Information Technology La Cachette was one of Oxford's less frequented restaurants, and Tom wanted it to stay that way, so he never recommended it, but he did often take young ladies there when his industrial sponsorship would allow it. The colour scheme was mainly red and gold, enhanced by the candle in its Chianti bottle which flickered on the table between him and Amanda. It shimmered also in her shades. 'I have problems with light,' she had explained, a little embarrassed. 'I hope you don't mind.' He did wonder what colour her eyes were, and if she would ever take the shades off when he finally got her where he wanted her.

Tom noticed she ate little and drank less. He was disappointed when she smilingly refused his offer of wine, but she explained that it did terrible things to her insides.

He should have known, he thought after his second glass of wine, not to drink on his own. It had been a pleasant meal, but to have a sober companion, like the control half of an experiment, lessened the pleasure. And moreover, he was not quite sure if he had heard what she had just said.

'I'm sorry? St Matthew's lawn lawn?'

'Yes,' she said, with a twitch of a smile. 'Professor Rafferty does not seem very worried about it. And I think he should be.'

Tom felt he had missed a vital link in the conversation. 'Surely it's a matter for the gardeners?'

'But not,' said Amanda, sipping her mineral water, 'when we are dealing with dimensional engineering?'

'Sorry,' said Tom, 'you've lost me.' He was rapidly sobering up. What did this girl know about the Department's activities? He was beginning to feel hints of worry again. Could she be a Free Earth Child or from one of the other New Age peace groups? Tom had assumed they would have the techno-paganists on their side, but one or two of his colleagues had assured him that it was not so, and that various groups were terrified of anyone finding out how the universe actually worked worked. Their fear was that scientists like Tom and Rafferty might, for instance, strip the mystique from the Earth or discover that pollution and the destruction of the rainforests were necessary cogs in the ecosystem. And so he wondered why Amanda had really sought him out.

'You know the Professor well?' she asked.

'Well enough.'

'Good. Well enough. I like that. Poor Tom, you look so bewildered. I think you don't realize how important you are.'

'Important?'

'To me,' she said softly.

He took a deep breath. 'That's very sweet of you. But I hardly know you, do I? And now I come to think about it, I really can't remember where it was that we met.'

'No,' she said, leaning back lazily in her chair. 'You wouldn't.'

He paid the bill, still bemused and rather unsure what was going to happen. She took his arm as they stepped out into the chill air of the High Street and walked in the Carfax direction. Behind them on the right, Magdalen Tower glowed with spectral floodlights.

'This city rustles with power,' said Amanda. 'You can almost taste it.'

Tom looked at her, a little surprised. 'Yes... Yes, I suppose you can.'

'And knowledge,' added Amanda. 'In such a small place... so compact. Nearly all the intelligence that matters on this world is here. Don't you think it might explode one day, under the pressure?'

'There are those,' said Tom, 'who would claim it regularly does.' Her use of 'this world' had not escaped him. He stopped, stared at her under the lamplight. 'Why don't you tell me what you really want, Amanda?'

'Yes,' she said, slipping her arms around his neck. 'Why don't I?'

Her wrists felt cold against the back of his neck, and her lips, although moist, tasted faintly of something he could not at first identify.

He recognized it a second later, as her tongue slid around his. It was like the aftertaste from drinking canned beer. A hint of metal.

The coldness on the back of his neck was growing.

As Amanda, smiling, drew away from his mouth, he felt, with a churning stomach, a numbness around his head like an icy helmet. The lights of the traffic smeared, and although he was not aware of his legs giving way, he felt his back sliding against the wall.

She caught his arm. Two young men in rugby shirts were walking past, and glanced at the pair in brief concern. He tried to call out, and found that he could not. He heard Amanda saying, 'His birthday... had a bit too much...' and then, to his horror, the two lads were walking on with cheerful waves and a shout of 'Good luck, darlin'.'

She looked down, her face pale and cruel. Her left arm had now come back into the light. Instead of a hand, there was now a streamlined, silvery cone, tapering thinner and thinner until it became the sharpest of needles.

It was the last thing Tom Cheynor saw before everything went black.

The data rushed on to the screen of the President's laptop computer. He smiled, snapped it shut and apologized to his fellow dons at High Table. The awkward glances were swiftly quelled. Bringing one's work to Hall was unsociable, but Dr Styles was the President, after all...

As soon as he possibly could after his first course, the President gave the time-honoured thump on the table and the undergraduates present at the Annual College Memorial Dinner rose to their feet with the usual mumbling and scraping of benches.

