Michael paused briefly before letting the Annarene's gun fall to the tiles.

'I suppose,' the Doctor said grimly, 'that it's a waste of time telling you that you really shouldn't do this?'

The male Annarene inclined its head to one side, its eyes glinting red and orange. 'Of course,' it replied.

'Then I won't bother,' answered the Doctor. He closed his eyes momentarily, his brow furrowing.

What was wrong with him? wondered Ace.Was it just a hangover from the effects of Sooal's machine? Or was there something else wrong with him? She placed a hand on his arm.

'Professor...?'

He waved her away, taking a breath and straightening up.

'After all you have done to cause interference with our plans,' the Annarene said, 'it must be particularly galling to you to know that in a few hours, we will begin our conquest of this world.' The Annarene raised a slender hand, almost gracefully, and made a short, sharp gesture to Sooal who stepped forwards.

'Activate the transmat,' it ordered.

Sooal glanced at Ace and the Doctor and gave a tiny, smug smile. Ace had to stop herself from punching him.

'He'll betray you,' was all she could think of to say to the Annarene as Sooal crossed to the control panel. The Annarene observed her coldly and said nothing as Sooal activated the transmat. There was a brief, almost-not-there shimmering of air in the centre of the room. Sooal returned to stand alongside the Annarene.

'He betrayed the Tulks, and he'll betray you too,' Ace repeated.

'We have witnessed his duplicity,' the female Annarene said.

'We will not be so easily fooled.' She angled her head towards Sooal. 'And he would not be stupid enough to consider subjecting us to betrayal. Would you?'

Sooal said nothing, but it was clear from the way he couldn't hold the Annarene's gaze that such thoughts were already twitching in his nasty little head. Ace wondered why she cared: if Sooal was going to double-cross them, let him. She looked towards the door as the third Annarene entered the room; the one that had been guarding them that Michael had knocked out, its arm hanging limply at its side.

At her side, the Doctor staggered, and she rushed to support him. Again, he waved her away, his face tight and intense. 'And how exactly do you intend to get your grubby little claws on the weapons?' he asked through gritted teeth. 'I take it you'll use the last of the ship's power to lift it from the water then what?'

Sooal grinned. 'The ship will generate a traction field, bring the sphere onto the island '

' and then you'll reattach the control sphere, input the codes and ' interrupted the Doctor, as if he'd thought this all along.

' and this world will be ours,' the Annarene finished coldly.

The Annarene still in the guise of the tweedy woman from the Orkneys reached into its bag and pulled out the control sphere that Ace remembered from John and Alexander's boat.

She had a cold, stupid feeling in her chest: if she'd kept her mouth shut, they might not have found it. The Doctor nodded, glancing at the pewter sphere, held firmly in the Annarene's pudgy, pale fingers.

Ace turned as she heard footsteps on the stairs shuffling, uncertain footsteps. The Annarene followed her gaze: standing in the doorway were Jessie and Connie.

Ace threw a worried look at the Doctor. 'I don't think you should be here,' she said to them. 'Just turn around and go back upstairs - we'll be up to see you soon.'

But the two of them were too busy staring at the Annarene, and Ace felt a pang of sympathy for them: as if having Alzheimer's disease wasn't enough, the last couple of days had seen them wired up to a computer, sent through a transmat and generally terrified out of their wits. And now, to cap it all, they were faced with two orange stick-insects the size of humans.

Dear G.o.d, she thought. This was enough to push anyone over the edge This was enough to push anyone over the edge.

Ace was only relieved they hadn't used the other stairs: the sight of a dozen charred bodies piled up in the kitchen would have had them screaming in seconds.

'I don't think so,' Jessie said slowly, enunciating every word dearly as though in a village drama society production of The The Mousetrap Mousetrap. 'We are here on the instructions of the Annarene High Council to arrest and detain you for crimes against the Protectorate.'

Ace felt as if her heart had stopped. The Annarene glanced at each other, their heads snapping from side to side sharply. She saw the mouth of the male open and close soundlessly.

'Professor! They're Annarene! Good Good Annarene!' she cried triumphantly. Annarene!' she cried triumphantly.

Before anyone else could react, Michael launched himself at one of the Annarene. In a sprawl of limbs, it went down, clattering against the floor like a pile of dry sticks, its arms thrown up to protect itself. She heard Michael shout in pain as its barbed body scratched against him. And before Ace could even think of going for one of the others, it was moving across the floor, faster than she could ever have imagined considering that she'd only ever seen their slow, ponderous movements in the fleshsuits. And right behind it was Sooal.

