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     The

    Eyeless

    LANCE PARKIN

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2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

Published in 2008 by BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing.

Ebury Publishing is a division of the Random House Group Ltd.

© Lance Parkin, 2008

Lance Parkin has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work inaccordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

Doctor Who is a BBC Wales production for BBC One Executive Producers: RussellT Davies and Julie Gardner

Original series broadcast on BBC Television. Format © BBC 1963.

`Doctor Who', `TARDIS' and the Doctor Who logo are trademarks of the BritishBroadcasting Corporation and are used under licence.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in aretrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyrightowner.

The Random House Group Ltd Reg. No. 954009.

Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found atwww.randomhouse.co.uk.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 846 07562 9

The Random House Group Limited supports the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC),the leading international forest certification organisation. All our titles that are printedon Greenpeace approved FSC certified paper carry the FSC logo. Our paperprocurement policy can be found at www.rbooks.co.uk/environment

Series Consultant: Justin Richards

Project Editor: Steve Tribe

Cover design by Lee Binding © BBC 2008

Typeset in Albertina and Deviant Strain

Printed and bound in Germany by GGP Media GmbH

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To John, Lesley, Jo, Katie and Brie the Parkins

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 PART ONETHE EYES OF A CHILD

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    The first walkway the Doctor tried almost gave way

    beneath his feet. The second creaked disconcertingly, and

    he half-ran, half-tiptoed across it. He didn't even dare put

    his foot on the third. He'd got two city blocks closer to his

    goal and decided to enter the nearest tower and descend to

    ground level an easier task than he'd dared hope, as the

    building had a fantastically carpeted staircase. This place

    had been a hotel. The robot porters and janitors were all

    gathered by a large recharging station just off the lobby,

    puzzled expressions permanently stuck on their

    mechanical faces. Like their human masters, who they'd

    clearly survived, they'd have taken the power supply for

    granted.

       There was a garage, full of speeders and flyers and one-

    or two-man flying saucers. The Doctor had toyed with the

    idea of just fixing an aircar up and driving the rest of the

    way but, with each one he found, a lot of the mechanics

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had rusted or rotted away, and the power cells were dead.He'd quickly decided he could walk to the Fortress in halfthe time it would take to fix one up. The exercise woulddo him good.

    The Doctor wished he could have just flown theTARDIS there, but that would have been a very, very badidea. He'd landed as close as he dared.

    The ground here was metal, a broken-down movingpavement. It was littered with rubble, shards of glass andscrap metal chunks of material that had fallen from thesurrounding buildings after winter storms or as whateverheld them up there corroded away. There was a raisedmonorail line that ran straight and in roughly the directionof the Fortress. The Doctor clambered up. The line itselfwas in a bad way. Metal expanded when it was hot,contracted when it was cold, and engineers had to allowfor that by leaving gaps at intervals in the rails, or they'dcrack or buckle. When trains ran over those gaps, theymade that `clickety-clack' noise, the whole universe over.The trick was to keep the gaps clean, or they'd fill up withleaves and rust.

    The city had been carefully designed so that sunlightstreamed over every building and down to every level.Even at ground level it was still bright. The sun was lowin that green sky now, though. All that light meant weedsand grass had thrived, poked through holes in theconcrete, making the monorail line a thin strip of greenlife that warmed the Doctor's hearts. There were even afew scattered saplings that would be great trees, given afew decades. Something on this planet had survived the

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cataclysm, and in the long term that was all that needed to.Three hundred million years from now, this city would bea thin, silvery geological layer in the rock, and somedistant descendant of these weeds would have evolved topuzzle over it. Earth had seen similar turmoil and massextinction before humans had come along.

   Perhaps tomorrow the Doctor would take the TARDISinto the far future, have a wander round that civilisation.Pop in for a chat with a weedy geologist.

   The Doctor stopped, turned. Something had caught hiseye as he walked past it. Behind him, in the mud, was afootprint.

   He bent down and put on his glasses. He soon found ashort line of footprints in a thin patch of dirt. Human, nearenough. Whoever had made them had six toes on eachfoot, certainly, but they were bipedal, they didn't havehooves or paws or caterpillar tracks. The foot was a Size9, the Doctor estimated. Not that this person had beenwearing shoes. Barefoot. No evidence he or she hadcut their feet on the metal or glass, though, as the Doctorsurely would have done if he hadn't had his trainers on.

   Pacing it out, like the page of Good King Wenceslas,marking the footsteps, the Doctor decided they'd beenmade by a person a little shorter than him, who had beenwalking, not running. The prints were in thin mud, so itwasn't possible to estimate the weight of the person who'dmade them. They were fresh an hour old, at the most. Hehadn't anticipated anyone else being here. Theimplications of having company were all worrying.

   The Doctor took his glasses off and looked around.

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There was a figure at ground level, ducking round acorner, out of sight. Even the Doctor hadn't had muchtime to take it in.

    The Doctor clambered down to where the movementhad been, but it wasn't there now.

    A pile of burned-out aircars blocked the other end ofthis passage. The Doctor looked straight up at theperfectly smooth, vertical sides of hundred-storeybuildings. It was hard to see how anyone could have gotaway. At ground level, there were small niches andcrevices in the walls, but nothing even he could squeezeinto, and he was notoriously skinny. It must have been atrick of the light. It wouldn't even qualify as a particularlygood trick. And he was on edge. The Doctor concludedthat there hadn't been anyth--

    A dark shape leapt out at the Doctor; he turned to faceit and was almost blinded. Belatedly, he realised theattacker had the sun behind it. By then, the creature wason him, shoving him over with a plank of wood.

    `Ghost!' a high-pitched voice yelled out. `Don't let aghost touch you!'

    The Doctor hadn't quite been knocked off his feet, andhis vision was quickly returning to normal. Now the wallswere coming alive, with over half a dozen other shapesrushing out from the cracks and gaps.

    They were children, the Doctor realised. None of themlooked more than about 12. Boys, mostly, all dressed thesame sort of way, in very smart dark outfits which were alla bit too baggy, but brightly decorated with bits ofcolourful foil and plastic ribbon. The children each carried

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two or three small bags which clanked and rattled as theymoved. They looked human, or close enough. They wereall rather pale.

    `He's a ghost,' one of the boys called.

    `Looks like we got ourselves a ghost,' another agreed.

    `I'm not a ghost,' he laughed. `I'm the Doctor and thisis--' He turned and then looked back, sheepish. `No one.'

    `Who were you talking about?'

    `Just force of habit.'

    `You know what I think? I think we are... we is talkingto a ghost.'

    `You were right the first time,' the Doctor saidhelpfully. `"You are talking to a ghost".'

    `He says he's a ghost!'

    `Ghost. Ghost. Ghost,' all but one of them startedchanting.

    The boldest of the boys was advancing, swinging apiece of metal pipe. The Doctor blocked it, elbowed thepipe out of the boy's hand. The boy was wiry, but he wasalso only 10 years old. Strong for his age, but not much ofa threat. Another child it wasn't the Doctor's top priorityto work out if it was a boy or a girl was already lungingwith a very fancy-looking knife. The Doctor stepped outof the way, tripped the child up and found himself shovingover a boy with a piece of brick in his hand.

    After that, the children stopped the attack and startedcircling. They'd moved around so they'd blocked the onlyescape route from the passageway. The boy who'dattacked first retrieved his metal pipe. They were stillshouting out `ghost, ghost, ghost' over and over. The

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Doctor didn't feel any safer, and the children were clearlypreparing to pounce. Every so often one of them wouldstep forward, quickly withdrawing. They were testinghim, like a pack of animals would.

   A stocky girl was the exception, the only one notchanting. She'd spent the time standing there lookingthoughtful. The Doctor decided to concentrate on her.

   `A ghost?' he said, addressing her directly. `Ridiculous.You can see right through that explanation, right? Seethrough it? Ghost.'

   She was glaring at him. The Doctor's face fell.

   `Loses a bit in translation, probably. Jokes tend to.Point is: I'm sure you can convince your friends here thatI'm not a ghost.'

   `Ghosts don't bleed,' she said. `We could see if youbleed.'

   The Doctor nodded slowly, pursed his lips. `Well, yes, Isuppose that's an example of the scientific method.'

   `We should cut you open,' the boy with the fancy knifeleered.

   `Do you see a lot of ghosts?' the Doctor asked,suddenly. A thought had struck him. `You don't happen tohave six toes, do you? Any of you? You're not barefoot.All wearing very nice shoes. They look brand new.' Abrainwave struck him, and he pointed down at his ownfeet. `Trainers. Look. Teenagers love trainers, right? Theseare a bit big for you, of course. But if you'd like them, I'msure we can come to some arrangement. If this is amugging, that is.'

   `A what?' the lead one asked.

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   `If you're mugging me for my shoes.'

   `Why would we do that?'

   `Don't you like my shoes?' The Doctor felt insulted.

   `Who are you?' the stocky girl asked. She was tallest,and she looked stronger than most of the boys. Girlstended to at that age. The lad with the metal pipe lookedlike the leader, though.

   The Doctor decided to assert some authority. He grittedhis teeth and pulled out his psychic paper, opening up thewallet and swinging it round so that he was sure all thekids could see it.

   `What's that?' the leader asked.

   `It's got writing on it,' the stocky girl replied.

   `Yes, that's right,' the Doctor said patiently.

   `Writing?' echoed another one of them, a particularlygrubby boy who looked about 12.

   The Doctor held it steady, up in front of that child'seyes.

   `We don't read,' the boy said dismissively. `No onereads.'

   `Ah. Well, it says ' the Doctor checked it, ` that I'mfrom the planet Ofsted and... Ofsted. That's, oh... Well,take my word for it, that's funny. You clearly don't thinkso. Fair enough. It's that joke/translation thing again.'

   The kids were all glaring at him.

   The Doctor grimaced as he put the wallet back in hispocket. `Anyway, if you could just... How many of youare there, by the way? Not here in this alley. There areeight of you here. How many people live here?'

   Again, it was only the girl who was listening to him.

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The grubby boy was at her side, though, hands in hispockets, and it really looked like he was waiting for herlead. This still meant there were half a dozen others toworry about.

   `Maybe he knows about ghosts,' the grubby boysuggested.

   `Oh, I've met ghosts in my time,' the Doctor saidcheerfully.

   The wrong thing to say. The others were nervous, now.

   `Ghosts aren't the spirits of the dead or lost souls,' hesaid firmly, like he was teaching an unruly class. `Ghostsare usually a sign that there's a discontinuity in the spacetime continuum. Nothing to worry about. Just the sort ofthing that happens. Five times out of five. Guaranteed.Well... unless they're Gelth. Or time travellers with adodgy temporal feedback circuit. Or from the future of analternative timeline. Or an osmic projection. Or it mightbe because this city was built over a time rift.'

   He hesitated, because he'd run out of fingers. `Or theycould be holograms. Or waterhive. Or an army of millionsof Cybermen from a parallel universe. OK... that's eight.Eight out of, er, five. Let's call it ten. So... two times outof ten, a ghost is--'

   A brick sailed past him, clattered and clanged againstthe metal wall. The Doctor sensed he was losing hisaudience.

   `Thing is, there's always a rational explanation,' he saidcalmly, but quickly. `A reason. If you've got a ghostproblem... well, I'm your man. Ghosts, I can help with.'

   `He helps ghosts!' another of the boys shouted.

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   `Um... that's not quite what I--'

   `He said he was the reason for the ghosts.'

   `He called himself the Ghost Doctor.'

   `That he knows eight different types of ghost.'

   `He said five.'

   `He said ten.'

   `He said nine,' the stocky girl corrected them.

   `You're right I said nine,' said the Doctor. `But you'remissing the nuances--'

   `What's the ghost talking about now?' The boy with themetal pipe was slapping it in the palm of his hand.

   `What's a new onz, then? Is that the type of ghost youare?'

   `He's not a ghost. He helps them and he talks to them,'the stocky girl reminded the crowd.

   The children's reaction made it clear they didn't seethis as an improvement.

   `Doesn't matter what,' dismissed one of them.

   `I think I saw a ghost here a minute ago,' the Doctortold her, almost pleading for calm. `Now... I'm new here.Only just arrived and--'

   Another rock flew past.

   `I wish I could see a ghost,' the Doctor said.

   That seemed to shut them up.

   `No!' the one with the fancy knife shouted.

   `He wished it!'

   One of the boys screamed.

   `You heard him! He summoned it. You saw it.'

   `It?'

   `The ghost.' The grubby boy was jabbing a finger at the

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Doctor. No: jabbing it to indicate something behind him.The Doctor took a deep breath before bowing to theinevitable and turning to take a look.

    The ghost shimmered. Its features were blurred anddifficult to make out. It was a man, or the shape and sizeof one. It wore white robes, a toga, and was terrifyingbecause it looked so terrified. It was an expression that theDoctor recognised, but could never get used to. Hisinstinct was to run, and he fought it, beat it down, kepthimself rooted to the spot. He was looking at a man whoknew that he'd lost everything, absolutely everything heknew and loved, including all the things he thought wouldbe there for ever, all the things that should have survivedhim. And the Doctor could tell that, once, this had been aman, a confident, proud man, who thought he hadachieved and built and protected those things he valued. Agood man reduced to a lost soul. He stared at the Doctorwith accusing eyes.

    `I know,' the Doctor said.

    The ghost reached out with both hands, trying to grabat the Doctor, just looking for one last moment of contact,some way of bridging the gap.

    `I know,' the Doctor repeated, raising his hand.

    `Don't let it touch you!' the boy with the metal pipeshouted. The ghost swept his arm around, almost casually,touched the boy, who vanished, his screams abruptly cutoff. The metal pipe clattered to the ground.

    `Frad! No!' the grubby boy said, grabbing the pipe.There wasn't much room between them. The ghost turnedto face him, pleading. The ghost was fading away. It was

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already hard to make out where it ended and the airstarted.

   `No...' the boy shouted, but it was too late, and theghost swept towards him, looked almost apologetic. Theboy was wild-eyed.

   `Let go of him!' the Doctor shouted.

   This had the intended reaction the ghost wasdistracted, turned away from the boy. The stocky girlpulled him away.

   The kids were all running off, now, out of the alley intothe open. A couple of them were still screaming.

   `Class dismissed,' the Doctor whispered.

   The Doctor looked back at the ghost, unsure whether tofeel anger. The ghost was hardly there, now. It lookedconfused. It howled, but didn't even have the power tobreak the silence. And then it dissipated, losing even itself.

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    The children ran away and kept running until the first

    few of them couldn't run any further. They regrouped,

    gathered in a place they knew well, the Metal Room. Big

    and square, it was at the base of one of the tallest towers.

    It made them feel safe, because it took four of them to

    push the door open and closed. It never closed all the way,

    because for some reason the sides had great fist-thick

    metal rods embedded in them.

        The room contained something really valuable: little

    strips of paper, printed with pictures of people and

    buildings and number symbols. If you held the paper up to

    the light, you could see other faces trapped in there. One

    of the oldest kids, Joss, had once said those were ghosts,

    and everyone laughed at him and called it joss paper from

    then on. The paper burned really well, kept them warm.

    There were also neat piles of shiny yellow metal bars and

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great tubs of bagged-up metal discs. They were no goodfor burning and just got in the way.

   The older, fitter kids still had some energy, and theykept watch. They all knew that the ghosts never followedthem, but they were still shaken up. Frad had beenpopular. They'd go back to the alley later, and lay a floral.What none of the kids knew was what had happened tothe skinny grown-up in the odd brown coat. This didn'tstop them speculating, and opinion ranged from him beingthe man that had been summoning up the ghosts all theseyears, right through to imagining that the ghost they'dseen ate the man after they ran off. Soon, everyone wasarguing about the Ghost Doctor.

   The stocky girl was clever enough to understand thatshe couldn't explain who the man was. The idea that therewas a person she didn't know disturbed her. She listenedto the bragging for a few minutes before it beganannoying her so much she had to slip outside.

   She got her thoughts straight, tried to separate out whatshe'd seen for herself from the confusion and rumour.They were getting silly in there, treating it like a game.They were kids. If she was thinking like that and she'dbeen thinking like it for months it meant she wasgrowing up. She fought the next thought, tried to keep itquiet, but still it came: there's no choice, it's nearly time togo back.

   The Ghost Doctor was too important for kids to dealwith. Too big for games. Boy games or parent games. Shefished around in her bag, found what she was looking forright at the bottom.

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    It had been months since she'd last seen the comm, andduring that time it had got a long, annoying scratch downits screen.

    She swirled one of the controls and it bleeped to let herknow she was being connected. It was a whole minutebefore Professor Jeffip answered. A tiny hologram of himappeared, hovering over the top surface.

    `Alsa... are you in trouble?' he began.

    `No. Frad was taken by a ghost, but--'

    `This is for emergencies,' he chided her, turning away.`Real emergencies. The batteries, Alsa. The batteries.'

    Despite herself, she was guiltily imagining theelectricity seeping away like sand from an hourglass.`There's a... man we don't know here.'

    Jeffip scowled. `You must be upset, but that's noexcuse for making up stories--'

    `I'm not,' she snapped. `It's true. He's not a ghost, he'sa...'

    `Stranger,' he said, supplying a word that Alsa onlydimly knew and had never spoken.

    `Stranger.' She rolled the word around her mouth. `Yes.We cornered him, and then a ghost appeared and we ranoff. I think he might have summoned up the ghost, but I'mnot sure. He asked stupid questions, like whether we hadsix toes.'

    Professor Jeffip believed her. He knew she wouldn'tdare waste the comm if she was making up a story. Hewasn't treating her like a kid. Alsa liked that.

    `Describe him,' he said.

    `Tall. Thin. He was old, but not as old as you. He said

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he was called "the Doctor", but that's not a proper name,is it? His clothes looked... made but not new. Not torn ordirty or anything, just...'

    `See what he's up to. See if there's anyone with him.Use the comm to take pictures of him and send themhere.'

    `The batteries...' Alsa said.

    `I know, but this is important.'

    Alsa hesitated.

    `Who do you think he is?' she asked.

    `I don't know. I might if I see his picture.'

    `Do you think it was him who murdered Jall?'

    `Jall was frightened to death by a ghost.'

    `She wasn't,' Alsa hissed. `I heard she was--'

    `Don't start that again, Alsa. Look... this Doctorsounds dangerous. Stay careful, Alsa. It's good to hearfrom you.'

    The hologram faded away, and the tiny device powereddown. That had been the longest comm call Alsa couldremember.

    Alsa stood, ready to go. Gar had come out. He wasalways so dirty. They were the same age, and he'd alwaysbeen taller than her until this year. He hadn't grown forages, and she'd done nothing but. It felt like she was twicehis size. He never took his hands out of his pockets. Thathad never bothered Alsa before these days it did nothingbut bother her.

    `Where are you going?' he said, his voice a little whiny.

    `I've commed Professor Jeffip. Told him about thestranger. He wants me to follow.' She started walking,

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soon passing the Blue Pyramid.

   Gar looked confused, and trailed after her. `You told onus? You told them where we are?'

   `No. I told Professor Jeffip about the Doctor and hisghost. It's important, Gar.'

   `So's not telling.'

   `This is more important. Bigger.'

   `Is he part of your plan?' he asked, half-cheekily, half-respectfully.

   `How could he be? I didn't know about him.'

   `Thought you knew everything.'

   `I'll hit you in a minute.'

   They picked their way over a large pile of metal slabs.They had obviously once all fitted together to make abuilding. It must have blown over. Or perhaps some otherkids had vandalised it. There was no better route round,but climbing over the metal involved a lot of sliding, andevery time they put a foot down it made a clanging sound.At the top of the pile, Alsa took the opportunity of a goodvantage point to take a look around. Then she skiddeddown, back to ground level, Gar close behind, almostlosing his footing and his foot in the attempt.

   `The Ghost Doctor was good at fighting,' he said whenhe was back on level ground.

   Alsa frowned. `He wasn't. He was nearly killed by abunch of kids.'

   `That's not what happened, is it? Everyone tried to gethim, but no one even touched him.'

   She hadn't thought of it like that. `If he was good atfighting, he'd have hit back,' she said, finally, unsure of

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her argument.

    There was a mid-level golden walkway close by, andthey took the pedestrian ramp about a dozen levels up toit.

    Alsa was already drawing up a plan. `We know he wasby Car Wall, but not where he's heading. Stay up here andwe'll get a good view of him.'

    `If he's still on ground level.'

    `If the Ghost Doctor doesn't live here, he won't knowthe best routes.'

    `I don't get it. Only kids explore. He's a parent.'

    `He's not, he just looks like one. All we need to worryabout is that he's dangerous.'

    `We need to make sure he doesn't see us.'

    `Oh, I saw you when you were by that blue pyramid,' aman's voice said.

    Alsa and Gar whirled round. The Doctor was standingthere.

For a while, the Doctor had stood in the alleyway, staringat where the ghost had been. He'd tried waving the sonicscrewdriver around to see if it could detect anything. Heknew the ghost was dead and gone. Even more dead andgone than normal for a ghost. In the end, he'd concludedthere just weren't any clues there for him. The Doctor hadhis suspicions, but he'd decided not to worry about it forthe time being.

   The three hours he'd estimated it would take to get tothe Fortress looked absurdly optimistic. He'd barely gothalf a mile in the first hour. He knew he'd be hard pushed

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to get to the Fortress before dark. Added to that was thefact that Arcopolis was busier than he'd anticipated. Withghosts and feral if very well-dressed kids around, thesooner he could get to the Fortress and concentrate on thejob at hand the better.

   The Doctor passed another gang of children, or perhapstwo gangs, playing with a cylindrical ball that playerswould occasionally just grab and use as a club. Most ofthem were boys; they were all in their early teens. He gavethem a wide berth, and they were too busy with their gameto spot him.

   Soon after, he'd seen two of the children who'dattacked him the grubby boy and the stocky girl. Theywere looking for him, and after a little while, he'd decidedto show himself.

`Hello again.' He was grinning. `If you're going to backaway from me, watch out for that drop behind you. Nohandrail. Common design problem in megacities acrossthe universe, I've found. I'm the Doctor, by the way.Didn't catch your names before.'

   If he set a ghost on her, Alsa knew she wouldn't be ableto get away. She'd already decided she would throwherself from the walkway instead.

   `Gar,' said Gar.

   `Alsa,' Alsa found herself answering. `How did you getup here so quickly?'

   `Ah, well, trick of the trade. I've been doing this sort ofthing a very, very long time.'

   `You a doctor?'

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    `Yes, that's right.'

    `An ossticktrishian?'

    `Obstetrician?'

    `Yeah.'

    `No. Well, not really. I dabble.'

    `Did you kill Jall?'

    `No.'

    Alsa knew he was telling the truth, because he hadn'thesitated, hadn't pretended, he'd just answered. He lookeda little sad, added he didn't know about Jall and askedthem to tell him about her.

    Alsa was wary, but Gar had already started. `She was agirl. Fair hair. They found her body a couple of days ago.The parents say she died of fright because she went whereshe wasn't meant to.'

    Alsa narrowed her eyes. `What are you doing here?'

    The Doctor pointed. `Heading to the Fortress.'

    Alsa gasped. Beside her, she swore Gar was swaying.Perhaps it was her.

    `You can't,' Gar said firmly. `No one's allowed there.Kids or the parents. No one would want to go there.'

    `So... it's a forbidden zone,' he said.

    Alsa frowned. `A what? It's just the Fortress, that's all.It's the way it is.' She crossed her arms over her chest.`We've told you everything we know,' she said curtly.`Even those of us who come to the city don't go to... thatplace. We just don't.'

    `You didn't build it, did you?'

    `Of course I didn't build it, I'm just a kid.'

    The Doctor laughed. `Not you personally. Your people.

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Your parents' people.'

   `No,' admitted Alsa. `It happened before we was born.Fifteen years ago. It just appeared one morning. If you goto one of the towers nearby or the Car Factory you can seethe half-buildings.'

   The Doctor nodded thoughtfully. `Everything in thespace the Fortress materialised into would have beendestroyed. Anything that wasn't would have beenunaffected. So there are buildings that were sliced in two.The half-buildings. Fascinating.'

   `No one knew what the Fortress was or where it wasfrom or why. They tried investigating, but still didn'tknow. Then three days later everyone vanished. Everyonebut the parents. They were all in the same travel tube. Itbroke down, and they dug their way out and when theygot there everyone was gone. Just vanished, andsomething had been done to the jennraters and puters andfabs so they didn't work any more.'

   `All the birds and fish and animals went, too,' Gar said.`I've seen pictures of them, though.'

   `The plants survived,' the Doctor said.

   `The parents would have starved otherwise,' Alsa said.

   `How many parents are there?'

   `All of them,' Gar replied, puzzled.

   `Thirty-seven,' Alsa told the Doctor.

   `Why do you think it happened?' he asked.

   `The parents argue about that. No one knows.Especially the ones who say they do know.'

   The Doctor was looking at Alsa, intently, but when shefaced him, he looked away suddenly and guiltily.

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   `We did something wrong, didn't we?' Gar said. `Wewas punished.'

   `You were punished all right,' the Doctor said quietly.`But not for anything you did. You certainly didn't doanything wrong. You weren't even born.'

   `You know what happened?' Alsa asked him.

   The Doctor smiled gently and got up. `I'm going to theFortress. It's going to be very dangerous.

   `You can't get inside. There's no doors.'

   `There are if you know where to look.'

   `People who go there get struck by lightning.'

   `Bet they do. That's why your parents are right, andyou have to stay away.'

   `Can I take your picture with my comm?' Alsa saidsuddenly.

   `Um... yes. I suppose.'

   The Doctor quickly ran his fingers through his hair andthen watched with a rather fixed grin the whole time as Alsa took the device out, waggled the control and madea hologram of him.

   `You said there was no power after everyonevanished,'he said through his teeth. `How does that run?'

   `Batteries,' she said simply. `You can't waste them.'

   `May I?' She handed it him. He'd finally stoppedgrinning. `And this is a "comm", so what? that's shortfor communicator? You can talk to people with this, too?So your parents have managed to set up a telephonenetwork?'

   `It's my mum, Olva, that keeps it running,' Gar saidproudly. `There's big batteries and one aerial in town. It's

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for emergencies.'

   `Good for her,' the Doctor said cheerfully. He stood upfrom the bench then looked over the edge. `Ooh! What'sthat?' he asked.

   Gar and Alsa ran past him to take a look. They didn'tsee anything, and when they turned back to challenge theDoctor he'd vanished.

   `We need to call Professor Jeffip again,' Alsa said. Shedidn't like to admit it.

   `What with?' Gar said. `He's nicked your comm.'

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    The sonic screwdriver had its limits. Not many, but it

    wasn't just a magic wand. Using it, the Doctor could

    fiddle around and make a piece of equipment run a little

    faster or give it more range, but it couldn't easily turn a

    toaster into a CD player or a lawnmower into an electric

    toothbrush.

       Take Alsa's comm (as, indeed, the Doctor just had). It

    was a mobile phone. There came a point where there was

    no point making a phone any smaller or lighter, or its

    memory any bigger, or giving its camera any more

    megapixels. There were only so many human emotions in

    need of emoticons to express them. This was a nice piece

    of technology. It was easy to use, with all sorts of

    foldyouty, 3D, pluggy-inny things down the sides. Once it

    had topped up the comm's battery and buffed out the

    scratch on the screen, there wasn't all that much else that

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the sonic screwdriver could add or enhance.

    The Doctor had been more interested in what it couldtell him. There had been a slim hope that the city datanetwas still around, or that bits of it were. But, no, there wasnothing but that one mast that Gar's mum was in chargeof. You could have the most brilliant device for accessingthe internet going, but if there was no internet it wasn'tmuch use.

    He had thought all that through without slowing hispace. He was now back on target, and the Fortress was soclose that it had started to loom. The evening light seemedto fall into the Fortress, unable to escape. He'd be at thoseblack metal walls in half an hour.

    The terrain had changed. A sewer main or railwaytunnel had caved in, leaving a wide, tile-lined river. Plantshad thrived, and all sorts of reeds and mosses proliferatedin, beside and along the banks. The air was thick withpollen. The water was slow-flowing, and really rather apleasant surprise, like finding a nice canal path whilewalking around a busy city centre. Everything was clean,as you'd expect it to be after fifteen years of cleansingrains. The ground was nicely squishy under his feet.

    The Doctor passed through an archway formed by twosmall buildings, one on each bank, that had toppled andhalf-collapsed into each other--

    --and suddenly there was nothing between him and theFortress.

    It felt as if it had jumped out at him, and the Doctoredged back under the concrete arch, keen to get out of itssight. He peeked round the corner and careful to give

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himself as much cover as possible got a good view. Hequickly understood how the Fortress had managed tosneak up. The collapsed and sunken buildings had formeda series of dams and terraces, and, over the years, thewater had collected, overflowed, built up, until a largeartificial lake had formed. It was a clearing in the forest ofskyscrapers, space needles, pylons and towers.

   One side of the Fortress was facing full on to the lake,the other two were swept back and partially embedded ina huge, curving white building. Smaller towers andneedles each one as large as any that had ever been builton Earth lay around the Fortress, like felled redwoodtrees. The lines of the Fortress were broken up withbuttresses, battlements, odd jutting features that mighthave been watchtowers. Plates of metal seemed to havebeen bolted on, carelessly at times, to reinforce thestructure. There weren't any obvious windows or hatches.

   The lake was a mile wide, easily. Every so often,nowhere near enough to provide a set of stepping stones,masonry and metal fins broke the surface of the water. Thefar shore was lapping against the solid black Fortress wall.An accidental moat. The Doctor hadn't thought to bring acanoe with him. He stood quietly on the shore, looking fora route across.

   About halfway across the water, a glass man stood. Thefigure was small and transparent, difficult to see. Ghostly.The Doctor thought it might be a statue an AntonyGormley, not a Michelangelo. Some instinct, though, toldhim it was alive.

   He spent a second or two trying to work out if it had its

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feet on a ruin, or simply on the surface of the lake. It wasfacing away from him, best as he could tell.

    This ghost didn't look anything like the other one.

    `Two types of ghost?' he whispered. Then, waving hisarms, he called, `Hey! You there! Hello! I'm the Doctor!'

    A bolt of blue energy streaked low across the water,right at him.

    This sort of thing had happened plenty of times to theDoctor before in his travels around time and space. One ofthe reasons he had lasted as long as 900 years was that hewas always half-expecting something to start shooting athim. He was back behind cover before the ray was hittingthe concrete and making a very credible attempt atshattering it.

    The Doctor knelt with his back to the wall, which waswarm now and still ringing from the impact. Had the glassman fired at him, or had something from the Fortress firedat the glass man and missed?

    There was screaming and shouting from back the wayhe'd come. Children screaming. Alsa and Gar.

    The Doctor extricated himself, darting back through thearchway, along the riverbank. He almost collided with Garand, by dodging him, managed to slam right into Alsa. Fora moment both he and she tottered on the edge of theriver, but they managed to pull back from the brink.

    `Ghosts!' Gar shouted. He was powering off, under thearch, his friend already almost overtaking him. `Don't leta ghost touch you!'

    Even now, the Doctor noted admiringly, the boy stillhad his hands in his pockets.

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   Behind them, three ghosts were floating towards theDoctor. The first type of ghost. Children, this time, whodidn't look much older than Gar or Alsa. All girls, withlong white hair twisted in elaborate dreadlocks. Theirfaces were blue-grey, their whole forms translucent. Theylooked surprised, more than anything. Shaken. One washolding up her hand, apparently bemused she could seethrough it. She had five fingers.

   The Doctor was about to reach out to her when heremembered not to. He remembered something else, too.He whirled on his heel, pounded after Alsa and Gar.

   `Stop!' he shouted.

   Gar did; Alsa either hadn't heard or pretended shehadn't. As she reached the other side of the archway andentered the clearing, the Doctor leapt, wrapped both of hisarms above her knees and pushed her and himself over, ina rough approximation of a rugby tackle.

   Alsa's arms flailed out, her hands actually splashinginto the water.

   `Gerroff...' she spat, trying to kick free.

   A bolt of blue energy sailed less than a metre over theirheads, silencing Alsa's protest. The Doctor let go and theycrawled behind a low brick wall half-submerged on theedge of the water.

   Gar was safe in the archway, and the Doctor called overto him to stay where he was.

   `Were the ghosts following you?' the boy asked, hisvoice trembling.

   `No,' the Doctor said, hoping he wasn't lying.

   He poked his head over the wall, brought it down again

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very rapidly indeed, and another blue ray slammed past.

   Alsa was wide-eyed, out of breath. `No one survivesthis. We shouldn't be here. Right from the start we're toldthat. No one comes here and lives.'

   The Doctor looked right at her. She looked so muchyounger than before.

   `How old are you, Alsa?' he asked. Get her to thinkabout something else.

   `Thirteen.' She was defensive again, her old self. Good.

   She was so young. Too young to be part of this.

   `Don't worry,' the Doctor said, looking her straight inthe eye. `You can trust me.'

   `You stole my comm.'

   The Doctor couldn't meet her eye for a moment.`True,'he noted. He fished into his pocket and handed itback.

   `You better not have broken it.'

   `The opposite actually.' The Doctor was toying with theidea of poking his head up again.

   Alsa examined the comm, then looked up at him,suspicious.

   `It's got a full battery. That's... you can't do that.'

