'Rosabeth.' Strakk was not smiling.

Ace looked down. The young TechnOp was slumped on the elevator floor, still pale and sweating. Something seemed to kick Ace hard, inside. She suddenly knew. They had all been very stupid.

'Too... bloody... convincing,' McCarran said, gritting her teeth. 'Right?'

Strakk's hand was under her chin, and he lifted it gently so that he could see her eyes.

'What was it?' he asked.

McCarran's hands were pressing her stomach, creasing and twisting her uniform. 'Catressium,' she muttered, and swallowed hard.

'Oh, for God's sake!' Strakk let her go in disgust.

'Strakk!' Ace was angry. Angry with herself, for letting McCarron do it, letting her think simulation would not be enough. Angry with Albion Strakk, for not seeming to care.

'What's the matter?' he snapped. 'Catressium's a mild emetic. You get god-awful stomach cramps for ten minutes and then you vom. After that it gives you a slight high.' He glanced briefly down at McCarran. 'She'll live. The stupid idiot.'

Ace closed her eyes as the relief hit her in waves.

She heard the elevator door swish open. Instinctively, her blaster was up and ready. She wondered why she and Strakk had not been stripped of their weapons, but supposed the Garvond knew they were useless.

They were in one of the ship's lowest tunnels, dim and uninviting, with only just enough room to stand.

'Wait,' Cheynor said. 'McCarran, are you going to be all right here?'

The girl, still kneeling, nodded with an effort.

'Right.' The acting captain's eyes were bright with a zest which he had kept hidden till now. 'Let's get in there.'

The bulkhead door was a hundred yards ahead of them. They ran for it, Cheynor leading, then Strakk, with Ace bringing up the rear. Their booted feet sent echoes bouncing around them, clanging like bells in a chamber.

Cheynor was breathless when they reached the end of the tunnel. He held up a finger to Ace and Strakk.

'You know... that... when they realize what we're doing... they'll send one of them down?'

'Then we'd better be quick,' said Ace. 'Get back.' She was tapping out something on the keyboard at her wrist. 'This'll have a friendly chat to your door,' she said. 'Persuade it to have a nervous breakdown. I was going to slap some multi-nitro on it, but this is less messy.'

Strakk grinned. 'Are we going to keep her on, sir?'

'Possibly.' Cheynor, his hands ready to clap over his ears, was staying deadpan, and Strakk wondered what was really going through his mind.

The opening-panel flickered twice before detonating. The report was surprisingly quiet. The bulkhead slid upwards.

But they all heard the next sound.

It was the roar of the engines, but magnified, twisted, as if the technology were being devoured by demonic forces. A part-organic, part-mechanical scream of rage, of primal hatred. Thundering out of the engine-room, down the tunnel towards the elevator.

Cheynor gave a low whistle. Not quick enough.'

'Get in there!' Ace yelled.

Strakk leapt through the gap. Cheynor was wavering, looking from Ace to the doorway and back again.

'It's sensed us, Ace. The Garvond is the ship. If it wants to stop us '

She lifted the blaster. Both hands, steady. A matter of centimetres from Darius Cheynor's forehead.

'If you wimp out on us now,' Ace breathed. 'I swear I'll kill you. Get in there. Get in there.'

Cheynor gave her an anguished look, and followed Strakk into the engine room.

The noise was unbelievable. The room, a simple greyish sphere of a dozen metres' radius, throbbed with it. Beyond a hazy screen the vast arena housing the warp-engines themselves could be made out in the greenish light. Panels of touch-sensitive keys covered the walls.

Strakk whirled round, helplessly. 'So what now?'

'We destroy it.' Ace looked from one of the officers to the other. This was where she needed them. This was where the plan truly, finally became her own. 'We smash the whole lot!'

McCarran felt better. She'd had precious little that was solid inside her anyway, having lived on pills and water for the past week. When she had known for sure that her brother Drew was dead how long ago? hours? she had gone into autopilot. She was a survivor. She needed strength, she realized, like that girl Ace. The one who'd started as a prisoner and now she was running the fight from the inside.

Whispers rippled down the corridor. Ghostly voices. Dozens, scores of voices, all of them agitated, as if awakening to find their nest invaded.

Rosabeth McCarran gripped her blaster. Like others before her, she knew it was useless, yet somehow could not bring herself to do without it.

The walls were bulging.

She had only just noticed, but now that she saw it, she realized how logical this would be. The spinning recklessness controlled her head, and everything suddenly seemed so much better that it was.

The whispering grew to muttering, groans, and the air bled angry light.

'All right,' she said. 'I'll be with you, Drew.'

Rosabeth blinked. She knew she just had to remain co-ordinated for long enough, to hold them off until the second stage hit her. The psychedelic in catressium tabs was a slow one, she was sure of that.

In a shower of light, a Time Soldier leapt.

She saw its teeth.

For the first time. The snout, which they had all assumed to be a gas-mask, ripped apart by a scream of hunger. The hunger for life. For the life of Rosabeth McCarran. It blazed with the Garvond's fury as it raised its gun-arm.

'Get them, Ace,' McCarran murmured. 'Just get them for me.'

Then she kicked out from the tunnel wall and leapt into the whirlpool of Time energy.

Ace lifted her booted foot, ready to kick in the main panel. She suddenly became aware of cries from Cheynor and Strakk, and saw them hurled against the panels by an invisible force. A second late she lost her own balance and crashed to the metal floor with the breath knocked out of her.

Hissing and crackling had begun to fill the engine control room. She turned over. Metal snakes were uncoiling from hidden positions on the walls, spitting sparks.

'Oh, gods,' Strakk breathed, sliding himself slowly up the wall with as little movement as possible.

'What are they?' Ace yelled.

