Suddenly the Doctor's hand closed around Stoker's and he pulled the comlink to his lips. 'Tegan! listen to me: I won't have time to repeat this.' The Doctor's face was as pale as smoke in the gloom. His eyes were shut tight with concentration. 'Get into the stasis tank. Close the lid and seal it. It's your only chance of hiding from the Dark' There was a stutter of protest from the radio. 'W-what? Are you sure?'

'No,' the Doctor told her. 'But it's all I can think of. Do it, Tegan, quickly!'

Tegan switched off the comlink and wiped her eyes roughly.

The seething ma.s.s of darkness was pressing close behind her. Almost before she had thought about it Tegan was running her hands clumsily over the nearest stasis tank, searching for the opening mechanism. The tank looked like a big steel bathtub with a lid, but raised on some kind of dais.

There were little lights blinking on the control panels and they made her wonder if the thing 'might accidentally activate itself while she was in it: would she try and hide in there only to wake up again in two hundred years?

The darkness intensified and she heard the outrage of a planet that had lost itself to evil over a million years before.

The anguish settled like a physical weight on her shoulders and she felt faint. Then she found the latches and slid back the heavy metal lid of the tank and clambered inside.

It was cold and hard and smelled of iron and rubber. She felt like she was lowering herself into a submarine's torpedo tube. Cursing the Doctor, she lay back down and, with a struggle, slid the lid back up and over her face. It shut with surprising ease and a solid thud. It was sound proof: all she could hear now was her own rapid breathing and the hollow beat of her heart.

Right above her was a small rectangle of thick perspex.

She could see the darkness outside, right above the stasis tank. She almost thought she could see the deeper, more evil shadow of the Dark itself rearing up over the tank, ready to strike.

Like a snake, she thought. she thought.

No. Not Not like a snake. like a snake.

Like soil and dust, ready to fall down into the freshly dug grave and scatter across the lid of her coffin. More and more, thicker and thicker, until she couldn't see anything.

She realised then that the torch was still on. The beam shone right up under her chin, illuminating her face for all to see through the little window. She remembered her first glimpse of Ravus Oldeman's face through the little hatch, viewed from the other side. She fumbled around, her arms restricted in the confined s.p.a.ce, and eventually squeezed the flashlight's b.u.t.ton. The beam vanished and darkness filled the coffin.

She was holding her breath.

She could see something in the blackness above her: a face, staring down at her through the window. It was blood red, with mad, wide eyes full of terror and loathing. Her heart stopped for a long moment.

Then she blinked and realised the crimson face was her own reflection. There were a number of little red control lights inside the tank, level with her head; the faint glow picked out her features with just enough clarity to be reflected right back at her in the dark gla.s.s above.

She started to breathe again, trying to control the urge to take great, loud gulping drags of the air. It was already hot and stuffy in here and she felt faint again. She shut her eyes and tried to breathe deeply and evenly.

Something pressed itself against the outside of the tank.

She actually felt the tank move slightly, and she could sense a great weight bearing down on the lid and something, something smearing itself across the little window. It was pitch black inside the tank and pitch black outside, but there was something something there: it was oozing across the gla.s.s like a giant slug. there: it was oozing across the gla.s.s like a giant slug.

Any second now that gla.s.s or plastic or whatever it was would crack, the weight would be too much, it would break and the gla.s.s would fall in and her face would be covered with an avalanche of worms and bugs, filling the coffin, all wriggling and burrowing into every little crevice they could find...

Tegan swallowed something wet and cold at the back of her throat and almost retched before she realised it was just phlegm.

She had to speak to the Doctor. She had to speak to someone, anyone.

Then she realised she'd left the radio outside on the edge of the tank.

The Doctor stopped and leant against the rock wall. He patted his face with his handkerchief and then, with great deliberation, tied a knot in one corner.

'What's that for?' asked Stoker wearily.

'Tegan,' he said. 'I won't forget her now, will I?'

Stoker stared as the Doctor carefully folded the handkerchief with its knot. 'What about Nyssa?'

'Who?'

'Your other companion. Nyssa.'

'Oh,' the Doctor said with a smile. Yes. Another knot, I think.' He unfolded the hanky.

'Doctor, do you want me to thump you again?'

The Doctor looked startled. 'No!'

'You're sure?' Stoker balled her fist. 'It might not help but it'd make me feel better because you're really starting to spook me out. You've got to fight the Dark, Doctor! Don't let it in! Don't forget your friends!'

The Doctor straightened up. 'Of course I won't forget them. I've tied two knots in my handkerchief, that should do the trick. Now, what were we doing?'

'This is impossible. I might as well give up now and take my chances with the Dark. You're useless.'

'It's all right,' he said. 'I know what I'm doing. I'm just trying to simplify my thought-processes, conceal what I can from the Dark's mental probing. But it may mean I only have occasional moments of lucidity.'

'If that's supposed to rea.s.sure me in any way, then it isn't working.' The Doctor looked hurt. 'Really? I'm doing my best.'

'Maybe your best isn't good enough!'

'That's a possibility. But it's all I've got. That, and the fact that the Dark is still after me...'