   `I can, you know,' the Doctor said, glad of an excuse tostay put for a moment. `It's rechargeable. The problemyou have is you've got nowhere to recharge it. Arcopolisgot past all the primitive power sources, like coal and oiland nuclear and solar. Cosmic energy collected bysatellites and beamed down. That's what those aerials ontop of all the buildings were for. No pollution, plenty foreveryone. Well, cut a long story short, the satellites have

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gone.'

   Alsa was staring up at him. This was the Doctor's firstopportunity to study her strange outfit up close. Post-apocalyptic societies were meant to go all Mad Max, withstudded leather straps holding up rags and animal skins. Itwas the rules. Alsa had roughly cut hair, like her mate haddone it, but it was almost too clean and moussed. She waswearing perfume. Too much, and he could make out atleast three different types. Not only that, she was alsomodelling a pinstripe trouser suit not unlike his own,although baggier, crisper and fancier. Then she'd ruinedthe effect by sewing patches on it, attached ribbons, pokedthrough badges and other adornments. Her mum musthave gone spare. Alsa was wearing the sort of trainers youonly get for Christmas. Nothing really fitted her all thatwell she was wearing half a dozen pairs of socks so thather feet filled out the shoes. It didn't add up.

   Or did it? The Doctor beamed as another piece fell intoplace. `Oh, oh yes! I see. You stole what you're wearing.Well, not stole took from the shops.'

   He thought about the vast city. All those shops withshelves full of... well, everything. They'd be full of stuff.Lots of things would fade or rot or perish how quicklywould depend on what they were made of, what they werepackaged in, how much sunlight hit them, whether theroof leaked. Some things would last a lifetime. One ofAlsa's gang had had that fancy knife. All of them hadclothes and bags and stuff like that. Loads of loot.

   `The parents disapprove,' Alsa said defiantly.

   `Well, not to be critical, but you do overdo the

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perfume.'

   `They say the city is dangerous.'

   `On balance, I tend to agree.'

   `They say we should learn to make things ourselves.They're stupid there's plenty of everything in the city.'

   The Doctor nodded. `It must be very difficult for them.You and Gar and the other kids, you've never known adifferent life. They did. It must haunt them. Losingeverything.'

   There was a flash as bright as the sun for the merestmoment, annihilation so profound it stretched deep intothe past and far into the future. Then Gallifrey was gone.

   `They don't like to talk about what happened before,'Alsa was saying, a sneer in her voice. `They alwayschange the subject.'

   `Well, they must have lost loved ones. I know howthey... well, talking of which: how are you getting onover there, Gar?'

   `I'm all right.'

   The Doctor could see him, and gave him the thumbsup. That made Gar smile, and copy the gesture.

   `Got your hands out of those pockets. Excellent. Right,'said the Doctor. `Gar. Alsa. The Fortress is able to defenditself. No one's alive in there. It's all automatic. It was aplace built for war, designed to function even after amassive assault. The... lightning... that's just a commonor garden directed energy ray. Motion sensitive,unfortunately for us. It fires at anything that moves. Therewill be other guns like that, at intervals, along the walls.The ghosts are another defence mechanism. You're not

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going to want to go anywhere haunted, are you? So theFortress projects scary images to frighten you away. Killsyou if you stay too long. That's all the ghosts bothtypes... um, I think are: holograms like your commmakes. And, if you remember, "holograms" were on mylist of rational explanations for ghosts. I was right.'

    `So... you do this all the time?' Alsa asked.

    `Oh yes. Fight monsters, right wrongs, boldly go whereno one has gone before.'

    `Like every day?' Gar wondered.

    `Most days,' the Doctor sighed. `Too many adventuresto tell in just one place. I forget half of them myself.'

    `Tell us a secret one.'

    `One no one else knows about? Um... yes.' The Doctorthought about that for a moment. `All right, here's a goodone: a couple of days ago, I was in a city called London.You won't have heard of it. It's on one of my favouriteplanets. You won't have heard of the Steggosians, either.Luckily, they haven't heard of you. A particularly nastyrace of fascist dinosaur people.'

    `What's a dinosaur?' asked Gar.

    `What's a fascist?' asked Alsa.

    `Well... imagine something as wide as I am tall, withscaly skin and a flat head. Big plates running down itsback, spiky tail.' The Doctor did a helpful mime.

    `And that's a fascist?'

    `This particular one, yes. What matters is that theuniverse won't miss them. Twenty years ago, relativelyspeaking, the Steggosian home quadrant was hit by aterrible plague that destroyed their immune systems and

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left no survivors. The one I met had been the captain of astarship out on deep-space patrol when it happened. Itdrove him mad. They'd caught the plague from rats, andthe captain decided to rid the universe of all mammals.'

   `What's a mammal?' the children both asked.

   `You are,' the Doctor assured them. `The rest of hiscrew perished over the years. He ended up inside a clocktower, planning to release poison that was so lethal asingle drop would have killed everyone in the country. Aclock tower is--'

   `We know what a clock tower is,' Alsa complained.

   `There's one in the Car Factory,' Gar added.

   `There's also a famous one in London.' The Doctorsmiled. `St Stephen's Tower, or the Clock Tower, but mostpeople call it Big Ben. They'd only just finishedrebuilding it, so I wasn't about to let anyone smash it upagain.'

   `What did you do to him?' Alsa asked.

   `I tried talking to him,' the Doctor said quietly. `Hewasn't keen on the idea. We fought. He ended up losinghis balance, falling sixty metres. Hit the pavement.'

   `Splat!' Alsa squealed.

   The Doctor's expression flickered. `He had a verytough hide. But, yes, he died.'

   Gar looked away, Alsa was thinking it through.

   `Did you keep the poison?'

   `No.' It was time to risk it. Very slowly, the Doctorstood up.

   `Doctor!' Alsa shouted, grabbing at his sleeve.

   `It's fine,' the Doctor reassured her. `There's a trick to

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it. Move slowly. Motion sensitive, like I said, following aset of instructions. It's programmed to fire at things only ifthey move above a certain speed.'

    `How fast?' said Alsa, standing up so slowly she'd havebeen shoved out the way by an impatient glacier.

    `Faster than that,' the Doctor chided. He was literallyinching backwards to the archway. `Although I'm not surehow much faster. It's trial and error, really. Think of it as agame.'

    `If we lose the game?'

    `We'll be, er, blasted to pieces.'

    The good thing about moving so slowly was that theDoctor had a chance to look back over the lake, see if hecould spot the glass man again. He couldn't, but it wasgetting dark, and it had been hard enough to spot himbefore. He might be inching across the water towards theFortress, not away from it. The thought was disturbing.

    Now the Doctor was getting a good view of theFortress, he could see the gun turret. It was a tubemounted low on a buttress, only a metre or so over thewater. It was still pointing in their direction, twitchingfrom time to time, impatiently. No ivy dared grow up thewalls of the Fortress, he noted.

    `Don't give in to the temptation to run the last bit,' theDoctor warned, as much for his own benefit as Alsa's.

    The ground squelched beneath his left foot, sank awaysuddenly, and the Doctor almost almost fell over. Herighted himself, sighed with relief, and with his next stepwas behind the concrete wall with Gar.

    Alsa's wide shoulders were high, tense. She was like a

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cat with an arched back. She'd been facing away from theFortress the whole time. Since the Doctor had nearlyslipped, she'd become so cautious with her feet she was indanger of tripping over them.

   `Relax a little, Alsa. Nearly there.'

   Three more steps and she was safe, and as soon as shewas safe her legs gave way and she sat down on the wetground. The Doctor double-checked the other direction forghosts. Alsa and Gar were talking amongst themselves,glancing his way from time to time.

   `You're coming with us,' the girl announced as she gotup.

   `Where are we going?' Gar asked, before the Doctorcould.

   `Back to the parents.'

   The Doctor bit his lip. `I really have to get into thatFortress,' he said finally.

   `You can get inside?'

   `Yes.'

   `Tell me what you're going to do.'

   `There is a weapon in there, a terrible weapon. Not thatray gun, but something that's and here comes a wordthat is overused, but not by me infinitely more powerful.That weapon was used once, fifteen years ago. Do youunderstand what I mean?'

   Alsa thought about it, but only for a second or two. `It'swhat killed everyone.'

   The Doctor nodded. He glanced at the sky and thenlooked back over at the Fortress.

   `Go home to your parents, show them you're safe. Get

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some sleep, and tomorrow morning, I promise, theFortress will no longer be a danger to anyone. I am goingin there, I'm going to get past all the traps and I'm goingto destroy that weapon once and for all. Then I'll go. LikeI'd never been here.'

   Night had fallen. The Fortress stood there, blackagainst a too-black night's sky. It was a dark mountain,and seemed almost as large as the city it had imposeditself upon.

   He could defeat it.

   There was the faint whiff of perfume.

   The Doctor turned, a smile on his face just in time tosee Alsa, arms aloft, bringing half a concrete block downon the side of his head. His knees buckled, he raised auseless hand, opened his mouth and splashed down intothe muddy ground, the one-syllable question he was aboutto ask still on his lips.

   `No,' said Alsa.

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    The Doctor's eyes snapped open, and the sudden light

    made his very sore head even more sore. His hand

    explored his temple, discovered it was tightly bandaged.

       `He's up,' a girl's voice too young to be Alsa's

    called out.

       He was lying on something like a camp bed, wearing

    loose pyjama bottoms. Without moving, he established he

    was in a large room with walls made of translucent plastic,

    like a marquee. The light was sunlight, so he'd been

    unconscious all night. Risking a turn of the head, he

    couldn't be sure if this was a hospital ward, a machine

    shop or a laboratory.

       The room seemed equally unclear on that point. There

    were cabinets along the walls, full of glass and plastic

    bottles, as well as various tools and scientific instruments.

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There were four other beds, all empty. Two large metalworkbenches were packed with hand-lathes, drills, sawsand so on. There were large packing crates dotted aroundthe floor, stuffed with what looked like rolled-up postersor scrolls.

   There were six girls in the room, all 7 or 8 years old, allin smart little lab coats. They were occupied cleaningbottles, writing up notes and other menial scientific tasks.

   The Doctor swung his legs round, planted his feet onthe rough stone floor.

   `Professor Jeffip will want to know,' one girl said, togeneral agreement from the others. She slid open a doormade of plastic sheeting and stepped through it.

From the quality of the light, they were going deeper intothe building, not leaving it. The corridors the Doctor wasled through reminded him of a traditional Japanese house,but while those were built in harmony with nature usinglocal materials, the people here had made do with piecesof metal scaffolding instead of wood, and sheets ofpolythene instead of paper.

   The girl who was leading him was so young and soself-consciously prim that the Doctor was unsure if shewas playing or not.

   `In here.'

   The girl stepped aside and closed the door after theDoctor. It was a smaller room. A man in a mostly bluepatchwork toga was hunched over a great wooden desk.The Doctor's coat, suit, shirt and tie were all hanging upon a rail beside the desk. The contents of his many and

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various pockets had been collected in a plastic tray. Theman at the workbench had clamped the sonic screwdriverinto a small vice, prised the case open and was peering atit.

    `Be careful,' the Doctor said, intensely annoyed. `Youdon't know what--'

    `It's a sonic tool... a screwdriver,' the man told himairily, without looking up. `I was just examining itsacoustic accelerators.'

    The man turned, belatedly removing the jeweller'seyeglass he'd had fixed into his eye. He looked like hewas in his late sixties, with an aquiline noise and a highforehead. His hair was a mane that started as a quiff, ranhalfway down his back and had grey streaks so dramaticthey were practically stripes. His irises were differentcolours, one was a pale blue dot, the other a vivid red.Cinnabar, the colour of mercury oxide, thought theDoctor.

    The man was toying idly with the piece of casing he'dtaken off. `We had devices like this,' he said as he did so.`Much, much larger. The size of this room.'

    The Doctor had reached the desk. He glanced down atthe tray with his stuff in and, as nonchalantly as he could,confirmed the TARDIS key was there.

    `Your scientific credentials are certainly impressive,'the man said, indicating the wallet containing the psychicpaper. `My name is Jeffip.'

    `Professor Jeffip?'

    `The children call me that, yes.'

    `I'm the Doctor.'

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   `Yes. So Alsa's told us.' He raised his left hand, clearlythe local greeting.

   `Alsa...' Just hearing the name made the Doctor's headthrob more.

   `She and Gar brought you here.'

   `She's a smart child.' The Doctor said. He'd pulled hisshirt from its hanger and was slipping it back on.

   `Yes. One of mine, I think. She's smart and angry. Nota terribly appealing combination.'

   `No. So where's Alsa now?'

   `She's not yet risen.'

   `Teenagers, eh?'

   `She and Gar were very tired. They brought you a longway in a wheelbarrow.'

   `Did they? Did they? A wheelbarrow. Fancy that.' TheDoctor whistled as he buttoned up his jacket.

   `Alsa couldn't begin to explain where you had comefrom.'

   `You've already gathered that I'm not from Arcopolis?'the Doctor ventured.

   `The two hearts and pockets full of items which aren'tfrom this planet gave it away,' Jeffip confirmed, reachingfor a walking stick made from a sawn-off piece ofaluminium pole. `Would you like some breakfast?'

Jeffip's laboratory was in just one of about a dozen similarstructures of various sizes and shapes. This settlement wasa shanty town, albeit a rather posh one. It had been laidout in a large flat expanse of parkland at the heart of thecity. It reminded the Doctor a little of Hooverville.

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   There were a lot of children around. A lot of them. Aremarkable number. Like a dozen school trips had shownup at the same time. They were all under 10, as best hecould make out. The only adult the Doctor had seen so farwas Jeffip.

   The pathways were festooned in bunting, paperlanterns and sculptures made of scrap metal and bits ofdead robots. Anything to brighten up the place.

   `Are you all right, Doctor?'

   The Doctor turned to Jeffip. `I'm sure it's nothing.'

   `You look worried those robots are going to come backto life.'

   The Doctor tried to sound casual. `Stranger things havehappened.'

   `I wish they would. We could do with the help.'

   They passed the comm mast, which stood in the middleof the settlement like a totem pole. Everyone was stoppingor at least looking up as they passed. The Doctor smiled alot, tried to look friendly.

   `We always knew there must be extraterrestrialcivilisations,' Jeffip was saying. `We never made contactwith any. Until the Fortress appeared. And now you, ofcourse. How's the head?'

   `It feels like something made contact with it,' theDoctor said lightly.

   Jeffip nodded, smiling. `I have many questions, ofcourse. A few practical ones. You're here alone? Whyhave you come to Arcopolis? How did you know we werehere and learn our language? Is that your natural form?'

   `What's wrong with my form?'

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   `Oh, nothing. Much. It's just that it so closelyresembles our own. I wondered if you'd adopted it toblend in. Like a chameleon.'

   `I'm from a world that was almost identical to this one.Same size, so same gravity. Same atmosphere, just about.Orange sky, not green. I like your sky, by the way. Don'tsee many green ones. Our superficial physical similarity isdown to natural selection and coincidence. The samepatterns repeat themselves across the universe. I'm herealone. I travel, and I've learned millions of languages onmy travels. Never bothered with Welsh didn't think I'dever need it. Just goes to show.'

   `Was?'

   `I'm sorry?' The Doctor had just looked down andnoticed his shoelaces were undone.

   `"A world that was". Past tense.'

   `You're a very perceptive man, Professor Jeffip.' TheDoctor was bending down, tying his laces.

   `What do you know about this world, Doctor?'

   `Well...' the Doctor began, `I know that I saw a boykilled yesterday. Touched by a ghost. I tried to save him,but couldn't. I'm sorry.'

   Jeffip grunted. `A shame. But at least it wasn't a girl.'

   The Doctor let that remark go for the moment.

They were approaching running water the Doctor couldhear it. They passed through the gap between two tentsand then they were on the paved bank of a very narrow,fast-flowing river. Upstream, there was a largewaterwheel, fixed to the side of a brick building that had

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probably once only been ornamental. From the crashingand clattering coming from inside, the Doctor guessed thewheel was powering a drive shaft that, in turn, must havebeen running things like a small milling wheel, a loomand a lathe. Jeffip confirmed that and added that therewasn't room in there for much industry. Its main purposewas to irrigate the fields.

    `You don't generate electricity?'

    `Not yet. We've had other priorities.'

    Set a little way from the water was a long picnic-stylebench. There were three women there: a blonde, a redheadand a brunette; all of them looked around 40, perhaps alittle younger. They wore similar outfits, almost like thicksaris, all of them patched and mended. They wereattending to a cloud of children, all under five, all withbottles of juice. Two of the women were at an advancedstage of pregnancy.

    `Ladies,' said the Doctor, smiling, sitting down.

    The children were, despite the women's best efforts,something of a law unto themselves.

    `These aren't all yours, are they?' the Doctor joked.

    `Who else's would they be?' one of them asked, tooconfused to be offended.

    The Doctor, at the second attempt, managed to countseventeen young children. It was mathematically possible,he supposed.

    Jeffip was dishing out a couple of bowls of soup from alarge stone pot. It was watery, but looked like lemongrassand mushroom. When the Doctor tried it, it tastedsurprisingly strong.

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   `I'm the Doctor, by the way,' the Doctor said to the onewho didn't look pregnant, the one with blonde hair.

   `Dela.' She raised her left hand, then returned herattention to wiping the mouth of a 2-year-old. Thechildren all knew to drink up their soup and eat theirmushrooms.

   `How many children do you have? If you don't mindme asking?'

   `Sixteen,' Dela told him, too busy to look up. `I'mbetween at the moment.'

   `Hard work,' the Doctor suggested.

   Dela turned her head and raised an eyebrow.

   `You knew that already,' the Doctor said.

   `I knew that already,' she confirmed, giving him a nicesmile.

   `We have to repopulate.'

   The voice belonged to a new arrival, a woman as old asJeffip, so around 60. She was scholarly-looking, withthinning grey hair. `Welcome to New Arcopolis. I amJennver.'

   `And do you have children?' the Doctor asked, turningaway from Dela.

   `Not for fifteen years,' Jennver said, without emotion.

   `Ah. Yes... I understand.'

   What had once been raw had been smoothed away overthe years, like pebbles in a stream. Before the Fortressarrived, all of the grown-ups here would have had jobsand friends, families and an expectation of what the futurewas going to be like. All taken away in an instant. TheDoctor wondered what they'd been like before.

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    `As I'm too old to have children and too weak to workthe fields, I occupy myself as leader of the Council.'Jennver beamed and raised her hand.

    Jeffip was smiling. `Jennver is also our onlyobstetrician.'

    `Delighted to meet you,' the Doctor said. This was thefirst time for centuries he'd heard the word "obstetrician"twice in twenty-four hours.

    `You are also a doctor,' she asked a little warily, theDoctor thought.

    `I am.'

    `Alsa told me a little about you last night. Thehologram she took wasn't terribly flattering.'

    `She didn't get my good side,' the Doctor suggested.`Given that it was a 3D image, that's just unforgivable.Kids, eh? You must have a terrible time controlling them.They must outnumber you ten to one.'

    `They all come to understand their duty to posterity.'

    `Duty?'

    `Well, yes. None of us have any choices. The--'

    `--women have to have lots of babies, and it doesn'tmatter so much if the boys are eaten by ghosts?' theDoctor finished for her. `Either way, you don't need toteach them to read.'

    The Doctor looked over to Dela for support, but shewas studiously looking the other way.

    Jennver bristled, but managed to stay civil. `Oursociety faces exceptional circumstances, Doctor. We wereleft with thirteen women of childbearing age. Everyone,men and women, lost privileges and rights. None of us

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have the life we would ask for. We retained a functioningsociety. There are now 148 girls and women. The eldest ofthe children will soon be adults, and have children of theirown. There will not be the same pressure on them.'

   `I calculate that an average of ten children will suffice,'said Jeffip. `Then six for the generation after that. Wecan't expand beyond the settlement's ability to feed itself,of course.'

   `It is not how I would organise an ideal world,' Jennverconceded. `We have never mistaken this situation for theideal world. We have adopted a clan structure, one thatseems to hold together.'

   The Doctor nodded. His attention had wandered backto the Fortress. He needed to get on with what he'd comehere to do.

The park was roughly triangular, probably two miles oneach side, surrounded by skyscrapers and other hugebuildings. The Fortress was visible, but further away thanever, a dark island almost lost in a sea of architecture. TheDoctor was confident he could make a break for it, but hewanted as much of a head start as possible, so he waswaiting for an opportunity to sneak off without alertinganyone.

   They'd finished breakfast and left the mothers lookingafter the children. Now, an hour or so after he'd woken,the Doctor was following Jeffip and Jennver as theywalked among the tents.

   `I'd love to hear your thoughts on where the Fortresscame from,' the Doctor told them.

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   Jennver looked dismissive. `I don't think we'll everknow for sure.' She'd taken against him, the Doctor wassure of it.

   The old man leant more firmly against his walkingstick. `Shouldn't stop us asking the questions, Jennver.I've been doing that for fifteen years. Certain facts areself-evident. It is the product of a civilisation far inadvance of ours. That civilisation is aggressive andparanoid. They operate on a scale that I know I can't evencomprehend. Their agenda is entirely unknown and theirmethods do not, as far as I can tell, have any precedent inour history. It is probably alien.'

   `Only probably?' the Doctor asked.

   `It may have time travelled from our future. In whichcase, it may have been built by our descendants for noother reason than that they knew it appeared when it did.The destruction of our civilisation may have been anecessary step in the creation of theirs.'

   `I tend to the belief that time travel is a logicalabsurdity,' Jennver said.

   The Doctor nodded approvingly. `Oh, absolutely. Infact, I was saying the exact same thing to a bloke downthe pub just next week.'

   `They did something that wiped out 200 million peoplein an instant. And it obscured nine of the stars. Did youknow that? I have drawn up star maps, compared themwith ones from the last fifteen years.' As Jeffip said that,the Doctor remembered the box of scrolls back in his lab.`The nine nearest stars to this world apart from our ownsun, of course. An atmospheric effect, I think.'

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   `Not everyone is so sure any stars have vanished,'Jennver said gently. `None of us were even amateurastronomers.'

   `Surely there are records?'

   `Every database is dead, powerless.'

   `There must be old books in museums and libraries?'

   `We have different priorities.'

   The Doctor's jaw must have dropped, because Jennverlooked annoyed.

   `Museums and art galleries had controlled conditions,all dependent on their power supply. We needed to plantand harvest. We couldn't afford to waste any effort.'

   `So every masterpiece of all the great artists ofArcopolis is sat mouldering?'

   `Rather them than the crops in the field. You can't eatbooks.'

   Jeffip had the decency to look ashamed.

   `Most of the statues and sculptures are still there,'Jeffip noted. `We did want to bring Dance of Days to thesettlement, make it a feature of our square, but it's solidbronze. It was just too heavy. Shame, as it's prettyinspiring.'

   `It's not going anywhere,' Jennver muttered. `We wereright to start afresh.'

   Jeffip was also clearly keen to change the subject.`Doctor, we were once a proud people. We thoughtArcopolis had reached the pinnacle of technology andsociety. But the only conclusion I can reach is that wewere caught in the crossfire of some intergalactic war thathad nothing whatsoever to do with us. We were an anthill

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run over by a tank.'

   The Doctor pursed his lips, but decided not to sayanything.

`Who was Jall?' the Doctor asked Jeffip later on in themorning.

   Jeffip nodded, upset to hear the name. `A lovely girl.One of the first to be born, she'd just come back to us.'

   `I gather she was killed.'

   `By ghosts, yes. Her body was found the day beforeyesterday, by the Ground Wing. It's a shame. She was oldenough to start thinking about having kids of her own.'

   `Alsa wanted to know if I murdered her.'

   `She thought you were a ghost at first, didn't she?'

   `Yes.'

   `There you are, then. She's angry and she's a child,Doctor not objective.' He hesitated. `It's odd. So muchdeath, but that was only the third body I'd ever seen.Everyone taken by the ghosts vanished. We lost a coupleof people early on. Couldn't take it. Selfish. We've beenlucky since then, in the settlement.'

   That puzzled the Doctor.

It was gone midday.

   Beyond the tents, the park had been ploughed up andvarious crops planted. The fields were full of people children, mostly just like pre-Industrial Revolutionfarms in Europe. At least on Earth they'd had horses andoxen to pull ploughs. The only mechanical sound he couldhear was the splash and creak of the water wheel, on the

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other side of the tents.

   The Doctor was keen to get back in Jennver's goodbooks before he left. The leader of the Council was at theedge of the fields, deep in conversation with Dela.

   A crowd of children a little older than the ones he'dmet at breakfast were picking what looked like bluestrawberries. A little boy offered the Doctor one, and hegratefully accepted.

   `Tasty,' he said, and meant it. It actually tasted a littlemeaty, like beef. A little. He had another.

   `So, Doctor,' Jennver said. `You knew about theFortress before you arrived. Did you know Arcopolis hadbeen destroyed?'

   `Yes.'

   `Did you know that we had survived?' Dela asked.

   `No,' the Doctor admitted.

   Dela and Jennver shared a glance.

   `Now you know about us, you have new plans.'

   The Doctor was puzzled for a second or two, mainlybecause it hadn't even been a question. `Well, yes, ofcourse,' he said hurriedly. `Um... what do you mean?'

   `Alsa said you fixed her comm,' Dela said. `A man ofyour abilities would be very useful around here.'

   `Um...' He floundered for a moment. `Oh, I see. Yes.I'm happy to do what I can to help out. I'm up for oddjobs, tinkering, fixing up. Anything, really.' He lookedover at Dela and smiled. `Within reason. Nothing thatchanges things too much, of course. I'm not meant tointerfere, but, well, that ship sailed a long time ago.'

   Jennver was smiling and nodding, keen. `That's settled.

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See what you can do. We're having a Council meetingtonight. You should come to it.'

   The Doctor checked his watch, looked back over at theFortress. `Yes, of course,' he said.

By mid afternoon the Doctor was getting itchy feet. Hewas a traveller, he liked travelling.

   Dela was pleasant company, and now she was showinghim around, introducing him to people. She'd just had himshake hands with a brawny, bearded man called Fladon,the blacksmith, although he was away from his workshop.Fladon was in his late forties, dressed in a jumper knittedfrom reeds and what looked like a PVC kilt. It wasn't alook the Doctor would be rushing to adopt.

   Fladon suddenly shouted: `Come back have you?'

   He was calling out to Gar, who'd just come swaggeringround the corner and had his hands back in his pockets.He didn't come over, or answer Fladon's question, he wasjust wandering through.

   `What's he doing out?' Gar scowled when he saw theDoctor. `That's the Ghost Doctor, that is.'

   `He's a man, Gar,' Dela said.

   `Frad's dead,' he called out, either indifferent orsuccessfully feigning indifference. He'd passed by, now.

   `Boys will be boys,' Dela sighed, picking up a bottleGar had dropped.

   `Children shouldn't be running around outside gettingexercise, they should be inside playing violent computergames and eating junk food,' the Doctor agreed.

   `We let children play.'

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   `And die?'

   `Life here is hard,' Fladon said. `Kids learn that adultsstay away from the city for good reasons. We tell them,but they have to learn for themselves, so a lot of them goout into the city when they're old enough. We give themore grown-up kids comms to use in emergencies. It'shealthy to question, to work things out. They all reach thesame decision in the end. Some only go there for a fewdays, others for years. Sooner or later, they all come back.The girls faster than the boys.'

   `They all have so far,' Dela agreed quietly. `If theghosts don't get them.'

   `And the adults never leave this park? At all?'

   `Well, I remember what the city was like. It's verypainful to go back, see the state it's in. All the places Iwent to with Gyll, just... dead.'

   `Gyll?'

   `Yes.' She blushed, didn't want to say any more aboutGyll. `I've not set foot there for... well, ten years. At least.Very few of us have. We've been busy here.'

   `But all the stuff there...'

   Fladon snorted, raised his hand to shut the Doctor upbefore he'd really started. `We learned self-sufficiency.How to make things and fix things. Not rummagingaround in other people's garbage.'

   `That's... admirable. To an extent, but...'

   `It must seem odd. Like I say, we all go through aphase of thinking that. All the kids do. But life here isfragile. Our survival is tenuous, and there's no guaranteethat this place is even viable. We can't control our destiny,

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but we must do what we can. It's childish to thinkotherwise.'

    The Doctor considered. `OK... one example: medicine.Even after fifteen years, there must be medical supplies inthe city that haven't expired, so do you--'

    `No,' Dela said.

    `All those births, you must have--'

    `No,' Dela interrupted again, laughing. `I wish we didat times.'

    `Well... why don't you?'

    `Because instead of relying on technology, we have torely on ourselves.'

    `Oh, too simple,' complained the Doctor. `Too glib.Come on... when the Fortress arrived you would haveboth have been what? mid-twenties? So you knowwhat the doctors of Arcopolis could do. So what waspossible? Heart transplants easy-peasy. Lungs, livers,kidneys... eyes. Faces. Had you done brains? They'retricky, but I bet a civilisation that could build ' he found aparticularly impressive building on the skyline andpointed at it ` that skylon could manage a good old braintransplant. I bet you'd cured just about everything. If yougot squished up in an aircar crash, I bet they'd justunsquishify you. I bet it was practically an outpatient'sprocedure.'

    `We had advanced medicine,' Fladon said. `We'recertainly at an advantage now because our ancestorseliminated genetic disease. But sooner or later anymedicine would run out. Better to get used to making ourown remedies, rely on our own strength. Imagine what

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would have happened if we had been reliant on robotsurgeons? I don't know what we'd have done if we hadn'thad someone like Jennver who could deliver babies.'

    `What's your life expectancy now, Fladon? Twentyyears less than your father's?'

    `At least. But the survival of the species is moreimportant than any individual. We need to know that ourgrandchildren and their grandchildren will survive.'

    `The ghosts keep to the city, the lightning only strikesthose going near the Fortress,' Dela agreed. `We have alife for ourselves here. It's hard, but it's safe. Take risksand we could all die.'

    `It's a good way to live, here,' Fladon said.

    The Doctor looked at Fladon. `In tents, literally in theshadows of some of the most beautiful buildings everconstructed?'

    `Yes. Living in the shadows is better than dying in thelight.'

    `We live here, now, Doctor,' Dela said softly, a littlereluctantly. `It doesn't matter what's in the city. It doesn'tmatter what we'd change if we could. We all of us have tolearn to make the best of it.'

    `Fatalism? Just letting the universe do its thing?'

    `Given how we find ourselves here, how we couldn'tprevent losing everything we had in an instant, it's aperfectly rational response, wouldn't you say?' Fladonsaid gruffly.

    The Doctor stuffed his hands in his pockets and took agood look around. `No. No, I wouldn't.'

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Late afternoon, and Alsa had just got out of bed anddressed. Her limbs ached. She sat there, half-crouched,thinking about her next move. A shape shifted behind themilky plastic wall, a parent coming her way. It turned thecorner, and Alsa was surprised to see the Doctor.

   `I was just popping in to see Dela,' he said. `You wereon the way, so I thought I'd say "hi". Hi.'

   `How's the head?' she asked, careful to sneer. Alsarealised she was sitting upright. Something about theDoctor put her on the alert.

   `I had a bandage, but I took it off. There's a bruisethere, but nothing worse.'

   `It's so small, isn't it?'

   The Doctor reached for the bruise.

   `No,' Alsa said. `This place. The settlement. All theseone-storey buildings. I don't think you can even measurethe tallest buildings in Arcopolis.'

   The Doctor laughed. `Well, someone had to, to buildthem. The tallest ones are eight, nine hundred storeys, Ithink, something like that.'

   `You've seen taller, though?'

   `On Gammadendrax, they have a tower that reaches allthe way to their moon.'

   `Their what?'

   The Doctor spent a second considering the quickestexplanation, then he said, `It's so tall it would be likestacking all of the towers of Arcopolis one on top of eachother. There's no roof, just two ground floors, one on oneplanet, one on another.'

   `That's stupid. What happens in the middle when

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you're going up it? Do they start falling instead ofclimbing?'

   `That's just what I asked. You're a very smart youngwoman, Alsa.' His grin melted away, and all of a suddenhe looked very stern, very serious. `Why do you behavethe way you do?'

   Alsa frowned. `What choice do I have?'

   `You tell me,' said the Doctor.

   So she did.

Almost every kid went to the City when they were oldenough. There came a point when you just did the sums,and realised that if all the parents were busy at their work,and if there were so many more kids than adults, thenthere was no way the parents could stop you doing whatyou wanted. The very first thing every kid wanted to dowas to explore the City that had been looming over thesettlement all their life, utterly taboo.

   Usually what happened Alsa's experience was prettytypical was that you'd tag along with some older kids,perhaps even break away and run back if they went toofar.

   Her first trip into Arcopolis, she hadn't liked it. Thebuildings were too tall, everything was wrong. There wereshadows and tiny dangers and humiliations everywhere.She'd slipped over on a walkway and fallen into a potholeand got wet and bruised.

   A lot of the girls, in particular, didn't stay there forlong. They were always better looked after by the parentsthan the boys were, given more interesting things to do.

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Alsa stuck with it.

   She got used to the City quickly. Soon, she was leadingyounger kids there herself. She'd discovered a departmentstore once, all by herself, close to the settlement but whichhadn't been touched. She'd prised open the sliding doorswith a crowbar. There had been eleven kids with her, andthey'd swarmed in, pushing and biting and shoving to bethe first inside. They'd just run around the place in a packat first, before breaking up into smaller groups andexploring for themselves. The store was full of everything.Clothes and make-up and sport stuff, a load of deadelectronics.

