'What's the sitrep?' Forrester said, approaching the door. Behind her, Bernice could see a number of Hith warriors and a number of half-melted or half-exploded bots. Provost-Major Beltempest was sifting through the robotic remains. A great knot of tension seemed to unwind in her chest. If Beltempest was there, the Doctor couldn't be too far behind. a.s.suming, of course, that he was still alive.

'The what?' she asked, distracted.

'The sitrep. Situation report.'

'You mean, "What's happening?"?'

Forrester frowned, and nodded. 'That's what I said,' she growled. 'Don't waste my time.'

'Well,' Bernice said, glancing across to where Powerless Friendless was un-curling himself, 'I'm sure you'll be pleased to hear that we're all in one piece.

How about you?'

'Fine for the moment,' Forrester replied, 'but I'm not counting on the condition remaining permanent.' She glanced out into the corridor. 'Whoever's controlling those bots will know they've been destroyed. Reinforcements will be on the way.'

Cwej nodded. 'We need to get this show on the walkway. Have you discovered how to turn the engines on yet?'

Bernice walked across to the puckered area of panel into which, according to Powerless Friendless, the nexus was supposed to fit. Without really thinking about what she was doing, she hefted Krohg in her hand for a moment, then placed the creature gently in the recess. It gazed up at her with its three stalked eyes, its lipless mouth seeming to her to stretch into a smile, and then it was gone, melted into the panel until it was just a k.n.o.b of flesh with three small nub-like switches on top.

The walls of the control room began to throb and, all around, panels blossomed with fleshy controls. In the pit of her stomach Bernice could feel a slow, subsonic thump, like the beat of some gigantic heart. 'Well,' she said brightly, 'Geniuses-R-Us strike again.'

228.Powerless Friendless's eyestalks dipped in acknowledgement. 'I had forgotten so much,' he said. 'How did you know that Krohg was the nexus?'

She shrugged. 'Little details and a ma.s.sive amount of guesswork.'

He nodded. 'Then you guess well.'

'I had a good teacher.' And that reminded her. 'Beltempest!' she called, 'is the Doctor all right?'

Out in the corridor, Beltempest glanced up from his investigation of one of the bots and gave a thumbs-up.

'He's out looking for something called the TARDIS,' he said. 'But he asked me to pa.s.s on a message.' It looked to Bernice as if he was frowning. 'I think he said, "Ashtray the ipshay." Does that mean anything to you?'

She thought for a moment. Ashtray the ipshay. Pig latin. Take the ays off, then move the last letter or two to the front of the word.

Trash the ship.

Bernice took a deep breath, then nodded slowly. 'Yeah,' she said. 'Thanks.'

She let her gaze roam over the corridor, and the armed Hith troops. They were setting up blaster emplacements, preparing to dig in for a siege. One of them, in an ornate body-sleeve, was glancing over towards her. Although he was engaged in conversation with a number of his troops, he looked as if he might be heading over at any moment.

'Powerless Friendless,' she said, 'what will your people do if they get this ship back?'

'With the engines on, the icarons are getting more energy, aren't they?' Cwej interrupted. 'I mean, that was the point. The Hith can take the ship away and junk it. I mean, it's dangerous.'

'Don't be a fool,' Forrester snapped.

Powerless Friendless sighed. 'It's a weapon,' he said, 'and my people have been wronged. Grievously wronged. If somebody kills your friends and family, and takes your planet away from you, and then you find a weapon, what do you do with it?'

'You use it,' Forrester said levelly.

'But we can't let them.' Cwej sounded outraged.

'No,' Powerless Friendless agreed. Forrester and Cwej both looked surprised. 'There's been too much killing. Too much hurting. Too much pain.

If the Hith are going to get anywhere, it has to be through talking. Diplomacy is the only solution.'

Bernice nodded. 'Right on,' she said, '"Jaw-jaw," as the Doctor once told some fat old man who smoked cigars and tried to pinch my bottom, "is better than war-war." As I see it, our priorities are: firstly, to destroy this ship; secondly, to defeat whatever evil b.a.s.t.a.r.d has been trying to kill us; and thirdly, to get out alive.'

