'Welcome to Kilgai! You Ms Grant?'

Jo nodded, stood up, picked up her luggage and went to the door.

'Do you know where Rowenna Michaels and Julie Sands were staying?' Jo asked.

'I don't know much about it, I'm afraid. But don't worry. Captain Hynes is here to meet you. He'll take you wherever you need to go.'

Jo felt a jolt of panic, but quickly controlled it. This was a UNIT flight. Hynes was bound to know about it.

She peered out into the hot sunshine, saw a man in a blue UN uniform walking out from the shade of one of the buildings. She clambered down to the ground and called hello. They exchanged introductions, and Jo found herself hustled into a dusty green Land Rover which looked as though it had been around since the days when the British army ran this part of Africa.

'You don't know where my colleagues Rowenna Michaels and Julie Sands have got to?' Jo asked, as they drove through the dusty streets. 'I've been trying to get in touch '

'I warned them to stay out of the gorge area yesterday,' said Captain Hynes. His accent was American West Coast, almost a caricature: Jo found herself wondering if it was a fake. 'I have no information about them after that time.'

They were out of the town now, and she could see the hills ahead, a gentle russet colour in the low sunlight. A solitary man, wearing a checked shirt and jeans, herded a few goats across a field of yellow grass by the road.

'It seems like a peaceful enough place. What's the problem here?'

'Temporal anomaly,' said Hynes. 'We've got our science people on to it now.'

'What kind of temporal anomaly? You can tell me. I used to help the chief scientific adviser to UNIT.'

'Sergeant Benton informed me about your status. But I can't reveal anything about current operations.'

He's like a machine, thought Jo. She felt a chill inside her despite the dry African heat. She wondered if she was walking into a trap. She'd always been good at that.

What if I don't come back?

She thought of Matthew for a moment, his bewildered, sleepy face as she'd dropped him off at Cliff's. His eyes looking at Cliff, then at her. She knew he'd heard their hasty, whispered conversation, knew he'd worked out that this was some big, terrifying adult thing that he couldn't be told about.

Her heart clenched, and she turned to Hynes, ready to tell him to turn the Land Rover around and take her back to the town.

But he spoke first. 'There's a barracks hut outside the restricted area. You can sleep there.'

The hills were rising around them now, dark shoulders of rock blotting out the sun. Peaceful russet had turned to dark, shadowed red, the colour of old blood. The sky was darkening as she watched, blue leaching away. A star appeared.

The Land Rover jolted, turned off the road. Jo looked ahead, saw a couple of prefabricated buildings resting on wooden supports. There was a truck parked between them: it reminded Jo of the UNIT of her day, big, with round headlights and a canvas covering. They even had the old dull-green paint. Jo supposed that, like Hynes's Land Rover, they were on hire from the Tanzanian army.

'Looks like you're planning to be here for a while,' she commented.

To her surprise, Hynes laughed. 'You sure you're not a news reporter?' He pulled up the Land Rover by the nearest of the huts. Then he took hold of her arm and squeezed it, hard.

Startled, Jo turned, met his eyes.

'Don't even think about going into the restricted area, right?' he said. 'I know why you're here. We don't need any trouble right now. So just do the job you came to do, and make a good report to Geneva, right?'

Jo stared back at him, trying to hide her relief. It was obvious that Jacob thought she was checking up on him. A Command Office spy, sent to check that he wasn't stealing UN-issue toilet paper.

'I'll stay out of the restricted area,' she said, trying to sound cool and authoritative, the bureaucrat abroad. 'But I'll report what I like. Clear?'

Hynes let go of her arm. He laughed again. 'OK,' he said. 'Report what you like then.' He got out of the Land Rover.

Jo suddenly felt cold in the hot, stuffy cab. Hynes didn't seem to think that it mattered what she reported.

And if it didn't matter, then probably The Land Rover door opened.

'I'll show you to your room.'

Fossils.

Rowenna Michaels was staring at hundreds of fossils. Skulls, ribcages, hips, femurs, jawbones. Many of them seemed almost complete.