   There was a food hall, and that was where Alsa endedup. Most things people used to eat had been made bymachines, but there were luxuries, and people got thosefrom stores. The smell was terrible, like a cesspit. A lot ofstock had just rotted. There was fruit juice, in pretty greenbottles but, judging from the first half a dozen of themAlsa broke open, it had all fermented, so she left the restalone. Some food was perfectly preserved, in plastic packsor in metal tubes. Most of the tubes had pictures of thefood on.

   She'd peeled back the plastic on one pack, eatensomething strange, a bit like mushroom but with an oddmelty, stringy texture.

`Meat,' the Doctor said.

  `Eh?'

  `The muscle and fat of a dead animal.'

  Alsa thought about it, more curious than anything else.

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`That was meat? The parents go on about meat.' She'dliked the taste, but mainly because it was so gross. Shelooked down at her own hand, flexed the muscles of herfingers.

   `The attack wiped out all the animals. Except for theparents. Given that cannibalism is, um, off the menu, thatmeans you're all lifelong vegetarians.'

   `You've eaten meat?'

   `Oh, yes.'

   `You've done loads of things, haven't you?'

   The Doctor pursed his lips and nodded. `That's... fairto say. I've had more opportunities than you.'

   `Yeah, well, obviously.'

   `What's your plan? What's it all about, Alsa?' He sangthat last bit, although she didn't recognise the tune.

   `What?'

   `Are you going back to the City and staying there allyour life?'

   `Doesn't matter what,' she said, frustrated. `Girlsbecome women, they get pregnant, have babies, look afterthem, the men help, but they can't have babies, so thewomen have to, so there's no choice, we need torepopulate.'

   `It's your duty.'

   `Are you laughing at me?'

   `No.' He clearly meant it, for what that was worth.

   `It's what we do.'

   `But there is a choice about how you do it,' the Doctorsaid.

   He was the first person who'd ever understood.

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   `They don't get angry,' she said. `You notice that? Arethey holding it all in? I can't tell. When I get angry... itboils. It never completely goes away.'

   `They're not guilty, either,' the Doctor added.

   `Guilty?' she said, annoyed with him. `What have theygot to be guilty about?'

   `Even if you were there and saw it all, even if youknow it's not your fault and you did your very best, youask yourself why. Why did I survive? Why do I deserve tolive, when so many others have died? Why was I the onlyone?' He paused, then, `Guilt. Even if you hide it, it'sthere. It eats away at you.'

   He looked up at her, gave a nervous smile.

   Alsa had watched the performance, unimpressed. `I'lltake your word for it,' she said. `I don't feel any guilt. Iwasn't there. Not my fault. But I get angry. I hate this. It'sstupid. I want to lash out, hurt people. All the time. I can'thelp it. It's all such... it's all...'

   `Wrong?' the Doctor supplied, and it was as good aword as any. `Not the way things are meant to be. Thisisn't the life a 13-year-old girl should have. You've beendenied so much.'

   `Doesn't matter what.'

   `So you keep saying. But you don't mean it, do you?'

   `No one could do anything about the Fortress. Even ifthere had been a warning, even a hundred years' warning,what could they have done? There was nowhere to run to,no way of fighting it. We are where we are. Here in a loadof stupid, small, cold plastic tents. Everything perfectlybalanced by Jennver and Jeffip, no alternative, no way to

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change even the slightest thing without all of us dying.'

   `So your solution is to lose your temper?'

   She looked at him, stared him right in the eye. It wasvery important for him to know that this wasn't an act,this wasn't a game, this wasn't anything trivial or stupidor childish. `Someone has to.'

   The Doctor was nodding, mouth clamped shut. It waslike he was grinding his teeth. Without another word, theDoctor turned and left, his coat tails flapping.

   `It's all different now, though, isn't it?' she said quietly,once he'd gone. `Now is when everything changes.'

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    The evening was a little chilly, and the Doctor had his

    coat on. He'd still not had a chance to recover his

    possessions, and felt almost naked wandering around with

    empty pockets. He couldn't remember the last time he'd

    done it. Hundreds of years ago, at the very least. It was

    also odd not having to plan the rescue of any friends from

    imminent danger.

       Not that he was short of company. Unfortunately. Qerl

     the Doctor thought that was his name was doggedly at

    his side.

       Qerl was a farmer. Dela had left the Doctor with Qerl

    about two hours ago. It was teatime, and then it was going

    to be bedtime for the young children. So the Doctor had

    been stuck with Qerl who, unlike Dela, wasn't terribly

    prepossessing. They'd spent the whole time discussing

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soil yields and crop rotation. Qerl was now onto thesubject of nitrogen fixation and the Doctor had concludedhe would have had a more rewarding chat with adiazotroph.

   The Doctor glanced up at the sky. It was evening, so ithad gone a very dark green. He couldn't tell where themissing stars would have been. He hadn't spent all thatmuch time in Galaxy Seven, so wasn't familiar with thenight sky, and it was clouding over anyway. Peering up,though, he could swear three of the stars were moving inclose formation. Before he could confirm it, they werebehind a cloud.

   Frustrated, the Doctor returned his attention toterrestrial concerns. He'd soon be out of here and headingover to the Fortress. He hoped he could get there before itstarted raining.

   The Council met in the largest tent, which was long andnarrow, like an Anglo-Saxon mead hall, and set a littleapart from the rest of the settlement, on a raised bit ofparkland. The Doctor was welcomed inside. There wereten adults in there, all sitting at one end of rows of shortbenches. Alsa lounged precociously among them, lookingat home. Gar was there, but a wallflower. The adults weredressed in a variety of styles mostly wraps and robesand saris, that kind of thing all the clothes were clearlyhandmade and practical.

   Qerl was taking his place on the benches. Jennver stoodfor a moment, addressing the Doctor rather formally.

   `We're here to welcome the Doctor to New Arcopolis.'

   A round of polite applause. Jennver took her seat. The

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Doctor did a little bow, thanked everyone.

   `He has already met a great many of us,' Jennvercontinued. `It's clear he will fit into this community. He'sa very talented individual, and starting to understand howand why we do things here. I suggest we leave it a fewweeks until I formally revise the schedule, so we can seewhich of his many--'

   The Doctor had raised his hand.

   `Doctor?'

   `Er... no,' he said.

   Jennver looked puzzled.

   `I'm not here for weeks,' the Doctor said.

   `But you said you'd help us.'

   `Well, yes. For a bit. I did that. I thought you were allgathering this evening to wish me bon voyage.'

   Murmuring from the adults.

   `Hang on,' the Doctor complained. `I told you. I washappy to see how I can help out around here. If you'd letme have my sonic screwdriver back, I could have donemore, but as it is I've improved the range of the commmast, given Qerl advice about his berries, serviced--'

   `You've done marvellous work,' Jeffip said. `Don't youlike it here?'

   `It's lovely,' the Doctor said, aware there was a dash oftetchiness in his voice but unable to remove it. `Charming.Friendly. But I came to this planet for a reason. There is aweapon inside the Fortress that is very dangerous. I intendto decommission it.'

   `I say we let him,' Alsa announced.

   Jennver held up a hand, and Alsa fell silent, albeit with

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bad grace.

   `Forgive her, Doctor. As the saying goes: children mustfind their own way to New Arcopolis.'

   `Um... nothing to forgive. I, er, agree with her.' Helooked over at Alsa suspiciously, but the girl was smilingand nodding sweetly.

   `You can't go anywhere near the Fortress,' Jennversaid. `If you go there, you will die. There are the ghosts,but there's also the lightning.'

   The Doctor decided to be gentle. `I appreciate that youhave a strong taboo against approaching the Fortress. Verysensible. As Alsa will have told you, it's well defended. Ihave the ability to thwart those defences. I don't mean toboast, but I'm uniquely qualified to do that.'

   `You were knocked out by a 13-year-old girl,' Fladonpointed out, to some laughter from the others.

   The Doctor could take a joke. `Indeed. A girl whose lifeI'd just saved. Perhaps she left that bit out.'

   `I told them,' Alsa said, not rising to the bait. `I've toldthem everything. We were really close to the Fortress. Ithink you can do it.'

   `Thank you,' the Doctor said, a little unsettled by hermagnanimity. `Now, there will be no danger to anyonehere. In fact, after I've deactivated the Fortress, it will bejust another building, and you'll be safe to go back intothe city.' He smiled at them, tried to keep it cheerful.

   `I say we let him,' Alsa repeated.

   The Doctor turned to face her, ignoring the others.`Alsa, with the best will in the world, if you wanted to letme get into the Fortress, why did you hit me with that

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rock? If you hadn't, I'd have finished the job by now.'

    The adults were murmuring again, glancing at him,talking among themselves. Was this the sort of seeminglypolite social situation which would abruptly turn into atrial and end with him being thrown down into a pit filledwith local carnivores? He'd been the guest of honour atplenty such events, over the years. Come to think of it,there weren't any local carnivores left, were there? So hecould relax. Presumably.

    The Doctor looked over to Jeffip for some help.

    The old man took the hint and stood, bit his lip a littlenervously.

    `So... Doctor. What would you do after that?'

    `Once I've decommissioned the weapon, I'll be on myway. Things will change here, obviously, but it's not up tome to say how.'

    Some of the adults were agitated, some angry. No oneseemed terribly happy. Except Alsa.

    This is why I should avoid politics, the Doctor mused.

    `Why abandon us?' Qerl said.

    `I'm not "abandoning" anyone. You were getting onfine without me.'

    `The problems we have to overcome can't be solved inone day. Another pair of hands, another brilliant mind,could be of such benefit.'

    `I know that. I--'

    `Why can't you return to us after you've destroyed theweapon?' Jennver suggested.

    The Doctor toyed with agreeing. He'd told them thetruth before, though, and didn't want to start lying now.

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    `You don't see the bigger picture,' the Doctor insisted.

    Uproar.

    `We don't matter?'

    The Doctor faltered. `You matter.'

    `But not as much?'

    The Doctor's smiled flickered. `It's not the way Iwould put it...'

    He was saved from being glared to death by Alsa, of allpeople.

    `Look... shut up, everyone. The Doctor's right. There'sa bigger picture.'

    The Doctor didn't have to wait long for the sting in thetail.

    `It's not about him helping out with the crops andchores. Don't you get it? We need the Doctor to dosomething none of us can: sort out the Fortress. But afterthat, it doesn't matter if he stays. If he gets rid of thelightning and the ghosts, we can move back into the city.'

    Stern silence from the adults, all their attention on thegirl.

    `Here we go,' moaned Alsa, gearing up for a blazingrow. `Look, we've had good reason to be scared. But it'sjust a building, there's no magic.'

    Jennver sighed. `We should stay out of the city. All ofus.'

    `Whyyyyy?'

    The members of the Council were shifting in theirseats, but had begun to look more relaxed. There's a pointin every argument where one of the people crosses theline: goes too far, says something that's demonstrably

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wrong, steers themselves onto a different point, one thatcan be knocked down more easily. They all thought Alsahad arrived there.

   Jennver was looking kindly at her. `Because that is thepast and we have to live in the future. We can't bedependent. We need to start afresh, not... cannibalise whatwas lost. That would be slow suicide.'

   `There is a whole city there, full of stuff.'

   `A finite amount of "stuff".'

   `Plenty for three hundred people. There are apartmentswith real beds and bathtubs. Tools and other equipment.Games. Clothes. There's just about everything we needand it's going to waste.'

   `Once, yes, we could live in the city. Not any more. Itisn't practical.'

   `Why not?' said Alsa, a real flash of fire in her eyes.

   `You wouldn't understand.'

   `Oh, here we go. I wasn't alive before. I don't knowwhat it was like before. Life was so different before. Iwasn't even born. I know that. I know what it's like now.And it's rubbish. You're scared. That's all it is. Cities arefor living in. Let's live in the city.'

   It was clear to the Doctor that this was not the first timethey'd had this out. The arguments must have beenendlessly rehearsed and repeated, and the wholediscussion had the air of a well-worn ritual.

   Maybe it was his headache, or he wasn't concentrating,but the Doctor couldn't see where Alsa was heading withthis, why she thought she'd change anyone's mind thistime. Was she just arguing for argument's sake?

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    `It's not just the ghosts and lightning,' Jennver sighed.`We can't just move into the ruins.'

    The Doctor tried to race ahead of what was being said,tried to get to where Alsa was going. This wasn't just ateenager kicking against the system. Alsa was cunning the bruise on his head throbbed its agreement at that andhad something up that designer-suited sleeve of hers.What had changed?

    Jennver was carrying on with what sounded like afamiliar lecture. `A great city needs lighting, heating. Awhole infrastructure, all mechanised. Clean water didn'tjust miraculously come out the taps, the buildings didn'trepair themselves. That was done by machines... andmachines need power. We have no way of activating theenergy satellites. Unless you have some magical powersupply--'

    `No!' the Doctor who had just worked out what Alsawas up to shouted. `No. Alsa, no.'

    Jennver was distracted, but soon got back to her script.`Without a power supply for the whole city... we can'tlive there. We don't even know that the satellites are stillthere. Jeffip wasted years trying to turn on a small portionof the grid. It wasn't built that way, couldn't be altered.Arcopolis long ago exhausted its fossil fuels. Woodburning just isn't efficient enough.'

    The Doctor was on his feet, seriously considering justmaking a dash for the door. `The weapon at the heart ofthat Fortress has to be destroyed.'

    Jennver was looking around, bewildered, like he hadjust changed the subject.

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   Alsa spelled it out. `The Fortress. The Doctor saysthere's this weapon, yeah? He says that it can projectholograms and fire death rays, and that there are--'

   `We've always known--'

   `Yes. We've always known that that thing had a powersource. The difference now is the Doctor. He says theFortress has got infinite power.'

   Jeffip had been thinking. `You know how it runs,Doctor?'

   `Yes. The Fortress doesn't have a power plant that alsosupplies the weapon, it's the other way round: the weaponpowers the Fortress. The fact that the Fortress has poweris the proof that the weapon is still in there and is stillactive.'

   Alsa smirked. `Infinite power sounds like plenty to runa city with. That's what the Doctor should be doing:instead of destroying the weapon, he should take thatpower and harness it.' She pointed straight at him. `TheDoctor can lead us out of the darkness and back where wedeserve to be: into a city of light and heat and safety. TheDoctor could do that. Don't you see he's our saviour.Him.'

   Everyone was looking straight at the Doctor. Alsa waspractically licking her lips, a glint in her eyes.

   `If he wants to leave us after that, let him.'

   The Doctor closed his eyes, slumped.

   `No,' he said.

   `If we could harness that power...' Jeffip began.

   Fladon was scratching his hairy chin. `Alsa's right,isn't she, Doctor? You could do this.' It was the first time

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the Doctor had seen him smile. `As soon as we get thepower back on, we could get some robots running, they'dstart fixing things.'

   Jennver was looking upset. `We make our ownsalvation,' she said in a faltering voice. Then, stronger,`We will survive through the efforts of our own hands.Not by praying for angels to come down and save us.'

   `We don't need to pray, we can just ask,' said Alsa.`You'll save us, won't you, Doctor?'

   He realised he was glaring at her through narrowedeyes.

   `No,' he repeated.

   Utter silence.

   `Can't or won't?' Alsa asked after a moment, leading.She'd known that he would refuse. `Instead of beingselfish and destroying that power source, you connect itup to the grid for us. We can go and live in the city. Wecould live in the Fortress itself.'

   It all sounded so reasonable, but she was so angry. Itwas infectious, too the Doctor could feel himself losinghis temper.

   `I came here to deactivate the Fortress,' he spat.`Destroy it. Not to do it up as flats.'

   `Now you know we're here, though, that changesthings, surely?'

   `Not enough,' the Doctor said curtly. `That weaponcan't fall into the wrong hands.'

   `No space travellers have ever come here. Except you.'

   `If they did, having a weapon to defend ourselveswouldn't be a bad idea.'

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   The Doctor walked up to Fladon, who'd said that, andjabbed a finger at him, before turning to address the otherCouncil members. `You all saw that? That's how ithappens. It starts with "we could really use this around thehouse" and then not one minute later suddenly it's "wecould use it to kill our enemies". That's fine when it's astone tool, or fire, or a knife, or a hunting rifle. It's evenfine when it's a missile.' The Doctor hesitated. `Pushing ita little by that point, admittedly, but it's still fine. Theweapon in that Fortress is too powerful.'

   Alsa was angry. `Says who? Too powerful for you,perhaps. Not for us.'

   `Doctor, Arcopolis was a place of peace. We had notknown war or even serious crime for many thousands ofyears,' Jeffip said. `A weapon is no temptation for us.'

   `Perhaps the Doctor wants it for himself. We shouldtake stewardship. We know we wouldn't use it.'

   `We have no ambitions except survival. We could beguardians of the weapon.'

   The Doctor took a deep breath, understood that hisanswer had to be diplomatic, had to be considered,couldn't under any circumstances include the phrase "youimbeciles". He looked over at Jennver. The leader of theCouncil hadn't spoken, or even moved, for ages. Her littleworld was collapsing. She glanced up at him, willed himto say something to convince the others.

   `Doctor, we have already experienced the very worstthing that could happen,' Qerl said.

   This time, the Doctor couldn't keep it in. `You thinkthat the worst thing that can possibly happen has already

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happened, because you've seen one civilisation fall?'

   `As the victims of a terrible attack,' Jeffip began, `Ithink we can understand the dangers. If the weapon was inour custody, we would prevent it from falling into thehands of people who would misuse it.'

   `We lost everything,' Qerl said.

   `You don't know the meaning of the word,' the Doctormuttered.

   `And the people who built it?' Jeffip asked. `Won't theyjust build other weapons like it anyway? They mightattack us again.'

   `They are all dead,' the Doctor snapped back, `andthere's a lot less of their planet left than there is of thisone. The war it was built to fight is long over. That is thelast weapon of its type.'

   Jennver was looking over at Alsa, thoughtfully.Everyone had lapsed into silence.

   The Doctor was beckoning to Jeffip. `Stand up. Comeon. Remind me: what was that you said about star maps?'

   `That there was an atmospheric effect that wasblocking out the stars, that--'

   `The stars were vanishing?'

   `Surely you're not suggesting that the weapon'sdisintegrating stars, one at a time?'

   `No.' The Doctor straightened. These were reasonablepeople. He would reason with them.

   `Words like "infinite" and "ultimate"... they're too big.There's an old saying: "One death is a tragedy, a milliondeaths is a statistic." When you think about the people thatdied here, I imagine you don't think of the 200 million...

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you think of your parents, your children, your best friend,even your pets. You remember the countless millionsthrough the ones you cared for.'

    He saw a few of them nodding warily, and decided topress his advantage.

    `I'll try to explain what this weapon does. All right...imagine you really wanted to destroy your enemy. Reallywipe out all trace of them.'

    `We don't have enemies, we don't want to destroyanyone.'

    `Which is why I said "imagine",' the Doctor saidtestily. `Back in the day... the Bronze Age, say, you'd startby burning down your enemy's village if you reallywanted to destroy them, not just defeat them or enslavethem or steal their stuff--'

    `You'd just kill everyone,' interrupted Alsa.

    `Exactly. Put them to the sword. Well, put the sword tothem, it's far easier. I digress. So... kill all the people. Notjust the soldiers, but all the women and children.'

    `Barbaric,' Jennver muttered.

    `Well, yes. Trouble is: what if someone managed tohide? What if a group of soldiers was out on patrol? Whatif there was a merchant away from town at the time? Letone puny little boy go and he'll end up as Conan theBarbarian. It's practically the rules. He'll be back.'

    `You'd need good information,' Jeffip said.

    `Exactly. Know your enemy. But even if you reallymanaged to kill every last person and burn all their stuff,there would be traces. Statues and gravestones. Even bitsof broken crockery. You could just about get rid of all that,

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if you put a lot of effort into it.'

    `You wouldn't need to go that far,' Jeffip objected.

    `Not normally, no. But what if you did want to removeall traces?'

    `You could never remove them all,' Jeffip said.

    `Course you could,' Alsa countered. `If you wanted tohard enough.'

    `Even if you dropped a bomb on it you'd leave acrater.'

    `And rubble,' the Doctor chipped in. `Don'tunderestimate rubble. Even when the last building ofArcopolis falls, there will still be debris. A goodarchaeologist could come along in 10,000 years and piecethings together. After that... well, it's terrible to admit it,but plastics and radioactives and refined metals...pollution, I guess... would be there. You've carved outtunnels and cuttings for roads and so on. But I guess youcould build a bomb powerful enough to smash all that todust. Would that be enough?'

    `No,' Alsa said finally.

    `No?'

    `Because the next village along, they'd remember thedestroyed village. They'd be able to... I dunno, drawpictures of it. It would be on their maps.'

    The Doctor nodded. `Good.'

    `So you'd have to kill them too,' Alsa added, soundingalmost gleeful. `And... the next village along. And...the...'

    Jeffip was thinking it through, now. `A technologicalcivilization... one with radio and satellites, you'd have to

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kill everyone else on the planet. No... more than that,you'd have to go to other planets to make sure they hadn'tseen it through telescopes or heard any of their broadcasts.Everything in the light cone.'

   `Yes.'

   `So... that's what that weapon does?'

   The Doctor almost laughed. `No. That's just if yourenemy lived in one village on one planet. That weaponwas designed to use against an enemy with footholds indifferent galaxies.'

   `That would be... impossible.'

   `Why?'

   `It would be too much work. It would take billions ofpeople thousands of years to do all that.'

   `So you build a labour-saving device,' the Doctor said.

   Every single person in the room turned to look over hisleft shoulder. That was the direction of the Fortress.

   The Doctor nodded. `Touch a button and no moreenemy. No more traces of enemy. They'd be gone. Theweapon doesn't just kill them, it kills everyone who's everheard of them. Destroys everything they've ever built anddrawn and written. Everything they've ever seen, even thestars in their sky. Erases it all. It's a weapon that wouldgive your run-of-the-mill ultimate weapon an inferioritycomplex.'

   `How?' Jeffip asked. `I mean, how could anything dothat?'

   The Doctor waved his hand airily. `Quantum physics.The observer effect. The superforce. Vunktotechnology.Vundatechnology. The people who built that weapon

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knew their stuff.'

   The Doctor checked his watch.

   `Wait,' Alsa said. `Even when it had killed yourenemy... there would still be you. You'd be left. You'veheard of the enemy. If you wanted to erase every trace,you'd have to kill yourself.'

   The Doctor nodded. `Logically, pretty much whoeveryour enemy is, you'd end up destroying the entireuniverse, including obviously yourself. It was aweapon of last resort, to be used only when all was lost.'

   `Who would be stupid enough to build a weapon thatdid that?'

   `Building it isn't the issue,' Fladon said.

   `No?' the Doctor asked.

   `They could build as many as they wanted to. Theproblem's when you use it.'

   The Doctor sighed. `"When" being the operativeword.'

   `Quite a deterrent,' Jeffip said.

   `A what?' Alsa said.

   `A threat,' the Doctor said. `If your opponent knowshe's going to be utterly destroyed, he won't attack... fourtimes out of five.'

   `I'd attack,' said Alsa.

   The Doctor motioned for her to continue.

   `Well, if I knew my enemy would destroy themselveswhen they fired, I'd know they'd never actually fire it.When it came to it, they'd hesitate and ' she mimedherself smashing them.

   `When it came to it, they didn't hesitate,' the Doctor

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pointed out.

    `Why is the universe still here?' Alsa asked, soundingalmost disappointed. `What stopped it?'

    The Doctor paused.

    `I don't know,' he admitted. `I've asked myself thesame question. There might be some kind of protectivefield around the weapon. If you're near enough, you'reimmune. It would explain why you survived.'

    There was a murmur around the room.

    `That travel tube you were all in must have beendirectly underneath the Fortress when the weapon fired.You must have been within that protective field. Thankheavens for public transport, eh?'

    `What happened, Doctor?' Jeffip asked.

    The Doctor looked down at his feet. `They called it anassault, but it wasn't, it was a massacre. Unprovoked,avoidable. And the historians who called it the Last Battleof the Seventh Galaxy didn't even notice Arcopolis. Themillions who died here barely qualify as a fraction of thecasualty figure.'

    `Not even an ant run over by a tank,' Jeffip saidweakly. `Not even a flea on the back of that ant.'

    `The weapon in that Fortress has to be destroyed beforeit can be fired again, and I'm the only person in the entireuniverse who can destroy it. Now, if you'll excuse me,that's what I'm going to do.'

    He turned and strode from the room, hoping againsthope no one would try to stop him. Not because he wasworried that any of them could, but because he wasworried about what he would do to anyone who tried.

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    The Doctor's words settled over the room. Out of all the

    parents, only Jeffip had really reacted. He was staring at

    the ceiling, like he could see through the plastic sheets and

    up at the stars. Jennver was quiet and pale.

       `Come on, then,' Alsa urged. She was already on her

    feet.

       Fladon was frowning. `We should only be concerned

    about the here and now. The children.'

       `Agreed,' Qerl called.

       `Yeah, yeah: it's all about me,' Alsa said impatiently.

       `What are you agreeing to? You're agreeing that we're

    going to force the Doctor to power up the city. Yes?'

       Jeffip didn't understand why Jennver hadn't restored

    order. `Did you not hear what he said?'

       `What's done is done,' Fladon repeated, to nods of

    agreement.

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   `Light years,' Jeffip said. `Don't you understand? I...'

   `The Doctor's getting away,' Alsa complained.

   `We know where he's going,' said Jeffip sourly.

   Fladon was standing. `We need to stop him.'

   `Look... if we're going to do this--' Jeffip began.

   `This?' Alsa said. `What?'

   Jeffip sighed. `Jennver?'

   Jennver looked up. `The Doctor has ruined everything.'

   `I will follow the will of the Council,' Jeffip told her.For so long, that had meant agreeing with its leader.They'd survived. Jennver had delivered every child,organised it all so that each of them had food and shelter.

   `We must do what we must,' she whispered.

   Fladon took that as an order. `All right. First of all, letthe Doctor get into the Fortress. Alsa, follow him.'

   `Ask me nicely.'

   `Young lady.'

   `I just want you to remember: I saw him first. I broughthim here. I showed you what to do next. Showed youthings could change. Most of all, I want you to look atJennver there, and remember that look on her broken oldface.' Alsa didn't wait for a response; she was alreadypulling Gar along.

   Jennver looked around. `Alsa's question was a goodone. What exactly are we trying to do? We know what theDoctor wants. Are we really going to force him to dosomething else?'

   Jeffip looked annoyed now. `We've all been forced todo things we don't like. Why should the Doctor be anydifferent?'

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The Doctor met Dela. She was strolling towards him, ashawl made of foil draped over her shoulders. Her face litup.

   `I was on my way to the Council meeting,' she calledout to him as they came closer.

   `Go back to your children, Dela.'

   She stopped, taken aback.

   The Doctor stopped, too. `I didn't mean it like that.'

   The shawl was silver, but with a painted pattern, a sortof abstract leaf design. She'd told him earlier that shepainted. They'd talked a lot that afternoon. The shawl waspretty.

   `You're angry.'

   `Not with you.' The Doctor started walking again. Delafollowed. It was a cool evening, the air was moist. It wasgoing to rain.

   `You're leaving?'

   `Yes.'

   `Take me with you.'

   `What?'

   `You could.'

   `No. It's far too dangerous.'

   `Not just to the Fortress. To outer space. I don't like ithere. I can't defend it the way Jennver and Fladon can. Iwant to travel with you. In the TARDIS. Be like... Rose.'

   The Doctor stopped. They really had talked a lot.

   `No.'

   `Someone will look after my...' But her voice trailedaway. She knew it wasn't that easy.

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   They'd crossed the threshold into Jeffip's tent. TheDoctor took a moment to remember the way to thelaboratory.

   `New Arcopolis is borderline viable,' he said. `If I takejust one person away from it, there's a chance thateveryone else dies. Not only your children. Everyone. Youcan't leave. You can't.'

   She knew that already, of course. `That's it then?Because of something that happened years ago, somethingtoo big to comprehend, there are no choices? Just atreadmill of duties and obligations and no chance ofescape?'

   `Yes,' the Doctor said. For both of us.

   He'd gone the wrong way. This room had a small metalbed and various toolboxes. There was something lying onthe bed, covered with a sheet made of the same silverymaterial as Dela's shawl.

   He listened out for a moment, but he didn't thinkanyone was following them. The Council must still havebeen arguing about a course of action. He had a fewminutes, then.

   The Doctor peeked. It was the slender corpse of ateenage girl, in sporty white shorts and camisole top.There was a grey flannel over her face.

   `Jall?' he asked.

   Dela nodded. `She was killed by ghosts.'

   The Doctor frowned.

   `That's been bothering me,' he announced.

   `It happens,' said Dela, her voice faltering.

   `Are you all right?' the Doctor said.

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   Dela wasn't. `She was my daughter. My first child. Ithappens. If she hadn't been in the city, the ghosts wouldn'thave got her. She'd come back, but still visited the city.'

   The Doctor shook his head. `I saw a ghost kill that boy,er, Frad. He was disintegrated. At the very least. Therewasn't a body.'

   `You're... right. There's never a body.'

   `Oh, I know I'm right. What's that flannel for, do youthink?'

   Without waiting for a response, the Doctor peeled theflannel off. Dela gasped and stepped back.

   Jall's eyes were missing. The Doctor bent over he'dput his glasses on and peered into the sockets, with anenthusiasm which was enough to make Dela cough a mildexpletive.

   `They've only removed the eyeball. Everything else isin there. I mean everything. The bones of the orbit, theoptic nerve, the muscles...'

   `She had green eyes,' Dela said quietly. `Really brightgreen. We joked about who the father was, no one elsehere has them. Pretty eyes.'

   `They wouldn't be so pretty out of context,' the Doctornoted absent-mindedly. `Sorry, that probably came out abit horrid, didn't it?'

   Dela nodded, swallowed what she had been about tosay to him.

   `I have no idea how you'd do that.'

   `Or why?' she added softly.

   The Doctor thought for a moment. `I'm still stuck onhow, I'm afraid,' he admitted. `There aren't even scratches

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or bruises on the eyelids. The eyes might have beendissolved, I suppose. Acid. They didn't spill a drop.'

   `They?'

   `Well, just about the only thing I know for certain isthat this didn't happen spontaneously. And it's just tooprecise to be an accident. It's... well, I was going to say"surgical", but I don't know any surgeons who could dothat good a job. This was a conscious act. The otherthing... you don't die if you lose your eyes. So she waskilled some other way. No marks on the body, no sign of astruggle. I'd need longer with the body. Hmmm. Did shesmoke?'

   He placed the flannel back over Jall's face.

   `I'm sorry... I don't know what you mean.'

   `Cigarettes? Cigar? Pipe? Um... inhale the fumes fromdried leaves?'

   `We... I don't think anyone in Arcopolis ever did that.Why would you want to? It must be an outer-space thing.'

   `It smells like she smoked.'

   `I smell it too, now. Perhaps it was something they usedto preserve the body.'

   The Doctor beamed. `That makes sense! Well done.'

   `Thanks.'

   `It wasn't something they used to preserve the body.'

   He put the foil sheet back and swept from the room.Dela hurried after him, after a glance back at the shapeunder the silver foil.

Dela showed him the way to Jeffip's laboratory.

  The Doctor removed the sonic screwdriver from the

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vice and clipped the casing back together. He slipped itinto his pocket and did the same with the psychic paper,the ball of string, the anti-radiation pills, the pocketGallifreyan-Cymraeg phrasebook, the bag of kola nuts,the yo-yo, a collection of coins from a dozen differentplanets, the everlasting matches, the TARDIS key andeverything else of his.

   `Come back,' Dela told him. Her eyes were wet, shewas still thinking about her daughter.

   The Doctor put his hand on her shoulder. `I will. I'llfind out who did that to Jall.'

   `And punish them for it?'

   The Doctor's eyes flashed fire. `Oh yes.'

It was a warm night, and it was beginning to rain.

   The Doctor had been unconscious when he'd beenbrought here, but he'd spent the day since looking out tothe Fortress, memorising the landmarks of the Arcopolisskyline. He had his escape route worked out. There wereno walls or fences why would there be? but the riverblocked off the most direct route to the Fortress.

   He followed the course of the river, heading past themill upstream. He was away from the tents in minutes,moving quickly until he was out of the park and into thecity. It was raining heavily by then, so he confined hisroute to covered walkways, or at least routes that hadsome form of shelter.

   The city was noisy, with all the rainwater glugging andsurging through drains and sewers and pipes. WhenArcopolis had been inhabited, the gutters and pumps

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would have been maintained. Now, they were rusted shutor worn away or plugged up. The city and the rainfallwould wrestle with each other, trying to get the other togive way. There would be different results in differentparts of the city.

   It was dark. It would make him difficult to spot, butwould give anyone following him the same advantage.They knew he was heading for the Fortress, so they didn'tneed to pursue him, just show up there. He still didn'thave a canoe, so he'd approach the Fortress from theopposite side, perhaps try one of the half-buildings. Itwould take him until morning to get there, and then he'duse the sunlight to assess the best way in.

   The Doctor passed a white dome that must have oncegleamed. Now it was grubby, cracked open like a boiledegg. Half a dozen boys in colourful suits of armour they'dimprovised from sports equipment and padding huddled inthere, against the rain and the cold. They might even haveseen him, but apparently he wasn't worth getting drenchedfor.

