As soon as Rose had started the final approach to the centre, Frinel had ordered the Quevvils into the yellow*lit shower cubicles, which apparently were teleport booths. Nearly every Quevvil had squeezed in, leaving only one or two manning the various bits and pieces around the room.

Frinel himself was standing outside the nearest booth. The Quevvil called Herryan was in place to activate the disruptors, and then, the instant they were switched on, to teleport the Quevvils across to the heart of the Mantodean stronghold.

'I shall lead the charge myself,' Frinel had announced. 'It is only fitting.' He waved his fist in the air triumphantly. 'Final victory approaches!'

The final lock was the trickiest yet. Rose avoided the acid flow and the razor blades that thudded out at head height, while standing at the top of a sheer cliff, and finally cracked the code. Or rather, the Doctor did all that.

The door opened. A hundred Mantodeans turned to look at her.

'Mickey, now!' she found herself yelling.

'Herryan, now!' cried Frinel.

Herryan's paw shot out, and hit the b.u.t.ton activating the disruptors. The screen in front of the Doctor went blank. Barely a split second later, the paw moved to hit the b.u.t.ton activating the teleporters.

Robert felt his hair spring up on his head, the air full of static. There was a smell like lemon washing*up liquid, and all the Quevvils vanished.

The heads of everyone remaining turned to stare as the door of the room smashed to the floor. Through the doorway fell Mr Nkomo, Mrs Nkomo, Mr Snow, Rachel Goldberg, Mr Johnson, Anne something or other, Tim Breeley and the j.a.panese girl, propelled forward by their momentum, each with a disruptor strapped to his or her chest.

The yellow lights of the teleport booths snapped out.

Every screen, dial and read*out in the room died instantly.

And, for a moment, there was silence.

Then, 'I think all your mates have just been atomised,' said the Doctor to the two remaining Quevvils. 'It might be an idea for you to surrender now.'

Back on Earth, the one remaining player of Death to Mantodeans Death to Mantodeans shook his control pad, tried thumping the games console, and switched the TV on and off a couple of times. Nothing seemed to work. He looked at his watch, and saw it was the middle of the night. How long had he been playing that game for? He realised he was really quite hungry and tired now. Plus, wasn't it supposed to be bad for your eyes? He'd get a sandwich, go to bed, and maybe try the game again in the morning. It might have sorted itself out by then. shook his control pad, tried thumping the games console, and switched the TV on and off a couple of times. Nothing seemed to work. He looked at his watch, and saw it was the middle of the night. How long had he been playing that game for? He realised he was really quite hungry and tired now. Plus, wasn't it supposed to be bad for your eyes? He'd get a sandwich, go to bed, and maybe try the game again in the morning. It might have sorted itself out by then.

And 100 miles away, a man who had agreed to pay 500 for something that would rid him of his wife once and for all lay tossing and turning in his bed, wondering if he'd made a terrible mistake, wondering if he'd been ripped off, wondering if the promised ticket would ever arrive, wondering if he really hated her quite that much after all...

Robert was feeling quite dazed. He couldn't quite believe that the Doctor had done it. 'Had to get everyone across the desert first, had to drag things out long enough for them to make it. Then split*second timing,' the Doctor had said. 'Those things only work at very close range. Had to be near enough to get here when the teleporter was still in operation, while the Quevvils were still streaming through the air as their component atoms but not so soon that they'd muck it all up as soon as the disruptor signal was sent. Then we'd've just had a pile of angry Quevvils on our hands, and that'd be no good to anybody.' He'd smiled then. 'I suppose that Mickey's not so useless after all.' He put a finger to his lips, and hissed to Robert, 'But don't tell him I said so.'

'But what about Rose?' said Robert, hardly daring to think about what might have happened to the wonderful girl.

The Doctor looked really solemn for a second. Then he gave a sort of half*smile, an 'of course it's all right, honest' smile. He looked round to where the Nkomos were hugging, and Rachel and Daniel Goldberg were clinging to each other as if they'd never let go, and Mr Snow was saying to Mrs Snow that they were certainly never coming here again, and they'd be writing a strongly worded letter to the company.

'I didn't know if the disruptors would knock out the control system,' he said. 'I thought they would couldn't be sure though. Bit scared I was leaving Rose frozen solid in the middle of a bunch of Mantodeans. But she'll be all right.'

'But what about the bunch of Mantodeans?' asked Robert, who'd seen the screen in the instant before the signal had been cut off. He hoped that was all that had been cut off.

'She'll be all right,' the Doctor reiterated. 'But it wouldn't hurt to go and see...'

Every light died. Every technological hum cut out.

'Crikey,' whispered Rose. She said it to herself, in her head, but was astonished to hear the sound come out of her mouth. She could speak again! She tried moving a foot. Yes! She could walk again!

Her delight was slightly tempered by the realisation that she was going to have to get out of this room full of Mantodeans without any of those superpowers the control device had given her.