I must be dreaming, she thought, but she knew she wasn't.

She began to feel afraid.

'Rowenna?' Julie's voice. 'Rowenna are you OK?'

Rowenna tried to move, felt a stab of pain from her back.

turning, the gun in his hand, the gun 'I'm ' Rowenna struggled with a dry throat, dry tongue, dry lips. 'I was shot. I was shot again '

She couldn't believe it, couldn't believe she'd been so dumb as to put herself in the way of a bullet again. And all for a piece of skull.

Skull. Fossil. Fossil skull.

She stared at the fossils, found her voice again. 'What the hell are those?'

'Dead humans.'

The voice wasn't Julie's. It was oddly inflected, neutral, strange. The voice of the alien oh God the alien where am I what's happening to me 'You will join them soon.'

'Ignore him.' Julie's voice. 'He's just trying to scare us.'

But Julie sounded scared herself. Very Very scared. scared.

Rowenna took a deep breath, then slowly, painfully, pushed herself upright with her arms.

She was in a cave. Low, badly lit, damp, smelly. Turning her head, she could see the end of Julie's legs, with black restraining straps around them. She couldn't turn far enough to see her friend's face. Looking forward, she saw straps around her own legs. She couldn't see a bullet wound, couldn't feel any wound. Had Hynes really shot her? Perhaps it had been some kind of tranquilliser...

She couldn't remember remember.

With an effort, she levered herself around so that she could face the alien. He was lying on a wooden pallet, his legs folded beneath him. He looked less horselike now, more like a folded dragon in his black body armour with its glittering constellations of lights. Rowenna could see a keyboard unit around his neck: more primitive technology, almost certainly human in origin. There was a speaker attached, and a voice processor. She'd seen similar units in the hospital when she'd been recovering from her injuries; they were used by people who had lost the power of speech.

'What's going to happen to us?' she asked the alien.

The three-fingered hand moved over the keys. 'You will die painfully, as many of my people will die painfully at the hands of your descendants.'

'Why?'

'My life began in your future. Humans invaded my planet. This is my response.'

A whisper from Julie. 'Jesus, Rowenna, this can't be happening.'

Rowenna remembered Jo, the stories of Autons and Axons and Daleks. 'It's happening,' she said. Then to the alien: 'Look, I I haven't done anything to your people. Julie hasn't either. Perhaps if you talk to our government now, we could find some way to prevent ' haven't done anything to your people. Julie hasn't either. Perhaps if you talk to our government now, we could find some way to prevent '

'I tried all that,' interrupted Julie. Her voice was raw with fear.

'You are already dying,' said the alien. 'You will be dead soon.'

Rowenna closed her eyes. What did the alien mean? Poison? Virus? She could hear Julie's breathing, fast and hoarse.

A faint moan of pain.

Suddenly Rowenna realised why Julie was so afraid. It had already started: she was sick, in pain.

'No.' Rowenna's own voice surprised her. 'This is crazy. You have to stop it, whatever it is. There's got to be a way we can live with your people.'

The fingers moved on the keyboard. Julie moaned again, a stifled, terrified, sound.

' No No,' came the reply at last. 'There is only a way you can die with us. All of you, with all of us. The entire world we have both known. And that will happen very soon.'

There was a guard, a single, tall, dark-skinned man pacing up and down in the weak moonlight.

Jo watched him for a while with some annoyance. Then she stepped down from the doorway of the hut, gave him a wave and a grin, and set off towards the trucks.

He didn't challenge her.

Hynes's Land Rover was gone. She followed the tyre tracks as far as the road, then walked a little way up the road towards the gorge. The night was hot: insects whined in the darkness, and there was a faint chatter of cicadas from the long grass on the hillside.

'Hey! Miss!'

The guard. Jo sighed.

'Miss! You can't go that way captain's orders!'

Jo turned, saw the man dimly silhouetted against the lights of the barrack huts. 'I'm just getting a breath of air,' she explained. 'Should I go the other way? Where does this restricted area start?'