   Above them all, a clear plastic walkway was sloshingwith water, like a log flume. The ground was very soft.There was a crack of thunder. This wasn't anything morethan a simple storm, but the buildings that surrounded himwere fragile things, and the water could easily dislodge apiece of masonry or plate glass and send it hurtling downat him.

Midnight, or near enough, and the Doctor was picking hisway over a broken slope of tiles. Moss had squeezed out

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through the gaps, cracked the ceramic. This had been awide plaza. The tiles were white, and, even at night, thecontrast of the tiles and the growth between made for avivid, just-about-regular grid pattern. In the middle of theplaza was a great circular shape. It had once been afountain, but it had collapsed in on itself, cracked, filledup to overflowing with giant lilies.

   The rain had eased up, but the ground was still slickand the air cool and damp. It smelled sharp, earthy, rusty.A little like blood, the Doctor thought.

   A glass man was no more than a dozen paces ahead ofhim, facing to the Doctor's right. It was an abstract humanfigure, almost featureless. It was the size of a small adultand slightly pot-bellied, or at least it had very poorposture. It didn't move as he approached.

   Whatever it was, it wasn't a ghost. The Doctorconcluded that it was a statue, after all.

   The glass man turned its head, took a step back, asthough it was only now aware of the Doctor and had beenstartled by his presence. The face was almost smooth, withtiny bumps and crevices instead of a nose and mouth.

   It was too dark to make out much detail, all the Doctorcould see was how the figure distorted the scene behind it,so the Doctor took another step forward. The glass manraised a six-fingered hand, in what would have been adefensive gesture if a human being or Time Lord, forthat matter had made it. There was a golden disc set intothe palm of the creature's hand.

   `I'm not trying to hurt you. I'm the Doctor, by theway.'

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   It lowered the arm, then started to run, an almostcomical sight as it barely moved its arms or upper body,just its legs.

   The Doctor gave chase, but the glass man could clearlyoutrun him. For one thing, despite having bare, glass feet,it had a better grip on the slick tiles than the Doctor'strainers could manage. He discovered that as they turned asharp corner. For another, the Doctor had spent all nightpicking over wet and uneven ground and was beginning toache from the exertion. It didn't stop the Doctor trying,but he soon fell behind.

   The glass man ran through an open doorway into adeserted building, and by the time the Doctor caught up tothat, he couldn't hear its thumping, solid footsteps anymore. It had got away.

   The Doctor was a little out of breath.

Someone was standing over Alsa. Before she was fullyawake, she'd lashed out at him.

    Gar managed to dodge her hand. `It's me,' he hissed.

    All around them, children were stirring. It was gettinglight.

    `They've spotted him heading into the Car Factory.'

    Alsa nodded. It was starting to come back to her.

    Last night, she'd used the comm to contact two dozenboys and a couple of girls, not always the strongest ortallest, but the toughest. Most of them were already withina few hours of the Fortress, and most would drag otherkids there with them. Alsa had spent a quarter of an hourin the settlement stuffing things into bags and pulling

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together rainwear before heading off with Gar.

    She'd met a few others at the Tesla Farm, a field ofgiant ceramic cones close to the settlement, where the kidshad built up a good stash: torches, binoculars, energydrinks and loads of other stuff the parents disapproved of.One of the things they hated most was bicycles. Alsanever understood that. You could race around on bikes,and they were simple enough to fix only the chains wereeven a little bit complicated. The tyres got punctured,yeah, but they could be patched. Alsa, obviously, didn'tbother; she just found a spare on some bike rack or shop.Usually, she'd just ditch the whole original bike.

    She smirked when she thought of the Council actuallygiving her permission to go to the Fortress althoughshe'd been the one giving the orders. It had taken twohours by bike, so she, Gar and the others had shown upthere around eleven and taken position.

    By then, just about everyone she'd commed was there,and they'd posted watch on all the approaches. She hadtaken the plum position, in an old clock tower, right in themiddle of the Car Factory. She'd worn herself out doingall that, and was soon asleep.

    `Any ghosts?'

    `Vrem said he'd seen one, but he's a liar.'

    Alsa shoved Gar out of the way of the window.

    The Car Factory was a simple building a 115-storeywhite concrete doughnut with sweeping windows andgaping hangar doors dotted irregularly at every level. TheFortress had materialised so that one of its black walls hadjust taken a bite out of the doughnut. From her vantage

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point, right in the hole of the doughnut, Alsa could lookdown on the entire complex, even into a lot of the Factorybuilding. There was a metal skywalk that gently spiralleddown from the top of the clock tower to the roof of theCar Factory, and then down to ground level. Cyclingdown that was going to make the effort of pushing thebikes up worth it. The Factory covered such a wide areathat they were well out of range of the lightning here but,in the past, plenty of kids had strayed from a safe leveland had never been seen or heard of again. Her variouslookouts were all well outside that perimeter.

   The parents never told them anything about Arcopolisor the old days, but sometimes they'd let slip something,or an adult would set a child straight. To Alsa, aircars hadalways been lumps of metal, prone to toppling over if youplayed too hard or got too frisky in them. She'd neverfound it that easy to picture them soaring over andswooping between the buildings. Alsa had sat in plenty ofaircar seats, been surprised how comfortable they were,how many controls and lights and switches there were.Robots and computers used to stop them from crashing Alsa was unclear exactly how.

   She knew some of the number symbols, and if she wasreading them right these cars could fly 300 miles a day.They could have travelled from the settlement to theFortress in minutes, not hours, and carried loads of stuff.You wouldn't be tired or wet when you got there, either.

   If the Doctor was from space, why didn't he bring anaircar? She'd ask him when she caught up with him.

   She spotted the Doctor walking under a twenty-storey

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sign. The sign was made up of bright glass tubes. Some ofthe kids said that they heard that in the olden days signslike that used to light up at night because there was aspecial gas in them, but Alsa didn't believe in that. Thesign was amazing enough as it was.

   The Doctor looked tired, but not exhausted. That oddbrown coat of his was darker because it was so wet. Hisstupid spiky hair had gone flat and stuck to his scalp.She'd guessed the Doctor would come this way. He knewthere was an impassable lake on the other side of theFortress, and the other ways in had open plazas whichwould be just as deadly. The Car Factory was one of thehalf-buildings he'd been so fascinated by, and the one thatwas the biggest and best landmark.

   `What's the plan?' Gar asked.

   `We comm the parents. Let them know we've seen theDoctor. Tell them we'll wait for them to get here.' Theway Alsa smiled made Gar feel very nervous.

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    The doughnut-shaped factory building was vast. Over a

    hundred identical floors, each with a high ceiling and its

    own production line, all stacked on top of each other. Each

    line ended with its own massive door, just waiting for the

    finished aircars to fly out of it. The production process had

    been, as far as the Doctor could tell, entirely automated.

    Sunlight streamed through great, wide windows. There

    were a few gantries and inspection ladders for people, and

    the Doctor used them where he could, but mainly he just

    walked along the conveyor belts. The floors were covered

    in dried-up pools of paints, glues and other liquids which

    must have escaped from pipes and cans over the years,

    when their seals had failed. It brought splashes of colour

    and unpredictability to a sterile white and chrome

    environment.

       The production line, robot workers and all, had frozen

    in place fifteen years ago. It meant that the Doctor was

    now a fascinated visitor to a museum featuring tableaux of

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a state-of-the-art Arcopolis factory. For half an hour, healmost forgot about the Fortress, the villagers who'd be onhis trail, Dela and Jall, the ghosts, the glass man andeverything else. He put on his glasses to get a closer lookat a few things, he tapped and prodded and danced around.He'd found a device that was basically a sonicscrewdriver but was the size and shape of a car wash.Jeffip had mentioned it. He speculated how quickly a carcould have been put together. He marvelled how everystage of the process was so flexible that each car waspractically custom-built to order. In a city of 200 millionpeople, there probably weren't two aircars the same.

   Then he'd followed the great curved path along too far,and found himself faced by the sheer black wall of theFortress.

   He did the traditional, dodging behind a great stack ofengine blocks to avoid the blue energy bolt that camehurtling past. A window thirty metres behind himshattered and threw down daggers of glass and strips ofconcrete window frame.

   The Doctor peeked through gaps in the stack. The wallwas matt black, at an angle almost exactly forty-fivedegrees to the factory floor. Mounted on the Fortress wall,he could see the gun turret, a thin wisp of smoke curlingup from the barrel.

   The gnarled black walls of the Fortress looked almostfused with the smooth white concrete of the Factory.Fifteen years ago, the Fortress would have materialised inthe city, like the TARDIS materialised. Unlike theTARDIS, there weren't all sorts of safety systems, and the

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things it landed on would have been instantly annihilated.It was, while horrible, quite an elegant solution. Theuniverse wasn't designed to have big things likeFortresses suddenly appear from nowhere. The energycreated by destroying so much matter was fed back intothe transduction corridor, helping to balance the books ofcosmic physics.

    The Doctor clacked his tongue. He knew what thefactory was made of diamond-reinforced type five spaceconcrete. He didn't know for sure what the Fortress wasmade of it was ugly black stuff that was probably metalor something. He wished there was someone here so hecould tell him or her just how much of an expert he wason particle transduction and how all this knowledge meanthe understood precisely how the Fortress and factoryfitted together.

    He fiddled with the sonic screwdriver, adjusting acouple of its settings with the deft touch of a safecracker.

    `There's a problem with diamond-reinforced type fivespace concrete...' began the Doctor, talking to no one inparticular.

    He pointed the sonic screwdriver at the roof and itsquealed for a few seconds.

    A crack appeared, right above the Doctor's head. Thecrack spread, then started to speed up. It raced in onedirection, towards the outer wall. At the last possiblemoment, it kinked to the left, hit a point where the ceilingmet the Fortress.

    A tiny piece of concrete, a pebble, fell, pinged againstthe Fortress wall, skipped and pinged again. The gun

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turret swivelled until it was pointing straight up, fired andatomised the pebble. The energy bolt kept going, slammedinto the cracked ceiling. The roof shattered, and a largechunk of it dropped onto the gun, bending it in half. Amoment later, a cascade of smaller pieces of concreterained down, flattening the remains of the weapon.

   `... and that's that it's easy to resonate.' He lookeddown at the sonic screwdriver. `I've never resonatedconcrete on my own before. That was fun.'

   He sauntered over to the Fortress wall, thought about itfor a moment, and then slapped it with his hand. Itclanged like a bell. Common-or-garden ugly black stuffthat was probably metal. He found a seam and opened itup, pulling back a panel that was so thick he needed bothhands to hold it. Once he had slid it aside, there was a gapthere just wide enough for him to squeeze through. So hedid.

   The Doctor had entered the Fortress.

Alsa, Gar and a couple of other kids brothers called Cozand Moz were running along a rubber and metalpathway that curved along the middle of this level of theCar Factory. It was easier to get around on foot here thanon bikes.

   `Where is he?' Gar moaned.

   `It's not this floor,' Alsa said impatiently, `it's the nextone up.'

   They weren't that far from where the Fortress bit intothe factory. They would have had to slow down anyway.

   There was the sound of shattering glass, from upstairs.

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   They all dived behind a nearby machine. It was a whitething, it looked like a miniature crane, with a whole set ofsharp tools on the tip of its arm. Looking up at it while shecaught her breath, Alsa thought it might be a robot arm.The thought of robots that were just bits of people hadalways disturbed her when she was younger.

   There was a crack and the sound of a rockslide.

   The four of them were covering their facesinstinctively. You got used to the buildings crumbling.

   `The floor above,' Coz said.

   `The Doctor,' Alsa agreed, not taking her eyes off theceiling. They had to get to him before he got inside.

   `It was falling on metal, not concrete. He's set off abomb that's blown a hole in the wall of the Fortress.'

   `Nah. Whole point of a Fortress is that you can't justslap a bomb on the wall. Anything strong enough todamage the Fortress would have ripped this place apart.'

   Gar was confused. `We have to wait for the parents.'

   `It'll take them hours to get here,' Moz complained.`They told us to wait.'

   `Wait?' Coz wailed.

   `It took us two or three hours on bikes,' Alsa said. `Andthey'll be walking. We let the Doctor open a way into theFortress. After that, we grab him. It's been the plan allalong.'

   `Has it? First I've heard,' Gar noted.

   `Yeah, well, it wasn't your plan. Can you imagine allthe incredible stuff there must be in the Fortress?'

   The boys all snickered.

   `I can't, and neither can you,' Jeffip said.

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    All four kids sat bolt upright. Professor Jeffip wasthere. So were Fladon and Dela. Dela was Coz and Moz'smum.

    `How?' Moz said.

    `We lived in Arcopolis long before you ever came here,Morren,' Dela said.

    `I used to be a supervisor at this factory,' Fladon said,talking to the other adults. `I was here four years, and theysaid the robots were foolproof, but once, one of thembroke down and...' He hesitated. `Another robot had to fixit. Sorry, it seemed a lot more dramatic at the time.'

    Dela laughed and put her hand on Fladon's shoulder. `Alot of us worked round here, remember?'

    Alsa's blood was boiling. This wasn't where theparents came, this was where the kids came.

    `Oh, calm down, Alsa,' Dela said. It was exactly thesame tone of voice she used with the babies.

    `How did you get here?'

    `Think about it. It takes hours to get here from thesettlement. We had to get here quickly, not just wait forthe call.'

    `So you were right behind us last night?'

    Jeffip chuckled. `About an hour behind you, yes. Wewaited until it stopped raining.'

    `If it's any consolation,' Fladon said, `the walk's justabout worn all three of us out.'

    Professor Jeffip coughed, leaning on his walking stickas he bent over. Jeffip was ancient. He was pale and out ofbreath. He'd just walked something like twenty miles, inthe wet. Alsa admired the fact he had it in him.

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   `Are you all right?' she asked.

   Fladon looked concerned. `If anything was to happento you, Jeffip, the settlement--'

   He waved everyone away. `It's a cough. Come on.Let's get up there.'

Fladon knew a quick way to the next floor, and soon theywere up there and edging around. All of them felt uneasyso close to the black wall, even when they saw a pile ofrubble where a gun should have been.

   No one else saw it, and it was a whole minute beforeeven Alsa saw the tiny gap in the wall. The Doctor musthave opened it up. There was no sign of him.

   `I don't think I could squeeze through that,' Fladonadmitted.

   `I could,' Alsa insisted.

   `We shouldn't,' Fladon warned. `It's too risky.'

   Alsa was running for the gap.

   `Wait!' everyone else was calling. They were chickens.A chicken was an extinct animal that was scared ofeverything. That's what Jeffip and Dela were like. Fladonand Gar just did what they were told.

   Gar was at Alsa's side.

   `You coming with me?' she asked.

   `No,' he said, trying to block her way.

   `Doesn't matter,' she said, pushing him over. Sheducked through the slit in the Fortress wall. No one elsehad the courage to follow her.

It was dark inside the Fortress. Black walls and no

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windows, the exact opposite of the Car Factory. It took amoment for Alsa's eyes to adjust.

   She pushed forwards, found she was in a thincrawlspace between two layers of wall. She edged along.The roof was angled, making it difficult to stand up. Herheart was racing, the blood rushing around her, scared andangry.

   Alsa realised that she was already disorientated.

   The ceiling sloped, she realised. The higher side wasthe inside. Alsa knew roughly how big the Fortress was the outer wall was about a mile long and at the end of itwas just a sharp turn then another mile of wall. What if thecrawlspace floor didn't run all that way? It was so dark,she'd just plummet.

   `Stay back!' the Doctor's voice hissed, and from aboutsix inches away. `Stay exactly where you are, or we'llboth be killed!'

Outside, everyone was so busy worrying about Alsa anddebating whether they should go back or stay where theywere that it was at least thirty seconds before any of themnoticed the glass man. Jeffip was the first. He didn't sayanything, just tapped Dela on the shoulder.

   The new arrival was in front of a wide window. Withsunlight pouring through its transparent body, it waspossible for Dela to see that there were... things inside it.A dozen or so tiny, indistinct shapes.

   The humans all just looked around at each other,baffled. No one was sure what they were looking at.

   `We need to leave,' Fladon suggested.

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    `No...' Jeffip said, his voice trailing away.

    Then they all heard it, even though it was only in theirheads.

    `Here.'

    `Was he talking to us?' Dela whispered.

    Dela was looking past the glass man and out of thewindow. A structure was pushing down through the greensky. It was bone-white, and looked like a number of flatshapes slotted together. It was difficult to judge the size,but it was immense, as large as a city block, at least. Acentral disc with three or four long flat pieces at a rightangle to it, with smaller triangles and dozens of squaresfitted at different angles to those long pieces, a little likesails on the mast of an ancient galleon. There was aglowing golden sphere beneath the disc, just hangingthere.

    Two others, the same size and shape, were behind it.They were too strange to be entirely beautiful.

    `Spacecraft,' Jeffip said. He'd joined Dela. She hadn'teven noticed him alongside her until he spoke.

    `Is that one of the people that built the Fortress?' Delaasked, indicating the glass man.

    `The Doctor said they were all dead. He could bewrong, but... those ships don't look anything like theFortress.'

    `Does a spaceship have to look like a skyscraper?'

    Jeffip, of course, had anticipated the question. `Itdoesn't look like it shares anything. No materials, nodesign elements. No... philosophy.'

    Jeffip took a step forward, and everyone else tensed up.

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  `I know what I'm doing,' he told them. `I have tocontact these people. Warn them.'

`I was being careful,' Alsa complained.

    The Doctor appeared in a circle of white light. Alsarealised that he'd taken the torch from her bag, whichmeant it had occurred to him she might have it and takenit before she'd even remembered it was there. `Good. Notslowly enough, though. Think of this place as a giantunexploded bomb. The slightest wrong move and there'sno negotiating or tricks, the machines running this placewill kill us.'

    `I got past the defences.'

    The Doctor laughed, and there was more than a hint ofdisdain. `There are thousands of defence systems and theydon't stop at the outer wall. They're almost all on standbyat the moment.'

    `Standby?'

    `You know. Like a TV that's on but not really on... ah,I see the problem. You don't watch enough television. Youshould. Five hours a day, minimum, and sit really close tothe screen. OK... what's the best way to explain? Oh...easy. Easy-peasy: this Fortress is asleep. It will wake up ifwe disturb it.'

    `How do you disturb a building? It's just, well, abuilding isn't it?'

    The Doctor shook his head, thought about it, thennodded.

    `That's not much help.'

    `I don't know the answer to your question. Inside here

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are loads of detectors. They send data to a battle computer,a sort of machine with a brain--'

   `I know what a computer was,' Alsa told him.

   `--which works out if there's anything worth botheringwith. I don't know precisely how it makes thatcalculation.'

   `So we don't know the rules.'

   `The monsters that designed this place didn't tellanyone the rules, because they didn't want anyonewinning the game.'

   The Doctor swung the torch back the way Alsa hadcome. `Right. You've got just as much chance of settingeverything off if you go back. So stick with me. Don't doanything unless you've seen me do it, don't step anywhereI haven't stepped, don't touch anything unless I'vetouched it. No, scratch that: don't touch anything. If yousee a rock, don't hit me over the head with it, if you canmanage that.'

   `No promises.' But the Doctor knew what he wasdoing, and she needed him around, at least for themoment.

   The Doctor handed her back the torch and took outsomething from his pocket. The same device he'drecharged her comm with. The end lit up, there was abuzzing sound and a hatch on the inner wall popped open.

   The Doctor smiled. `As long as you are the onlydistraction, we'll be fine. Five times out of five. Well...two times out of... erm... I'm sure we'll be fine. As longas no one does anything stupid.'

   Jeffip walked over to the glass man. He paused,

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probably considering what to say.

   It was strange. Dela felt a connection with this creature,like it knew her. She regretted that it wasn't mutual. Shewasn't totally convinced it was alive not even partially,like robots. Through the window, she could see the threealien spaceships. They were miles away but, betweenthem, they filled the air. White against the green sky, theycould have been freak, sculpted storm clouds with rays ofsunlight peeking out from underneath them. Just about.

   `I am Jeffip,' the old man said, so quietly that Dela andthe others could barely hear him. `I am a native of thisworld. I welcome you to Arcopolis.'

   But the glass man walked straight past him. Now it waswalking towards Dela. It moved with such grace. The lightsparkled off it. Behind it, through the window, thebeautiful, pristine spaceships were such a contrast to thedilapidated towers and fallen spires of Arcopolis.

   Dela was now shoulder to shoulder with the glass man.

   It turned its head. For the first time, she could see itsface. Dela was so close she couldn't see anything else.

   `We are the Eyeless,' it announced.

   `But you...' Dela began.

   It had eyes. Just the eyeballs, one above the other, notside-by-side. They looked just like a human being's eyes,just little blobs of white jelly, but they were suspended inthe transparent form of its head. With no eyelids or eyesockets, the eyes looked too large, and all they did allthey could do was stare wildly at her.

   The irises were bright green.

   She recognised the eyes and so she knew where the

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glass man had got them.

   Dela screamed.

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PART TWO

  UNLESS

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    How do you define intelligence? It's a word that means

    different things to different people. The scientists who

    built the Fortress weren't worried so much about an

    abstract debate. They needed a practical answer.

       The Fortress could have been given an artificial mind

    so brilliant, so adaptable, that it would be able to solve

    any problem instantly by thinking it through. Imagine a

    student who was brilliant at mathematics, and so was

    smart enough to pass any maths exam or test. But the idea

    of creating so powerful a mind worried the builders of the

    Fortress. They knew plenty of examples of creations rising

    up and destroying their creators, and they couldn't take

    the risk. This Fortress would have access to the ultimate

    weapon, and making it intelligent and resourceful was just

    asking for trouble. Luckily, there was another way of

    doing it. Imagine a second student, one who had been

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given a list of all the answers. He would also get a perfectscore. Most people would say that it was only the firststudent who was really demonstrating `intelligence', butthe results would be identical.

   The Fortress had been given a giant list of everypossible problem and the best solutions. Its builders hadset it up so that the Fortress would automatically performthe required action.

   The Fortress `thought'. It received information frommillions of sensors dotted inside and outside the building,but it didn't have a `brain' as such. There wasn't even oneplace where it did its thinking that would have been fartoo vulnerable to attack so there were hundreds of tinycomputers, all linked up in dozens of different ways. Itdidn't know right from wrong, any more than adishwasher knows what a dish is.

   The sensors could see, hear, taste, touch and smellthings far more efficiently than a human being could. Itknew that some forms of attack would be based ondeception that it couldn't always believe its own eyesand ears. So it didn't just check what it was seeing once, itasked itself thousands of times a second.

   What it sensed now were a couple of humanoids thathad got inside. They posed no immediate threat, and therewas an extremely high probability that they would triggerone of the automatic defences.

   The best model that matched said that there was noneed to intervene and the intruders would soon be dead.

The Doctor hadn't heard the voice.

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    Alsa was two steps behind him. They were in a narrowcorridor which was made floors, walls and ceiling ofthe same black metal as the outside of the Fortress. Itsoaked up the light, just giving them enough to see theirfeet and the route ahead.

    `It said something about a list. I think,' Alsa told him.

    `I didn't hear anything,' the Doctor said. He continuedstriding on, moving quickly but controlling every singlemovement, careful where he planted every footstep, everyglance.

    `"We are a list",' said Alsa.

    `"We are a list"?' the Doctor repeated, scoffing.

    `The voice was dead faint. Like it was back outside.'

    The corridor twisted downhill, and was lit by dull greenelectric lamps. Alsa was impressed by the clean, evenquality of the light. The most impressive thing was thatthe lights were just... there. Light usually meant keepingan eye out to make sure the poppy oil wasn't running lowor the flame wasn't too high, that there was enoughventilation. She had never taken light for granted. Thereweren't all that many things she'd ever taken for granted.

    It was the first place she'd been that felt normal. Notruined or bound up in a load of stupid rules. The placesmelled clean. This wasn't a warm place, but it had solidwalls and a dry floor. For all the black metal and darkness,Alsa felt more at home here than she ever had before.

    The Doctor wasn't saying very much. There hadn'tbeen any of his grinning or fooling around. He'd turned tolook back a couple of times, and the expression on hisface was grim.

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    Alsa wasn't sure what her plan was at this stage. Sheknew where she wanted to get to; the weapon plugged intothe city power grid. She knew not even Professor Jeffipwould be able to do that; it would have to be the Doctor.She hadn't worked out, yet, how to force the Doctor to doit. For now, she'd just stick close to him.

    He had some idea of the layout of the place. They'donly been walking for a few minutes, but it felt like theywere making good progress. The Doctor had alreadydefused a device that he said had been poised toelectrocute them. `Kill us with electricity,' he'd explainedcheerfully, as he handed Alsa a piece of mechanism he'dbarbecued with the sonic screwdriver.

    The corridor broadened out into a small circular room.

    `It's safe,' the Doctor said, hesitating just long enoughto give away that he was guessing. There were two opendoorways leading out of the room. The Doctor wasrubbing his lips thoughtfully.

    `Hmmmm,' he said. `Hand your comm over, I've hadan idea.'

    Alsa scowled at him.

    `Please?'

    She passed the bag over. The Doctor quickly found thecomm. He was thumbing at the controls the moment hehad it in his hand and, within seconds, a hologram of theFortress was flickering above the comm display.

    `How did you get it to do that?'

    `I hacked into the Fortress battle computer.'

    The hologram showed a green and blue wire-framerepresentation of the outside of the Fortress. The native

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buildings of Arcopolis were marked out in white lines.Alsa tried to take in as much of it as she could. More andmore details started to fill in on the hologram, apparentlyas a result of the Doctor's playing around. Now it wasshowing the internal structure, thick layers of wallsopening into a large vault. In the centre of the buildingwas a column with its roots in the base and whose trunkreached up to the very apex of the roof.

   None of those things were occupying Alsa's attention.

   `Do you recognise those?' she asked, indicating threevast objects shown floating outside the Fortress. Theywere hovering over the far shore of the lake.

   `They look a bit like the Blue Peter ship,' the Doctorsaid, distracted. `They're probably not though,' he added.

   Alsa was shaking her head.

   `Hang on,' said the Doctor.

   One word flashed up on the tiny screen.

   EYELESS

   `Eyeless?' the Doctor said, puzzled.

   `It's the people who built this place,' Alsa said. `Theyknow we're in here, and they're angry.'

   `Definitely not, probably not, and very possibly,' theDoctor said. `In that order.'

   `That voice didn't say "a list", it said "eyeless". What'sit mean?'

   `That they don't need mascara, monocles or anoptician?' The Doctor sniffed, clearly more interested inwhat the comm was telling him. `That they're fearless andearless and peerless and tearless?'

   `They're aliens,' Alsa said impatiently. `If they're not

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the people who built the Fortress, are these the aliens thatthe Fortress was built to fight?'

   `No.'

   `So they're a fourth lot?'

   `Third, surely...'

   `The ones who built the Fortress. The ones they werefighting. You.'

   `Ah. Well, yes, then they're a fourth lot.'

   `You met this type before? Know what they look like?'Alsa asked.

   `Eyeless?' the Doctor said. `Not from just the name.Eyeless? Eyeless! No. I've only been to Galaxy Seven ahandful of times, mind. I'm in a state of Eyelesslessness.'

   Alsa looked around for a rock to hit him with, but therewasn't one.

   `Do not move,' a voice said. `Stop what you are doing,Doctor.'

   `Doctor,' Alsa warned.

   The Doctor sighed. `Oh, what is it now?'

   `You didn't hear that?'

   `You hearing the voices again?' He didn't trust her.

   `The same voice,' Alsa insisted.

   `What did it say?' he asked, not sounding interested.

   `"Do not move",' Alsa said.

   `A rather stupid thing to say. Unless it was in here with--'

   They had been followed in. The Doctor and Alsa turnedto see three glass men walking down into the alcove,taking up position to block all the exits.

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A few minutes earlier, when she'd first seen the brightgreen eyes, Dela had been sick, helpless as the glass manstood over her. The eyeballs were just fixed in its head,watching her. How could they even be functional? Was itwearing them as decoration, like she used to wearjewellery?

   She had remembered the Doctor's promise to find andpunish whoever had done that to Jall.

   Jall?

   Jall. An image of her: those bright green eyes wherethey belonged, the two of them laughing. A month before,when Jall had come back and they'd talked all night, andDela discovered that yet another cliché of motherhood that your daughter grew to be a friend could be true.

   Dela had looked up to see Jall's dead eyes peeringdown at her.

   The Eyeless had been reading her mind, taking hermemories. Dela had tried to resist, but realised she didn'tknow how to begin fighting it off. It stole anothermemory, the last one she had of the Doctor, of himrunning off into the night. Then another, of her arriving onthis floor of the Car Factory, seeing the opening in theFortress wall.

   The Eyeless had stayed in her mind but, as it hadturned to face the black metal wall, it was as if it hadloosened its grip a little, and there was enough slack forDela to have new thoughts. She had got up, legs shaking,wanting to leave.

   Six more Eyeless had marched in, keeping perfectformation. Three at the front, two in the middle, one at the

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end.

    People were allowed secrets. There were things no oneelse knew about her. All of them had spilled out, theEyeless lapping them all up, not appreciating their value.Dela had felt the same sense of violation and frustrationshe'd had when she was fifteen, when she'd seen thesettings had changed on her diary and realised her motherhad been reading it, and so she knew about Gyll.

    Had she just remembered that, or had the Eyelessremembered it for her?

    Dela had wanted to slap it. No break it. It was glass.Surely a blow from a blunt, heavy object could crack itopen?

    The dead eyes had stared down at her, and Dela hadunderstood that it didn't mean to hurt her. Instead she wasa resource, a well of knowledge about the Doctor, so shehad value.

    `The Doctor is a threat,' it had said, and a wave ofagreement had broken inside Dela's head. The Eyeless hadturned on its heel, and marched over to the gap in theFortress wall opened up by the Doctor. Two others hadjoined it.

    `We have an opportunity to study the Doctor. We mustenter now.'

    And, knowing she couldn't just abandon the Doctorand Alsa, but too scared to go into the Fortress after them,all Dela had found she could do, as she stood there and theminutes had ticked by, was feel sick again.

The Doctor had allowed himself to get distracted. If he'd

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stuck to his plan, not been knocked out by that girl, thenhe would have been and gone before the Eyeless showedup. But then, if that had happened, he'd never have met anEyeless. And now he'd met three.

   `Hello there,' he said cheerfully, picking one to talk to.`I'm the Doctor, by the way. I met you earlier. You ranoff.'

   The Eyeless were shorter than the Doctor, but toweredover Alsa. This one regarded the Doctor silently for agood half a minute.

   `You really can't hear it speak, can you?' Alsa askedthe Doctor, delighted.

   `It doesn't have a mouth,' the Doctor pointed out.

   He went over to it. So, this was an Eyeless. This wasthe first time he'd got the chance for a proper look, so heput on his spectacles.

   It looked like glass, but was perhaps clear resin orplastic. It looked hard, but might have been soft, like gel.Or sticky. It was all the Doctor could do to stop himselffrom poking it.

   Whatever it was made of was almost flawless, but therewere a few small bubbles in there. Other items, too things that he didn't understand. In this nearest one, therewas what looked like a red cog, about a centimetre indiameter embedded in its leg; a small V-shaped tube ofplastic in its neck; a gold disc in its hand; what looked likea seventeen-centimetre strip of stir-fried beef in its chest.None of these objects seemed to be connected to anything,and he couldn't see for the life of him what function theyserved. Were they decorative? Did they have some ritual

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purpose? Oh, come on, Doctor `some ritual purpose' iswhat people say when they don't want to admit theyhaven't a clue what an artefact is.

   `Well, look at you,' the Doctor beamed, genuinelythrilled. `I have to admit, I think you've caught me out.No joints, no muscles, no seams, no capillary tubes. Ithought you might be using nanotechnology, but you'renot, are you? You're not a robot. A silicon-based life form.Or... oh, wait. Carbon-based, like me and Alsa, but thecarbon takes the form of diamonds? Is that it? Are you adiamond geezer? You look completely solid, but you canmove. Animated glass. That really is remarkable. Are yougoing to tell me how it's done, or is it a secret?'

   Ten seconds of absolute silence.

   `I don't think he can,' Alsa said, then, more petulant, `Idon't know why not. I'm just telling you.'

   `Is it talking to you? In your head?'

   Alsa nodded.

   `Telepaths. A race of glass telepaths called the Eyeless.I mean, cor, how brilliant is that? I can't hear it. Can ithear me?'

   `The entire surface of his body can register the smallestvibrations in the air. It's far more sensitive to sound than ahuman ear.'

   The Doctor turned back to his Eyeless, grinning. Heopened and closed his mouth for a few seconds, madehand gestures, pretending to speak but with no wordscoming out.

   `No,' said Alsa, a couple of beats after he'd finished. `Ithink he's dead clever and just pretending.'

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    `I am,' the Doctor nodded solemnly. `But I'm notclever enough to work out why you call yourself "theEyeless".'

    `That's obvious,' Alsa scowled.

    `It's obvious they don't have eyes, but why didn't theypick their noses?'

    Alsa sniggered, and it was a moment before the Doctorworked out why.

    `You know what I mean,' he insisted. `They don't havenoses, either. Why not the Noseless, eh? Or theMouthless? Hairless? Earless? Heartless?'

