'What are you doing?' asked Martha.

Gaskin nodded at the stone. 'I'm going to take that d.a.m.ned thing outside and blast it to Kingdom Come.'

'What? Are you sure?'

'Absolutely. It's caused nothing but trouble. I don't want it in my house for a moment longer.' Gaskin moved to pick it up and then, at the last second, hesitated. 'Is it safe to touch?'

'I have no idea,' Martha said. 'It was all right before. But since the Doctor did what he did. . . ' she glanced at his unconscious form and shrugged. 'I'm not so sure.'

'Why don't you get something to pick it up with?' suggested Sadie.

'Like tongs, you mean?'

'A shovel or a dustpan would do.'

'Good idea,' Angela found a dustpan behind the door and went to hand it to Gaskin, but he was already holding the shotgun. 'Oh.'

'Here, I'll do it,' offered Sadie.

'No, no; it's all right,' Angela said. 'I can manage it.' 'Wait a minute,' Martha said, getting to her feet. 'Do you think this is the right thing to do?'

'I'm not having it here any longer,' Gaskin insisted.

'No, but. . . shooting it? That can't be the answer.'

'Can you think of anything else?'

Martha looked at the Doctor again. 'Well, er, no. . . '

'Then we get rid of it permanently.'

'But you don't know what will happen. It may not be possible to destroy it like that.'

'No harm in trying.'

'But what if something happens? What if it opens up again like it did before?'

Gaskin shrugged. 'Let it try! This is a 12-gauge, my dear. Double-barrelled. At close range it could lop off the branch of a tree. I don't think it'll have any trouble with. . . with whatever that is.'

Angela moved in with the dustpan.

'I really think we should wait,' Martha said.

Angela put the pan down next to the brain, the edge just beneath it so that she could pick it up cleanly. 'I need something to push it on with, I think.'

'Here's the brush,' said Sadie, coming over.

'Just wait!' Martha said.

'Carry on,' said Gaskin firmly.

Sadie brought the brush alongside the brain. She only had to push it along the table and it would roll into the dustpan. She hesitated.

'Are you sure it's safe?'

'No!' said Martha.

'Just do it,' said Gaskin.

' Marmalade Marmalade!' yelled the Doctor suddenly.

Everyone jumped.

'Doctor!' screeched Martha.

'Great Scott!' said Gaskin. 'I nearly gave it both barrels!'

The Doctor had sat bolt upright. His hair and eyes were both wild.

'Thick cut!' he shouted, holding a hand out towards Gaskin. Suddenly he was on his feet taking the shotgun out of Gaskin's hands. Gaskin stared stupidly at him. The Doctor pa.s.sed the gun to Martha. 'The most perfect marmalade I've ever tasted,' he announced.

Sadie smiled happily. 'Oh, thank you! I call it my Thick-Cut Tawny.'

'Loved it!'

'I know. You ate the whole jar in one go.'

'Doctor!' Martha said, relieved to see the Doctor well again but also rather irritated. She put the heavy shotgun down carefully on top of a chest of drawers. 'What happened to you?'

'Telekinetic shock,' the Doctor said, stretching as if he'd just woken from a long, relaxing sleep. 'Numbed every synapse in my head, and believe me, that's a lot of synapses.' He began running on the spot.

'Now what are you doing?'

'Getting my heart rates back to normal.' He speeded up. 'Oh yes!

Now we're cooking!' He slowed to a stop and then began to touch his toes. 'One, two, three, four. . . '

'It's OK,' Martha a.s.sured them all. Gaskin, Angela and Sadie were all staring at the Doctor as if they had preferred it when he was lying unconscious on the kitchen floor.

'Are you sure he's all right?' asked Gaskin.

'. . . ten, eleven, twelve. . . '

'Doctor,' said Martha through gritted teeth.

He stopped where he was, bent double, his fingers touching the tips of his trainers. He looked up at her from his knees. 'What?'

'We have a situation here.'

He straightened up, looking blank.

Martha felt it necessary to prompt him. 'The brain?'

'What? Oh, fine now, thanks.' He grinned brightly at her. 'How's yours?'

She closed her eyes and pointed at the kitchen table. 'I mean that one.'

'Oh! Yes! That one!' The Doctor pulled up a chair and sat down, studying the brain intently. Then he took out his sonic screwdriver and everybody tensed. Slowly, without taking his eyes off the brain, the Doctor returned the screwdriver to his pocket. 'Perhaps not,' he said to himself. 'Been there, done that, didn't like it.'

