      When the TARDIS console is wilfully
 sabotaged, the Doctor’s time machine becomes
  dimensionally unstable and begins to dissolve.
The area immediately affected is the room where
          Nyssa is working by herself.

       As the creeping instability closes in on
  her, the TARDIS locks onto the nearest passing
     spacecraft, and the process of collapse is
       halted – but there is no sign of Nyssa.

 Hoping that she has escaped onto the strangely
   deserted host liner, the Doctor goes looking
   for her. Whether or not he finds her, getting
  back to the TARDIS will be no easy business...
                 Among the many Doctor Who books available
                  are the following recently published titles:
                         Doctor Who – Logopolis
                     Doctor Who and the Sunmakers
                       Doctor Who Crossword Book
                        Doctor Who — Time-Flight
                          Doctor Who — Meglos
                        Doctor Who – Castrovalva
                     Doctor Who — Four to Doomsday
                        Doctor Who — Earthshock



                                                GB £ NET         +001·50
                                        ISBN 0-426-19385-7



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         DOCTOR WHO
          TERMINUS
Based on the BBC television serial by Steve Gallagher
   by arrangement with the British Broadcasting
                   Corporation



          JOHN LYDECKER




                A TARGET BOOK
                   published by
             The Paperback Division of
              W. H. Allen & Co. Ltd
A Target Book
Published in 1983
by the Paperback Division of W.H. Allen & Co. Ltd
A Howard & Wyndham Company
44 Hill Street, London W1X 8LB

First published in Great Britain by
W.H. Allen & Co. Ltd 1983

Novelisation copyright © John Lydecker 1983
Original script copyright © Steve Gallagher 1983
‘Doctor Who’ series copyright © British Broadcasting
Corporation 1983

Phototypeset by Sunrise Setting, Torquay, Devon
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Hunt Barnard Printing Ltd, Aylesbury, Bucks


ISBN 0 426 19385 7

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall
not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold,
hired out or otherwise circulated without the
publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or
cover other than that in which it is published and
without a similar condition including this condition
being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Tegan was sure that there must be something to like
about Turlough, but she couldn’t think what. It wasn’t
his age, it wasn’t his looks – it wasn’t anything that she
could name, but as they walked down the TARDIS
corridor his presence behind her gave Tegan a creepy
feeling between the shoulders. It was like stories she’d
heard of travellers back home in the Australian bush;
they’d get the same crawling sensation and look down
to see a snake about to strike.
   ‘These are all storerooms,’ she said, gesturing at a
set of doors she was certain she’d never seen before,
and she carried on past before Turlough could ask any
awkward questions. Just give him the tour, Tegan, the
Doctor had said, you know your way around by now, and
she was left in the position of either tackling the job or
else arguing for her own incompetence – which she
wasn’t going to do, not in front of the Brat. Her
assessment of Turlough was such that she’d trust him
to store up the admission and use it to embarrass her
sometime. It was about the only thing she’d trust him
for.
   At the next intersection, she stopped and glanced
back. Turlough was looking the doors over as if he was
weighing up whether or not to believe her. In the cool
grey light of the timeless corridors he looked serene,
almost angelic, but when he caught her eye and smiled
there was a glint of something hard and unpleasant
under the surface. If the Doctor looked for long
enough, he’d probably see it as well... but then he’d
never had reason to, and on the couple of occasions
when she and Nyssa had tried to describe their doubts
he’d dismissed them. Reservations about a new
companion in the TARDIS could so easily look like a
display of petty jealousy; and when the Doctor was
around, Turlough’s act was very, very good.
   He sauntered along slowly to catch up, and Tegan
turned the corner. She saw with relief that, at last, they
were coming into an area she recognised. Not only was
so much of the TARDIS unfamiliar, she was convinced
that parts of the craft quietly redesigned themselves
when no one was looking.
   Through this open area and out the other side, and
they’d come to the corridor with the main living areas.
She slowed, so that Turlough could make up the
distance. He didn’t hurry. Something else that had
unsettled her; Turlough was no primitive, but there
had been nothing in his background to prepare him
for the intellectual and sensual shock of entering a
craft containing the floorplan of a mansion in an
external package the size of an old-earth police
telephone box. So why was he taking it all so calmly?
   ‘Well,’ she said as they reached the living space,
‘that’s the layout.’ She tried not to sound too relieved
at making it back.
   ‘It goes on forever,’ Turlough said politely, as if he
was thanking an aunt for a present (but he ought to be
standing there with his mouth hanging open and his mind
completely blown, Tegan thought).
   ‘It can seem like it,’ she said. ‘It’s best if you don’t go
wandering until you know your way around.’
   ‘How am I supposed to manage?’
   ‘Give me a call.’ That’s a joke, she thought, and
pointed across the corridor to the door of the room
that she shared with Nyssa. ‘Most of the time I’ll be
over there.’
   ‘Don’t I get a room?’
   ‘I was coming to that next.’
   Well, to be honest, she’d been putting it off for as
long as she could. She led him down to another of the
doors and touched for it to open. ‘This one... isn’t
being used,’ she said delicately.
   Turlough went through and stood in the middle of
the room, looking around. Tegan hesitated for a
moment before she followed. This was Adric’s old
room. Nothing inside had been touched or moved
since they’d lost him. She could understand that it was
only fair to let Turlough have somewhere that was
within easy distance of the console room and the social
areas, but why did it have to be here?
   She knew the answer, of course; that the pain was a
necessary part of the healing. But it didn’t make her
feel any better.
   ‘It looks like a kid’s room,’ Turlough said.
   Tegan did her best to keep the anger out of her
voice. She almost succeeded. ‘It was Adric’s.’
   ‘Who?’
   ‘It doesn’t matter. But he wasn’t a child.’
   Turlough barely seemed to have noticed. ‘I’ve had
enough of children,’ he said, ‘what with that awful
school on Earth.’
   She relented a little. Maybe the Doctor was right,
and she simply wasn’t giving him a chance. She said,
‘You can change things around to suit yourself.’
   He picked up an interlocking mathematical puzzle
from the desk, inspected it, and tossed it back. It rolled
and landed on a heap of notes and charts. ‘All this can
go, for a start,’ he said, and then he looked up and
smiled. Practising for the Doctor. ‘That’s not
unreasonable, is it?’
   ‘Do what you like,’ Tegan said stiffly. ‘It’s your
place.’ And she turned and walked out.
   When she was back in the corridor, she had to stop
and take a deep breath. Steady, now, girl, don’t let him
get to you. That’s how he works – he’ll needle away
until you explode, and then he’ll stand there in
complete innocence while you make a fool of yourself.
But why? We’ve taken him in, sheltered him... why
isn’t it enough?
   She stood under the corridor lights and listened to
the even heartbeat of the TARDIS all around her. It
was a good trick for getting calm. Tegan got half-way
there, deciding it was the best she was going to
manage, and went through to join Nyssa in their
shared room.
   ‘He’s got the manners of a pig,’ she said.
   Nyssa looked up from her work, surprised. ‘The
Doctor?’
   ‘The brat! I had to show him all around the
TARDIS. You’d think he was going to buy it.’
   ‘Perhaps he’ll settle down,’ Nyssa suggested, but
Tegan wasn’t about to be reassured.
   ‘You know he threatened me?’ she said.
   Nyssa laid aside the abacus that she’d been using to
check over some data. ‘Seriously?’
   ‘It seemed serious enough at the time.’
   ‘Why?’
   ‘I found him playing around with a roundel. He
tried to laugh it off, but he’s up to something.’
   ‘Have you told the Doctor?’
   ‘Not yet.’ And perhaps not ever, if Turlough
managed to keep the Doctor convinced with his
pretence of innocence.
   Nyssa pushed herself back from the bench. Most of
its surface was taken up with the intricate glassware
tangle of a biochemical experiment, like a funfair
modelled in miniature. She said, ‘Well, that means two
of us are having a less than perfect day.’
   ‘Not you, as well,’ Tegan said, and she came over to
take a look at the set-up on the bench. Nyssa had been
saying for some time now that she felt she was losing
her grip on all that she’d learned, and that it was time
she went over some of the basics of the disciplines
she’d acquired on her lost home world of Traken. The
glassware and the spectral analyser had all come from
the TARDIS’s extensive but haphazardly organised
stores, maybe even from one of the rooms that Tegan
had identified to Turlough in passing. There wasn’t
much here that she could recognise, except for the
shallow glass dishes in which bacterial cultures were
growing and, of course, the book that Nyssa was using
for reference. Of all the storage and information
retrieval technologies available to the TARDIS, the
Doctor insisted that books were the best. To put all of
your faith in any more sophisticated system, he would
say, is to ask for trouble; when a crisis hits and the
lights go out, the time you need your information most
is the very time that you can’t get to it. He called it a
Catch-22 situation. And when Nyssa wanted to know
what a Catch-22 situation was, the Doctor sent her to
the TARDIS’s library – Earth, Literature (North
American), twentieth century (third quarter).
   Tegan said, ‘What’s the experiment?’
    ‘I’m trying to synthesise an enzyme. It’s one of the
simpler procedures on the course, but it isn’t going
right. I’m way out of practice.’
    ‘I thought you did this last time you had one of
these blitzes. It went okay then.’
    Nyssa sighed. ‘I know, but then I had Adric to do
the calculation for me. This time I’m using my own
figures, and they’re nowhere near as good. I’ve got a
lot more ground to cover before I can afford to get
lazy again.’ She looked despondently at the equipment
and at the pages of notes that she’d scattered over
every unoccupied space on the bench. This was to have
been her occupation at one time; now it seemed that it
was her last link with Traken, and she was in danger of
losing it.
    Tegan said, ‘Why don’t I dig out Adric’s notes for
you?’
    ‘I really ought to do it myself.’
    ‘Come on, cheat a little. My old teacher always said
if you don’t know, ask.’
    ‘That sounds fair enough.’
    ‘I know, but then she’d whack us for not paying
attention in the first place. What do you say?’
    Nyssa shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t know where to
look.’
    But Tegan was already on her way to the door.
‘Adric kept files, didn’t he?’ she said. ‘Besides, it gives
me a chance to check up on you-know-who.’

Tegan was on her way to a surprise. Turlough was not,
as she was expecting, making a big heap of Adric’s
possessions in the middle of the floor of his new room;
he wasn’t even in his new room. As soon as Tegan had
left him, he’d switched off his smile like a lightbulb and
followed her to the door; he’d watched as she stood
out in the corridor and struggled for self-control, and
when she’d disappeared into her own room he slipped
out and tiptoed past. He was tense, ready to alter his
manner in a moment; the Doctor was out here,
somewhere. If they met, Turlough had a plausible
story ready. He wasn’t quite sure what it might be, but
extemporisation to suit the moment was his main
talent. It was why he’d been chosen.
    He’d annoyed Tegan. Well, so what – Tegan wasn’t
the one who mattered. As far as the Doctor was
concerned, Turlough’s act so far had been flawless.
Anything the two girls might say would look like
jealous sniping; it would help his case and weaken
theirs. He couldn’t lose.
    In spite of the uncertain nature of the tour that he’d
been given, he’d fixed the main points of the TARDIS
layout in his mind. It was much as he’d been led to
expect. He got to the console room without meeting
the Doctor, and outside the door he stopped and
listened for a few seconds. He heard nothing other
than the regular motion of the time rotor, and after a
moment he strolled in. Turlough, wide-eyed and innocent,
come to see if he can be of any use around the place... He let
the attitude drop as soon as he was sure that he was
alone.
    With the exception of an old beechwood coat-stand
that the Doctor had found useful in one of his more
flamboyant incarnations, the console room was empty
of furniture. Not that it would have been difficult to
single out the TARDIS’s main control desk; the
angular structure with its central rotor dominated the
chamber, the translucent core rising and falling as if in
time with the very breathing of the craft. Turlough
circled it, slowly. The technology was alien to him, the
layout of the controls unfamiliar. A wrong move now
could ruin all that he’d achieved. He’d come so far on
his own. Now it was time to get help.
   He reached deep into his pocket and brought out a
tiny cube. It looked harmless enough. If he’d been
searched he could have claimed that it was some kind
of memento or souvenir, a worthless crystal mined by a
great-uncle and passed down through the family for its
sentimental value. Turlough didn’t know whether he
had any great-uncles or not; if he did, the chances
were that none of them had been engaged in anything
quite so honest and hardworking as the mining trade.
The point was that the story sounded plausible. He set
the cube on a flat surface of the console, and then he
crouched to stare into it.
   The crystal structure of the cube had been altered to
key in with Turlough’s mindwave. Only he could
unlock it. After a few moments’ concentration, the
cube began to glow; Turlough waited for it to reach
peak brightness before he spoke.
   ‘I did as you said. They’ve accepted me.’ He kept his
voice low, knowing that it would still be possible to lose
the game even now that he was within reach – literally
– of its end. There was a pause before the voice of his
unseen controller, harsh and distorted, came through.
   ‘Acceptance is not enough. You must destroy.’
   ‘I’m in the console room. Tell me what I have to do.’
   A series of terse instructions followed. As Turlough
was following them through, lifting one of the access
panels beneath the console and identifying some of the
major components beneath to give himself some
orientation, Tegan was crossing the corridor some
distance away on an errand that she would never
complete.
    The interior of the console was unbelievably
complicated; without step-by-step guidance, Turlough
wouldn’t have had a chance. He rested his finger-tips
against the sides of the single element that the search
had led him to. It felt slightly loose in its mount; a
decent grip and a good pull would probably get it free
completely.
    ‘What will this do?’ he whispered.
    ‘You are touching the heart of the TARDIS. Rip it free!’
    But Turlough immediately withdrew his hand a
little. ‘And what happens to me?’
    ‘You will be saved. I am ready to lift you away. You’ll live
forever at my side.’
    Being saved and living forever sounded attractive
enough, but Turlough wasn’t so sure about the
prospect of eternity spent at the side of the owner of
the unseen voice. It was probably just the Black
Guardian’s way of saying he’d be grateful. Turlough
certainly hoped so. He suppressed a little shiver, and
re-established his grip on the component deep inside
the console. He pulled.
    The console reacted immediately. The time rotor
locked in place and started to flicker, the lights in the
console room dimmed momentarily, and alarm
buzzers on the control panels started to make urgent
noises. The component came half-way out, and then
jammed.
    Turlough pulled harder, but he couldn’t get it free.
Half a job would accomplish nothing; worse, it would
ruin his cover with the Doctor and destroy the Black
Guardian’s confidence in him. Desperately he tried
again; he lost his grip and some of the skin from a
knuckle as his hand slipped free.
   ‘It’s stuck,’ he told the contact cube. ‘It won’t move
any more.’ Turlough’s mind was racing; if he couldn’t
succeed, how could he patch up the situation and give
himself a second chance? Come on, he told himself,
think on your feet, it’s what you’re good at, but just
when he needed his talent most, it seemed to have
taken a walk. He pushed the component back into
place as best he could. It didn’t feel right – he’d
probably broken connections that would have to be re-
made by someone who knew what they were doing,
but for now he would have to be satisfied with making
everything look normal. He withdrew his hand and
started to replace the cover panels.
   The Black Guardian didn’t like it. ‘Continue!’ The
cube pulsed. ‘Continue!’
   ‘I can’t. There isn’t time.’
   ‘The breakup is beginning. You must...’
   Turlough snatched the cube from the console
surface and pocketed it. His controller was silenced,
the glow which signified contact dying as soon as he
picked it up. He raised himself from his knees and
looked around; the rotor was still locked and the
alarms were still sounding. He could run from the
console room, but if the others were approaching it
would be a big mistake; no amount of explanation
could remove the appearance of guilt even from the
Doctor’s mind. He could claim some innocent act of
incompetence, perhaps knocking a control without
meaning to, but that could be easily checked. At best,
he’d be barred from the console room and closely
watched whenever he came near to any area of
importance; there would be no second chances that
way.
   He’d have to stay where he was. He’d heard the
alarms and had come running to see if he could help.
That ought to do it.
   With an eye on the door, Turlough started to work
on the expression he’d be using when they caught up
with him.