'Here, really,' said the guard. 'But I guess as long as you stay away from the cave, there won't be a problem. Go up to the top of the gorge there's a path.' He pointed, and Jo saw a crude flight of steps leading up from the road.

Jo thanked him and started up the steps.

The cave.

Right.

Only about three kilometres of cliff face to look at. In the dark. Where the hell was she going to start?

A sharp click ahead of her answered her question.

'Ms Grant.' Jacob Hynes's voice. 'It's clear that you want to see your friends real bad.'

Jo could see him now, crouching in the shadows, the gun aimed directly at her. 'I ' she began.

'It's your lucky day,' said Hynes. He stood up, aimed the gun carefully at Jo's chest. 'I'm able to reveal their location now.

Just come along with me, and you'll get to join them right away.'

CHAPTER 9.

Kitig stood at the window of his bedroom, looking down at the garden where the Doctor and Sam were playing tag with his children.

They're happy happy, he thought. They're laughing laughing. Surely the Destroyer of Worlds would be a sour-faced fellow, full of the plasma and brimstone of his calling.

But the facts remained. The Doctor might be the Destroyer of Worlds, the Uncreator. He had given several signs, not the least of which was his interest in the Book of Keeping Book of Keeping.

Kitig studied the aliens, knowing that the existence of his entire world might depend on his observation, on his judgement.

Sam was just small enough to ride on the back of Critil, Kitig's eldest: they were cantering round the garden, leaping over the low walls, twisting between the frosted junipers, barrelling down the bright-yellow arch of the trellis, which was thick with winter jasmine. The Doctor, was with the twin foals Jontil and Mritig, chasing them or, rather, Jontil and Mritig were doing the chasing, while the Doctor did clownish things, running on the spot, making wild leaps into the air that just failed to connect with the target, instead landing him in the junipers, or ending in a long skid across the frozen pond, with his light-brown mane flying in the air.

It all might be misdirection, of course. In fact, it was obviously obviously misdirection, of a sort. The Doctor was happy because he was happy: but perhaps he was also be pretending to be happy because he was hiding something. misdirection, of a sort. The Doctor was happy because he was happy: but perhaps he was also be pretending to be happy because he was hiding something.

The question was: what? Was he merely a spy, a petty thief on the run? Or was he truly the Destroyer of Worlds, the legendary nemesis of the Tractite species?

The Book of Keeping Book of Keeping was vague on the subject of the Uncreator: he will be a biped, with pale skin, and he will know our language and our ways. He will arrive unexpectedly. That was all that it said was vague on the subject of the Uncreator: he will be a biped, with pale skin, and he will know our language and our ways. He will arrive unexpectedly. That was all that it said about about him. But it also said that he must be destroyed, at once and without mercy, 'or everything that the Tractites have built, on all of the worlds, will cease to exist'. him. But it also said that he must be destroyed, at once and without mercy, 'or everything that the Tractites have built, on all of the worlds, will cease to exist'.

Kitig looked away from the window, at the translucent walls of the bedroom, the ancient crystal furniture, at his wife, Narunil, lying on the hay bed, her eyes closed, her legs and arms crossed, the fear and tension apparent in every line of her body.

He swallowed. It can't be true, he thought. This can't be real. Not now, when I have my house to grow, my family to care for. This alien can't be the Uncreator. There is no Uncreator: it's just an old legend from the times when our people were weak and our cultures steeped in xenophobia. This is all just a horrible coincidence...

He turned back to the window. The Doctor was now lying on his back in the freezing grass, laughing at Sam, who was trying and failing to stand up on Critil's back.

There was a rustle of cloth behind him, and the heavy clopping of Narunil crossing the floor. She slipped in by his side, her body against his, her breath against the side of his neck.

'What do you think?' she asked after a while.

'I don't believe it,' said Kitig. 'I never did believe it. Evil without purpose doesn't make sense and I can't believe that the Doctor is so deranged that he would deliberately destroy us. Look at him!'