Get him up here?'

Something inside the old man gave out a dreadful Ace shook her head. 'No point. Maybe things've croaking moan and the Doctor shuddered. Then it spoke.

quietened down in there. If the Doctor got in, we should be able to get out.'

Nightshade was running.

Carefully, she slid down the roof and leant over the gutter, There wasn't much time, he knew, and the rocket had to straining to hear more. She closed her eyes, feeling sick, as be launched soon or else - or else ...

the ground jumped into view a hundred feet below. What Around him, the air steamed and hissed, smoke belching was the Doctor doing in there?

from the ma.s.sive steel furnaces which crowded the complex.

Three domes, their fabric buckled and blackened, loomed Billy Coote was slumped against the wall like an into view and he chose the first, scurrying up the twisting abandoned scarecrow, his arms limp at his sides. The ladder on to the gantry section. He looked down at the flat Doctor was crouched on his haunches, gazing in awe at the concrete far below and felt queasy. Heights had never been old man's luminous eyes and the weird light streaming his strong point.

from every crevice of his leathery skin.

But what was that below? A body? Lying lifeless on the baked ground, its features coated in black slime. Of course.

'Who are you?' said the Doctor gently.

Barclay! How could he have forgotten? Barclay was dead.

Billy stirred slightly, his hair rustling agitatedly as energy Barclay had sacrificed his life so that they might escape. But began to build around him. Filigrees of electric-blue light where had he, Nightshade, been? Why hadn't he even tried shivered over his flesh.

to save the young man?

'Who are you?' said the Doctor again.

There had been something else. Something very pressing.

Billy's eyes rolled in their sockets, the dull light suddenly 'Nightshade...'

blazing intensely from them. He opened his wizened mouth That voice again. Chuckling. Chuckling.

236.

237.

And suddenly the complex vanished, replaced by the He struggled to his feet and, with some trepidation, deeply inset window of an eighteenth-century farmhouse.

pressed the summons b.u.t.ton. The doors sprang open Nightshade looked down. There was a television in the immediately.

corner of the room and his own face was on the screen, There was a strong smell of burning inside the lift and grimacing in horror as a vicious insectoid claw burst Trevithick held his breath as he crossed the threshold, through the window.

carefully avoiding the gaping hole which the creature had Nightshade turned around and retched as an appalling ripped through the floor.

smell a.s.saulted his nostrils. This was all wrong. This His jacket lay in tatters in the corner next to the tubular belonged to someone else's life.

ashtray and there were black bloodstains all over the walls.

He fell back against the armchair as the window shattered, It had been real, then. He breathed out noisily.

a great, glistening black claw ramming its way inside.

Trevithick pressed the Level 8 b.u.t.ton and the doors slid 'Trevithick,' rustled the voice.

shut with a soft click.Trevithick He had little idea what he would do when he got to the Trevithick control room; after all, daylight was only safe in fairy stories.

Trevithick blinked twice and opened his eyes. He was What if there were more of them waiting for him? It would lying with his back against the wall of the same corridor certainly be the end. He hadn't the strength left to...

into which he had tumbled the previous night.

Trevithick frowned as the floor indicator reached Level 8 He craned his neck and looked over towards the tiny and then continued downwards. A cold chill ran through portal through which daylight was streaming. The dish of him. Not again. Not more.

the telescope dominated the view.

He'd always had a horror of being inside a plummeting Of course, he was on Level 18. That's where he'd reached lift. Was this it? Wasn't there a position he had to a.s.sume, after destroying the creature. Then he must've dropped off bend his knees or something? Or was that just an old wives'

to sleep.

tale?

He cursed his old body again. This wasn't the time for The lift, however, continued to descend in its own stately frailty. He had to make sure the others were all right. He way.

had defeated that monster, but there had been at least five Trevithick jabbed at the Level 8 b.u.t.ton again but there others. Getting back to the control room was now a priority.

was no response. He glanced down at the floor and felt Trevithick looked about for a doorway, expecting an compelled to peer through the hole out into the dark shaft.

entrance to a flight of stairs, but the corridor walls were Grunting with effort, he crouched down on his hands and blank. He turned and regarded the closed lift doors with knees and put his face as close as he dared to the hole.

dread. That was obviously his only way down.

Expecting only darkness, Trevithick was taken aback by the sight which met his eyes.

238.

239.

The lift was descending into a network of glowing light, The room was buzzing with energy once more, the noise wisps of fiery energy coc.o.o.ning the entire shaft like a from various machines almost deafening.

spectral spider's web.

