Eventually she picked it up, unwillingly and without enthusiasm. She looked at it and felt a little surge of fear, as she wondered what the point of it could be, and what role she was being commanded to play in this dangerous charade.

Far below Tegan, in the dark pa.s.sage underneath the farmhouse's foundations, the Doctor, Will and Jane Hampden had just considered it safe to emerge from their hiding place under the staircase when they heard the footsteps corning back and had to dive out of sight again.

The troopers emerged from the tunnel at a trot, shielding the flickering candles with their hands. Sir George was close behind them. He was annoyed and impatient and, as always when he was agitated, he gripped the black spongy ball and worked it ceaselessly with his fingers. He was a man of volatile disposition, always easily aroused, but Jane had never seen him as disturbed as he was now. The agitation which convulsed his mind also racked his body and made his movements seem disjointed, so that he turned this way and that like a puppet.

'She won't get far,' he said as he entered the chamber, 'the village is sealed.' He turned to one of the troopers. 'Get me Sergeant Willow,' he ordered. 'I must see how the preparations are going.' Then he spun round on his heel and snapped at the other man, 'And see that my horse is brought round immediately.'

He was like a man whose nerves were quickly being drawn to their ultimate tension. Without warming he jerked round again and with a wild look in his eyes raced up the stairs and out of sight, with the worried troopers breathing hard at his heels.

In their hiding place under the stairs Jane listened to the departing footsteps and breathed another sigh of relief.

Yet she still could not believe they were going to get away with this. Leaning close to the Doctor she whispered, 'It's not like Sir George to give up so easily.'

'Be grateful,' the Doctor replied. He was craning his neck to look up the staircase. 'Where do the steps lead?'

'Colonel Wolsey's house.'

Curiously Jane watched the Doctor leave the safety of their cover to explore the room. He poked about with his torch, examining the walls, the roof, the floor. He had evidently decided they were safe for the time bring. He was a strange man, Jane thought, with a remarkable authority; she realised that she trusted his judgment implicity, and with only a pa.s.sing hesitation at why she should put her life in the hands of a complete stranger, she followed him out of hiding.

Will had come out too, and was watching the Doctor scrabbling around on the floor, dreading what he would come up with next.

Jane peered myopically at their surroundings. 'This must be the pa.s.sage Andrew Verney discovered,' she said, and explained, 'He's our local historian.'

'Yes, Tegan told me.' The Doctor's response was of the vaguest sort, for he had found something on the floor. He crouched on his heels fingering a lump of black, spongy stuff which gave offa metallic sheen in the torchlight. Jane watched him closely, sensing his extreme puzzlement.

Then the Doctor drew in his breath sharply. 'Just a minute,' he exclaimed in a whisper. He stood up and offered the substance to Jane for her to examine. She held it gingerly. Her overwhelming reaction was one of surprise and uncertainty. The stuff filled her with doubts, for although it was as light as a feather, there was a solidity and weight about it too, and despite its squidginess -- she could mould its shape like plasticise it had a hard, abrasive resilience.

Jane recognised it as the substance Sir George was always fiddling with. This was the first time she had seen it at close quarters, but the closer acquaintance resolved nothing. It only raised questions. The thing was an impossibility and yet it was here in her hand.

The only thing Jane was sure of was that she had seen nothing like it before. In the absence of clues from the Doctor, all she felt was an overwhelming apprehension it was like being thrust into a locked, absolutely dark room and wondering what was in there with you. Giving up, she looked at the Doctor and saw from his eager expression that he had some interesting theories which he was dying to expound.

'What is it?' she asked, to please him.

'It's metal.'

Impossible. Jane looked at the substance again and moulded it in her fingers.

'It can't be,' she argued. 'It's all squashy.'

'It's Tinclavic,' the Doctor announced, as if that should settle everything. Jane stared at him, feeling stupid.

'Tinclavic?' she echoed. 'What is that? Where does it come from?'

The Doctor took a deep breath and plunged in at the deep end. 'The planet Raaga,' he said quickly, and watched her mouth fall open. 'Let's go back to the church,' he suggested, and before she could explode he was away, with Will at his heels.

Jane stood rooted to the spot. She stared at the Doctor's retreating back, and gave a frightened glance at the glinting black substance in her hand as if it had just come to life and bitten her.

Feeling strangely alien in the May Queen costume, Tegan stood in front of the latticed window and looked sadly out at the countryside and the yellow-thatched and red-tiled roofs of the village.

Everything was wrong, she thought. Out there somewhere was her grandfather, but he might as well have been on another planet. He was missing, and probably in trouble, if not worse. Heaven alone knew where the Doctor and Turlough were, and the TARDIS was probably buried under tons of collapsed stone. On top of that, a youth had crashed out of a wall and another century, everybody was going stark staring mad trying to pretend it was was that other century and that its horrific war was still going on and she herself was a prisoner. She had been compelled to wear the clothes of a country girl of the seventeenth century, and so was being forced back in time herself. It was enough to make anybody depressed. that other century and that its horrific war was still going on and she herself was a prisoner. She had been compelled to wear the clothes of a country girl of the seventeenth century, and so was being forced back in time herself. It was enough to make anybody depressed.

