'Yes,' she said at last. 'I'm surprised, but I do. I never imagined that I'd want to be at peace, if we won. That I'd want to do anything but fight, and fight, and fight, but...' She hesitated. 'Perhaps I just want to be a farmer again.'

Kitig kicked up the ash-white sand of the beach, watched the dust scatter in the wind. He thought carefully for a moment, then said it. 'And your children?'

Mauvril looked up sharply, and her night eyes opened for a full second, glaring with blood. 'You smelled it?' she snapped.

'I have a wife and children,' said Kitig. 'And I had younger brothers and sisters. I know the scent of a pregnancy. And I would guess that you aren't the only one.'

Mauvril turned back to the lake, said nothing.

'It's a colony, isn't it? You're building Paratractis, aren't you?'

Mauvril tossed her head. 'I didn't want to tell you,' she said after a while. 'I wasn't sure I could trust you. I'm still not sure. But I suppose you were bound to work it out eventually.'

'The Doctor will work it out too. He is very perceptive.'

'Yes. I know.' She turned back to him. 'Is he an Imperial agent?'

'I really don't know. I don't know much about the Empire. But I think...' Kitig hesitated, looking for the right words.

'Even if that's part of it, he's more than that.'

'But he favours the humans?'

'He has to. He says it's to do with the nature of time.'

'Yes, I spoke to him.' A pause. 'I could have him tortured, you know, until we get the truth.' A longer pause. 'I could have you you tortured, until we get the truth from him.' tortured, until we get the truth from him.'

Kitig's throat constricted. The smell of ash and sulphur in the air seemed to get stronger. 'You'd do that to me? To him?'

'You saw what they did to us.' Mauvril swung round, rose on her hind legs and kicked at the air, disturbing a cloud of insects. She turned as she fell back, so that she was facing Kitig. Took hold of his hands. 'Do you know why I don't think you're an Imperial agent? Why I didn't just kill the pair of you?'

'No. In your position taking everything into account I would probably have felt that I had no choice but to '

Mauvril laughed. 'That's it! "In your position taking everything into account "!' Her hands gripped harder. 'You're a child, Kitig of Paratractis. You're innocent and naive and beautiful and you're everything we're fighting to make happen.

And I don't think that even the Empire would be clever enough to make you that way just to fool us into giving up our dreams.' She let go. 'But you do realise that the Doctor might be deceiving you?'

Kitig took a few steps back from the beach, felt the first stems of grass prickle against his back legs. 'I think that he's telling some of the truth,' he told Mauvril. 'You know I'd do anything to make the future I lived in real. My wife my children everything I knew is there. I want to go back, and even if I can't go back I'd like to know that I've done everything I can to make it happen. But if the Doctor is telling the truth, then all of us will lose everything. Or perhaps we already have.'

Mauvril stood for a long time, staring out at the volcano. Kitig could hear a faint, almost subsonic, vibration in the wind.

'I should have you tortured,' said Mauvril after a while. 'I'm sure it's the only way of getting the truth out of the Doctor. I know the type of person he is. He won't crack under anything else we can do to him. But, you see, I can't do it to you. I can't take away your innocence like that.'

Kitig kicked at the sand with his forefeet. He felt more irritated with Mauvril than afraid of her. 'I'm not innocent,' he said. 'Torture me if you have to.'

'You are innocent. You've never been tortured, you've never seen anyone tortured. If you had, you wouldn't make stupid remarks like that.'

There was a silence. The wind grew stronger, throwing up whitecaps on the lake. The volcano still grumbled in the distance.

'I can try to get the truth out of him myself,' said Kitig. 'I could pretend that you had threatened me. That might be enough to persuade him '

'I was hoping you'd suggest that,' said Mauvril, glancing over her shoulder at him, her eyes cold. 'I didn't want to have to make you do it.'

Click.

There was light in Sam's eyes. Torchlight. Human Human light. light.

'Jacob?'

'He's been here?'

A woman's voice. A dim face behind the light.

Sam realised that only a minute or so had passed. Her head hurt, and her arms hurt. Axeman and several of the other habs were bounding up the slope, scattering pebbles.

In a minute they would start throwing rocks.

'Whoever you are, we've got to go after Jacob, now!' snapped Sam.

'What's he done?'

Sam felt a nudge of fear. Whose side was this woman on?

It might be better to run for it, find Jacob, work out some kind of strategy but Jacob had already abandoned her once.

A hand grabbed hers. 'Can you get up?'

Sam got up, felt a stabbing pain in her neck and almost vomited.

The other woman held on to her.

A rock clattered past them.

'We've got to go!' urged Sam.

'No. Wait. They won't hurt us if we ow!'

Sam almost laughed.

They both started running, Sam clumsily: her neck was still hurting and her head buzzed. She saw habiline shadows around them, but none approached, though there was quite a lot of hooting and grunting.

Finally, they seemed to be clear of them. The woman peered uncertainly at Sam in the weak moonlight. 'I umm,' she began. 'You are are Sam, aren't you?' Sam, aren't you?'

Sam nodded. 'Who are you? Why don't you like Jacob?'

The woman must have heard the suspicion in Sam's voice. She said quietly. 'I'm Jo Grant. The Doctor's mentioned me, I expect.'

Sam remembered a name like that from somewhere. She looked at the woman, taking in the floppy Indiana Jones hat and the purple striped pullover that looked ten years out of date, even for someone of Jo's advanced age. She looked a good deal more incongruous than Jacob, and a good deal more Genuine.

Sam suddenly began to feel sick.

'He made me inject one of the habs with something,' she told Jo.

'What?'

'He said he was from the Doctor. That's what all the fuss was about back there: the habs thought we were attacking them.'