'Any change?' said Vijay as Cooper hobbled back to her There was a deep, throbbing pulse emanating from the consoles.

light as it progressed upwards.

She sifted through a sheaf of paper and frowned. 'There's Upwards.

a real pattern now. Still makes no sense, but it's a pattern.

Trevithick got to his feet and pressed the first b.u.t.ton that Regular. Like a pulse.'

met his trembling fingers. Nothing happened.

'A pulse,' said Holly calmly.

He swore savagely and kept his finger on the b.u.t.ton until Vijay ran his fingers through his hair. 'I still don't see how the nail whitened.

a nova could produce this kind of data.'

It seemed as though the lift were being dragged Holly slapped herself across the forehead. 'It's so b.l.o.o.d.y inexorably down into the pulsing ent.i.ty below.

obvious!'

Insubstantial tendrils were already groping their way Cooper smiled. 'What is?'

through the hole in the floor.

'The Doctor was right all the time, only he didn't know Trevithick panicked and stabbed at the 'doors open'

what about. We've been acting on the a.s.sumption that all control, his whole frame shaking in fear. The floor indicator this data is coming from s.p.a.ce. Because that's where it's showed Level 5.

supposed to come from!'

To his inexpressible relief, the doors sprang open and he 'From the nova?' said Cooper quizzically.

threw himself out of the lift into another darkened corridor.

'No! We couldn't see the wood for the trees. The nova is Trevithick groped his way through the blackness and his incidental. The energy isn't coming from s.p.a.ce at all. It's hand clapped on to a cold, steel banister. Thank G.o.d, at underneath us.'

least there were stairs at this level.

Cooper whistled. 'That would explain why it's flooded He forced his weary legs on to the damp concrete. It was the systems. Too local to make any sense.'

now vital that he found his friends. There was something Vijay looked at her excitedly. 'But what is it? The Doctor's alive down here. Alive and growing.

ghost thing?'

Holly shook her head. 'I don't know.'

Holly and Vijay helped Cooper through the double doors Cooper sat down and pouted her lower lip. 'Well, call me and then into the control room.

alarmist if you like, but it strikes me we're not in the best of 'Now what?' said Holly. 'The village?'

positions here.'

Vijay shook his head. 'No, this changes things. If Dr Vijay looked down gravely. 'We're sitting on a powder Cooper survived, then maybe old Trevithick did too. I think keg.'

we owe it to him to at least look.'

240.

241.

The Doctor rocked on his haunches.

Ace was hanging from Robin's legs as he hooked his 'How long?' he whispered.

fingers into the guttering. It was horribly unsafe and he Billy Coote inclined his head, his whole frame now gritted his teeth, mixing blind optimism with prayers to his flickering with light.

neglected deity.

'How long have you been here?' urged the Doctor.

'OK?' he gasped.

There was a strange, whispering groan, merging with the 'Yeah. Hold on.' Ace scrambled down his legs and pushed familiar rustling sound. Then the voice, halting, dry and her boot into the same wall crevice she had found the dead as stone: 'All time. Since before the world.'

previous night. If she could just keep a grip on the stone and The Doctor frowned. 'Before the world?'

swing herself back through the window...

Billy raised a spindly arm along which flurries of blue 'You get back on the roof!' she shouted to Robin. 'I'll get light were dancing. 'All time.'

the rope strung up and then you can come down. OK?'

The Doctor changed tack. 'What are you?'

He hissed his a.s.sent, struggling to breathe as Ace The thing within Billy Coote seemed to shudder and for clambered down him.

an instant there was a vile movement beneath his She reached his ankles and her feet found the top of the transparent skin, like a specimen in a jar suddenly jerking to stone window. Carefully, she pushed her fingers into the life.

crumbling masonry and scrambled through into the attic 'Know not,' it mumbled. 'Know not. Just am.' Billy's head chamber.

slumped on to his chest, columns of light bursting from 'Doctor!'

every pore. 'So tired. So tired.'

He held up his hand to silence her. Ace gawped at the The Doctor rubbed his chin thoughtfully and moved back thing in the corner.

still further. Energy seemed to be seeping from Billy's body, Billy Coote's whole body was alive with crackling light, pooling under his legs and beneath his back.

billowing around him in nebulous clouds.

'Do you know ...' the Doctor began. 'Do you know where 'He's possessed,' whispered the Doctor. 'Possessed by you've come from?'

whatever it is.'