chancer. I hunted in my pockets. I thought might have some iodine or sulpha somewhere. That might help.

I found the sulpha, applied it to the wound, covered it with twenty or so Band-Aid plasters. The man was still unconscious. His breathing seemed better, though I doubted he could be moved. And he would still need medical attention. I took two diamonds and shoved them in his pocket.

They just fitted. There. At least now he could afford the best medical care. The rest was in the hands of the universe.

I stood.

A man with a ginger mop of hair plastered over a thick brow was watching me. The dock handler I had first encountered on leaving the TARDIS some hours before.

'Come on, guv'nor.' The man's voice was as rough as I remembered, though not as drunk. He cast a quick glance at the unconscious cutthroat. 'You don't want to be discovered hanging round here, if you ask me. The peelers'll 'ave y'inside quicker'n blinkin' and Gawd knows what'll 'appen to yer then.'

'We should at least call for help.' I suddenly realised how remiss I had been in concentrating on my attacker. For he was not the man who had been following me at all.

'He was going to do fer yer.' The docker took a pistol from his pocket and pointed it at me. 'And I'll do fer yer if y' don't do as I say,' he added menacingly. 'Nah git along.'

7.

The Screaming Sea

It is a hunter's job to be curious. But I did not get a chance to look inside the cabin that Royston had been to so many times for many days. My best chance came during the worst storm Tweed Tweed had yet encountered. had yet encountered.

By then I was desperate for something to kill. It was a feeling I found difficult to control - something the Doctor had been trying to convince me was not an att.i.tude to take to a civilised world. It was hard, though. We had been at sea for so long now and I was bored. bored. When the storm came I was almost grateful. When the storm came I was almost grateful.

It began gently enough - what seemed likely to be another good day for washing. But as the rain continued and the skies darkened the men began talking of a demon they called Cyclone. Cyclone.

I was in the crow's nest again, with Jack, watching out for icebergs, waiting our turn to be called down from watch to wash. The sky, which until that morning had been as blue as the Doctor's eyes, had begun to change. Now it looked grey and greasy, like bad fat from old meat, left too long before eating. The sky coloured the ocean, too, as if the one was an infection, a poison, seeping down to taint the other.

The pigs and fowl seemed most affected by the change in the weather.

They put up a tremendous racket. The wind dropped, gusting abruptly from different directions. The Bosun ordered the sails furled and everything that was movable, including the chickens, was lashed down or taken below decks.

Tweed sailed lazily for two days under two close-reefed topsails and two storm staysails. The weather did not improve. sailed lazily for two days under two close-reefed topsails and two storm staysails. The weather did not improve.

On the morning of the third day I awoke from a fitful sleep to find the sky held a livid green tint - as if it had swapped places with the ocean, which was tossing fitfully beneath us, as restless by day as I had been by night. From the main hatch on the quarterdeck I could hear the pigs and chickens. If anything, being below decks had increased their fear.

I went looking for the Doctor and found him in the rigging to port of the foremast. He was sitting upon the fore lower topsail boom, and had tied himself there by his scarf. I ran lightly out along the spar and perched beside him. The tightly furled sail made a comfortable seat.

'Something is coming,' I said. He nodded. 'Invisible monsters, like those from the Beyond. The air has the same feel.'

' "By the p.r.i.c.king of my thumb, something wicked this way comes." '

The Doctor frowned. 'Static electricity. It's filling the air with positive ions.

It's like the dodgem cars at the fair. Only this will be a ride like no other you've experienced.'

I said nothing. I had a feeling the Doctor was right. We watched the sky together for a while, as the wind became more erratic, gusting harder and harder. I could not only feel this demon the men called Cyclone approaching, I could feel the men feeling it approach. Most of them were scared. I scented their sweat above the salt and the animal smell of the air. 'What can we do?'

'If I had the TARDIS we could at least take shelter. Or put up a force field.'

'But we do not have the TARDIS.'

'I know that. The Old Thing's probably halfway to India by now.'

'So what can we do? Can we kill this demon?'

'Kill a cyclone? No. But perhaps we can fight it off.'

'How? With prayer?'

'With good seamanship. Stuart's a good captain. He's not lost a man or pa.s.senger on any run yet. We must trust in him.'

'But he has taken gold from our enemy to betray us!'

'Leela, everyone wants to live. That's a basic tenet of human nature.

Captain Stuart has an ego. It's humankind's most powerful driving force: the inability to conceive or accept the death of self.'

'You mean... if we die it will be because the Captain himself is dead?'

'And the ship is lost. Yes.'

I was about to answer when I stopped, listened. The air was moaning.

'Listen. The sea screams.'

The Doctor nodded slowly. His face was a thundercloud to match the scythe heard sailors speak of the wind as if it had a voice. Some say it whispers to them. Tells them to do things. Others say it moans with the desperation of a lost mariner. It can offer warning or threat, be joyful, or sad, or angry.'

All around us the rigging bent in the gusting wind, the ropes snapping taut and then slack, every rope a voice in an unholy chorus of demons.

Then a light shone in the gathering darkness. A dazzling thread connecting the sky to the ocean. I blinked. 'The sun! The cyclone has stretched it out thin and flung it into the sea.'

The Doctor seemed amused. 'It's lightning. You could call it a sun - a short-lived one, and very dangerous. We must hope that the Captain has secured everything made of metal.'

'I understand. Suns like this do not like holy relics. I have seen even the holy metal melted by the touch of a sun like this.'

'If it can melt metal imagine what it will do to the ship.'

'The Captain told me this ship once weathered a cyclone which smashed many other ships like it.'

'Good old Tweed. Tweed. Let's hope she hasn't lost the knack.' Let's hope she hasn't lost the knack.'

The wind rose even further. The Doctor urged me to tie myself to the boom but I would not. I did not like the idea of being trapped against the mast. Above our heads the sky changed colour again, this time with the appearance of great lumps of cloud. I had seen cloud like this only once before, as a child, when the Xaust Xaust wind had wiped out half of my village. wind had wiped out half of my village.

Men ran to obey the bosun as he called for the remaining sails to be furled. I did not hear the man's voice above the roar of the wind, the voice of the demon. The cloud dropped upon us, lower, lower, until it was sc.r.a.ping the crow's nest and the masthead had vanished into the murk.