Footsteps approached quickly along the corridor outside. Tegan stiffened with anxiety, and spun round as the door opened. Sergeant Joseph Willow strode in, with a smug expression on his face.

'Don't you ever knock before entering a room?' Tegan asked.

Willow frowned. 'You'd better be careful,' he warned.

'You're beginning to annoy me.'

He came into the middle of the room, clearly surprised by the extent of Tegan's transformation. Instead of her old, gaudy shapeless dress she wore the spring colours of green and white and presented a perfect picture of flourishing, seventeenth-century young womanhood. Her white bonnet dangled gleaming white ribbons beside her checks; the fitted dress had a soft green bodice nipped tight at the waist, with pulled shoulders and white flowers; white collar and white skirt completed the picture. Tegan looked as cool and pretty as a wood in springtime but she did not look happy.

Willow s.n.a.t.c.hed up her old dress from the chair and rolled it into a ball and crushed it in his hands. 'What are you doing?' she cried.

'Those are your clothes now,' Willow smirked, 'compliments of Sir George Hutchinson.' He headed for the door again, then hesitated, turned in the doorway and dropped his bombsh.e.l.l with conspicuous glee. 'You're our Queen of the May,' he smiled.

'What?'

Tegan was dumbfounded. Willow closed the door and locked it behind him. Tegan stood there for a long time, staring at the blank door.

The Doctor stormed up the steps from the pa.s.sage and ran through the vestry to the church, driven by questions and theories and a host of ideas, some of which were starting to click into place, slotting comfortably into each other like the pieces of a jigsaw, to make the beginnings of a sensible pattern.

However, there were still a lot of pieces missing, and the Doctor could not be certain that the way he was building up the ones that he had was correct. There could be a hundred alternatives; to whittle them down he needed more information, more clues. He headed for the pulpit and its carving, but his attention was attracted by that crack in the wall. It was wider, and the pile of rubble underneath it was larger.

Something was happening inside the wall. The Doctor stared at the crack, puzzled by it, then he hurried over to the stained gla.s.s window, and peered up at that, and at the pile of collapsed stone and heavy beams which littered the floor beneath it.

He was still standing there with pursed lips and a puzzled expression when Will and Jane caught him up.

'Slow down!' Jane pleaded. Gasping for breath, she held out the black substance as if it was eating her and at last asked the question which had been burning in her mind.

'What do you mean, this is from the planet Raaga?'

The Doctor did not answer immediately. Instead, he went back to look again at the pulpit and the cracked wall.

He bent to examine the carving, and then told her, in an urgent voice which forbade argument.

'I mean precisely what I say,' he said. 'The Terileptils mine Tinclavic for more or less exclusive use by the people of Hakol ...' Quite suddenly he softened and turned to Jane with an amused smile, knowing well the effect his words would be having on her. 'That's in the star system Rifler, you know.'

Jane's eyes were wide with disbelief. 'Oh, no,' she cried out in despair, 'I've escaped from one mad man only to find another. Do you expect me to believe what you're saying?'

The Doctor sat down in the front pew and regarded her steadily. 'You take that sample to any metallurgist,' he suggested. 'They'll confirm it isn't of this planet.'

Now it was Jane's turn to study the Doctor in silence.

Will, too, was quiet; he rubbed his chin in bafflement and wonder, for this was a conversation stuffed with words he'd never heard of.

Finally, responding to the Doctor's serious and unshaking gaze, Jane ventured to speak. 'You're serious, aren't you?' she said.

'Never more so.'

She was still confused, however. 'Very well, then,' she conceded, 'for the sake of argument I'll accept what you say. But how did it come to Little Hodcombe?'

The Doctor hesitated. He looked at Jane's cynical expression and wondered how much apparently irrational argument this schoolteacher would be prepared to accept in one session. Then he shrugged. It had to he said, after all.

'On a s.p.a.ce vehicle.'

That was the last straw. Cynicism changed gear and accelerated towards hysteria. A broad, pull-the-other-one grin stole across Janes face and she had to force herself not to laugh out loud. 'A s.p.a.ce ship from Hakol landed here?

Is that what you're trying to say?'

'More likely a computer controlled reconnaissance probe,' the Doctor said earnestly.

'How silly of me not to know.' Jane's voice was heavy with sarcasm.

Suddenly another piece of the jigsaw slipped into place in the Doctor's mind. He jumped to his feet and asked, 'Tell me, was Andrew Verney engaged in any research concerning the Malus?'

