'And what do you know of extra-terrestrial life?' Rafferty realized his hands were shaking. He got up and went to the drinks cabinet.

'Suppose I were to mention Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart of UNIT? A friend and colleague of yours, I believe.' Rafferty did not respond as he poured himself a brandy. 'He has dined at High Table in this college no less than three times in the past eighteen months. What do you discuss, I wonder?' Her voice was like a razor through satin.

'You could easily know of the Brigadier. He was the main opposition speaker at a Union debate last Michaelmas term. "This house believes that Britain needs no military defence", I think.' Rafferty took a deep gulp of brandy. 'Went down remarkably well. Won over a few of those peace-and-love students, as I recall.'

'But would I know of the Zygon Gambit?' Amanda purred, and slipped from her seat with silent grace. 'Or the Shoreditch incident?' she added, her mouth unnecessarily close to Rafferty's ear. 'Or how about your paper on the dust samples taken from the Auderly House explosion?'

'You're a remarkably well-informed young lady,' said Rafferty steadily, and finished his brandy.

'I want to call the college President.'

'Impossible. Dr Styles is in his lodgings, he's never disturbed during the day.'

'Ah, but he'll make an exception,' said Amanda, 'for me,' and she slipped the telephone receiver around Rafferty's neck to his left ear.

Captain Terrin's group had run into Quallem's near the airlock sector. Despite Ace's protestations, no one was prepared to go back to the control centre to find out what had happened to the Doctor. Quallem, in particular, seemed relieved to have one less prisoner to contend with.

Now Ace's arm was aching. Quallem had turned out to be quite unexpectedly strong, and was making a good job of marching her along the corridors with a powerful grip. The added problem was that Ace, although her eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, could not see as well as the officers with their infra-scan goggles, and every step felt like a venture into the unknown.

Strakk kept behind. Ahead of them somewhere, Ace knew, were Captain Terrin and his two guards leading the way, but she could only hear and not see them. She supposed that the darkness was useful in that it hid some of the space-station's horrors, but she was consolidating the opinion that she often found stiffs a lot less creepy than some people she could mention.

She was jolted to a halt. There was a sound of a door hissing open, which she knew had to be the airlock.

They all heard the rustle of sound further down the corridor, and saw the bluish light permeate the gloom. Ace could make out the two guards now, their guns instantly raised, but she also saw Terrin's hand raised to stop them.

'No!' snapped the captain. 'Look!'

Forming in a whirlpool of light was a space-suited figure. What they had all noticed, and what was now stopping each of them from instantly opening fire, was the Survey Corps insignia on the ghostly figure's uniform.

Transfixed, they watched the ghost reach out to them. A hand, for help. Help not offered, but needed. And faintly, in the distance, as if borne on the wind across a desolate moorland, a cry of pain. A woman's voice.

'Tanja,' murmured Strakk.

Ace and Quallem looked at him.

The image flickered now as if slipping out of phase. Blue light was strobing across the small group of humans. Ace saw Strakk, as if in slow motion, pushing his way forward, towards the figure. Only Terrin held him back.

'Don't go! Tell us what's happening!' Strakk yelled.

The ghost of Surveyor Tanja Rubcjek glowed one last time and vanished like a guttering flame.

Terrin's reaction was instant. 'Right, everyone into the airlock. That means you, too,' he added for Ace's benefit.

Strakk's eyes were still fixed on the end of the corridor where the spectral figure had appeared. Ace, ignoring Terrin, was studying the Lieutenant, not without sympathy.

'You knew her?' she asked.

'Come on,' Quallem snarled, and Ace was shoved into the airlock before Strakk could answer. The security guards followed.

'Captain ' Strakk began.

'Back to the ship, Lieutenant,' Terrin ordered. 'I'm going to find out what's happened to Symdon and Carden, and this strange fellow you mentioned.'

'They're all dead, sir. There's no point.'

'Strakk '

'This place is death! It breathes it. The bloody metal stinks of it.'

Terrin laid a hand on the young lieutenant's shoulder. 'We are still the Survey Corps, Lieutenant, not the military. We have certain responsibilities. It is our business not to run away from danger, nor to tackle it head-on, but to find out. That's why we're here, that's why we collected those samples. To know know why something happened. Otherwise there is no point to it all.' why something happened. Otherwise there is no point to it all.'

'Point? Tanja, Matt and the others have died for that point point, sir. And one day, Captain, your hunger for knowledge is going to get you killed as well.'

With that, Strakk, somewhat astonished at his own impertinence, strode into the airlock without looking back.

Chapter 7.

On the Bridge The starship Icarus Icarus was hardly what Ace had been expecting. She would have placed these people in a gleaming, slick environment, humming with human and mechanical activity. Disillusionment came fairly swiftly. First there was the elevator, which was slow and creaking. Then, as they reached their destination, she became aware that Quallem's gun was actually ushering her onto the bridge itself. It occurred to her, as it had not done before, that a survey ship would be purely functional and would not be likely to have any facilities for prisoners. was hardly what Ace had been expecting. She would have placed these people in a gleaming, slick environment, humming with human and mechanical activity. Disillusionment came fairly swiftly. First there was the elevator, which was slow and creaking. Then, as they reached their destination, she became aware that Quallem's gun was actually ushering her onto the bridge itself. It occurred to her, as it had not done before, that a survey ship would be purely functional and would not be likely to have any facilities for prisoners.