229.'But not necessarily in that order,' Forrester added.

'And,' Bernice continued, shooting Forrester a dark glance, 'we can do it all in one fell swoop.' She turned to Powerless Friendless. 'Can you set the controls so that this ship appears in real s.p.a.ce?'

'In real s.p.a.ce?' Powerless Friendless looked stunned. 'I thought you wanted to fly it away in hypers.p.a.ce?'

Bernice shook her head. 'We've got a whole load of your people on board.

They'd just take the ship off our hands. And even if we could defeat them, or lock ourselves in here, they must have arrived in something. All they have to do is follow us through hypers.p.a.ce. No, the best course of action is destroy it here and now; bring the whole thing crashing down, and the INITEC building with it.'

Powerless Friendless shrugged. 'I have bad memories of this building,' he said. 'I'm game.'

Cwej opened his mouth to protest, but Forrester elbowed him in the stomach. 'Sign me up for it,' she said as he bent double in pain. 'I'd like to shove this ship right up the a.r.s.e of the person who runs INITEC. After what he did to me . . . ' She paused, and swallowed. 'After what he did to Martle.'

Cwej nodded. 'Fine,' he said, still trying to catch his breath. 'Whatever you say. But what about the people in the building?'

Glancing out into the corridor, Bernice could see the Hith commander slithering towards them.

'If the congruities are preserved,' she said, 'then the ship will appear in mid-air outside the building. I think. I hope. It'll drop down to the Undertown. Is there anything in particular underneath us here?'

'Mostly deserted buildings and water,' Powerless Friendless said, moving over to the controls. 'The INITEC building is above the area where the old Sc.u.mble ship crashed, years ago. It's a wasteland. And, let's face it, if we can stop the icaron radiation, we'll save more lives than we squander.'

'I see you've got the Skel'Ske Skel'Ske working,' the commander said, addressing them all from the doorway. 'Good work. How long before the ship is ready to go?' working,' the commander said, addressing them all from the doorway. 'Good work. How long before the ship is ready to go?'

'Five minutes,' said Powerless Friendless, without turning. 'But it's only going in one direction.'

'What do you mean?' the commander hissed. 'Which direction?'

'Lingerie, stationery and kitchen utensils,' Bernice said with a smile.

The Doctor slipped a hand into his right trouser pocket, frowned, and brought it out empty. He repeated the process with his left pocket. Still nothing.

Pulling them out like an elephant's ears to check their depths, he shrugged.

Next he checked his jacket pockets, one by one, but they were empty too.

230.'Doctor, your juvenile sense of humour is proving to be a little wearing.'

'You've waited this long,' the Doctor snapped, slipping his shoe off and up-ending it. 'Impatience doesn't suit you.' The key dropped into his palm, and he grinned. 'Obvious place!' he cried, and slipped it into the lock. The TARDIS door swung open, revealing a dark interior.

'Follow me,' the Doctor said, limping towards the darkness.

Vaughn hesitated for a moment, then reached out with a chunky metal hand and took the Doctor by the scruff of the neck. The Doctor winced as the fingers tore open one of his rapidly healing wounds.

'I'll keep you by my side, I think,' he said. 'I am not unaware of the trick you pulled on Planet 14.' Dragging the Doctor along beside him, he stepped through the vulnerably open door and into the sterile white light of the console room. His gaze pa.s.sed across the roundelled walls, the central console, the scanner screen and the enormous object embedded in the ceiling. 'Doctor,'

he said, gazing around in avuncular fashion, 'you have no idea how impressed I am by the achievements of your race. Even the Cybermen could not construct a vessel such as this.' He tightened his grip on the Doctor's neck.

'Thanks a bunch,' the Doctor muttered. 'As I recall, they once stole one from us.' He squirmed slightly, trying to ease his way out of Vaughn's grip. He had hoped to shut the huge time doors, cutting Vaughn off from the outside world, but he hadn't antic.i.p.ated Vaughn wanting to keep him quite so close.

'Doctor?'

