'You haven't got it, have you?'

'No.'

'Oh, dear. And I thought we were doing so well. I tell you what, let's talk later. It's dark now and Aysha will be after us.'

'Or Lotuss.'

146.

'Which is a very alarming thought indeed. Yes. Now, Adoon, can you find us some clothes? We look a bit strange dressed like this, don't you agree?'

Adoon certainly did, and suddenly saw what he needed.

Without a word of explanation he dived into the darkness and hoped the Great Djinn and his Royal Prince would wait.

The stench was terrible. Had these pitiful creatures never heard of sanitation? Even the most primitive ancestors of the Cat-People knew how to use a litter area and keep their lands clean. Germs and airborne diseases must be in plentiful supply. No wonder anthropoids were so easy to invade.

Lotuss stopped and stared. Most of the anthropoids had long since scurried back to their stone dwellings to escape the cold air - but she thrived on it. Low temperatures kept her senses clear, her brain alert and her adrenalin running.

Memories of previous campaigns for her mother came back: the uprising on Kalidon, when they had been employed to eradicate an entire reptilian species, or the skirmish with the Gargar rebels on the frontier world of the Maskill system.

There, Lotuss had fallen victim to a rebel land-mine. Her first-litter-mate Ramuth had been literally shredded apart and Lotuss had lost her eye and blistered her paws.

The medics had offered any number of grafts or prosthetics, but Lotuss would have none of it. Her diminutive size had saved her life then, just as Ramuth's bulk had cost her hers, and after years of ridicule - most notably from her own mother and litter-mate Chosan - she could use her size and wounds to make a statement. And what a statement it had been, as she battled her way through war after war, battle upon battle, killing and maiming wherever possible. She recalled a victim who had been whimpering in a trench once - a pale-blue anthropoid, splattered with copper-coloured blood and green mud. It had asked her something that she had never forgotten. 'Have you no mercy? No pity or compa.s.sion? Is there anything you love more than killing?' Lotuss smiled as she remembered 147 the three answers she had given. A flat, unquestionable negative to all three questions. Then she had blasted his head into oblivion. Chosan had been forced to present Lotuss with a medal after that campaign, much to her chagrin.

Those were good days, before the Queen had become obsessed with power - literal power. Their ships were still the most powerful in the galaxy, capable of years of travel without refuelling. Yet of late, Aysha, her mother, had kept reiterating the need for better, newer forms of energy - this magnetic explosive variety found in the molten cores of worlds like Earth. Lotuss could not see any point in such pursuits. Where was the death and glory in that? If Lotuss was to die, it should be in battle, not searching for fossil fuels.

'Excuse I,' said a voice next to Lotuss. She turned. There was an old female anthropoid, hobbling about, hiding its probably disease-ridden face under a red shawl. 'Excuse I,' it croaked, 'but I cannot see. Which way is the market square?'

'Where I come from, old creature, you would beg for death rather than live a fruitless life unable to contribute to your community.' It occurred to Lotuss to vaporize the creature where it stood, but Chosan had ordered that only the Doctor and his anthropoid companion were to be shot.

Lotuss also hoped to encounter the anthropoid-mewling that had escaped her earlier - slaughtering that would be satisfying if not exactly following orders.

'You . . . you are a stranger, yes?' The old woman hobbled a bit nearer, reaching forward.

'Touch me, creature, and you lose your arm,' Lotuss hissed, letting her fur rise, although the old woman clearly could not see it.

Her head still bowed, her face still hidden under the shawl, the woman stopped. 'You have travelled far. I sense weariness in you.'

'Only in your conversation, creature. Leave before you die.'

148.

'As you request, precious lady. But beware the traitor in your midst. She will destroy you all.' The old woman hobbled away, obviously terrified of Lotuss.

Lotuss smiled. Traitor indeed - who amongst the Cat-People would consider treason apart from Lotuss herself?

Unless . . . could she mean Thorgarsuunela? Lotuss shrugged, she had heard threats and warnings from experts - some smelly anthropoid was hardly going to hurt her.

Smell!

The anthropoid did not smell like an anthropoid. No it was . . . the Doctor!

Lotuss hefted her blaster and prepared to fire after the 'old woman' but 'she' had vanished. As Lotuss relaxed she knew something was wrong - her blaster! The power pack was missing. The Doctor had managed to steal it during that charade. Lotuss would return immediately to Queen Aysha and tell her that. . .

Of course, she could not. Returning to the shuttle, having encountered a disguised Doctor and lost her weaponry - the shame would be unbearable. Lotuss could picture Chosan's gleeful face at her discomfort. 'Very well, alien, the chase is on. I will have my firepower back, and your head on a stick.'

She slowly walked into the shadows, tracking the Doctor.

Adoon stared open-mouthed at the shambling figure coming towards him.

'I be glad of our little chat, Cat-Person,' croaked the 'old woman', and then it threw the shawl off.

'You are indeed a great djinn, to disguise your voice so.'

