'Well. I remembered this thing about how porcupines go mad for it,' she'd explained. 'They chew stuff to bits if someone's just touched it with sweaty hands, that's how much they love it. So I figured...'

The Doctor had interrupted her. 'These aren't porcupines! Porcupines don't, contrary to popular belief, shoot their quills at you. They don't walk upright. They don't carry little laser guns. And they don't, whatever David Attenborough might tell you, kidnap human beings and teleport them to an alien planet!'

Rose shrugged. 'Well, I knew it was a long shot...'

He'd grinned then. 'A bloomin' brilliant one!' And he'd given her a great big hug, swinging her off her feet. 'I'll never let anyone call you a dumb human again.'

'What, you mean they '

'Nah,' he'd interrupted again, laughing, and he took her hand and led her off down the street.

'Nah,' he said again now. 'We're going to figure that out when we get there. Easier that way. I hate having to keep rejigging a plan just cos there was something we didn't know about before we arrived.'

'Yeah, right,' said Rose. 'You've just got this seat*of*the*pants thing going. You'd get all bored if you'd got it sorted beforehand.'

He just smiled at that, as he pushed open the blue double doors; didn't confirm or deny.

Rose was sort of used to coming into the TARDIS now, in the same way Alexander Graham Bell's friends must have grown used to the miracle of being called up on the telephone after the first few times, but she still got a rush from it, the casual wandering into a wonderful alien environment, a machine that was, amazingly, bigger on the inside than the outside. That would have been astounding enough in itself, even without the whole 'travel to anywhere and anywhen' thing.

The Doctor held out a hand for the winning scratch*card as they walked up the ramp into the dark control room, and she pulled it out of her jeans pocket again, hoping the slight crease it in wouldn't have harmed whatever strange technology it was concealing.

She pa.s.sed it over, and the Doctor stuck the card into a slot in the console. The TARDIS always seemed to have exactly what was needed. Rose suspected that it somehow adapted itself to the Doctor's requirements, but she'd never managed to catch it out; never managed to spot something that she knew hadn't been there before, or found anything to be absent that had previously been present.

'Won't be long,' said the Doctor.

Rose hoped so, you really didn't want too much time to reflect before plunging into deadly danger. The Doctor flicked a few switches, and the thin column in the middle of the console began to pulse up and down, bathing the room in blue*green light. That meant they were in flight. That they were, as far as she could understand it, more or less nowhere. Travelling in the TARDIS was more like the Quevvils' teleportation than a rocket to the moon: you didn't have to take a detour round Saturn or risk getting stuck in a s.p.a.ceship jam at the edge of the Milky Way, you just... Well, actually, she'd leave the details to the Doctor. Just take it on trust for now.

The Doctor was mooching round the console, his hands in his pockets, occasionally peering down at something. He did not thrive on inactivity. 'Be there any second,' he said.

'Good,' said Rose, 'I ' But she suddenly found herself flying across the room. The TARDIS had lurched violently, like it had given a sudden enormous hiccup. She grabbed at one of the strange sculptures that decorated the room, a sort of Y-shaped thing that looked like a cross between a tree and a statue, and it arrested her flight. Using it for support, she managed to drag herself back to her feet.

'What was that?' she asked, shaken.

The Doctor was examining the console. 'We were repelled by something.'

'The force field around the Mantodean stronghold!' Rose realised. 'No teleporting, no TARDIS.'

The Doctor nodded. 'So that's Plan A out of the window.'

'Well, we were making it up as we went along,' said Rose, to sort of comfort him. 'We've landed somewhere, anyway.'

'Mm,' said the Doctor, getting his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket as if to check he still had it, then putting it back in again. 'I expect it's gone into default mode, taken us to exactly where the winning*card holders materialise. But the best way to find out '

'Is to go out,' completed Rose.

The Doctor opened the TARDIS doors, and Rose followed him outside.

THIRTEEN.

There were about fifteen people in the room. There were fourteen now, fourteen exactly. There were fourteen now, fourteen exactly. There always seemed to be about fifteen, because as fast as they took people away, new ones appeared. When the people materialised out of thin air they were usually upset and confused. If you'd been there for a while, you had to explain what was happening. Not that you really knew. Sometimes people had barely arrived before Percy the Porcupine came in and took them away. Sometimes, like Robert, you could be there for hours. No one knew where they took you, but everyone was scared, no one wanted to be picked. There always seemed to be about fifteen, because as fast as they took people away, new ones appeared. When the people materialised out of thin air they were usually upset and confused. If you'd been there for a while, you had to explain what was happening. Not that you really knew. Sometimes people had barely arrived before Percy the Porcupine came in and took them away. Sometimes, like Robert, you could be there for hours. No one knew where they took you, but everyone was scared, no one wanted to be picked.