    `Can't they call themselves whatever they want?' Alsaasked.

    The Doctor thought about it for a few seconds more,tried to clarify his objection. `Groups are usually namedafter where they come from, or what they do, or what theybelieve in, or what they want to be. What sort of culturenames themselves after something they aren't? Somethingthey don't have? Something that's not theirs?'

    The question hung in the air.

    `What are they, Alsa?'

    `They're trying to explain. I don't understand.'

    `Say what you see,' the Doctor suggested.

    `There are white things, like... structures, all gatheredaround a huge ball that looks like the sun, but it's in themiddle of the night sky. The structures, there arethousands of them. They're buildings and vehicles, butalso parts of a machine. There are loads of Eyelesses inthem, all bathed in colourful light. They travel all acrossthe galaxy. It's incredible.'

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   The Doctor could have worked most of that out forhimself.

   `Why?' he asked.

   The Eyeless didn't say anything, but the questionclearly confused them.

   `They forage for technology. Because they can readminds, they usually find it easy to come to an arrangementwith the original owners. If not, they take what they wantanyway,' Alsa grinned. `They're just like me.'

   The Doctor raised an eyebrow. `Are they, now?'

   Alsa laughed. `They've just promised to change thingshere.'

   `Have they, indeed?'

   `They don't trust you,' Alsa told him. `They say Ishouldn't trust you.'

   `They're used to reading minds. They've never neededto earn trust, just taken it. Takers. That's what they are.Scavengers. Thieves. Thugs. On a cosmic scale.'

   `They want to know why they can't read your mind.'

   The Doctor jabbed his thumb at his chest. `Time Lord.We come with top-of-the-line psychic defences asstandard. I imagine a race as well travelled as the Eyelessknow all about the Time Lords.'

   `No. They haven't heard of you,' Alsa told him.

   That burst the Doctor's balloon. `Oh... really?'

   `They just asked something stupid. They all right, allright, I'll ask Doctor, they want to know if yourTARDIS is a time machine.'

   The Doctor felt his grin twitching. `Er... no. Ridiculousidea.'

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   `The Eyeless would very much like a time machine,'Alsa said.

   `I bet they would,' the Doctor murmured throughgritted teeth.

   `And you say you're a Time Lord and told Dela thatTARDIS stood for Time And--'

   `Oh. Right. Yes, I see why there's all this confusion.Simple mistake. It's "Thyme", with an H-Y. The herb. I'ma Thyme Lord. In the Middle Ages, you'd put some thymeunder your pillow to ward off nightmares. Not that I'vebeen to the Middle Ages, of course. Heaven forfend.You'd need a time machine for that. As a, er, Thyme Lord,I know that it's good with roast chicken. And in biscuits.You wouldn't think so, but try it. Couple of tablespoons. Icould go on for ages about Thyme.'

   `Please don't.' The Doctor wasn't sure if that was Alsa,or the Eyeless speaking through her. Either way, he sighedwith relief. `The Eyeless fail to understand why thismeans your brain needs such an elaborate firewall.'

   `Isn't it obvious?' the Doctor said, then hesitated for along while, before adding, `It's because we don't wantanyone stealing our recipes.'

   He smiled, a little uncertainly.

   `They believe you,' Alsa said, not bothering to concealher dissenting opinion. `They want your recipes. Theydon't just take stuff. They take experiences. Thoughts andemotions and fantasies. That's what the things suspendedin their bodies are for souvenirs. Badges.'

   `Proof of individual achievement in a hivemind,' theDoctor muttered.

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    `The rules... they're dead complicated. If an Eyeless isthe first one ever to feel or do something or gosomewhere, it can wear a memento of it.'

    The Doctor looked between the three aliens, tried toguess what each of the artefacts symbolised. AnotherEyeless stepped out of the gloom, turned its head so it wasfacing the Doctor for the first time. The Doctor looked upat it. He took a deep breath.

    `You're like me,' Alsa said, this time to the Eyeless,proudly pointing to a ribbon on her jacket. `I earned thatwhen I beat Hlann in a fight. Broke his nose. It's stillwonky. You get what you want. That's like me, too.'

    `This particular Eyeless does have eyes,' the Doctortold her.

    Alsa had kept her distance, but now she was strainingto see.

    `Don't,' the Doctor warned softly. Then, twirlingaround to look back at that Eyeless, taking another stepover, he said, `Mr Eyeless... those ships of yours are veryadvanced. I mean, just one glance at them and it's obviousthey have galactic range and they're powered by anartificial sun. Very few civilisations get so advanced. Thepeople of Arcopolis are children by comparison. Well,Alsa is only 13, I suppose, so she's got an excuse.'

    `Hey!' Alsa snarled, instinctively moving closer to thenearest Eyeless.

    `You seem very pally with them, Alsa.'

    `I can hear their thoughts. They can hear mine.'

    `And you're birds of a feather?'

    `I've no idea what that means.' Strange colourful,

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flappy thoughts appeared in Alsa's mind, placed there bythe Eyeless. She ignored them.

   `This one killed Jall. Did you realise that, Alsa?'

   `Sure. He's wearing her eyes.'

   He'd assumed she hadn't seen. `Doesn't that botheryou?'

   Alsa shrugged. `I understand why he did it. Can't put itinto words... they're not like us. And I never really knewJall that well. They operate on a bigger scale.'

   The Doctor looked puzzled. `Did you think that, or didthey think that for you?'

   Alsa frowned. `I thought that,' she insisted.

   `Of course you did.'

   `Of course I did. Look, back at the Council, you werethe one going on about the bigger picture. It's a shame Jalldied, but rather her than me.'

   `What makes you think that's the choice?' the Doctorasked.

   `I don't come from a planet with choices.'

   `We'll see about that.' He turned to the Eyeless withJall's eyes. `Those ships are very pretty.'

   The Eyeless stayed where it was, let the Doctor comelevel with it.

   The Doctor waved a hand above his head in the vaguedirection of the ceiling, took another step, turned to backinto the wall. `But this Fortress is very ugly. It's horrible.Offensive. At the moment, it's... well, it's asleep. Donothing to wake it. Please, please do nothing to wake it.'

   His other hand found the door frame.

   `He's trying to get away!' Alsa shouted.

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   She really was very smart.

   The Eyeless raised its right hand, held it straight out,pointing at the Doctor, palm flat. There was a gold discembedded there. It flashed with the light of the sun.

   The Doctor shrugged when nothing happened. Hetapped his lip with the sonic screwdriver, which he'd justtaken from his coat pocket. `A weapon which literallyburns out the neurons. Smoke pours out of the nose andmouth. Doesn't work on me, just like your telepathydoesn't work on me. Now... you killed Jall and I made apromise about Jall, and I will honour it.'

   He took a step back.

   `Last chance, Alsa. Pick which side you're on.'

   `You make it sound like we're playing a game.'

   The Doctor looked her right in the eyes, saw nothingbut contempt there. So be it.

   `Alsa?'

   `Yes, Doctor?' she said, sneering.

   `Playtime's over.'

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    Before anyone could stop him, the Doctor took the last

    step back through the doorway. As he passed through, in

    one movement and without looking back, he turned,

    brought the sonic screwdriver up level with the nearest

    control panel, operated it, and made the heavy black metal

    door slam down.

       The Doctor didn't stick around to see what happened

    next.

       The Eyeless who'd been closest to him managed to

    lurch forward and catch the underside of the door, quickly

    twisted to hold it about halfway open. The door was

    inching down, and the Eyeless wasn't going to be able to

    hold it for long.

       `Go!' Alsa was shouting to the others.

       The Doctor was already a hundred paces away. He

    could hear Alsa swearing and yelling, but it was already

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getting faint and after a moment the sound cut offcompletely. It felt wrong to abandon her, somehow. Thatsaid, there was no indication the Eyeless would harm her rather the opposite and she was far safer stuck backthere than in the depths of this place.

   Alsa's comm was in the Doctor's hand, set to displayall the internal defences of the Fortress. Within fifteenseconds it had saved his life by spotting a row of nozzlesin the floor. They were designed to blast up jets of poisongas, and he'd have completely missed them. The simplemotion sensor that would have triggered the trap waseasily tricked by the Doctor using a sweet wrapper hefound in his pocket.

   There were dull clangs of solid glass against metalfloor. Footfalls behind him. One Eyeless had got through,but only the one. The Doctor had to slow down a little toneutralise every trap. Unless there was another door hecould close behind himself soon and he couldn't seeanything obvious on the plan it would catch up withhim.

   The corridor curved down. There were a number oflocked doors to either side, but he couldn't slow down, sodidn't try them.

   He avoided a trap designed to fire plastic straps tosnare his chest like a boa constrictor. He left it live, andhurried away. Ten seconds later, the Doctor was gratifiedto hear it triggered, but also alarmed the Eyeless had beenthat close behind him. The glass man didn't breathe, so thetrap wouldn't suffocate it, and it'd be free soon enough.

   The Eyeless fascinated him. Did they know specifically

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about the weapon at the heart of this Fortress, or had theysimply marked out Arcopolis as a potential source ofadvanced technology?

   He scolded himself. They must know. It was a longway to come on a whim.

   He had to get to the weapon before the Eyeless did. No:faster than that. He needed to get to the weapon beforethey even tried, because when they tried... well, thatwould set the Fortress going and make his life difficult.

   The Doctor picked up his pace.

   If the Eyeless knew about the weapon, he wondered,did that mean they knew all his secrets?

Whatever the Doctor had done to the door, the Eyelesscouldn't undo. There had been no way to brace it open, sothere was only time for one Eyeless to get through. Thisfrustrated Alsa, who kicked and punched at the metal, butall it did was clang and hurt her fists and feet.

    That only made Alsa more angry.

    The two Eyeless left behind stood there, unmoving,impassive.

    `Don't you ever get upset?' she asked them.

    `No. All our decisions and actions are rational.'

    Alsa barged into the door, shoulder first. `Damn it!'

    `You will not open the door using that method.'

    `You don't get it, do you?'

    `No. I would like to.'

    It was just the one with the eyes talking to her now, shecould tell that somehow. It was almost like it waswhispering to her. The other one was keeping its distance.

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   `I thought you could read my mind.'

   `That does not mean I can feel what you feel. I wouldlike to.'

   And now Alsa was looking at herself standing over bythe door. She felt confused, but didn't look it. She lookedgleeful. That girl wasn't her. It looked like her, but... shewas inside the Eyeless. She was tall, strong. She wasn'thungry or cold, wasn't even breathing. She could see rightthrough her six-fingered hand. There was a gold disc inthere. It was weird. She wasn't looking out through littleholes in her skull, like she usually did; she had a totalawareness of her surroundings.

   `We've swapped bodies?' Alsa asked.

   `That is the simplest way of describing it, yes,' the girlopposite her said, mumbling and slurring a little, as if shewasn't used to having a tongue. `We call itpsychografting.'

   It was like she was driving its body. The Eyeless wasclearly driving hers, flexing the fingers, running them upand down her arm. It revelled in the sensation, wide-eyed.

   `How bizarre ... arms ... fingers ... hair!'

   `Watch where you're putting those hands,' Alsawarned.

   The other Eyeless shifted its feet, fascinated.

   For the first time in her life, Alsa felt calm.

   `You've never been angry before?'

   `Not like this. Not the actual emotion, just a copy.' TheEyeless in her body was breathing hard, swaying. `Suchrage,' it said.

   `I told you I was angry.'

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    `It is exhilarating. All sorts of hormonal surges andphysical responses. I see something, I want to hurt it.'

    `But that's what I see. All the time.'

    In response, the Eyeless punched the wall, thengrabbed at that hand with the other, crying out in pain.Alsa would have smiled, but the face she wore wasfeatureless, immobile, so she couldn't. She looked downat her own arm... her new one. Alsa couldn't see herselfinside the glass. A thought crossed her mind: wherewasshe?

    Never mind that: she really wanted to see how muchshe could wind up the Eyeless.

    `The Doctor lied,' she said. `All that stuff about herbswas rubbish. He let me down and he lied to you.'

    `How can you be certain?'

    `Normal people have intuition. Feel it in our stomach.Try it.'

    The Eyeless growled, a noise that made Alsa start, evenin her new, impassive body. She had never made thatsound herself.

    `The Doctor tricked me!' it snarled.

    `Yes. He tricked us both.'

    `I will kill him!'

    The Eyeless slammed into the door then tried clawingat the metal. Its comrade watched this, impassively.

    If it carried on like this, it would hurt itself. No, notitself: that was her body it was wearing, and Alsa wantedit back in one piece.

    `You need to calm down a bit. Focus. You want to hurthim, not yourself. Close your eyes,' Alsa suggested.

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   She figured that closing eyes was something theEyeless could never have done before, and she quickly feltthe alien's mind grow almost giddy at the darkness.

   `That is... so strange.'

   `It's just normal.'

   `No ... strange.' It was opening and closing its eyes,now. Grinning like an idiot.

   After another minute of that, the Eyeless announced itwould restore control of her body and Alsa was backwhere she belonged, feeling dizzy and her hand wasthrobbing. Alsa felt upset again, but it was dying down,becoming dulled. She wore the grin the Eyeless had made.

   `We cannot allow the Doctor to escape,' the Eyelesssaid. Now it seemed to be both of them speaking again.

   `We've got to be careful,' Alsa reminded them. `TheDoctor said that the Fortress was asleep, and we shouldn'twake it.'

   `He said it was on standby,' the Eyeless concurred. `Weshould also take into account that, while the Fortressdemonstrates great potential, and warrants fullinvestigation, we have what we originally came to thisplanet for.'

   `You do?'

   `We have the hypercube.'

   The information poured into Alsa's mind, like she wasremembering it. A hypercube was an object where theinterior measurements were larger than the exterior ones.Like going into a small tent and finding that inside it wasa huge hall.

   Alsa got a mental picture of a big, blue, wooden box,

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with windows and a light on top.

    `I don't recognise that at all,' she said, annoyed thatthey expected her to know about it.

    `It is not Arcopolis technology.'

    `Then... ?' she asked, impatient.

    `We were passing through this space sector when wedetected the hypercube in flight. We were able to calculateits trajectory to this planet and arrive here two days beforeit. It landed on a beach around ten miles from here and ourlanding party took possession of it shortly afterwards.Despite our efforts, we are currently unable to unlock thedoor. It remains on the beach where we found it.'

    `Whose is it, then?'

    `Ours,' the Eyeless said, confused by the question.

    `Whose was it before? Where did it come from?'

    `We think it belonged to the Doctor. We think it is theTARDIS he spoke to Dela about. While he did notdescribe its physical properties to her, he explained thatthe noun was an acronym for Thyme... Time And RelativeDimensions In Space. Hypercubes possess the property ofrelative dimensionality.'

    What flowed into Alsa's head next made no sense toher. It was a string of numbers and other symbols thatmight have been numbers, but none that Jeffip had evertaught her. The word `equations' swam through her mind.

    `I'll take your word for it.'

    `We will learn all the secrets of the TARDIS.'

    `What does the Doctor use it for?'

    `Apparently it is a vehicle and a home and a museumand a laboratory and a library.'

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    Alsa was trying to get everything straight. So, theEyeless had come to this planet looking for that big bluecrate, the TARDIS. They weren't here for the weapon atall. They might not even know about the weapon.

    `Weapon?' For the first time when it was in its ownbody, Alsa felt the Eyeless radiate an emotion: fear. Thenanother: fascination.

The Fortress strategy computer was assessing the piecesof data it had collected.

   There were two alien creatures and a native humanoidin one of the outer chambers. They hadn't moved for afew minutes. The aliens communicated via simpletelepathic broadcasts, which operated at 93.7 megamyers.The computer listened in, rather than jamming the signal.There were four more aliens outside, by the breach, andsix native humanoids. An alien and a non-nativehumanoid were through the outer defences, heading to thecentral vault. There were three spacecraft immediatelyoutside.

   The computer sifted this information. There were twopoints of immediate concern.

   The three spacecraft were potentially a threat. Thestrategy computer was watching them carefully. It toyedwith the idea of a first strike, but rejected it. It wasprogrammed to use proportionate force.

   The non-native humanoid, the one with two hearts,concerned it more, because he had managed to get furtherthan the strategy computer had originally projected. Hewas the one who had opened the outer hatches, using a

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sonic resonator. His avoidance of the various traps andsnares indicated high levels of intelligence and initiative.

    It checked its files, and discovered whole dedicatedsections and subroutines about this individual, the Doctor.It brought them online, studied them.

    The Doctor was aware of the weapon. He was makinghis way towards it. The computer selected the beststrategy to stop him and implemented it.

This whole planet was quiet in the first place and the thickwalls of the Fortress acted to provide soundproofingagainst even the silence. On the other hand, because it wasconstructed almost entirely of metal, every noise theDoctor made as he hurried through the latest corridor rangout and echoed. It was dark, with just the emergencylighting. The various traps that had dogged him at firstwere becoming increasingly thin on the ground and thisworried him.

   The Eyeless must have got out of the snare by now,although the Doctor hadn't heard it behind him.

   He'd been moving for half an hour. There was stillsome way to the central vaults, according to the comm.The narrow corridors were a maze, like a nervous systemor an animal warren lots of tunnels branching off andleading to chambers and alcoves. The whole place wasempty. There were racks and hooks and socketseverywhere, but no equipment or other material.

   The immense strength of the weapon, even when it wasinactive, was as tangible to him as the weather was whenhe was outside. He could feel its weight, oppressive.

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    The corridor opened up in front of him. It was nowtwice as wide, although this didn't serve an obviouspurpose. For no reason he could have explained, theDoctor glanced down at the comm.

    HELP

    He looked back up. A beautiful face was looking rightinto his eyes. A ghost, standing in front of him, its cold,crisp glow radiating like nothing else in the perpetualgloom. It wore the same flowing white robes as the otherghosts he'd seen, and it looked just as scared, trapped. Theghost moved its hand, and the Doctor was going to take it,but then remembered what had happened to Frad.

    It's not trapped, it's the trap. Don't forget that, Doctor.

    `And I was just thinking how thin on the ground theautomatic defences had become,' he said out loud. Heglanced behind him, double-checking the Eyeless wasn'tthere.

    The ghost looked bewildered.

    The Doctor raised an eyebrow and tried the comm'skeypad.

    TIOUCH ME I DIEE

    The Doctor was all thumbs, but the ghost got themessage and took a step back. This was odd. If it reallywanted to destroy him, it could have made a good stab atit. Why wasn't it trying? What reason could it have todelay? For that matter, why wait until the corridor was aswide as this and it would be easier to duck past? TheDoctor peered at the ceiling to see if there was some sortof emitter or lens projecting the image. The ghost itselfwas gesturing around impotently. Its fingers brushed the

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comm.

    IM LOOKING 4 SOME1

    The Doctor was unused to this form of communication,so it took a moment for him to translate. This was anillusion, just a phantom generated by the Fortress. Adefence system. A hologram or something very like it with just enough artificial intelligence to work out wherethe chinks in his armour were. A lure. A trick.

    What if he was wrong, though? It was an odd trick. Hetyped, fumbling a little.

    I CAN HLP U

    He thought for a moment, then added:

    IAM DR? BTW

    ?????

    It asked.

    `I wish I knew,' the Doctor said, typing, ALIEN4TRESS. IT ATTACKED ARCPLIS. He frowned, adding,U TRAPPED HERE?

    The ghost nodded, frantic.

    HELP FIND HER

    The Doctor was about to ask `who?' but the ghostanticipated this and added: DELA

    `You know Dela?'

    The ghost nodded, eager.

    `I know Dela,' he said. The ghost understood themeaning without the Doctor having to type it out, and itsface flickered with hope, for the very first time.

    `What's your name?' the Doctor asked.

    He read the answer.

    `No. No, no, no.' The Doctor stepped back. `This is a

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trap. This is still a trap. A very weird, extremely indirect...non-trappy... trap.'

    There was a single word on the screen.

    GYLL

    `You're Gyll?'

    Y

    Dela's lover, the one she'd been so reluctant to talkabout, killed on the day the Fortress appeared along with200 million other people in Arcopolis.

    U V BEEN HERE 15 YRS?

    The ghost frowned, looked around.

    15 MINS MAX

    BUT 15 YRS SINCE ATTACK

    N

    Y

    N

    YYYWKO

    ?

    WITH KNOBS ON, the Doctor clarified.

    Gyll looked very lonely. Sad, more than panicked, likethe universe had slipped through those ghostly fingers.

    This is a trap, the Doctor reminded himself. A simpletrick designed to feed back and magnify his fears andinsecurities. Giving him someone to save, allowing him topicture the satisfaction he'd feel when he looked Dela inthe eye and said he was sorry Jall died, but he had broughtsomeone else back. The sort of small, human moment helived for.

    It might not be a trap. This might be Gyll, somehow notdead.

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   He could hear footsteps behind him the Eyeless wasclose by. Impossible to tell how close.

   The Doctor pulled himself together. The ghost was adistraction. Whether this was a trap or not, whether it wasGyll or not, it was still a distraction. The Doctor knew hispriority had to be the weapon, not this.

   The weapon could perhaps be altered so that it--

   The Doctor didn't even allow himself to finish histhought. No.

   I WILL COME BACK 4 U, the Doctor typed quickly,aware as he did so that he'd made a similar promise toDela. He added a little more, until it read, I WILL COMEBACK 4 U + DELA.

   Then the Doctor swept past, careful to avoid even theslightest physical contact with the ghost. He didn't lookback as he hurried away, so didn't see that Gyll waswatching him go, tearful.

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    Alsa was working with the Eyeless with green eyes,

    trying to remember everything the Doctor had said about

    the weapon.

       It told her that Dela had fought the telepathic process,

    found it unpleasant and intrusive. Alsa liked the feeling of

    having the Eyeless in her mind. Despite that, Alsa wasn't

    used to giving. She was used to cooperating, ganging

    together and divvying up the spoils. Kids did that when

    they had to. There was plenty for everyone, usually. But

    you always got something in return for helping someone.

    It was only fair.

       The Eyeless said it understood, and now, suddenly,

    Alsa remembered running across a dusty, airless

    landscape, weighing almost nothing, leaping forwards a

    hundred metres at a time, kicking up bronze dust and

    being flooded with such an amazing elated feeling. Thirty

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Eyeless were around her, all sharing that feeling,amplifying it by endlessly feeding it back, running forrunning's sake.

   `You actually did that?'

   `Yes.'

   `It's brilliant.'

   `There was a danger we would be dashed against therocks.'

   `That was what made it brilliant. You could have died.'

   `An unlikely outcome,' it told her before conceding,`although a possible one.'

   Reluctant to be dragged away from those memories,keen for more like it, Alsa remembered what the Eyelesswanted her to do. Alsa remembered the Council meeting,knowing exactly what Jennver was going to say because itwas what she always said, letting the smelly old womanwalk into it.

   The Eyeless seemed more interested in that than in hermemories of the Doctor.

   `You were angry.'

   Alsa snickered. When wasn't she?

   The Eyeless were better than people. They could do somuch that people couldn't. Jennver and the other parentswanted everyone to sit around eating weeds, plopping outbabies. Alsa had thought the Doctor would change things,but he wasn't going to help her. But she wanted more thanmemories if the Eyeless took the weapon, she couldn'tuse it to power the city--

   `In return for your help, we will give you an engine thatwill do that,' the Eyeless promised.

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   `Will I be able to operate it?'

   `Yes. We will give you that knowledge, too.'

   `Only me?'

   `That is your desire, so yes.'

   `Give me another memory,' she said.

   Jall screaming, terrified and alone as the Eyeless killedher, drank her thoughts so that it was both the murdererand the victim, the emotion feeding back, just like thesense of elation had a moment before.

   Alsa's chest heaved like her heart was going to burstout of it. She felt terrified, but still not quite fully back inher own body. She was now acutely aware of the weightof her feet, the sweat in her armpits, the dryness in hermouth. Her breathing. She was breathing too fast. She hadto stop breathing. Her tongue almost choked her.

   `Why did you show me that?' Alsa gasped.

   Jall's dead eyes peered down at her.

   It was only a sensation, like the others.

   Was that her own thought or had the Eyeless put itthere? It wasn't anything like what she wanted to think.

   `Not a nice sensation.'

   `No. Neither good nor bad, merely true.' It hesitated`You want power over others, but why? Do you think youwill be a good leader?'

   Alsa shrugged. `Don't you want to have power amongthe Eyeless?'

   `No.' But the only Eyeless with eyes had paused, justfor a moment.

   `I suppose,' she conceded. `Jennver got out of havingbabies. She's too old now, but she wasn't fifteen years

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ago. I want that choice.'

   `Jennver holds the power in the village because she isthe only obstetrician. You need someone to deliver thebabies. She has not shared her knowledge because thatknowledge is her power.'

   That simple truth had never once occurred to Alsa, butthere was no disputing it. Jennver had been asmanipulative as anyone. She almost felt admiration.

   Alsa's mind now flooded with a whole newvocabulary: words like gravidity, macrosomia,haematocrit, folate, even somatomammotropin. Moreyears' experience than she'd lived.

   `You are now an obstetrician,' the Eyeless announced.

   `What would you like in return?'

   `Your anger.'

The thick steel door slammed down in front of the Doctorlike a guillotine blade, almost taking his toes off.

   Symbols set in the door explained it would staydeadbolt sealed for precisely one minute. Sensors dottedaround the room whirred and bleeped. The Fortress wasperforming a full bioscan on him. This didn't worry him;it meant he must be getting closer to the weapon chamber.

   The Doctor kept aiming glances over his shoulder,wondering how far behind him the Eyeless was. He'd notseen or heard it for a while. It might have been caught inanother trap. Perhaps it had met the ghost.

   The encounter with Gyll had rattled the Doctor. Itdidn't make sense that the ghost had been one of theautomatic defences. Or, rather, it didn't make sense to

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him. If it was one of the defences, by definition there wasa mechanical, perfect logic involved.

    The Doctor wasn't sure what worried him the most:that it was all part of a game the Fortress was playing withhim and he didn't understand the rules... or that he'dreally met the ghost of Gyll.

    He'd met ghosts before. That didn't bother him. Theywere usually trouble, but plenty of the people and thingsand people-things the Doctor met on his travels weretrouble.

    No.

    The thing was... the weapon, the ultimate weapon atthe heart of the Fortress, utterly annihilated its target. Thewhole point of it was that it left no trace. If that was a realghost, it was most certainly a trace. Not just something ithad missed, something it had affected.

    The Doctor didn't want to think too hard about theweapon; he wanted to get to it, destroy it and leave. Keepit simple.

    The Doctor glanced down at Alsa's comm, but thescreen was dead. He rattled the device and the plan of theFortress reappeared, but as it did so, the floor shook.

    That was puzzling. Had he really ? He rattled thecomm again.

    The floor shook again.

    `Am I doing that?' the Doctor asked out loud,wondering how he possibly could be.

    Then he looked more closely at the display. It wasn'thim the Eyeless ships had begun their attack.

    This wasn't good.

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   The minute was up, there was a click, the deadbolt slidback, and the door in front of him started to roll open,very slowly.

   There was still no sign of the Eyeless. The Doctorglanced back and something the size of a man, coiledand glinting, barely visible, was springing at him.

   A poised landing and two sharp strides and the Eyelesswas at him, swinging its arm precisely, efficiently. TheDoctor's reflexive, panicky dodge worked, though, andthe glass hand grasped at air.

   The Doctor lurched for the door, but it wasn't farenough open, and he merely clanged into it.

   `Get them to call off the attack!' the Doctor shouted atthe Eyeless, ducking clear of another swipe.

   It wasn't listening. It was hunched down, like a prizefighter, and had managed to get him to take two pacesaway from the door, which was now almost fully open.

   The Doctor had to get out of here.

   His opponent was used to reading minds, but couldn'tdo that now. So the Doctor simply feinted, moving to stepright, then darting left, past it and through the doorway.The door slammed down between them.

   Timelocked, deadbolt sealed. One minute.

   The Doctor took a deep breath and hurried on.

Jeffip watched the four Eyeless who'd stayed out of theFortress.

   Fladon, Dela and the boys were at the big window,looking out at the spacecraft. Jeffip could hardly blamethem for that. He, though, was far more interested in the

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ships' builders.

   Telepaths. They'd taken memories from Dela, as easilyas if they'd overheard her talking.

   What sort of society would a race of mindreaders have?Jeffip thought of all the things they couldn't do: lie, cheat,boast, patronise, deceive, conceal, exaggerate, bluff.Those all seemed like negative things, and usually theywere, but even the white lies, even being polite, would beimpossible.

   Jeffip didn't like the idea of living in a place whereevery passing thought was transmitted to everyone else.He had lived with the same three dozen adults for fifteenyears, in a situation that forced them together, sharing somuch. Even now, though, he didn't know absolutelyeverything about any of them. They all had secrets. Heoften thought things he didn't really mean, or hadopinions he didn't want other people to know, or ideas hewasn't ready to share.

   Jeffip was at a huge disadvantage. The Eyeless knewwhat he was thinking, but he didn't have a clue aboutthem. He couldn't even work out where they thought.They didn't have brains, at least not like human beingsdid, or built-in computers or... well, anything he couldimagine which was capable of thinking.

   The Eyeless were wandering around and lookedaimless, but Jeffip thought there must be some alienpurpose to it. They could be pacing out the room, orperforming some other type of survey.

   One of the Eyeless was walking up to him, now.

   `What are you looking at?' it demanded.

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    This startled Jeffip. Up until now, their voices had beenperfectly calm.

    `I meant no offence,' Jeffip insisted, looking down athis own feet.

    `You like looking at people?' it asked.

    Dela was near to them, and she walked over, puzzled.

    `Why's it doing that?' she asked.

    Jeffip shrugged.

    `It's like it's drunk,' Dela pointed out.

    It was a good description. The body language wasdifferent more of a swagger.

    `We need to get out of here,' Jeffip said.

    `It's too risky to stay,' Dela agreed.

    Something had changed, and Jeffip tried to think of themost diplomatic way of asking. Then he realised that theEyeless had read his mind.

    `We consulted our colleague,' it answered. `Thepresence of a weapon of such power changes theequations. We have decided on a strategy of violentconflict resolution. Do not attempt to leave this area, aswe will have further need of your knowledge.'

    The calm way that was announced infuriated Dela, whojust turned to Jeffip and looked like she was going to takeit out on him. Jeffip was equally frustrated. He pushed hisway in front of the Eyeless nearest to him.

    `Careful,' Dela warned.

    `The Doctor warned us,' Jeffip said curtly. `You knowthat already.'

    The Eyeless didn't respond.

    `You would attack the Fortress?'

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    `The assault will begin shortly. Please take cover.'

    They'd all heard that. Fladon and the boys lookedaround and quickly concluded that the safest place wouldbe behind the engine blocks.

    Dela joined Jeffip. He wanted to slap her, even thoughhe knew she agreed with him that attacking the Fortresswas insanity. What was the matter with him?

    `I can't allow it,' Jeffip said, venting his anger on theEyeless. `I will do everything I can to stop this.'

    The Eyeless raised its right hand.

    Jeffip frowned. There was a gold disc embedded in theglass palm. Everyone noticed it at the same time. Theground had started to shake beneath their feet.

    `I don't understand,' Jeffip said, irritated. `What dowant me to--?'

    The gold disc flashed as bright as the sun for a fractionof a second. Jeffip staggered one step back, then stumbledover. Smoke was pouring from his mouth and nostrils. Hetried to pull himself up, tried to cough, but instead all hedid was die.

    The Doctor wasn't worried too much about the Eyelessships. He was extremely worried about how the Fortresswould respond to them. He could see from the commdisplay that the Fortress strategy computer was runningdetectors over the spacecraft, as they moved into attackposition. There was only one reason a strategy computercollected data.

    He had to get to the weapon, and he had to do it rightnow, while the Fortress was still inactive, because thingswere about to get a lot more dangerous. The route was laid

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out for him, right there on the comm screen.

   The Doctor began running.

                           ***

Dela's eyes were screwed shut.

   She was huddled with the others, behind the stack ofengine blocks. They shouldn't have come here. It was sostupid of them. They told the children over and over not tocome to the City at all, but especially not to go near theFortress. Here they were, ten metres away from it. Ifthey'd stayed in the village, what would have happened?They'd have just lost a few of the boys and Alsa, thebiggest problem case amongst the girls. Jeffip would stillbe alive. The Doctor and the Eyeless would have settledtheir dispute without them it wasn't as though any of thesurvivors could have changed anything.

   `What's happening?' Morren said, so softly she hardlyheard him, even though her son was curled up, pressinginto her. Even with her eyes closed, Dela's world filledwith light.

   And then came the sound.

   It was so tempting to turn and look. To fight that, Delaimagined her feet had been nailed to the floor and hereyelids had been gummed up with glue. It was the firsttime in years she'd had her two sons with her like this.The boys were holding squeezing her hands. Shehoped she could transmit strength to them. Dela hoped shehad that strength within her to give.

   There was terror, like a blanket, numbing her, isolating

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her from the outside world. She tried, and failed, to blockout the whole universe.

