Closeness, now.

The perceptions and the long-embedded fears. Fire lapping at my ankles... no, there must be more than that I probe more deeply. Yes... the incomplete game. Not the fear of losing, but the terror of the unknown... of the Universe remaining unfathomable. What arrogance I have found.

I feel, through the shell of the station and other minds, through the dull intellects that surround this one; and I catch impressions...

I gain strength.

Soon!

The doors swished open, and Quallem marched in, followed by Symdon. She gave the Doctor and Ace the kind of look that a cat bestows upon its latest bowl of meaty chunks.

'I found them tampering with the controls, ma'am,' Strakk said. 'They seem to know what's going on here.'

Ace met the stare of the new arrival. She didn't like the look of her, even though she could barely believe the girl had any authority. This was their first officer? A bimbo barely older than her... This was their first officer? A bimbo barely older than her... Quallem's eyes, round and green, seemed to look through Ace with distaste and the slightest hint of irrationality. In the centre of the room, the Doctor stood silently. Quallem's eyes, round and green, seemed to look through Ace with distaste and the slightest hint of irrationality. In the centre of the room, the Doctor stood silently.

'Excellent,' said Quallem at last. 'Lieutenant, make the arrangements. They will be transported back to the ship immediately.'

Strakk nodded, and began a low and earnest conversation with his com-link.

Quallem, with an imperious toss of her fiery hair, turned away from her prisoners and began to slink out of the room, her reflective suit catching the glitters from the glo-ball. She paused at the door, and glanced over her shoulder for a moment.

'Oh, by the way,' she said, 'you are under arrest.'

To Ace's fury, the Doctor's face broke into a broad smile.

'Splendid,' he said, 'not before time. I wonder if I might have a glass of water?'

Chapter 5.

Temporal Distraction Dr Ferris Mostrell never stroked his white goatee beard, but he did have an irksome habit of tapping it with his forefinger while resting his thumbs under his chin. The lights of the Icarus Icarus' laboratory filled the circular lenses of his glasses as he lifted his head to look at Captain Terrin.

'Bone samples,' said the medical officer, clearly and distinctly.

Terrin folded his arms. 'Bringing material back on board could be dangerous.'

'Nevertheless, we need to find out what happened down there. And do you imagine that my equipment is portable?' Terrin was almost dazzled by the reflection from Dr Mostrell's glasses. 'I need bone samples, Captain. As soon as possible.'

Terrin winced slightly. 'Very well. I'll tell Quallem.' He went to the communications panel and punched in the code with unnecessary violence.

It sparkled like a million mirror-balls in a ballroom of insanity. Tumbling lights like shattered crystals falling through moonbeams into water. It shifted, billowed, reformed itself constantly against the blackness of space.

Slowly, the pulses of light became more regular. The cloud throbbed with new energy as if it had located its prey, and reached out into the blackness.

It sensed life.

It closed in.

Cheynor could hear his own breathing as he leaned over the tracking TechnOp's shoulder. The TechnOp's hands caressed the opaque dome on his console, making minute alterations. Data flowed across its surface, and then Cheynor saw the red blip, like a drop of blood on the tracer.

'It seems to have variable mass and volume, sir.'

'Speed?'

'Five traks per second.'

Cheynor felt his heart thumping as if it wanted release. He straightened up and strode towards the podium, in one movement. 'Get the captain,' he said before he reached the chair. 'And go to Initial Alert.'

The lights dimmed on the bridge.

Shadows like stalagmites fell across Darius Cheynor, and for the first time ever they frightened him.

Symdon and Carden had left the control centre of Station Q4, having been dispatched to collect the samples requested by Dr Mostrell. Strakk was lounging in the corner, against the main doors, but Ace had seen hunters and fighters enough times to know the pose of relaxation for what it was. She fixed her gaze on his gun-hand, which was tight and steady on the grip of the Derenna-24. The distance between her and Strakk was about eight metres, she calculated roughly. It would not be enough. The result of a break would be likely to be messy.

Beside her the Doctor, as usual, was giving nothing away. She often used to wonder if he really formulated plans or if he just made it up as he went along, but she had stopped wondering long ago, even before first parting with him. Both interpretations were far too reductive, neither allowing for the true complexities in the way that the Doctor worked. So if he was playing along, she would too. She knew the score well enough by now.

There were three sharp clicks as Quallem re-fixed the seals on her pressure-suit. 'Move,' she said. 'We're going.' She levelled her blaster at the Doctor.

'"Please" is such a little word,' said the Doctor ruefully.

'And it doesn't cost anything,' Ace added, in Strakk's general direction.

The doors slid open, with loud and painful shrieks from their machinery. Quallem's pistol was right against the back of the Doctor's neck as they moved out from the centre of the room, and Strakk's was level with Ace's kidneys. Four sets of footsteps resounded like drums from hell. Before they even reached the exit, Quallem's communicator buzzed. She pressed the receive switch. 'Quallem?'

The voice of Terrin crackled through the speaker. 'Lieutenant-Commander, proceed to the airlock, now!'

'Great minds?' said the Doctor quietly.

Quallem ignored him. 'We're just on our way, sir.'

'Then make it faster! Cheynor's tracking an unidentified trace in this vector. It'll be right on your heads in two minutes '

Metal screamed, almost drowning out Terrin's words. Ace first thought the ceiling was collapsing on them, then she became aware of the sparkling lights beneath the thick dust on every console.

Quallem spun in a half-circle, but Strakk's gun did not waver, even when the tortured doors crashed shut with a shower of dust, sealing the four of them in the control centre.

'Someone sounds pretty miffed,' Ace muttered, looking up towards the unseen upper levels of the station. 'Lucky we didn't ring for room service.'