His mum had done this really embarra.s.sing thing, crying and screaming for them to take her instead of him, trying to throw herself in front of him and stop the monsters from getting near him.

Some people said they probably ate you.

And they had picked her and that was real.

Robert didn't believe what the people said. He didn't believe that was what was happening.

'You won't hurt him! I won't let you take him!'

Robert didn't think the porcupines could really tell the humans apart, either; they weren't picking or leaving behind anyone in particular; it was just chance. Some people obviously thought they picked whoever was nearest to hand, and they tried hiding behind everyone else. Robert despised people like that, the cowards. But then other people pushed him to the back, tried to protect him because he was the youngest there, and although he told them not to he didn't push them out of the way, didn't yell, 'No, take me instead!' Not like his mum had.

He was desperate to be brave, desperate to be a hero, but it was his mum who'd been the real hero.

And heroes always came back. They always beat the odds against them.

At the moment, there was Robert, and there was the blonde girl and her mum. The girl's name was Sarah, not that she spoke to him, because girls didn't even in life*or*death situations, but he'd heard her mum call her that. Sarah's face swapped between the most perfect sneer and the most gorgeous pout Robert had ever seen. She'd cried a bit, at first, but now just looked bored. There were four couples at various degrees of agedness: the Nkomos (old: probably in their thirties), the Catesbys (very old: probably forties), the Snows (ancient: fifty or so) and the Atallas (in their sixties: practically dead). They were all new arrivals. Everyone kept out of the way of the Snows, who didn't seem to realise what was happening and kept trying to insist that they must talk to someone in charge.

There was a man called Daniel Goldberg, whose wife had been taken away, and who now just sat in a corner crying, and another man, probably aged twenty or so, who was wearing a suit and tie and had been virtually in hysterics since he arrived. He'd said his name was George, as far as he could be understood through all the whimpering and screaming, and Robert thought he was pathetic. He hoped he'd be taken next. Then there was an old granny called Mrs Pobjoy, who said it was just like the war and kept trying to organise sing*songs. At the moment, she was giving everyone a rousing chorus of 'Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag', but Robert really couldn't see that they had anything to smile, smile, smile about, although they might do if she stopped.

Suddenly a loud grating, rasping noise began echoing around the room. It sounded like some great engine grinding into life, and everyone started in terror. 'It's the mincing machine!' shouted George. 'They're going to eat us all!' He tried to grab Mrs Nkomo to pull her in front of him. Mr Nkomo pushed him back and looked as if he was about to punch George. Robert didn't blame him.

But then the thing appeared, and grabbed everyone's attention. If it was a mincing machine, it was stranger although less scary than any Robert could imagine. The thing arrived out of nowhere: a blue box, taller than a man, with a flashing light on top and little windows high up on the sides sort of like a small blue shed, only it had the words 'Police Public Call Box' written on it.

Everyone stood staring at it for what seemed like a very long time, but was really only seconds. Mrs Atalla said to her husband, 'It's a police box. Like they used to have,' and her husband said, 'I remember.' They stared at it, standing hand in hand, which was pretty disgusting for people of their age.

Then the doors of the police box opened, and a man stepped out.

He was a tall man who looked a bit like some of the trendier teachers at school he had really short hair, and was wearing a really cool battered leather jacket that Robert coveted immediately. If Robert's dad ever did turn up, he'd like him to be a man who looked like that. And, actually, he'd quite like him to be a man who appeared out of nowhere in a blue box as well.

And then the second person came out of the box, and Robert forgot all about the man, and all about Sarah the blonde sneering girl, and about his mum, and even all about Suzie Price, because this was the girl he was going to love for ever. She was totally beautiful and utterly cool and just, well, perfect. She was probably about eighteen or nineteen, but that wouldn't matter because he was really mature for his age, and she had dark blonde hair past her shoulders and a wide, smiling mouth that was even more desirable than Sarah the blonde sneering girl's, and as she left the blue box her eyes met his and she smiled, and he knew that she felt it too, the connection between them.

The girl pushed past her companion and headed straight for Robert. She had eyes for no one else. And she held out her hands towards him, and he took them in his, and she said just the one word, 'h.e.l.lo,' and then she grinned at him.

He said breathlessly, 'I'm Robert.'

She said, 'I know. We've come here for you, Robert. I've come here for you. Because you're special. I've been wanting to meet you for so long.'

He said. 'I've been wanting to meet you too, although I hardly dared to believe that there was someone so beautiful in the world.'

She leaned towards him, she was going to take him in her arms, and he stood strong and tall and closed his eyes, and said, 'I don't even know your name...'

He opened his eyes. The girl was standing behind the tall man, in the doorway of the police box. 'All right,' said the man in a northern accent, looking round at everyone, 'We're the rescue party.'