There was a moment's silence.

Jo took Sam's hands in hers. 'Sam. The Doctor said that Jacob had '

'Let me guess. A virus. In a syringe. Attached to a green thing about the size of a tennis ball.'

'He didn't mention that, but '

'What have I injected them with? What are we going to do about it?'

Jo didn't answer.

'What have I done?' wailed Sam.

But she knew.

I've just injected them with the virus I let Jacob fool me how could I have been so stupid?

'I've just wiped out the human race,' whispered Sam. She heard Jo swallow in the darkness. 'Tell me I haven't.'

Jo didn't tell her that. Instead, she said, 'The Doctor will turn up. He had to go somewhere else in the TARDIS, but he'll be back. Everything will be all right then.'

But she didn't sound entirely convinced.

The room was small, and smelled of blood and pain.

It was almost dark: Kitig had to open his night eyes before he could see clearly. The Doctor was hunched in the corner, his face white, dried blood staining the front of his shirt. His jacket and shoes had been removed, and there were red welts on his face.

Kitig stopped in the doorway, shocked despite everything that Mauvril had told him. He hadn't expected them to have tortured the Doctor already already.

The Doctor looked at him and smiled. His upper lip was cut wide open, and there was a gap in the row of teeth. 'Hello Kitig,' he said in a muffled voice. 'I wondered when you'd turn up.'

Kitig shuffled forward into the cell. A guard closed the door behind him.

There was an ominous clicking of locks.

'Mauvril ' he began. But he couldn't just launch into his prepared lie. 'Why did they do this?' he asked, surprised at the anger in his own voice.

'Do what?' The Doctor saw Kitig's stare, looked down at himself. 'Yes, sorry, I do look a bit of a wreck. Don't worry, I can control the pain. Old Gallifreyan technique.'

'Yes, but why?'

The Doctor frowned. 'I'm not sure, but I think some of Mauvril's thugs had got a bit bored, without any humans to beat up, and I look human, don't I?' He shrugged. 'Well, there you are.'

'Doctor, Mauvril has asked me to find out the truth. She says...' He hesitated, swallowed. 'She'll torture me if you don't confess.'

'Yes, that's usually the next step,' said the Doctor. 'And you don't want to be tortured, I suppose?'

Kitig swallowed again, looking at the Doctor, feeling the locked door behind him. It was no use fooling himself: it was obvious that Mauvril might well carry out her threat, for all her talk of Kitig's beauty and innocence. He wondered how he would feel, after living the life that Mauvril had led.

'I don't know,' he said. 'She's unstable. She changes her mind constantly.' He sat down on his haunches. His folded legs almost touched the Doctor in the confined space. ' Is Is there anything more to be told?' he asked quietly. there anything more to be told?' he asked quietly.

'Not really,' said the Doctor. 'I suppose I could tell them my life story that might keep them busy for a while.' He smiled again. It was probably supposed to be reassuring, but his lip dripped blood. 'Don't worry, I'll think of something.'

Kitig shook his head. 'It's not enough, Doctor. We have to tell a story that will convince Mauvril she's heard the whole truth.'

The Doctor's smile broadened. 'Ah, Kitig. I see you're learning the arts of diplomacy at last.' Kitig stared at him.

The Doctor leaned forward, wincing. Kitig wondered just how much pain he was in, and how well he could really control it.

'They're not going to let me out of here,' he said quietly. 'Not ever. So you need to do something for me, or, rather, arrange for something to happen. I'm not sure it will work, but if it doesn't I suspect we'll all cease to exist after a little while, so I think you'd better give it a try. What I need you to do is '

'Before you tell me,' said Kitig quickly. 'I should tell you something.'

The Doctor looked at him, looked directly into his eyes. Kitig could feel the biped's will, like a monstrous hand, pushing him towards making a promise he couldn't keep.

'I can't guarantee that I'll help you,' said Kitig, speaking with slow determination. 'If you tell me about your plan, I may decide to sabotage it. I must put my own people first.' A pause. The Doctor didn't look away. 'I'm sorry.'

The Doctor looked down at last. 'I understand,' he said. Then, quite suddenly, he grinned. 'But you're my only hope, so I'm going to tell you anyway.'

'I understand. Go on.'

'I need you to bring the TARDIS to me.'

Kitig closed his eyes in sadness. Because, before the Doctor had even finished his sentence, before he even began the technical explanations of how Kitig should move the space-time machine, Kitig knew that he was going to have to refuse him.

Tvan Mauvril was glad to be back in charge of an operation. A genuine operation, with a target, with an enemy, with dangers. She'd hated the war, but she'd got used to it: managing a colony, even one under the possible threat of discovery by Imperial agents, was dull by comparison.

She trimmed the steering of the flitter cautiously, minimising the load on the irreplaceable power cell. The volcano was quite close now; the plains below were coated in white ash that had fallen from yesterday's eruption. It reminded her of snow, the snow that had fallen on the fields of her home town on Tractis, many years ago in another, more innocent life.

She looked over her shoulder at the Doctor's space-time machine, the thing he called the TARDIS, strapped down in the bomb bay of the flitter. She remembered Kitig's warning: the TARDIS is very powerful. The Doctor can call the machine to him at any time. If you try to kill him, it will come to his rescue. You can't destroy it with guns, you can't destroy it at all, unless you drop it into the sun. You have to seal it off from him, put it somewhere he can't ever find it.

Well, she couldn't drop it into the sun. Not without a spaceship. But the volcano was the next best thing, and there was just enough flitter power left to get her there though she was probably going to have to walk part of the way back. The heat of the magma would be enough to destroy the machine, surely.