   The ground was vibrating. A sensation Delaremembered from before, so she concentrated on that, thepast, when the machines and engines of Arcopolisthrummed all the time, never sleeping, never evenpausing. Every day since, Dela had had moments whenshe'd pictured the faces of her parents, her friends, herlover. There weren't any tears now, not after so long. Shehad also pined for the comforts of the city, the auto-massaging-showers, the instant food, pills that madeheadaches go away, robots that unloaded the washer-dryerand ironed everything. The humming now was different; afar less specific memory, one of a sense of activity, thefeel of technology. It made her nostalgic, even as she feltscared that the light and sound coming from the Eyelessships would take her apart. She'd been safe, then.

   Dela used to get her music player to record thebirdsong from outside, pipe it through to her when shewas awake. The dawn chorus. She'd not thought aboutbirdsong for years.

   Did that mean her life was flashing in front of hereyes?

   No. She was squatting down, somehow both terrifiedand numb. Alive.

   Dela remembered the tiny suns hanging below eachship, and imagined them blasting out solid beams ofenergy, all aimed at the same spot on the side of thosethick black Fortress walls.

   The light and sound snapped off. She opened her eyes,

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discovered she was dazzled anyway, her eyes swimmingwith afterimages.

    Fladon was saying something. Dela's ears were ringingso much she couldn't make out the words.

    Cozzan was on his feet, looking back over at theFortress. She tugged at his sleeve, but he was speaking.

    `...ight. Stopped.'

    Dela stood and looked. The attack had been soconcentrated that none of the Factory's windows hadbroken. The air, though, felt like it was hissing. It musthave been ionised or... Dela didn't have the vocabulary.She looked over at the body lying there on the factoryfloor. Jeffip would have known the words.

    `We have to leave,' Fladon said.

    `They said they would kill us.'

    `They're too busy. We have to... to... take ourchances.'

    Three of the Eyeless were moving back over to theFortress. Beyond them, through the window, high above,the alien ships were lined up. It might have been herimagination, but Dela thought the spheres beneath themlooked dimmed, diminished. A quick look at the Fortress,and there was no obvious damage from this side, althoughthere was a rusty, smoky smell.

    The fourth Eyeless hadn't moved. Dela was level withit, could see the reflection of her face stretched andmapped onto it.

    `Attack ineffective,' the Eyeless said. `We anticipate acounterattack.'

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The Doctor followed the directions the comm gave him:running a hundred metres, sharp right turn, first left. He'djust come to the end of the last corridor, taken his first stepinto the inner vault. It was almost pitch black, a great,cold, echoing place, bigger than a rocket silo or thebiggest cathedral or even the hangar deck of a carrier ship.The Doctor who was very good at seeing in the dark had trouble making out much detail. He was abouthalfway up it, feet planted on a narrow metal walkway. Hecould just about make out that the huge space wascrisscrossed with other walkways, as well as thick powerlines. Below him were more gantries and power lines, andnetworks of metal pipes, discs and tubes. There were largeshapes that were indistinct but loomed in the gloom.

   The rumbling noise had stopped. The Fortress was nolonger shaking. The Doctor checked the comm, but themap and directions had gone. In their place, the displayflashed frantic warning icons over an image of a verysmall area of the Fortress wall, zoomed in for a second ortwo. There wasn't much damage and the image zoomedout again.

   Klaxons and sirens started sounding. For three secondsor so, the Doctor assumed that he was the cause of thefuss, tensed and braced for an attack.

   Then the Fortress changed.

   Starting at the apex, taking about ten seconds, theinterior of the Fortress lit up, one section at a time. Thissoft orange-white light marked out the vast space of theinner vault. A three-sided pyramid. Here were greatgalleries, staging platforms, empty hangar bays and

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docking cradles. They sat there in metallic layers, inrainbow steps and ledges of gold and silver and copperand iron and steel and bronze. They were connected byshafts and tunnels, but it was always possible to see atleast one sloping black metal wall.

    In the centre of the vault was a thick column, the coreof the Fortress. It was a building within a building, andlooking up and up and up at it, even the Doctor felt avertiginous rush.

    The column was battleship grey, about the same heightas ten moon rockets on top of each other. It was thirtymetres thick, so really quite slender, reaching from theground right up to the top. With its hundreds of armouredbranches, gantries and pipework, it looked a little like agreat and ancient midwinter tree.

    Right at the heart of it and it seemed impossibly faraway, now was the chamber where the weapon washoused, waiting. The weapon chamber was a rough bliphalfway down the central column, a pyramid pulled out ofshape by the thick tangle of lines and cables. The Doctorcould clearly make out a single long, straight walkwayleading from the outer walls straight to the weaponchamber. That was about ten storeys above him, and theDoctor suspected it would be the most heavily defendedroute in the place. The comm was telling him there was alift in the central column that would take him straightthere.

    The Doctor could hear sets of new traps snapping intoplace, all around, whole arsenals warming up.

    The Fortress was awake.

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   There was a fresh hum very close by. A new systemhad come online. A quick check of the comm, and theDoctor could see that the Eyeless ships had the strategycomputer's full attention. As yet, there was no sign thatthe internal defences were being ramped up. If elephantsare stampeding towards you, it's not the time to worryabout a little cold virus inside you.

   `Bless you,' said the Doctor.

   It was then that a glass arm whipped up and round hisneck, so that a smooth elbow was level with the Doctor'sAdam's apple, crushing the air from him.

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    The Fortress made its move. The first blue energy bolt

    hit the middle Eyeless ship. Nothing happened. It fired a

    second, more powerful shot, which hit exactly the same

    spot. Nothing happened. The third energy bolt punched

    right through the hull of the ship.

       Instantly, the Fortress brought half a dozen more turrets

    to bear, and they all fired, seven blue bolts hitting the

    breach in the hull, all from slightly different angles, at

    millisecond intervals. The bolts smashed seven different

    swathes through the interior structure of the ship, cracking

    open decks, igniting flammable items, rupturing power

    lines, causing chaos and explosions that quickly became

    chain reactions.

       The Eyeless ship listed badly, but its crew was able to

    right it within moments. While they were doing that, the

    Fortress aimed all its detectors and peered through the

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holes it had made in the hull. It analysed the deck plans,weapons systems and engines. Within a second, theFortress knew more about the Eyeless ship than itsdesigners did.

    Its attention turned to one of the other ships, the one onits right. This time, it only needed one shot, which hit at aseemingly random point on the underside. The glowingsphere hanging beneath the ship suddenly dropped like astone, smashing down into the lake below, mere metresfrom the shore. It rolled a short distance, and the waterbeneath it instantly began boiling and steaming, and evencaught fire.

    The flames were smothered within seconds, as the restof the Eyeless ship plummeted onto them. As the whitehull touched the sphere, there was a flash of light and ahuge explosion that blew a great crater into the soft earth.The shockwave toppled a couple of nearby skyscrapers. Amushroom cloud of pulverised mud, bits of Eyeless shipand steam slowly rose. A great wave in the lake sloshedand slurped against the walls of the Fortress. Tiny piecesof white hull material and what looked like small chunksof glass began showering down over a wide area.

    The undamaged Eyeless ship fired seven small pulsesof golden light from its sphere, each one hitting andripping apart a gun turret.

    The Fortress fell silent.

    The damaged Eyeless ship drifted back a little. For themoment as long as the surviving Eyeless ships keptwhere they were they'd be safe, as the Fortress had noguns facing them.

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   This situation was unacceptable to the Fortress.

                           ***

The Doctor had broken free of the Eyeless, but it still hada six-fingered handful of his coat and jacket lapel. TheDoctor was close in, his arm under the Eyeless' so that hehad it in what he rather hoped was a wrestling hold.

   They were about halfway along a metal gantry made upof thin metal tubes. There was a doorway right at the end,leading into the central column. A little way from therewas the lift that would lead straight up to the weaponchamber.

   The Eyeless was making all the textbook moves, whichmade it easy for the Doctor to anticipate them. On theother hand, they were the textbook moves in the first placebecause they were effective. The net result was that theDoctor and the Eyeless were dragging each other alongthe gantry, almost waltzing, each trying to trip the other upwithout losing footing and tumbling off the gantry.

   The glass man was clearly trying to calculate acountermove to break free from him. It had just occurredto the Doctor that, in theory, he should be able tocommunicate with the Eyeless using the psychic paper.The Doctor couldn't spare a hand to fish it out, andanyway the Eyeless would take its opportunity to attackhim if he released his grip.

   They got to the end of the gantry, into the lift and thedoor hissed shut behind them. The floor began to move.

   It was a lift that was all. It had been on the map, but

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from memory the Doctor had thought it had been a littlefurther inside the central column, not right on its side.He'd be at the weapon when the lift stopped. Taking anEyeless along for the ride hadn't been part of the Doctor'splan.

    There were no nozzles or trap doors in the lift car, andit wasn't wired up to electrocute its passengers, but thatdidn't mean it was safe in here.

    The glass man shoved the Doctor against the back wall.It wasn't any stronger than a human being, although thatwas strong enough to push the air out of his lungs. Herecovered, twisted, managed to trip the Eyeless over. Itwas relatively light, and now he had it pinned, his knee inits back, although it was hard to keep hold.

    The arm the Doctor had hold of was as clean and sharpas crystal, and had what looked like a little metal anchorembedded in it. Like a sailor's tattoo, the Doctor thought,unable to stop himself gasping out a laugh.

    The Eyeless was trying to shake itself free. The Doctorgritted his teeth and kept holding it down. He wonderedhow brittle an Eyeless was.

    There was a grinding sound beneath their feet.

    They both looked down, puzzled.

    Was the Fortress arming the

    The Doctor panicked. When two hearts start racing atonce, it isn't a pleasant sensation. It sets the epinephrineflowing a bit too freely.

     weapon that killed Arcopolis?

    `No,' he concluded out loud, calming himself down.`No. This is something else.'

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   For a start, the weapon was above him, not below. Sowhat was the noise? Even though he couldn't hear itsthoughts, the Doctor could tell the Eyeless was askingitself the same question. It tugged, tried to stand. TheDoctor didn't let go.

   `If I knew,' the Doctor announced calmly, `I wouldhave been a bit more specific. Like I say, it's somethingelse.'

   The lights dimmed a little.

   `They're diverting power to the... something else.' Thenext creak and clatter was nearer still.

   `Hang on...'

   The Eyeless had loosened its grip a little.

   `Let me use the comm,' the Doctor said. He used hisfree hand to retrieve it. `The comm? See? Comm see,comme ça.'

   The Doctor checked the screen as best he could withoutcompletely letting go of the Eyeless. To his relief, itclearly showed that the lift was heading up. It was just afew floors away from the weapon chamber, and...

   Thing was, if the noises beneath them were gettingnearer, that meant the lift was going down. Now theDoctor came to think about it, it did feel like the lift wasfalling.

   `Oh,' he said, realising. `The comm's been lying to me.'He let that sink in for both of them.

   `Well... to us, really,' he added. `The Fortress hackedinto the comm, fed me what I wanted to see, gave me aroute that only said it was to the weapon chamber. All thetime it was leading me here.'

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    The comm went dead.

    Another grinding, puttering sound, which echoed like acackle, inches beneath them, making the floor of the liftcar thrum and vibrate.

    `If we're going to survive, we need to cooperate,' theDoctor suggested. `It's the rational thing to do.'

    The Eyeless hesitated, then nodded. Slowly, the Doctorlet go of it.

    The Eyeless held out its hand, which the Doctor shook.Then the door opened, the lift car tipped itself right over,and the Doctor and the Eyeless fell out.

    They dropped, hands clasped, straight down throughfive metres of darkness, before crashing onto a metalsurface. The Eyeless hit it chest first, with a sound likesomeone dropping a crate of beer bottles. The Doctor letgo of its hand and it flipped over and slid away, lifeless,torso dashed to bits, down into the gloom.

    The Doctor didn't shatter, but he did slide off, fallingonly a metre or so, but then going on to hit a ledge, rollingover that for a while, and then down another five metres,landing flat on his back on solid rock.

    `Ow,' he noted.

    There was a new sound. Metal against metal, a vastmechanism creaking into life. A great ratcheting noise,clanks and what sounded like bolts clacking back.

    The Doctor had heard a sound like this before, andtried to place it. It rang a bell... and that phrase remindedhim of the other day, the thing he'd been telling Gar andAlsa about. Being up in St Stephen's Tower, chasing thelast of the Steggosians round the workings of Big Ben,

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dodging that spiky tail of his.

   Concentrate. Concentrate on identifying the noise, theDoctor told himself.

   And don't black out.

   He'd heard this sound in London, but on a differentoccasion. Ages ago. Where and when?

   `Tower Bridge!' he exclaimed, wincing at the effort. `Itsounds like Tower Bridge getting ready to open up.'

   The Doctor, still flat on his back, soaked up the scene.He had an ideal vantage point. He was lying in a three-metre deep, ten-metre wide trench cut into what lookedand felt like bedrock. The trench was very slightly curved.Above, all around, horizontal and vertical, was a greatmesh of cogwheels, made of the same black metal as thewalls, marked out with silver and grey rivets. There weredrive shafts and pistons like redwood trees. There wereflywheels the size of houses, drive belts you could haveused as bus lanes.

   Peering down past his feet, the Doctor could see anenormous drum, like the front of a steam roller. It wasabout a hundred metres away, so partially obscured by thecurve of the trench. It was ten metres tall and just as wide,so rested perfectly snugly in the groove the Doctor waslying in. Above and to each side were vast numbers ofcogwheels, belts and gears, all eventually connectedup to the axle of the roller.

   `Ah,' said the Doctor, who'd just worked out what it alldid.

   There was a creak, then a clank. A deep rumbling note,and the roller started edging forwards, towards him. It was

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moving at walking pace, so would reach him in about aminute.

    All in all, this wasn't the best time to realise hecouldn't quite get his legs to move. He'd just fallen aboutten metres and landed spine-first on solid rock. The factthat he didn't feel any pain was not encouraging.

    `This is a really inefficient and melodramatic way ofkilling one person,' the Doctor complained loudly. `Evenif that person is me.'

    He looked back over at the roller, now fifty metres orso away from his feet. The grinding was deafening. Theroller must have weighed hundreds of tons, easily.

    `Although I have to hand it to you... it does look likeit'll work.'

    The Doctor could wiggle his toes. Using all hisconcentration and willpower, he knew he'd be able tomove in another thirty seconds.

    His main problem now was that the roller would reachhim in twenty.

    Hydraulics and great gears hissed and clanked around.Every cogwheel was turning. It sounded like the engineroom of an ocean liner going full steam ahead. The heavyroller was a wall of metal, turning so very slowly, scrapingand sparking against the bare rock, its rotation asunstoppable as a planet's. The Doctor had nothing butadmiration for the engineers who'd designed and builtsuch an incredible machine.

    The edge of the roller brushed the tips of his trainers.The Doctor forced his feet to move, but they onlytwitched. He tried to throw them back over his head to flip

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himself upright. They only got halfway.

    With a mighty hiss, the roller came to a dead stop.

    The Doctor was bent into an L shape. His legs had henoticed before quite how long and skinny they were? pointed straight up in the air, the backs of them resting onthe cold metal roller.

    He was not only bent at a right angle, he was at exactlythe right angle to see what had happened. By comparingthe new position of all the mechanisms, he was able towork out what all that mechanical activity had been in aidof.

    All this vast machinery at the base of the pyramid wasdedicated to one purpose. It hadn't been to kill him. TheDoctor now knew what the roller had been doing and whyit had stopped.

    `You're kidding,' the Doctor whispered.

The Eyeless ships had disabled the guns on the side of theFortress facing them. The fighting was over, at least untilthe Eyeless attacked again. Barely controlled thoughts andconcern about the many, many Eyeless casualties flittedbetween the four glass men out here.

   Likewise, Dela and Fladon were over at Jeffip's body.There was a terrible truth about the future. Neither ofthem was ready to confront it so soon.

   `What do we do with it?' Fladon asked, ever practical.They were a long way from the settlement. It would behard enough just getting the body down to ground level tobury it out here.

   Dela knew the sensible thing to do was to leave. There

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was nothing they could do here, on the front line of someinterplanetary war. She'd stayed because she hadn'twanted the Eyeless to cut up Jeffip's body just so theycould add a red eye and a blue eye to their collection.

   Fladon took her hand, but she shook him away. Delafelt numb, detached from events.

   An Eyeless swept past her, agitated. As she stepped outof its way, not wanting to antagonise it, a wave of anxietypassed over her. She had every reason to be worried, ofcourse, but this didn't feel like it had come from withinher. The emotions of the Eyeless were infectious. Was thatwhy she had been feeling so angry before? She'd caught itfrom the Eyeless?

   There was a crunch.

   `What was that?' she asked.

   The other humans were coming over, wary. TheEyeless closest to them was looking equally lost.

   `It sounded like ice breaking,' Fladon said, aware itwasn't a helpful answer.

   Another crunch.

   `Where's it coming from?' Gar asked. They were alllooking down at the floor.

   `The attack must have weakened the Factory'sfoundations,' Fladon offered.

   `Without even cracking the windows?' Gar sneered.The kids who came out into the city were all experts onthe ways buildings collapsed.

   Cozzan was looking around. `That's weird,' he said.

   `It's possible,' Fladon said, not hearing. `When thatship hit the ground, it would have fractured the

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subterranean travel tunnels. The cracks could havespread.'

    Morren was close, almost huddling. It wasdisconcerting for her son to treat her in this way, Delarealised, more than a little guiltily.

    `Are we moving?' he asked.

    `No...' Dela said quietly.

    But they did seem to be turning, angling away from thesolid mass of the Fortress. A memory. For the first time infifteen years, Dela remembered what it was like to sit in amonorail carriage when it set off. It would look, for thefirst few seconds, like you were sitting still and the stationwas reversing away.

    They all realised in the same moment it was theFortress that was moving, not them.

    The immense black wall was shifting. The wholeFortress was rotating on its central axis, as though it wasmounted on gimbals. It was slow, about walking pace. Itwas unnerving, like watching a mountain turning to get abetter look at something.

    `The Factory is in its way,' Cozzan said.

    Now the Fortress was twisting, grinding away theconcrete and metal superstructure of the native building. Itmoved clockwise, exposing the side that had been buriedin the Factory to the Eyeless ships.

    The ceiling above them was creaking.

    And now it was definitely time to get back to thevillage.

    Dela, her children and Gar all ran, as the big windowfinally shattered and the floor beneath them began to

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ripple and moan. Sparks flew from the machines of theFactory production lines, giving up the final ergs of powerthey'd hoarded for fifteen years.

    A minute later, with a triumphant, echoing slam, theFortress stopped moving. Almost round the corner, now,Dela and her sons turned to see a black wall identical tothe one that had been there before.

    The Eyeless had stayed rooted to the same spot. Theyhad been showered with debris from the shattered windowand the wreckage that had fallen from the ceiling. Delacould see three of the four, and they didn't seem injured ordamaged, or whatever the right word was, but the otherwas gone. Dead. Jeffip's body had been completelyburied, possibly even crushed, and the other Eyeless mustbe under the rubble, too.

    Fladon hadn't run, but had been thrown over as theFactory convulsed. Now he was getting up, coughing.

    Stay still, Dela heard herself think. It was anotherwarning from the Eyeless.

    It came too late.

    Fladon was blasted to pieces by a blue energy bolt.

    The Doctor had buried the automatic gun, but on a wallthat was now facing away from them. The new wall had anew turret.

    Dela heard three Eyeless voices screaming warnings.Not to her, to their ships. She was already running, pullingall the children along with her.

The Fortress had turned itself 120 degrees and locked intoplace with a new side facing the Eyeless ships. The lake

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sloshed around its base, trying to settle down.

    Fresh guns now faced the Eyeless. Ten of them fired,the energy bolts converging on the same spot on thesphere hanging below the undamaged ship. Theypunctured it, let it explode in mid-air.

    The fireball enveloped the vessel above, burst it andthen dispersed the remains on a shockwave that brokeevery window within a ten-mile radius but bouncedharmlessly off the Fortress itself.

    The last surviving Eyeless ship, the first to be hit, firedlittle golden pulses, intending each one to hit a turret onthe Fortress. It had worked before, but now the Fortresswas ready for the attack and it fired seven shots, eachhitting an energy pulse, popping them. Then the guns fireda third time.

    By now, the Eyeless ship had thrown up a force field,which absorbed most of the energy but couldn't stop theship being flicked miles into the heart of the city, rightinto and among a cluster of skyscrapers.

    The Fortress took no pleasure watching the Eyelessship slamming into a tall tower, its masts toppling and thehull corkscrewing down to the ground. The ship flippedover as it fell, bounced off other structures, carved greatgouges into the buildings, scooped out blocks of masonry.The Fortress was keeping a tally of alien life signs, andthat fell to zero during this process, even before the bulkof the ship hit ground level.

    The Fortress updated its records to register it hadneutralised a threat.

    As the ship's force field had failed, however, the ship's

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artificial sun had broken off or been deliberately ejected and was now hurtling towards the Fortress. The strategycomputer detected this and had the automatic guns blast atit, but it had been caught off-guard, and wasn't able to geta good aim. It scored ten near misses. Ten energy boltsshot off in different directions, far into the morning sky.The ball of energy continued on its course.

    The Fortress had no strategies to prevent the impact,and switched to damage limitation.

Alsa could read the mind of the two Eyeless, an ocean ofresentment, rage and frustration.

    `What's going on?' she asked.

    `So many dead.'

    `What? Who's dead?' Was it talking about Eyeless orreal people?

    `We are now in the line of fire,' it told her. `The sidefacing the ----'

    That last word hadn't come out at all. `The what?'

    The shockwave from the blast had already knockedthem off their feet when the front wall shattered andhurled itself at them, so quickly Alsa didn't even havetime to close her eyes. She saw the two Eyeless lifted offtheir feet and slammed into the back wall like dolls. Thenall she could see was the slab of black metal that reared upoff the floor and was about to hit her right in the face. Awave of heat washed over her, but everything was darknow.

The Doctor finally managed to summon the willpower to

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stand up. He hopped to his feet, trying not to cry out as herealised just how many bruises he had.

    He knew there was no way he could scale the sheerside of the trench, and the metal of the roller was far toosmooth to get a handhold.

    He checked the comm. The three Eyeless ships hadbeen destroyed. He could believe that, but he couldn'ttrust the comm with much else. So he tossed it up onto theledge, stepped back, and used the sonic screwdriver todetonate its battery. That blew a metre-thick chunk of rockout, which fell into the trench, forming a rough set ofsteps. He clambered out, onto the floor at the base of theFortress.

    He pulled himself upright, twisting his aching shoulderround to see if that helped the pain. It didn't. He lookedup. The weapon chamber appeared to be impossibly highabove him. He was at ground level and virtually at theouter wall. He'd have to get across the whole of the floorto the central column, then climb up, somehow. TheFortress was awake now, all the defence systems online.The Doctor could feel it peering down at him, waiting forthe moment to pounce. That little trick with the comm andthe lift car demonstrated that the Fortress was far morethan just a machine designed to kill an intruder, it was amachine designed to enjoykilling an intruder. Not becauseit liked being vicious, almost the opposite: it liked solvingpuzzles. Murdering him would satisfy the Fortress in thesame way as it was satisfying to solve a crossword.

    His foot scuffed against something solid. A glass head,with a great crack in it. The Doctor picked it up. It was

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light. Decapitated heads tended to be heavier than theylooked, in his experience. This one was utterly inert,nothing to indicate it had ever been alive.

    `One down,' the Doctor noted, carefully laying thehead back on the rock floor.

    He was trying to work out what to do next when astreak of golden light punched its way through the wallbehind him, about a hundred storeys up. It looked like asmall, squashed sun.

    The Doctor made a run for it. This wasn't just to avoidthe debris, which was already beginning to crash downaround where he had been standing. It was also becausethe ball of energy was so bright, so powerful and such animmediate threat that it would both blind and occupyevery sensor in here for the next few precious seconds,at least.

    Its light had seared an afterimage into the air itself, butalmost all of its force had been spent getting through thewalls. It managed to bore a hole in the tangle of walkwaysand cables, but all the sphere could do after that wassplash feebly into the central column, like a blob of lava.It left a congealed splash of metal, like a sore, on the sideof the column, and that was already cooling rapidly.

    It posed no further danger to the Fortress. Which meantthat the only remaining threat was the Doctor himself.

    He gulped.

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    The winding corridor Alsa had come along with the

    Doctor to get this far into the Fortress was all gone,

    replaced by a sloping tunnel of jagged black metal. The

    explosion had burrowed hundreds of metres deep into the

    thick double walls. Sunlight streamed in through the gap,

    down past the stumps of sliced pipework and cables and

    through the five glass men standing there.

       Alsa was already up. Her nose was a bloody mash, like

    someone had punched it. She was dabbing it with her

    sleeve. Apart from that, she was fine.

       She felt the anger of the two Eyeless who'd been with

    her all this time, burning hotter than ever and hotter than

    her own. The three newcomers were offering to share their

    calm, simply paste over the negative emotions. The one

    with the green eyes was refusing, suggesting that they

    have his rage instead.

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    `Are you the only survivors?' Alsa asked.

    There should be others scouts and other patrols. Noneof them were close enough for telepathic contact, though.They ought to be regrouping. It was known that manyhundreds, all of the Eyeless on the ships and two downhere, had died. There might only be these five.

    Human beings had the expression `their memory livedon', but it wasn't true, not really, it just meant that peopleremembered the dead. And it wasn't like the parentsremembered everyone. The thirty-seven parents were justordinary people. They had had friends and relatives verysmall families back then from what they always said, oneswith less than a handful of kids. Say they knew a thousandpeople, being really generous this was a dizzyingnumber of people for Alsa. Say, for sake of argument, theyeach `knew' a different thousand people. They `knew' awoman they passed in the street, or a neighbour they'dnever talked to, or some shop assistant. That would meanthat between all of them, they only remembered 37,000people, out of all the people in Arcopolis.

    The Eyeless did the maths: the parents onlyremembered around 1 person in 5,405. It was totaloblivion for everyone else. Not even their names survived.They didn't even count as strangers.

    It was different for the Eyeless. Their memoriesliterally lived on, copied into the minds of the otherEyeless.

    The Eyeless shared everything. There was no privacy,and Alsa didn't like that idea. She'd never liked peoplelooking at her. She dressed in layers and layers of

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clothing, never went swimming when the others did, nevertold anyone else how she was feeling about stuff. Thatwas for babies.

   The Eyeless were better than people. Alsa had workedthat out ages ago. They could do so much she couldn't.But it wasn't just that they were so much moreambitious. All of the glass men here had done so manythings. Wanting privacy felt silly. Childish. Still, a part ofAlsa needed it. She felt a lot more comfortable thinking oftheir communication as a conversation, not a mingling ofthoughts.

   She wondered if they could still give her the enginethey'd promised her. She hadn't said anything, but theyknew she was thinking about that, and hadn't answered.

   The Eyeless felt trapped now, alone, but they werepractical, they were looking for a solution. Their telepathyonly worked over a short distance. They couldn't call for arescue ship with it. They needed a beacon.

   Like the comm mast in the middle of the village, Alsathought. She hadn't meant to volunteer that thought, butthe Eyeless were already agreeing to commandeer it. Asone, the five of them turned to go.

   `Hang on! Don't you want this weapon?' she asked.

   The Eyeless hesitated.

   `Of course,' they said finally, in unison. `It is also inour interest to ensure no one else has it.'

   `The Doctor won't trade for it.'

   `We cannot read his mind, so cannot say that forcertain. You think we have to use force.' It wasn't aquestion, of course, as the Eyeless knew exactly what Alsa

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thought.

   She pictured the scene: armies of Eyeless, surroundingthe Doctor, arms raised, about to tear him to pieces. Sheasked them if the Eyeless would do that.

   `Yes, if the stakes were high enough.'

   `Well are they?'

   `If the Doctor is describing the weapon accurately,there is a dominating strategy: the weapon should beacquired at any cost up to, but not including, our totalannihilation.'

   Now the Eyeless were picturing the interior of theFortress. Before the ships had been destroyed, they'dscanned the building. The five glass men and Alsacontemplated the results. Alsa could see where theweapon was right at the heart of the pyramid and shecould see how to get to it. One walkway led straight there.Simple.

   Except that she could also see the defences. Automaticguns and other systems that Alsa struggled to understand.

   There was a flutter of excitement.

   `What?' Alsa asked.

   The impact of the miniature sun that had powered thelast Eyeless ship had smashed a long, straight routethrough the interior of the Fortress. This had disrupted thedefences. The Fortress had compensated realignedvarious turrets and so on but coverage wasn't perfect.There were a few blind spots.

   It took Alsa a moment to interpret the images.

   `There's a safe route through, now?'

   No... but there was an area close to the weapon

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chamber with only one gun. It would be possible to followa route along pipes and gantries, then drop down and runthe last fifty metres.

   `That's not so far,' Alsa thought. `And that one gun?'

   Could fire five times in that time, maintaining eightyper cent accuracy.

   `If someone stepped onto that walkway, four times outof five they'd be killed?' Alsa asked, aghast.

   No, they explained patiently. That would be true if itcould only fire once. It could fire five times. If someonestepped onto the walkway, they'd be killed 3,124 timesout of 3,125.

   She didn't believe them, so they patiently talked herthrough the probabilities. They were right.

   `That's the same as saying there's no way across!' shecried out.

   There was always a solution, the Eyeless assured her. Itwas simply a matter of finding it. This was something towork with. Their best chance.

The Doctor and the Fortress were not locked in an epicstruggle.

   This would be over quickly. The Doctor would get tothe weapon or the Fortress would kill him. This wouldn'tbe a game of chess; it would be more like a shoot-out. Itfelt to the Doctor like he was fighting a volcano... no, anogre. A mechanical giant.

   This thought heartened him a little, as he'd foughtogres and giant robots plenty of times in the past, andhadn't been beaten by one yet.

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    Then again, the bad guys only had to win once.

    The Doctor had concluded that if he stuck close to theexposed mechanisms that had moved the Fortress around,it wouldn't be able to attack him with the really nasty stufflike high explosives or acids or even energy blasts. Itmeant he was running a very convoluted course to thecentral pillar, darting from one delicate piece ofequipment to another, always careful to leave plenty ofoptions for himself. He was still alive, obviously. So far,the defences had consisted of nothing but bursts ofradiation that he could literally just shake off and littleblasts of poison gas that were relatively slow and so easyto see coming.

    A tiny dart nicked his hand as it whizzed past.

    The Doctor didn't slow down, but had a quick look atthe damage: a very light scratch that stung like a papercut. He didn't like this. Not to say that he'd have preferredto have his hand sliced off, but... well, why just poke athim?

    On instinct, he dived and rolled. A mini-missile shotstraight over him. It was moving fast, but the Doctor couldtell it was only about the size of a bottle of wine. Itbobbed around making the distinctive buzzy, doppleredsound of an antigravity generator.

    The Fortress fired a second mini-missile, which theDoctor leapt over like it was a hurdle. The weapon hadanticipated the Doctor would duck, like he had the firsttime, so it had aimed low. Glancing back over hisshoulder, the Doctor saw that both missiles were nowarcing round to have another go.

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  He glanced down at his hand, with its tiny scratch.

  The dart had taken his biodata sample.

  The missiles were programmed with his genetic details,and wouldn't give up until they'd hit him.

Dela and the children were outside now and had finallystopped running. Dela's skin was tingling. It had onlybeen when she saw Cozzan's red face that she realisedthey all had instant sunburn from the sphere that hadbroken off the Eyeless ship. Apart from that, she felt fine.The boys had no obvious injuries or distress. She wasproud of how calm they'd been.

   They had led her out of the Factory down to groundlevel and straight into an area thick with trees. TheFortress still overshadowed them, but they were shieldedfrom the worst of the oppressive black shape by a canopyof fronds and ferns and flat leaves. Dela could barely seeten paces in front of her.

   `It's the Urban Jungle,' Morren told her solemnly.

   `A good place to get lost,' Gar said.

   `Yes,' she said, looking back. She wondered if theDoctor was all right.

   The ground was wet from the previous night's rain, andthe air was saturated with the smells of loam and fruit andpollen and bark and so much else.

   `What was it before?' she wondered aloud. They wereeast of the Factory, not all that far from where she'd lived.There had been nothing like this in the City back then.

   The boys all approximated a shrug.

   Dela tried to get her bearings. `Close to the AircarFactory, in the direction of the... it's the Botanical

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Gardens. No, too close, they were miles away... wait...the plants have spread out. Seeds and spores must haveblown here.'

   `There are domes and stuff in the heart of the Jungle,where the plants are thickest,' Gar confirmed, nodding hishead in the right direction, keeping his hands in hispockets.

   `Nothing's very colourful,' Dela said.

   `What do you mean? It's all green.'

   Dela laughed. `I used to come here. Well, to theGardens.'

   `With, er, thingy?' Cozzan asked.

   `Gyll, yes, and on school trips and with my parentsbefore that. It was where rare plants were kept. Therewere flowers, then. Every size and shape and colour.'

   The flowering plants would have survived the comingof the Fortress, but slowly died off without any insects topollinate them. The vegetation no longer had to appeal tobees or ants.

   `What are we going to do?' Cozzan asked.

   Dela had been thinking. `We go back to the settlement.Get out the way, let the Doctor and the aliens... the otheraliens... settle their dispute.'

   `I meant now Jeffip and Fladon are dead. They did somuch.'

   Dela hadn't thought her heart could sink any lower.She'd put that question to the back of her mind.

   `They learned their skills. Boys like you will have tostep up to take their place. We will all have to be braver.'

   `You lived in the Jungle before?'

