'Not as such, no. I was talking metaphorically,' he told her, 'although now you come to mention it, maybe it is some kind of disease.'108.

He stopped and frowned, running through the possibilities. There was something else, something he wasn't getting. Then, with a quick shake of his head, he left the problem to tick over at the back of his mind and returned to the present.

'First things first,' he announced. 'We need to get a whole lot of this jinnera stuff made up. Trouble is, there don't seem to be that many bushes in this area of the forest,' he added.

Rez, who had been standing over at Brother Hugan's bedside, watching the old man sleep, cleared his throat. 'I might be able to help you there,' he told them. 'We use jinnen for so many things, we've huge stockpiles of it in the village.'

On the bridge of the Humphrey Bogart Humphrey Bogart, Kendle was checking the progress of the ship's auto-repair systems. Everything seemed to be coming along nicely. The doors at the rear of the bridge opened and Professor Shulough appeared.

'Another twelve hours and we should be able to take off. But without some trisilicate we won't get very far,' he told her. This didn't seem to be what the professor wanted to hear. 'Then we'd better confirm now one way or another whether this is Guillan's paradise. If it is Laylora, trisilicate shouldn't be a problem,' she reminded him. She then said that she was intending to visit the village with the Doctor, Rose and the human boy, Rez.

Kendle, as conscious of security as ever, didn't think this was a good idea. 'It might be dangerous. I think I should come with you.'

The professor shook her head. 'There's no need. The Doctor's made up some more jinnen solution enough to deal with those creatures if we should run into any.'

'OK, but be careful,' he insisted.

Sadly, he watched her leave the bridge. What had happened to the bright-eyed young woman he remembered so vividly on her graduation day? He shook his head slowly. It was no good thinking about the past; that Petra Shulough was long gone. And in his heart he knew why.

Trying to put his concerns about the professor out of his mind, he 109 turned back to the job in hand. He just hoped she would find what she was really looking for. Whatever that was.

Rez had been left alone in the MedLab, to keep an eye on the recovering shaman. The old Layloran was sleeping more peacefully now and some colour had returned to his cheeks. Rez hoped he was going to be all right. The tribe needed him more than ever in the present crisis, even if his ideas were a little oldfashioned.

Across the room was the bed that had, until recently, been occupied by the other patient, the female crew member called Baker. Thinking about what had happened to her, he now felt a terrible guilt. It had been one of the Witiku that had nearly killed her and that meant one of his tribe. How could a Layloran be turned into a creature like that? It seemed like magic, the sort of mystical event that Brother Hugan was always talking about, but Rez couldn't believe in stuff like that. Especially here in this s.p.a.ceship, surrounded by high technology. And yet. . . he had witnessed it with his own eyes: one moment it had been a Witiku, one of Laylora's legendary guardians, the next it had been Brother Hugan. Had this kind of transformation happened before in the distant past? Was that the source of the legends? Brother Hugan coughed and opened his eyes.

Rez turned to give him his full attention. 'How are you?' he asked anxiously.

The old man's eyes flickered around the room, panicky.

'It's all right,' Rez a.s.sured him. 'You're safe now.' He gripped the old man's hand and was shocked at how frail it felt. How could it have been a ma.s.sive taloned paw before?

The old man's lips were moving but no sound was coming out. Rez leaned closer to the old man's mouth. 'Water,' he croaked in a parched whisper.

Rez looked around the room there was no sign of a jug of any kind. But he remembered seeing Rose get water from somewhere one of the machines, but which one? He crossed the room to where Rose had been standing. It must have been on this side of the room, 110 he thought. And then, without warning, something exploded on the back of his head and he fell to the ground.

Professor Shulough found the door to her quarters open and frowned. She was sure she'd left it locked, as she always did. Moving cautiously into the room, she discovered the reason for her confusion. It was the Doctor. He and the girl Rose were looking through her paradise collection all the artefacts and bits of evidence that she had acc.u.mulated during her search.

'Don't you understand the concept of privacy?' she asked, but if she was hoping to surprise the stranger she was sorely disappointed. He glanced up, as if he'd been waiting for her, and then looked back at the flight report he'd found. 'Ah, there you are. Ready to go, are we?'

The professor grabbed the sketchbook that Rose was looking at and dropped it back into its folder. 'Do you mind? This is private,' she insisted.

'Sorry,' said Rose. 'We were only looking.'

'Clues,' explained the Doctor, rather obliquely. 'Is this all the stuff you have on the so-called Paradise Planet?'

'Yes, and it's taken me years and a small fortune to bring it all together. I'm not about to start sharing it now.' Angrily, she s.n.a.t.c.hed the flight records from the Doctor's grasp.

He looked up and smiled innocently. 'But you think you've solved the mystery, don't you? You think this is the Paradise planet that Guillan found?'

The professor swallowed hard as the Doctor's intense brown eyes seemed to bore deep inside her. He was a hard man to argue with.