Some problems, the Doctor believed, were best solved
through quiet reflection. Many of the decisions that
he’d had to make in the recent past had been made
under pressure – and they hadn’t, he had to admit, all
been for the best. He was, he thought, a social animal –
more so than any other Time Lord that he’d known,
although he’d always regarded himself as something of
a rebel – but there were times when he needed to be
alone. It was a basic requirement, human or otherwise,
and it was in recognition of this that he’d asked Tegan
to install the newcomer in Adric’s old room. But as far
as the Doctor was concerned, staying in one place for
too long made him restless; when there was a problem
to be tackled, like the resolution of the spiky
relationship between the two girls and Turlough, he
preferred to be out and roaming.
   There was also another advantage. It meant that
you couldn’t easily be found and distracted.
   But as the Doctor emerged on his wandering from
the half-lit tunnels where the inhibitor crystals were
stacked in their pressurised tanks, the urgent, half-
panicky note in Tegan’s calling told him that there was
more serious business to be attended to. His name
echoed faintly through the corridor complex, and he
started out towards its source.
Something was badly wrong. Tegan had always been
wary in strange situations, but she was no coward; and
as the Doctor reached her and she spun around to
meet him, it was obvious that she was scared.
   ‘All right, Tegan,’ the Doctor said, aiming to calm
her down in order to get as much information as he
could, ‘what’s the problem?’
   But Tegan could only shake her head. She was
breathless from running. ‘You’d better come,’ was all
she could say, and so the Doctor nodded and followed
as she led the way.
   Crisis had improved Tegan’s navigational ability
considerably. She made straight for the residential
corridor leading to the console room, and as they
rounded the final corner it became obvious to the
Doctor why he was needed. He stopped for a moment,
and then walked forward slowly.
   He’d never seen anything like it, not on the inside of
the TARDIS. One complete wall of the corridor was
starting to break away. The effect was difficult to
appreciate. The wall seemed to shimmer from floor to
ceiling, as if it wasn’t a solid surface at all but a cut-out
piece of a waterfall; it sparkled with drowned stars and
pulsed like the heartbeat of a sick machine. The
Doctor was tempted to touch it, but he knew better.
   ‘What is it?’ Tegan said.
   The Doctor was still watching, trying to make out
whether the breakup was stable or getting any worse.
It seemed to be deteriorating. ‘It’s the matrix,’ he told
her. ‘We’re in trouble.’
   ‘And Nyssa’s on the other side!’
   The Doctor stared at her for a moment, and then he
turned and headed for the console room at speed.
Tegan followed, only a couple of paces behind.
   Turlough was already there when they entered. He
seemed lost and confused by the console alarms, and
his relief when the Doctor arrived was obvious.
   The first thing the Doctor did was to look over the
telltales on the console. There was no clue to the cause
of the problem to be found there, but the rotor was
still jammed and flickering. ‘What was Nyssa working
on?’ he asked.
   Tegan was still by his side. ‘Nothing that would
cause this,’ she said emphatically.
   The Doctor didn’t press it further. Tegan didn’t
have a hard-science background, but her grasp of the
uses and consequences of technology was good.
Besides, Nyssa wasn’t likely to be dabbling in anything
that would have this kind of effect. She hadn’t told him
what she was proposing to do – mostly because she was
afraid of being given helpful advice when she really
thought she should manage alone – but her field was
the biological sciences, not high-energy physics.
   And now she was trapped in a section of the
TARDIS that was tearing itself apart.
   The Doctor started lifting panels to get to the
circuitry inside. The breakup that he’d witnessed was
something that simply shouldn’t happen, but it was
useless to insist on the point. Safety cut-outs were an
integral part of the console; whatever happened to the
TARDIS, it was designed to keep its internal structure
solid right up to the end.
   But tell that to the TARDIS. He started to trace the
lines in and out of the matrix generator, looking for
anything that could give him a clue about the cause of
the trouble. As long as Nyssa hadn’t actually been in
contact with the inside wall when the trouble started,
she was probably still all right; but unless he could
arrest and reverse the instability, it would creep
forward and surround her and then, finally, absorb
her. And then the rest of the TARDIS would start to
follow.
    There seemed to be nothing wrong, nothing at all.
Every line was intact and there were none of the
telltale signs of failure that would have to be there
before such a deterioration could take place. His hand
came to rest on the main cut-out stack; the stack came
free.
    He realised with horror that he was able to pull the
component nearly all of the way out; the TARDIS was
holding together almost entirely on its subsidiaries.
The Doctor looked up sharply. He said, ‘Has anybody
been lifting these panels?’
    Turlough looked immediately at Tegan. ‘Not that I
know of,’ he said. Tegan started to blush, even though
there was no reason why she should. She couldn’t help
it.
    ‘The cut-out’s been disturbed. The stabilising
control on the space-time element. It’s what holds the
TARDIS together.’
    Turlough came in for a closer look, and the Doctor
had him hold one of the contacts closed as he worked.
Tegan watched for a minute, but she couldn’t stay
silent; ‘What about Nyssa?’ she said.
    The Doctor reached across the console to operate
the switch that would uncover the large screen on the
console room wall. ‘I’m trying to re-focus the exterior
viewer on the inside of the TARDIS,’ he said, and as
he spoke something crackled inside the console and
threw out a rain of sparks. It made him hesitate, but
only for a moment. ‘Watch the screen,’ he said, ‘and
tell me what you see.’
   The screen cover rolled back, and the Doctor’s
attention returned to the depths of the console. Tegan
watched as the screen came alive, but there was no
recognisable picture. ‘Just a mess,’ she reported.
   The Doctor glanced up. ‘Dimensional instability,’ he
said, shaking his head. There was no way that he could
do a fast repair on the cut-out. It was a lengthy and
intricate job, and the danger to Nyssa – already
considerable – was increasing minute by minute.
   He managed to get the viewer focused on the
interior of the room. It was something he’d never tried
before. In theory it ought to work... but then he’d had
a theory about the stability of the matrix, as well. He
opened the channel that would carry two-way sound,
and said, ‘Nyssa? Nyssa, can you hear me?’
   ‘We’re getting a picture!’ Tegan said excitedly.
Turlough had moved back and was watching from
beside her.
   The image was torn about by interference, but at
least it was recognisable. Nyssa had backed up against
the table that carried her experimental gear. The
textbook that she’d been using was clutched tightly
under her arm. Although she was obviously scared, she
was still in control; even as the Doctor’s voice broke
through, she was clearly looking around for some
means of diverting the danger.
   This had been the Doctor’s main worry, the reason
why he had made a priority out of establishing
communication with Nyssa. If she’d assumed that the
distortion around her was the result of some inpouring
of energy, she might attempt to channel it away from
herself. But the lightning-rod theory wouldn’t just be
ineffective, it would be fatal; in a burning house, one
doesn’t feed the flames.
   ‘I hear you!’ she said. Her relief was twofold; until
now she’d had no way of knowing whether the rest of
the TARDIS and its occupants were still whole.
   ‘Stay well back, Nyssa,’ the Doctor warned, ‘there’s
nothing you can do.’
   The screen image broke up for’ a moment. When it
reformed, Nyssa was backing around the table. ‘Can’t I
conduct it away?’ she was saying.
   ‘No. I’m trying to contain it from this end.’ He
wouldn’t have much time. Already the breakup was
starting to show, creeping in from the edge of the
screen.
   They lost the image again. Turlough watched over
the Doctor’s shoulder as he worked to restore it, with
the result that only Tegan saw what happened next.
The picture returned but she was convinced that, for a
moment, it was the wrong picture; it showed a curving
interior wall that was the wrong shape and the wrong
colour, and there was something else... something that
sent her heart racing as if it had been spiked,
something that faded before she’d even had the chance
to be sure of what it was. The more familiar image
came through, but it showed even more interference
than before.
   ‘Something’s happening in there,’ she said.
   The Doctor looked up. ‘What?’
   ‘I don’t know. For a moment it didn’t look like a
part of the TARDIS.’
   The Doctor took a deep breath. ‘The outside
universe is breaking through. I’m losing it.’
   ‘What are you going to do?’
   When she’d asked the question, Tegan waited. The
Doctor didn’t reply immediately, and Tegan felt a
growing horror; for all the occasional vagueness of his
moods and his unpredictable behaviour, he was never
indecisive. Hesitation now could only mean one thing.
The Doctor was out of options.
   This was closer to the truth than the Doctor would
have cared to admit. The TARDIS was like a bubble of
space and time, the job of the matrix being to maintain
the bubble. The deterioration of the residential
corridor was only the beginning of what would
ultimately be a complete collapse.
   Orthodox methods of operation simply didn’t allow
for this kind of situation. There was nothing he could
do to save Nyssa, and within a short time the rest of
them could expect to share her fate.
   As long as he stuck to orthodox methods.
   ‘I’m going to make an emergency exit,’ he said with
renewed determination, and he opened another panel
along from the matrix circuitry.
   As the Doctor worked on, Tegan watched the
screen. Nyssa had gone about as far back as she could
get, and now the creeping instability was starting to
engulf her bench experiment; the glassware exploded
and forced her to cover her face as the shimmering
moved in, a net that was slowly drawing closed around
her. Tegan screwed her fists tight in frustration; there
wasn’t a thing she could do to help, and it was burning
her up. Turlough watched alongside her. His eyes
didn’t move from the Doctor; perhaps his anxiety was
all reserved for his own future.
   The Doctor popped up from behind the console.
‘Nyssa,’ he said, ‘look behind you!’
   Tegan saw Nyssa turn, and she wondered what the
Doctor meant. And then she saw; something was
happening to the back wall of the room. The normal
grey-and-white interior moulding of the TARDIS was
starting to fade away and to be replaced by a new
texture. Nyssa stood before a large door. It was metal
and monstrously solid, as if it had been built to
withstand tons of pressure, but the garbled
representation of the room’s interior could show them
no more detail than this. The door was starting to
swing open on its own. Nyssa took a step back, and
almost retreated into the field of instability.
   ‘Go through!’ the Doctor called to her. ‘It’s your
only chance!’
   ‘But where are you sending her?’ Tegan said,
bewildered.
   ‘I don’t know,’ the Doctor admitted. ‘But if she
stays, she’ll...’ Whatever he was going to say, it was
drowned by a roar of static. The screen turned
unbearably white, a window on Armageddon.
Dimensional instability had finally consumed the entire
section of the TARDIS; now they could only wait and
hope that it would die out rather than spread.
   They could also hope that Nyssa had moved quickly
enough.
   The screen cleared slowly – too slowly, it seemed at
first, but as the image re-formed they could make out
the fact that the room had just about managed to hold
its shape. The shimmering was spasmodic, much less
violent than before although no less deadly. There was
no sign of Nyssa at all.
   The unfamiliar door that was the TARDIS’s
temporary gateway to the outside stood open.
   Beyond it was darkness, and the contrast range of
the screen couldn’t handle the shadow detail.
Turlough said that he thought he’d seen something
move, and it occurred to the Doctor that Nyssa might
be trying to re-enter the room, ‘Keep moving!’ he
shouted to her, ‘It isn’t over yet!’ There was a blur in
the doorway that might have been anything, and then
the screen overloaded again for a few seconds.
   The Doctor disappeared back into the console. This
was his chance to disconnect the faulty component and
reassign its functions.
   ‘She’s still got a chance,’ the Doctor said.
   ‘Doesn’t that depend on where you sent her?’ asked
Tegan.
   Now that the alarms were no longer sounding, it
was possible to make out a regular pulsating hum that
was coming from the console. ‘We’ve locked onto some
kind of spacecraft,’ the Doctor said.
   But Tegan wasn’t listening. On the screen, the
strange door was beginning to close of its own accord.
The Doctor saw this and hurried out of the console
room. Tegan started to follow.
   ‘What’s the rush?’ Turlough said. ‘I thought we
were safe.’
   Tegan paused for a moment; she wanted to tell him
that he had the hide of an elephant. Instead she
flashed him a disapproving look, and set out after the
Doctor.
   The new door in the far wall had completely closed.
The Doctor went over to examine it, but for the
moment he didn’t touch. Turlough was pushing his
way in from the corridor as Tegan said, ‘How strong’s
the link?’
   ‘We’re well hooked,’ the Doctor said. The door
wasn’t really telling him anything; it was as much a
part of the TARDIS as of the craft they’d contacted.
On the other side, there would probably be an
opening where there had been no opening before. If
there was a crew to be met on the other side, he hoped
they’d be flexible in their thinking.
   Tegan said, ‘Hadn’t we better find out what we’ve
sent Nyssa into?’
   The Doctor shot her a look of impatient reproof, but
it was mild. He understood that she was as anxious as
he was for Nyssa’s safety. His first touch of the door
caused it to open automatically.
   It had a wide swing and, like Nyssa, they all had to
take a pace back. A metallic scent-cocktail of machine-
scrubbed air came wafting through, reminding Tegan
of aircraft runways and oil-stained tarmac and open
bay-doors, causing a stab of nostalgia that wasn’t
entirely unpleasant. There wasn’t much to see other
than dim lights and dark metal. She said, ‘Are we
going through?’ She was doing her best to sound
confident, but she wasn’t quite making it.
   ‘I’ll go through,’ the Doctor said. ‘You wait here.’
   He hesitated for just a moment, and then he went to
the threshold and stepped down. Tegan followed him
to the edge and looked through after him.
   What she saw was a section of a corridor complex
formed from staggered alcoves down one side with a
curving wall opposite that was probably a part of the
ship’s outer skin. The floor was a see-through metal
grating over a cable trap, and the lighting seemed to
be set at night-time levels. The Doctor was standing
and looking around. The only sounds were the drone
of buried motors and, laid faintly over this, an ethereal
windsong that was deceptively like far-off crying.
   ‘Well?’ Tegan said.
   ‘She’s gone.’
   ‘Which way?’
   The Doctor was about to say that there was no way
of knowing, but then he saw something a short
distance away that made him think again. He walked
over for a closer look. It was a biotechnical text from
the TARDIS library. It was scorched along one edge.
He set it against the wall and turned back to Tegan.
‘Stay back,’ he said. ‘She can’t have gone far.’ And then
he set off in the direction that the book had indicated.
   Tegan waited and listened when he’d gone from
sight, but after a few moments the sound of his
footsteps faded. They hadn’t left it too long; surely
Nyssa must have realised after a while that the danger
was over and she could stop running. Perhaps she’d
turned around and was heading back already. Tegan
was doing her best to be optimistic, but she couldn’t
get the image of the damaged book out of her mind.
   She moved back into the TARDIS. ‘Nyssa’s gone,’
she told Turlough.
   Nyssa’s abacus had been warped and scorched, but
otherwise it was recognisable. Turlough had picked it
up, and he was flicking the beads from side to side. He
said, ‘The Doctor will find her.’
   ‘Do you really care?’
   Turlough was smiling. ‘Do you know, Tegan,’ he
said, ‘it wouldn’t be possible for me to be the ogre you
seem to think I am.’
   ‘Really?’ Tegan said, and her disbelief was obvious.
   ‘Really. I mean, am I criticising you because you’d
rather stay here than help look for Nyssa?’
  That did it. She turned and went out through the
doorway.

Turlough watched for a moment in case Tegan
changed her mind, but he wasn’t expecting it. Of the
three, she was the easiest to manipulate. All he needed
to do was to annoy her a little, and she’d jump off
impulsively in whatever direction he wanted. He
reached into his pocket and brought out the contact
cube.
   Although he couldn’t say so, he blamed his
controller for his earlier failure. There had to be a
better way of bringing the Doctor down than by
striking at his technology; that, after all, was the
Doctor’s strength. The cube started to glow.
   ‘They’ve left me alone,’ Turlough said as soon as
contact was established. ‘What can I do?’
   ‘Nothing. Destroying the TARDIS is nothing if the Doctor
lives.’
   ‘He’s gone.’
   ‘Then follow and kill him. Find a way.’

Tegan hadn’t even gone out of sight of the door when
Turlough stepped down into the corridor. It wasn’t
going to be as simple as it had seemed at first; the
corridor branched and divided further down, and the
monotony of its appearance was disorienting. She
heard her name being called, and she turned back to
see what he wanted.
   He was walking towards her, and she saw with a
start of fear that the door was closing itself behind him.
No doubt it would open again when someone
approached it, and if there was any problem in
tracking it down there was always Nyssa’s book that
they could use as a marker, but Tegan still felt as if a
cell door had been slammed on her.
   But the big surprise was Turlough. He was looking
sheepish. He was embarrassed.
   ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘That must have looked really
selfish. I couldn’t let you come out here alone.’
   It was certainly a change of heart, but Tegan wasn’t
about to take any bets on how long it might last. When
she turned around to lead the way, there was that
familiar uncomfortable feeling between her shoulders
again.
   In fact, she’d been on the point of turning back. It
no longer seemed like a good idea to try to catch up
with the Doctor, and it was only the thought of
Turlough waiting and smirking at her lack of resolve
that had caused her to hesitate, but now that he was
with her and tagging along, she felt even less able to
give up the notion.
   So they followed the way laid down by the book, as
the Doctor had done, pressing deeper into the
unknown craft and walking in what they hoped were
his footsteps. They paused only once, when the steady
engine sounds from under the decks changed and
became less intense. By then they were already some
distance away from their starting point; there was no
way that they might have seen their link to the
TARDIS slowly fading out and leaving a blank section
of corridor wall.
   The Doctor was either staying well ahead of them or
else he’d turned off somewhere. Tegan and Turlough
moved as fast as they dared without making too much
noise, staying with the main line of the corridor; this
way they stood the least chance of getting lost, because
they’d be able to trace a straight line back to their
starting-point.
   They met nobody. The place even had an empty
feel about it, helped along by the low-level lights. For
Tegan it was like an engine yard at midnight, and the
only life was that which throbbed through the decks
under their feet. Even so, this didn’t make her any less
uneasy – lights of any kind, even at the lowest level,
must have been provided for someone to see by. There
were sliding doors at regular intervals down one side
of the main corridor, but none was open.
   Thanks for that, at least, Tegan thought as they
pressed on.
   ‘Was that her?’ Turlough said suddenly, and Tegan
realised that she’d been letting her attention wander.
   ‘What?’ she said, but Turlough signed for her to be
quiet.
   They listened for nearly a minute, and finally it
came again: what Tegan had assumed to be the far-off
moaning of air through the craft’s recirculation system
was augmented by another, more distinctive sound. It
was something very like a human cry.
   ‘Well?’ Turlough said.
   Tegan listened again, but the sound wasn’t
repeated. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘I suppose it could
have been...’
   But Turlough was already convinced. He even
seemed to be sure of the direction, down a tunnel that
intersected with the main corridor only a little way
ahead. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘we’ll catch up with the
Doctor on the way.’
   ‘Wait a minute! We could get lost!’
   ‘All taken care of,’ Turlough said, and he held
something out under the nearest of the dim lights.
Tegan took a closer look and saw that it was the
abacus.
    Turlough took hold of one of the crosswires and
sprung it loose from the frame. The beads ran from it
easily into his hand, and he crouched. ‘We’ll leave a
trail,’ he explained, and he took one of the beads and
set it in one of the cut-out squares of the floor grating.
It sat neatly, too small to roll out and too big to fall
through. ‘All we’ll have to do is follow the beads home.’
    Tegan couldn’t help being impressed. ‘Don’t miss a
trick, do you?’ she said.
    Damn it if Turlough didn’t come close to actually
blushing. ‘I look after myself,’ he said.
    Then both of them heard it, and this time there was
no mistaking what it was: a girl’s voice, far-off and
filled with anguish. Even if Turlough hadn’t already
come up with a sure method of finding their way back,
Tegan would probably have been unable to resist the
summons. It was clear evidence that Nyssa was alive
and hurt, and for Tegan there was no other
explanation.
    Leaving Turlough to take care of their trail, she was
already heading down the tunnel.

Whatever was making the sound, Nyssa could hear it
too.
  It came from somewhere overhead. She crouched in
the darkness below the metal stairway of the lower
deck with her eyes shut, waiting for it to stop. Some of
the dizziness was going but there was still the nausea
whenever she tried to move, and any sound was like
needles in her ears. She didn’t know where she was, or
how far she’d run; all that she could remember was the
advancing edge of the field of instability as it devoured
the room around her, and then the blinding pain and
the Doctor’s voice urging her to keep moving. Well,
she’d kept moving even though her vision had been
distorted worse than the worst of bad dreams and her
head had been pounding with a dull, regular beat.
She’d kept on until a measure of conscious control had
returned and she’d found herself half-way down the
stairs to the lower deck, clutching the rail and on the
point of pitching forward.
   It’ll pass, she’d told herself desperately, wanting
nothing more than to let herself down slowly and let
the bad feelings ebb away, She made it to the bottom of
the stairs, where her legs almost gave out. It was then
that she’d turned and seen the shadowed area
underneath, and she’d crawled into the darkness
much as a beaten fox might crawl into its hole.
   The wailing had started then. Please, someone
seemed to be calling, help me. Even though there were
no clear words, the message was plain. It was more
than Nyssa could bear. After a few moments she
covered her ears and did her best to sit it out.
   As she rested, she started to feel better. The
improvement was only relative, but at least the nausea
began to subside. After a while she took her hands
away from her ears and opened her eyes; even the
lights no longer hurt. In a minute or so, she promised
herself, she’d try to stand. As long as that far-off agony
didn’t start up again, Nyssa felt that she could face
whatever she’d got into.
   It was as she was standing that she heard a light
footfall on the stairs above.
   Nyssa froze, and waited. Whatever was coming
down towards her had hesitated, too, but after a
moment it came on. She could see its shadow through
the open construction of the stairway, and hear its
weight on the metal as it descended with stealth. She
held her breath.
   No details, just a dark shape. It came down to deck
level and turned to step out into the light. Even
though she’d been determined to stand quite still –
there was always the chance that it wouldn’t see her,
and pass on by – Nyssa couldn’t help taking half a pace
back into the greater safety of the darkness.
   The wall behind her was closer than she’d thought.
She came up against it with an almost inaudible
bump... it was almost nothing, but it was enough to be
heard.
   ‘Nyssa?’ the Doctor said. He was standing at the
bottom of the stairway, one hand on the rail, peering
uncertainly into the shadows.
   For a moment she was sufficiently overcome to hug
him, and he was sufficiently relieved to let her. He
said, ‘Where did you think you were going?’
   ‘I had no idea,’ Nyssa said, finally stepping back.
She could even stand without swaying, now. ‘I got all
scrambled up, and I didn’t know where I was going. I
was just about to start looking for the way back. Where
are we?’
   The Doctor looked around. ‘My guess is that it’s
some old passenger liner.’
   ‘But where are the passengers?’
   ‘I don’t know. Let’s get back.’

Tegan and Turlough had been going wrong for more
than half the distance that they’d covered, but they
had no way of knowing it. Tegan’s preoccupation had
been with speed – keep going and they’d soon
overtake the Doctor – and she stayed with the idea
much longer than was practical. It was because of this
that she’d missed the simple clue that had taken the
Doctor off down a side-branch some distance back and
eventually to the lower deck where Nyssa had been
hiding: the mark of Nyssa’s hand, lightly printed into
the dust and grime of the corridor wall as she’d
reached out to support herself in turning the corner.
    But now Tegan had a new preoccupation, which
was to track down the source of the sound that they’d
heard. In her own mind she was already convinced
that it was Nyssa, and a Nyssa in severe distress at that.
Every step closer that she took increased her
conviction. Turlough followed, marking their trail and
doing his best to keep up.
    Eventually, the inevitable happened. ‘We’re out of
beads,’ he called to Tegan.
    Tegan stopped and looked back. ‘But we’re almost
there,’ she said. ‘I’m sure of it.’
    Turlough shrugged, and showed her the empty
frame. Perhaps they could break it up and use the
pieces to extend the trail a little, but the difference that
it could make would be negligible.
    There wasn’t a choice. They’d seen enough of the
complex of curves and turns that made up the several
decks of the liner to know that, without some system of
marking the way, they’d have only the slimmest chance
of finding their way back. Tegan simply couldn’t
argue.
    ‘All right,’ she said reluctantly, ‘we’ll head back and
see if we can meet up with the Doctor. But leave the
trail so we can follow it again.’
    Now it was Turlough’s turn to lead. He left the
frame against one wall as a sign of the trail’s end, and
they went back to the first intersection of the route
back to the TARDIS. And here Turlough stopped.
   Tegan looked at him; he was scanning the floor,
confused, and she felt an immediate tremor of
apprehension somewhere deep inside. ‘What’s the
matter?’ she said.
   ‘It’s gone.’
   ‘What?’
   Turlough pointed. ‘The last of the beads. It was
there.’
   Tegan looked around; two other branch corridors
joined close by. ‘It must be one of the other sections,
then,’ she said, but even before she’d finished
Turlough was shaking his head. There was no way he
could expect to remember their entire route, but he
was sure of the very last turning they’d made.
   He wasn’t quite so sure about the next intersection,
but he set out to check with Tegan only a little way
behind. She was thinking that perhaps the bead had
dropped through the grating. They couldn’t all be a
regular size, and besides, there was no other
explanation – from all that they’d seen, they were
alone on a deserted ship. She and Turlough had come
far enough for her to be sure that, if there had been
anyone around, they’d at least have seen a sign of it.
And if there was nobody to disturb the beads, it
therefore didn’t make sense that the beads should be
disturbed...
   Turlough reached the corner, and stopped
abruptly. There was no more than a fraction of a
second’s reaction time in which he stood with
amazement on his face, and then he was hustling
Tegan over to the corridor wall and motioning
urgently for her to be quiet.
   She tried to pantomime a look of enquiry. He
stepped aside so that she could take a cautious peek
around the corner. His hand was on her arm, ready to
pull her back if he saw unexpected danger.
   There was some kind of robot, and it was picking up
their beads.
   It was small and battered, and no attempt had been
made to mimic a humanoid shape. It was an obvious
work-horse machine, a drone. From the front, its
bodyshell presented an octagonal profile with diode
lights and indicator panels on the forward section.
Above this, in lieu of a head, was a camera housing
raised on a curved gooseneck stalk. It looked like the
flattened head of a snake as it scanned from side to
side, searching across the flooring for anything else to
collect. Folded flat against the shell were anglepoise
arm mechanisms, each tipped with an evil-looking
blade or drill facing forward like weapons at the ready.
Two of these – both pincers – had swung out for use,
one to pick up the beads and the other to hold the
growing collection in a semi-transparent bag.
   Satisfied that there was nothing else to be found, the
drone straightened. It had probably been
programmed to keep the corridors clear of any
obstruction, large or small. If it had any defence
function in addition to simple maintenance, neither
Tegan nor Turlough wanted to find out the hard way.
They watched as it turned, centred itself on its gyros,
and moved off in the opposite direction. Some way
down the corridor it stopped, turned, and set off
again, and eventually disappeared out of sight.
   And it took all their chances with it, rattling together
in a semi-transparent bag.
Their names were Olvir and Kari, and they were
raiders. Their entry into the liner was no less
spectacular or unusual than that of the TARDIS party,
and it was carried off with considerably more noise
and damage.
   The sequence had been well rehearsed, in
simulation and on countless other real-life missions.
The limited spread of the thermic charges attached on
the outside instantly vapourised a ring of metal large
enough for them to pass through. A high wind blew
down the corridor section as air drained out through
the hole and the ventilator pumps went into overload
trying to replace it, and dust and debris whirled
around in the vortex before the gap as the two suited
figures entered.
   Kari was first because she had the experience. She
came through with her burner ready to fire and
expecting trouble, bracing herself against the tug of
the air-loss and scanning around in an even sweep.
Olvir was at her back in a moment, and as the strong
winds died they stood and kept both main approaches
covered.
   They were wearing lightweight assault gear, enough
for a few minutes’ resistance to vacuum without
slowing them down. The close-fitting suits and the
smooth pressure-helmets gave them an intimidating
appearance which, after the shock of the initial entry,
was usually enough to overcome any resistance.
   Assuming, that was, that any kind of resistance was
presented; the lack of resistance was the first thing on
the liner that didn’t coincide with what they’d been
expecting.
   The outward rush of air finally stopped. Both
raiders carried hand-radios clipped alongside the
spare power-packs on their belts, but assault
procedure required radio silence until primary
reconnaissance had been carried out. They restricted
themselves instead to the low-power helmet
communication that couldn’t be picked up outside a
circle of a few metres.
   ‘Check the air-seal,’ Kari said, and she kept watch in
both directions as Olvir went back to their entry point.
The hole was now plugged with what appeared to be
solidified foam. Olvir spread his fingers and pushed
against it, but his gloved hand barely made a dent. A
few minutes longer, and the foam would have set as
hard as the metal around it.
   He signalled to Kari that there was no problem. A
last check in both directions, and then with a jerk of
her burner she indicated for him to follow as she set
off down the corridor.
   They’d spent six of the last twelve hours in deep
hypnosis, memorising every turn of the route ahead as
it was shown in plans that the Chief had bought under
a false name for the servicing agents – not that this
particular model appeared to have seen a service bay
in more than its safe quota of runs, which was a second
worrying factor.
   The plan was to fight their way from the access
point to the bridge, where they were to take prisoners
and over-ride the airlock seals so that the main force of
the raiding party could enter. It was for this that
they’d fixed in their minds every scrap of cover, every
firing angle, every short-cut and potential source of a
hidden enemy. But this... this wasn’t right.
   The light was bad, and the corridor was grimy.
There were no guards and no defensive devices. Ever
suspicious, Kari wondered if it was some kind of
original approach designed to get their defences down
so they could be hit without expecting it; but as they
came into the last part of the run leading to the liner’s
control room and they’d still seen no signs of life, she
was starting to discount the theory.
    The doors were open. Olvir looked at her for
guidance, and she signalled him in. They came
through together, crouching low to reduce the target,
and turned their weapons onto an empty room.
    Kari straightened slowly. She no longer believed
that they might be facing some kind of odd defensive
strategy. What she sensed instead was a serious
miscalculation. It was basically a standard control
room, with tiers of crew positions facing a deep-set
panoramic window that probably showed a simulation
rather than a direct view of the distant stars. What
made it unusual was the ugly piece of equipment
under the window, obviously not a part of the original
specification but grafted on. Lines and cables appeared
to link this to the various crew controls, and other
cables ran out to disappear under the floor grating.
    Kari lowered her guard, and then, after only a
moment’s hesitation, she removed her pressure
helmet. Following her lead, Olvir did the same.
    ‘I don’t get it,’ she said.
    Olvir looked around. It was his first mission as a
member of an advance party, and everything was
equally new to him. ‘What’s wrong?’ he said, and as he
turned towards her he made his first real mistake by
bringing her into the firing area of his burner.
    Kari guided the muzzle away firmly. ‘The whole
ship’s rigged to run on automatics,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t
fit the briefing.’
    ‘Can’t we open the airlocks ourselves?’
   ‘That’s not the point.’ Kari walked around the
forward control desk for a closer look at the odd unit,
leaving Olvir to stand alone. He looked at the nearest
crew positon. The read-out screen and the picture
symbols on the input keys seemed to indicate a
navigation console. He reached out to press the
nearest of the keys, wondering what might happen.
   ‘Don’t touch anything,’ Kari said sharply. She didn’t
even seem to be looking his way. Olvir withdrew his
hand as if it had been slapped.
   Kari was still looking at what was probably the
automated command centre that was guiding and
operating the liner. Olvir waited out the silence for a
while, and finally said, ‘So... what next?’
   ‘There’s atmosphere, but no crew,’ Kari said,
thinking aloud. ‘Doors that won’t open. No cargo
space.’ She turned unexpectedly, and fixed Olvir with
a piercing stare. ‘What does that mean to you?’
   ‘No cargo?’ Olvir hazarded.
   Kari unclipped the radio from her belt. ‘And it’s
supposed to be a merchant ship,’ she said. ‘I’m going
to call the Chief.’
   She opened the frequency and gave the call sign,
and for a while they waited. There was no reason for
the Chief not to respond. It was a part of the plan to
establish contact when the bridge had been taken, but
the radio stayed silent. Kari tried again.
   ‘Bad signal?’ Olvir suggested when there was still no
reply, but Kari shook her head.
   ‘It would register. Maybe it’s the handset. You try.’
   Olvir unclipped his own handset and gave the call
sign, not really expecting to get any different result
from Kari. He didn’t.
   ‘The gear’s usually reliable,’ Kari said, but the
thought that followed it remained unspoken: I wish I
could say the same about the Chief...
   ‘Chief,’ she said suddenly, ‘I know you’re listening.
It’s not working out. We’re coming back.’
   ‘We can’t,’ Olvir pointed out, ‘if he doesn’t link with
the airlock.’ Kari looked at him then, and he saw the
apprehension in her eyes. If something scared Kari,
anybody else around who wasn’t worried was probably
seriously out of touch with the situation.
   ‘He’d better,’ she started to say, ‘or...’ She stopped
abruptly. Voices! And coming their way!
   For this, there was a procedure. Fear could wait,
pushed out of the way by training and routine. Quickly
she gave Olvir his orders.