And Robert smiled for real.

The room they'd landed in was totally grim, a bleak concrete sh.e.l.l. A group of people were huddled in one corner, staring at the Doctor and Rose: mainly adults, but a couple of kids too, one boy and one girl. They all had small metal discs stuck to their foreheads, like Mrs Hall and the lad they'd seen in the game.

'We're gonna take you home,' said Rose, stepping forward. There were disbelieving smiles from the crowd; one man threw himself on the ground and started weeping.

A moustached man pushed himself to the front of the group. 'Are you in charge here?' he said. 'I have a serious complaint to make!'

Next to him, bizarrely, an elderly woman began to sing, 'There'll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover...'

'Don't think you'll find any bluebirds in England, love,' said the Doctor. 'Now, blue boxes, on the other hand...' He gave an exaggerated, ringmaster's gesture towards the TARDIS. 'If I could trouble you all to walk this way...'

The door to the room thudded open, and two Quevvils stood in the doorway, with several more behind them. Their heads were down and their quills bristling.

'Inside, now!' barked the Doctor, but the instant they sprang towards the TARDIS, before the poor people in the corner had taken even a single step, a barrage of quills soared through the air, tinkling on to the concrete floor at their feet. A few stuck into the sides of the TARDIS.

'That was just a warning!' called the lead Quevvil, as they all froze on the spot.

The first two Quevvils slowly came into the room.

And with them was a human. A human Rose recognised. It was Darren Pye.

'What on Earth is he doing here?' she cried out to the Doctor. 'I thought he was dead!'

'No such luck,' said the Doctor. 'He's the one who was nicking the games and selling them on the Internet.'

And she realised the rest, wondered why she hadn't worked it out before. They'd heard someone outside, thought it was the person who'd nicked Mickey's telly. He'd have heard everything they said, about the games, about the holidays, about the aliens. And he went down the stairs and met Jackie and had taken her ticket and her phone. Wouldn't have used the ticket himself, not knowing what it represented. Sold it straight away, and before you could say Jack Robinson the poor guy who'd bought it had ended up dying here, on this planet.

'I thought I recognised the voice when he offered to send my unwanted old aunt a winning scratchcard for 500 quid,' said the Doctor. He raised his voice. 'Must have been a b.u.mmer when you found out how much you could get for them, when you'd already sold Jackie's ticket and the phone. What did you get that time? Twenty quid? Thirty?'

Darren Pye just scowled at them. But one of the kids, the boy, started forward. 'Johnny Deans,' he cried. 'He said he'd bought his ticket off someone down the pub for 30, and they threw in a mobile too. He was only here for five minutes before they took him.' The boy paused, and looked at his watch. 'That was about two and a half hours ago.'

'That'd be about right,' said Rose quietly. She'd known Johnny Deans from school, not properly or anything, but she knew who he was. Darren Pye used to beat him up, she remembered. Ultimate act of bullying, this. Johnny probably wondered why his old enemy was doing him a favour. Now she was thinking of those desperate, dying sounds on the telephone. Thinking of how she hadn't been able to feel sorry about the death. Now she knew it had been someone else dying, someone she'd no grudge against, her stomach suddenly flipped with guilt.

The remaining Quevvils had entered the room; there were now five in all, far too many for the Doctor or Rose to risk trying anything. The lead Quevvil pointed at Rose. 'Prepare the human,' it said. Which didn't sound good at all.

The Doctor jumped in front of her. 'You're not doing anything to her,' he said.

'You have no choice,' replied the Quevvil. He was smiling smugly at the Doctor. 'You will play the game for us and that human ' he indicated Rose 'will be your carrier. If you resist, we will kill that one, and one of these humans ' now he pointed at the cowering group in the corner 'will act as your carrier instead.'

'Just take her!' yelled someone from the group the young man who'd been sobbing on the floor. Rose developed an instant and overwhelming dislike for him. 'Leave us alone, please!'

The Doctor hadn't moved, but the Quevvils' quills were beginning to bristle again. Better to take her chance with being a 'carrier' than a pointed death here and now. Rose stepped forwards, trying not to look nervous. A young, hesitant voice called out, 'Don't worry. It doesn't really hurt.' She turned to see the boy who'd spoken before pointing at the metal disc in the middle of his forehead. So that's what they were going to do to her first. She gave the boy a smile, thanking him for the comfort, trying to show she wasn't afraid.

As she pa.s.sed the Doctor, he suddenly swept her into a great hug. For a moment it scared her: perhaps he really did think this was goodbye, perhaps he didn't think he could rescue her... But then she felt him pressing something into her hand, and she realised the over*the*top embrace was just a distraction. As the Quevvils shouted at them to stop, and the Doctor drew back from her, Rose hurriedly shoved the Doctor's sonic screwdriver up the left sleeve of her top.