Vaughn's voice was sharp, as if he could read the Doctor's thoughts. 'Don't think you can betray me. I can kill you faster than you can move!'

Judging by the way that Vaughn's metal fingers cut into the tender flesh of his neck, the Doctor believed him.

The high-pitched scream of the Skel'Ske Skel'Ske's engines powering up followed Bernice and the others as they pounded and slithered their way along the twist-ing, turning corridors of the Hith ship. The Hith troops were sliding along the walls and ceiling in Powerless Friendless's wake, blasting any bot that dared show its face. Provost-Major Beltempest had retrieved two laser cannons from fallen Hith and was cheerfully laying down covering fire with one cannon in each pair of arms. They'd left quite a trail of wrecked metal behind them, but they'd lost a lot of troops in the process.

Chris Cwej suddenly appeared beside Bernice. His arm slid around her back and beneath her arm, taking some of her weight. She rested gratefully against the ma.s.s of his body. 'Thanks,' she said.

'Don't mention it,' he said, grinning.

Forrester, who was running beside Cwej, growled, 'Nothing personal, we just don't want you holding us up.'

231.Bernice turned to make sure that Powerless Friendless was keeping up with them, and felt a sudden pain stab through her. Powerless Friendless wasn't with them. Powerless Friendless had stayed behind.

He had tried to explain, in what little time they had before the Hith commander would have got suspicious.

'There's no remote timer,' he had said. 'And besides, Homeless Forsaken Betrayed And Alone and I caused the problem. He's dead, and so it's up to me to sort it out once and for all.'

'But . . . ' Bernice had stammered, desperately trying to think of ways out of the situation.

'No buts,' Powerless Friendless had said gently. 'I don't want to survive. I can't live with the memories of what was done to me by INITEC, and I can't live without them either. I hid in the Undertown for too long. I have to . . . to atone for my cowardice.'

And he had pushed her gently towards the doorway with a pseudo-limb.

Impulsively, she had returned and embraced him. 'Goodbye,' she had said, kissing him softly between his eyestalks.

And she had left, taking Cwej and Forrester with her.

Bernice's mind suddenly jerked back into the present as they all rounded a corner, and found the hatch into hypers.p.a.ce ahead of them. Two bots were standing guard over it. Beltempest dropped both of them with withering blasts of radiation.

'Out!' he yelled, 'and quickly!'

As Bernice pa.s.sed through the doorway and onto the walkway across hypers.p.a.ce, she momentarily wondered how Beltempest felt, defending a group of Hith against human-built robots. Perhaps he didn't see the incongruity. Perhaps he'd go back to hating aliens the minute they were all safe. People, as the prophet said, were strange.

Ahead of them, another ship, presumably the Hith ship, was attached to the walkway by a long boarding tube.

The whine of the Skel'Ske Skel'Ske's engines had spiralled up and out of the range of human hearing, to the point where it was giving Bernice a headache. Casting a glance over her shoulder as she ran, she saw the ship phasing in and out of unreality. She could see the non-stuff of hypers.p.a.ce through it. They only had seconds.

They pa.s.sed the point where the boarding tube connected to the walkway.

The Hith troops turned off and slithered along it without any farewells, while Bernice, Cwej, Forrester and Beltempest kept going towards the door out of the void. The Hith obviously knew as well as Bernice that the particular area of hypers.p.a.ce they were located in was the second most dangerous place in the area at the moment, and that they should vacate it immediately.

232.Bernice, on the other hand, was heading straight for the first most dangerous place.

She turned as they reached the doorway. Forrester, Cwej and Beltempest ran past her, but she stayed for a moment, desperately looking at the Skel'Ske Skel'Ske.

It had almost vanished, but she thought that she could see a movement at the front, through the transparent screen of the control room. Someone waving.

Someone waving goodbye.

