'They're going to kill her.'

'Who are?'

'Don't know... s.p.a.ce/time pollution.'

'What did you say?'

'The ants. Criss-cross... pollision... pol... collision...'

'This is unsatisfactory,' the voice snapped. 'How much of that stuff did you put into her?'

'Uh, the standard dose, sir.'

'I have no idea what that means.'

'Uh, no sir. It, uh, all happened rather quickly. She put up a struggle.'

'The standard dose for them or for us?' the voice asked with thinning patience.

'Um... For us, I suppose.'

88.'She's barely conscious. We'll have to wait until she comes round. I must go. I'll send someone to look after her and have her brought to me.'

'What shall we do with her until then, sir?'

'Keep her here. She has already said enough. They know.'

The figure receded. Rita was sure Dumont-Smith bowed. But then she started to black out again.

'How's your arm?' Ace asked.

'Stings a bit, said Jimmy, but it's a nice pain. How's your shoulder?'

'Same,' smiled Ace.

They had strolled back through a capital closing for the day and opening up for the night. Jimmy had a key to the zoo. They slipped in, to darkness, and a single, pale light.

'Ted's still here...' murmured Jimmy. 'He sells toffee-apples. Want a toffee-apple?'

Ace suddenly realised the b.u.t.terflies in her stomach weren't just in antic.i.p.ation of the night to come. She was starving. They skipped over to the little booth.

'Got any left, Ted?' Jimmy asked.

'Two, said Ted. 'You're lucky.'

Ace hadn't had one of these in years. She wolfed it down as they walked back to Jimmy's underground room.

When they got there they kissed again, longer and harder this time, and Jimmy slipped Ace's jacket from her shoulders, then his own. She peeled his T-shirt away, and he hers, and they collapsed on the mattress, Jimmy's face moving down her neck and shoulders as she clutched at his back, her eyes closing.

89.

Chapter Ten.

It was already dark when Cody McBride came to on his friend's floor.

His head felt foul. So did his stomach. He struggled to remember what they'd done.

Above him Mullen snored with the gale.

The doctor only a young houseman, it seemed the bigwig was away - had agreed to let them sleep it off when they'd threatened him with the contents of Mullen's bedpan.

McBride struggled to his feet, wrapped his coat around his shoulders and crept out into the corridor and into the street. It was five o'clock.

The whole day gone.

He felt bad the Doc had sounded pretty desperate but so was Mullen. Mullen had needed him there and then.

He hoped the Doc was being lucky. Ace had been a good kid... back in the war. Judging by the Doc's appearance, he speculated that Ace might not have changed either. He'd always thought she kinda liked him. He found himself sucking in his paunch, until he realised it hurt too much.

What would she think of him now, nearly twenty years older?

He disappeared into the underground.

At about the same time, a lone figure was standing in McBride's office bony fingers thoughtfully tapping the Doctor's note with Rita's addendum against cracked, slightly smiling lips. Old, pale eyes stared coldly at their own warped reflection in the whisky decanter.

Twenty minutes later the same figure said goodbye to Miles Dumont-Smith in a cafe across the road and watched him depart. Five minutes after that he watched a very green-looking Cody McBride return to his office, then emerge again, letter in hand, looking even greener. The man took a delicate sip of tea and blinked a blink of slow satisfaction, staring after McBride as he strode off up the road trying to hail a taxi.

Smiling, the man returned to his crossword.

Six across. Five letters. 'He hocks his freedom and joins the ranks guarding castle, church and throne.'

He picked up his pen and started to fill in the blanks.

90.The Doctor came to in surprising comfort. He was in a clean, warm bed, and Davey O'Brien was sitting beside him, reading a book.

'Good afternoon, Captain,' said the Doctor.

'Oh, you're awake good,' grinned the young pilot. 'I was getting bored. I saw you fall. The rozzers were here at the time. Luckily none of them thought to look out of the window. Anyway, they searched and left again. Haven't been back since.'

'How long have I been asleep?'

'Only about four hours, but I've never seen anyone so spark out, even on Paddy's Night. What were you on?'