'Stop them!' Ace shouted to no one in particular, suddenly realising that if anyone was going to stop them, it would have to be her. Once they were through the transmat, it'd be too late: they'd turn it off from the other side and they'd be beyond reach. Almost without thinking, she threw herself at the fugitives, only to find herself tangled up with the Doctor, who'd taken a step forward. In a deft movement, as two of the Annarene and Sooal sprinted for the transmat point, he reached out and s.n.a.t.c.hed the control sphere from the fleshsuited Annarene's hands. She whirled, surprised, and gave a tiny, clicking gasp. Behind her, her companion stepped silently through the transmat.

'I'll take that, thank you!' said the Doctor. And with that, he tossed it over his shoulder to Ace, who caught it perfectly. Then he took a step forward and gave Sooal a hefty shove in the chest.

Ace almost laughed at the startled expression on his face as he staggered backwards into the female Annarene, and the two of them tumbled, silently, through the open transmat and vanished.

Behind her, Ace heard Michael shout 'Oi!' and felt herself pushed aside by thin, bony fingers: she cannoned into the Doctor, still managing to keep a hold of the control sphere, as the last Annarene thrust her aside and headed for the open transmat. It didn't - even notice that she had the control sphere.

The Doctor wobbled on his feet as the Annarene leaped through the air and disappeared and with a long, low sigh, he collapsed to the floor. His hat rolled from his head, and something sparkly and metallic fell from it.

The room was suddenly deathly quiet.

Chapter Twenty-One.

It was like falling into thick, green treacle.

A wave of cold deadness swept through his body as Sooal tumbled backwards through the transmat. Around him shimmered a coruscating haze of blue which died within seconds. He tried to turn his head, but nothing happened. In front of him, through a pale, phosph.o.r.escent corona, he saw the unmistakable silhouette of the Annarene the one that the Doctor had pushed through after him, moving ever slower towards him until it, too, froze, suspended in s.p.a.ce.

And as the light died, Sooal saw, ranged around him, the sullen, patient outlines of crates, boxes, racks of weapons; gaunt, unknown devices stood silent, metal arms clasped to their chests like sleeping insects, all limned in ghostly green.

The iron fist that gripped him brought every particle in his body to a standstill and the darkness folded in on him. And finally, despairingly, he knew where he was.

By the time the Doctor muzzily regained consciousness, Ace's gentle patting of his face had turned into full-on slapping. He shooed her away with his hand.

'Professor! What's happening they've not come back! We have to get after them!'

'What? Who haven't... oh, yes, yes.' He sat up, shakily, helped by Ace and Michael, clasping his hat to his head. He looked round the solicitous crowd, gathered around him like gawpers at a car crash.

'Well?' he asked.

'Very, thank you,' replied Ace. 'Now shouldn't we be going after them?'

He pulled the control sphere from Ace's hand and confidently tossed it into the air a couple of times. On the third, she s.n.a.t.c.hed it from him, almost petulantly. 'Why haven't they come back for it?' Her face suddenly fell. 'Don't tell me they've got some other way of opening the stasis chamber...'

'If they have,' replied the Doctor, rising to his feet unsteadily, 'then it's not going to do them much good. Not where they've gone.'

'They're not on board the s.p.a.ceship, then?'

The Doctor twinkled at her and took the control sphere back from her, pocketing it neatly. 'Well they would be if I'd been doing what they thought I was doing when they caught me doing it.'

'Uh?'

'So where are they?' asked Michael cautiously. 'Sent them back home, have you, back into outer s.p.a.ce?'

Ace glanced over at Connie and Jessie, standing, hand in hand, watching the proceedings in a very good imitation of total bafflement.

'Well, if home is where the heart is, then you could say that, yes.' 'You're doing it again,' Ace warned him. 'Subt.i.tles in English for the hard-of-thinking please.'

The Doctor took a deep breath and drew himself up, obviously relishing the fact that all eyes and ears were on him.

'What was the thing that they all coveted, above anything else?'

'Decent dress sense?' suggested Ace. 'A nice tan for Sooal?'

'The weapons in the stasis chamber,' said Michael suddenly 'You've sent them into the stasis chamber!'

'Give the man a banana!' the Doctor beamed.

'But how?' Ace asked. 'I thought that was the whole point of the stasis chamber the perfect safety deposit box. Nothing could get in and nothing could get out.'

'Well,' the Doctor gave a modest little bow, 'that's the theory, of course. But that's what Sooal's little science project on board the ship was all about. Whilst he was working on reviving the Tulks' memories for the codes to the stasis chamber, he wasn't stupid or naive enough to a.s.sume that they would hand them over to him without an argument. And, of course, he had to take into account their ages, and the fact that one of them might die before he gave them their memories back. So he set up the parallel processor. He linked human minds together to form probably the most powerful computer this planet's ever seen.