'Security probes! Designed to home in on illegal access. They must all be under the control of that monster!'

The slithering probes seemed to unfurl themselves from the wall and undulate across the room. Ace saw that they were inlaid with glistening circuits, like lines on their silvery skin. The nearest began to snap and bite within inches of her face.

She risked a quick look around. Cheynor was pinned into the corner, Strakk trapped by one of the serpentine probes that had coiled itself around his leg.

'It's playing with us,' Ace snarled. 'Unoriginal, bonehead. If you want to kill us, why not do it properly?'

'Don't encourage it!' Cheynor's face was a mask of sweat, his eyes darting between the probe and the door.

'All right,' Ace murmured, as her right hand began to wander stealthily towards her left wrist. 'Keep them talking, boys...'

The first blast, a half-second long, slammed McCarran backwards. She twisted like an autumn leaf. She was fifty-five when she hit the elevator wall and broke her spine.

She smiled up at the Time Soldier as it approached, silent, swift as thought.

The next blast lasted a second. It jerked her limbs into a brief, scarlet-blazing motion. When it released her, she tried desperately to gasp air into her eighty-seven-year-old lungs.

The creature had stopped, with its bristling gun-arm immobile, its lascivious breathing clearly audible behind the helmet. Behind the helmet. Behind the helmet. The old woman tried to force her mouth into a smile. She had seen what she had suspected. And she knew what the Time Soldier was seeing, as well. Two blue eyes, burning still with love and hate, with power to live, with the unquenchable spirit of a human fighter. In her ravaged face there was something which the Time Soldier had once understood. Which it could no longer understand. The old woman tried to force her mouth into a smile. She had seen what she had suspected. And she knew what the Time Soldier was seeing, as well. Two blue eyes, burning still with love and hate, with power to live, with the unquenchable spirit of a human fighter. In her ravaged face there was something which the Time Soldier had once understood. Which it could no longer understand.

Her voice was like a dry well. She could taste the blood in the back of her throat as she spoke.

'You aren't just a thing. A monster with a gun. Are you?'

The Time Soldier remained still. Its eyes were burning brightly. The broad gun was trained on Rosabeth's head.

'You understand about pain. About the human race. You're not just killing us for nothing.' Her face, scored with lines and yellowish-white, was exultant. 'I know who you are!'

The hissing breath gathered itself into a recognizable sound. It cascaded through many resonances before settling on one. The voice that issued from the ghostly mouth was not that of the Garvond. It was, for the first time, the soldier's own.

'How... long... do... humans... live?'

The words were uttered with vampiric pleasure, steeped in the adoration of death.

Rosabeth almost grinned with the blackened ashes of her teeth. 'You mean... you don't know?' She lifted her chin, still proud.

She was looking the Time Soldier straight in the eye when the third blast ripped through her body, shattering her bones to splinters.

Chapter 19.

The Link 'What though the field be lost?

All is not lost...'Milton, Paradise Lost Paradise Lost, Book I

The sunlight was glittering on the river as the St Matthew's First Eight reached the home strength. Pulling in synchronized motion, the sweating rowers were a length ahead, spurred on by the cheers of their supporters.

No one noticed a whisper in the air as a grey haze formed itself on the bank behind the spectators, just in front of the pub terrace. It solidified with a trumpeting sound into a sleek black Porsche, on which the sunlight did not seem to reflect.

It sat there, waiting.

The Doctor and Epsilon Delta watched the rowers on the scanner. The self-styled President rubbed his hands with glee at his team's evidently performance.

'Splendid! Some things never change, even in one's absence.' He was now attired in a fur-trimmed cloak with a broad-brimmed hat and a walking cane. Now the President took a mirror from his pocket and began to admire himself at arm's length. 'Unfortunate,' he said, 'the way that your friends wandered in here unannounced. Now you must admit that so far I have been tolerant. Most tolerant.'

The prisoners and the androids were waiting in an anteroom the Doctor had seen them led away. He and Epsilon Delta had the console room to themselves.

'Don't waste your words, Epsilon Delta. Just tell me what you want. And don't try to make your threats stylish. It grates.'

Epsilon Delta leaned down until his eyes were on a level with those of the Doctor. Neither Time Lord flinched.

'I want,' said Epsilon Delta, 'your co-operation, your respect, and your TARDIS.'

'Unlikely, inappropriate, and impossible. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a time-line to save.'

'You think I am not serious, Doctor.'

'I think you're trying too hard. You know the location of my TARDIS. Yours is tuned into it.' The Doctor's voice was uncharacteristically harsh.

'But I need you, Doctor, to give me access to the capsule. Now let me remind you my androids have an immense capacity for destruction. Their hands can be programmed to crush lead and platinum, so I doubt whether a few puny human bones would cause them more trouble.' He straightened up, swaggered across to the anteroom door. 'Shall we go and see who they could start on?' he inquired, leaning on his stick with manorial arrogance. 'Professor Rafferty, perhaps? He would crunch easily. Or Bernice? More of a challenge, but I'd imagine she's no less brittle than any other human.' The flippant tone vanished and the renegade narrowed his eyes. 'Your TARDIS, Doctor. If you want your friends to live.'

For a moment the Doctor stood with his face betraying nothing. Then he bowed his head and walked over to join Epsilon Delta.

'I'll show you,' he said quietly.

Ace was conscious of every muscle in her body.

She could hear her breathing, and Strakk's and Cheynor's, above the haunting whispers and howls from the engine room. Hovering centimetres from her face, the probe crackled with energy. She could almost smell the Garvond in the machine, taste the decay and death. She thought of baby Monstrell again, in his incubator, and the husk of Quallem lying in fragments on the floor of the bridge.

Ace, moving her finger to one key at a time, punched in the icebreaker that she needed.