It was traditional to join his fellow Fellows for dessert in the Senior Common Room, but instead he hurried in the direction of his lodgings, his gown billowing in the evening breeze.

As the group of dons straggled out, hardly anyone paid any attention to the disappearing President but the hasty departure had not gone unnoticed by the sharp blue eyes of the Professor of Extra-Terrestrial Studies. Rafferty was trapped, though, in a conversation with the new Modern Languages tutor Dr Ellen Rocher, who was berating him about the standard of the Senior Common Room desserts. He decided that agreeing with her about what she called 'stodgy Boy's Own puddings' was the easiest course of action as, with a sinking heart, he saw the President disappearing under the archway into the main quadrangle. He cast desperate eyes around for Bernice, who had vanished from his sight as they left Hall. She was nowhere to be seen. Rafferty smiled at Dr Rocher and said yes, he thought fruit salads were an excellent idea, and left her to the mercies of the Senior Dean's company.

Bernice slipped from behind a pillar with one graceful movement. She had a glass of port in her hand and had clearly been enjoying herself.

'James,' she said with a wine-mellowed voice, 'I do believe you're as curious as I am.'

'I have been called it in the past. I take it you're with me?' His whisper echoed up into the cloisters.

Bernice finished her port in one gulp. 'What's the alternative?'

'Cigars, mints and small talk.'

'Then I'll take danger every time.'

He took her arm. They hurried past the chapel into the quad, which was silent and empty, and slipped under the carvings of ministering angels and into Kent Quad. They were just in time to see the orange glow of the light flick into being on the ground-floor window of the President's office.

The President said 'Open,' to the filing cabinet in the corner of his office. One of the most attractive features of the Type 102 TARDIS, for him, was its highly reliable chameleon circuit, while another was its voice-activated lock.

He heard the hum of the mechanism, and, with the laptop under his arm, he strode towards the cabinet. Then he paused. The scuffling under the window-sill had not gone unheard, and he wondered for a second what was the best thing to do. If the observer were innocent, he decided, then he had nothing to fear. And if he had designs, then he would be walking into a trap anyway. Smiling at his logic, the President stepped into the back of the filing cabinet.

Rafferty waited a second or two before climbing through the office window. Such an action was undignified in his long academic gown, but he managed it with the minimum of fuss. Then he leaned out and gave Bernice his hand. He was surprised at how warm it felt, even on this November night. She hopped into the room, flexing her knees.

'Right,' she whispered, 'I wonder where he is?'

Rafferty took a couple of moments to get his breath back, reflecting that the last time he had climbed in a window had been in 1955, to visit a Somerville girl after curfew without incurring the wrath of the authorities. That sort of thing had become much easier now that he was too old for it, Rafferty thought, in fact it had possibly changed in a matter of a few years. He was not at all clear on the well-documented side of the Sixties, for it had passed him by Rafferty's decade, though, had had its own triumphs. He had a vague idea about Sergeant Pepper being a brand of fizzy drink, and the only Woodstock he knew was a pleasant market town a few miles north of Oxford, but such things mattered little. Those had been the years in which he had first come to know his friend and colleague Ian Chesterton, and when as a postgraduate student he had been taken into the confidence of Professor Travers concerning the matter of a small metallic sphere which was evidently not of this world. He wondered whether the Doctor had told Bernice anything of this history, but reflected that now was probably not the best time to find out.

Bernice was standing with her feet apart and her hands on her hips. Even with the flush of alcohol on her cheeks, her face was alert, intense.

'This floor,' she said, 'is buzzing.'

'Buzzing?' Rafferty listened.

'Vibrating. Can't you hear it?'

He could feel it now. He listened, trying to trace the source, and it did not take him long to look around the back of the filing cabinet. There appeared to be a sort of door, large enough to admit a man, and standing ajar. He looked across the room at Bernice. She made a twirling gesture with her hand, as if encouraging him.

Rafferty hesitated, then hurried to the desk and snatched up the President's external telephone.

'You're not calling the police, are you?' said Bernice apprehensively. 'It'll make an awfully embarrassing scene.'

'Bernice, please credit me with a little common sense.' He tapped out a number with lightning speed.

The telephonist, as he had expected, was brisk. 'This is a UNIT priority number. Please state your name and business.'

'Rafferty. Get me Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart.'

'Please hold.'

He hung on, his heart pounding, for a minute. He kept casting anxious glances at the filing cabinet. Benny was pacing the room with her arms folded. Impatient.

