'Does that mean I'm dead?'

'Don't ask that too loudly. I'm waiting here for somebody particular. I don't have to deal with you. Do you know what a respiratory by-pa.s.s system is?'

'No.'

'That's all right then. You've just got one.'

Tim woke up and reached for his neck. He pulled the collar of his pyjamas aside and found the red marks where the rope had bitten him.

'I'm alive!' he gasped. Then the gasp became a shout. 'I'm alive!'

Phipps was the first one to wake, smothering a scream with his bedclothes when he saw Timothy sitting up in bed.

The others ignited their bedside lamps, and, seeing the miracle that had occurred, ran to surround the boy again. 'But you were dead!' Merryweather cried. 'You'd stopped breathing, there was no pulse!'

'I died,' Timothy told him. 'And then I came back.'

Hutchinson pushed his way through the crowd and glared at Timothy. Timothy met his gaze evenly.

After a moment, the Captain turned away. 'As I said,' he murmured. 'A lot of fuss about nothing. Don't forget it's OTC tomorrow, Dean. Make a man of you.'

The others hesitantly followed Hutchinson's example and returned to their beds, many of them still staring at Timothy as they did so.

After the lights had all been extinguished again, Tim flexed his fingers experimentally, staring at his young hands. 'Too late...' he whispered.

Serif opened his eyes. 'I don't believe it!' he whispered. He was in a tiny, white-brick cell, with a solid metal door. One small barred window looked out on the darkness. The only light was that which washed under the door. On the floor in front of him sat a tray with some bread and cheese on it.

He jumped to his feet and hammered on the door. After a few minutes, a tiny slat at eye-level slid open. 'Oi,' said a voice. 'Be qui-et. Silencio. Get my meaning? You'll wake the other prisoners.'

'You - ' Serif rammed his hand at the little gap, but the slat slammed shut again before he could touch whoever was outside.

It was inconceivable, but somehow the ex-Time Lord had outsmarted him. He turned back to the interior of the cell and paced up and down, considering his options. He didn't carry any of the extravagant weaponry that the others favoured.

If they'd only given him some meat...

Serif finally came to a bitter conclusion. He concentrated for a moment, then pulled off one of his gloves.

He put the revealed chalk-white hand up to the window and concentrated again. It took an hour, but, finally, Serif was convinced that he'd released the correct molecular messages into the air. Directing them would take longer still.

He just hoped that Greeneye wouldn't smirk about it.

Sergeant Abelard carefully closed the part.i.tion and wandered back behind the desk of the small police station.

'You've been back and forth to that door all night, Sarge,' said Constable Bickerston. 'And you've been on the go all day. Shouldn't you be getting home?'

'No, Alfie, I'm not a happy halibut. Army lads'll be through here any time now. I want to know what's going on. We might be at war tomorrow.'

'War?' Bickerston looked up from his newspaper. 'What, you reckon it was the Germans did that to the hospital today?'

'Germans, perhaps. Austrians or Russians, more likely. You didn't see what that gas did, Alfie. Most of the patients and staff in one of the wards just vanished, melted like they were made of chocolate on a hot day. But it was the ones at the edges that had the worst of it. There were bits and pieces of them everywhere. I've persuaded Geoffrey down at the newspaper not to mention it tomorrow, not until we can find all the relatives. But there'll be no holding him if the news gets out to London. What with that, that business at the pub and our anarchist down in the cells...'

'You reckon they're all connected?'

'Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned if it's a coincidence, a gas bomb, a violent robbery and an a.s.sault on the same day. That, what, triples the crime rate for April in one go? No, I think we've got our man, but it'll be down to the Army how they treat him. I hope they - oh, h.e.l.lo, miss, what can we... do for you?'

A nurse had wandered into the police station, carrying a red balloon. Abelard and the constable exchanged glances.

'Excuse me, officers,' the nurse began, 'but I was wondering if you might have chanced upon a friend of mine. He's a tall, rather sinister gentleman, in a large hat.'

'Are you a relative, miss?' asked Abelard.

'Why, yes, I'm his daughter.'

'Come now, miss, you can't expect us to swallow that.'

The nurse laughed and her voice changed. 'You said something funny. I'm tired of talking in that stupid way, so I'm going to talk like me now, all right?'

'That's absolutely fine, miss. Would you care to sit down for a while? Perhaps we could have a little chat.' Abelard opened the part.i.tion and showed the nurse towards the row of chairs that ran along the edge of the room. 'Now, were you in the hospital this afternoon when... when something awful happened?'

'Yes!' The nurse hopped up and down, smiling at him. 'I was because I did it!'