'Human arrogance never changes,' said the Doctor, his eyes fixed unblinkingly on the horrified face of Listrelle Quallem. 'You realize that you may not be allowed to leave this place?'

Ace looked properly at the doors for the first time. They were two triangular slabs of metal that came together in a diamond shape, outlined in a rusty brown that might once have been red, and they looked decidedly unmoveable.

The communicator was spitting static, staccato bursts growing louder like some demonic snare-drum.

'Door controls,' said Strakk, and swept the debris off the nearest console with one angry movement. He surveyed the keyboard for a second or two, wondering what to do, then he looked up at the Doctor, who widened his eyes slowly in expectation or mockery.

'I think you'll find,' the Doctor told him, 'that whatever has jammed the doors would probably expect you to try and open them.'

'Whatever?' This was from Quallem.

'Yes! Why do you humans always expect that everything has to be within your comprehension? It's your most irksome trait. And one I've never come to live with.'

'Doctor,' Ace interrupted, 'at the risk of being an irksome human, how the hell are we going to get out of here?'

The Doctor was, temporarily, saved from having to answer, as the static from Quallem's communicator resolved itself into the fractured voice of Terrin.

'Lieutenant-Commander, why haven't you moved? That trace is right on top of you!'

Quallem, almost gabbling with urgency, responded. 'Captain, we're trapped in the control centre. Can you contact Symdon or Carden? They're on one of the lower levels.'

'Then they're probably dead,' said the Doctor.

Quallem's accusing stare was more than matched by Ace's.

In the dimness of the hold where it had materialized, the TARDIS stood as an oblong block of deeper blackness.

A breath or a whisper began, like waves against a long-forgotten shore. Twisting with it into a corkscrew of sound came a deep and almost human sigh of pain. It seemed to come from the depths of the time machine itself.

When the lamp on top of the police box began to pulsate, it was not with its usual soft, blue light. Jade-green and jagged, it dashed splinters of radiance around the dusty hold. And the glow, swirling in fractal patterns, spilled over the Doctor's TARDIS and engulfed it.

When the lights dwindled like dying glow-worms, the TARDIS had disappeared.

And from the level below came a scream of terror.

They heard the scream in the control centre. It was not alien. It could be nothing other than the sound of a human being dying in the utmost agony. And it stopped after five seconds, like a tape-recording snapping to the end of its spool. When it ended, the only sound was the dead hissing from both the Survey Corps officers' radios.

Strakk looked desperately at Quallem.

The first officer, her face betraying anger and hatred, moved towards the Doctor, and before Ace could stop her she grabbed him by the collar with surprising strength and forced him up against the bulkhead.

'All right, Mr Superior, I've had enough of you! I don't know what the hell is happening here, but you do. So tell me before I kill you.'

She was at least a foot taller than the Time Lord's current body, and the discovery pleased her, enhanced her sense of power. The Doctor, meanwhile, could smell the warm metal in the barrel that was being pressed between his eyes, mingled with a sweet aroma which, had he known it, came from the freshener implant in Quallem's wisdom-tooth.

'If you really think I can tell you anything,' he said, 'then killing me is going to make you none the wiser.'

'Maybe not. But it might just make me a little happier.'

The Doctor had seen calculating humans tip over into madness before. He looked into Listrelle Quallem's face and met her eyes with an intense expression of sadness. It had been a long time since he had found a mind which he was tempted to reach out to, although he knew he really ought not to do that kind of thing any more. This one, he felt, if only he pushed further, would contain so much abandonment, bleakness...

'What's that noise?' Strakk asked.

Quallem let the Doctor go. He straightened his tie, smoothed his crumpled waistcoat. They were all listening now, as the fluttering, like the wings of a thousand bats, seemed to pass over their heads. It seemed then to return in a rustling wave, settling over the ceiling of the control centre with a babble like the twittering of ghostly birds.

'Creatures...' Quallem murmured, her gun pointing into the dark upper reaches. 'Thousands of creatures...'

The Doctor's face seemed to have gained more lines and shadows, and when he spoke, Ace shivered.

'No,' he said. 'It's far worse.'

He is so close now that I can touch him. Like one icicle among many on the branch of a tree, but I know which one it is that I must reach out for. I can see the light of Time reflecting on his mind.

He is here!

Ace saw it first.

'Don't suppose you're expecting visitors, Boadicea?' she asked nervously.

Quallem did not need to ask what she meant. The officer was already mesmerized by the flickering lights which had begun to form around the skull of Supervisor Ballantyne like a devilish halo, and which were now filling the eye-sockets with radiance. Slowly, the lights formed a sparkling corona of red and green, and lifted silently, like a balloon, from the skeleton.

Only the Doctor knew that it was hunting.

'What the hell is it?' Strakk breathed.

'Party pooper,' said Ace. 'Time to go home, Doctor, say something. Be nice to it!'

The Doctor, his umbrella clutched close to his chest, was the only one who seemed not to be reacting. 'It doesn't use speech, Ace. It's progressed beyond that need.'

Quallem had been breathing hoarsely for the past few seconds, and her gun-arm, slender and straight, was lifting at an inexorable angle.

The Doctor's cry of 'No, don't don't!' coincided with the first three energy bolts. They fizzed into the globe of light and were absorbed. It fed on them. Swelling like a purulent sore, it throbbed and advanced towards Quallem, becoming formless now, filling the room. Quallem's reflexes, activating a jittering finger, pumped bolt after bolt into the cloud of lights. Strakk, uncertain, aimed but did not fire.

It was then that Ace decided she had better do something.

'Doctor, let's go!' she yelled, and circled around the hovering lights. The entity was now, effectively, between them and their captors.

Quallem was screaming incoherently. The air fizzed with charged particles from her gun, slamming uselessly into the entity.