No one knew more than the Doctor that they were in a
difficult situation – uninvited guests in an unknown
environment – but he was beginning to think that, with
speed of action and a fast withdrawal, they’d be able to
carry it off without too much danger. There was
nobody around, they hadn’t been challenged, and he
was confident that he could remember the way back to
the TARDIS where Tegan and Turlough would be
waiting, as ordered. Considering the way events could
have gone, they’d turned out well.
   At least, that’s what he’d thought until they came
upon the plugged hole in the liner’s outer skin.
Suddenly he was no longer so confident. ‘This is new,’
he said, crossing the corridor for a closer look.
   Nyssa didn’t understand. ‘New?’
   The Doctor placed his hand on the surface of the
hardened foam, carefully at first and then with
increased pressure. Solid as rock. It didn’t seem likely
that it could have formed in the short time since he’d
first passed this way. The only other explanation was
that he’d taken a wrong turn somewhere, and that
they were in a new and unfamiliar part of the ship. He
said to Nyssa, ‘Do you remember anything at all about
the way you came?’
   But Nyssa shook her head. ‘Nothing. I didn’t know
where I was going, or what I was doing. I just ran as
you told me to.’
   He touched the foam again. It wasn’t even warm.
Well, he told himself, when you’re offered a choice of
explanations you have to pick the simplest, unless
there’s some good reason not to. And right now,
there’s no good reason to suppose we’re anything
other than... well, not lost, just a little way off the
beam.
   ‘We’re on the right level, anyway,’ he said, doing his
best not to communicate any more anxiety to Nyssa.
She’d already been through enough. He pointed back
down the corridor and said, ‘It’ll be this way.’
   They started to move back. They were on the right
level and in the main corridor, so it was really only a
matter of time before they came across the TARDIS.
The slight curve of the passageway suggested that, if
they were to go on for long enough, they might
eventually return to their starting-point – in which case
they had nothing to worry about. All they had to do
was to keep going, and they’d cover the entire ship.
   But the corridor didn’t make a circuit. After a few
minutes of walking and not finding the TARDIS, they
came to the corridor’s end and an open door. They
hesitated long enough to make sure that the area
ahead wasn’t holding any nasty surprises for them, and
then they went through.
   ‘This has got to be the control room,’ the Doctor
explained, looking around. ‘With any luck, we can find
out where we are from here.’
   The Doctor was no stranger to other people’s
spacecraft, and he already had a reasonable idea of
what to expect. Societies with limited experience and
expertise in space travel tend to produce short-hop
craft of restricted capability and with control systems
that look as if they would take a lifetime of study to
master. More developed cultures tend towards a high
level of automation, with simplified controls and, as
often as not, some indication of their use that isn’t tied
to a single language or set of languages. The long-haul
liner obviously fell into the second category.
Attempting to get some sense out of the inboard
computers would be feasible, even if it was time
wasting and tedious, but what the Doctor had in mind
was something simpler. He wanted to check around
the walls for a floor plan of the liner.
   He didn’t get the chance. As he and Nyssa
approached the control desk, someone rose up from
behind it and levelled a weapon at them. He was
youngish, hardly more than a boy.
   The Doctor quickly steered Nyssa around, saying,
‘Sorry, didn’t know it was private.’ But their exit was
already blocked. The rifle-like burner in the girl’s
hand came down to cover them, and she looked fully
capable of using it.
   ‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘We’re in a mood for
company.’
   But somehow, the Doctor didn’t feel that he could
believe her.
‘This makes twice in one day,’ Turlough said as they
hesitated at yet another junction of corridors. Every
direction seemed the same. They hadn’t even
managed to find their way back to the main
thoroughfare, and now they were having to move
slowly because of the need to check for any robot
drones that might be heading their way.
   Tegan didn’t understand. ‘What do you mean?’
   ‘You lost your way in the TARDIS, as well.’
   ‘If it wasn’t for your bright idea with the beads, we’d
never have come this far.’
   ‘Arguing won’t get us out of here.’
   ‘Maybe,’ Tegan said, ‘but it helps my temper.’ The
annoying part about it was that he was right.
   There were no more drones, so they took a guess
and moved on. They’d seen one more of the robots,
with a different coloured bodyshell and a different set
of tools. It had crossed their path some way ahead and
had paid them no attention. This wasn’t really enough
to make them feel safe – it only meant that, at the time,
whatever they’d been doing hadn’t raised any
objection from its programming. Let them wander into
some unmarked but proscribed area, and the reaction
might be different.
   The plaintive calling that had lured them down had
stopped shortly after they’d tried to turn back. Tegan
was doing her best not to think about it. But she could
hardly put it from her mind when it started again –
not when it was coming from the other side of a door
that was only a few metres behind them.
   It came through as a distinct Help me. Tegan was
transformed; she rushed to the door and pressed her
head against it to listen. ‘That’s her,’ she said, ‘that’s
Nyssa!’
   Turlough wasn’t so sure. Even though they hadn’t
known where they were heading, they’d come a long
way from their turn-around point, a place where
they’d supposedly been getting near to the source.
‘That could have been anybody,’ he said, but Tegan
was already convinced.
   ‘Nyssa?’ she said loudly, doing her best to make
herself heard through the thickness of the door.
‘Nyssa, are you there?’
   A faint but unmistakable response came through.
Tegan looked around at Turlough in triumph, as if
she’d had absolute confirmation.
   ‘It’s the Doctor we have to find,’ he was starting to
say, but Tegan wasn’t even listening.
   ‘See?’ she said. ‘We’ve got to get the door open!’

Whilst Tegan was trying to find a way to open a sliding
door that has no handle and no visible controls on the
outside, the Doctor and Nyssa were sitting in two of
the crew chairs in the control room of the liner.
Weapons covered them from both sides, and the
raiders with the weapons obviously knew how to use
them.
     It hadn’t taken long for the Doctor to add an empty
liner to a foam-plugged hole and work out how the
newcomers came to be here. What he couldn’t answer
quite so easily was the question why? In the meantime,
he could see no advantage either in lying or in
concealing his own motives for being on the liner.
     ‘You’ve got a ship?’ Kari said at the first mention of
the TARDIS. ‘Where is it?’
     ‘That’s the problem,’ the Doctor said. ‘We can’t find
it.’
     ‘Is it armed?’
   The Doctor and Nyssa both spoke together. ‘No,’
they said, and then exchanged a glance. They wanted
to present themselves neither as potential enemies nor
as allies to be pressed into service. The Doctor added,
‘We’re not looking for trouble, we’re just passing
through.’
   Kari turned her weapon slightly and flicked a switch
on its side. The movement seemed to be as much for
their benefit as for any practical purpose. The burner
emitted a high-pitched whine, and a red indicator light
blinked alongside the switch. She flicked it off, and the
whine stopped.
   ‘I’m not convinced,’ she said.
   ‘This is all very one-sided,’ the Doctor objected.
   ‘I know.’
   Olvir’s attention, meanwhile, had drifted from them
and was now directed more towards the panoramic
window at the forward end of the bridge. ‘Kari,’ he
said, and the undertone of warning caused her to
glance his way. It was then that she saw the moving
shadows around one of the ports, the first indication of
an approaching light-source somewhere outside.
   ‘Watch them,’ she said to Olvir, and she crossed
over to the window to take a look.
   The Doctor had already weighed the possibility of
making a run for it, and dismissed the idea. Olvir
might be number two in the raider hierarchy, but he
still knew what he was doing. Even if they made it out
into the corridor, they’d be perfect targets. From his
seat by what was probably the liner’s manual helm, the
Doctor watched as Kari stared out at something they
couldn’t see. She seemed to be getting paler and paler,
all of her colour bleaching away until she had to turn
aside from the brightness or be blinded. The
windowglass reacted a moment later, darkening in
response to the photon overload as a deep rumble
made itself felt all the way through the control room.
   Olvir couldn’t help it. He had to see. He continued
to keep the Doctor and Nyssa within his firing arc as
he backed over to the window but he switched his
attention away from them for a moment. Nyssa looked
at the Doctor, but the Doctor shook his head.
   ‘That’s our ship!’ Olvir said in disbelief.
   Kari had unclipped her radio from her belt and was
making a hasty attempt to communicate. ‘Chief,’ she
said, ‘this is the advance party. What’s happening?’
   But Olvir had already guessed. It was the obvious
sequel to the lack of follow-up and the long radio
silence – a silence which even now wasn’t to be broken.
‘He’s running out on us!’ he said.
   ‘He can’t!’ Kari tried again, but her only reply was a
deafening wash of static as the raid ship’s engines
burned their way past. She switched off. The quiet of
deep space was abruptly back with them, the only
background sounds those of the liner’s engines
running themselves up in preparation for some
automated manoeuvre.
   The Doctor leaned fractionally towards Nyssa. She
looked at him, eager to hear the plan of action that
would get them out of this mess.
   ‘Any ideas?’ he said.

‘It’s the motors,’ Turlough said as he stepped back
from the door, and he listened for a moment to be
certain. ‘Something’s happening.’
    Tegan didn’t even seem to hear. They’d found that,
by pressing hard and putting all of their strength into
it, they could make the door give just a little. It wasn’t
enough to be of any real use, but it looked like
progress. She said, ‘Hold on, Nyssa, we’re getting you
out.’
   Turlough had his own reasons for being helpful. His
sights were set, not on Nyssa, but on the Doctor.
Helping Tegan was only a way of keeping his cover
intact whilst he waited for the opportunity that the
Black Guardian had assured him would come. He said,
‘We need a crowbar. Something to lever the door
open.’
   ‘Well, find one!’
   That’s easy to say, he thought, but where? Tegan was
ignoring him, pressing all around the frame as she
searched for weak spots. There might be an easier way
out. What if he presented himself to the Doctor as the
only survivor? Tegan had followed him out and he,
Turlough, had tried to dissuade her. It had been no
use. He’d called to her and after a while he’d followed
her. An open door and a deep airshaft, with maybe a
conclusive piece of evidence like a scrap of material
caught on the edge... he knew he could make it sound
convincing. He could strike now, while all of Tegan’s
attention was on the door.
   Tegan stopped. She turned as if he’d touched her
and she stared at him. She knows, he thought, somehow
she senses it. ‘I’m on my way,’ he said, backing off. She
watched him all the way to the corner.
   The engine sounds were much louder here,
drumming their way up through the open flooring.
He didn’t think that there was much chance of finding
anything that resembled a crowbar, but he had to
make a show. From now on he would have to try twice
as hard to convince Tegan that he was above board, or
she’d be watching him so closely that he’d never have
an opportunity to get near to the Doctor.
   Assuming that he needed one. The more Turlough
thought about it, the more it seemed that his best
opportunity had already been handed to him. His
controller had been so quick to order him outside that
he hadn’t waited to hear the details of the situation.
Take the TARDIS away and the Doctor would be
helpless, marooned, as good as dead... and it could be
carried off without personal risk to Turlough.
   This would be an ideal time to set the plan in
motion. It was as he was reaching into his pocket for
the contact cube that Turlough saw Nyssa’s book.
   It was against the wall, just as the Doctor had left it -
except then it had been within a few metres of the link
to the TARDIS. The door itself was gone. In its place
was metal plating that showed no sign of ever having
been disturbed.
   ‘Turlough!’ Tegan called from around the corner.
‘It’s moving!’
   ‘I’m on my way,’ he replied, but he made no move
to return. Instead he approached the book. It might
have been reasonable to suppose that a passing drone
might clear it away as so much litter, but that it should
be moved to some other location and placed in exactly
the same way would be too bizarre to be expected.
   There was only one conclusion: this was the place,
but the link to the TARDIS had faded away.
   ‘I could use some help!’ Tegan called, and now
there was an edge of real annoyance in her voice.
   ‘I’m coming,’ Turlough said, with as much intention
of carrying this out as before. The throb of the liner’s
motors had increased so much that it was now shaking
the corridor floor. There was also something rather
more interesting that was starting to happen.
   The TARDIS was coming back.
   First came the shadows, then the details. The
massive door sketched itself in quickly, and then this
was followed by a slower filling-out. Turlough was
about to call to Tegan, but then he checked himself
and smiled. Wasn’t this exactly what he’d wanted? He
took a step forward, feeling the floor shiver as the
liner’s engines strained and altered their pitch.
   And then, the door began to die away. It was a ghost
again before it had even managed to become solid, and
then it was gone completely.
   He’d been so close! The door had been starting to
open for him! Just a couple more seconds and he’d
have been inside and on his way. He made a fist and
slammed it against the wall in frustration – there was
no give, and he almost damaged himself.
   So now it was back to the original plan, ingratiate
and subvert. It would be a lot more difficult, but now
he didn’t have any choice. Tegan had been silent for a
while. She was probably angry at him, and his first job
would be to get her confidence back. He looked at his
skinned knuckles, and they gave him an idea.
   He came back around the corner holding his wrist
and making a good show of somebody who’s hurt but
is trying to ignore the pain. What he saw made him
forget the strategy.
   Whatever Tegan had managed to release, it wasn’t
Nyssa – and it was pinning her to the door.
   A hand wrapped in bandages was over her mouth,
and another had a hold on her wrist. The door had
been pushed back no more than a few inches, but
whatever was behind was now trying to open it
further. Turlough stood with an expression of dazed
wonder at the scene, but then Tegan managed to
shake away the bent claw that covered her face for long
enough to shout, ‘Don’t just watch!’
    He dived forward, and grabbed the arm before it
could get another grip. It quickly withdrew, leaving
him with a momentary but unforgettable impression of
scales and dirty linen. Tegan tried to pull herself away
from the claw that was hooked around her wrist, and
Turlough beat at it until it let go. It snapped back as if
on a spring, and the door slammed shut.
    There were scrabbling sounds for a while, but they
died down. After a few moments of silence, the wailing
started again; it no longer sounded anything like
Nyssa. It didn’t even sound like anything human.
    ‘You took your time,’ Tegan said resentfully. She
was rubbing at her arm, as if she’d never be able to get
it clean.
    ‘I found the doorway to the TARDIS.’
    The transformation of Tegan’s mood was
immediate. ‘Where?’
    ‘It’s gone again.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘The bridge is only temporary. We’re in worse
trouble than we thought.’
    Tegan eyed the sliding panel, with the horror-show
behind it. How many similar doors had they passed in
their wandering through the liner? She said, ‘You’re
saying that we can’t go back.’
    Turlough considered for a moment. ‘It seems that
way,’ he said. ‘So I think the most important thing for
us to do now is to find the Doctor, don’t you?’
    Find the Doctor. Then wait for the right moment.
‘But why run out?’ Olvir said for the second time. It
went against everything he’d been taught.
   Kari had been given the opportunity to see rather
more of the Chief’s tactics in the field. ‘We won’t be the
first party he’s dumped,’ she said. ‘He’s found out
something he didn’t know before, and suddenly we’re
expendable.’
   Olvir looked towards the Doctor and Nyssa. His
burner was still trained in their direction, and he’d
made them both spread their hands on the console
before them so he’d have warning of any attempts to
move. The Doctor seemed to be taking an interest in
the console read-outs. Olvir said, ‘And what about
them? Where do they fit in?’
   Kari dismissed them with a glance. ‘They’re
harmless,’ she said. ‘But we can use their ship.’
   Nyssa was keeping her voice almost to a whisper, so
that their captors wouldn’t hear. ‘Where do you think
they fit in?’ she said.
   ‘Raiders, by the sound of it,’ he said. ‘You know,
kind of high-technology pirates. They’ll be a small
advance party sent in to open the airlocks for the main
forces.’
   ‘But raiding what?’
   Nyssa was right. There seemed to be nothing about
the liner that was worth a raider’s attention. Olvir and
Kari were obviously as surprised by this as anyone.
The Doctor said, ‘Perhaps they were misinformed.’
   The two of them were now on their way over. Kari
hefted her burner, just in case it needed bringing to
the Doctor’s attention again, and said, ‘You’re taking
us away from here.’
   The Doctor’s reply was fast and firm. ‘Not at the
point of a gun.’
  ‘I’m not giving you a choice.’
  ‘And I’m not giving you a lift.’
  Kari took a step closer. ‘I don’t have to kill you. I
could hurt one of you very badly.’
  ‘And blow the last chance you’ve got.’ The Doctor
indicated the range of information displays before
him. ‘You don’t have to be a genius to understand
what these things are saying, just listen to the engines.
Those are alignment manoeuvres. We’re docking with
something.’
  Olvir came to stand behind Kari’s shoulder. ‘It
could be what scared the Chief away,’ he said.
  The Doctor pressed his opportunity. ‘We’ll take
you,’ he said. ‘But it’s a truce or nothing.’
  Olvir was looking at Kari. After a moment, she
nodded. They turned their weapons aside.

From now on, the Doctor believed, it ought to be easy.
He told himself afterwards that he should have known
better.
   He was sure that his earlier ideas on how to find the
way home had been correct. The discovery of the
raiders’ entry point had made him think otherwise,
but now it should simply be a case of back-tracking to
some recognisable stage of the journey, and then
proceeding as before. Kari seemed wary about this, but
Nyssa reassured her. ‘The Doctor knows what he’s
doing,’ she said, and then she turned away quickly.
She didn’t want any of her own doubts to show – after
all, he had just rescued her, but she knew of old that
the Doctor tended to sail into the darkest situations
with a seamless display of confidence.
   The first recognisable stage of the journey turned
out to be the stairs to the lower deck where he’d found
Nyssa – at least, they looked like the stairs, even
though to the others they seemed no different to any
of three that they’d already passed.
   ‘We can’t go wrong from here,’ the Doctor said after
he’d descended a couple of steps to check around, and
it was as he turned back to rejoin the others that the
lights came on.
   Olvir and Kari immediately reached for their
weapons. The night-time levels of both decks were
turning into an artificial dawn, and the change had
come without any warning. The effect was almost
painful to their darkness-tuned eyes, and by some
strange inversion the liner had suddenly become more
threatening. The ship no longer slept.
   There was more. It spoke to them.
   Concealed speakers down the length of every
corridor crackled and came alive. The voice that
boomed around them was slurred and inhuman.
   ‘All decks stand by,’ it echoed. Olvir and Kari were
scanning around in every direction, tensed for any
attack. ‘All decks stand by. This is a special announcement
from Terminus Incorporated. Primary docking alignment
procedures are now complete. Passengers with mobility should
prepare to disembark...’

Some distance away and heading in completely the
wrong direction, Tegan and Turlough stopped to
listen in awe.
    ‘Anyone failing to disembark will be removed. Sterilisation
procedures will follow. Chances of surviving the sterilisation
procedures are low.’
    They looked at one another. It sounded grim, and
they’d already thought that matters were as bad as
they could get, but still there was more.
   Tegan put her hand on Turlough’s arm. He didn’t
need her to direct his attention, because he could see
for himself: all around them, doors were beginning to
slide.
   They’d already seen as much as they ever wanted to
see of what lay behind. Their shared urge was to run...
but where? There were doors in every corridor, and
corridors on every deck, and no way of knowing for
sure how many decks there were. As they backed away
the entire liner seemed to have become a single, living
entity, and the blistering heat of its attention was being
brought around to bear on them.