'I think so, yes.'

'So what does all this matter now? It's academic if this is the place you have been looking for.'

She couldn't fault the logic of that.

'But if this stuff does relate to this planet,' continued the Doctor, pausing to flash a grin at her, 'then it might just tell us something about what's going on with the shape-shifting locals and all that.'111.

Rose frowned. 'They're shape-shifters?'

'Well, no, not as such. Not in the cla.s.sic sense,' admitted the Doctor.

'Not like your Axon or your Zygon, or any other gon come to that. . . '

Rose gave the professor a sympathetic look he was off again, blithering.

'But they did change shape, or transform,' continued the Doctor, getting back to the point, 'and I for one would like to know why.'

'And have you found anything?' asked the professor levelly. The Doctor's face fell. 'No,' he admitted. 'So let's try plan B.'

Rose smiled. 'There's a plan B?' she teased him, sounding surprised.

'That makes a change.'

'There's a plan C too,' he murmured in a slightly menacing way, 'which involves taking you home and leaving you with your mother for a couple of weeks, so don't push it!' And then he was off, his long legs propelling him to the door at most people's jogging speed. 'Come on, then. Let's go and see the natives. I hear they're friendly.'

And at that point, as if to throw doubt on his a.s.sertion, Rez appeared staggering down the corridor, clutching the back of his head.

'What happened to you?' asked Rose, worried.

'Brother Hugan,' he replied simply.

The Doctor was concerned. 'He hit you?'

Rez nodded and then instantly winced, the sudden movement doing nothing for the state of his head, which was throbbing with pain. 'Hit me and then ran off.'

'Right,' said the Doctor commandingly. 'Let's get you something for that headache and then we'd better go after him, before he does anything stupid.'

'This might sting a bit,' warned the professor as she dabbed at the back of his head with a medicated cleansing wipe. Rez winced. She wasn't wrong.

'I'll put a dressing on it,' she told him. 'It'll speed up the healing.'

Rez looked at the professor as she searched through the cabinet for a bandage. For the first time since he had met her he was seeing 112 something akin to a caring side. Perhaps his initial evaluation had been too harsh.

'Thank you,' he said with genuine grat.i.tude as she gently fixed the dressing in place with a spray of instant plaster.

'You're young, fit. You'll recover from this in no time.' She smiled and looked suddenly much younger. 'You must have been through much worse, living alone among aliens.'

Rez shrugged. 'I never really thought about it,' he said. The professor raised a quizzical eyebrow. 'Never?' she asked, not really believing him. 'Are you telling me you never stop and think about where you came from? You realise you must have family somewhere. . . '

'Maybe not never,' he confessed. 'But what's the point? My life is here. Whatever world I came from before I was sent here. . . it's lost to me for ever.'

Not now, thought the professor, but she kept the thought to herself as Rez jumped down from the examination table he had been perched on.

'Am I OK to go?' he asked.

The professor nodded. 'Sure. Let's get on the trail of your shaman.'

In the forest Brother Hugan was running like the wind, driven by the voice in his head. Laylora was calling to him. She needed him to act. The humans were killing her with their very presence, only Brother Hugan could help her. That's why she had chosen him to take the form of the Witiku. And why he had been chosen again to do her bidding.

Ignoring the branches and ferns that whipped his body as he ran recklessly through the trees, Brother Hugan felt an enormous joy. At last his studies had been justified. The ancient Laylorans had known their own world well and that wisdom had been all but lost. Brother Hugan alone had kept the sacred flame of that knowledge alight and now, at last, he had been rewarded for this loyalty. He knew what he had to do. He had to rouse his people and lead them in battle against the enemy. The aliens and their stinking, dirty technology must be removed from the planet by force. Laylora must be cleansed. 113 Oblivious to anything else, Brother Hugan ran on, a man possessed. The Doctor was following the trail of the escaping shaman.

'It looks like he's heading in the same direction we are,' he observed.

'But aren't the tribe at the temple?' asked Rose. 'We took shelter there from the Witiku attack.'

'They will have returned to the village by now,' Rez told her. 'Life must go on.'

'But surely the creatures could attack again? They could take more of you off and create more Witiku. Another couple of nights like last night and there will be more of the creatures than there are villagers.'

The Doctor shook his head, dismissing Rose's a.n.a.lysis. 'No, that won't happen. I won't let it.'

Rose knew that tone in his voice. It was calm and cool but hard as iron. No second chances.

The four of them hurried on through the forest, Rez leading the way, followed by Rose and then the Doctor and Professor Shulough bringing up the rear. The Doctor dropped back to fall into step alongside the professor.

'What's it all about, then, this quest of yours?' he asked, without preamble.

She looked at him sideways with a degree of suspicion.

'You know what it's about. I've been searching for the Paradise Planet,' she replied.