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    `No... it wasn't here, this was all just part of the city. Iwas a bank manager.'

    `A what?'

    She smiled. `That would take a very long time toexplain. Jeffip was a teacher. A primary school teacher.Fladon worked in the Car Factory. Very little of what weknew before was any use.'

    `Mum!' Morren called out. He was a little way ahead,and was now signalling them all to slow down.

    The boys' feral instinct was to duck down. Dela cranedher neck, hoping to get a better look at whatever it was.Gar grabbed at her.

    Dela felt them in her mind before she saw them.Dozens of Eyeless, marching in single file, each of themnegotiating the obstacles and hazards they encountered,ducking under branches, stepping over root bores andround fallen trees without breaking their stride or theirperfect formation.

    A burble of thoughts, imperatives and observations,flittered between the aliens. They were marching on theFortress; were one of five groups heading there; wanted toget inside the building and acquire the weapon before theDoctor did.

    If they saw the humans, or heard their thoughts, theydidn't acknowledge it. The glass men were already hard tosee, and within seconds of passing, the column hadcompletely disappeared into the foliage.

    `I have to warn the Doctor,' Dela said. No one wasmore surprised hearing the words than she was, but sayingthem had been a liberation. She knew it was the right

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thing to do. Then, she said to the boys: `You can find yourway back to the settlement? Do that. Warn Jennver and theothers. Tell them what happened.'

   She hugged them all, even Gar. That left them tooembarrassed to object. Dela took her chance to escapethem.

The two missiles were circling and had the Doctor pinnedwith his back to a large metal pillar.

   They were in a circular vault, around seventy metres indiameter. The missiles were circling the perimeter of theroom, sticking close together. There were ten exits,equally spaced, along the perimeter, but every time theDoctor made for one of the doorways, one of the twomissiles started heading for it and they could travel fourtimes faster than he could. The pillar he had his back towas a crankshaft in the middle of the room that themissiles didn't want to damage, so they were waiting forhim to make his move. They didn't seem to want to comein any closer than the perimeter.

   He had to get to one of the doors, but every time hestarted towards one, it became clear the missiles could getthere first.

   He was more than a little annoyed with himself,because there was clearly, mathematically, a way to get toa door. The Fortress was setting him a puzzle.

   `Something to do with pi,' he told himself.

   He waited until the missiles were directly behind him,then ran for it, straight towards one of the doors, but oneof the mini missiles started powering round. He turned his

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head, and it was obvious that it would get to the doorbefore he got anywhere near.

    The Doctor ran back to the middle of the room, and theshelter of the mechanism there. The missile raced past thedoorway before resuming its perimeter patrol.

    `2 pi R,' the Doctor said, still trying to work out thesolution. `The radius of the circle is, um, call it a hundredfeet... er, I mean thirty metres... and there's a value of...they're four times faster than me, so if I'm standing aquarter of the radius of the... I'm in the centre of thecircle, so if I... but there are two missiles... so if I'mstanding an eighth of the radius of... Oh, stuff this for agame of soldiers!'

    In no mood to play along, he pulled out the sonicscrewdriver and started running straight at the missiles.One of them pitched round and straight at him. There wasno time to check, so the Doctor fired away and hoped he'dgot it right.

    A big glob of air shimmered in front him and themissile flew right into it. Instantaneously, every screw,weld, seal and rivet failed. The missile became a bucketfulof missile components, not one of which was connected toanother. The pieces also lost all their momentum, justdrizzling down onto the ground.

    For every action there was an equal and oppositereaction in other words, the force of the sonic burstflicked the Doctor off his feet and sent him flying back.He landed on one foot, stumbled, fell and landedawkwardly. His body noted irritably that it was tired andbruised and scratched enough already, thanks.

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   Despite that, the Doctor felt like kissing the sonicscrewdriver. There was a cloud to the silver lining: theMaximum Disassemble setting drained all its power. Hecould set the screwdriver to recharge itself, perhaps byabsorbing ambient sound, but that would take a fewminutes.

   Which was a shame, as the second missile was comingstraight for him right now.

   It was moments away. Reflexively, the Doctor flinchedand raised his elbow so it was right between his head andthe missile, peered at the weapon through the crook of hisarm.

   The air between them was blurring, growingopalescent.

   The Doctor had just formed the thought that it might bea residual effect of the sonic burst when the shaperesolved into a ghost a middle-aged man in a toga, witha smooth head.

   The ghost fixed a dark-eyed stare at the Doctor,surprised to see a man cowering quite so comprehensivelyfrom it.

   The ghost didn't see the missile coming. The Doctordid, through its translucent, bald head. He wasn't surewhat would happen, but couldn't do much to affect theoutcome anyway. In the event, the missile hit the ghostsquare in the back of the head and the two wereannihilated in a burst of light.

   The Doctor blinked the flash out of his eyes.

   `Oh, I am so sorry,' he murmured. It was pure luck thathe hadn't been hit himself, but that didn't make him feel

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any better about it.

   He scrambled around on the ground for something,found it and hurried off towards one of the doorways.

   Before he got much further, his route was cut off by ashimmer in the air. Another ghost had appeared. Anotherone. Another. Within moments, there were too manyghosts to count there was just a tornado cloud madefrom long limbs, flowing robes and hair, lit from within,engulfing him.

                           ***

The Eyeless had been burbling away, crunching thenumbers, drawing up their plan. Alsa stood between themall, but didn't feel involved. They were finally calmingdown. As was she, Alsa realised. Their emotions werecatching.

    The mental images of the inner vault held in the fiveEyeless minds dripped details of the traps that lay in wait.The Eyeless had worked out that the Fortress would onlyever hit back slightly harder than it had been hit. TheEyeless had confronted it with three ships. If they hadbrought thirty, it would have attacked them with ten timesthe ferocity.

    `The Doctor was smart to show up here on his own,without any guns or other weapons,' Alsa said. `He left hisspaceship on the beach, so he's still got a spaceship.'

    She was trying to rile them, but it wasn't working. TheEyeless understood she was impatient, so without waitingto be asked what her plan was, she told them they should

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let the Doctor do the hard work of getting the weapon,then ambush him. Simple.

   `No,' the Eyeless said. It was like a chorus. `It is notacceptable to allow anyone else even temporary control ofthe weapon. We have to acquire it first.'

   `There's no way to do that,' Alsa complained.

   `We have calculated an option that guarantees we cansecure the weapon chamber before the Doctor arrives,' theEyeless told her.

   As one, they turned towards the corridor that led intothe central vault.

   `Are you going to tell me what it is?' Alsa demanded.The corridor was uneven and blasted, making it tricky tofollow them.

   She saw their plan.

   `That's it? Charge at the guns? It's suicide!'

   `Not for all of us. The benefit justifies the cost.'

   `You don't want to die, surely?'

   `It is not our preference. Humans have adopted suchstrategies. Your current culture is based around short-termsacrifice to ensure the survival of future generations.'

   The whole point, Alsa thought sulkily, was that shehated that and wanted it changed. They still hadn'treassured her that they could build the engine they'dpromised her.

   `How many is "enough"?' she asked.

   `It only needs a handful,' the Eyeless said. `One willcertainly survive, there is a sixty-seven per cent chancethat more than one will. The survivor or survivors willacquire the weapon.'

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    They'd reached a small antechamber. Through the nextdoorway, Alsa could see the vast interior of the innervault, so much larger and more solid than the mentalpicture had made it seem.

    Alsa looked over at the five Eyeless.

    A handful.

    The Eyeless with Jall's eyes held out its hand, wavedits fingers almost cheerfully.

    `A handful is six,' it told her. `You are the sixth.'

`Touch me and I die!' the Doctor shouted.

   Countless ghosts swirled away until he was out of theirreach, but still they circled him. The Doctor looked ahead,then behind, but couldn't see past the ghosts. There wasno way out.

   One soon drifted into the eye of the storm, floated infront of him. A young man. It thought about reaching out,but hesitated... and was lost to the throng. As soon as itslight had faded, another ghost had taken its place. It wasscreaming, silently, and even the Doctor flinched at theraw horror in its eyes.

   `I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,' said the Doctor, trying tomove out of its way, but there were ghosts in everydirection. Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands. Their light, blueand pearl grey, wasn't cast far from them. Every fewseconds, a ghost or group of them would break from thepack to confront him.

   He saw five ghostly children in short robes lookingaround. Four of them were crying, and the other waslooking up, too surprised to react. The Doctor had to try

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something for them. He took the sonic screwdriver fromhis pocket. It had recharged enough for him to take somesimple readings. They told him nothing, so he thoughtabout it.

   Could they really, somehow, be the lost souls ofArcopolis?

   `There's nothing I could do,' the Doctor said quietly.

   `Nothing I can do.'

   Two ghosts appeared in the children's place a manand a woman with almost angelic expressions, holdinghands, trembling a little. They had gone almost as soon asthey'd arrived.

   `I said I'm sorry. I meant it. I'm sorry.'

   Dark thoughts swirled inside the Doctor, almost fillinghim, almost dragging him under. All the other ghosts, hisown ghosts.

   `There is nothing I can do!' he whispered.

   Would he have to look all 200 million of them in theeye? The Doctor vowed to do that, if that was what ittook. He would stand here, tell each of them to their face,however long that took.

   `Really. There's nothing.'

   But he would be telling them all the same thing.

   They were crowding a little closer, now, although therewas still a sense of respectful distance. He had to get tothe weapon. As the Doctor stepped forward, the ghostsmoved with him, blocked his way.

   `Can't you hear me? Don't you understand?'

   There was no individual response from them, nothingto suggest a connection or a meaningful communication.

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There was just their shock and loss and emptiness. Ahollow, objectless, grief. The sense of loss, the sense offutility, the sense of fate. It echoed within the Doctor. Thesense that this shouldn't have happened, eliding withoutdifficulty into a sense of helplessness.

   `I wish I could. I wish I could do everything. I wish Icould save everyone. I can't.'

   Fifteen years ago, this had just been a normal world.These people hadn't been criminals or vicious or even thetiniest bit selfish. They didn't deserve this. They had beenpeaceful and prosperous. Charity was easily given whenthere was plenty for everyone, and their magnificent citywas a monument that there once had been. But even now,even after all this time and hardship, the survivors of thisfallen civilisation had fed him from their own meagresupplies. Everyone would have a little less to eat, but theDoctor had just sat there and slurped up their soup andchomped away on their fruit. They'd shared their liveswith him, showed him kindness. Not threatened him withviolence or even with confinement. They were goodpeople. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair on them. None of it.

   What had he done for them? What could he do forthem?

   He checked the sonic screwdriver again.

   `You're not even a blip on the sonic,' the Doctor said. `Idon't have the answers. I don't know what you are, onlysome of the things you're not. There's no point crowdingme.'

   The Doctor tried to move on, but the ghosts wereconsciously blocking him, now. They had become

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agitated.

    `I mean it! Begone! Shift!'

    They all moved a little closer.

    `Touch me and I die. Just die. That would be it.Nothing like... what you've got. Just an end to it all. Andthen where would you be?'

    As he'd thought that, for only a fraction of a fraction ofa second, the Doctor wondered if that would be so bad.

    `Do you think you're special?' the Doctor demanded.

    He had seen so many people die.

    `At least some of you survived,' the Doctor shouted,angry at them now. `You weren't the last.'

    The ghosts were all glaring, now, eyes fixed on him.Like that pack of kids when they'd first attacked him.They weren't as angry as him. How could they be? Evenall of them added together, how could they be?

    `I'm the last one,' the Doctor said. `I'm it. My peopledied. All of them. And Time Lords don't die just the once,you know. You have to kill us a lot more than once tomake it stick.'

    Still the ghosts pressed at him, some holding out theirhands like beggars after a scrap of food, some shoulderingtowards him like they were after a fight, some apparentlyjust wanting him to see them cry. They kept coming, likewaves to a beach.

    `Do you know what? In the end their sacrifice made nodifference. Because they survived. Thousands of them,millions. Just one. It doesn't matter. It's the same thing.And... do you know what?... life is always better thandeath. Always. Yet I want all of them dead. Every single

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last one of them. When did I become someone whowanted to exterminate? When was that? When did theywin?'

   The ghosts weren't listening.

   The Doctor lunged at the next one with the sonicscrewdriver, brandishing it like a dagger.

   `Just leave me alone!' he shouted.

   And they did.

`You need to take control of your physical responses,' theEyeless advised Alsa.

   She was sobbing.

   `You are more than a child, now,' the Eyeless assuredher.

   The five Eyeless had taken up their positions, facingthe first metal gantry, standing two by two, with Alsa inthe middle row. They had been sifting through hermemories, acquiring her acrobatic skills, earned overyears of making her way around the collapsed city. Theyalready had similar abilities, learned from creatures called`monkeys' they'd encountered on another planet, and theygave Alsa those to augment her own talents.

   She could see the weapon chamber. One of theautomatic gun turrets was there, not quite facing them.

   `If we went really slowly...' she started to say. Thathad worked the first evening with the Doctor. The gunswere, what had he called it?

   `Motion sensitive,' came the voice in her head. `Thatwas before, when the Fortress was merely on standby.'

   Weren't there other Eyeless? Why did she have to do

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this?

   `They are on the way, but we need to act now, beforethe Doctor acquires the weapon.'

   This was all the Doctor's fault, Alsa thought. All of it.

   The Eyeless at her side was the one with green eyes.

   `I'm scared,' Alsa admittedly quietly.

   `Yes. Your fear is exhilarating. Inspiring. I believe Iactually feel it, rather than experiencing it second hand, asis usually the case.'

   The Eyeless were poised to go.

   `Assemble your last thoughts,' the Eyeless said. `If youdo not survive, at least those thoughts will.'

   They were waiting for the prompt. This was it... shewas going to be dead in just a few minutes.

   `No,' Alsa said.

   The Eyeless turned its head. `Explain.'

   `It means no.'

   `Our impression was that you wanted to be part of ourproject. That you only wanted to be more like us.'

   She thought about it. She wasn't like them. Couldn'tbe.

   `We have the ability to psychograft you permanently toa body like this one.' It raised a hand to its glass chest.

   `No,' Alsa said.

   She turned, could literally see the Eyeless thinkingabout grabbing her.

   `No,' she repeated. `This isn't right. It isn't human.This isn't how things should be. I thought you alienswould have the answers. But you don't, do you? Not you,not the Doctor.'

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    `With only five of us, acquiring the weapon is notassured,' the Eyeless told her.

    `That's your problem,' Alsa called back, already almostback around the corner.

    The Eyeless watched her go. The others were babblingat it, demanding to know whether they were going to abortthe mission. The Eyeless felt another surge of anger, thistime coming entirely from within itself.

    `Charge,' it told them.

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    Defending       against the alien assault on the weapon

    chamber was complicated by the loss of a number of

    perimeter turrets. Although there were only five aliens,

    their attack was cleverly choreographed, involving a

    sequence of precisely timed leaps down walkway levels.

    The Fortress alighted on the same sums the Eyeless had,

    and realised that as things stood there was a good chance

    one of this group was going to survive.

       The surviving gun covering that section was already

    powered up. Now it fired, picking off an attacker. It was a

    test shot. The strategy computer had been concerned the

    refractive material the Eyeless were made of could be

    resistant to attack from energy weapons. It wasn't, and the

    Eyeless burst into fragments when the bolt hit it. One

    subsystem counted and tracked all the pieces, just in case,

    but they were inert, apart from a little psychic residue.

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   A subroutine warned the Fortress to pay attention to theDoctor. He was a long way from the action, but had madeit to the base of the central pillar and destroyed twomissiles. The column was a sheer surface, with nohandholds. The Doctor was many minutes away from theweapon chamber.

   The gun guarding the weapon chamber fired again,another alien fell. That situation was under control.

   There was still a strong possibility at least one of theEyeless would survive.

   The Fortress was programmed to anticipate anypossibility.

   A subsystem warned the strategy computer that it hadlost track of the Doctor.

   This wasn't possible.

   It ruled out the Doctor's disintegration. It scanned allthe places the Doctor could be, given the topography ofthe Fortress and that he was a humanoid pedestrian. Itruled out every teleportation and stealth technique in itsdatabanks, even the hypothetical ones.

   When all that failed to explain where the Doctor was,the strategy computer allocated more computing power tothe problem, performed a more thorough crosscheck of itsrecords, opened every database.

   A couple of subsystems warned the strategy computerthat the Doctor was falling towards the weapon chamber.

   The Doctor had been on the ground level, the weaponchamber was in the mathematical centre of the chamber,many hundred of storeys above that. Things fell down, notup, so the strategy computer ignored them. When the

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subsystems insisted, it shut them down for repair.

   There was a finite number of places the Doctor couldbe, given the laws of physics.

   He wasn't in any of them.

   The strategy computer kept looking.

The Eyeless with green eyes stood on the walkway.Shards and splinters of clear glass littered the ground. Theair sizzled where the energy bolts had just sliced throughit.

    This Eyeless was the only survivor. It looked down.There was a narrow crack on one side where its collarbonewould have been if it had had one. It didn't hurt. Therewas no sign of the Doctor. There was nothing between itand the open door leading to the weapon chamber. It wasthree steps from the doorway, safe.

    It could sense the weapon in there, a strange andterrible taste.

    A brown, flapping shape swept up from under thewalkway at great speed, grabbed the Eyeless, lifted itthree metres into the air. It was the Doctor, fallingupwards, using the weight of the Eyeless to slow hisascent. But he had too much momentum, and now both ofthem were dropping up.

    The Doctor was fiddling with something he washolding, and they both drifted back down to the walkway.The Eyeless landed on its feet, the Doctor on his side,rolling a little way towards the door before coming to ahalt.

    The Eyeless was between the Doctor and the door, but

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it didn't want to turn its back on him.

    The Doctor was on his knees, pulling himself to hisfeet. Once he was standing, the Doctor held out his hand.A small metal cube was hovering in his palm.

    `Antigravity generator,' he explained. The Eyelesscould not read his mind or feelings, but the Doctor's bodylanguage and manner of speech indicated tiredness.Unlike an Eyeless, humanoid bodies grew weary. `Used itto fall all the way from the ground. Was part of a missilethat I--'

    The Eyeless shoved into him, tried to push him off thewalkway.

    `Hey,' the Doctor said, twisting around, trying tomaintain a foothold.

    The Eyeless slammed into him again, but this time theDoctor was ready, and sidestepped. The Eyeless was ableto right itself before its momentum could carry it over theedge or into the field of fire of any of the turrets.

    Without any hesitation, the Eyeless swung for theDoctor again. The Doctor made only a half-heartedattempt to block the arm, but managed to deflect the blow.

    The Eyeless adjusted its fighting style to a moreinformal one, elbowed the Doctor in the face, gave him akick in the stomach and quick left-right punches to thehead. A head butt after that, and the Doctor sank to hisknees.

    `Turns out I'm the one with a glass jaw,' the Doctorcoughed.

    The Eyeless moved in for the kill.

    `Wait,' the Doctor said, holding a splayed hand up,

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almost losing his balance. `Hang on. Don't.'

   The Doctor pulled himself upright, using the Eyelessfor balance.

   The Eyeless recognised the expression on the Doctor'sface as it drew level with its own. Alsa wore thatexpression. Defiance. Eyes wide with a sense of victory.

   This was incompatible with the Eyeless' understandingof the situation. The Doctor had clearly made a move.

   As the Doctor stepped away, the Eyeless became awarethat there was a new object embedded in it. The Doctorhad pushed the cube he'd been carrying into the flaw inthe Eyeless' collar.

   The Eyeless looked at his opponent, and saw theDoctor had his sonic screwdriver in his hand.

   There was a flare of blue light, an ultrasonic squeal,and the antigravity cube activated. The Doctor, thewalkway and the weapon chamber fell away from theEyeless' feet. As it plunged skywards, it could just makeout the Doctor stepping through the door into the weaponchamber.

   All around the Eyeless, turrets and gun barrels twitchedand took aim as it plummeted up to the apex of the innervault, far above.

The Doctor stepped into a room that was a tiny hollowpyramid, its interior virtually featureless. There was barelyroom for him, let alone anyone else. Not enough room toswing an Eyeless.

   He was worn out, but he had work to do and he'dalready got his glasses on. He knelt in the centre of the

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room, concentrating on the weapon. It was suspended in aweb of power lines. To human eyes, it must have lookedrather plain. It was a cylinder, about a metre long, tencentimetres wide. It was burnished metal. No obviouscontrols or trigger, no letters or numbers or symbols. Moreinteresting things were going on in the higher, lower andsideways dimensions, obviously.

    `Infinite menace and a slight hum,' said the Doctor outloud, quoting Douglas Adams.

    It was activated by touch, so he couldn't use barehands. The Doctor fished around in Alsa's bag and found apair of woolly gloves. He slipped one on.

    He could have reached out already, plucked the weaponfrom its cradle. There wasn't anything stopping him.There wasn't a booby trap on the weapon that wouldrisk damaging it. The Doctor's hand was at his side.

    Why hadn't he destroyed it already?

    He knew he was holding back. He wasn't sure why. Helooked around, sheepishly.

    The weapon continued to hang there.

    Go on, he willed himself.

    It would be so easy to imagine that his hesitation wasthe result of some last line of defence, that it was theweapon itself staying his hand with some sort of hypnoticcommand. That wasn't what was happening.

    The Doctor hadn't moved for over a minute, now.

    He could feel the energy crackling inside the cylinder,like a trapped, perpetual lightning bolt, but perfectlyblack. So dark it would blind anyone who looked straightat it.

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   Why hadn't he destroyed it?

   `We're both the last of our kind,' he concluded, quietly.It was complex, uniquely so, but there was no mind inthere, no consciousness, no life, nothing that could answerback.

   Destroy it. The Eyeless could be here any minute.Destroy it.

   `If the Eyeless got hold of you, then... well, that wouldbe terrible. Worse.'

   He wasn't like the Eyeless. Not at all. He travelled theuniverse like them, true. Flitted from planet to planet.Revelled in new experiences. Didn't put down roots. Theywere irresponsible, though. Not that he was the mostresponsible person in the universe, but his hearts were inthe right places. He didn't kill people.

   The Eyeless he'd just sent plummeting up to its doommight have been the last one.

   The memory of a reptile hand clawing at soot-stainedlimestone. The Doctor's thoughts had returned to thebattle with the dinosaur man in the clock tower of theHouses of Parliament, the Steggosian he'd told Gar andAlsa about. The Doctor could recall the creature's rank,not his name. There was no one left now who couldremind him. The Doctor had let the Steggosian Captainfall to his death, knowing he was the last of his kind.

   He remembered the last of the Racnoss, consumed inflames. He remembered the death throes of the Pyroviles.He remembered an army of Daleks sucked into thehowling Void. He remembered Richard Lazarus, dying ina blitzkrieg of sound courtesy of a cathedral organ and the

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sonic screwdriver.

   They weren't victims. They had been poised to kill,springing traps they'd set themselves. The best word todescribe them was monsters, and the best thing to do withmonsters was fight them.

   The people of Arcopolis, they were victims.

   What if the weapon could be used for good?

   The Doctor hadn't taken his eyes off it.

   `There's no such thing as evil science,' he said finally.`Anything can be turned into a weapon. Anything. If youworried about what wicked men might do, you'd neverinvent anything. You'd never light a fire or pick up a rock.You can kill people with medicine, drown them in abucket of spring water, burn them up in sunshine.'

   The opposite was true, too: any sword could be beateninto a ploughshare, every spear into a pruning hook. It wassometimes difficult to see how. He, alone in all theuniverse, had the knowledge to do it with this weapon. Noone else understood the science like he did. More thanthat, he knew it was at least possible, because he'd seenthe ghosts. The weapon wasn't meant to leave traces, butthe ghosts were traces.

   There's more to this weapon than I thought.

   The Doctor tapped his teeth with his fingers, thenrapped his forehead with his knuckles. This was a changeof plan, no doubt about it. He could study the weapon,learn a bit more about it. It might not be possible. Therewas a chance, though.

   If I destroyed the weapon now, I would lose that chancefor ever.

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    `Good point,' the Doctor noted.

    He peered up at the weapon over the top of his glasses.He might be able to use it to create, not destroy. Reverseits polarity, or whatever.

    Every instinct was telling him to destroy it.

    He took a step back, thought for a moment. Was itpossible to use this for the good?

    No one else possibly could. You might.

    The Doctor decided not to destroy the weapon.

    Some superstitious urge made the thought of touchingit uncomfortable, even through a glove. He slipped Alsa'sbag off his shoulder, turned it inside out and put his handsin, like it was a giant oven mitten, then reached into theweb of power lines and began plucking the weapon fromit. The cylinder was solid, surprisingly heavy. It waswarm, even through the artificial fibre of the bag. Thedetached cables still buzzed, still had enough energy inthem to bite.

    The Doctor was cradling the weapon now, needed bothhands to lift it.

    One last power line to detach, then the weapon wouldbe free, and he would turn the bag back outside in andhide it out of sight and out of mind. As the Doctor tuggedit loose, there was a clattering noise from outside thechamber. He glanced through the door.

    The very last thing he saw before the whole Fortresswent dark was an army of Eyeless charging down thewalkway towards him, arms raised like clubs.

    There was a theory that the way to defeat an enemywas to turn their own strength against them.

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  `Well,' the Doctor sniffed, `at least I have plenty towork with.'

The Fortress strategy computer recognised that it wasabout to be deactivated, knew it had no options remaining.It drew all its strength from the weapon, and the Doctorwas well on the way to disconnecting it.

   A thousand subroutines had warned it not tounderestimate the Doctor from the moment he'd beenidentified, yet it had done just that.

   It had just been overrun. Eighty-eight of the aliensinside it, all exploiting the safe route to the weaponchamber, all heading for the Doctor. The guns in thatsection had all been disabled, and the power would beshut off within moments.

   The Doctor would destroy the aliens, of course. Thestrategy he would adopt was straightforward. Thecomputer felt no regret or anger. It cycled through itscomplete list of strategies one last time, not knowinganything else to do.

   And then the machine stopped.

When the lights had gone out, the Eyeless leading thecharge had been within seconds of reaching the weaponchamber.

   Now it was pitch black but, as if to compensate, the airwas saturated with sound. The noise was made up ofalmost a couple of hundred heavy glass footfalls on metal,echoing off the walls.

   Instantly the command went out, and the Eyeless came

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to a halt. Had a squad of human soldiers tried to do thesame, the line would have concertinaed and slipped up;maybe a couple of people would even have been pushedor tripped over the edge of the narrow walkway. Theirtelepathy allowed the Eyeless to coordinate the move.

   The immediate situation was easy enough tocomprehend, and broke like a wave over the Eyeless: theDoctor was in the weapon chamber, dead ahead of them.Through the one doorway leading into the chamber,they'd seen the Doctor with the weapon in his hand. Withthe power offline, that meant there were no active defencesystems.

   They had to get to the weapon, and quickly.

   As the echoes died down, they shared their memoriesand impressions of the inside of the Fortress, swiftlyoverlaying them all, self-correcting the discrepancies,until they had built up a mental map of the structure. Thiswas a rare process for them, to so totally give up theirindividuality. They elided their memories and perceptions,effortlessly becoming, to all practical purposes, a singlecreature, a beast with 88 heads, 176 legs, 1,056 fingers,one mind and one objective:

   Kill the Doctor.

   He couldn't disguise the sounds of his feet scuffing thefloor, his breathing, his double heartbeat. Eighty-eight ofthem heard him at the doorway.

   As one, they charged at him.

   The foremost reached the doorway and the Doctorwasn't there. Three of them felt their way into thechamber. They held their hands out, thirty-six fingers

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twitching like antennae.

   One of the Eyeless brushed against a power line, whichsparked and froze it rigid, forcing another one to stepaside, into the path of another power line. Another spark.The third was trapped between them.

   The three of them would recover in minutes. Theremaining eighty-five knew that the Doctor was no longerin the weapon chamber. He couldn't be far.

   One of the Eyeless, towards the middle of the pack,was shoved aside, toppled over the edge. Two of itscomrades managed to grab it before it was lost for ever.The one nearest those two swiped out to grab the Doctor,who must have been responsible for the initial shove.Instead, it grabbed one of the rescuers, unbalanced it. Allfour tipped over, off into the darkness.

   Sharing this sensation, all the Eyeless reeled, moved tobrace for when they landed.

   Eighty-one flares of blue light; eighty-one electronicsqueals; eighty-one Doctors, holding eighty-one sonicscrewdrivers aloft, eighty-one ultimate weapons tuckedunder eighty-one arms. The Eyeless lurched in eighty-onedifferent directions to grab him.

   The Eyeless reeled, assimilated the experience. Therewas only one Doctor, but all of them had seen him thensent the information to the others.

   Simultaneously, they felt the rush of air from above.

   There was a grinding crash, followed by a series ofcreaks. The ranks of the Eyeless had been diminished,bisected.

   Sixteen Eyeless leapt out the way, finding either air

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under their feet, or the side of a comrade, bumping themuntil they were over the edge of the walkway. The Eyelessfelt the air whistling past them, felt the impacts. Mostwere able to swing an arm out, connect with some cable orother walkway.

    Nineteen other Eyeless had just vanished.

    The wave of realisation broke over the survivors theblue light hadn't just been to disorientate them, it hadloosened a large section of pipeline that had been hangingoverhead.

    That pipe was now a curved wall dividing the Eyelessinto two small groups one of seventeen individuals andone of twenty-nine.

    There was a creak and the wall moved.

    `Ah...' the Doctor's voice called out, from just aboveall forty-six of the Eyeless.

    Another creak.

    `Look,' the voice continued. `Um... you have lights inyour hands, remember? Might be an idea to use them.'

    They remembered. Three of them raised their handsand activated them. Three soft golden lanterns in thedarkness.

    The Doctor was standing on top of a cross-section offallen pipe that had landed square in the middle of thewalkway. It was about the same height as the Eyeless.

    The Doctor silently surveyed the scene, then startedrunning backwards on the spot, and the pipe started rollingtowards the exit.

    The twenty-nine Eyeless on that side started runningahead of it rather that than leaping off or being crushed.

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None of them had time to note the gleeful glint in theDoctor's eye. He had only got the pipe a little way,though, before the Eyeless behind him worked out thatthey could shove at it, trying to steer it.

   All this activity meant that the lanterns went out again.The sound of the pipe creaking and rolling along filled thedarkness.

   After a few moments, there was a great clang as thepipe crashed into the outer wall of the vault. It waswedged in place.

   The Eyeless in front of the pipe were blocked out of theinner vault, for the moment at least. The Doctor was alsoboxed in, though.

   The Eyeless prepared to go in for the kill, threeclimbing up onto the top of the pipe with the help of theothers.

   The Doctor wasn't there.

Moments after the lanterns had gone out, the Doctor hadgrabbed a dangling piece of cable and clambered up it.The Eyeless had been too busy pushing the pipe to notice,and the racket that it had made covered his tracks.

   He'd climbed up a couple of levels and found a narrowgantry, all of this in the dark, every handhold and escaperoute found by blindly flailing an arm.

   He was three or four levels higher, now. He floppeddown on the solid platform, needing to get his breathback. He tried not to make any noise.

   The weapon was still in the bag, weighing on his mind.He felt exhilarated, full of possibilities. He could hear the

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Eyeless clattering around below him, caught glimpses ofthem moving, arms aloft and glowing, hurrying along thetops of gantries and the thickest pipelines like palaceguards. They were all many levels below him. The searchpattern wasn't as systematic and ordered as he'd expectedfrom them. He had them rattled.

   The Eyeless were still angry and agitated, like they hadbeen infected. They'd been changed by their experienceshere. Ideas, attitudes, beliefs, emotions... they couldrapidly spread through any society. Jokes or pop tunes ornew slang or catchphrases could appear one day andeveryone in a country would know them within a week ortwo. The Doctor had met hiveminded races before. Theyall had a slightly different mechanism for spreading theword, but their great strength was that they could shareinformation instantly and totally efficiently.

   These Eyeless were addicted to anger now, tookpleasure from it. If they got into contact with the rest oftheir kind, the anger would spread, across the galaxy. Anadvanced race with a massive space navy, an urge to steal,fuelled by anger. They'd swarm across the cosmos.

   It wasn't as though the universe was short of monstersalready. He'd have to nip them in the bud.

   The Doctor glanced down at Alsa's bag.

   There was an easy way to do this. A surgical strike. Usethe weapon. Just once.

   Exterminate.

   The Doctor shivered, physically pulled himself backfrom the bag.

   Destroying the Eyeless because of what they might

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become? All so easy, using the weapon.

   The simplest thing was just to destroy it. Here and now.

   He stood, stiffly, but also a little wobbly on his feet.Not a brilliant combination when the way around here wasacross narrow gantries and on top of pipelines.

   The Doctor could have used Alsa's torch, but theEyeless would be on him like... he was going to say likemoths to a flame, but moths tended to lose that battle.

   He'd be safe in the dark for a little while.

   There was a light forming in front of him.

   This was really bad timing, he thought, tucking himselfout of sight.

   The ghost of a very, very old woman, looking around,perplexed. She didn't see the Doctor. Lit from within, thelines and wrinkles of her face were stark, spidery.

   The Doctor looked down. He could see Eyeless lookingup, calculating a route to the ghost. Then, like a dyingember, the ghost just faded away.

   The Fortress was without power, now. The ghostsweren't a defence system, after all. That nagged at theDoctor. So what were they?

