Michael shook his head; the scene was playing out just as he'd feared it would. 'No, Mum, he doesn't know. n.o.body knows. That's the whole point. I've had enough of UNIT. I want out.'

Ace and Alexander spent a frantic few minutes trying to get the radio to work, but finally had to concede defeat.

'What now?' Alexander asked.

'I dunno. The tweedies might be happy that were cut off. If they were going to do anything to us, they'd probably already have done it, not just wrecked the radio.'

Alexander got to his feet. 'We should go and tell John what's happened.'

Ace nodded. 'You take the dinghy and tell him. I'm going to keep an eye on the tweedies. At least if they come for us, we'll get a bit of advance notice.'

'You sure? Wouldn't you be better coming to the boat with me?' 'Maybe, but I think I'd rather know exactly where they are.

For all we know, they've got a boat of their own, or they can swim like fish or something.' She looked around the camp. 'If there's anything you think you might need, take it now just in case you don't get a chance later. Keep an eye on the beach I'll wave or flash my torch at you when the coast's clear.' She patted her pocket.

Alexander started stuffing bits and pieces into a large holdall from the tent. He picked the broken radio up, too. 'John might be able to fix it,' he said by way of an explanation. Ace nodded, although she wasn't hopeful. The two of them walked down to the sh.o.r.e, arms laden with radio equipment, maps and other a.s.sorted bits and pieces which Ace helped Alexander load into the dinghy before they pushed it out. He jumped aboard. 'Are you sure you don't want to come with me?' he asked.

'I'm not sure John would appreciate me going back there - especially if the tweedies are after me. They didn't wreck your radio 'til I arrived, and it's not fair for me to put the two of you in danger.'

'Don't be daft,' Alexander protested. He realised the dinghy was starting to drift free. 'And how do you know they won't come after us anyway?'

She shrugged cheerfully.

'You're a nutter,' he shouted, shaking his head as the dinghy float away from the sh.o.r.e.

'Maybe I just like to live dangerously.' Ace splashed back up the beach.

'Like I said,' she heard him shout above the wind and the rush of the waves, ' nutter.'

Back at the camp, Ace rooted through the tent and the bits and pieces Alexander had left behind, looking for anything that would be useful in fighting off the tweedies if they came for her. Which, she a.s.sumed, they would. Sooner or later. They hadn't seemed particularly threatening the worst that could happen would probably be that the dog would snuffle her to death. But the fact that they'd felt the need to sabotage the radio suggested that they considered Alexander, John and herself as potential threats. And if the destruction of their only means of communication with the outside world didn't satisfy them, what might they try next?

She didn't like to think about it although she took some small comfort from what was in her rucksack.

Her rucksack! There was no sign of her rucksack: she suddenly pictured it, under the dining table on board the boat.

Oh well, she sighed. Just as long as John and Alexander didn't try to use her 'deodorant': if they mishandled her cans of nitro-9, sweating would be the least of their problems. She took a deep breath and carried on picking through the brothers' stuff.

The last thing she expected, just as she was rolling up the sleeping bags, was to feel the cold metal of a gun barrel against the back of her neck.

Chapter Eleven.

'Well, well,' said Megan. 'What a small world this is.'

Ace started to straighten up, the sharp tip of Megan's gun still pressed into her neck.

'Careful,' Megan warned, her voice oozing smugness. 'It would be so tragic if this were to go off in my hand.'

Ace raised her arms slowly and felt Megan remove the gun from her neck, heard her step away. She turned around slowly and saw Megan standing a few paces from her, dressed head-to-toe in black leather. At her feet was a crumpled s.p.a.cesuit.

'A bit overdressed for swimming, aren't you?'

'A bit underdressed for surviving a shot from this, aren't you?' Megan countered. The side of her face was swollen and bruised, her left eye hardly open at all.

'What happened to you? Looks like you had a fight with a rolling pin and lost.'

'A pan, actually, as you know full well.'

Ace frowned.

'Oh don't play the innocent,' Megan said. 'I heard you creeping down the stairs. And if it wasn't you, it was your friend the Doctor. But he's not going to be bugging me any more.'

'Why? What've you done to him?'

'I wish I could take the credit, but I'm afraid that will have to go to Sooal.'

'I said what have you done, bog-brain?' Ace could feel her face flush with anger.

Megan theatrically looked at her watch. 'Well, I'd say round about now, his brain will be a smouldering lump of charcoal.

Steady...' Megan raised her pistol again as Ace took a step towards her. 'On my way through the ship, I saw him wired up to the computer. It looked like he was having a bit of a bad trip.'

She grinned cruelly.

'And you just left him?'

'Well,' Megan considered, archly, 'it was either rescue him or kill you. Decisions, decisions.'

'You cow.'

Megan smiled coldly and gave a sigh. 'As last words go, it's not very memorable, is it?'

'Maybe not. But as Alexander, grab her!'