'Oh, I know what you've been doing,' he went on cheerfully, 'but I want to know why why.'

'Why does anyone do anything?'

'The usual reasons: fame, money, love. . . But you've spent years on this quest, and a fair bit of cash too, I'd say, although I'd steer clear of whoever sold you that ship in the future I reckon the mileage clock's been reset on that one, if you know what I mean. . . But my point is. . . ' He trailed off, having taken himself down a cul-de-sac for once.

'What is my point?' He pondered for a moment and then continued with renewed vigour: 'Oh yes, you. And your quest. Because that's what it is, isn't it? A good oldfashioned quest.'114.

The professor shrugged. 'I suppose so.'

The Doctor shook his head. 'Nah, come off it. You can't fool me. This is something big, isn't it? Like a grail quest. . . Hold on, that's it, isn't it? It's not the object of the cla.s.sic quest that matters, it's the journey itself that's important.'

Pleased with himself, the Doctor was almost bouncing along the path. The professor, meanwhile, just regarded him with cold eyes.

'What kind of doctor are you? Some kind of shrink? I don't need a psychiatrist,' she told him firmly.

'I'm just interested, that's all.'

'Well, find a new hobby to take up!' she spat back at him, and with that she extended her stride and moved ahead of the Doctor, curtailing any further conversation.

The Doctor watched as she strode ahead purposefully, trying to figure her out. There was something there. Underneath all the bl.u.s.ter and hardness there was a human heart beating inside that woman, he was sure of it. He'd seen the way she had reacted to Rez. Something about the orphan's story had touched her, he was sure of it. At first glance when they reached the village everything looked normal, but then Rose realised that everyone was busy repairing torn tents or cleaning up debris. The Witiku attack had come before they'd had a chance to fully recover from the earth tremor, so there was plenty to be done. All the villagers who had escaped to the temple ruins last night seemed to have returned and they appeared determined to get back to normality as quickly as possible. Mother Jaelette and Kaylen were the first to greet them, welcoming Rez home with big hugs. They were polite but less enthusiastic in their greetings to Rose and her companions. Rose introduced the Doctor and the professor and told the Laylorans that they had both come to help. Rose was giving the professor the benefit of the doubt here, but hoped she wouldn't be proved wrong. Rez began to tell them about Brother Hugan but they stopped him.

'We already know,' Kaylen told him. 'He's in his tent. He came back a little while ago.'115.

'How is he?' demanded the Doctor.

Mother Jaelette looked worried. 'He was babbling incoherently, making no sense at all. We tried to calm him down and get him to talk to us, but he just collapsed. We've put him in his tent and given him water, but he's no better.'

The Doctor asked to be taken to see him, explaining that he needed urgent medical attention. Kaylen and Rez accompanied him immediately, leaving Rose and the professor with Mother Jaelette. The two older women regarded each other with suspicion. Rose felt that Friday night feeling, the one you get when somebody knocks over a drink or calls the wrong girl something unpleasant and you just know there'll be a nasty silence that can only end in a fight.

'Well, this is nice,' she said brightly, hoping to defuse the moment without the need for violence.

'Your sky boat landed in our forest,' said Mother Jaelette eventually.

'A forced landing,' replied the professor. 'The damage was limited.'

'Not to the forest!'

'I meant to the ship,' stated the professor, cool as ever.

'The forest is more important than your sky boat,' Mother Jaelette threw back at her.

Rose knew she had to break this apart. She was sure this wasn't the way first contact was meant to go.

'Look, we can see you've got a lot on right now,' she started, addressing the tribeswoman. 'Why don't we ' she gestured at the professor inclusively 'have a wander round, get out of your hair, eh?'

It seemed for a moment as if Mother Jaelette wanted to do something a little more permanent than removing the human from her hair, but she took the opportunity Rose was offering her and withdrew.

'I do have things to do,' she conceded. 'Try not to get in anyone's way.' And then she was gone.

Rose let out a sigh of relief. 'That wasn't a barrel of laughs, was it?' she said, but the professor just shrugged and moved off. Rose hurried after her. Somebody had to try and keep the moody cow out of trouble and it looked as if Rose had been volunteered for the task. 116 'Fascinating jewellery,' observed the professor after they had been walking around the village for a short while.

'Yeah, amazing, isn't it?' said Rose, glad to hear something approaching enthusiasm in the woman's voice for once.

'Can those really be trisilicate crystals?'

'I dunno. Here, have a look at one.'

Rose fished the crystal she'd picked up at the temple out of her jeans pocket and tossed it at the professor, who weighed it in her hands, then produced a pocket magnifying gla.s.s and started to examine it in more detail.

'This is incredible. It's perfect.'

'Yeah,' said Rose, affecting a casual att.i.tude. 'Apparently they're a real problem for the natives, mucking up their fields and all that.'

'They're abundant?' asked the professor, matching Rose for casualness now.