'Did you really, miss?' Abelard reached for his notebook, suddenly wondering if he ought to put in a call to the constables from Berridge, who were still helping to clear up at the hospital. No, this girl was obviously round the bend. 'What was it that you did, then, exactly?'

The nurse let go of her balloon, which floated up to the ceiling, and unb.u.t.toned her cuff. She showed Abelard her wrist. 'Watch! Nothing up my sleeve, just like a real magician. And now... ta-dah!'

The inside of her wrist split open like a piece of meat on a butcher's rack. There was no blood, just a black capsule that plopped neatly out into her hand. The wrist swept shut again.

Abelard stepped back, astonished. 'How - '

'Now, here's the clever part...' The nurse began to unscrew the cap on the capsule.

'Sarge!' shouted Bickerston. 'That's the gas, it must be! Stop her!'

Abelard dived forward and wrenched the black capsule out of the nurse's grip. He stared at it for a moment. She glared at him, her hands on her hips. 'Oh!'

'For goodness' sake, hurry up, can't you, Aphasia?' August wandered in and shot Abelard through the head.

As the body slid down the wall, he turned his gun towards Bickerston, but the constable had already dived under the counter, grabbing the telephone as he went.

'Balloon,' Aphasia sighed, recovering her gas capsule from the b.l.o.o.d.y wreck on the wall. 'Behind the desk.'

The balloon swept down from the ceiling and dropped below desk level, from where the sounds of frantic dialling issued.

'Hoff's back at the dome,' August told Aphasia. 'Have you seen Greeneye?'

'No, but I got a message from him.' The dialling had stopped, the receiver slammed back down again, and now the sound was a violent thrashing and m.u.f.fled shouting.

'Did he say where he was?'

'No, but he said he had a new plan.' The sounds from behind the desk grew quiet, and then stopped. The balloon floated back to Aphasia's grasp.

'That's all we need,' August sighed. 'If it's anything like the last one, we'll all get injured this time.'

The telephone behind the desk began to ring. 'Go and get Serif, would you please?'

August asked. 'Oh, and kill anybody else you find.'

As Aphasia ran through into the interior, he opened up the part.i.tion and squatted down. He nudged the body of the constable aside and plucked the receiver from his fingers.

'h.e.l.lo? Yes. Yes, Major, I see. Very good. All right. See you then.' He replaced the receiver just as a ragged alcoholic scream came from one of the cells.

Serif stalked out into the duty area, Aphasia skipping behind him merrily. He glanced at the carnage against the wall. 'What took you so long?' he mumbled, and carried straight on out of the doorway.

August smiled at Aphasia. 'He could at least have said thank you.'

They marched up into the forest to the dome, Serif keeping his distance ahead of August and Aphasia.

Hoff was looking up at the moon, idly picking twigs off the trees and eating them.

He spun round as Serif stamped into the clearing, levelling his gun at the dark figure.

'Don't be so melodramatic,' Serif grumbled, opening the dome.

'Look who's talking.' Hoff smiled at August as he and Aphasia arrived. 'Should have left him there. Any problems?'

'No, except that I answered a communications link to an approaching military convoy. Quite wisely, they've come to the conclusion that events at the hospital were somewhat extraordinary and are on their way to investigate.'

Hoff shrugged. 'Could nuke them. One mini-missile would do it.'

'Yes,' August tapped his chin, 'but that would quickly bring the whole country down on us. At the moment, we're free to search for the Pod, but things would really slow down if this becomes a battle zone. That, and Greeneye's fears could come true. The Time Lords might notice a major conflict. No, I think we should just seal the place off. What have you got?'

'Heat barrier?'

'Bit showy.'

'Fear barrier?'

'We want to minimize panic and confusion, not create it.'

'Time barrier, then. Wall of temporal displacement. Two layers, each with time on one side a second earlier than on the other. You can walk through one from either side, but not through both. Anybody short of a Time Lord who tries to go through, it's like they're walking through a wall. If they keep trying, all sorts of bizarre effects start happening, many of them fatal.'

'Good.'

'Glad you escaped the hospital.' Hoff patted Aphasia on the back, and the nurse's body went flying, landing on the humus a few feet away like a thrown paper dart.

Hoff laughed. 'Sorry. Should have realized that body wouldn't be very dense.'

'Well, I'm getting rid of the ugly thing!' Aphasia yelled. She leapt to her feet and ran into the dome.

'Invaluable as always, Hoff,' said August, following her. 'Oh, and could you check the security systems on the dome? This search of ours is going on far too long.'