   They weren't a coincidence.

   It would be almost comforting to think that they werethe restless souls of the 200 million killed here inArcopolis, that the injustice of their deaths had scarred thevery atoms and molecules. Nature had laws, but nojustice. If there was a ghost for every untimely death,there would be few places in the universe that weren'thaunted.

   The weapon had done this. It was a logic puzzle, but

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the answer wasn't in the programming of the Fortress, itwas somewhere in the laws of physics. When a ghosttouched someone, they both vanished that was part ofthe puzzle, too.

   He had to get out of the Fortress to somewhere safer,somewhere away from the glass men and the ghoststhemselves.

   The Doctor lowered himself down a level, scurried onhis hands and knees through a narrow crawlspace. Fiftymetres of that, and he found an access hatch that he slidopen. He climbed out onto what the acoustics told himwas a wide platform, dusted himself off, slung the bagover his shoulder, turned and almost walked straight into aghost.

   This was a ghost he'd already met. Behind it, otherghosts, dozens of them and more all the time. They castlight and shadows over the platform.

   Last time, they'd communicated via Alsa's comm,which was gone now. The Doctor remembered the ideahe'd had for talking to the Eyeless. He slipped a slimleather wallet from his pocket, and opened up the psychicpaper.

   `You can hear me,' he whispered. `I can't hear you.Here, let's try this.'

   The ghost nodded, relieved, and tiny, neat copperplatehandwriting appeared on the paper.

   I am Gyll.

   `Yes, I... recognise you. Don't you recognise me?' TheDoctor found himself wondering if this was how Gyll'shandwriting had always looked. With all their computers

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and robots, would the people of Arcopolis have evenbothered learning to use pens?

   I'm not sure. Something is different.

   `Yes.'

   The Doctor opened the bag, let the ghost see inside it.

   `This is the weapon that killed you,' the Doctor said.

   `This is what murdered you all. Don't touch it.'

   The ghost drifted towards it, head turning to get abetter look. And, as it looked down, and he saw italongside the weapon for the first time, it came to theDoctor what the ghosts were.

   So small a thing.

   `Yes,' he said quietly.

   Now you have it.

   `I've promised to destroy it, the very first moment Ican.'

   Yes, I know you mean to do that.

   `I have to break another promise. I can't save you.'

   The ghost stared at him, blankly.

   `I can't save you, because I know what you are, now,'the Doctor said. `You're not Gyll, not really.'

   I am Gyll.

   `No. The weapon killed Gyll. Killed everyone. But youcan't destroy matter and energy so utterly. It's impossible.There's always something left behind. Even if you drop anuclear bomb, you burn shadows into the concrete andtarmac. Blast shadows, they're called.'

   The Doctor paused, took the time to breathe in.

   `Gyll was ripped from the universe, but the imprintremained. You're a blast shadow. A complicated one,

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because Gyll was killed by this very, very complicatedweapon. But you're only the echo of the ghost ofconsciousness. Here.'

    He let the equations flow from his mind and across thepsychic paper, a model of eleven-dimensional time andspace. Beautiful, beautiful mathematics.

    I don't understand that.

    `You don't have to. All that you need to know is that Ido understand it. You're a shadow, and the person that castit is long gone.'

    I am Gyll.

    `No,' the Doctor said simply.

    I know I am.

    `No. You ghosts aren't real, you're holes in reality.Anyone you touch falls right out of the universe.'

    Something was agitating the ghosts behind the Doctor,making them flit over and around him. They couldn't haveoverheard what he'd said. Were they moving to block hisescape?

    They weren't... They were looking at something aheadof him. The sea of ghosts parted just long enough for theDoctor to see a small army of glass men walking slowlytowards him.

    At their head was the one with Jall's eyes. It had acharred pit the size of a fist in its chest. A dozen pacesfrom the Doctor, though, it came to a halt, as did all theEyeless behind it.

    What is happening?

    `You're holding them in place,' the Doctor reasoned.`They are powerful psychics. So many ghosts, all those

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memories, all that pain and anguish. It's paralysing them.Like a deafening sound would stop a person in theirtracks.'

    The one in front tries to communicate. It is so angry.

    `What is it saying?'

    That you want the weapon for yourself, that they arethe Eyeless & want only to study it. That they had nothingto do with the death of Arcopolis.

    `It calls itself an Eyeless, but it has eyes,' the Doctornoted.

    The ghost moved forward, as did a number of theothers. They all peered into the glass head, saw the twoeyeballs mounted there. The Eyeless squirmed under thescrutiny, but couldn't retreat. It was like its feet had beenglued to the metal floor. The ghosts looked around at eachother, puzzled, then all but one of them fell back.

    `Human eyes,' the Doctor confirmed. `Ask it toexplain.'

    The ghost just swept over to the Eyeless, who writhed,tried to escape, but couldn't. The ghost calmly took itsmemories. The ghost floated in front of the Eyeless for afew seconds, like an attentive listener.

    `Those are Jall's eyes it's wearing,' the Doctor saidquietly. `Ask it who Jall is.'

    The ghost turned back, stared into the bright greeneyeballs, looked back at the Doctor, shocked. It wasremembering it all, taking the thoughts and memoriesfrom the Eyeless. Seeing what the Doctor couldn't themoment of Jall's death, the drinking in of her last, terrifiedthoughts, the taking of the eyes.

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   Finally, words appeared on the psychic paper.

   Dela had a daughter?

   `Yes.'

   We only talked about children.

   The ghost didn't seem to know if it had heard goodnews or not. It had no memories of the last fifteen years,just a snapshot of Gyll's mind at the moment of death.

   `Things are different now. Everything has changed.Dela has many children. The only way for the people ofArcopolis to survive. Jall was the eldest.'

   & now Dela's firstborn is dead.

   `Dela is alive,' the Doctor told the ghost. `She shouldbe safe, but thanks to this creature I can't be sure of that. Imade a promise to Dela. You can help me keep it. But...there's a cost.'

   The ghost held out a finger, almost touched theDoctor's lips. There was no need to say more.

   Then it fell onto the Eyeless, hands thrust out liketalons, thrusting its elbows deep into the glass chest. Theghost was silently screaming, swirling through the bodyand mind of the Eyeless. The other glass men werepowerless to move, let alone defend their colleague. Theone with Jall's eyes managed to lift one foot, at last, but itlost its balance, had to send its hand to the edge of theplatform to keep itself from falling over the edge.

   Its glass was losing its brilliance and looked almostcharred. The Eyeless raised its right hand, trying to use theweapon embedded there, but couldn't summon any light.

   A second ghost hurtled past the Doctor and throughanother of the Eyeless. Then another, then another, then

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another. All of them, throwing themselves into the Eyelessranks, tearing the strength of the glass men out with theirbare hands.

    The Eyeless swatted at them, not connecting withanything. The ghosts were dashed to pieces as they hit theEyeless, vanishing when they touched anyone, as they hadbefore, but they eroded their opponents in turn. This wasan entirely silent process and as each ghost dissipated,their light faded, and the interior of the Fortress grew alittle darker.

    `An eye for an eye,' the Doctor said, so softly thewords were almost drowned out by the sound of shatteringglass.

    He had seen enough death, and gained no satisfactionfrom the thought of more. Wearily, he watched, waiteduntil the inevitable moment when the last light faded.

    Kill you.

    The words crashed through the Doctor's mentaldefences.

    The ghosts had gone, but one Eyeless was still there,the sheen of its skin faded, pitted. Damaged by contactwith the ghosts, but surviving through sheer force of will.The glass man rose to its knees, watery, broken lightseeping from its damaged right hand. Of course it was theone with Jall's eyes. The last of the Eyeless.

    Its face was level with the Doctor's. They were inchesapart, at most.

    Kill you.

    It was the Doctor's own voice. He was the bringer ofdarkness, the oncoming storm, the murderer of whole

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worlds.

   The Doctor couldn't tell if he was thinking that or theEyeless was thinking it for him. He found he wasn'tresisting as the Eyeless' hands closed around his neck, ashe began sinking to his knees. The fight had gone fromhim. This was his death, and there was no one in thisuniverse who would mourn him, and the Eyeless wouldtake the weapon.

   Unless.

   `I have something for you,' he managed to croak out.

   The Eyeless stood motionless.

   `You can't have the weapon,' the Doctor said, getting tohis feet. He held out a small metal shape on a loop ofchain. `You like trading? You always want somethingnew? How about this key?'

   The Eyeless looked warily at it.

   `The key to my TARDIS,' the Doctor said. `You wereright. That blue box is a time machine. But you've notbeen able to get inside, have you? I... will do you a deal.'

   The Doctor looked down at the pieces of glass scatteredon the gantry.

   `You ran the numbers,' he said quietly. `Well... runthese numbers: if you let me live and let me destroy theweapon, you can have my TARDIS.'

   The Eyeless took a step forward, reached out, but theDoctor snatched the key away.

   `The most important thing is destroying the weapon,'the Doctor said quietly, almost to himself. `No one shouldhave it. Not me, not you, no one. I will pay any price tosee that weapon broken in half.'

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   The key dangled tantalisingly out of the reach of theEyeless.

   `I know what you're thinking,' the Doctor said. `Youcould kill me, take the key, take the weapon.'

   The Eyeless was careful not to betray its reaction.

   `The TARDIS won't let you in unless I tell it to. Afterthat, it's simple enough. The flight computer is, well, let'sjust say it's fairly intuitive. This isn't a trick... well, Iwould say that. Honest, it's not a trick. Trust me, I'm adoctor. But this is the deal: you watch me destroy theweapon, I give you the key. I'll just stay here, with thevillagers. Live out my life. Look after them, if they'll haveme.'

   The Doctor paused, sagged a little.

   `I can do good here. You get a time machine and youcan fly off in it. Hand on hearts, right now I can't imagineyou'd do any more harm than I've already done.'

   He looked straight at the Eyeless, a glint in his eye.

   `You're a strategist, you're a rational being. It's a gooddeal. Particularly for you... individually.'

   The Eyeless turned its head slightly.

   `Nothing wrong with a bit of ambition,' the Doctorassured it, raising an eyebrow. `Eh? Know what I mean?'

   The Eyeless held out its hand.

   `Say no more,' the Doctor said.

   The Eyeless blocked his way. It held out its left hand,palm up.

   `You can't have it yet. Let's go outside, then I'lldestroy the weapon.'

   It stayed where it was, twitched its fingers.

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     The Doctor strained to look around it, both sides.`Oh... all right.'

     Its glass wrist had begun to ripple, eager for the trophy.

     `Handy,' said the Doctor, his mouth managing to flickerat the pun. `You'll never lose the key this way. And, ofcourse, if you're... stuck with the key, you, uniquelyamong all the Eyeless, get to be the TARDIS captain.Primus inter pares, eh? If you'll pardon my Welsh.'

     The Eyeless looked down at the TARDIS key. Thepossibilities started to surge through its mind. It leapt forthe Doctor, greedily gripping the lapels of the Doctor'scoat with a six-fingered hand, the Eyeless' mind grabbingfor the Doctor's mind.

     There was something he wasn't saying, wasn't there?His secret. That it was the Doctor who--

     `Oh, shut it,' the Doctor snapped, shrugging off the gripof the glass hands. The psychic onslaught continued andfor a moment, they were eye to eye. The bright green,unblinking, stolen eyes. The Doctor and the Eyeless bothunderstood what had to happen next, and that it wouldsoon all be over.

     `You're a thief,' the Doctor said softly, his mouth closeto the side of the Eyeless' head. `A murderer. And I meanteverything I said, and you had your chance and you blewit.'

     The Eyeless thrust its hand into the bag to grab theweapon. The Doctor threw his hand out to stop him.

     A hand brushed against the weapon, grabbed it.

     The weapon fired.

     A moment later, the Doctor was alone in the darkness.

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    He strode from the wreckage. He emerged from the

    great gash in the side of the dead Fortress, into the sunlit

    Car Factory. The weapon was still in the bag slung over

    his shoulder. Rubble and smashed glass and bits of rag

    were strewn over the factory floor. Great chunks and

    beams of the concrete ceiling had come down.

       The silence pressed against his eardrums.

       He'd survived. At least he assumed he had. Perhaps,

    like Gyll, he only thought he'd survived. He didn't know

    exactly what the weapon had done. Why it had spared

    him. He didn't know if it had spared anyone else.

       He might truly be alone, now.

    He needed to get back to the TARDIS. He turned, wanting

    companionship, more than anything, but there was no one

    beside him.

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   It was a warm afternoon, so he took off his coat andfolded it over his arm and Alsa's bag and what was insidethe bag. He could feel the sun against his face, at least.

   He must be alive.

He had scoured the darkness. The instant the weapon hadbeen activated, the Eyeless had gone. He had been theonly thing left in there, the only trace of life.

   There had been no light, no sound, the air had beenperfectly still. All there had been was the metallic smell,faintly like dried blood, and the press of his feet throughthe soles of his trainers down onto the platform, and thethrob of the bruise on his temple. Without those, it wouldhave been oblivion, nothing. He had felt numb,dissociated. It had crossed his mind that he was imaginingeverything, merely remembering. Then he hadunderstood: if he could have those thoughts, he stillexisted.

   He thought, therefore he was.

Now, outside, sunlight and silence streaming over him, hesat on a metal block. He ached all over. Behind him, theFortress was creaking, cracking.

   He thought of the weapon destroying all life. Not justthe Eyeless, but all the humans here, all the trees and otherplants and bacteria, then out into the universe, its fingerspoking into the gaps between space and time and rootingout every life form on every world and between all theworlds, striking so swiftly no one could even see it as itwent about its work.

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   Everyone dead. Everyone dead but him.

   Had that happened? How long would he be lefttravelling on his own? How long would he need to acceptthere was no one else? How many dead planets would hehave to visit?

   The rubble that had tumbled down had blocked everyway out but one. One of the vast machines the sonicscrewdriver the size of a car wash hadn't buckled. Itsarch now formed a short tunnel, the one way out of here.

   It also gave him something to do. He found the controlpanel for the machine, which was on the side facing theFortress. He brushed off the dust and fragments from it.The device was fully charged. It absorbed sound, andthere would have been plenty when the floors above itcollapsed.

   He whispered things to the machine, told it some of hisfears and secrets.

`Doctor!' a voice called.

   It was Dela. She ran over to him, through the arch andto the other side, and was rather surprised when hegrabbed her, pulled her off her feet and gave her such ahug she almost snapped in two.

   `Bad day?' she asked, when he finally let go.

   `Oh, you know... I stole an infinitely powerful superweapon, exchanged text messages with the dead, had anethics debate with a psychotic teenage girl and a fight inpitch blackness with an army of glass men. An averagesort of Saturday, really. It's still Saturday, isn't it?'

   `I think it's still Saturday morning. Are... are you all

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right?'

    `The Eyeless that killed Jall is dead.'

    `The one with her eyes?'

    `Yeah.'

    `Thank you.'

    He nodded. `They're all dead.'

    And eventually Dela said it was probably for the best.

    `And the weapon?' she asked.

    Hesitation.

    `Doctor?'

    `The Eyeless didn't get their hands on it,' he told her.`It's in the bag.'

    The bag was draped over his shoulder.

    `The joke is... the joke is that it didn't work. Twice,now, the weapon has failed to do what it was designed todo.'

    `This is what it does when it fires a dud?'

    `Yes.'

    They sat in silence for a little longer.

    `I miss--' Dela said.

    `I thought--' he said at the same time, then, `Go on.'

    `No, you first.'

    `I thought it might have destroyed everything.'

    `Everyone but you.'

    `Everyone but me.'

    `The weapon could really do that?'

    `Yes.'

    `We still might be the last two people.'

    `Yes. What were you going to say just now?'

    `What? Oh... I miss the birdsong,' she said. `Sorry, I

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don't have the grand thoughts you have.'

   The Doctor broke into his first grin since emergingfrom the Fortress.

   `Why haven't you destroyed the weapon?' she asked.

   `I will... I will now,' the Doctor agreed. `Right now.'

   The pair of them stood, helping each other up.

   `Well,' said the Doctor, then seeing Dela's expression,`Um, why are you looking at me like--?'

   A waft of perfume and the bag was tugged hard off hisshoulder.

   The Doctor turned to see Alsa, a wild sneer on her face,her nose caked in dried blood. He ducked out of the wayas she swung the bag at him. No, not at him at Dela. Themetal cylinder inside the bag connected with the side ofDela's head, and she slumped.

   `It's quite effective at close range, yeah?' Alsa noted.

Alsa had felt the Eyeless die through their own senses.Those that had been gunned down, those in the ships,they'd just faded away. They had never meant anything toher... but when the one with green eyes went, there was amoment when Alsa thought she'd also become nothing.

   As soon as she'd seen the archway, she knew theDoctor would have to come out this way. She'd waited,kept out of sight as Dela had gone past. As soon as shesaw the Doctor leave the Fortress, she'd just known theweapon was in the bag. Her bag. She had no idea how itwasn't just because there weren't many other places itcould be, she really could sense it.

   This had been her plan right from the first moment

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she'd heard about the weapon, realised what it could do:let the Doctor get it, force him to give it to her. Alsastepped back into the arch, blocked the only way out. Thething in the bag was twice as heavy as she'd beenexpecting. She couldn't look at it yet, couldn't take hereyes off the Doctor, needed to keep both her hands free.

   `You killed the Eyeless.'

   `Yes.'

   `All of them?'

   `Here, yes. Beyond that, I don't know.'

   She had fleeting images of other worlds, pulses ofintense emotion, flakes of esoteric science and history,remembered what it had been like to briefly be an Eyeless.Was that memory all that was left of them?

   `Alsa, that Eyeless had started to infect the others. Itcouldn't see any further than itself. It thought its problemswere the universe's. And you think the same, don't you?'

   `But it's OK, because I'm just a kid? Go on then pushoff. Leave me to it. You're not going to solve anything.'

   `Your civilisation will survive. It will take time, manygenerations, before it thrives. But it will survive.'

   `I saw a way out of this.'

   Alsa hefted the bag, and she saw the Doctor flinch.

   `It would mean even more death. Everything touchedby that weapon becomes corrupted.'

   `I thought that you were our saviour. I thought youcould change things. I thought the Eyeless would.'

   `I know,' the Doctor said, not taking his eyes off her.`And I'm sorry you thought that.'

   `All I wanted was to be treated the same as an adult.'

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    `Oh... you really don't want me to do that,' he told herdarkly.

    `I've never wanted anything else from anyone!' Alsashouted, holding up the bag. `I just want someone to takeme seriously! If I've got to use this weapon to do that--'

    `"Seriously"?' the Doctor said. `Oh, I can do seriously.'

    The Doctor held his arm out, pointed the sonicscrewdriver up above her head. Alsa looked up. For thefirst time, she registered that this archway was part of amachine. A metal bolt above her head slid shakily backand locked into a new configuration.

    The machine was humming. Blue lights startedflickering all around her on the sides of the archway, inweird patterns. There were three other bolts one oneither side, one between her feet.

    Alsa steadied herself, stared right at him, mouth open,eyes narrow.

    `That machine is like my sonic screwdriver,' the Doctorsaid. `You're standing in the resonator cage.'

    Alsa shrugged, partly to look brave, partly because shedidn't understand what the Doctor meant.

    The Doctor pivoted his arm around, pointed it at a pileof engines. The tip of his sonic screwdriver flared and theengines just fell apart, the tiny components cascadingdown.

    The Doctor turned to aim the sonic screwdriver back atAlsa. She didn't look up the next time he activated it. Thebolt to her left slid back and locked into place, just like thefirst. The Doctor blinked, lowered the sonic screwdriver.

    `Two more bolts to go,' she told him, feeling brave,

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proud of herself. She had the strength for this, she knewthat.

   `I think the Eyeless altered your mind,' the Doctor said.

   `That would be so much easier, wouldn't it? You couldkill me in good conscience, then.'

   The Doctor lowered his sonic screwdriver.

   `Oh I could never kill you, Alsa,' he said. His voicewas tinged with sadness. `But what about you? Could youkill? Really?'

   Alsa already had one hand tugging on the bag's flap,and now she saw the weapon for the first time. It was ametal tube, that was all. It was humming to itself.

   `This is it?' she asked.

   It surprised Alsa how calm the Doctor looked.

   `Touch it, it will activate,' he said. `It'll kill everyoneyou want it to.'

   She'd won. Alsa knew she'd beaten the Doctor. That'swhy he was so calm he knew there was nothing else hecould do. He couldn't even kill her.

   Why was she hesitating? Dela was slowly cominground, shaking her head and getting unsteadily to her feet,watching Alsa warily. Was it because of Dela that she washesitating?

   The Doctor was looking right at her. `There are norules here, now,' he said. `No Jennver. No monstersforcing you to do anything. No authority. No laws. Nowitnesses. You can do whatever you want to me. Anythingyou want to Dela. No one can stop you, no one can punishyou afterwards.'

   Alsa thought about it. It sounded like the ultimate

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freedom.

   `Do it and no one will tell you off, or hold you toaccount.'

   Alsa looked down at the weapon again. It would be soeasy to shut the Doctor up. Very easy.

   `You're on your own. No one but yourself to blame.'

   He let that sink in.

   `It's up to you. Your choice. I made my own choice justnow. Will yours be any different? Do what you want.'

   Alsa could feel something beneath the metal surface ofthe weapon, something inside it, around it, working intoher like roots and damp into an old wall. She could almostfeel it starting to eat away at her.

   `All it does is destroy?' she asked.

   `Yes.'

   `This isn't a trick?'

   `You know it isn't.'

   `Yeah... I know.'

   Alsa couldn't make herself move. Couldn't decide. Shecould destroy anything. Everything.

   `It's not easy, is it?' the Doctor said.

   `No.'

   `The fate of all life in the universe is in your hands,Alsa. Literally in your hands.'

   `This is what it's like for you all the time?'

   `Oh yes,' the Doctor said quietly. `And doesn't it justdrive you mad?'

   Alsa stepped off out of the arch, wrapped the bagclosed and handed it to the Doctor.

   `Help me,' she said.

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   The Doctor took the bag, weighed it in his hand. Therewas no relief in his eyes. Why would there be, now he hadthe weapon weighing him down again?

   `I don't know what to do,' Alsa told him. `I live here. Idon't know anywhere but here. You could take me back.'

   `Back?' Dela asked.

   `His TARDIS is a time machine. He could take meback to before. He could take us all back.'

   The Doctor was shaking his head. `It doesn't work likethat. That isn't what happened.'

   He'd wrapped the bag around itself, cocooned theweapon.

   `Destroy the weapon,' Dela insisted. `You can at leastdo that. Do it now.'

   `Yes.' The Doctor paused, looked down like thatgenuinely hadn't even occurred to him. `I need to get itaway from here. I have to get back to the TARDIS.'

   `The Eyeless said they had taken possession of it.'

   `We don't need to worry about the Eyeless any more,'the Doctor said quietly.

   `Take me with you,' Alsa said.

   `All right,' said the Doctor, distracted. Then he lookedup sharply, realised what he'd said. Dela was staring athim, empty-eyed.

   `I'll come back,' the Doctor told Dela. `I'll...'

   He paused. Looked at Alsa, then Dela, then up at whatwas left of the ceiling.

   `Actually, yes. Come on, Alsa. I know how we do this.'

   `You can help me?'

   `Squaring circles. What I do best,' he declared happily.

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He indicated the arch to Alsa. `Lead on, McDuck.'

   `I don't understand.'

   `No, you don't. Lost in translation. But you willunderstand. That's the point.'

   `I'd better.'

   `I wouldn't mind an explanation, too,' Dela said.

   `All in good time,' the Doctor chuckled.

   The three of them stepped through the arch. Alsa washolding Dela's hand.

   After walking another twenty metres or so, the Doctorturned back. `Hang on, I almost forgot.'

   He pointed the sonic screwdriver at the archway, andthe final bolts fell into place. The air filled with soundwhich then spiralled into the archway, building andbuilding and compressing. Finally, the energy released ina single burst, which shot out away from them, hit theFortress, took it to pieces.

   The black metal walls slipped apart, avalanched,sploshed down into the lake far below. Each layer fellaway in turn, faster and faster as the supporting structurewas weakened, pieces of pipe and gantry and platform andgun turret and doors and light fittings, until the wholeFortress had gone, and there was nothing but sunlight andfresh air and the sound of tons of metal crashing into thewater in its place.

   Dela, Alsa and the Doctor were laughing, but couldn'thear each other. They had to clamp their hands over theirears.

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    The Doctor kept his promises to both Alsa and Dela.

    Now, a large blue wooden crate, decorated with rows of

    square panels and a flashing light on top, arrived in the

    centre of the settlement.

       A messenger boy had run to Dela even before the

    strange noise it made had fully died down.

       The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS, looked up at

    the huge metal sculpture that now dominated the central

    square.

       `That's new,' he noted.

       `It's old,' Alsa told him, puzzled, stepping out after

    him.

       `It's called Dance of Days. They must have moved it

    from the city this morning. Is this what you were going to

    show me?'

       `No. Look around.'

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   There were people everywhere. All ages, plenty of kids.The distant buildings of Arcopolis were covered in ivy,most of them. Others had tarnished, become brick red.There was a gap in the skyline where the Fortress hadbeen, like the city was missing a tooth.

   A crowd was gathering around the TARDIS.

   `It took us weeks to get it here,' a man said.

   Alsa wouldn't have recognised him if he hadn't had hishands in his pockets. He wore a tool belt, and his hair wasstarting to thin a little.

   `Gar?'

   He nodded.

   Alsa turned, drank it all in. `This is the future.'

   `Yup,' the Doctor said. He was also looking around.Everyone clearly knew who he was. Many of them hadbeen there twenty years before. The others must haveheard stories about him. An older woman stepped outfrom the group.

   `This is your time machine?' Dela asked. Her hair wasextraordinarily, vividly white, now. She looked radiant.

   `Yes.'

   `It doesn't look like a time machine, it looks like...'She wasn't sure what it looked like.

   `There's a reason,' the Doctor assured her. `A reallygood one.'

   `You don't look a day older.'

   `I'm not. Not quite.'

   She ran a hand along his temple. `You still have thebruise.'

   `You must have scores more children by now,' the

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Doctor said lightly.

   `Only one more. Lios. A boy. Well, a man now. It's allgrandchildren these days.'

   The Doctor beamed. `Hang on. Almost forgot. Broughtyou a present.'

   He nipped back into the TARDIS.

   `And the weapon?' Dela asked.

   Alsa held out a small, charred piece of metal for Delaand Gar to inspect. `We went to an asteroid like a littleplanet. It didn't have any air, so we had to wearspacesuits. There was a plasma vent, like a pit of energy.We dropped it in there and the weapon just opened up. Wecouldn't look at what was inside, but once it was out, itcouldn't survive in our universe. Then we went to anotherplanet and ate weird stuff called "burgers".'

   The Doctor emerged from the TARDIS holding abirdcage. Inside were two birds that would have fitted inthe palm of his hand. Their feathers were a rainbow, fromtheir red caps to their violet wingtips.

   `Kegronian Halcyons,' the Doctor said. `A breedingpair. Widely regarded as having the most beautifulplumage and song of any bird in the universe. Veryadaptable. Not much meat on them, but... well, that'sgood news for the Kegronian Halcyon, isn't it, all thingsconsidered?'

   The Doctor opened a small door on the side of thecage, and the two birds pushed their way out, then spreadtheir colourful wings and they were off, swooping aroundeach other, darting towards the city and so many potentialroosts.

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    The others watched the birds, but the Doctor wasstaring at the necklace Dela wore a glass pendant.

    She glanced over at him. `They're all over the city, getwashed up in the streams. The water wears them smooth.'

    Gar was handing the Doctor one, but he held up hishand. `Won't work on me. Alsa?'

    Alsa took one. `Oh...'

    `Memories?' the Doctor asked.

    `Yes,' Gar said. `Some from the Eyeless, some from theghosts.'

    `A source of technical knowledge?'

    `And a way of broadening our horizons.'

    Dela smiled. `Gyll,' she said, touching her stone. `Atleast... I like to think so.'

    `So you go into the City, now?' Alsa asked.

    `Yes,' Dela said. `We choose to. We have choices, now.There are so many of us, we've actually lost count. Whichis silly, there aren't all that many. Thousands.'

    Alsa smiled.

    `It makes everything a lot easier.'

    The Doctor was grinning. `Who says there are nosecond chances, eh? What wally ever said that? See, Alsa,it all works out.'

    `Yes...'

    `So now you've seen this, I can take you back, safe inthe knowledge that it all turns out for the best and--'

    `Doctor,' Dela cut in, `it didn't happen that way.'

    `It doesn't what?'

    `This is the first time we've seen either of you fortwenty years. You said before that if it isn't what

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happened, it can't happen.'

    `I...' The Doctor was lost for words. `We must have...no. It's the plan, you see. A bit of Ghost of ChristmasFuture, just enough to make Alsa mend her ways thatwas what that McDuck reference was all about. I reallyliked the McDuck reference.'

    `You never came back. Is that bad?'

    `It means...' the Doctor began, `we must have gotsidetracked. Or... worse.'

    `You're so thick,' Alsa said.

    `I'm not,' the Doctor objected. `I'm great.'

    `Don't you get it?'

    The Doctor looked around, nonplussed.

    `I get off here,' Alsa explained. `I stay in the future.Can I come back, Dela? I know all about obstetrics.'

    Dela raised an eyebrow.

    `You don't have to,' the Doctor said. It wasn't clear ifhe meant that Alsa didn't have to stay or that Dela didn'thave to take her. `Although, come to think of it, thatwould work.'

    `I just told you it would...' Alsa pointed out.

    `I was talking in terms of the timeline,' the Doctor saidairily.

    `You can be a child here, Alsa,' Dela said. `There areplenty of other children now. You can be grown up. Onlyif you want to, only when you're ready.'

    The Doctor was beaming. `There are choices here foryou, now. Yes. The perfect solution. If anyone asks, thiswas the plan all along. What a great idea this was ofmine.'

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   `You could stay, too, Doctor,' Dela said.

   `Well,' he said, smile flashing, `it wouldn't be fair onthe rest of the universe, you having me all to yourself,would it?'

   `Life's not fair,' Alsa noted.

   The Doctor sniffed the air, turned on his heel, drank inthe scene. He was lost in thought for a moment, thenrealised he'd placed his hand on the side of the TARDIS.

   There was a big, wide universe out there and he had hissecond chance, too.

   `Life's not fair?' he echoed. `Well... I'll have to seewhat I can do about that.'

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                Acknowledgements

Thanks to Jon Blum, Graeme Burk, Mark Clapham, MarkJones, Danielle Labbate, Philip Purser-Hallard, KateOrman, Lars Pearson, Lloyd Rose, Jim Smith and RobertSmith. Thanks to the many and various behind the scenespeople, including, but no doubt not limited to, LeeBinding, Albert DePetrillo, Caroline Newbury, NicholasPayne, Gary Russell and Steve Tribe. Special thanks toJustin Richards and to Russell T Davies.

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                         David Tennant reads Pest Control

                               Written by Peter Anghelides

          Launching a new series of audio exclusive stories from BBC Audiobooks

                                  Also available from BBC Audiobooks

    Abridged readings of the Doctor Who novels by cast members from the BBC TV series, with bonus

                                          author interviews

       The Stone Rose              The Feast of the             The Resurrection Casket

      by Jacqueline Rayner            Drowned                           by Justin Richards

            Read by                  by Stephen Cole                         Read by

         David Tennant                   Read by                          David Tennant

                                      David Tennant

      The Nightmare of                The Art of                  The Price of Paradise

        Black Island                  Destruction                         by Colin Brake

         by Mike Tucker              by Stephen Cole                         Read by

            Read by                      Read by                          Shaun Dingwall

         Anthony Head                Don Warrington

     Sting of the Zygons            The Last Dodo                       Wooden Heart

        by Stephen Cole           by Jacqueline Rayner                    by Martin Day

            Read by                     Read by                              Read by

         Reggie Yates               Freema Agyeman                         Adjoa Andoh

           Wetworld                Forever Autumn                         Sick Building

     By Mark Michalowski             By Mark Morris                       By Paul Magrs

           Read by                      Read by                              Read by

       Freema Agyeman                  Will Thorp                           Will Thorp

         Peacemaker                The Pirate Loop                        Wishing Well

       By James Swallow            By Simon Guerrier                   By Trevor Baxendale

            Read by                     Read by                              Read by

           Will Thorp              Freema Agyeman                        Debbie Chazen

                               Available on CD or as a digital download

                                AUDIO BOOKS ON THE GO

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                    Also available from BBC Books

                   featuring the Doctor and Martha

          as played by David Tennant and Freema Agyeman:

                      Beautiful Chaos

                            by Gary Russell

                        ISBN 978 1 846 07563 6

                    UK £6.99 US $11.99/$14.99 CDN

     Donna Noble is back home in London, catching up with

    her family and generally giving them all the gossip about

     her journeys. Her grandfather is especially overjoyed

    he's discovered a new star and had it named after him. He

       takes the Doctor, as his special guest, to the naming

                            ceremony.

       But the Doctor is suspicious about some of the other

     changes he can see in Earth's heavens. Particularly that

    bright star, right there. No, not that one, that one, there, on

                               the left...

    The world's population is slowly being converted to a new

      path, a new way of thinking. Something is coming to

     Earth, an ancient force from the Dark Times. Something

              powerful, angry, and all-consuming...

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