Adoon wanted to bow to the Dok-Ter but thought that might be considered a bit silly. Certainly neither Dok-Ter nor Prince Ben-Jak had requested such obedience or servitude from him. Dok-Ter threw something to Ben-Jak.

'Is this what I think it is?' he asked, turning it over.

All Adoon could see was a silver box with a gla.s.s top.

'Yes,' said Dok-Ter, 'and if we can slip that to Thor-Sun without her knowing, friend Lotuss will be a trifle upset.'

149.

'Good.' Ben-Jak pointed to the sky. 'What about the rest of them?'

'Back in 1994, Ben. Or should that be forward? Anyway, we only have our six here to worry about.'

'And the destruction of Baghdad,' Adoon muttered a little louder than he meant. Dok-Ter turned to him and Adoon expected to be turned into a rat on the spot. Instead, the great djinn knelt in front of him.

'No, Adoon. I'll try to explain.' He coughed to clear his throat. 'You see, when Thor-Sun and her cohorts arrived here, Earth looked very different. There were no seas separating the continents as there are now. When she laid her . . . lights, they were in one place, but years later the lands slowly drifted apart. Over a long time.'

'Did the djinns push them apart to keep the evil spirits away from good men?'

'Yes, if you like. Anyway, Thor-Sun, your sand-demon, hadn't realized that this thing occurred. She's mistaking her line of twenty thousand years ago for the line as it would be in twenty thousand years' time.' Adoon did not really understand anything Dok-Ter said, and he was glad to see that Prince Ben-Jak was clearly as confused.

'But what's this all about, Doc?'

Dok-Ter looked right and left, apparently checking that no one could see them as he stuffed the old woman's clothes under a nearby market-stall awning. 'Basically, I understand this much.' He held his fingers up, very close together.

'Oh,' said Prince Ben-Jak. 'That's encouraging.'

Dok-Ter shrugged. 'So, what we have are two groups of alien invaders. Group One, who I guess are the fabled Euterpians who died out centuries ago, must have arrived here about forty thousand years ago - Australia by what Thor-Sun has said. Now, they came looking for a power source to fuel their ship - the still cooling Earth's core would be a marvellous supply of magnetic energy which they needed -'

150.

'But forty thousand years ago isn't quite the hundreds of millions of years ago when Earth was created,' argued Ben-Jak. 'What good would it do them?'

'Well, Ben,' said Dok-Ter, 'in cosmic terms, a few million years is a blink of an eye. The core energy would still be powerful enough way back, or when the Euterpians arrived, now or in 1994. The lessening of power would be negligible. Satisfied?'

'Sorry,' muttered Ben-Jak.

'Good.' Dok-Ter beamed happily. He patted Adoon on the head. 'Are you following this, young man?'

'No.' Adoon thought it best to be honest to a great djinn.

'Good,' repeated Dok-Ter as if he had not heard. 'So, they landed and split up. Thor-Sun and Atimkos - your "Tim", Ben - placed a series of marker buoys - in reality ma.s.sive syphons - that could be seen from s.p.a.ce but not closer. These ought to have circ.u.mnavigated Earth in a nice curve so that their mothership could slice through the crust and release the energy.'

'Like cutting a slice off an orange?'

'Exactly, Ben, exactly like that. However, they failed.

Although they had RTC units to keep the ageing process at bay, they lost any sense of time or distance. I doubt they walked constantly either - even Euterpians must have needed rest now and again. The problem with that was that the ground moved and their little ring of marker buoys was disrupted, breaking their links to each other. So, from s.p.a.ce, nothing would be seen.'

'But, Dok-Ter, she must know about the continental shift.

Every kid does.'

'Adoon doesn't.'

'Yeah, but Thor-Sun's lived thousands of years. She must be super-intelligent.'

'Why? I can think of lots of long-lived people whose IQ is lower than your shoe size. One day I'll take you home to meet them.'

'But it can't be difficult to find things like that out.'

151.

Dok-Ter sighed. 'Oh, Ben, if only people were that observant. Remember, when it occurred, she and Atimkos were walking and so not as dramatically affected by the drift. And remember there were no newspapers or television to tell anyone what was going on. Even in your time, you don't know what's going on under your feet. Would you know about earthquakes in San Francisco or tidal waves in Hawaii if you didn't hear or read about them?'

'No. I s'pose not.'

'Exactly. Well, bearing in mind that it took nearly thirty thousand years for one man to acknowledge another existed on the other side of the world, is it any wonder that the Euterpians wouldn't know the world had literally changed under their feet?'

'No. All right.'

'So,' Dok-Ter continued, 'so what we have then are a group of people, aliens, disguised and adapted into Earth society. I a.s.sume that Mrs Wilding and Dent are two others in the party, trying to reach their friends through time. I found their RTC units in the library at the Grange. Now, I gather from Thor-Sun and the Cat-People that there is a leader somewhere, who has built some kind of sealed-off buffer zone.'

'A what?'