'Perhaps Greeneye's found something.' August sighed. 'Perhaps cats will fly.'

So it was that in the early hours of the morning, a thin linear ripple appeared in the air on the other side of the hill, an impossible shifting of reality that gave off an atomic twinkle. It arced right over the town like a rainbow, and then fanned out, expanding in a circle to form a dome.

Then another layer swept out in the same way, following it exactly.

The walls of it swept round the outskirts of the town, slicing straight through trees and foliage, creating marks in wood that would still be visible decades later.

A flock of pigeons were caught by it, and one of them spiralled to earth, its wing spinning off on the other side of the airknife.

An owl, hovering over a meadow in wait for prey, sensed the thing coming, and ceremoniously flapped town-wards to escape it.

Those that were awake to see the dome's sparkling progress, at the farms and dairies and post offices, thought that it was the aurora and smiled at it. It completed its arc, sparkled again for a moment, and vanished.

The town was cut off from the world.

The first person to notice was Mr Hodges, whose horses suddenly stopped and whinnied in the middle of the road in the darkness before dawn. He got down from the cart and quietened them, and told them that they had to get to town for market, give the stallholders time to unload the produce. But they wouldn't go any further.

Hodges took his cap off and scratched his head. It was - like there was something in the road that was scaring them. He knew that sometimes even the smallest animal in its path would cause a horse to startle. He took his walking stick from the seat and walked forward, knocking it along the ground to scare off anything that was lurking in the bushes. A fox maybe, or one of Mrs Deel's dratted dogs. In the back of his mind was the thought that perhaps it was the man who'd attacked that saucy young thing Bernice. But Hodges was a practical man, and he didn't get scared by unseen things in hedgerows.

The stick hit something with a resounding chime. Hodges stepped back, and swung it again, struggling to comprehend the idea that... there was a big sheet of gla.s.s here? He reached out a hand and touched it, unable to see anything. His fingertips pa.s.sed through something, a light chill, and then encountered a smooth surface.

He leapt back. A memory had heaved itself into his, mind: his Kitty, dead for ten years now, holding up little Albert for him to see. Everything had been clear, like a waking dream, but it was fading now... He looked round, horrified, expecting to see St Peter or someone in the dark roadway, but all that there was, was the approaching dawn and the distant cry of lambs.

Shaking, Hodges reached out for the barrier again.

Morning. Dr Smith woke at the sunshine through his curtains and winced at the pain in his finger.

He got dressed and wandered into the washroom. The events of the night before seemed like a nightmare. If he'd had a whole little finger on his left hand, he'd have written them off as that. What sort of burglar bites the end of your finger? He'd ask Joan to check the bandages today. Probably a good sign that it was still hurting. He stared at his face in the mirror then felt the stubble on his chin. Holding his damaged hand awkwardly away from the sink, he managed to wedge the pot of shaving foam in a comer under the mirror and worked up a useful amount of foam one-handed. He wasn't going to see Joan with a rough chin.

Oh, and he'd told b.l.o.o.d.y Rocastle that he was going to go to his OTC meeting today. Well, he could just manage without him. It wasn't in his contract to work on Sat.u.r.days. He shaved, being even more careful than usual with the big cut-throat razor. He remembered his first real shave as a boy, the barber on Espedair Street who smelt of tobacco, and kept talking about running away to sea, for some reason.

His skin had felt wonderful afterwards, but very hot and red, and he'd woken up the next day with a face covered in acne. That always happened, his dad had told him.

The girls would understand. Well, the d.u.c.h.ess - Verity - had, at any rate.

He splashed some water on his face, wiping the foam away one-handed.

He pulled out the big metal tub from the cupboard and filled it with jugs of hot water in the lounge, picking up the local newspaper from the doormat on his way into the kitchen. There was no word about the hospital at all. They must have gone to press before it happened.

Odd. He clenched his teeth and glared at the absence. It was as if gears inside him were trying to engage but missing their wheels, an inch up the hill and then always a jerk back. This must be what Sherlock Holmes felt like when he was thinking about a problem... Good, actually, if Conan Doyle would write a couple more stories now, he could ask The Strand whatever fee he liked. Or perhaps this was just the common feeling of people now, that they were b.l.o.o.d.y missing something.

A finger, actually. That was the whole of it; he was still a bit shocked and the emptiness inside was a measure of that. A man in love shouldn't be blue.

A man in - G.o.d, enough time for foolishness later. Bath'd be good for shock.

He threw the paper across the room and dropped his dressing-gown over the back of a chair. Gingerly, he stepped into the hot water and, settling into it, sighed.