'What? You're talking crazy again, Doctor.'

'No, listen: the Dark could have killed me in the cavern when it killed Cadwell. It's chasing me - and by that I mean us, of course - right now.

It's trying to reach into my mind to control it, to influence it, but not actually destroy it.'

'Why?'

'I don't know. But at least it means we've got a chance of keeping one step ahead of it.'

'Until?'

The Doctor shrugged. 'Well, until it catches us of course.'

'And then then it kills us, right?' it kills us, right?'

'Well, I'm not so sure it will kill me straight away. But it will almost certainly kill you without hesitation.'

'Great.'

'Don't worry,' the Doctor looked Stoker in the eye, and the effect was strangely unnerving. 'I won't let it come to that.'

Stoker ran a hand through her hair, which was damp with perspiration despite the cold. 'All right,' she said after a breath. 'But what about Tegan?'

The Doctor looked blank. 'Who?'

Tegan had no idea how long she lay in that stasis tank, petrified like some stone effigy on a tomb. It could have been minutes, but it felt like hours: staring at the blackness just above her, seeing things moving through the obsidian gla.s.s like the phantoms from someone else's nightmare. She couldn't make out any shape or detail, or even movement, but there was a sense of something something being there, something palpable pressing against the lid of the tank: dark, heavy, wet, with tentacles that picked nimbly at the latches and probed the casing for the tiniest aperture or weak spot. being there, something palpable pressing against the lid of the tank: dark, heavy, wet, with tentacles that picked nimbly at the latches and probed the casing for the tiniest aperture or weak spot.

She remembered lying in her bed as a child, staring at the dull grey rectangle that was her bedroom window at night.

She could see someone standing outside her window, a thin, gnarled figure, bent like a witch, gently tapping on the gla.s.s.

She could hear the tap-tap-tap all night long. The witch never left the window; she just stood there, and occasionally tapped to let Tegan know she was there, watching her, waiting for her to fall asleep.

Her dad had told her it was just one of the branches of the big tree in the yard, and the wind was making it tap against the gla.s.s. The witch's hand was a stump of wood and her fingers were just twigs.

Tegan knew that there was a tree right outside her bedroom window, of course she did.

But she also knew there was a witch there at night time, a witch who lived in the tree, who was part of the tree, with skin like rough black bark and eyes like little dried berries.

She could still hear the witch now, tap-tap-tapping against the window.

And she could see her, too: the gnarled features were peering at her through the gla.s.s, eyes shrunken and crusty, sharp yellow teeth bared in a cackling laugh.

With a moan of dread, Tegan realised that there was was a face visible through the tank's inspection hatch: a hideous, dark skull with empty eyes. a face visible through the tank's inspection hatch: a hideous, dark skull with empty eyes.

As she watched, a skeletal hand, clad in bark-like skin, started to tap against the gla.s.s.

'Tegan!' Stoker yelled into the comlink. 'Can you hear me? Tegan?'

'Maybe we're down too deep in the caves,' suggested the Doctor anxiously.

'Perhaps the signal's too weak.'

Stoker shook her head irritably. 'These things are Consortium issue.' She pressed the transmit switch again.

'Tegan! Come in, Tegan! State your position.

The radio crackled.

'What was that?' asked the Doctor, sitting forward.

'It sounded like, I don't know, something tapping,' said Stoker. They listened again as the radio hissed with static and then, distinctly, they heard a definite tapping noise.

Something metal being struck repeatedly.

'The stasis tank,' said the Doctor.

'It's found her,' said Stoker quietly.

There was a clank and a loud hiss from the comlink. The Doctor and Stoke both hunched closer to the radio, straining to decipher the noise.

'That's the lid being released,' said the Doctor. 'It's opening the stasis tank.

Stoker swallowed and then shut her eyes as a terrified scream tore through the radio, distorting into a squeal of static and then silence. 'Oh, Tegan...' said the Doctor, collapsing against the rock wall in despair. 'Oh no... not you as well...'

Stoker, aghast, shook the comlink and kept depressing the transceiver. 'Tegan! Tegan!' She glared at the radio in horror. 'Dead.'

The Doctor had covered his eyes with a hand. His head was tilted back to rest against the rock wall. He sat there, unmoving and silent; in his other hand he clutched his handkerchief tightly.

Chapter Twenty-Two.

The Doctor remained motionless for several minutes, a gla.s.sy, brittle look in his eyes.

It was, Stoker thought, the look of a man forced to confront his worst fear; and then finding that he simply wasn't ready for it.

Or perhaps it was the Dark, forcing its way into his head like a syringe needle and sucking out his most precious thoughts, his compa.s.sion and love and friendship and resolve. In a moment, all that would be left was the husk, his eyes remaining cold and empty.

Stoker grabbed his hands, which were continuously ma.s.saging the knotted handkerchief. She forced the fingers to remain still and looked into those cold, empty eyes.

'Don't let them die for nothing, Doctor,' she told him. 'Not Bunny, or Lawrence, or Tegan. Fight Fight for them.' for them.'

Slowly his eyes regained focus. 'Fight? I'm sorry, I'm not terribly good at fighting.'