When I was in there ' he frowned at the memory ' I saw what he was up to: it was a rather crude brute force effort to a.n.a.lyse the cycling frequency of the stasis chamber. Ingenious, but a heavy-handed way of being able to reach into the stasis chamber and take out what he wanted. But by the time I'd finished the calculations for him not that I intended to ' he added hastily, 'he'd revived most of the Tulks and thought he should get the codes from them anyway, just as a backup in case the parallel processor hadn't come up with the right frequency. That's what I was doing with the transmat control adjusting the frequency, setting it to home in on the stasis chamber.'

'So when we thought you were just activating the transmat,'

Michael said, 'you were setting it to send them into into the stasis chamber?' the stasis chamber?'

'Neat!' Ace said with admiration. 'But why grab the control sphere off them before they went? Why not let them take it with them and trap that in there, too?'

'Because in the fraction of a second that it took to actually pa.s.s through the transmat, the maintenance signal from the control sphere would have been cut off, and the security routines on the stasis chamber would have cut in.'

'And?'

The Doctor leaned close in to Ace. 'And bang bang!' he said softly.

Ace flinched. 'Taking most of Scotland with it, I should imagine.

A safety feature to prevent people from simply destroying the control sphere to gain access. I rather suspect that none of them thought of this, otherwise they wouldn't have been taking it with them,' he added.

'Will they feel anything?' she asked curiously.

The Doctor pulled a face. 'Not for long, I imagine. Opening the transmat into the stasis chamber will probably give them a few seconds of sensory awareness. After that... just darkness, Ace.'

'So what about them?' Ace tipped her head in the direction of Connie and Jessie. 'Bit of luck them arriving when they did - although a few hours earlier would have been nice.'

Ace looked back at the Doctor, who was wincing, his eyes deliberately trying to avoid hers.

'What?' she asked. 'What's going on...?'

'I'm sorry Ace,' he said sheepishly. 'They're not actually Annarene.'

'Then why did they say they were?'

The Doctor gave a sigh. 'I'd originally intended for them to come and rescue us. Then when Michael here kindly got us out and I realised I could direct the transmat into the stasis chamber, I knew that I had to find some way to panic Sooal and the Annarene into jumping through the transmat without checking the settings.' He reached down and picked up the silvery hairnet that had fallen from under his hat when he'd collapsed. He turned it over in his hands. 'I cobbled this together from the implant I removed from Joyce it's '

'I know what it is,' Ace said hotly, realisation dawning on her. 'It's the thing that connected her up to the computers on board the ship, isn't it?'

He nodded.

'And Connie and Jessie still have theirs in their heads, don't they?'

He nodded again. 'I'm sorry Ace,' he said again. 'It was the only thing I could think of. I had to panic them. I couldn't take the chance that they'd check the transmat settings.'

'h.e.l.lo?' interjected Michael. 'Us normal people are still here, you know.' He looked at Ace, eyebrows raised.

'Ask him,' she spat, and turned away from the Doctor.

'While we were locked in the storeroom,' the Doctor explained, his eyes on Ace as she crossed to Jessie and Connie and began rea.s.suring them, 'I used this to forge a temporary mental link to Connie and Jessie.' He twirled the silver mesh in his fingers. 'A bit of a strain, but it was my only option. I asked them to do a bit of play-acting for me which they did marvellously.' He turned to the two ladies, trying hard to be cheery and matter-of-fact about the whole business. But Ace at whom, she knew, his jollity was really directed sullenly ignored him. His face fell.

'So they're not Annarene at all?' Michael asked. The Doctor shook his head.

'No, just two very game ladies who've probably saved your planet from slavery. Now... who's for tea?'

The sky was pale grey, the morning was cold and wet, and in the Orkneys, Ace was fishing about in her rucksack, wincing as she accidentally put her weight onto her damaged knee. She found a pen whilst Alexander searched amongst the bits and pieces left around the camp and found a blank envelope. He handed it to her, mystified.

'You do realise,' he reminded her as she stuck down the flap and began to scribble on the back, 'that it's going to be Friday before that's even collected by the supply boat. And then it's got to find its way to the Doctor.'

'Trust me,' Ace said, signing her name with a flourish and an exclamation mark. She pressed it into his hand. 'Can you add the longitude and lat.i.tude of the beach when you get back to the boat?'

Alexander nodded as he read the card: Wish you were here. Wish you were here.