This room full of Mantodeans who were all looking at her. 'What have you done!' screeched one. Rose was surprised. She'd never heard a Mantodean speak before, she'd been a.s.suming they were just dumb monsters, beasts acting on instinct. How stupid she'd been how could dumb monsters have created a maze like this, and puzzles and traps like those she'd encountered?

'You can speak!' she said.

There was a collective hiss from the Mantodeans. 'It talks! It talks!'

The Mantodean who first spoke stepped forward. 'If it talks, if it is not a dumb beast like the others, then it will explain why it has done this to us, before we crush its thorax and it can talk no more!'

'Hang on a minute,' said Rose. 'I... I think there've been a lot of crossed wires here. You thought humans were animals, we thought you were monsters...' This didn't seem to be going down too well, so she changed tack. 'Look, the Quevvils ' there was a hissing from the Mantodeans 'the Quevvils have been kidnapping my people, humans, and sending them over here to get into your stronghold. They couldn't get in, but they'd developed this disruptor ' she tapped her chest 'so they could knock out your defences and teleport in.' She looked around. 'Thought they'd be here by now. Although obviously I'm glad they're not.'

'You are an ally of the Quevvils?' snapped a Mantodean.

'No!' she said. 'They've been forcing us to do this. Really forcing, so we couldn't move for ourselves, or even speak. Look, it's nothing to do with me. Please, if I could just go, I'll never bother you again... I'm really sorry for what's happened.'

But the first Mantodean was coming towards her, and its mandibles were opening. 'You brought this "disruptor" into the centre of our stronghold!' it said. 'You have destroyed all our technology! You have brought all our defences down!'

'I'm really sorry,' said Rose, backing away, trying desperately to see if there was anywhere to run to. But the Mantodeans behind her were closing in. And the jaws in front of her were opening wider and wider, getting closer and closer...

Snap!

The Mantodean's jaws crunched shut.

Rose, to her great surprise, still had a head. The disruptor, however, now lay at her feet, the steel*strong straps now neatly severed.

'We shall study this,' said the Mantodean. 'We shall learn how to reverse the damage it has done, and we shall revenge ourselves on the Quevvils!'

The Mantodeans began to crowd round, legs and feelers reaching out to the disruptor, suggesting this thing or that thing to try. Rose whispered, 'So can I go now?' and began to back away again without waiting for an answer. They were all distracted. She should really leave before they began to, for example, notice her again.

Wonderfully, the power loss had affected all the doors, all the traps and puzzles. She felt elated at first, thinking it was going to be a cinch getting out. But of course it wasn't. The power loss had affected all the lights too. The more she thought back to those hours wandering the maze of tunnels, and that was with the Doctor to guide her... and how on Earth was she going to get over all those pits and things in the dark? She was fit, and she was athletic, but she wasn't, much as she'd like to be, Wonder Woman.

She'd thought the adventure was over, but perhaps it was just beginning.

TWENTY*ONE With indecent haste, while everyone was still trying to come to terms with things, the Doctor had dashed about removing all the control disks, and then sorted out the teleport system back to Earth 'Can you fix it?' Robert had asked, cringing that he was making the Doctor sound like Bob the Builder but 'Yes, I can,' was the reply, 'it's on a separate circuit, no worries.' And the Doctor had zapped everyone back to Earth. He'd then proceeded to smash the teleport controls with a large spanner.

Robert who had begged, pleaded and behaved like a total brat to be allowed to stay with the Doctor got a bit panicky, but the Doctor a.s.sured him he'd allowed enough time for everyone to rematerialise on Earth before he destroyed the teleporter.

'You'll just have to go home in my s.p.a.ceship,' the Doctor told Robert.

And Robert wasn't going to argue with that.

Rose was inching her way very, very carefully down a very, very steep slope, when she heard someone crying. 'h.e.l.lo?' she called out. 'Is there anyone there?'

The crying stopped, choked off. 'h.e.l.lo?' said a woman's voice. 'Oh, I'm here, I'm here!'

Rose scrambled down the rest of the way. Her night vision was getting better, and she thought she could just see the dim figure of a woman. 'I'm coming!' she called.

'Stop!' the woman called back, turning towards Rose in a panic. Rose scrambled to stop her feet carrying on forward of their own volition. In the dark, she'd not noticed the pit in front of her.

She grabbed the arm of the woman. 'Thanks!' she said. 'I'd have gone right in!'

It looked as if the woman half smiled. 'Don't thank me yet,' she said. 'I think we're trapped.'

Rose turned round. Behind them was the steep slope. Hard enough to slide down. Impossible to climb up. In front of them was the pit. And there was no other way out.

The box might say 'Police Public Call Box' on the outside, but the Doctor told him that was just for disguise. It was quite a disguise! Because inside, inside the s.p.a.ceship...

Robert thought his eyes were going to explode as he tried to take it all in.

'This is your s.p.a.ceship?' he said. 'Really? It really belongs to you?'

'Uh*huh,' said the Doctor casually, but he gave Robert a huge grin. 'Brilliant, isn't it?!'

'And you and Rose...?'

'Travel round the universe doing good deeds, yeah. Well, and having a bit of fun. Sometimes.'