Kari didn’t like it any better. If she was going to have
an enemy, she also wanted a target. ‘Who is that?’ she
said.
   ‘Recorded      message,’    the    Doctor    guessed.
‘Automated, like everything else.’
   The automated voice ground on. ‘There is no return.
This is your Terminus.’
   In case anybody had missed it, an electronic repeat
picked up the message. Terminus, Terminus, it droned,
over and over.
   It meant nothing to the Doctor, and it didn’t seem
to mean anything to Nyssa. It certainly didn’t mean
anything to Kari... but Olvir’s jaw dropped in sudden
understanding.
   Terminus, the repeat said as Olvir shifted his uneasy
grip on his burner and took a couple of steps back.
Terminus, as he turned away. Terminus, as he broke into
a panicky, desperate run back in the direction of the
liner control room.
   ‘Olvir!’ Kali shouted, but despite the edge of
command in her voice he didn’t stop.
    ‘I think I know what’s happening here!’ he called
back over his shoulder, and a moment later he was out
of sight.
    The Doctor looked at the others. ‘That’s knowledge
that ought to be shared,’ he said, and without any need
for discussion the group set off after him.
    They’d barely covered half the distance, when the
doors around them began to open.
    The Doctor saw this first, and he halted the party.
There was no way of knowing what lay ahead, but he
had a feeling that they were about to find out.
    The electronic voice droned on. After a few
moments, the first of the figures emerged. Then came
another. Then came a hundred.
    They flooded out, shuffling and swaying and filling
the corridor like a sudden tide. They were bent and
lame and mostly in rags, and most of the rags were
filthy. Many faces were covered, some by muslin hoods
through which only a dim shadow of features could be
seen. Others were bareheaded, with bone-white skin
that contrasted with dark eyes and lips. They moved in
silence, pressing and crowding and jostling towards
the three, some groping blindly and some leaning on
those next to them – an army of the living dead.
    The Doctor held out his arms to motion the others
back. Nobody argued, but when he looked over his
shoulder he could see that the corridor behind them
offered no chance of passage. It was filled wall to wall
with the half-decayed and the dying, a mighty sea of
unspeaking disease that was even now on the move to
close in around them. There was nowhere to go,
nowhere to run, and as they pressed into one of the
recesses formed by the shape of the corridor they knew
that it was no cover at all.
   And over the heads of this army of the lost came
Olvir’s voice, echoing through the ship. ‘Well,’ he was
shouting, ‘now we know, don’t we?’
   In the doorway to the control room, he gripped the
frame and bellowed as loudly as he could. Behind him
the automated systems of the liner ticked on without
noticing. ‘We know what scared the Chief away,’ he
yelled, and then he looked over his shoulder. The vista
that had been rising across the panoramic window as
the liner coasted in for its final docking now filled it
from side to side. ‘We’re at the Terminus, where all
the Lazars come to die.’ Spotlights from the liner
played over the passing sides of the Terminus ship,
huge, dark and forbidding. Slowly, through one of the
beams passed an immense rendering of a screaming
skull, one of the most potent warnings to be found in
any sector.
   The meaning behind his next words came over
clearly to the others. His voice was shot through with
the despair of the already defeated.
   ‘We’re on a leper ship!’

The Doctor could think of plenty of news that he’d
rather receive. He wasn’t familiar with any disease that
went by the name used by Olvir, but the evidence for
its existence was all around them and pressing closer.
    ‘Don’t let them touch you,’ he told Nyssa. One of
the figures was getting dangerously near.
    Nyssa pulled back as far as she could, almost
flattening herself into the angle formed by the corridor
walls. ‘I wasn’t thinking of it,’ she said.
    The Doctor’s attention returned to the Lazars. They
seemed to be shuffling along blindly and without
volition, obeying some deeply implanted impulse that
had perhaps been drummed into them at an earlier
time: when the voice speaks, everybody out. If the three of
them could simply keep out of the way, the crowd
might even pass them by without any contact.
   Somehow, he couldn’t feel reassured. They’d been
walking around, touching, breathing the air. To hope
that they’d managed to avoid infection would be like
standing in the rain and hoping to walk home dry.
   ‘Excuse me,’ Kari said, business-like. The Doctor
began to move aside for her without thinking, but then
he saw her raise the burner and level it at the nearest
Lazars.
   ‘Nyssa!’ he said quickly, and Nyssa got the message
right away. Standing directly alongside Kari, she
clasped her hands together and drove an elbow into
the raider’s ribs. Kari folded instantly, her eyes wide
with surprise as she gasped for breath, and the Doctor
was able to reach for the burner and take it away
without any resistance.
   ‘It’s all right,’ he told them. ‘Just hold back here,
and we’ll be safe. Most of them can’t even see us.’
   The Lazars shuffled on by, intent on some far-off
goal that no observer could understand. As soon as
Kari could breathe again, she said with indignation,
‘You took my gun away!’
   The Doctor glanced down at the burner as if he’d
forgotten it. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, and offered it back. Kari
took the weapon, but it was almost as if having it taken
away from her so easily had shaken some of the magic
out of it. ‘But we made a deal,’ she protested.
   ‘Mass slaughter wasn’t a part of it.’
   ‘Sometimes it’s the only way.’
   ‘But not this time. Look at them.’
   So Kari looked. The crowd was thinning out now as
the last of them went by. One was tottering blindly and
holding onto the rags of the Lazar in front. A few
stragglers, and then the three were able to step back
into the main part of the corridor.
   Nyssa said, ‘What about Olvir?’
   ‘He ran,’ Kari said with unexpected harshness. ‘We
leave him.’
   ‘I don’t think so,’ the Doctor said. ‘He’s got a lot to
tell us.’ He moved over to check the nearest of the
rooms that lay beyond the now-open doors. It was
empty and almost featureless, a few low benches
around the walls and a mechanised water-dispenser in
the middle for those who could use it. There was
nothing for comfort and no sign of any emergency
crash-protection, a minimum of expense for a cargo
that couldn’t complain. The room wasn’t too clean,
either.
   He stepped out into the corridor and started to lead
the way back towards the control room and Olvir. An
embarrassed-looking Kari was the last to follow.

Tegan and Turlough were watching the last of the
Lazars go past from an unusual hiding-place. After
Tegan’s experience at the sliding door there had been
no question of them stepping aside and hoping that
confrontation would pass them by, but as they’d tried
to run they’d realised that it was hopeless. There was
no escape at all. Every way they turned, they saw
Lazars.
   It was then that Turlough had started to stamp
around on the metal floor. Tegan looked at him as if
he’d lost his mind, but when he explained what he was
doing she started to do the same.
   The floor grating was laid in sections. It was Tegan
who found what they needed, a loose section that
rocked slightly when weight was transferred from one
corner to another, and when the discovery was made
they both knelt and, locking their fingers through the
cross-hatched gaps in the metal, tried to heave it up
from its supporting pillars.
   Even though it wasn’t fixed, it was heavy. At first it
seemed hopeless but then, as they could hear the
Lazars only metres away around the next corner, they
managed to raise the grating a few inches. They were
so surprised at their own success that they nearly let it
fall, but desperation gave them strength. The section
hinged up, and Turlough held it clear as Tegan
scrambled under.
   The cable-trap underneath was a shallow
passageway filled with dust and grime. Tegan
crouched low as Turlough followed her in and let the
overhead panel drop into place. They were in relative
darkness and surrounded by conduit and piping, but
they could still see up into the corridor through the
floor. It was a strange perspective, and one that made
them feel less than safe.
   The Lazars came, blotting out the light like slow-
moving thunderclouds. Their rag-bound feet made a
muffled pounding on the metal, and the darkness that
they brought made Tegan aware of some dim sources
of light down there in the channel with them – a
phosphorescent build up around a corroded joint in
some piping, or a neon glow escaping from behind
some badly fitted safety cover.
   It seemed to take forever. In amongst the Lazars
was the occasional drone, supporting one who couldn’t
walk or leading one who couldn’t see. The weight of
the robots made the flooring bend and creak, and
Tegan and Turlough couldn’t help shrinking back
slightly whenever one of them went over.
   But eventually, it was over. The last of them
disappeared, and there was silence. Even so, the two of
them waited for a while, listening to the quiet in order
to be sure. They heard a couple of clangs and bumps,
but they were a long way off.
   ‘Time to get out of here,’ Tegan said and Turlough,
having no reason to disagree, straightened up as much
as he was able and put his shoulders against the
grating to lift it.
   This part ought to be so much easier, Tegan was
thinking, because they were on the side where lever-
age could now work in their favour. But Turlough
strained and pushed, and nothing happened.
   ‘It’s stuck,’ he gasped finally.
   ‘It can’t be,’ Tegan said, suppressing her panic. This
was like something from the worst dream she could
ever have. She added her own efforts and the two of
them pushed together, and still the section wouldn’t
move. They both fell back, breathless.
   ‘We’ll have to find another way out,’ Tegan said.
Turlough looked at the shadows around them.
‘Where?’
   ‘We’ll have to look, won’t we?’
   They took a moment longer to recover, and then
Tegan crawled around in an attempt to find them a
way through. The cable trap went wherever the
corridor went, so in theory they ought to be able to
follow it and keep trying the floor panels until they
found another that they could raise – assuming that
they hadn’t all been stamped down as firmly as the one
overhead. That was the theory, but the practice wasn’t
so straightforward. Pipes and angles and intruding
shafts blocked the way, and they were going to have to
do a lot of wriggling and squeezing.
   As Tegan turned around, she nudged a piece of
plating. It wasn’t even fixed in place, and as it fell loose
a greenish light came spilling from behind it. Tegan
scrambled back immediately.
   ‘It isn’t even decently shielded!’ she said. ‘This place
is a deathtrap!’
   They stayed well away from the leakage, and
managed to push some loose wiring aside to make a
gap. The wire hadn’t been disturbed in so long that
the dust lay like a carpet over it. They came through
into an area where they could at least move more
freely, but every section they tried to lift was as firm as
the last. The channel got narrower and narrower, and
it ended in a blank metal wall.
   ‘Oh, no,’ Tegan said.
   Turlough peered past her. ‘Is there any way
through?’
   ‘Not a chance.’ She knocked twice on the metal. It
was like the side of a tank.
   ‘Then we’ll have to go back.’
   Tegan wasn’t happy at the idea, but it seemed that
they didn’t have any choice. She looked around into
the darkness.
   ‘Wait a minute,’ she said, and stretched her hand
out to the side. It met nothing.
   She pulled herself over for a look. What she’d taken
to be a solid side-wall was actually the access to a
vertical tunnel. Her head emerged into it and she
could see that it was wide enough to take them. There
were climbing-rungs all the way down, dusty but firm –
as she found when she reached out and tested her
weight on the nearest.
  Tegan looked over her shoulder. ‘We’re still in
business!’ she said. Her voice echoed down the shaft. It
almost seemed to be mocking her.

‘He isn’t here,’ Nyssa said.
   So much was obvious. The newly raised lighting
levels showed an empty control room, from the
panoramic window facing forward to the circuit racks
at the back. Kari said, ‘I told you, we leave him.’
   The Doctor didn’t answer immediately. He went
over to the window and looked out at the part of the
Terminus that was visible from their restricted angle of
view. Not much showed beyond the liner’s
searchlights, but it seemed huge; he could see an edge
of stars in only one direction.
   He said, ‘Leave him? That’s a hard set of rules to
live by.’
   But Kari was unrepentant. ‘He knows it.’
   The Doctor studied the Terminus for a moment
longer, and then he turned away from the window. It
hadn’t told him much, but he’d noted that the
screaming skull painted across the plates seemed to be
a fairly recent addition. He said, ‘We didn’t have any
choice about coming here. What about you?’
   Kari shrugged. ‘It was a big liner from a rich sector.
It looked like a perfect target.’ She went on to explain
how the Chief had fixed on the liner and tracked it for
some time, observing a number of pick-ups from
worlds noted for their wealth and influence. When a
covert research team had been sent out to check into
the liner’s background, they’d found exactly nothing.
Officially, the liner didn’t exist. The attraction of a
secret cargo was irresistible to the Chief, and he’d
prepared his plans and stayed on its trail until it had
reached this unpatrolled area.
   Well, now they’d found their secret cargo. The liner
didn’t look such a prize from the inside.
   The Doctor said, ‘And what about the Terminus?’
   ‘I don’t know. Ask Olvir, he seemed to have all the
information.’
   It was Nyssa who suggested that they should try to
tap the liner’s computer, and the Doctor agreed. All of
the crew points had terminal screens and a limited
array of inputs, but one place on the console seemed
better served than any of the others. The Doctor
guessed that it was probably the navigation desk.
   The keyboard was, as he’d expected, unfamiliar, but
it appeared to have been set up on principles that were
mathematically rather than linguistically based.
Alongside this was a row of slots, and by these a stack
of rectangular plastic blocks. The blocks were loose,
and they seemed to fit into the receiving spaces in any
orientation.
   Kari was silent at first, but the Doctor didn’t seem to
mind conversation. He could talk and work at the
same time, neither distracting him from the other, so
she leaned on the console and told him what she knew
about Olvir. It wasn’t much. This had been their first
teaming... in fact, it had been Olvir’s first mission. The
rumours were that he was from a wealthy family that
had gone broke, and that Olvir had saved them from
ruin by contracting himself to the Chief, securing them
an initial sum as an advance against his bonuses.
   ‘So the Chief paid Olvir’s family for the contract and
put him straight into training,’ she concluded. ‘His
first time out, and he messes it up.’
   The Doctor had so far managed to get the liner’s
computer to recognise that someone was trying to
communicate with it, but not much more. He said,
‘And now you want to dump him.’
   ‘That’s how it goes.’
   ‘You didn’t say that when your “Chief” did it to
you.’
   Kari had no ready reply. Instead, she changed the
subject. She indicated the screen where random
graphs and patterns were rolling through, and said,
‘Do you know what you’re doing?’
   ‘No.’ The Doctor removed one of the blocks and
inserted another. They seemed to contain coded areas
of memory. ‘I don’t know the design and I don’t know
the control programme. Even if there’s information
about the Terminus in one of these units, I couldn’t
get it out.’
   ‘So why waste time?’
   ‘Sometimes you hit lucky. But I’d settle for a floor
plan of this place.’ He looked up. ‘Nyssa?’
   Nyssa was over by the ugly-looking box that seemed
to be the source of the liner’s automated control. She
straightened up to see what the Doctor wanted, and he
held up one of the blocks. ‘Can you see any more of
these?’ he said, and Nyssa nodded and moved out to
look.
   Kari sorted through the others on the desk, looking
for any sign or symbol that might distinguish one from
another. ‘A floor plan?’ she said.
   ‘I need to know why I got it so wrong. I
remembered every turn and we still didn’t find the
TARDIS.’
   Kari reached over and slotted in the last of the
available blocks. ‘Try this,’ she suggested, and the
Doctor typed in the limited code that he’d so far been
able to devise for display.
   The screen showed what was obviously a schematic
diagram of several star systems, named and numbered
in some unfamiliar language. ‘What’s that?’ Kari said,
indicating a zigzag dotted line that went through the
systems.
   ‘Us,’ the Doctor said. The line showed every stage of
the ship’s journey so far. It ended in a pulsing red
point that was presumably the site of the Terminus.
He considered the picture for a while. Although the
names were strange, he thought he could vaguely
recognise the pattern that they made. He carried out a
simple operation that would increase the scale, and he
watched as more information came crowding in from
the edges.
   ‘What do you make of that?’ he said.
   ‘I’m combat section,’ Kari replied, almost
automatically. ‘I don’t read charts.’

Nyssa was engaged in what she believed would turn
out to be a no-hope mission... but then it was the
Doctor who had asked for it, and she had more than
enough reasons to be grateful to him.
   The area at the back of the control room was
cluttered and shadowy, with tall banks of equipment
and racks of electrical relays taking up most of the
space. She stood in the narrow gap between two of
these and took a deep breath. Just as she thought that
she’d more or less recovered, she’d get an all-over
tremor and her stomach would try to do a flip. She
closed her eyes and waited it out, and in a few
moments it passed. It wouldn’t do to let the others see;
they had problems enough already. By the time she’d
checked out the area behind the racks, she’d be back to
normal. It was on the way to do this that she almost fell
over Olvir.
    He was sitting on the floor in a shadowed area,
hugging his knees like a child hiding in a closet. He
looked up sharply when Nyssa called his name, but
then he turned his face to the darkness again.
    She crouched by him, and tried not to make it
sound as if she was talking to a child. That would be all
that it would take to finish off his damaged pride.
‘Come and talk to the Doctor,’ she urged.
    He wouldn’t even face her. ‘Forget it,’ he said.
‘We’re dead.’
    ‘You can’t be sure.’
    ‘This place is full of disease. We’re breathing it.’
    ‘It’s not hopeless. We need your help.’
    Nyssa waited, and after a moment Olvir unwound a
little. He said, hesitantly, ‘Is Kari there?’
    She nodded. He thought it over for what seemed
like an age, the turmoil running through him like a
blade. Then he started to get to his feet.
    The Doctor and Kari were still hunched over the
display screen at the navigation console as they
emerged from the racks. Both looked up in surprise as
Olvir said loudly, ‘Whatever you’re planning, forget it.
There’s no escape.’
    Kari frowned, as if she was in the habit of
disbelieving news that made any situation out to be
hopeless. She said, ‘I’ve never heard of any Lazar
disease.’
    ‘There are more polite names for it,’ Olvir said as he
came around the end of the control desk.
    The Doctor said, ‘How much do you know?’
   ‘My sister died of it. We sold everything to send her
to the Terminus, but she died before she made the
trip. Terminus Incorporated wouldn’t return the
money. We were ruined.’
   Kari seemed genuinely shocked. ‘I thought that was
because of the fire storms on Hagen.’
   ‘You don’t advertise the Lazar disease,’ Olvir said
grimly.
   The Doctor tapped the edge of the console
thoughtfully. ‘And what is the Terminus?’
   ‘They talk about a cure. But I never met anyone
who came back.’
   But if it’s such a shameful process, they’d never tell you,
the Doctor was thinking, but instead of saying so he
moved aside so that Olvir would be able to see the
navigation screen. ‘Tell me what you make of this,’ he
said.
   ‘I’m combat section,’ Olvir started to reply
automatically, ‘I don’t...’ but the Doctor waved him
down.
   ‘All right. It’s an expanded chart showing the
position of the Terminus.’
   Olvir did his best to appear interested, but he
couldn’t keep it up. The screen showed a vague,
cloudy sphere made up of points with individual
details too small to make out. At the centre of this
pulsed the red point that had marked the Terminus
from the beginning. He shook his head and said,
‘Don’t waste your time on that old hulk.’
   The Doctor rarely became impatient, but he seemed
to be getting close to it now. He said, ‘We don’t know
what kind of technology may be preserved in that “old
hulk”.’
   It was Nyssa who defused the argument before it
could begin. ‘But, Doctor,’ she said, stepping through
for a closer look at the illuminated chart, ‘if that’s what
I think it is...’ The Doctor was nodding, encouraging
her. ‘Then it means that the Terminus is at the exact
centre of the known universe!’

‘It’s all going wrong.’
    ‘The Doctor still lives?’
    ‘I haven’t even seen him yet. I’m trapped with one
of the others.’
    ‘Because you disobeyed me.’
    ‘I know. I’m sorry.’
    ‘A poor beginning to your service.’
    ‘I never killed anybody before.’
    ‘There are weapons all around you. Keep one close to
hand. Make them trust you and then, when it is least expected,
strike.’
    ‘I will.’
    ‘You know the rewards for success. I have other rewards for
your failure.’
    The light in the cube began to die, as Tegan’s voice
came echoing through the shaft to him. ‘Turlough? Is
something wrong?’
    He returned the cube to his pocket and leaned out
over the drop. ‘I’m on my way,’ he called in reply, and
he reached for the first of the rungs to begin his
descent.

When he reached the bottom of the shaft, Turlough
emerged into an underfloor area that was hardly
different from the one that they’d left behind. Tegan
was already trying alone to raise the overhead grille,
but she didn’t seem to be having much success. She
gave up as Turlough sat beating the dust from his
clothes, and said, ‘What kept you?’
   ‘Out of practice,’ Turlough said, and he glanced at
the grille. ‘Any luck?’
   Tegan shook her head. ‘Solid. I don’t even think
that two of us could move it.’
   ‘Well, give me a minute and I’ll...’
   But Tegan was suddenly gripping his arm so hard
that he stopped before he could finish. The intent to
warn was obvious. She was staring upward, and he
followed the look.
   The corridor above seemed no different from any
other that they’d seen, with the exception that the
lights were brighter down at the far end. It was a part
of the liner that they hadn’t covered – they knew as
much because it was two or three decks down, and
until the discovery of the shaft they hadn’t descended
at all. Now, Turlough could make out what Tegan had
seen.
   The lights were brighter because the corridor ended
in a door to the outside. The door was open, and
somebody was coming in.
   He was Death.
   The image occurred to Tegan straight away, and it
persisted even as he strode towards them and
overhead. It was impossible to tell if he was a man or a
machine under the weight of the dark armour that he
wore. What appeared to be the lines of bones and
sinews were moulded into its surface like old brass,
and around his shoulders was a heavy cloak that
almost reached the ground. They could feel a cold
downdraft as it swept across the grating above. He
carried a metal staff that lightly touched the floor with
every other step. It sounded like the polite tap of the
undertaker, with the carriage and the black-plumed
horses waiting outside.
   Both Tegan and Turlough huddled down and tried
to make themselves as small as possible. They didn’t
even dare to breathe; dust was still thick in the air, and
a single sound would have given them away. The
terror of the Lazars had been bad enough, but now
this...
   There was a drone waiting at the other end of the
corridor. They saw the dark man bend to touch some
kind of code into the machine’s front display panel,
and when he straightened they heard him speak, a
single word as harsh as a saw cutting through skin:
   ‘Sterilise.’
   Then he turned and headed back for the door, and
they closed their eyes tight as Death passed over. Again
they felt the downdraft, again the slow tapping like the
hammering of the Calvary nails.
   ‘It can’t get worse,’ Tegan whispered; feeling as if
she would burst, ‘it can’t.’
   Turlough put a reassuring hand on her arm. He did
it without thinking, and he surprised himself.
Friendship was no part of his orders, and he’d kept it
firmly out of his mind... but such things, it seemed,
were not open to conscious control.
   And as he tried to pass on strength that he wasn’t
even sure he had, Turlough was certain of only one
thing. Tegan was wrong. It could get worse and, if his
controller had his way, it would.
   In the meantime, they had to keep moving. ‘Come
on,’ he said, and he looked around for a new route
through the crawlspace.
‘If it’s about my running away,’ Olvir began, but Kari
cut him off.
   ‘Forget that. It’s them.’ She looked over to where
Nyssa and the Doctor were standing by the navigation
screen, discussing the possible implications of the
expanded star-chart. ‘They can’t be trusted. They
teamed up and took my gun away.’
   ‘You’ve got it back.’
   ‘That’s not the point. Stick with your own kind and
tell them nothing else.’
   ‘My own kind?’ Olvir said with some incredulity.
‘It’s our own kind who cut loose and dumped us here.
You’d do the same to me now, if you got the chance.’
   ‘No, I wouldn’t.’
   Olvir looked at her suddenly, with searching interest
and some hope. ‘Really?’ he said.
   ‘Of course I wouldn’t,’ Kari said, trying not to
appear as uncomfortable as she felt.
   Olvir watched her a moment longer, and then
shrugged. ‘You’d say that anyway,’ he said.
   The star-chart on its own was of no use. Both the
Doctor and Nyssa agreed that it was an interesting
curiosity which told them nothing. It was a clue, not a
solution, and they didn’t even know the true nature of
the problem. As far as the Doctor was concerned, this
argued the need for the analytical resources of the lost
TARDIS. Nyssa was worried about the prospect of
taking the danger of infection back to Tegan and
Turlough, whom she assumed to be safe and waiting
inside, but the Doctor believed that the danger had
begun the moment that the door to the liner had
opened.
   In the meantime, they were getting no closer. Olvir
and Kali finished their conversation and came over.
Kari said, ‘Any progress?’
   ‘Nothing,’ the Doctor said, and he indicated the
console with its scattering of useless memory blocks
alongside. ‘If there’s a map of the liner, it isn’t here.’
   Olvir looked down for a moment, and then said,
‘Why not try some of the others?’
   The Doctor frowned. ‘What others?’
   Olvir indicated the equipment stacks where he’d
been hiding. ‘Those little blocks,’ he said. ‘There’s a
rack full of them back there.’