'Many of the concoctions you create on this planet disagree with me,' muttered the Doctor. 'Four hours is far too long. I must find that rocket. It's here somewhere. I must get up.'

'I'll leave you to it,' said O'Brien. 'I sorted you out a new shirt and pullover. Yours were goners... and I didn't think you'd want to go to town in your operation gown.'

He left, closing the door behind him.

A minute and a half later the Doctor bounded down O'Brien's stairs.

'Hey,' the young captain grinned, 'not bad.'

A decent white linen shirt and a rather smart sleeveless pullover fawn, with a broad band of vague pattern running around the middle of it.

'You have impeccable taste, Captain.'

'You're a pretty nifty dresser for a guy your age, Doc. You want something to eat?'

'No time, no time.'

The Doctor stared out the window, as if willing the rocket to reveal itself.

And then it did.

'Captain O'Brien '

'You've probably got me busted for espionage. You might as well call me Davey.'

'Davey, those birds, over the wood, do they always behave like that?'

They were flocking and swooping, circling, diving over the dense forest canopy.

'A couple of weeks ago they started. It built up over a few days.' He blushed. 'I, uh, spend a lot of time looking out of the window, you know?'

'Pigeons, mostly... even the odd gull. Scavengers. The sort of birds that flock around human activity.

'As far as I know it's just an old oak wood.'

'Shall we go and find out?'

91.Rita paced the bedroom with a headache. She'd thrown all the available furniture at the window in vain. The door, of course, was locked.

The house was silent. She was pretty sure she'd been left alone.

She really was starving.

She had to get out somehow. She didn't know what she'd stumbled across she vaguely remembered a bright light and a man asking her questions. She had no doubt now that she'd stumbled into some Russian spy cell.

She looked about the room for an idea. There was nothing. Nothing she could use to jemmy open the door, nothing that might break through the impenetrable gla.s.s.

She had to get help. She tugged the hand-knitted bedspread off the bed. She could hang it in the window and...

And what? Folks would see a quilt in the window and call the cops?

She could write a message on something...

With what? All her stuff was downstairs.

She let out a sob of frustration she was no good in situations like this.

'Then again,' she said to herself, 'it's not exactly the sort of thing you prepare for.'

There wasn't even an attic she could rummage in there were always old kitchen knives in attics. Maybe even tools. She looked bitterly up at the high, open roof-s.p.a.ce ma.s.sive beams and the heavy old thatch lying on top.

What would McBride do?

The thatch. Surely they wouldn't have reinforced that.

She struggled to a.s.semble her thoughts. First, she had to get up there, and she felt far from steady.

She heaved the bed onto its side and dragged the big old iron frame into the corner of the room, leaning it against two walls to make a triangle. The frame was broken she could see where one of the corner-struts had broken away and woefully unsteady, but she managed to scramble up onto the bed frame's edge. She could reach the rafters now She gripped the nearest of the huge, horizontal beams, wrapping both arms around it, and somehow managed to scramble onto it.

Holding on with one hand, she pushed at the thatch where it met the wall.

She should have known. It weighed a ton. She started picking at it, scanning, and tore a nail quite painfully.

Hopeless. She needed some kind of tool. A pick...

92.A broken iron strut...

Leaning down from her beam she levered the strut back and forth until it had snapped entirely from the frame then, turning to the giant bird's nest above her head, she started to dig.

It was already night among the huge oak trees that cl.u.s.tered together to the south of Winnerton Manor. The Doctor and Davey O'Brien were in every sense groping in the dark.

The Doctor was thinking about Ace. She might be dead by now He'd brought her here, and in doing so brought about the very thing he was trying to stop her death. One of time's playful little eddies.

He'd taken a terrifyingly irresponsible decision in coming here deliberately acting with knowledge of future events in order to change those events. There were reasons his people had laws of time.

He stumbled.

'We should have brought a torch,' he griped.

'Haven't got one,' O'Brien replied. 'I asked for one, but it never came. I don't suppose they want me snooping around at night.'

The Doctor peered about him into the gloom.

'I can't help feeling I'm being watched.'