'So she's really... like, your a.s.sistant. Like Robin, or something.'

The Doctor snorted. 'a.s.sistant? Rose, right? She travels with me. In my time machine. You'd think I'd be the boss, yeah? Yeah, right. There've been times I wouldn't've minded one of them little silver boxes, I tell you it'd make things a whole lot easier...'

But Robert was no longer listening. His attention had well and truly been caught by something at the beginning of the Doctor's rant. 'Time machine.' machine.'

The Doctor snorted again, but he was grinning again too. 'Yeah, yeah, I can take you to the furthest corners of the universe, I say, to infinity and beyond, and everyone's always, oh that's nice, that's good, but as soon as I mention it travels in time time as well...' He flicked a switch on this amazingly bizarre-o giant glowing mushroom in the middle of the fantastic control room. 'Rose was just the same. And talking of Rose...' as well...' He flicked a switch on this amazingly bizarre-o giant glowing mushroom in the middle of the fantastic control room. 'Rose was just the same. And talking of Rose...'

'How are we going to find her, though?' asked Robert.

'Oh, the TARDIS'll manage, now the force field's down,' said the Doctor. 'I can't quite work out why, but she seems to have taken a shine to that girl.'

And he pulled a lever, and the room was suddenly flooded with green light. 'We're off!' said the Doctor. And Robert thought it was the most exciting thing that had happened to him in his entire life.

Rose was wondering if she could find a way of getting the sonic screwdriver to melt stone, so she could make handholds down the side of the pit, see if there were any exits at the bottom. It seemed a stupid, impractical plan, but it was the only one she had just at the moment, apart from the even more useless one about making a very long rope out of all their clothes. For a start, it almost certainly wouldn't be long enough, for another, they'd then be running around in their undies, and for a third, the flimsy fabrics probably wouldn't take the weight anyway. Shame it didn't tell you on the little label inside 100 per cent cotton, wash at 40 degrees, do not tumble*dry, able to support up to 500kg.

Rose's new friend, whose name was Daisy, sat there quietly while Rose expounded her various schemes and theories. She still seemed rather sh.e.l.l*shocked. She'd asked Rose who else had got out of there, and Rose had told her about everyone she'd encountered in the stronghold. She hoped they'd all got out. Daisy didn't think she knew any of them apart from Tim Breeley. 'But then, I've been in there for a long time, I think,' she said. 'It stopped once or twice, but always started again.'

'You were lucky,' said Rose.

Daisy smiled sadly. 'Lucky? Perhaps. But that was everyone? They got through people very quickly. So no one else can have survived from the time I went in. I... I hope...' Tears were streaming down her cheeks. 'It was so hard, just me and him, his dad didn't want to know, it's been so hard making ends meet, but I tried so hard... I loved him so much, and I know that teens are supposed to be difficult but he seems to resent me so much... But I'd have done anything for him, anything... And you try to protect them from measles and mumps and running out into the road and playing with matches, but you can't protect them from things like this, things that you didn't know about, things you'd never have believed were real...'

Rose sat down beside her and reached out for her hand. 'You had a kid?'

'My little Bobbles.' She tried to laugh. 'He hated me calling him that. "Mum," he'd go, "my name is Robert"...'

Rose jumped. She'd been so stupid. The woman had only asked about people in the stronghold, she hadn't thought to mention people back at the Quevvils' base. Obviously Daisy hadn't dared to hope he'd stayed there this long. 'Daisy, it's all right!' she cried. 'Robert's '

But she was drowned out by a sound that wasn't just music to her ears, it was the most wonderful music ever, it was the greatest symphony ever written, performed by the best orchestra in the world. It was the sound of the TARDIS.

Rose had to grab Daisy, who had started to back away in astonishment and fear, forgetting or no longer caring that there was a very deep pit behind. And then, suddenly, there was the TARDIS in front of them, its flashing light banishing the darkness, banishing their fear.

The door opened. A young lad poked his head out and saw Daisy.

'Bobbles!' she screamed. 'Oh, my darling, my darling!'

The lad put up with her ma.s.sive embrace with fairly bad grace. 'Mum,' he said, 'my name is Robert.'

Then the Doctor appeared, still the same as ever, grinning away. 'Rescue party!' he said.

He turned to Daisy, and seemed to be checking her out. Rose coughed, pointedly.

'Is this your mum then?' he said to Robert. 'Funny, that. She's not really how I imagined her from your description...'

Robert shrugged and made a face.

'h.e.l.lo,' said the Doctor to Daisy, holding out a hand. 'I'm the Doctor.' She grabbed at his hand with both of hers, thanks pouring out of her mouth. It took a while for the Doctor to extricate himself. Then he turned to Rose. 'There you are then. All right?'

'Yeah,' she said. 'I'm all right.'

They went into the TARDIS.

I couldn't have done it without you, Robert. You really are special. You really are a Chosen One. Some might even call you a hero.

Thanks, Doctor. But it was nothing.

Oh, Robert. You were wonderful. You saved my life, truly you did. Doctor...

Yes, Rose?

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?