Bor had taken a walk.
   Valgard had seen him go and had been able to do
nothing about it. Once he’d passed the crude yellow
line that marked the beginning of the forbidden zone,
he was as good as lost. Valgard had called to him, but
Bor had only hesitated briefly and shouted something
that sounded like It’s still climbing. His helmet was off
and he was looking worse than ever, a ragged
scarecrow of a man who was obviously unwell and
feverish.
   Valgard stood at the line in the middle of the
storeyard and watched as Bor disappeared into the
shadows that began on the far side of the area and
stretched away into the depths of the Terminus. He
wasn’t the first to walk off into the zone, and he
probably wouldn’t be the last. For a moment Valgard
saw another figure in place of Bor, and its face was his
own.
   Perhaps it wasn’t too late. Perhaps something could
be done before Bor was overpowered by the fast-acting
sickness that gave the forbidden zone its name, and he
could be brought back... back to suffer the slow,
creeping deterioration that no amount of armour or
drug control could fully prevent.
   All of the Vanir were dead men – Bor, Valgard,
Eirak, all of them. Perhaps a walk into the forbidden
zone was the most that they could look forward to,
release from the endless workload of Lazars that
arrived in increasing numbers and went... well, nobody
really knew where they went. It was the Vanir’s job to
ensure that they got from the liners and into the
Terminus. Once they’d been taken into the zone, that
job ended.
   For as long as it took these thoughts to go through
his mind, Valgard hesitated. Letting Bor go the way of
his choice might, in the end, be the kindest thing to
do. Except that Valgard couldn’t bring himself to do it.
He went to speak to Eirak.
   The watch-commander of the Vanir was to be found
in the corner of a converted storage tank that he used
as an administrative office. Here he would sit and
puzzle over worksheets and shift allocations as he did
his best to handle the inflow of Lazars with an ailing
labour force. If the throughput was slowed, Lazars
died on his hands; and Terminus Incorporated had its
own way of punishing such inefficiency.
   Eirak hadn’t long returned from giving the
sterilisation order to the current liner’s drones – and at
the same time, although he couldn’t know it, he’d
given Tegan one of the biggest scares of her life –
when Valgard burst in.
   ‘Eirak,’ he said, even before he’d removed his
radiation helmet in the comparative safety of the tank,
‘We’ve got a problem.’
    Eirak rubbed his eyes wearily. Without his helmet
he was nothing like the monster that Tegan might
have expected. He was simply a tired bureaucrat, and
problems tended to form long queues for his attention.
    ‘Really?’ he said.
    Valgard advanced on the desk, and set his helmet
down with a thump. It partly covered the chart that
Eirak had been studying, but Valgard didn’t seem to
notice. ‘It’s Bor. He just turned around and walked off
the job. He went straight into the forbidden zone.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘No reason. Nothing obvious, anyway.’
    Eirak frowned. ‘That’s all we need,’ he said, part-
way lifting Valgard’s helmet and pulling the chart free.
‘I’ll have to revise the entire roster.’
    Valgard waited for a moment, but Eirak was already
reabsorbed in the graph. He couldn’t stay silent for
long. ‘Is that all you’re going to say?’
    ‘I’ve got a shipload of Lazars just arrived, we’re
under-strength and most of the men are too sick to
work more than a half-shift. What do you expect me to
say?’
    ‘There must be something you can do.’
    Eirak sighed. ‘Like what? Grow up, Valgard.’
    Valgard took an angry step around the makeshift
table. ‘You’ve got a responsibility...’ he began, but
Eirak suddenly thrust a handful of the papers before
him, almost crumpling them before Valgard’s eyes.
    ‘This is my responsibility,’ he snapped. ‘To keep the
Terminus running so that we all get some chance of
staying alive. What Bor does is Bor’s problem. The
rosters and the work schedules are mine.’
    ‘So you’ll just let him go?’
   Eirak’s expression changed. The anger went, and
the real Eirak was uncovered – the ruthless, calculating
personality that had fitted him so well for his self-
appointed job in the Terminus. He said, smooth as a
snake and twice as dangerous, ‘Do you want to bring
him back? I could give you the order.’
   For one moment, Valgard was revisited by the
fleeting glimpse that he’d had in the storeyard, his own
face looking back from the other side of the line. ‘You
couldn’t make it stick,’ he said.
   ‘Oh, but I could.’ Eirak’s fingers drifted lightly over
some of the papers on his desk, touching them, almost
loving them. ‘How long would you last without a food
ration? Or Hydromel?’
   Valgard was beaten, and he knew it. Eirak had the
power to withold the symptom-suppressing drug
simply because the others all knew how much they
needed him. When Valgard said nothing, Eirak went
on, ‘Get Sigurd and check out the liner. And forget
about Bor, he’s taken the easy way out.’
   Nothing happened.
   Eirak met Valgard’s eyes and repeated, with a steely
edge, ‘Check the liner.’
   Valgard turned and walked out.

The fifth block that they tried carried maintenance
details for the liner, and several of the diagrams were
given over to breakdowns of the corridor systems on
each deck. They weren’t exactly a tourist map, but
they would do.
   ‘It looks complicated,’ Nyssa said.
   ‘Like a maze,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘No wonder we
got lost.’ He stared for a while, fixing the details into
his memory. There was a certain pattern in the layout
of the passageways, but it would have taken a long
time to perceive it by wandering around. The diagram
couldn’t tell him where to find the TARDIS, but it
would at least prevent them from wandering in circles
as they looked for the link.
    ‘We can put a bit more method into the search this
way,’ he explained when Kari asked him about the
computer’s usefulness. ‘We can’t afford to waste any
time on uncertainties, now we know that there’s
disease around.’ He was about to say more, but the
lights went out.
    ‘Everybody down!’ Kari shouted, and such was her
tone of command that everybody went. She whispered
something else, and Olvir did a silent sprint across the
control room to take up a position beside the door,
burner at the ready.
    As the Doctor’s eyes slowly adjusted to the new light
levels, he realised that the liner had simply returned
itself to the state of readiness it had shown on their
arrival. ‘What’s happening?’ Nyssa wanted to know,
and the Doctor nodded towards the control centre
under the window. Before he could speak, the liner’s
automated voice was booming all around them.
    ‘Attention,’ it said. ‘Preparations for departure will begin
with stage-one sterilisation. Unprotected personnel are advised
to leave this liner immediately. No return will be permitted.’
    ‘No one outside,’ Olvir reported.
    ‘Terminus Incorporated will accept no responsibility for the
consequences of ignoring this warning. Stage-one sterilisation
is now commencing.’
    The Doctor and Nyssa exchanged an apprehensive
look.
It was quite a relief for Tegan and Turlough to come
into an area where they could at least stand, even
though they had to hunch a little to avoid banging
their heads. The service core, as Tegan had named it,
was a metal cage with a walkway floor that appeared to
run the full length of the ship. It was obviously
intended to give access to various underfloor areas,
and because of this it seemed likely that they’d soon
come upon a more orthodox way out.
    ‘Maybe we’re safer down here,’ Turlough said,
remembering what they’d seen only a little while
before, but Tegan was doing her best to put this out of
her mind.
    ‘Come on,’ she said, and started off ahead. There
was some light, but most of it came from bad shielding
where there should have been none. Turlough was
slow in following; when Tegan looked back, she saw
him standing and inspecting the floor beneath him.
    ‘What’s the matter?’ she said.
    He seemed hesitant, but he stepped forward. ‘I felt
the floor move...’ he began, but before he could finish
he was gone.
    The walkway floor was no more than a series of thin
alloy sections bolted to an underframe, and one of
them had been loose. Tegan had stepped on its centre,
but Turlough had put his weight too close to the edge
- it had hinged under him as quickly and efficiently as
the slickest trapdoor and dumped him through the
resulting gap.
    Tegan dashed to him. He was hanging onto the
edge, his knuckles whitening as they fought for a grip
where there was none. In the long darkness below
him, the breakaway section was still falling. His hands
slid a couple of inches and his legs kicked free in space,
but then Tegan grabbed both of his wrists and held
him firm.
   There was a booming crash, far-off and echoing.
Tegan pulled as hard as she could, but she was holding
Turlough’s weight almost unaided.
   ‘Don’t kick!’ she said. ‘You make it worse.’
   Turlough did his best to be calm, even though his
heart was racing. He tried to let himself swing free.
Tegan hauled again, and they made a few inches –
enough for him to get a fingerhold over the next join
in the flooring. Now that he could help, Tegan
reached over and grabbed a handful of his collar. She
got a handful of his shoulder too, but he didn’t
complain. Slowly, his muscles singing like violin
strings, Turlough came up and over the edge to safety.
   They lay together, gasping. Tegan was still holding
him, as if there was some danger that he might slide
back. The only sound besides their ragged breathing
was the howl of moving air in the vast space below.
   But then it slowly became clear to Turlough that the
added rumbling that he’d been taking for granted
wasn’t simply the blood pounding in his ears.
   ‘What’s that?’ he said, wondering if it was the
working of his imagination, but Tegan had also heard
something.
   ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t like it.’
   They barely had time to duck before the high-
pressure sterilising gas was on them.

Kari’s suggestion for speeding up the search for the
TARDIS – that they should split into two groups and
keep in contact via the hand-radios – hadn’t really
found much favour with the Doctor, but with the new
urgency that had been added to the situation he really
had little choice. Nyssa insisted that she’d be safe with
Olvir, and so the Doctor reluctantly agreed.
   ‘See you at the TARDIS,’ Nyssa said, before she and
Olvir disappeared from sight.
   Kari was about to set off in the opposite direction,
but the Doctor held her back for a moment. ‘We can’t
waste time,’ she protested.
   ‘I know,’ the Doctor said, ‘but there’s something we
have to understand before we go any further.’
   ‘What?’
   ‘It doesn’t matter who finds the TARDIS first. But
nobody gets left, dumped or abandoned. All right?’
   Kari hesitated. She seemed almost evasive, and it
was obvious that she was overcoming her most
immediate response. ‘Of course,’ she said eventually.
   Ah, well, the Doctor thought, at least she’s learning.
They moved out.
   The search proceeded at speed, both parties moving
in parallel around opposite sides of the liner. Olvir
almost ran all the way, as if he felt he had something to
prove, but the main consequence of this was that Nyssa
found it harder and harder to keep up.
   ‘I have to stop,’ she said eventually.
   ‘We can’t,’ Olvir told her. ‘Come on.’
   ‘Please...’ She stumbled, and Olvir had to catch her.
It was then that he realised that his haste could
actually defeat the object of the search. ‘I had a dose of
temporal instability,’ she explained trying to catch her
breath. ‘I’ve been feeling bad ever since.’
   He helped her down to sit on the floor against the
corridor wall. ‘A minute,’ he said, ‘no more. I’ll tell the
others.’ And then he crouched beside her and
unclipped the radio from his belt.
   As soon as he switched it on, he knew that any
attempt to communicate from this part of the ship
would be pointless; the air was filled with a weakly
pulsating interference from the radio’s speaker.
   ‘We’ve got a problem,’ Nyssa said quietly.
   ‘It’s just leak interference,’ Olvir assured her. ‘Bad
shielding on the engines somewhere.’
   ‘That’s not what I meant. Look.’
   So Olvir looked, and got his first view of one of the
liner’s drones.
   It stood squarely in the corridor before them, with
the low-level lights glinting on the blades and drills by
its sides. These were the only parts of the liner that
Olvir had seen which didn’t look shabby. It seemed to
be waiting for something.
   ‘There’s no need for panic,’ Olvir said, hoping that
he sounded confident.
   ‘I’m not panicking. I’m ill.’
   ‘Can you stand up?’
   ‘The problem is breathing.’ Nyssa fumbled at her
bodice in the shadows. Something ripped, and there
was a clink of metal as something dropped to the floor.
   ‘Don’t make any sudden moves,’ Olvir said. ‘I don’t
like the look of those weapons.’
   But Nyssa was starting to sound impatient with him.
She couldn’t fight the reason for her discomfort, and
Olvir just happened to be the next in line. ‘They’re not
weapons,’ she said, ‘they’re tools. It’s a maintenance
robot. Anyone can see that.’
   ‘So what’s the problem?’
   ‘They’re sterilising the place, and we’re in the way.’
   Olvir thought it over. If the drone really was no
threat, then all they’d need to do would be to get up
and walk away. It hadn’t moved.
   ‘Let’s go,’ he said and, moving slowly, he helped
Nyssa to her feet. He couldn’t help noticing that she
leaned on him heavily. She came up into the weak
light of the corridor and turned her face towards him.
   She’d grown paler. Her skin was almost white, and
her lips had darkened. Olvir felt a terrible wrench
inside as he realised where he’d seen such a face
before. He released her, and stepped back in horror.
   ‘Olvir,’ she said, alarmed, ‘what’s wrong?’
   But Olvir could only shake his head. He couldn’t
speak. As if it had now received the signal that it had
been waiting for, the drone moved forward.
   And as it moved, the control voice echoed again
around the ship. ‘Attention,’ it said. ‘This is the final
warning. All Lazars and any other personnel must disembark
immediately...’
   (The drone extended a three-fingered clamp
towards Nyssa, reaching for her wrist.)
   ‘Stage-two sterilisation is about to begin. Drones will give
assistance to those Lazars requiring it...’
   (Gently, it began to draw her away from Olvir; he
did nothing to prevent it.)
   ‘All other personnel must leave immediately...’
   (Nyssa called for his help, but he could only stare as
the voice continued.)
   ‘All Lazars must comply with the drones. All Lazars must
comply with the drones. Stage-two sterilisation is about to
begin.’
   Olvir stood alone in the corridor, though in his
mind he was somewhere else. His father and his uncle
were talking downstairs. Papers were being drawn up,
some kind of loan was being agreed. His father and his
mother were arguing. It was the hour before the
dawn, and the sap-scent of the leaves in his uncle’s
garden came to him on the dew-damp breeze. His
uncle walked alone down the street, a crumpled piece
of paper in his hand. Olvir’s hands were sore from the
digging. The earth was over his head, and still they
dug deeper, the shovels biting into the hard clay
almost all of the way down to bedrock. He stood back
from the edge of the hole, and the sap-scent of the
garden was burned away by the sour smell of the lime.
The empty bags lay by the side of the grave, and his
hands were blistered now as they shovelled dark earth
back into the hole.
   Olvir stood alone in the corridor. In his mind, he
was somewhere else.

Valgard had done as he was told because he knew that,
when it came down to it, Eirak’s hold over the Vanir
was unbreakable. He could grouse about it as he and
Sigurd rode the freight elevator to the receiving
platform against the liner’s side, but he couldn’t do
anything.
   Sigurd listened, but he wasn’t over-sympathetic.
‘And what did Eirak say?’
   ‘He didn’t want to know. He was more concerned
about the effect on the rosters.’
   There were a couple of Lazars waiting when the two
Vanir reached the platform. They were standing
blinded in the air--seal section that linked the
Terminus to the liner, shivering and not making a
sound. Valgard and Sigurd herded them into the
elevator. Another Vanir work detail had already
transferred most of the ‘passengers’ down into the
main part of the Terminus, but the drones always
managed to round up a few stragglers.
   ‘Don’t cross him, Valgard,’ Sigurd warned as he
closed the cage door on the Lazars. He and Valgard
remained on the platform as the elevator dropped
away.
   ‘He doesn’t scare me,’ Valgard said.
   ‘He should. He’s got too much power around here.’
   ‘He’s a glorified clerk, that’s all. Anybody could do
what he does.’
   But Sigurd shook his head. ‘One or two have tried,
and it’s not so easy. Without Eirak, the Terminus won’t
work.’
   ‘That would be the company’s problem,’ Valgard
said, but even to him it sounded hollow.
   An indicator light over the elevator control came on;
the cage had been emptied down below. Sigurd threw
the switch for its return, and said, ‘I’ll tell you what the
company would do. They’d starve us out and then find
some other prison willing to sell off its hard cases as
forced labour. Face it, Valgard, we just don’t count.’
   And the galling part about it was, as Valgard knew,
that Sigurd was right. Terminus Incorporated had
wanted a low-cost, trouble-free workforce, and they
had it in the corps they called the Vanir. The rules
were simple; work or die. And the means of control
was the drug that they called Hydromel.
   Valgard said, ‘So Bor dies,’ and Sigurd shrugged.
   ‘We’re all dying here anyway,’ he said. ‘Bor just took
the easy way out.’
   ‘That’s what Eirak told me.’
   ‘Well, he knows what he’s talking about. Come on.’
   It was time to check the liner, and to collect their
consignment of Hydromel from the control room. It
would be packed into a metal case that fitted into a slot
in the automated unit by the windows. Any attempt to
remove it before the brief period between
disembarkation and stage-two sterlisation, and the
locks would go on. They moved towards the liner, but
their way was blocked.
   One of the drones had managed to come up with
another Lazar. It was still gripping her wrist as she
stood there, wide-eyed and scared. She looked almost
alert, but Valgard knew how deceptive appearances
could be. The best way to keep your sanity in the
Terminus was to forget that these things had ever been
human. Then when the company’s radiation-resistant
trained mule took them off into the zone, you were
safe from any worries about what lay ahead of them.
   Now time was getting short. Valgard said that he’d
take care of the Lazar if Sigurd went in to get the
Hydromel. Sigurd agreed, and as he disappeared
through the air-seal Valgard half-dragged and half-
carried the girl across to the returned elevator – there
was no point in expecting a Lazar to understand you
or manage for itself.
   Inside the cage, Nyssa grabbed the bars to stop
herself from falling. She felt as if she’d stumbled into
somebody else’s nightmare without knowing the aims
of the plot or the story so far. Her new jailer entered
after her and stood blocking the way out, but this
seemed to be incidental – he obviously didn’t expect
her to run anywhere, and for Nyssa’s part she couldn’t
immediately think of anywhere to run.
   He was wearing dark armour and a cloak, but for
the moment he’d removed his helmet. He seemed
weary, a gaunt and haggard man with thinning hair
that hung almost to his shoulders. Nyssa took a deep
breath and said, ‘Where are you taking me?’
   Valgard looked at her sharply. ‘They don’t usually
speak,’ he said.
   There was a coldness in him that Nyssa didn’t find
encouraging, but she pressed herself to go on. ‘I’m not
one of the Lazars.’
   ‘You should see yourself. The drones are
programmed to recognise the symptoms, anyway.’
   It took Nyssa a long moment to absorb this. She’d
had no illusions about the dangers of infection, but to
learn that it had already happened to her... It had
arrived so fast. What kind of disease could it be? And
why – this was a fleeting thought that she was later to
wish that she’d given more attention – why didn’t her
new jailer seem worried by being so close to it?
   She said, ‘Are you doctors?’
   ‘Doctors?’ Valgard was bitterly amused. ‘We’re
baggage-handlers. We just receive and pass on.’
   ‘But I have to know what’s happening to me.’
   ‘You’ll be given to the Garm,’ Valgard told her in a
tone which suggested she’d already used up more of
his patience than she had a right to expect, ‘and he’ll
take you into the forbidden zone. And that’s the last
that anybody here will see of you.’ And then he half-
turned away to watch the liner for Sigurd’s
reappearance.
   Garm? Forbidden zone? Whatever lay ahead, it
sounded grim. And her hand was starting to hurt. She
held it up and saw a spot of blood lying as fat as a bead
on her thumb. It must have happened as she’d tried to
ease her breathing in the liner corridor. She’d felt the
jab, but she only remembered it now.
   Valgard was watching her out of the corner of his
eye, and he was getting suspicious. He couldn’t tell for
sure whether or not she was trying to conceal
something in her hand. He said, ‘What are you doing?’
   Nyssa turned to show him. ‘I cut my thumb,’ she
said. ‘Look.’
   She put out her hand for Valgard to see, and he
automatically leaned closer. It was then that she
changed the gesture into a fast upward sweep with the
heel of her hand that caught the Vanir on the point of
the chin.
   He staggered back, and Nyssa ran from the elevator.
The platform outside was small, and there were only
two choices: a metal runged stairway that she could see
over to one side and which probably served for access
if the elevator wasn’t working, and the liner itself.
Inside the liner were the Doctor and the TARDIS; it
was really no choice at all.
   In the doorway, she paused just long enough to take
a look back. Valgard was emerging in pursuit, and he
didn’t look pleased. If she could keep her lead (and
ignore the weakness that-was already beginning to pull
her down) she could perhaps lose him in the complex
of internal passageways. She turned, and ran straight
into Sigurd.
   He caught her wrist easily, and held her fast. ‘Come
on,’ he said. ‘Valgard’s not that ugly.’
   Nyssa could only struggle weakly as she was taken
into the elevator for the second time. Valgard was
looking embarrassed, and Sigurd said, ‘Are you getting
old?’
   ‘No, just gullible.’ Valgard glanced at the familiar
metal case in Sigurd’s free hand. ‘Did you check
through all the levels?’
   ‘You’re joking. If there’s anybody left, the drones
can flush them out.’
   The cage door was closed, the interior switch was
thrown. There was a lurch, and they started to
descend. Within a few metres, Nyssa was getting her
first real view of the Terminus.
   They were dropping through a complex of catwalks
that ran all around the open shaft. Nyssa’s immediate
impressions were of darkness, bare metal, oil, and
steam, but then the steam cleared and she was looking
out into an immense interior space. It was like the
inside of a gutted whale, or perhaps some bizarre
parody of a cathedral under restoration. The best-lit
areas were far below; elsewhere the lights were strung
out and temporary-looking, and the presence of a
large amount of what appeared to be scaffolding and
tarpaulin sheeting only added to the makeshift effect.
Behind these layers of evidence of human activity was
the dark presence of the Terminus itself, over-
powering all attempts to create brightness, and making
them small.
   Nyssa was glad of the bars to hold onto. Something
out there was being prepared, just for her.

