Then the bus gave up the ghost and toppled backwards, over the dune's lip. For sixty feet they shot down the hill, plunging deep into the sand. All four were thrown off balance again, landing in a heap.

When all was still, they stirred themselves. The Doctor was first on his feet.'Anything broken?'

No one had broken anything. Gila was helping Sam to her feet, and she shook him off brusquely.

Iris went straight on the offensive. 'You've wrecked my ship! You've put us into a big b.l.o.o.d.y hole in the ground! This is down to your impatience, Doctor! I hope you're satisfied.'

She flung open the bus's doors and sand came rushing in. They were buried a foot deep. She hopped out, followed by Gila.

'I thought it was a good idea,' the Doctor told Sam.

'It was,' she said.'You weren't to know she had a rubbishy TARDIS.'

'She did warn me, though. And Iwas getting impatient.'

'Look,' Sam said. 'We're over the mountains, safe. She should thank you.'

'Iris won't see it like that," he said glumly, following the others outside.

'And I forgot. Iris likes to do things for herself. I shouldn't nave interfered.'

Sam tutted. The Doctor was erratic in deciding who to be tactful with.

They found Iris and Gila staring at the ma.s.sive rise down which they had just plunged.

'We have to get all the way back up there,' Iris was saying sardonically.

'How do you suggest we manage that?'

'Fly?' said Sam.

'Not funny,' snapped Iris.

Gila grunted. 'We push it,' he said.

Even with Gila's prodigious strength, they made little headway. He and Sam and the Doctor pitted their combined weight against the back of the bus and pushed for all they were worth. Iris had plonked herself back in the driver's cab, ostensibly to steer, but Sam couldn't see the point in that. She had been about to point out that they'd be better off with Iris's help in pushing, but the Doctor had caught her eye. He was wary of further aggravating the old woman. But after they had spent a fruitless, sweaty hour moving the bus precisely nowhere, he was shouting up to the front, 'Are you sure you've got the handbrake off?'

Iris bellowed something filthy at him.

She tried the engines again, which spluttered and coughed dolefully.

Eventually they consented to turn the wheels a little, and the pushers got their hopes up slightly, as the tyres bit into the sand, and seemed at first to drag the vehicle a little way up the rise.

Great flurries of golden, jewelled sand were sent up into the air by the growling wheels. The Doctor produced, magician-like, a rope of handkerchiefs, for them to cover their noses and mouths as a small dust storm was kicked up around them. There was a terrible racket and, above it, came Iris's cry:'How are we doing, fellers?'

'Hopeless!' Gila shouted.'I think we're just digging it deeper into the sand.'

It was true, the bus was burying itself, even as it fought to be free. Iris switched off the engine.

She came stumping round to the back of the bus. She flung off her tiger-skin coat and rolled up her cardigan sleeves.'I'll have to have a go myself,' she said, giving them a bitter look, as if they hadn't been trying enough.

'It's stuck, Iris,' said the Doctor gently.'Don't push it.You'll do yourself a mischief'

'Are you saying I'm past it?' He tutted.'Well, help me everybody!'

Sam was slapping at her bare arms. 'I wish these insects would keep off.'

In the past hour they had been beset by over-large mosquitoes with violet wings. It was as if they had homed in on the stranded pa.s.sengers.

Sam said, 'Is it just me or are there more of them?'

The Doctor glanced around and then he stood very still.

Suddenly the air seemed thick with the things.

'We're being attacked,' he said, just as they became aware of how noisy the insects had grown.

'A swarm!' Iris gulped,and hurried back to her fur coat for protection. She clutched her head."They're in my hair!'

Only Gila, with his scabrous skin, seemed unaffected.

'Back inside!' the Doctor called.'Quickly!'

As they rounded the bus, however, they saw that the way to the doorway was blocked by a creature standing twice the Doctor's height. The very sight of it stopped them in their tracks. It was orange and muscled, and roaring with laughter, as the insects swarmed venomously around.

'It's a kabikaj,' the Doctor said.'A djinn of the insect world.'

Chapter Ten.

Standing Around Virtually Naked

Kabikaj. It was less of a wraith than the other djinn they had so far seen on this trip. Less of a flesh-eater, a ghostly fly-by-night. The creature that confronted them in the heart of the swarm was corporeal and gross. It looked as if it could knock down any of their party with one easy blow.

And it was still chuckling, low in its tautly muscled neck. The creature was like one whole muscle, Sam thought, dripping like something that had been basted for the oven. And it had its arms crossed, just like a genie in a pantomime.

The insects were getting to them. Sam felt as if she had been stung from head to toe. In a frantic moment she thought the beasts were scuttling into her head through her ears and nose, but that was mostly the noise - a torturous, incessant drone.