Two and a half minutes. He wondered if UNIT were still there. Coming to a decision, Rafferty slammed the receiver down.

'All right,' he said. 'You win.'

He was quivering with energy, and knew he had to do something.

Steeling himself, he touched the cabinet. He had somehow expected the tingling sensation. He pulled the door open just enough to admit himself.

'Bernice,' he said, 'what would you say if I told you to wait here?'

'It wouldn't be fit for polite company.'

'I thought as much. Sorry. I don't think we should both get ourselves into a mess.' He stepped into the back of the filing cabinet.

She sprang forward. 'James, no!'

The secret door had snicked shut behind him. Bernice was facing solid metal, with no visible apertures or even hairline cracks.

With her heart pounding, she flipped out the homing device. Its red light was flashing wildly. She looked up at the filing cabinet once more, as realization dawned.

The beacon was detecting a time source. Not necessarily the Doctor's.

'Oh, my goodness,' she said.

For a moment, James Rafferty found himself in utter darkness, and his eyes were unable to adjust. Losing orientation, Rafferty decided that this had perhaps been a bad idea. He looked around for the chink of light that showed the way back into the office, and noticed that it no longer seemed to be there.

He felt a rush of air behind his ear. He heard the crack of bone an instant before the pain hit him, and then he lost consciousness.

Bernice was hammering on the unyielding metal of the cabinet.

'James!' she shouted. 'James!'

Silently cursing her current lack of a good blaster, she took a step back from the metal box, and looked around wildly for inspiration.

The shutters slammed down over the window.

Like four guillotines they swished to a halt, thudding into the sill outside. Bernice was at the door in two seconds. It would not budge. She rattled the handle a couple of times, aware that the lights in the room were dimming.

Never one to panic unduly, she swivelled, thinking hard. Sheer brute force over intellect, she thought, and brought a booted foot up hard into the oak door. It boomed angrily, and left her with an aching toe. She gritted her teeth and kicked again. And again.

A familiar voice crackled from the intercom on the President's desktop.

'I really wouldn't attempt any more vandalism, my dear. It's hardly the way for a guest to behave.'

She kicked again. The wood was starting to splinter. 'No,' she snapped in the direction of the desk, 'but then you're hardly the perfect host.'

Two clicks alerted her, and she swung around. Two nozzles like tubular metal flowers had sprung from the floor, and an instant later they began to shoot a yellow gas into the room.

The cloud spread with amazing speed. Bernice flattened herself up against the dented door, wondering if the window might yield more easily. She knew she only had a couple of seconds.

'I think you've had a hard day, Miss Summerfield,' crackled the voice of the President. 'Why don't you turn in for the night?'

'I'm a twenty-four-hour party person, didn't you know? I'd really prefer you called me a cab.'

With one arm over her nose and mouth, she lifted the armchair and hurled it towards the leaded lights. The glass shattered in several places, but the metal shutters clanged, bouncing the chair back into the room. Bernice could feel the gas stinging her eyes. It billowed, swirling like ghosts, injecting her mind with unwanted headiness.

In just a few more seconds, the gas had filled the room.

Chapter 13.

Incubus 'I know who's going to win,' murmured Terrin, as he watched low-gray athletics on the interstellar video-link 'I could put a million on it.' He looked at the Doctor across the pastel hues of their new quarters. 'I'd be a rich man, Doctor.'

The Time Lord was sitting with his hat over his face and his feet up on the perspex table. 'Don't get a taste for it, Captain. You might find the Blinovitch Limitation Effect catching up with you.'

On the instructions of Helina Vaiq, the nameless Doctor and the man who called himself Romulus Terrin were no longer to be treated as prisoners. Compromising with Ballantyne, though, had required that the two 'visitors' be confined to their accommodation until further notice, with an armed guard outside the door.

Although the Doctor still felt uneasy, he was at least more comfortable in the plush lounge. It had an inch-thick carpet of royal blue beneath curving walls, which appeared white but which, if one looked at them for long enough, acquired hints of pastel shades like azure and rose-petal. A circular window looked out on to the stars, and a fountain, fringed with ferns, splashed under green light in the centre of the room. The table was generously laden with coffee, ham sandwiches and various exotic fruits, and the two-metre holoscreen in the corner seemed to pick up an infinite number of channels.

Terrin, though, had obviously been deep in thought while the Doctor had been away. 'Doctor, supposing I tried to contact someone I knew? Supposing I called the Icarus Icarus? What would happen happen?'

'Did it happen?' asked the Doctor's muffled voice.