She saw a low, circular room bathed in orange light and dominated by a screen, with the captain's podium in the centre. About a dozen TechnOps were at consoles around the walls, and all of them wore headphones with radio-link mouthpieces like trackers at Mission Control. None of them looked up as the party entered, but Ace supposed they were paid not to notice things that didn't interfere with the job. The atmosphere of tension was tangible, but that was not the first thing Ace remarked upon. The Doctor had told her this was the twenty-fourth century, and although she did not count herself an expert, she did not think the equipment looked sufficiently high-tech. Some of the instrumentation had purposes that could only be guessed at, such as the opaque dome on one of the far consoles, but banks of switches, keyboards and monitors were not what the now broad-minded girl had come to expect. There was even a stand-alone PC with a printer in one corner. The rail that surrounded the central podium could have done with a lick of paint, as could some parts of the wall.

'Restrain her,' Quallem ordered, as she strode imperiously on to the bridge.

Cheynor pivoted on one heel and raised an eyebrow. 'Here?'

'I want the little bitch where I can see her.'

'Stick it, Boadicea!' Ace yelled as the two guards manhandled her into a swivel-chair.

Cheynor strode over to the chair and stood looking down at Ace with his hands clasped behind his back. 'So, you're our intruder,' he said, more surprised than anything. 'Doubtless we shall come to you in due course.'

Ace looked him up and down, seeing a man of medium height, late thirties, in a black uniform with the silver star she had come to associate with the Survey Corps. All the uniforms, Ace had noticed, looked as if they had seen better days, and the Corps insignia had evidently been added as an afterthought. Cheynor himself, despite a deep tan acquired somewhere on his travels recently, looked worn out too deep crow's feet were etched into the skin around his eyes. Another tired one, she thought. Everything and everyone's on its last legs round here. Still, at least he seemed reasonably civil.

'Yeah, well,' she said, 'don't force yourselves. If you've more important things to do.'

Cheynor smiled. 'For the moment, it looks as if that's the case,' he said, and nodded to the guards. One of them pressed a control on the back of the chair, and three tight bands of metal sprang from the upholstery, one around Ace's neck and the others pinning down her arms. 'Sorry,' Cheynor added, sounding as if he meant it.

In the next few minutes, most of them seemed to forget she was there, so she sat and watched them all instead. She had trouble recalling all the names, but she saw the suntanned guy deep in conversation with the cold bitch Boadicea on the podium. Over the chatter of instruments, though, she could not hear what they were saying. Only at one point did she make something out, when the man said, 'not expendable' and, raising his voice apparently in anger, something about 'should have sent someone else.'

She became aware of a shadow falling over her, and looked up into a familiar pair of hunted eyes behind a grey-blond quiff.

'Comfy?' asked Strakk as he unclipped his gloves and threw them onto a chair.

'Don't you have a post to go to, or something?'

'Probably. But no one's insisted yet. It's a bit like that around here haven't you noticed?' Strakk folded his arms and leaned against the wall.

'Tell me about it. You seemed such an efficient bunch back on the station.'

Strakk shrugged. 'It's the impression the captain quite likes to give. He knows as much as any of us that it's one long tea-break sometimes.'

'Are they all as keen as you?' Ace asked with a grin.

'Look, this ship is a hundred and fifty years old. We don't boast about it. You don't imagine they actually fund the Survey Corps properly, do you? We get the crap that the military and the medics don't need. Our last mission's lasted two years and we've all had it. So's the ship. It's being de-commissioned when we get back to Earth.'

Ace nodded, her suspicions confirmed. 'So what now?'

He looked away into the distance for a moment, his eyes seeing something that Ace could only guess at. Then he said, 'Whatever we're dealing with you're as frightened of it as we are, aren't you?'

'Uh-huh.' Ace realized it was hurting her jaw to speak.

'Well. Sorry about the spartan accommodation. If you really have just been caught up in this, then believe me it's the safest place for you to be right now.'

'Why are you such a bastard when she's around?' Ace tried to jerk her head in the relevant direction, but Strakk understood and gave a bleak, fractured smile.

'Helps to get the job done,' he said.

'You sure? If you ask me, your first officer's a few bytes short of her full ROM.'

He obviously did not want to say any more about Quallem, at least not on the bridge. 'Your friend the Doctor. That creature whatever it was attacked him too. Why didn't he run? He just stood there.'

'The Doctor knows what he's doing.' And maybe that's what's always worried me, And maybe that's what's always worried me, she added to herself. she added to herself.

'He seemed to have some idea what happened back there. If he can really help us, then... I want to be part of it.' Strakk met Ace's gaze. 'But for now...' And his eyes, almost imperceptibly, flicked back towards Quallem.

Ace got the message. We have to follow orders. We have to follow orders.