‘We can’t have missed it,’ the Doctor said, perplexed
and frustrated. They’d covered their own part of the
liner and had no success at all. The same was
presumably true of Olvir and Nyssa, since they hadn’t
radioed.
   Kari said, ‘How about the other explanation?’
   ‘What?’
   ‘It’s disappeared.’
   But the Doctor shook his head. ‘There was a book
lying on the floor,’ he explained. He couldn’t know
that the biotechnical text from the TARDIS’s library
was at that moment being flash-burned in the liner’s
incinerator along with a bagful of beads and several
kilos of discarded bandages, all collected in the drones’
anti-litter campaign. ‘It would still be...’ The Doctor
tailed off. In looking at the floor he’d seen something
else, and he moved over to pick it up.
   It was a piece of material, a part of Nyssa’s skirt. In
the bad light they’d almost missed it. ‘There’s blood,’
the Doctor said. ‘Call Olvir. Quickly.’
Nyssa’s first impression – that the human activity in the
Terminus was a recent overlay on some much older
structure – was confirmed when they reached the
lowest level. The large tunnel structures that ran
through the middle of the ship were original, as were
the massive fuel or liquid storage tanks that stood in
rows on either side of these. The crudely cut doors
which converted these tanks into rooms and the
walkways that linked them, however, were obviously by
some different hand. They’d been squeezed in
wherever they’d fit, and the standard of workmanship
was low.
   Some of the tanks appeared to have been put to use
as holding wards for the Lazars. Nyssa could see a few
of the sick people, hardly more than bundles of bone
and rag, waiting to be moved inside by the Vanir. The
workforce showed no cruelty, but no tenderness,
either. Valgard’s description of them as baggage-
handlers seemed to be as apt as any. They prodded
and pushed where they had to, using their metal staffs
as shepherds might. The Lazars, for their part, obeyed
like sheep.
   And I’m one of them, Nyssa thought. The thought
didn’t scare her as much as it should. She knew that it
would get worse when the realisation hit her for sure.
   Eirak watched the two Vanir unloading the girl.
Like all the others, he wore full armour for maximum
protection out in the open areas of the Terminus.
When he moved towards Sigurd with his hand
outstretched, there was no question about what he
wanted. Sigurd handed over the Hydromel case.
   Eirak hefted it expertly, testing its weight against his
memory of countless earlier consignments.
   ‘It’s light,’ he said.
   Sigurd was taken aback. ‘They can’t cut us down
again,’ he said.
   ‘This stuff’s expensive. They won’t send us any more
than the minimum.’
   ‘We could all die, and they wouldn’t even know it,’
Sigurd said bitterly.
   ‘They’d know it,’ Eirak assured him. ‘They’ve got
ways of knowing. Has anyone warned the Garm about
Bor?’
   This last question was mainly aimed at Valgard, but
he stood with a tight grip on the arm of the last girl
out of the shuttle and seemed to be making a point of
ignoring his watch-commander. Sigurd said, ‘I don’t
know. Why?’
   ‘We’ll need the body back for the armour. Valgard!’
   So now Valgard couldn’t help but turn and listen.
Eirak went on, ‘It’s your job. Sigurd can see to the
girl.’
   Valgard reluctantly released his grip, and Sigurd
took over. ‘It’s just as well,’ he said to Valgard in a
lowered voice that wasn’t entirely serious. ‘She might
take another crack at you.’
   But it was impossible to make any kind of a private
remark, not with helmet amplifications. ‘What does
that mean?’ Eirak said sharply.
   ‘Nothing,’ Sigurd said, but the damage was done.
   Eirak was needling him, Valgard was sure of it. He
already had other duties, as Eirak well knew – after all,
he’d been the one who had assigned them. Now in
addition he had to go back to the storeyard, the very
place where he’d seen Bor walk off into the zone, and
there he had to call the Garm.

The storeyard was exactly what its name implied, an
area where the leftovers and spare units of the
builders’-yard junk that cluttered the Terminus had
been heaped. It had been set up by whoever had
carried out the conversion a long time before. In those
days the boundary to the zone had been a lot further
away, but it had since been redefined to run straight
across the middle of the yard’s open area. It was to this
spot that they brought the Lazars when it was time for
them to be taken into the zone. Nobody visited the
place otherwise – from the radiation point of view it
was too ‘hot’ to be comfortable for long – unless it was
to perform a periodic check on the zone monitoring
gear, as he and Bor had been doing, or to call the
Garm.
   There was a switchbox bolted to one of the girder
uprights near the edge of the zone. Valgard passed his
hand before the sensor plate and felt the gut-trembling
hum of the subsonic signal as it went out. The Garm
would be with him soon. It didn’t have a choice.
   The Garm was Terminus Incorporated’s answer to
the difficulties of deploying any kind of workforce in
the zone. It wasn’t that they had any moral hesitation
over the matter. If the company thought that it could
make the system pay, the Vanir would be ordered in
and some strategy would be devised to force them to
obey. But the fact was that it would be uneconomical:
working just outside the hottest areas with their
symptoms held in check by drug control, they could
last for years; inside the zone they’d be dead within
days.
   It was for this reason that the Garm had been
brought in. It was an animal from some planet where
the background levels of radiation were naturally high,
no doubt from some suicidal war somewhere in its
past. The Garm was already adapted to zone-like
conditions, and Terminus Incorporated technicians
had gone in with their conditioning techniques and a
spot of supporting surgery in order to get maximum
compliance and obedience out of it.
   It was a while before Valgard realised that he wasn’t
alone. For all its size, the Garm moved in silence. And
it kept to the shadows – even now Valgard could only
just make out its massive dog-headed outline and the
dull red gleam of its eyes in the darkness.
   ‘Garm!’ he said. ‘Can you hear me?’
   The Garm inclined its head slightly.
   ‘One of the Vanir’s gone missing. He walked across
into the zone. When you find his body you’re to bring
it back here, you understand?’
   Again, the slight movement of assent.
   Valgard lowered his voice a little. ‘Apart from that,
we’ve got more Lazars for you to move. Big surprise,
eh?’
   The Garm showed no response. Back in the early
days they’d argued over whether the Garm had any
intelligence or not, but the consensus had been that
anything working in the zone without complaint and
for no reward would even make Skeri look bright.
Skeri had been the first of the Vanir to take his own
life. Looking back, perhaps he hadn’t been so dumb.
    Well, Valgard had a job to do. He turned and
walked away.
    Intelligent or not, there was something in the
Garm’s presence that had always made him uneasy. He
was glad to leave.

‘There,’ the Doctor said, pointing, ‘another drop of
blood.’
   Kari couldn’t understand it. Nyssa had left an
inadvertent trail – and recently, too, from the look of it
– that diverged wildly from the pattern that had been
laid down. Now they were being led down the stairs to
the next deck of the liner. ‘But why here?’ she said. It
didn’t make any sense.
   ‘Try them again,’ the Doctor urged. Kari’s first
attempt with the radio had produced no response. She
raised the handset and switched it on, but frowned at
the pulsating interference she heard.
   ‘There must be a radiation leak somewhere around
here,’ she said. ‘It’ll clear if we move.’ She was about to
switch off, but the Doctor seemed interested. He held
out his hand for the radio, and she gave it to him. He
waved it back and forth, using the interference as a
crude means of detection.
   ‘That’s the wave pattern the TARDIS homed in on,’
the Doctor said. ‘But it’s weak...’
   ‘Can’t that wait?’ Kari said, and the intuitive leap
that the Doctor had been on the point of making had
to be postponed.
   ‘Yes, of course,’ he said, and bent again to check the
direction of the trail. Downward and outward – it was
starting to seem as if Nyssa had been making
purposefully for the exit as it had been shown in the
computer layout.

Some distance away, Tegan and Turlough were
straining to listen.
   ‘It’s him,’ Tegan said, ‘I’m sure of it.’
   Turlough frowned. The freak echo was too distorted
for him to be sure. Misleading voices and wrong
identification had already drawn them into one mess.
   They had escaped the full effects of stage-one
sterilisation by the coincidence of two near-disasters.
High-pressure fumigating gas had been pumped
through the below-decks areas without warning, a
choking yellow cloud that threatened to poison them if
they breathed it and suffocate them if they didn’t.
They’d been saved by the presence of a vent which
funnelled the gas away instead of letting it stay around
as a poison cloud. The vent was the hole through
which Turlough had come close to falling.
   Now they’d found an exit from the service core, but
they were really no better off. They’d simply ex-
changed the crawlspaces for the ventilation system. As
a means of getting around it ranked about equal; as a
means of transmitting and distorting sound, it was full
of surprises.

Back on the lower deck, the Doctor had stopped
speaking. Kari looked at him to find out why, and then
after a moment turned to see what had caught his
attention.
   Fog was boiling out of a side-corridor and spreading
towards them.
   ‘What is it?’ she said.
   ‘Stage-two sterilisation,’ The Doctor told her. ‘Come
on.’
   They backed off with haste. Elsewhere in the liner
Tegan and Turlough were yelling in an attempt to get
their attention, but it was too late. The heavy gas
deadened any space that it filled, and now it seemed to
be coming from every direction. With no handy vents
and no alternative air supply, the Doctor knew that
their chances of riding out the sterilisation were, as the
automated voice had put it, small.
   They were more than half-way to the exit, as the
Doctor remembered it. Not an attractive course to take
– but then they didn’t have many options to choose
from.
   The door to the outside was dropping as they
reached it, eyes streaming and gasping for breath. Kali
would have done better if she’d kept a hold on her
pressure helmet, but both she and Olvir had left them
in the control room. They were a liability in combat,
and they’d seemed unlikely to be necessary for a trip in
the TARDIS.
   They ducked under the falling edge of the door and
emerged onto the receiving platform. Kari was already
ahead, her burner raised and at the ready.
   ‘I’m used to this,’ she said, suddenly business-like
and unarguably in command. ‘Stay with me.’
   The Doctor wasn’t going to object. Kari had been
trained in making sudden entries to strange and
probably hostile situations, and such an advantage
wasn’t to be wasted. He said, ‘What do we do?’
   ‘First, we get to cover.’
   No disputes so far. The receiving platform was as
brightly lit as a boxing ring. The elevator shaft was
empty and there was only one way to go, down the
iron stairs to the side.
   Even as they moved, the lights went out.
   The Doctor was going to wait until his eyes adjusted,
but Kari had a hold on his elbow and was pulling him
along. He groped blindly for the guiderail, found it,
and began to follow her down. They took it slowly,
being careful to make as little noise as they could.
   Within a minute, he could see. There was a dim
glow around them, no more than a starlight overspill
from the brighter areas somewhere down below, but it
was enough. They were on part of a complex of
catwalks that centred on the elevator shaft. Some ran
along girders bolted between uprights, others were
cable-suspended over long drops through darkness.
Where two walks crossed over, a ladder or stairway
would connect them. The entire structure appeared
makeshift and frail.
   Kari studied the way ahead. She was aware of the lit
areas down below, and she wanted to pick a route
which would avoid them. The object was not to seek
confrontation, but to find somewhere away from
danger so that they could discuss and decide their next
move.
   As she was evaluating, the Doctor was marvelling.
   He’d moved to the catwalk rail and was looking
down on the same scene that had appeared to Nyssa:
the vast interior of the Terminus, and the antlike
activity under the bright lights in a small section of it.
‘Dante would have loved this,’ he breathed – a living
hell, complete with armoured dark angels.
   ‘Reconnaissance comes later,’ Kari said, and she
pulled him away.
   From his place by the lighting switches three levels
below, Valgard watched them go in amazement.
Outsiders? In the Terminus?
   The area that Kari found for them seemed to be
some kind of storeyard. It was on the ‘ground-floor’
level of the Terminus, but it was away from the
occupied areas and further screened by a number of
hung tarpaulins over a frame of scaffolding.
   ‘The liner’s no good to us now,’ Kari said decisively.
‘We’ll have to find another way out.’
   ‘You’re combat section,’ the Doctor reminded her.
‘Leave the strategy to me.’
   ‘But what’s the alternative?’
   ‘We’ve got Olvir and Nyssa to think about. Nyssa
may be hurt – you saw the blood on the floor. I’ve got
friends back in the TARDIS and they’re trapped as
surely as we are.’
   ‘But we can’t go back,’ Kari pointed out.
   ‘No,’ the Doctor agreed, ‘We can’t. But in the end,
we may have found that we had to come out into the
Terminus anyway.’
   ‘But why?’
   ‘There’s not only escape to think about. We take the
risk of Lazar infection with us. And if there’s an answer
for that, I think we’ve a chance of finding it here.’
   The Doctor pulled back a canvas cover. Underneath
it was a stack of highly polished metal sheets standing
on end. He looked at the distorted reflection of his
own face. Nothing of the Lazar disease showing
there... but for how long?
   Kari said, ‘You think there’s a cure for the disease?’
   For a moment, the Doctor said nothing. He moved
on through the storeyard. Finally he said, ‘I think
there’s more to the Terminus than just an old dead
ship.’ Now he stopped before some kind of signal box
that had been bolted to an upright. ‘Didn’t your chief
think that there was anything strange about its position
on the charts?’
   Kari didn’t answer. The Doctor let her chew on the
idea for a while before he turned for her reactions.
   Kari hadn’t spoken, not because she was lost for a
response but because a metal staff clamped crosswise
on her neck was cutting off her air. Valgard had
managed the hold in such a way that she could neither
cry out nor reach her burner. Almost as the Doctor saw
them, he released her. She slid to the floor in a
graceless heap.
   And then Valgard came for the Doctor.
   The armoured Fury with its mailed hands
outstretched, no part of the human being visible,
would have been enough in itself to overcome
opposition in many, and even the Doctor, who had
seen more than his share of strange sights and weird
aggressors, hesitated for a moment before he could
react.
   It was long enough. Valgard’s hands clamped
around his throat and started to squeeze.
   Until now the Doctor hadn’t been certain as to
whether Valgard was a man or an artefact, but the
pressure behind the gloved fingers was human. It was
a limited kind of relief – hydraulically powered pincers
would have decapitated him as easily as one might snip
the head off a flower. The Doctor grabbed at Valgard’s
arms and tried to relieve the pressure, but Valgard
responded by bearing down more heavily.
   They struggled in silence. The Doctor wasn’t having
much success. Everything started to turn grey, and
then red; and as blackness started to creep in from the
edges of his vision, the Doctor knew that the situation
was becoming desperate.
   He could see, dimly and far away, that Kari was
stirring. Her speed of reaction was a tribute to her
training. Within a few seconds she was fully alert and
reaching for her burner.
   Some sign of hope must have shown in the Doctor’s
eyes. Valgard swung him around. The pressure eased
for a moment, and then the Doctor was shielding the
Vanir from Kari’s weapon. There was no way that she
could get a clear shot.
   She fired.
   The burner spat a continuous red beam. She’d
opened it up to full intensity. She was aiming wide of
the mark, and the Doctor could immediately see what
her intentions were. Valgard couldn’t... but then, that
was the idea.
   Kari was aiming at the reflective sheet that the
Doctor had uncovered only a couple of minutes
before. A couple of minutes? It seemed like hours...
but then the Doctor realised that he was losing his hold
on consciousness, and he fought to get his mind back
in focus. The energy beam was being reflected from
the sheet at an angle which took it only a metre or so
behind Valgard’s all-enclosing helmet.
   The less-than-perfect reflectivity of the surface
meant that the beam was starting to get diffuse as it
came close, but it would have to do. The Doctor
pretended to weaken suddenly, and Valgard was so
taken by surprise that he almost overbalanced. He was
even more surprised when his victim came surging
back with renewed strength, enough to force him back
a pace. And then another.
   Valgard’s helmet passed directly through the path
of the beam. There was a searing flash and a sound
like lightning in water, and suddenly it was all over.
Valgard clutched at his head and fell with a crash.
   The Doctor felt as if he’d been the tester in a noose-
tying contest. Any more, and he was sure that he’d
have been carrying his own head around in a bowling-
ball bag. Valgard was making weak struggling motions,
trying to get his helmet off. He was down, but he
certainly wasn’t out.
   Kari came over and stood by the Doctor. She took
the back-up power pack from her belt and plugged it
into the burner. That one long burst of energy had
drained it completely. She said, ‘Is it a machine?’
   ‘It’s a man.’ Speaking was like spitting glass, but it
didn’t feel as if there had been any permanent
damage. The Doctor went on, ‘He’s wearing radiation
armour. Keep him covered.’
   Valgard was already making the effort to sit up.
Kari said, ‘There’s a problem.’ She said it in the quiet,
unexcited way that people save for the worst disasters.
   ‘What do you mean?’
   ‘The back-up unit’s dead. I’ve no power.’
   Valgard had made it to his knees, and they had no
way of stopping him.
   ‘Come on then,’ the Doctor said. When it came to a
choice between fighting and running, the Doctor
preferred to run every time. Those who stayed to fight
tended to be swiftly stripped of their noble illusions.
They took aim for the darkness, and ran.
   Valgard struggled a little longer, and finally
managed to remove his helmet. It had protected him
from the worst of the blast, but the heat had sealed all
of its ventilation lines and crazed the one-way glass of
the visor. He’d been blind and baking inside – the
useless piece of armour was trailing steam as he let it
fall to the floor. Flushed and panting, he looked
around. The intruders were gone, but the sound of
their running footsteps echoed back to him.
   He’d followed as far as he could, and he could
follow no further. They’d gone straight into the zone.

‘Anybody coming after us?’ the Doctor said when they
stopped for breath.
   Kari checked behind them. No.’
   ‘Let me have your radio.’
   She handed it over without question. Now, more
than ever, they needed to get a warning to the others –
wherever they were. But she’d misunderstood the
Doctor’s intention. She kept watch for pursuers,
saying, ‘If they wear radiation armour, there must be
radiation.’
   ‘That’s what I’m checking,’ the Doctor said, and he
held the radio out at arm’s length and switched it on.
   A pulsating waveform came through, strong and
loud. It was similar to the interference they’d first
heard on the liner, but it implied a much more serious
leak. Kari said, ‘Badly shielded engines again. Always
the same pattern.’
   The Doctor switched off the radio. They could
forget about using it to communicate. There were
properties of interference here that he’d never
encountered before. He said, ‘What kind of engines
are they?’
   ‘A self-containment reaction drive. It’s like building
a big bomb and then using the blast energy to form a
container. Then you can skim off power whenever you
need it.’
    ‘No need of fuel, and it runs forever. What happens
if anybody plugs the leaks?’
    ‘You don’t wait around to find out.’
    The Doctor handed the set back to her. ‘Let’s move,
then,’ he said, and started out. Mari hesitated
momentarily before she followed. She’d always
believed that she could sense when she was being
observed, and it had saved her in a couple of tight
situations in the past. Now it seemed to be playing her
false; there was a definite tingle, even though the more
she looked the more certain she was that they were
alone in the depths of the Terminus.
    She put it out of her mind. That dull red gleam
could have been anything.

The tank that Nyssa had come to think of as the
Lazars’ ward was bare, not too clean, and very poorly
lit. Nyssa, like most of the others, sat on the floor by
one of the walls. The worst cases were lying at the far
end of the tank, in rough bunks, stacked like shelves
from floor to ceiling.
    She tried to use the time to do some coherent
thinking about her position and the courses of action
that were open to her, but concentration wouldn’t
come. It was like trying to catch hold of a spot of light
on a wall.
    So when two of the Vanir entered the tank and
began checking the Lazars one by one, Nyssa was
starting to get desperate. They’d left their helmets by
the door (why did they seem so unafraid of infection?)
and she recognised one of them from the receiving
platform. When they got near enough, she’d speak to
them.
   This was Sigurd’s least favourite part of the whole
operation, lifting heads and looking into one pair of
dead eyes after another. As they moved along the lines
he reported symptoms and made estimates on the
chances of each Lazar making it as far as the zone.
Some of them wouldn’t even leave the tank alive. The
other Vanir dutifully noted everything on a clipboard.
   ‘I want to speak to somebody in charge,’ one of
them said suddenly as they came level. If Sigurd
recognised Nyssa, he didn’t show it.
   ‘Speech centres untouched,’ he dictated, ‘could be a
remissive.’ The other Vanir made a note.
   ‘Please listen,’ Nyssa said, and reached out for his
arm.
   Sigurd caught her hand and tested its flexibility.
‘General weakness,’ he said, ‘poor grip. But make a
special note for Eirak.’
   He straightened up, and the two Vanir moved on.
Nyssa sank back, weak and defeated.
   ‘You’ll get nothing out of them,’ the Lazar next to
her whispered. ‘They’re not interested.’
   Nyssa looked around in surprise. She’d come to
believe that none of the Lazars was capable of speech,
but the one alongside her was lifting back with
difficulty the cloth that covered its head. This revealed
a girl, a pale blonde of about Nyssa’s age. She wasn’t as
far gone as any of the others, but the disease was surely
squeezing the life and strength out of her.
   ‘The only thing they care about,’ she said, keeping
her voice low so the Vanir wouldn’t hear, ‘is the drug
that keeps them alive.’
   ‘What are they going to do with us?’
   ‘There’s supposed to be a secret cure. But I think
they’re going to let us die.’
   Nyssa was about to speak, but the girl stopped her.
A moment later, the two Vanir walked by. They
collected their helmets and left the tank. The door
closed behind them with the solid clunk of metal on
metal.
   Nyssa said, ‘One of them told me he was just a
baggage-handler.’
   The girl nodded. ‘And we’re the baggage.’
   Nyssa summoned up her strength and tottered over
to the door. She was amazed that her energy was
seeping away so rapidly. The door operated on a
simple key, but that was enough to ensure that she
couldn’t get out. She returned to her place.
   ‘Might as well face it,’ the girl said.
   ‘No,’ Nyssa said with determination.
   ‘We’ve been had. There’s no hospital and there’s no
cure. It’s hopeless.’
   ‘That’s not what the Doctor would say.’
   ‘There are no doctors here.’
   ‘He’s one of a kind. What’s the forbidden zone?’
   The girl said, with grudging admiration, ‘You don’t
give up, do you?’
   ‘Not until I’m beaten. Well?’
   ‘I only know what I’ve heard. It’s where the
radiation gets too strong for them. They have to keep
on this side of the line or they’ll die even sooner.’
   ‘And what’s the Garm?’
   ‘You’ll find out soon enough.’
   ‘I need to know now.’
   The girl sighed. Talking was wearing her out, and
she obviously believed that Nyssa’s determination was
going to be wasted. She said, ‘It’s some kind of animal
they brought in to work in the zone. They operated on
its brain, but it’s still half wild.’ She turned to Nyssa, as
much as she was able, and gave her a hard look.
   ‘Just wait a little while longer,’ she said, ‘and you’ll
see for yourself.’