Two of the Quevvils came with her, and led her down a depressingly grey corridor. She made no effort to get away hard to run from creatures who could spray needle*sharp quills down the length of the corridor, and anyway, where would she run to?

At the end of the corridor was a door, and the Quevvils took her into a room.

The first thing she noticed was the window. She'd known that Toop was a desert planet, and she'd seen bits of it on the screen via Death to Mantodeans Death to Mantodeans, but it was still a shock to come face to face with it. Somehow she'd expected a desert to resemble an enormous version of Southend, only with fewer ice*cream sellers and more oases, but it was nothing like.

The sky... the sky wasn't a glorious holiday blue, it was a dull blue, a grey*blue, so pale as to be almost colourless. The sun was harshly white: glaringly bright, but lifeless. And even the ground disappointed, she could tell it wasn't deep, soft sand, the sort you'd make castles out of or even ride a camel across it was more like dead ground: dusty and yellow and parched. And it was bleak. All she could see in the distance was a single structure, a dull ochre mound that did actually look a bit like someone had upturned a bucket of sand and produced a truncated cone with one tap of their spade. She reckoned that must be the Mantodean place. Only a few kilometres away. A local war.

The Quevvil holding her snarled, and she started. But it was snarling at the view. 'A world blighted by Mantodeans,' it said. 'But not for much longer...'

'Have you ever thought of, you know, just trying to be friends?' said Rose. The Quevvils ignored that, and the second one grabbed hold of her arm. 'Ow!' she said. 'Or you could just put up curtains so they don't spoil your view...' They took no notice of that, either.

There were several workbenches in the room, and one Quevvil led dragged her over to one on the far side, away from the window. It kept hold of her, as the other picked up a metal disc, and held it to Rose's head. She instinctively tried to back away, but only succeeded in standing on the foot of the Quevvil holding her. It pushed her forward impatiently, and the second Quevvil then slammed the disc against her forehead.

The disc had little claws sticking out of it on one side, and to her horror it didn't stick on to her forehead like she'd expected, it stuck into into her forehead. She could feel the claws grab hold, push their way into the flesh, and then clench up, as if they were making a fist. It was a horrible experience, but to her surprise the boy had been right, it didn't really hurt; just a short, sharp shock like having your ears pierced, then a nagging unpleasantness, but no actual lingering pain. her forehead. She could feel the claws grab hold, push their way into the flesh, and then clench up, as if they were making a fist. It was a horrible experience, but to her surprise the boy had been right, it didn't really hurt; just a short, sharp shock like having your ears pierced, then a nagging unpleasantness, but no actual lingering pain.

Then one of the Quevvils pressed a b.u.t.ton on a small silver box, and the pain began.

Or maybe it wasn't pain. But it was the most unpleasant sensation. Something was happening inside her. The feeling started at the disc on her forehead and slowly spread throughout her body. It was as if tiny wires were threading themselves along every nerve. Worst of all, she couldn't react: couldn't shout or back way; couldn't move a single muscle.

The Quevvil then picked up a small metal cube. Rose realised what it was doing this was like the beginning of the game, only she wasn't in a t.i.tle sequence, they were preparing her to play for real.

The cube was on a thick metal wire, and the Quevvil hung it around her neck, twisting it so the wire encircled her like a noose. Two more wires, taken under her arms, were attached behind Rose's back. Without cutting the wire or removing her head it would be impossible to get rid of the cube.

She watched the Quevvil who had been holding her go over to a device on the wall, just like one she'd seen on the wall of their underground lair back in London. It spoke into it: 'Is the controller ready?'

'The controller is ready,' a voice confirmed. 'You will dispatch the carrier.'

'Understood.'

The Quevvil did something at the control panel. Rose had a split second to register the tang in the air that spoke to her of the Quevvils' teleportation devices. And then she was somewhere else.

FOURTEEN.

The man had let the wonderful girl be taken by the porcupines. Robert couldn't believe it. He'd only just met her, and she was being taken from him already.

Mind you, the man really didn't seem happy about it. He wasn't doing anything now, but from the way he looked, Robert was pretty sure he wasn't just going to accept the situation.

The tall man turned to the nearest porcupine. 'I was planning on just rescuing everyone and, you know, maybe destroying your technology so you wouldn't do it again,' he said conversationally, acting totally coolly about it all. 'If she gets hurt, though, this planet's dust. Just thought I'd mention it.'

Yeah, thought Robert. Dust. If they hurt her, he'd be there helping this man smash it all up.

The other man, the ugly one who had come in with the porcupines, snorted with laughter. 'You and whose army?'