'Two things. Firstly, I do not trust Jodi on the bridge. You will remove her from command once I am gone, thereby not reflecting the action on me. After all, once I am in deep s.p.a.ce, I cannot stop you doing whatever you believe is right for command.'

'I am not joining you?'

Aysha shrugged. 'I know you enjoy killing, Lotuss, but Chosan needs you here more. I want you to work together on improving our weaponry. The Doctor was certainly right about Earth's defences. I want a pulse trigger built that will set off every nuclear-powered device on the planet simultaneously. If nothing else, it'll rip the thing apart and we'll absorb the energy that way.'

'And when do we use it?'

Aysha smiled again. 'Preferably when I return empty-handed. I am trying to locate the buoys one last time.'

They began walking towards the shuttle bay. 'I wish you good hunting, Your Majesty,' Lotuss said.

Aall stood outside the bay entrance. 'Your command crew are aboard the shuttle, Your Majesty.'

Aysha twitched her whiskers. 'Good. Shall we go?' Lotuss opened the bay doors, revealing the shuttle. Chosan looked into the bay control room.

Tamora. Excellent.

The bay door dropped behind them. Aall, Chosan and Aysha began walking towards the shuttle. Lotuss paused and then followed.

'Why are both hatches open?' Aysha demanded.

Aall shrugged. 'I'm sorry, Your Majesty, I don't know.'

Chosan nudged Lotuss and pointed at the rear hatch. With a sigh, Lotuss nodded and went to close it.

236.

The alarm screamed at them, followed by Tamora's panicking voice over the intercom. 'Decompression! The outer doors have circuit-jumped. They're opening!'

Lotuss, near the open hatchway at the back of the shuttle, heard the alarm and Tamora's voice. Decompression took four seconds - she hurled herself into the open hatchway, praising Chosan sarcastically for sending her there.

Slamming it shut with the emergency lever, she saw Nypp doing the same with the side one.

Nypp? Why was she here? And Tuq. And . . .

'Nypp! State of decompression in the bay?'

Nypp stabbed at a control. 'I don't understand - there's no decompression. It was a false alarm.'

Lotuss looked through the window and saw Chosan and Aall escorting Aysha through the closing bay door, back into the corridor.

'Whoops. Sorry about that. False alarm.' Tamora's voice crackled through the communicator. 'Shuttle preparing to launch now. Strap yourself in. Good hunting.'

Tuq was frowning. 'I thought the Queen was -'

Lotuss leaped forward, pushing Tuq aside. She stabbed the comm-switch. 'Tamora! Don't you dare!'

'Decompression completed. Your navigation controls appear to be locked out, Lotuss. Sorry, I'll guide you out with the tractor beam.'

'I confirm that,' said Nypp. 'They're moving us. Controls should re-engage when we're outside the ship's shields.'

'No! No, no no!' Lotuss slammed her paw into the console.

The shuttle was free of the bay and in s.p.a.ce. The tractor beam - or rather Tamora - gave it a push.

'Free of shields in ten seconds.' Nypp punched her navigation and helm controls. 'Still locked.' She frowned. 'I don't get it.'

'Time,' shrieked Lotuss. 'What time is it?'

237.

She did not hear Tuq's response. All she saw out of one window was a flash from two bulkheads below the shuttle bay. The refuse area.

She breathed deeply and allowed herself a grim smile.

Outwitted in a style she thought only she was capable of.

'I misjudged you, Mother.' As her missile struck the shuttle the floor erupted. Nypp was sucked straight out, Tuq crushed by the missile as it hit the propulsion unit. In her mind's eye, Lotuss saw Aysha, Chosan and Aall laughing at her.

'd.a.m.n.'

The shuttle, and litter-runt Lotuss, disintegrated in a burst of fire that was instantly extinguished by the vacuum.

'Are you all right?'

Polly opened her eyes and promptly shut them again - there was a glare of brilliant white, which she recognized.

From where?

After a few more seconds she tried again and quickly adjusted to the brightness. Looking at her were two vaguely familiar people, but she could not place them straight away.

'Well done, Polly. You got us here.'

She recognized that voice, even if she could not see him.

Her heart sank. Despite her beliefs, Polly knew in her heart that the concept of Heaven as a physical place you go to after dying was a nonsense. Wherever she was, she was both alive and trapped. With Tim. She propped herself up on her elbows and looked around. Tim was sitting cross-legged about four feet away from her. He looked different - his face less weathered and his hair more meticulously shaped. He was wearing a dark one-piece jumpsuit. So were the other two people near by - although, as they were standing over her, they were far enough away from Tim to let her know that they were not best friends.

Mrs Wilding and Mr Dent. Looking younger and, in Dent's case, somewhat less crippled. They too were wearing the black suits. Polly reasoned that this was all three's real appearance.

238.

Mrs Wilding held out her hand to Polly who gratefully allowed herself to be pulled up.

'Excuse me. Everyone else turned to gla.s.s and I'm feeling fragile myself'

Tim laughed. 'I didn't know you were such a wit, Polly.'

'I didn't know you were such a -'

Dent took Polly's arm. 'Let us tell you what is going on, shall we?'

Polly looked at him, looked into his younger, less-pain-wracked eyes. 'That would be nice. Is the Doctor here?'

'No. Not yet, anyway, although we believe he will be soon.' Mrs Wilding moved aside and Polly saw the two men she'd last seen in her dream: Professor Bridgeman and the stranger.