Sigurd came upon Eirak in his corner of the tank that
was the Vanir’s headquarters. The watch-commander
was at his desk with the Hydromel case open before
him, and he was making notes. Logging-in of the
phials of honey-coloured liquid was always a priority
duty.
   Sigurd dropped his clipboard on the end of the
desk, and said, ‘Lazar assessment from tank three.
How’s it going?’
   Eirak looked up at him. He wasn’t smiling. He said,
‘I was right. They’ve reduced the supply. Half of these
are just coloured water.’
   For a moment, Sigurd didn’t know what to say.
Finally he managed a strangled, ‘But why?’
   ‘Obviously they think we can get by on less. Or else
we’ve not been performing well enough.’
   ‘That’s impossible.’
   Eirak leaned back wearily, contemplating the
glassware before him. ‘I don’t know how they get their
information. Spies, perhaps.’
   ‘Bor’s gone,’ Sigurd said with sudden inspiration.
‘Won’t that help?’
   ‘Not enough. We’d have to lose at least one more.’
   ‘Then there’s no way out of it.’
   ‘I just told you the way out,’ Eirak said with quiet
seriousness.
   And he meant every word of it, Sigurd thought with
horror. He’s actually contemplating shutting one of us
out. A name struck from a roster somehow didn’t seem
to carry the same charge of outrage as the death of a
human being – but it was the rosters that were Eirak’s
reality. Sigurd was trying to think if he’d ever given
Eirak a reason to single him out, but he could think of
nothing that didn’t apply to every other Vanir in the
Terminus. Eirak won all the arguments, but still
everybody griped. So it was really a question of who
had offended him most recently.
   As if in answer, Valgard burst into the tank.
   ‘We’ve got trouble,’ he said immediately. He was
helmetless and in an obviously agitated state. The rest
of the off-duty Vanir took an instant interest and
started to come through from the bunkroom area.
   Eirak looked up at him. ‘What do you mean?’ he
said.
   Valgard pushed his way through the growing crowd
and leaned heavily on Eirak’s desk. ‘I saw two people
down in the storeyard, a man and a girl. They went off
into the zone.’
   ‘Were they Lazars?’
   Valgard shook his head. ‘No, they weren’t. They
were talking about reconnaissance, and they were
armed.’
   ‘Company spies?’ Sigurd hazarded.
   ‘Perhaps.’ Eirak obviously wasn’t going to commit
himself until he’d heard it all. He said to Valgard,
‘Why didn’t you stop them?’
   ‘I tried, but they teamed up on me.’
   ‘That’s got to be it,’ Sigurd insisted. ‘The company
sent them.’
   But Eirak was still keeping his reserve. ‘For what
reason?’
   ‘It’s obvious,’ Sigurd said. ‘We’ve been here too
long, and we’ve absorbed too much of the background
radiation. Look what it did to Bor. They don’t think
we’re giving them full value anymore. Unless we do
something about it, we’ll be making way for a new
workforce. One that can do the job better.’
   There was a general murmur of concern. Valgard
wasn’t convinced that they could act to help
themselves. He said, ‘But they’re in the zone.’
   ‘So we need a brave volunteer.’ Eirak said, and he
stared directly at Valgard. ‘Don’t we?’
   There was a silence as realisation came to Valgard.
Although he already knew the reason, he said quietly,
‘Why me?’
   ‘Because I know you’ll succeed.’
   ‘This isn’t fair,’ Sigurd started to say, but Eirak
raised a hand to silence him.
   The watch-commander’s eyes didn’t leave Valgard.
‘Fairness doesn’t come into it,’ he said. ‘There isn’t
enough Hydromel to go around, so I’m making a little
bet with Valgard.’ He reached out and closed the
Hydromel case, twisting the small key in its lock. He’d
already added a chain with a trembler alarm to ensure
that no one would be able to interfere with the supply
whilst it was unattended. He went on, ‘He’s had his last
shot. But if he can put right his mistakes, he can have
my supply.’
   Valgard stared at him stonily. Then, without
another word, he turned and walked out.
   There was an overpowering feeling of relief in the
tank. The Vanir broke up into a number of excitedly
chattering groups. Only Sigurd stayed by Eirak.
   ‘He’ll die,’ he protested, but Eirak was unruffled. In
fact, he seemed pleased with himself.
   ‘He hates me,’ he said. ‘He’ll succeed.’
   ‘And you’ll give him your own Hydromel?’
   Eirak gave him a pained look, one that said how
could you be so naive?
   It was no more nor less than Sigurd expected.
   ‘Come on,’ Eirak said loudly as he stood and
reached for all the boards with the Lazar assessment
forms, ‘we’ve got Lazars to move.’

They were out.
   After spending so long in the dark spaces of the
liner that it seemed as if they’d take residence, Tegan
and Turlough had managed to make their way into
the duct system that fed air directly into the corridors.
Turlough improvised a crowbar from a metal strut and
used it to pry loose one of the covering grilles, and
then completed the job by kicking it out two-footed.
They crawled out into the corridor, grimy and
streaked.
   The TARDIS had faded away. Barring some fluke,
the Doctor and Nyssa were either dead – which
Turlough suggested but which Tegan wouldn’t accept
– or else they’d been forced outside by the sterilisation
process. With this in mind, Tegan wanted to find the
liner’s control room. Perhaps there would be some way
of opening the outside door from there.
   They’d formed some idea of the liner’s structure
from their tour inside the walls, but it was still going to
be a fairly haphazard search. It was further
complicated by the fact that this seemed to be the time
set aside for the drones to carry out their heavy
maintenance work.
   They crouched by a corner and listened to the
sounds of welding, just out of sight. Occasional flashes
threw long shadows across the intersection.
   Tegan said, ‘If they’re programmed to get rid of
intruders, I don’t want to find out the hard way. Did
you see some of the knives they’re carrying?’
   ‘Weapons all around us,’ Turlough said
despondently. Tegan, of course, couldn’t know what
he meant.
   ‘I suppose there are,’ she said. ‘Shall we move?’
   They crept back until they felt it was safe, and then
they started to walk. ‘Tegan,’ Turlough started to say,
but he seemed uncertain how to go on.
   ‘What?’
   ‘Thanks for saving me.’ It came out all at once.
   Tegan was nonplussed. Gratitude was so against
Turlough’s nature – his true nature, as opposed to the
polished and calculated exterior that he usually
presented – that it had taken him a long time to get
around to it. Which made her even more convinced
that he was being sincere. Perhaps there was hope for
him, after all.
   ‘Don’t mention it,’ she said, and they moved on.
   After a while, they took a break. Neither of them
had realised how near to exhaustion they were getting.
They sat on the steps of one of the inner-deck
stairways, and Turlough said, ‘You really think they
made it to the outside?’
   Tegan was hugging one of the stair rails and looking
into nowhere. ‘I know they’re not dead,’ she said.
   ‘How?’
   ‘I just know.’
   There was a pause. Then: ‘Tegan...’
   ‘What?’
   ‘If ever you had to kill someone, could you do it?’
   She looked at him, frowning. ‘What do you mean?’
   ‘Just supposing. Could you?’
   ‘No... I don’t know. I suppose if it was important, to
save a friend or defend myself.’
   ‘But if it was in cold blood?’
   Tegan took hold of the rail and pulled herself to her
feet. ‘You’re weird, Turlough,’ she said. ‘What a
subject to bring up at a time like this.’ And she started
to ascend.

‘We’re just going deeper and deeper,’ Kari
complained. ‘What are we looking for?’
    ‘Whatever it is that makes the Terminus special,’ the
Doctor told her. ‘Something that could even cure the
Lazar disease.’
    They’d really had little choice over their route. The
ribbed tunnel that they’d entered hadn’t offered them
any interesting-looking diversions, and there seemed
little point in returning when they knew that a hostile
reception was guaranteed. Kari said, ‘There’s nothing
here but radiation.’
    The Doctor considered this for a moment. ‘You
know,’ he said, ‘you’re right.’ And he switched on the
hand-radio for a brief burst of the wave interference. It
was much louder than before. ‘And we’re getting
closer to the source.’
    ‘That doesn’t sound too healthy.’
    ‘It isn’t. How safe is an engine when it leaks that
badly?’
    ‘You couldn’t use it. You’d blow yourself away as
soon as you tried to open up.’
    ‘So,’ the Doctor said, letting his mind run along the
speculative rails that events had presented to it, ‘why
haven’t they just dumped the reaction mass and made
the Terminus radiation-free?’
    ‘You think radiation’s part of a cure?’
   ‘I think there’s even more to it than that,’ the
Doctor told her. What Kari had suggested seemed,
from the evidence, to be reasonable. If the Lazar
disease was caused by a virus or a similar organism
with a lower radiation tolerance, a non-lethal dose
might be enough to clean it out of the victim’s system.
Blanket secrecy and social shame would serve to keep
this simple solution from becoming common
knowledge. Whoever ran the Terminus – the
‘Terminus Incorporated’ referred to in the liner’s
automated announcements – was obviously taking
advantage of the old ship’s high incidental levels
without either knowing or caring how they were
caused.
   And the possible causes were beginning to worry the
Doctor even more than the disease itself. ‘We’re
standing at the centre of the known universe,’ he told
Kari. ‘Now, don’t you think that deserves some close
consideration?’
   But Kari was no longer listening to him. She seemed
incredulous.
   ‘I can hear someone singing!’ she said.

Handling of the Lazars was conducted according to a
plan originally devised by Eirak. Vanir responsibility
for the sufferers technically ended at the yellow line
when they were handed over to the Garm, but it
seemed that the Company’s judgement of their success
was based on the survival rate as it was calculated
somewhere later in the processing. What happened
beyond the line was something that they couldn’t
know, but it was in their own interests to ensure that as
many Lazars as possible arrived to face it alive.
    Originally this had meant sending the sickest and
least able through first. It looked good in theory, but
in practice it was a disaster. They slowed up the whole
process so much that even those who’d arrived able to
walk on their own finally had to be carried to the
handover point. Eirak’s answer to this had been the
Lazar assessment, where estimates of the advancement
of the disease were made and the fittest sped through
first. Which was how he came to be looking at Nyssa.
    ‘She’s hardly touched,’ he said, putting a hand
under her chin and tilting her face towards him.
    ‘Well, compared to some of these,’ Sigurd agreed.
Other Vanir were moving amongst the Lazars and
pinning numbered labels to them. It was all running in
an orderly manner, the way that Eirak liked it.
    ‘Take her first, then,’ he said, straightening, and
Sigurd turned to beckon one of the others over.
    ‘No, wait,’ Nyssa said quickly, and Eirak gave her
the cool look that he saved for troublemakers. He’d
been right, she was hardly touched. The progress of
the disease barely seemed to have advanced beyond
the initial stages.
    He warned her, ‘Don’t give us a hard time.’
    ‘But others are worse than me.’
    ‘The fittest ones go first,’ Eirak said. ‘There’s some
kind of quota going, and most of these corpses won’t
fill it. So just co-operate and don’t mess up our
chances.’
    He nodded to Sigurd. Two of the Vanir took
Nyssa’s arms and raised her, protesting, to her feet.

Tegan and Turlough had found the control room.
They stood in the doorway, taking their first look.
   ‘Maybe they were here,’ Turlough said, but he
didn’t sound as if he believed it. Tegan was looking at
the two pressure helmets that had been abandoned on
the main console.
   ‘Maybe somebody was,’ she said.
   They moved in to look around. It wasn’t as
promising as Tegan had hoped. It was one thing to
suppose that you’d be able to spot the control that you
needed out of all the others, but facing the reality was
something else. She wouldn’t even know where to
start.
   Turlough reached over and tried a couple of
switches, ‘Hey,’ Tegan said apprehensively, ‘What are
you doing?’
   ‘Messing around, unless you’ve got a better idea.’
   ‘Well, don’t. The situation’s bad enough.’
   ‘We’ve got to try things,’ Turlough insisted, and to
demonstrate he tried a couple more. All of the screens
at every crew position suddenly came alight. ‘We can’t
just stand around. What if one of these opens the door
to the outside?’
   Tegan looked at the nearest screen. It showed a
diagram which she couldn’t understand, but which
reminded her of the old-time maps which showed the
earth at the centre of the universe, long before the
spiral-arm backwater that was its true home had ever
been imagined. She said, ‘Do you think it could?’
   ‘Well, how will we know if we don’t try?’
   Tegan came around the desk for a closer look.

Kari had been right. Somebody was singing to himself
– breathlessly, tunelessly, and without much regard for
the words. The song was something about being across
the purple sea in the cold ground and sleeping
peacefully, and the whole endless ramble was basically
the same verse over and over with lines skipped,
mumbled or hummed. When they came to the end of
their tunnel, a cautious peek gave them a view of the
singer.
    ‘Who’s that?’ Kari said.
    ‘He seems happy enough,’ the Doctor said. ‘Let’s
find out.’
    He was hunched over and limping, obviously very
ill. Part of his face, chest and arm had been blackened
by an explosion that had ripped open his armour–the
same kind of armour worn by their attacker only a
short time before. There was a strap around his neck
which had been knotted to make a sling for his twisted
arm, but despite his injuries there seemed to be an odd
cheerfulness about him, self-absorbed and purposeful.
    His cloak was spread out on the floor behind him.
There were three or four machine parts heaped on it.
The hood was wrapped around his good hand, and he
was dragging the haul onward into the Terminus. It
seemed to be a painfully slow business. As they
watched, he stumbled and fell to his knees.
    The Doctor started to move out of cover, but Kari
held him back.
    ‘He’s ill,’ the Doctor said, and pulled free.
    He cautiously approached the man, who was now
making a weak effort to get up. Kari emerged from
hiding, but she stayed some distance away.
    The Doctor said, ‘Can I help you?’
    The man looked up. He didn’t seem surprised.
‘Most kind,’ he said. ‘A burden shared is a burden...
something or other.’ And then he handed a part of his
cloak to the Doctor, and made it up alone. The Doctor
found that he was now expected to join in dragging
the machine parts along. The man started singing
again.
   The Doctor said, ‘This isn’t really what I had in
mind.’
   The man broke off his song. ‘Oh?’
   ‘I thought you were ill.’
   ‘Ill?’ He looked around in case the Doctor might be
talking about someone else, but then he shook his
head. ‘No,’ he said, and resumed his dragging.
   The Doctor looked back over his shoulder. Kari was,
if her expression was anything to go by, getting pretty
exasperated. He beckoned for her to follow.
   The load was heavy even with two of them pulling,
and after a short time the man called a halt. He
lowered himself to sit on the floor, exhausted.
   ‘Many thanks,’ he said. ‘Aid much appreciated. Just
a short breather before the, ah, final... whatever...’
   ‘Any time,’ the Doctor told him. Now it was time to
face Kari. She was looking angry.
   ‘You’re breaking every rule in the book,’ she said.
   ‘Then we work by different books.’
   She held up her useless burner. ‘You could have
been walking right into danger, and I couldn’t have
helped you.’
   He’s harmless. Which is more than I can say for the
rest of the wildlife that we’ve encountered in the
Terminus.’
   ‘And what do you think he can do for us?’
   ‘With careful handling, we can get him to explain
the set-up here,’ the Doctor began, but it was at this
point they realised they were again alone. There was
only one way that the cabaret could have gone, and the
Doctor and Kari moved as one to follow him.
   They were expecting to find a further extension of
the tunnels, instead they found where the tunnels led:
to the engines of the Terminus ship.
   They were held in spherical reactor globes,
supported in steel cradles with coolant pipes and
control cables snaking around, and each had a tiny
inspection window. The glass would be leaded and
tinted to near-opacity, but so fierce were the energies
inside that each glowed like a tiny sun – that is, with
the exception of the globe immediately to their left.
This globe was dark and dead-looking.
   The man had made it all the way to the far end of
the row. This obviously wasn’t his first visit, because
there was a heap of junk, scrap and odd machine parts
stacked in front of the globe. Now, ineffectually
shielding his face with his arm, he was trying to lift a
piece from his latest haul and place it on top.
   ‘There’s our radiation source,’ the Doctor said.
   Kari didn’t understand. ‘A junkheap?’
   ‘The globe. It’s cracked.’
   The man managed to add to the pile, but he fell
back after the effort. The Doctor and Kari caught him,
one on each side. ‘Easy now,’ the Doctor said, and they
guided him to a safe distance and sat him against the
support structure of the inactive globe.
   ‘Most kind,’ he said. ‘I...’ he hesitated, and squinted
at the Doctor. ‘I’ve seen you before.’
   ‘About a minute ago,’ the Doctor agreed.
   The man shook his head. ‘Short-term memory’s the
first to go,’ he said sorrowfully.
   Kari said in a low voice, ‘He needs a medic.’
   The man heard her, and he looked down at his
scorched and damaged arm. ‘I tried to pull down the
control cables,’ he said, ‘but I picked the wrong ones.
Power lines. So since I couldn’t stop the buildup, I had
to wall it in...’ he looked towards the heap of scrap.
‘Only now I’m not sure I’ll get it finished.’
   ‘What buildup?’ the Doctor said.
   ‘The radiation spill. I used to monitor the levels. My
name’s Bor. Every time it gets worse, the forbidden
zone gets bigger. But this time it’s more serious.’
   ‘In what way?’
   Bor weakly indicated all around them. ‘These are
the engines of the old Terminus ship,’ he said. ‘Know
what would happen if one of these exploded?’
   ‘We’d be in big trouble,’ Kari said. ‘They don’t just
explode, they chain-react.’
   Bor looked at the globe above. ‘That’s how this one
went,’ he said.
   ‘I don’t think so,’ the Doctor said gently. ‘The ship
wouldn’t still be here.’
   Kari added, ‘None of us would.’
   ‘Oh,’ Bor said airily, ‘it was a long time ago. And the
ship was protected, that’s the point.’
   ‘This is very interesting,’ the Doctor said, ‘but...’
   Bor didn’t seem to hear. He was looking at his
scrapheap again. ‘That one’ll go next. The crack’s
always been there, but the leak’s been getting worse. I
didn’t find out why until I followed the control cables.’
   Valgard was thinking that he’d heard enough.
   He’d been standing in the shadows at the end of the
row for most of the conversation, and any doubts that
he may have had were now gone. Not that it mattered;
the object of the exercise was to return from the zone
with evidence that he’d carried out his unwelcome job
so that he could watch Eirak wriggle and squirm and
try to get out of the bet that he’d made. He probably
had no intention of carrying out his part of the
bargain, in which case Valgard was going to see to it
that his authority in the Terminus would be ended
forever. If you couldn’t believe his promises, why
believe in his threats anymore?
   For now, speed was the main problem. Valgard
needed to get back as quickly as possible to minimise
the effects of the zone and give himself the best chance
of fighting them off. He was running on the effects of a
Hydromel high, brought on by the use of more than
half of the drug remaining from his last issue. What
remained couldn’t keep him going for much longer.
   He stepped out into the light. ‘Tell them nothing,
Bor!’ he shouted. ‘They’re company spies!’
   Bor’s expression changed in an instant. ‘You’re
from the company?’ he said, horrified. ‘You seemed so
friendly!’
   The Doctor and Kari both stood. ‘They’ve got great
respect for their employers,’ the Doctor observed.
   Valgard stepped out for a closer look at Bor. It was
the first view he’d had of Bor’s condition. ‘You’ve been
torturing him!’ he accused.
   ‘Have they?’ Bor said. ‘I can’t remember...’
   Valgard was still advancing on them, his staff held
crosswise. As they both remembered, he could use it to
good effect. Kari brought her burner around, but
Valgard wasn’t to be fooled.
   ‘You’ve no power for that,’ he said. ‘I was there
when you found out, remember?’
   Valgard kept on coming. He changed his grip on
the staff, holding it out to full length and sweeping it
from side to side. ‘I’m taking you back for Eirak to
see,’ he said.
   ‘Fine,’ the Doctor said, ‘Let’s go. There’s no need
for violence.’
   ‘That comes later. When we’ve finished questioning
you.’
   ‘Ah. I see. In that case...’
   He seemed to be about to turn away – at least, that’s
how Valgard read it, which was what the Doctor had
intended. On the next sweep of the staff he turned
suddenly and caught the end with both hands.
   For a moment, it was stalemate. With no central
pivot to give the staff leverage, they were in a contest
of strength, a contest that the Doctor won.
   Valgard was whipped aside. The weight of his own
armour kept him going, and he spun into the junk
that Bor had heaped before the cracked reactor globe.
With an almost deafening sound, the junk came down
with Valgard sprawling in the middle of it.
   ‘My wall!’ Bor shouted in agony as he got to his feet,
but he was drowned out by Valgard’s screams as a
beam of unchecked radiance burst from the globe.
Valgard rolled aside. Bor arrived and, again using his
arm to shield his face, attempted to pile some of it
back.
   ‘Well done,’ Kari said approvingly, but the Doctor
could get no pleasure from the victory.
   ‘He’s not as strong as he looks,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’
   They turned to leave, but it wasn’t going to be so
easy. The darkness that blocked their way was huge
and powerful, and its eyes glowed a dull red.

Force of habit had Kari reaching for her useless
burner. ‘What is it?’ she said.
  The massive beast was unmoving. Valgard had
recovered sufficiently to prop himself up, and he said,
‘You ought to know. Your people brought it here.’
   ‘We weren’t sent by the company,’ the Doctor said.
He was beginning to get irritated at the persistence of
Valgard’s misunderstanding.
   It lifted one immense paw. It took them a moment
to realise that it was pointing at Bor.
   ‘It wants something,’ Kari said, although she
couldn’t make out what.
   ‘It wants Bor,’ Valgard said from the floor. ‘It’s been
ordered to find him and take him back.’
   ‘Let it pass,’ the Doctor suggested to Kari. Slowly,
cautiously, they moved aside. The Garm moved
towards Bor. For all its size, it moved in total silence.
   ‘Look at that skin,’ the Doctor said as it passed them.
‘Like natural armour.’
   Kari tried to make it out. The Garm just seemed to
soak up the light. ‘Radiation-resistant?’ she said.
   ‘A purpose-built slave to work in the danger area.’
   The Garm raised Bor from the floor as if he
weighed no more than a handful of paper. Bor hung
there limply, without the strength to fight or resist. But
then as he was turning, the Garm stopped.
   Nobody really heard it, but they all felt it: a deep
stirring that was beyond sound and almost beyond
sensation. ‘Subsonics,’ the Doctor said, adding as the
Garm moved out with Bor, ‘obviously some kind of
signal.’
   A moment later, and the beast was gone.
   Kari looked at Valgard. He stared back defiantly,
although he still didn’t seem able to make it up from
the floor. She said, ‘What about him?’
   ‘Leave him,’ the Doctor said.
   ‘I should kill him.’
   ‘He’s too weak to follow us. Come on.’
   The Doctor set out with some obvious sense of
purpose. He was scanning the walls and the open
latticework of the ceiling above. She had to catch up
before she could ask, ‘What are you looking for?’
   ‘Control lines,’ the Doctor explained, but when he
glanced at Kari she was looking blank. ‘The ones that
Bor said he followed.’