Forrester grabbed her elbow and pulled her through the ma.s.sive door into the INITEC building, just as the Skel'Ske Skel'Ske vanished. The room was full of people and bots, but Bernice had only a split second to register the fact before she was deafened by a huge boom. As they all collapsed to the ground, clutching their ears, she realized that she couldn't tell whether it was the sound of the door slamming, the vanished. The room was full of people and bots, but Bernice had only a split second to register the fact before she was deafened by a huge boom. As they all collapsed to the ground, clutching their ears, she realized that she couldn't tell whether it was the sound of the door slamming, the Skel'Ske Skel'Ske vanishing from hypers.p.a.ce or the shock wave of its arrival in real s.p.a.ce, just outside the INITEC building. Perhaps it was all three. vanishing from hypers.p.a.ce or the shock wave of its arrival in real s.p.a.ce, just outside the INITEC building. Perhaps it was all three.

Kali Derrim and Londi Gay stood face to face on the walkway. Like all the others in the area, it had jammed shortly after the fires started. They didn't care. They didn't care about the way the sky glowed orange, either, or the bodies that littered the walkway's surface. They just stood there, face to face, hatred in their eyes, knives in their hands, each waiting for the other to make a move.

When the Hith ship appeared in the sky above them, the thunderclap of displaced air making the walkway tremble beneath their feet, they didn't even notice. It hung, poised above them, for a timeless moment, like some ancient G.o.d made manifest upon Earth, then began to fall. It fell gracefully, it fell slowly, but it fell.

It took out three walkways, smashing through each one and sending the broken halves curling away like suddenly cut ribbons, before it reached the one that Derrim and Gay were standing on. The blood-tinted, smoke-dappled sky was occluded by its dark and growing bulk, until there was nothing above them but a rounded, spavined expanse of metal. It was only then, when it was too late to do anything but watch in awe and fear, that Derrim's gaze flickered upwards, and Gav, seeing his chance, sent his knife spinning through the air towards him.

Less than a second later, nothing mattered to either of them.

Vaughn's face suddenly blanked over again. He'd been doing it every few seconds for as long as the Doctor had been there, but this was different. It was as if whatever he was watching was so dramatic that it absorbed all his attention and kept him elsewhere, out of his own body. The Doctor didn't 233know what it was, but he did know that this was the only chance he was going to get. He'd been waiting for something to happen, and if this wasn't it then it was close enough.

The Doctor twisted in Vaughn's lifeless grip, tearing the skin that was pinched between Vaughn's fingers in his frantic efforts to get free. With a last despairing wrench, he finally prised himself loose, and went staggering across the TARDIS console room, ending up leaning on the console itself. He turned towards Vaughn just as Vaughn's consciousness returned to his body.

'My ship!' he snarled, his normally calm voice clogged with hatred and anger. 'They have destroyed my ship!'

He turned to leave.

The Doctor slammed the red lever that operated the huge time doors. They swung shut in Vaughn's face with a m.u.f.fled thud.

'You meddling fool,' Vaughn cried. 'Do you think you can trap me here?' His brow suddenly creased, the flexible metal skin furrowing into a broad V-shape as he tried to contact his subsidiary bodies outside.

And failed.

'I've severed your connection,' the Doctor said with a smile. 'We're in a separate universe here. Once I closed those doors you became unable to com-municate with anything outside. Any thing thing, Vaughn. You're separated from your little metal army. You're on your own.'

The Doctor suddenly realized that he was shouting, and took a deep breath.

Time for vituperation later. One immensely powerful robot body was all that Vaughn needed to kill the Doctor and open the doors.

The same thought had occurred to Vaughn. He stepped forward menacingly.

'Then either you will open the door or I will rip your arms and legs off,' he growled, opening his arms wide to prevent the Doctor from running past.

'Catch as catch can!' the Doctor said. As Vaughn reached out for him, he leaped across the control room to the other door, the one that led deeper into the TARDIS. He was counting on two things: firstly that Vaughn wouldn't dare follow him into the unfathomable depths of the machine, and secondly that Vaughn's overweening arrogance would lead him to examine the console, sure that he could decipher its operation. Which he probably could. After all, if Tegan could do it, anybody could.

The Doctor knew he had about a minute before Vaughn found the door control and re-emerged into his office. Once he had done that, he could shift his mind into any bot on the planet and the Doctor would never be able to find him.