Megan whirled, only to discover no one there. And as she turned back to Ace, the camping kettle smacked her across the side of her face. The bruised side. With a howl she dropped the gun and clapped her hands to her head. Ace glanced at the pistol, lying at Megan's feet and hesitated for a moment. But if Megan saw her going for it, she'd forget about her face pretty d.a.m.n quickly. Instead, she turned and began to sprint up the hill towards the ridge.

Joyce and Michael stood, shivering slightly in the cool evening air, waiting for someone to answer the door. She could hear noises, anxious voices inside, and through the frosted gla.s.s she saw vague movements.

'This is ridiculous,' Michael said, trying the door handle. It was locked. He stepped back outside the porch and looked up at the windows. 'Wait here while I try round the back.'

Before Joyce could argue, Michael had stomped off around the side of the building. As she waited anxiously for someone to answer the door, her thoughts returned to what she was going to do about Michael. She'd have to tell Terrance, of course. And he'd be angry. Disappointed, too, she supposed. But angry mainly. If Michael hadn't wanted to stay in UNIT, why couldn't he have said something to her; talked it through with her, before deciding to leave, to run away. More than anything, she supposed, Terrance would be angry that Michael had done it this way. Suddenly, she heard the rattling of bolts and locks. The door was jerked open by a young black girl. Claudette, wasn't it? She looked fl.u.s.tered, confused to see her.

'I've come to see my mother,' Joyce said, perhaps a little more primly than she intended, and stepped into the hallway before waiting to be invited. Claudette moved hurriedly aside.

'Er, yeah. Fine. Could you wait in the '

'No, I could not.'

And with that, she pushed past the dumbfounded Claudette and stormed up the stairs like an angry tornado, almost colliding with an elderly man coming out of his room. She didn't even bother to apologise as she swept on along the corridor in the direction of her mother's room. The door was ajar, and for one, cold moment, Joyce expected to find her mother gone again. But she was there, sitting up in bed reading a copy of Woman's Realm Woman's Realm, with the cover model mysteriously cut out. She looked up as Joyce came in.

'Come on, Mum,' Joyce said, crossing straight to the dressing table and hunting round for her mother's toilet bag.'We're getting you out of here.'

'You most certainly are not!' she replied indignantly.

Joyce whirled round. 'Mum, don't start, please. Just get out of bed and get dressed.'

'Mum? What are you talking about? Who are you? What are you doing in my room? Get out!'

'Mum,' she implored, crossing to her side and trying to take her hands. Why did this have to happen now, just when she needed her to be OK, to be normal? Norma pulled her hands away, drawing back from Joyce with a horrified look on her face.

She reached for the buzzer at the side of the bed. Joyce tried to stop her, but she was stronger than she'd expected and managed to stab at it a couple of times, shrieking and wailing for Joyce to get off her.

Oh G.o.d, thought Joyce, suddenly feeling close to tears -but closer, much closer, to slapping her. With a sudden burst of terrifying, irrational anger, she wanted to grab the old woman's shoulders and shake her and shake her and shake her...

She stared at her mother, a thin, frightened woman in a blue bedjacket, something cruel and mocking behind those eyes. She turned away from her and in one huge, extravagant movement swept everything off the dressing table onto the floor with a crash and a shattering of gla.s.s and china.

'Alf! Alf!' Norma was shouting, jabbing at the buzzer.

'Alf's dead, Mum. He's dead!' she rounded on her.

'That's an evil, wicked thing to say,' she replied, her eyes glistening, a tiny tear of saliva on her lip. 'You're a hateful, hateful girl. D'you know that?'

'Just shut up, just shut up!' Joyce spoke through gritted teeth, clenching her fists so hard that, only later, did she see the tiny, bruised crescents on her palms.

'Don't you speak to me like that. You were always a nasty girl. If your father could hear what you're saying, saying that he's dead '

'But he is, Mum. He's been dead for ten years. He died of cancer, remember? He shouldn't have died, but he's gone. He shouldn't have left me to cope with you, he shouldn't have been the one that died '

Joyce froze and the world shuddered to a sickening halt around her as the words left her lips. She'd said the one thing that she promised herself she'd never say. She didn't believe it; she knew she didn't mean it. But it was said. All she could do was to stare at the pathetic figure in the bed in front of her, all feeling gone. Her mother just gazed at her. Joyce tried to look away, tears streaming down her face, blurring her mother's features, turning her into something indistinct, unknowable. She couldn't bear to look at her, scared of what she'd see in her eyes.

She just wanted to run away, to leave this mad little woman and her mad little world; to get back to science and UNIT and normality and how everything used to be.

But instead, in silence, she sat on the edge of the bed and held her mother as tightly as she could.

Ace's original impression of Kelsay as an unspoiled, picturesque island was quickly being replaced by an impression of it as a deserted, tiny rock with nowhere to hide. As she'd reached the ridge, she'd looked back to see Megan following her weaving from side to side as she held her free hand over her face.