'I believe he was.' Jane's smile faded as she recalled her old friend and his enthusiasm for digging up the past.

The Doctor gave a satisfied sigh. 'That's what must have led him to the tunnel, and the remains of the Hakol probe.'

Will nodded enthusiastically and pressed Jane's arm.

'See? I seed the Malus!' he told her eagerly.

The Doctor laid an arm around Will's shoulder and looked closely into his eyes. 'I believe you Will,' he said. 'My sincerest apologies for ever doubting you.' Will glowed with pride.

Jane desperately wanted to restore some everyday reality to this conversation, and haul it back to a basis she could relate to. If she allowed herself to believe even a quarter of what she had heard, she would soon be as mad as everybody else. 'Doctor,' she pleaded, 'the Malus is a myth, a legend! Some mumbo jumbo connected with apparitions or something!'

Now that he had got this far, the Doctor had no intention of letting Jane cling to illusions. This was a time for facts, for unvarnished truth.

'That is precisely what Will saw,' he explained firmly.

'On Hakol, psychic energy is a force that has been harnessed in much the same way as electricity is here.'

'But what has that got to do with the Malus legend?'

The Doctor fixed her with an unyielding stare. 'The thing you call the Malus was on board the Hakol probe.'

Now he had her hooked. He saw it happen he watched the realisation dawn in her eyes. They darkened visibly, and Jane looked uneasily around the church. 'Oh,' she said.

'I see what you mean ... You mean it's still here!'

Her eyes lit upon the crack in the wall and she hurried across to examine it. 'Doctor,' she whispered, in a voice filled with awe, 'that wasn't here the other day.'

Before the alarmed Doctor could warn her to get away from it, the wall groaned loudly again, and this time there was also a cracking noise; which flew around the church like a whiplash, gathering momentum and volume as it went. At the same moment a section of the wall collapsed and caved into the hole. Now it was much wider.

Jane shrieked. She stumbled backwards. Will shuddered and clapped his hands over his ears as a renewed groaning sound squeezed eerily out of the depths of the wall. The Doctor moved forward.

Now wisps of smoke slipped through the crack, oozing out of the wall like bile. Warily the Doctor stretched out his hand towards the wall.

'Don't touch it!' Will yelled. He was very frightened; his shout wailed like a cry of paw, and he was near to tears.

Jane, too, was scared stiff. She felt, rather than heard, faint noises of movements springing from all the dark corners of the church, and there was a smell of gunpowder from the smoke which spilled out of the hole in the wall.

The air had turned clammy and cold, raising goosepimples on her skin. 'He's right, Doctor,' she shouted. 'There's suddenly a very strange atmosphere in here!'

Perhaps the Doctor could not hear her because of all the other noises. Perhaps he wasn't listening, because he was so intent upon these strange developments. Whatever the reason, he paid no attention to the cries of Will and Jane.

And suddenly all h.e.l.l broke loose.

The Doctor was pulling gently at the crack when a huge chunk of plaster came away in his hands. Almost immediately another section blew out of the wall, and now the crack had become a gaping black hole which spouted smoke in billowing, acrid clouds.

'h.e.l.lo,' the Doctor murmured to himself. He tried to look inside the hole and for a moment thought he could see something which made him catch his breath ... it was impossible to he sure, but it looked like part of an enormous mouth. High above that there was something green and shining.

A plume of smoke almost choked him. 'Come and have a look at this,' he shouted to the others.

The luminous green light was growing larger. Suddenly it jerked forward towards him. A roaring noise began far down in the wall and sped forward too, moving with the light. The Doctor had to leap out of the way as another chunk of masonry exploded from the wall and whistled past him. Jane screamed.

Something was coming, and coming fast. That deep rumble was roaring towards the surface of the wall at great speed. The green light was coming too - and suddenly it was a colossal eye, glaring at them out of the black socket of the hole.

'No!' Will yelled.

'No!' Jane shouted too. And 'No!' she shrieked again as more plaster was blasted out and another eye loomed in the blackness, high above a huge stone mouth which was twisted wide in the most terrifying leer. It was the same grotesque monster which had been carved on the pulpit and on the vestry tombstone, but many, many times bigger. And it was coming to life before their eyes: moment by moment it grew larger, stretching out and up like an inflating balloon and shooting lumps of plaster and masonry out of the hole with noises like cannonfire.

The Doctor was much too close -- right in front of the hole. The noise came screaming to the surface and roared around him like a wind. He clapped his hands over his cars, but it vibrated his eardrums and twisted his face in pain.

'Look out!' Jane yelled - too late, for smoke erupted from the hole, as if the noise had a.s.sumed visible firm. it poured over the Doctor like a waterfall, and he was obscured instantly.

The noise roared and the smoke billowed, and inside it there were exploding noises as if the wall was disintegrating. The Doctor was inside it too. He had disappeared.

'Doctor ... !'