'Listen,' began Gaskin. 'Now that you're back in the land of the living, perhaps we can get on? I still think we should take the blessed thing outside and blast it into smithereens.'

'Hear, hear,' said Angela.

'I agree,' said Sadie.

The Doctor shook his head. 'That would be the most foolish and irresponsible thing you could possibly think of doing.' He slouched back in the chair and put his hands behind his head. 'But then again, you are only human, I suppose. Total destruction is always the preferred method of dealing with a problem for you lot. Goes right back to prehistoric times, when the first caveman picked up a whopping great bone and bashed his mate on the head with it.'

'What are you blithering about, man?'

'Oh, it was the usual stuff: his mate had been fancying his girlfriend, all that kind of thing. Solution: whack 'im on the head and be done with it. Problem solved.' He looked up at the fuming Gaskin with a puzzled frown. 'Sorry that's not what you meant, is it?'

'No, it is not.'

'Let me spell it out, then.' The Doctor pointed at the brain. 'This thing is totally alien to the Earth, and horribly dangerous. It's destructive and highly intelligent. Its one and only purpose is to propagate and kill. A single Vurosis is more than capable of spreading over this entire planet if given the opportunity. This one has been growing slowly underneath the village for hundreds of years and is now fully matured and ready to strike. All it needs is that.' The Doctor pointed at the stone. When he spoke again, his voice was very quiet. 'For a second back there my mind touched the mind of the Vurosis, and I can a.s.sure you that, as dangerous as that stone is now, it will be a hundred times worse if it's reunited with its host body at the bottom of the well.'

'What can we do?'

asked Martha.

Everyone else seemed too shocked to say anything. The Doctor's eyebrows shot up. 'Well, you saw what it did to me when I gave it a poke with the sonic screwdriver. I'd hate to think what it would do if you started shooting at it.'

'We have to do something something,' insisted Gaskin. 'It can't stay on my kitchen table for evermore.'

'It seems pretty inert now,' commented Martha. 'Can we move it?'

'Where to?' wondered Angela.

'An asteroid field. A star. A black hole. Anywhere,' said the Doctor, never taking his eyes off the thing. 'We've got to get it away from Earth.'

Gaskin turned to Martha. 'I'm sorry, my dear, but do you have any idea what he's talking about?'

'I'm afraid so. It may sound odd, but the Doctor knows all about this sort of thing.'

'Mr Gaskin,' said the Doctor, 'do you have something I could put it in?'

'What? Oh, yes, of course. Wait a minute.' Gaskin crossed to one of the kitchen cupboards and rummaged inside. 'Will this do?'

He handed the Doctor a plastic Tupperware box. The Doctor looked at it in dismay. 'Actually, I was thinking of something metal. Lead-lined, if possible.'

'Oh. Sorry.'

'But I'll keep this just in case I ever come across a ham sandwich threatening to take over the world.'

Somebody t.i.ttered. Angela had a hand over her mouth and Sadie was biting her lip. Within seconds everyone was laughing.

And then Martha pointed at the brain and yelled for them to be quiet. 'Look!' she said. 'It's moving!'

They all fell silent and stared. A hundred tiny filaments were moving on the surface of the stone.

'That's disgusting,' remarked Sadie.

The brain stirred on the table as the cilia grew into waving, worm-like fingers groping for something in the air.

'What's it doing?' asked Angela.

'It's reacting to something,' said the Doctor. 'Us?'

'I doubt it.'

They all heard Jess suddenly barking, loud and clear, outside. A warning.

'Something's coming,' said the Doctor.

The barking reached a sudden, panicky crescendo and then dropped to a whimper.

Gaskin headed for the back door. 'Jess!'

The Doctor grabbed his arm. 'Don't go out there!'

'But that's my dog '

There was a terrific noise from outside, a huge crunching sound as if a tree was being uprooted. Everybody stood still, listening.

'What is it?' whispered Angela nervously.

'I can't hear Jess any more,' said Gaskin anxiously.

'What's happened to her?'

There was a rustling noise outside as something approached the house. Sadie yelped as the kitchen window suddenly cracked as if hit by a stone. Something pushed against the pane like the branch of a tree, and when the Doctor raised the blind the window was full of white weeds crawling all over the gla.s.s like worms, probing for some kind of opening.

'Doctor!' exclaimed Martha. 'Back door!'

They all turned to see the kitchen door suddenly shake as something struck it hard. The gla.s.s panel cracked and then shattered, sending broken shards right across the kitchen. A thick arm covered in luminous white weeds followed the gla.s.s, the big hand thrusting its way inside, grabbing for the door handle.