'You knew that girl, didn't you? You called out her name.'

'She was another surveyor,' he said dismissively. 'One of those sent here when communication gave out. She's dead. They're all dead. And Terrin still won't let it lie.'

'And if he finds something?'

Strakk laughed hollowly. 'You saw those poor sods back there. They found something too. And they can't tell us much about it.'

'The Doctor could,' said Ace.

'If we knew where he was yeah?'

And as she looked into his mocking, half-shadowed face, she had to admit that she shared his sense of helplessness.

Chapter 8.

Conversations with the Dead The Doctor, in his long experience, had become used to recovering from shocks. He seemed to spend a disproportionate amount of his life waking up on cold floors in a prone position, with a nasty ache at the back of his head, and indeed towards the end of his fourth incarnation he had even contemplated giving up the whole intergalactic trouble-shooter life for good and retiring for an extended fishing holiday on Florana. Only recently had he actually begun to enjoy the wretched business again. There was still the unfortunate occupational hazard of the knocks and bumps, though.

He sat up, rubbing the back of his head, and replaced his hat. Rather to his surprise, he appeared undamaged. Having reassured himself of this, he looked up, for the first time, into his surroundings and was dazzled.

The light was white, clear as mountain snow, and washed over smooth walls without emanating from any visible source. The surfaces looked to be made of the kind of material that could atomize dust at a distance of several centimetres. Such things were not unknown in the Doctor's experience. As he climbed cautiously to his feet, he was unsurprised to find that the walls formed a curving corridor, inlaid at one point with a red, diamond-shaped logo. And it was with a weary sense of time-honoured resignation that he felt the cold steel of a blaster against the back of his neck.

'Whatever you're planning to do next,' said a tobacco-choked voice, 'run it past me first, OK?'

'You know, when you get to my age,' said the Doctor ruefully, without turning round, 'you tend to imagine that people will be pleased to see you. Just shows how wrong you can be, really.'

He heard the click of a communicator being activated. 'The intruder has been apprehended,' said the phlegm-soaked voice, and its owner paused to relish a hawk and a spit before continuing. 'Shall I bring him to the centre?' The answer was inaudible to the Doctor, but a second later the blaster jabbed him in the neck again, accompanied by the instruction, 'Move.'

'I see your manners are no improvement on your sense of hygiene,' remarked the Doctor. He glanced over his shoulder. His captor was a black-uniformed guard, built like an American footballer, and he stank of tobacco.

'Move!' The guard gave him a shove and the Doctor decided it was best to obey as he was propelled along a series of almost identical corridors. He kept asking himself where he had seen the red diamond logo, and before he had time to think about it, he and his captor were facing a heavy pair of sliding doors outlined with the same pattern. Lights flickered briefly in a side panel, presumably for identification, and then the Doctor entered a world of holograms.

There were columns of planets, whirls of galaxies, giant pools of star-charts, all beneath a vaulted roof that curved up towards a circle of blackness. He had not expected to see them, and yet they all were floating over the consoles. And all were manned by alert, young TechnOps, their hands like those of musicians over the touch-sensitive keys.

It was then that the Doctor realized where he had seen the room before.

In the centre, near the eye of a hologrammatic ion storm that was obviously being closely monitored, there stood a padded swivel-chair. It contained a tall man with high cheekbones and close-cropped grey hair. As the Doctor was pushed roughly into the chattering, swirling world of the centre, the man straightened up from his ion storm and met the Time Lord's gaze with a pair of bright blue eyes.

'We do not take kindly to stowaways.' His voice was like a spring, compressed and suggesting greater power than it actually revealed. 'I suppose you came on with the last shipment?'

The Doctor looked a little edgy. This was the part he had always found embarrassing. On this occasion, though, the difficulties were compounded by a feeling that he should not really be alive at all. 'Ah, well,' he said. 'Not exactly.'

The tall man strode over to the Doctor and looked down at him with very little effort to disguise his contempt. 'I am Station Supervisor Septimus Ballantyne,' he said. 'And I should like to know, sir, how you come to be on board Space Station Q4.'

He had wondered how long it would be before he got that familiar, queasy feeling that things were going to be complicated. And this time, they seemed to be even worse than usual.

'I see,' said the Doctor. 'I must say, Supervisor '

'Yes?'

'You're looking very well.'

The President of St Matthew's College, Oxford was a contented man. The fortunes of the college were very healthy indeed thanks to a number of donations from benefactors. In general they tended to be anonymous, but the President had a fair idea who most of them were.

The college's reputation was similarly flourishing, now that the First Eight had bumped the much-vaunted boats of Oriel and, furthermore, now that it had cemented its position in the top five of the recently resurrected academic league, the Norrington Table. An excellent production of A Midsummer Night's Dream A Midsummer Night's Dream was currently drawing the crowds to the gardens every evening, and the chaplain, after a protracted theological debate with the President which had become a personal argument, had announced his intention to retire. was currently drawing the crowds to the gardens every evening, and the chaplain, after a protracted theological debate with the President which had become a personal argument, had announced his intention to retire.