"They're being controlled by him, that creature,' roared Gila.'Make him stop!'

The Doctor raised his voice, slipping as he was occasionally wont to do, into imperious mode.'Are these things poisonous?'

The orange-skinned kabikaj threw back its head and laughed. Its lascivious features contorted with mirth.

'Don't give me that!' the Doctor shouted.'Answer!'

The djinn stopped laughing then and looked at him.

The Doctor was pleased.'They respond to commands, these djinn,' he told the others.'Like the genies in the old stories.'

'Do we get three wishes?' Sam asked.

'Not yet we don't,' said the Doctor grimly. 'Kabikaj, we demand safe pa.s.sage through this your realm.'

"This realm,' said the creature, in sonorous tones, 'belongs to me and my workers.You have disturbed us with your ugly, ugly vehicle.'

'Ugly!' cried Iris.

'Leave this to me,' the Doctor warned her. 'Kabikaj, call off your workers and let us go safely.'

The djinn considered, and then snapped his fingers. Instantly the thousands of insects halted on the air. They were suspended, silent, in a great thick cloud. The Doctor sighed.

'If you disappoint me,' said the kabikaj,'I will set them free once more.

Their stings are not fatal, but they will stay with you until your dying day.

They are very faithful, my workers.' He folded his arms almost nonchalantly.

'Kabikaj,' said the Doctor. 'We are on a very important mission, sent by the Scarlet Empress, who will be very angry if we fail to carry it out.'

The djinn tossed his head. 'I care little for the Empress. Her grandmother held me captive for many decades. Her sort doesn't scare me.'

'Quite,' said the Doctor, licking his dry lips. He felt his skin burning where it had been stung.'Kabikaj, we ask three things of you.'

'Continue,' he said, seemingly amused.

"That you ask your workers to go about their far more profitable business of making honey. That you salve the stings we have already incurred.

And that you lend your marvellous strength in helping us push our ugly, ugly vehicle back to the top of this sand dune.'

'And what,' said the Kabikaj,'will I receive in return for these favours?'

'Our undying grat.i.tude?' asked the Time Lord hopefully.

'Undying anything from mortals is a waste of time,' observed the djinn philosophically.

'He's right, you know,'put in Iris.'I've often thought that.'

"Then, perhaps, a gift,' said the Doctor.

'A gift, mortal?'

'Don't call me mortal, please,' said the Doctor, shivering.'Yes... how about...' He fiddled around in his capacious pockets. He produced a glob of pink jelly with tendons and suckers.'A Zygon... um, artefact?' The kabikaj snorted in derision.'A Dalek gun-stick?'

'I have no use for weapons.'

"Then how about... this?'And then the Doctor pulled out a sliver of blue crystal.

'A bauble?'

'No ordinary jewel. It is from Metebelis Three, in the Acteon galaxy.'

Iris shuddered. 'Don't go giving out blue crystals again. You know what happened last time.'

The Doctor ignored her.'As I say, this is no ordinary bauble. It is from the far future of Metebelis. It is a fossilised sliver of the mind of the Great One. The Queen of the Metebelian Spiders.'

'Give it to me,' urged the kabikaj.

The Doctor held the translucent fossil so that it caught the sun's glare and shone fabulously. Looking closely, they could see something moving, fluidly, deceptively, inside.

'I might own the mind of the Great One,' murmured the lumbering djinn.

'You might indeed,' said the Doctor.

'It's a deal,' grunted the creature, and s.n.a.t.c.hed the crystal out of his hands.

'Doctor, where do you get all of that old tat?' asked Sam.

'Tell your pet plague to go home,' the Doctor told the kabikaj, who was dreamily inspecting his prize. The djinn snapped his fingers and the insects roared into instant life once more. But, as one, they turned and flew off into the desert. The air was still again.

'Our stings,' prompted the Doctor.

All their painful b.u.mps and swellings disappeared.

'Now,' said Iris.'perhaps you'd get your friend to give us a lift up to the top.'

Even with the great brute's strength to help them, it still took a good part of the afternoon. But gradually, by agonising degrees, they made it. A few yards for every good, concerted shove, and Iris slammed on the handbrake while they regained their breath. Their progress was marked by the brake going on and her telling them how far they had yet to go. In these moments the kabikaj would absently take out his new prize and gaze at it.

Sam pulled the Doctor aside.

'I know what you're going to ask,' he said.

'What?'

'Not even I would be so ridiculous as to give that creature a piece of the Great Spider's mind. I picked that old thing up on the Portobello Road.'

'I wasn't going to ask that.'

'Oh. Never mind. Clever though, eh?'