Occasionally she loosed off a shot from the pistol in Ace's direction, but with one eye covered she was dearly having difficulties.

Nevertheless, the crackling fizz of the pistol's shots, and the gra.s.s and soil that spurted up from the ground didn't do much for Ace's confidence. Throwing herself down on the gra.s.s over the ridge, she looked down the slope where, in the distance, she could see the tweedies' cottage.

Great, she thought. Four of us on the island and I've managed to p.i.s.s off three of them. Nice one, Ace.

In the other direction, towards the north-east, the ground became more convoluted. If she was to find anywhere to hide, to shake Megan off until she could make it back to the beach and attract the boys' attention, it would be there. Her chest heaving, she scrambled to her feet and set off. To her relief, it seemed that Megan was making slower progress than she was: she kept glancing back and managed to duck behind a rocky outcrop at the bottom of the slope before Megan came over the ridge. Ace watched her stand and survey the island below her, rotating mechanically and slowly from side to side.

Oh no, Ace thought. Please say she isn't a killer cyborg.

She watched as Megan slowly started down the slope heading in the direction of the cottage. If she told the tweedies that she was hunting Ace down, it wouldn't be long before the three of them managed to corner her.

So having spent the last ten minutes running away from Megan, Ace realised, ironically, that her best chance was to take on Megan on her own and then deal with the tweedies. She stood up and leaped across a narrow gorge between the rock and a gra.s.sy bank a few feet away. Glancing up, she saw that Megan had seen her and was altering her course as Ace had hoped.

That's it, she thought, scrambling along the bank towards where it sloped down to another patch of rocks. Come to Ace.

The rocks were rough, but thick with lichen and moss, and slippery as she tried to get a handhold on them. Keeping an eye on her pursuer, she managed to get a foot into a crevice, and clambered on to the top of the largest one: she knew she could move more quickly jumping across the tops of them a.s.suming she didn't slip and break her neck than trying to struggle round them. Unfortunately it also made her an easier target; but judging from how wide Megan's shots were going, she didn't have too much to worry about just yet. with a grunt, she dropped from the furthest rock onto the sandy gra.s.s and headed south along the edge of the island.

'And you didn't think to say anything?' Alexander yelled.

John clenched his jaw 'And how exactly was I supposed to tell you? You were still over there with that b.l.o.o.d.y girl.'

Alexander let that pa.s.s. 'You could have sent up a flare or something.'

'Why? For all we know it's a friend of hers. He or she did come up from the same bit of water after all.'

Alexander grimaced and turned back to the island. From here he couldn't see either Ace or the mysterious newcomer that John had seen surface. He pushed past John and fetched the binoculars from the cabin. But, sweeping his gaze over the island, he still couldn't see either of them. Perhaps John was right: perhaps it was a friend of Ace's maybe even this mysterious Doctor and the two of them had gone in search of the elderly couple. But Ace hadn't exactly given the impression that the Doctor was an Olympic swimmer. A hundred if he was a day, she'd said. That didn't sound like the figure John had described.

Alexander was still feeling guilty about returning without Ace. He'd never been one for selfless acts of courage, but leaving her there with a couple of weird old people seemed a bit c.r.a.p, even for him. He tried to console himself with the fact that Ace had insisted. But he hadn't tried very hard to dissuade her, had he? He'd played it down to John; he knew what he'd say, telling him he never had the courage of his convictions.

'Why don't you try to get the radio fixed?' he said to John, trying to be practical.

'Yeah, answered John. 'I suppose one of us should do something useful.'

Alexander bit his tongue, clenching his fists until John had taken the remains of the radio back downstairs. Tentatively, he reached out to touch the handrail and recoiled with a yelp as he heard the crack of the electrical discharge and felt the pain in his hand. The dome was still generating its magic static even if John managed to repair the radio, Alexander suspected that it would be just as useless as the other one.

Michael paused for a moment, his fingers on the handle of the door to the kitchen extension at the back of the house. Through the frosted gla.s.s panels there was no sign of movement inside.

Gently, he opened the door and slipped in. The smell of grease and overcooked cabbage a.s.sailed him; on the cooker was a huge pan, bubbling and steaming away. He grimaced, and checked the corridor. Taking a deep breath, he headed for the hallway. A couple of times he had to back into the shadows when he heard voices, and only once did anyone see him but it was an old man who just nodded politely and went on his way.

Soon he found himself at the foot of the stairs; he could hear the TV in the lounge, and two women arguing about whether this new-fangled 'Channel 4' would be nothing but violence and p.o.r.nography like everyone was saying: Michael grinned when he heard one of them saying that she hoped it would. There was no sign of Mum she must already be inside. He stopped in front of the main door, realising that he didn't know where his gran's room was. Should he just try doors at random, or should he see if he could find one of the battier residents and ask them, hoping they wouldn't start shouting the place down at the sight of a stranger? Before he had the chance to do either, he heard a shout: a woman's voice, calling for help from under the stairs.