'Professor! Are you all right?'

'I am now, thanks to Mrs Wilding. How are Simon and the others?'

Polly began to say something, and then realized she couldn't. The memory, now unburied, flashed through her mind - the Grange enveloped by the white light, the unbridled energy of Earth released in its purest form.

Destroying everything.

'They're dead, Bridgeman. Vaporized. Burned. Crisped.

Zappo.' Tim got up. 'Terribly bad show, old chap. Still, plenty more back in London, eh? Students are two a penny, I think.' He paused to take in Bridgeman's reaction. There wasn't one. The human was just staring. Tim shrugged.

'Actually, I'm wrong. There aren't any more. We activated the beacons and destroyed Earth. Sorry and all that.'

'Where are we?' Bridgeman gently eased the man Polly did not know to the white floor. 'I take it we're not in the garden any more?'

Dent agreed. 'We're actually within the nexus itself.

Outside normal s.p.a.ce and time.'

'Why?' It seemed a logical question to Polly.

Tim just laughed again. 'Because I brought you all here.'

239.

'Wrong. We We did.' Another voice Polly recognized - this time from the same dream in which she had seen the sick Bridgeman. did.' Another voice Polly recognized - this time from the same dream in which she had seen the sick Bridgeman.

As one they turned.

'G.o.dwanna,' breathed Mrs Wilding.

Polly saw their nemesis - dressed in another black jumpsuit, but this one dotted with reed decals. Her jet-black hair was tied back and up in a severe pony-tail, and her face was set in the most insincere smile Polly could ever imagine seeing. It was like someone had taken a corpse and fixed its mouth into a rictus grin. If the eyes were not so staring, so powerful, Polly could have believed she was the embodiment of the traditional zombie. Her skin was stretched tight over her bones, giving her an attractive but harsh appearance.

'Welcome, my children. Welcome, survivors of the human race.' She nodded to Tim. 'A shame you couldn't find your way to returning Thorgarsuunela to us.'

Tim shrugged. 'She's dead. Sorry.'

'No matter.' She walked over and stroked his cheek. 'You served me well, child.'

Mrs Wilding took a step forward. 'He was working with you? All this time?'

'Of course, Tarwildbaning.' G.o.dwanna put her head on one side. 'Pitiful fool, did you never once consider I had help? Am I considered so all-powerful that you believed I arranged this by myself?'

Polly frowned. 'Arranged what?'

G.o.dwanna threw her hands in the air dramatically. 'You, my dear. You and your powers.'

'I don't have powers.'

'Nonsense, sweet child of Earth. All your race have powers. From the earliest men of Africa and Australia to the newborn children born at the very second of your planet's destruction. Your brains have untapped codes and pathways, linking you to the very construction of your world. You all have the power of geopathy: to control, cure, communicate and cultivate. Your planet gave you all these gifts and it has 240 taken Atimkos millennia to find what I needed. Someone whose brain has been opened to its possibilities.'

Polly stared at her. 'When I was younger . . .'

G.o.dwanna waved her down. 'Yes, child, I'm sure your powers have manifested themselves slightly. They do with a few million of your race every thousand years. But your travel with the Doctor, crossing the boundaries of time and s.p.a.ce, they cleared those neural pathways even better. Gave us something to focus in on.'

'The dream . . .' Polly frowned. 'The Cat-People I saw?'

She looked at Tim. 'You put them there?'

'Sort of. The dream was your own brain's attempts to warn you, cloud your judgement as I broke through to you.

The human brain is quite delicate, you know.'

Dent joined in. 'So it knew it was being manipulated - showed Polly the Cat-People as a warning of the future if she allowed herself to become involved with you.'

Bridgeman nodded. 'This is all fascinating. And true, I'm sure. But why am I here? And Nate Simms?' He looked down at the dribbling childlike face of Nate, who stared back in abject terror.

G.o.dwanna looked him up and down, casually. 'Like everyone in my garden, you all had the potential in you. The beginnings of the power growing. But none of you had the minds capable of coping with my manipulations. Looking at your lucidity now, I fear I misjudged just how powerful Tarwildbaning could be.'

'We helped each other,' Mrs Wilding put in.

'Of course you did, dear. How much more fruitful if you had aided me instead of fighting me.' G.o.dwanna held her fist out and unclasped it. Floating fractionally above her palm was a small ball of light. Energy.

Polly recognized it: it was identical to the one she had seen in Tim's hand just prior to the destruction of Earth.

'It's all here, you know, children. Life, energy, matter.

Everything that was the planet Earth is here in my hand.'

'Put it back. Please.' Polly did not know why she said that, it just seemed appropriate.

241.

'Oh, I don't think so. I need this energy. I'm going to use it to add to our own powers. We will sing ourselves home now.'

'What about the Cat-People?' Polly stared at the glowing ball. Life. All life from Earth condensed into one small globe of energy.

Tim answered her question. 'Thorgarsuunela had roughly the same idea, unaware that G.o.dwanna and I had been communicating all these years. She was going to get the Cat-People to release it and use the power to sing just herself home.'

'But I thought the Cat-People wanted the power?'

Tim shrugged. 'Who cares. All Thorgarsuunela had to do was collect the energy and go; she could erase the Cat-People from existence with one note. She just needed their machinery to tap the marker buoys.'