'Like the Ex-Room the students created in c.u.mbria. It's not quite in this dimension but accessible through a series of points. Presumably it's powerful enough to absorb the power released by the marker buoys if they were set off and return the Euterpians home.'

'So, why don't they go? And why has Thor-Sun got those Cat-things here?'

'Ah,' the Doctor chuckled. 'There's the rub. Our Euterpians don't like each other, going by Mrs Wilding's diary and Thor-Sun's explanations. Certainly she and Tim are usually at each other's throats. I think that our Victorian couple are essentially just trying to discover what the other two are up to. Whether they're working for their leader or themselves, I have no way of knowing.'

152.

'So, do you trust them?' Adoon decided it was time he tried to add something.

'Oh, no, my young friend. We trust no one.'

Ben-Jak nodded. 'Least of all, Frowline Thor-Sun.'

'She's not the real problem, Ben. She's underestimated the Cat-People quite badly, I think. She's brought them here, offering them her RTC unit as a bribe to get her off Earth if she gives them the power due to come through the beacons.'

'Which she can't find,' said Ben-Jak, clapping his hands.

'Brilliant. She's totally keelhauled.'

'Yes, thank you for the nautical references, Ben. But you're almost right. She used her memory and limited sonic powers to get us here, presumably guessing that she must have placed a beacon here. That would be fine if you drew a straight line from c.u.mbria to Australia today, but not forty thousand years ago. Baghdad is perfectly safe because she's done her maths and geography wrong.'

'Yeah, and what about those sonic powers?'

'Nasty, Ben. Vicious if misused and I expect she can misuse them better than most. But the Cat-People are immune - as are we in that shuttle - because of the RTC she gave them. That's why I think there's more to Aysha than meets the eye.'

'She doesn't want the beacons then?'

The Doctor shrugged again. 'Possibly. But I think she's thinking bigger than that. I think Thor-Sun told her about the nexus where her leader is and Aysha has guessed that there's even more power to be gained by controlling that. I think she's using Thor-Sun to find a link to that.'

Ben stood up and brushed dust off his clothes. 'OK. So how do we stop them?'

'Divide and conquer?' Adoon asked.

'Jolly good, Adoon. Now, let's go and find Frowline Thor-Sun and give her Lotuss's little present.'

Martin Hickman had never seen quite so much devastation in eleven years in the West c.u.mbrian Fire Service as that which greeted him at (what was left of) the 153 Grange. On driving the first of the three red fire engines that sped as quickly as possible up the dusty, stone-laden narrow lane that was the only driveway to the Grange, he had been the first to see the result of the unknown events that had clearly destroyed the house and grounds.

The Gatehouse was blazing, the roof already caved in, and as his team dismounted, the west-facing wall collapsed, rapidly followed by the rest. Within three minutes, it was a burning pile of stonework and any hope of recovering articles or, heaven help them, people inside, vanished immediately. Trying to fill out his appraisal forms on this one was going to be nigh on impossible. Arson?

Accidental? No one would ever know.

There were other, more inexplicable things as well. That old police box had been there, he was sure. Then there had been a red flash in the corner of his eye and when he had looked back, the police box was gone. No one else saw it, of course. Then there was this long trough which linked the Gatehouse and east side of where the Grange had been.

Looking into it, Hickman felt no heat, no damp, no cold.

Just a rush of air. He could not see the bottom of the trough, but it was very dark down there.

Of the Grange, there were just fragments. All three storeys had collapsed in on themselves and burned away. A few lumps of stone and the odd piece of wood were all that remained of the Georgian property. Hickman was particularly saddened by this - although the Grange had long been deserted, it was nevertheless a building of character and popularity. The discovery of the overturned, gutted and blistered metal framework of a transit van suggested that the three adults and three students from London were more than likely to have been inside when whatever happened happened. Someone was going to have to tell their friends and families. And there would be nothing concrete to say.

'I'm sorry - we know they died,' someone would have to say, 'but we have no idea how.' Were they burned? Was it an explosion? What about the trough - was there some 154 equipment buried by the students, linking the Grange and Gatehouse, that overheated and literally blew them apart?

PC McGarry had cycled over from the village as soon as possible, but his notebook and wetted pencil were held uselessly in his hand. Who was witness to the event? Were Smithers and Coates in the Gatehouse or Grange? Hickman did not care much for Charlie Coates but George Smithers had been local for years. And after that business with his wife . . . well, he deserved better than this.

A shout alerted Hickman and then McGarry to the cliff edge, where the trough had continued through the Grange's foundations and out to the sea. A large portion of the cliff edge had also been obliterated - a ma.s.sive V-shaped wedge had been torn out - and any clues that the gra.s.s and earth might have held were gone with it. But there, down on the rocks being lapped by the cold waters of the Irish Sea, was a body.

Thirty minutes later the police from Whitehaven had identified it as Charles Albert Coates. Although no coroner, the SOC had reckoned that he had been killed by the fall - his clothing or skin carried no signs of burns or combustion.