Contrary to Eirak’s hopes, Nyssa had been giving them
a hard time.
   She’d already made one attempt to run as they’d
escorted her to the storeyard, and but for the fact that
she turned into a blind alley between two fuel tanks,
they’d have lost her. Sigurd cursed himself and kept a
tight grip on her from then on. Some day soon Eirak
might be selecting someone else to lose his Hydromel
supply, and Sigurd didn’t want to be the next in line.
   They had a procedure for tethering rebellious
Lazars in the storeyard, although it was more often
used for those who were dazed and liable to wander if
not watched. Sigurd warned his companion to hold
onto Nyssa as he set off the subsonic signal and then
prepared the manacle that would lock her to the
supporting strut until the Garm arrived. When he
turned around, his companion was on the floor and
Nyssa was running again.
   She wasn’t at her best, but neither were they.
Sickness slowed her, and heavy armour slowed them.
The gap widened as she ran for the tarpaulin and
ducked under. Almost immediately, Nyssa bounced
back with the breath knocked out of her.
   The Vanir with whom she’d collided helped them to
bring her back, but for the moment she had no fight
left. They lifted her and closed the self-adjusting
pressure catch of the manacle around her wrist, and
only then did Sigurd release his hold on her. Two bad
moments like that were enough to ruin anybody’s day.
   He signalled his thanks to the Vanir who had
helped.
   ‘Who’s team are you on,’ he said, ‘Gylfi’s?’
   The Vanir inclined his head in agreement, but
further conversation was prevented as Sigurd’s
companion called for their attention.
   ‘It’s Bor!’ he said. ‘The Garm found Bor!’
   The Garm came striding from the Terminus with
Bor held out before. They ran to the yellow line to
receive him, and when the Garm had been relieved of
the body he stepped back to wait.
   Bor was lowered to the floor. ‘Most kind,’ he was
mumbling, ‘most kind...’
   ‘The armour’s ruined,’ Sigurd’s companion
observed. The Vanir who had arrived in time to help
with the capture of Nyssa stayed well back.
   Sigurd said, ‘We’d better get him to Eirak while he
can still talk. Otherwise they’ll think we stole the best
parts.’
   Looking at Bor now, it was difficult to see why
anybody should want his armour – but Sigurd was
taking no chances. He undid Bor’s makeshift sling and
they each got an arm around their shoulders to carry
him away, feet dragging along the floor. ‘Stay and
watch her,’ he said to the other Vanir as they passed,
and a few seconds later they were gone.
   The Garm was still waiting. The Vanir turned to
Nyssa and said, ‘Let’s see that chain.’
   He reached for the manacle. Nyssa tried to push
him away with her free hand. It wasn’t what he was
expecting. He took a surprised pace back, and then he
quickly removed his radiation helmet.
   ‘It’s me, Nyssa!’ Olvir said.
   When he’d realised what was happening he’d tried
to follow and rescue her from the drone, but by that
time she was already being handed over to the Vanir.
He’d dodged around corners twice to avoid Sigurd on
his way to and from the collection of the Hydromel,
and then when he’d arrived on the receiving platform
it had been just in time to see the elevator dropping
away. He’d followed it down by the stairs and catwalks,
and stayed in the shadows as he tried to get some idea
of how the Terminus was being run. His observations
led him to the unattended equipment store, and there
he’d been able to assemble for himself a disguise that
would allow him to move around unchallenged.
   The Garm was starting to move towards them.
‘You’d better make this fast,’ Nyssa said.
   But it wasn’t going to be easy. The manacle had
been closed by some kind of sprung clip. It would take
a lot more strength to open it than Olvir could muster.
   ‘Don’t worry,’ he reassured her, ‘I’ll stop him.’ He
took a couple of steps back, reaching under his Vanir
cloak as he went. He brought out his burner and
levelled it at the Garm. He set it for low heat and high
energy, the brick-wall effect that came out in a single
concentrated zap.
   It might have been a paper cup full of water. The
Garm didn’t even slow down. Olvir switched to a
concentrated burn – humane impulses were all very
well, but the situation was getting away from him – and
tried again.
   Nothing. He had to end the burn abruptly because
the Garm was too close to Nyssa and she was at risk.
The thing must have had skin like a rock. It reached
out and sprang the manacle in a single easy gesture,
and then swept Nyssa off the ground before she could
even react.
  He was carrying her away, into the Terminus.
There was nothing that Olvir could do about it.
  ‘I’ll think of something else,’ he called after her.
  At least, he would try.

‘Nothing,’ Turlough said as he threw the last of the
switches. With a few inconsequential exceptions, none
of them had any effect. They could lower the control
room lights or boost the air-conditioning, but they
could neither get out of the ship nor let others in.
   Tegan said, ‘Everything’s routed through the
automatic pilot.’
   ‘So we’re stuck here until that box decides to let us
out?’
   ‘We don’t have any choice.’
   ‘I think we do,’ Turlough said, and Tegan sensed
that he was finally getting around to explain what had
been bothering him for some time. ‘I think there’s a
way we can get back to the TARDIS.’
   ‘It would be more practical to find the Doctor.’
   Turlough shook his head. ‘Not at all. It would be
more practical to re-create the door we came through.
Wait here.’
   He walked out of the control room with an obvious
sense of purpose. Confused, Tegan watched him go.
Whatever was going through his mind, he didn’t seem
ready to share it.
   As soon as Turlough was certain that Tegan wasn’t
following, he took the communication cube from his
pocket. He was fairly sure that he couldn’t be
overheard.
   The Black Guardian came through immediately.
‘You have not destroyed the Doctor,’ the cube pulsed, the
ferocity of its glow an accusation.
   ‘I haven’t found him yet.’
   The cube gave an intense, spasmodic surge, showing
a capability Turlough hadn’t been aware of. He tried
to resist the wrenching pain that came with it, but he
couldn’t prevent himself from crying out.
   ‘Kill the Doctor!’ the Black Guardian urged, and the
agony stayed for several seconds longer. Turlough
fought not to cry out again. Tegan might hear and
come to see what was happening. If she did, and if his
secret was uncovered, he knew what the cube’s next
order would be.
   ‘I’ll do it,’ he gasped as the glow died and the pain
receded. ‘I have a plan.’
   ‘You have nothing.’
   ‘I do. But I need to get back to the TARDIS.’
   ‘Why?’
   ‘Trust me,’ he pleaded, knowing that he had little
chance, and it was then that he heard Tegan calling.
She must have heard something. Quickly, he went on,
‘How do I recreate the door?’
   ‘Fail me again...’ the Black Guardian said ominously,
but Turlough did his best to put a confidence into his
voice that he didn’t feel.
   ‘I won’t, I promise. But how do I get back?’
   ‘You have skills, use them. Look beneath your feet.’
   Underfoot? What could he have seen under the
floor that would give him a clue to the way back to the
TARDIS? He tried to think through the stages which
had led to the creation of the door: the breakup, the
emergency programme set to home in on the
distinctive radiation waveform of a passing ship...
   Tegan was coming around the corner. He realised
that he still had the communication cube in his hand,
and he quickly pocketed it.
   He thought he had an answer.
   Tegan was looking puzzled. She’d been expecting to
find him in some kind of trouble. ‘What are you
doing?’ she said.
   ‘I need you to help me. We’ve got to find the place
where the door to the TARDIS appeared, and then
we’ve got to find a way of lifting one of the floor
panels.’
   ‘But why?’
   ‘I’ll explain when we get there.’

The catwalks deep inside the Terminus were
considerably different to those that had been added by
the Vanir and by their immediate predecessors; these
had been built for bodies with dimensions that were
decidedly non-human. It wasn’t as difficult as the
Doctor expected to find the lines that Bor had
identified as power and control cables, because his
tracks were fresh in the dust. It seemed that the Garm
kept to his own areas, and they didn’t include
anywhere above floor-level.
   The lines and cables were colour-coded, and they
ran parallel to the walk. Kari couldn’t understand why
they were following – literally – in Bor’s footsteps at all.
‘But what’s the point?’ she said. ‘He’s crazy.’
   ‘Crazy to think he could make an effective radiation
shield out of junk, yes,’ the Doctor conceded. ‘But he
knew what he was talking about.’
   ‘I wish I did.’
    ‘They’re using a leaky containment drive as a kill-or-
cure, that’s risky enough. If we don’t get out of here
soon, we’ll glow in the dark for the rest of our lives.’
The Doctor was hardly exaggerating. With access to
the facilities in the TARDIS, he was confident that he
could reverse the effects of mild radiation
contamination. It was a fairly simple case of rigging a
low-power matter transmitter with a discriminating
filter between the two ends. But when the
contamination had been around for long enough to
cause actual cell damage on a detectable scale, there
was no way of reversing the process.
    ‘But you think there’s an even bigger danger than
that?’ Kari said.
    ‘Bor seemed to think so. Follow these lines, and we’ll
find out why.’

They carried Bor into the Vanir’s converted storage
tank and laid him on one of the bunks. He was weak,
and he was starting to become delirious again after a
brief period of lucidity. Someone was sent to get Eirak,
and Sigurd crouched by the bunk.
   ‘You hear me, old man?’ he said.
   Bor stared at the ceiling. ‘Sigurd?’
   ‘Why did you do it? You knew you wouldn’t last.’
   ‘Worth a try... the pilot’s dead, you know.’
   ‘Which pilot?’
   ‘Pilot of the Terminus.’
   Now he was definitely rambling. The Terminus
hadn’t moved under its own power or anything else’s
for generations. Sigurd said, ‘The pilot’s dead and
long gone.’
   ‘Oh, no,’ Bor insisted, ‘he’s still there. But he’s going
to fire up the engines, and they won’t take it.’
   There was a noise from behind. Sigurd looked up to
see Eirak on his way over from the door. He came and
stood by the bunk, and glanced from one end to the
other. ‘Where’s his helmet?’ he said making no attempt
to lower his voice.
   ‘He didn’t have it.’
   Eirak inspected Bor’s ruined armour critically. ‘Did
he say why he went into the zone?’
   Sigurd shook his head. ‘I can’t make sense of it.’
   ‘Well...’ Eirak straightened. ‘One less on the rosters.’
   Seeing that the watch-commander was about to
leave without further comment, Sigurd said, ‘But he
needs Hydromel!’
   The answer was harsh and direct. ‘There isn’t any to
spare.’
   ‘But he’s dying!’
   ‘So why detain him?’ Eirak said curtly, and he
walked away.

The Doctor and Kari had followed the control cables
to their end; they led to the control chamber of the
Terminus ship.
   It wasn’t easy to get in. The floor and the ceiling
had been built on a slope, so there was hardly enough
headroom. A recess had been cut into the slope for the
central control couch, and all of the controls and
displays had been packed into the available space
around this. It didn’t leave much space to move
around.
   Not that the pilot needed any. He was most
definitely dead.
   The suited body in the couch was half as big again as
a man, its contorted alien face half-hidden by the
tinted bubble of a pressure helmet. As the Doctor
crouched and moved across for a closer look, he could
make out only a few details by the lights of the live
instrumentation. They gave the alien the look of the
screaming skull design that had been painted on the
outside of the Terminus ship’s hull.
   It seemed all wrong. The place didn’t have the
feeling of long-ago disaster that he’d been expecting.
Something had gone wrong – the dead pilot and the
damaged reactor globe down in the engine section
were evidence of that – but from what he could see
around him, the Doctor would have guessed that all of
this had happened only hours before. And that, of
course, was impossible.
   Kari seemed fascinated by the dim vision of horror
that could be made out through the alien’s visor glass.
Squeezing himself between units for a closer look at a
part of the console, the Doctor said, ‘Do you remember
Bor telling us that one of the Terminus engines had
exploded?’
   ‘Did he?’ Kari said, only half-aware.
   ‘Look at this panel.’ he pointed, and Kari had to
shake herself to concentrate. The Doctor went on,
‘The Terminus was once capable of time travel.’
   She stared. The layout meant nothing to her. She
was combat section. She said, ‘So?’
   ‘To push a ship of this size through time would take
an enormous amount of energy.’
   ‘What are you getting at?’
   ‘Think about what we’ve learned. The Terminus
seems to be at the centre of the known universe.
Imagine the ship in flight. Suddenly the pilot finds
that he has a vast amount of unstable reaction mass on
board. What would you do?’
   Kari didn’t have to think it over. ‘I’d jettison. It’s the
only answer.’
   ‘And a perfectly normal procedure, under more
conventional circumstances. Unfortunately, this pilot
ejected his fuel into a void.’
   ‘And it exploded.’
   ‘Starting a chain reaction which led to Event One.’
   It took a moment for Kari to grasp what was being
said, but then her eyes widened in amazement. ‘The
Big Bang?’ she said. ‘But why wasn’t the Terminus
destroyed?’
   ‘As Bor said, it was protected. The pilot used a low-
power time-hopper to jump the ship forward a few
hours, leaving the unstable fuel behind to burn itself
out. He obviously thought it would be a localised
reaction and no danger to anybody. Unfortunately, the
chain reaction just got bigger and bigger... the
shockwave must have caught up with him and boosted
the ship billions of years into the future.’
   ‘And killed the pilot.’
   ‘As well as damaging a second engine. Which is still
active.’
   Kari looked again at the pilot, this time with even
greater awe. He was more than an alien; he was the
last survivor of a universe which he’d destroyed with
his error, and his dying moments had been spent
looking on the new universe that he’d inadvertently
brought into being in its place.
   But if the second engine was still active... didn’t that
mean that the whole process could take place again?
   The Doctor was staring at one of the console
controls. ‘Did you see anything move?’ he said. ‘I
haven’t been looking. why?’
   ‘Something’s changed, and I’m not sure what.’ He
seemed to be looking most intently at a T-shaped
control handle that was almost within the reach of the
pilot’s gloved hand. The three-fingered claw lay on the
panel, actually touching nothing.
   But as they watched, the handle moved a fraction.
‘A pre-ignition sequence!’ the Doctor said. ‘It’s already
been programmed in!’
   ‘But he couldn’t. He’s dead!’
   ‘The ship doesn’t know that. It‘ll go ahead anyway.
We’ve got to try to shut the damaged engine down.’
   ‘But how?’
   ‘Well,’ the Doctor said, shifting himself around to
reach across the control panel, ‘we can start by seeing
if we can reset that handle.’

Olvir tried to get ahead of the Garm, but he hadn’t
counted on the labyrinthine complexity of the
Terminus interior. He couldn’t effectively make his
way alone, and when he tried to retrace his steps the
Garm had, of course, moved on. He listened, but the
beast made no sound. It was only Nyssa’s weak calling
of his name that gave him something to follow. He
caught up just as Nyssa was being strapped to an
upright before the damaged reactor globe of the ship’s
engines.
   He saw Bor’s junkheap. More important, he saw the
deadly crack that was only partly covered, light
streaming though like the gaze of Satan. Nyssa called
his name again, and Olvir started forward.
   If he hadn’t still been wearing Vanir armour,
walking into Valgard’s staff might have killed him.
   Olvir folded, all the breath smacked out of him. He
felt as if he’d been rammed in the midsection by a
truck. He hit the floor, sack-like and out of control, as
the Garm ambled across his lurching field of vision
towards the stacked machine parts. Olvir wondered
with a detached kind of curiousity what might be
coming next. For the moment, he had only the most
tenuous contact with his body and his surroundings.
He tried to focus on the Garm, but Valgard got in the
way.
    ‘Where are the others?’ he demanded, hefting his
staff ready for another blow.
    ‘What?’ Sensation was returning to Olvir now, and
its return was bad news.
    ‘The other spies!’ Cheated of prey once, Valgard
wasn’t going to allow Olvir any advantages. The staff
came down towards Olvir’s head in a bone-splitting
hammer-blow. Olvir ducked, took some of the force on
his protected shoulder, and slid up under the rod to
grab hold of Valgard. The staff was useless for close-up
fighting, and it was here that Olvir would have the
edge of youth and strength.
    It wasn’t the bonus that he’d hoped. Valgard had
over-ridden the metering mechanism on the
intravenous Hydromel dispenser that was fixed to the
chestplate of his armour, and he’d used up all of his
reserves in a single shot. For a while, at least, he would
feel immortal. Olvir tried some of his best moves, the
ones that had won him points in combat training, but
Valgard blocked them all. They spun and they circled,
and Olvir had little chance to register what the Garm
might be doing.
    Valgard tried to break free to make a useful distance
for his staff, but Olvir wouldn’t let him. Olvir tried to
bring his burner around for a close shot, but Valgard
knocked it to the floor and kicked it away. They swung
around again. Olvir could see that the Garm was
leaning hard against the side of the junkheap.
   The animal bulldozed the scrap aside. Radiant light
burst through, and Nyssa was directly in its path. She
screamed.
   Olvir suddenly switched tactics. Instead of pulling
away, he launched himself onto Valgard. The Vanir
suddenly found that he was trying to hold the
combined weight of Olvir and two sets of armour.
   Given warning, he might just have managed it. He
swayed for several seconds, but he was already beaten.
He crashed to the ground with Olvir on top of him.
   They rolled apart, winded. Olvir was feeling sick
and dizzy at this, his second hand-out of abuse, but he
struggled to his knees. If only he wasn’t too late. He
had to get Nyssa away from the danger of the radiation
field.
   But Nyssa was no longer there.
   Olvir stared mutely at the chain and the straps that
had secured her. They swung gently in the deadly
light. He made it onto his feet. There was no sign of
the Garm, either, and no clue as to where they might
have gone. His burner had come to rest close to the
reactor globe – too close for safety. He’d have to reach
into the hottest part of the danger area in order to
reach it.
   ‘I wouldn’t,’ Valgard said from behind him. ‘The
radiation would kill you.’
   Olvir turned. Valgard was still on the floor where
he’d fallen, but he’d managed to prop himself up. He
said, ‘Get much closer and you’re dead, unless you can
get to a decontamination unit.’
   ‘You’re lying.’
   Valgard shrugged. ‘Go ahead, then. In my day we
had better training.’
   ‘What are you talking about?’
   ‘You’re a raider, aren’t you? Combat trained.
Colonel Periera, was it? The one they call the Chief?’
   Olvir tried not to let his surprise show, but it was
unavoidable. He said, ‘How do you know?’
   Valgard shifted a little in an attempt to make the
most of the strength that he had left. ‘I recognise the
moves,’ he said. ‘He taught the same ones to me. I was
with him for five tours until he turned me in for the
reward.’ He shook his head, and smiled at the
memory. ‘I was lining up to do the same to him, but he
beat me to it. Good times.’
   ‘How did you get here?’
   ‘We’re slave labour, all of us. That’s how the
Terminus works.’
   ‘Where are the guards?’
   Valgard almost laughed. ‘Don’t need them. If we
don’t work, there’s no Hydromel for us.’ He put out a
hand. ‘Help me up,’ he said, but there was a whining
note in his voice that caused Olvir to step back a little
further.
   ‘Come on,’ Valgard said, ‘Look at me. I’m a danger
to nobody. I’m finished and I’m dying.’
   But Olvir wasn’t to be won around. He said, ‘Where
did that thing take Nyssa?’
   ‘Who?’
   ‘The girl. Where did it take her?’
   ‘I don’t know. This is the first time I’ve ever been
into the zone.’
   ‘Will he harm her?’
   ‘He’s supposed to be helping her to get cured.
That’s what he’s here for.’
    Olvir glanced across at the straps and chains. They’d
stopped swinging. If this was Valgard’s idea of a
healing process, he’d got it badly wrong. Was it worth
even attempting to find Nyssa if she was doomed
anyway?
    He said, ‘How can this be expected to cure
anybody?’
    ‘Help me, and I’ll show you.’ Valgard was just a
little too eager in his offer. Olvir didn’t believe that the
Vanir knew any more about the inner workings of the
Terminus than he did.
    Olvir said, ‘I’ll find her myself.’ The Garm hadn’t
passed them as they’d fought, so that limited the
choice of directions. Olvir took a guess and moved off.
    ‘Don’t leave me,’ Valgard called after him.
    One of the tactical principles of the Chief’s combat
training programme was that no enemy should be left
alive if there was a possibility that he could pose a
future threat. Olvir obviously thought that Valgard
was finished and not worth the attention... which was
what Valgard had wanted him to think.
    As soon as he was sure that Olvir had gone, the
Vanir scrambled to his feet. He wasn’t fast, but he was
a long way from being the helpless invalid that he’d
pretended to be as long as the young raider was
around. He got his staff and went over to the reactor
globe, approaching in such a way that he was out of
the direct line of the radiation. The staff was his
protection as he used it to draw Olvir’s burner out of
the danger area.
    His time in the zone might be getting short, but he
had a weapon. Let them try to stop him now!
‘Are you all right?’ Tegan said anxiously, and
Turlough fanned some of the acrid smoke away. His
attempts to pull down some of the shielding in the
newly uncovered section of the underfloor area had
started a small electrical fire, but it had quickly burned
itself out.
   ‘I’m all right,’ Turlough assured her.
   ‘I might be able to help you if you’d tell me what
you’re trying to do.’
   ‘There was some kind of radiation leak around here,
remember? It gets worse when the motors are
running. That’s when the door to the TARDIS is fully
materialised... that leak must be the engine signature
that the emergency programme attached itself to.’ And
as if to prove a point, Turlough leaned back and
started to kick at the cladding which lined the
underfloor tunnel. There were sparks and more
smoke, but pieces of the cladding came away.
   Tegan looked up. On the wall behind her, a faint
ghost-image of the door to the TARDIS was starting to
appear. She was about to tell Turlough, but the liner’s
automated warning voice beat her to it.
   ‘Primary ignition is now beginning,’ it boomed down
the corridors. ‘All systems running on test. Departure
sequence is beginning now.’
   ‘What’s happening?’ Tegan said.
   ‘I should think that’s obvious. The liner’s getting
ready to leave.’
   ‘But we can’t leave yet!’
   The liner was deaf to any argument that Tegan
might offer it. ‘All drones to designated assembly points,’ it
went on, ‘Countdown to secondary ignition follows.’
   Turlough heaved himself half-way back to corridor
level, and he looked at the results of his work with
some satisfaction. He estimated that the door was
about one-third materialised. Tegan was no longer
looking; she was more concerned about their
imminent departure. They were already separated
from the Doctor and Nyssa, and it was a situation that
threatened to become permanent.
   ‘The ship’s on automatic,’ Turlough told her.
‘There’s nothing you can do.’
   ‘But I’ve got to try,’ she said, and before he could
argue any further she’d set off towards the control
room.
   She covered the distance in record time. As she ran,
the decks beneath her feet began to rumble with the
buildup of launch power. Coming into the command
area stopped her short for a moment. It was a room
peopled by busy ghosts, ranks of empty seats before
which controls were setting themselves and read-outs
were displaying to no purpose. But Tegan knew that
all of this activity was only secondary, a reflection of
the orders that were being issued by the automatic
command centre at the forward end of the room.
   ‘Departure sequence is now under way,’ the box
announced calmly. ‘Countdown to docking disengagement
is now beginning. Preparing to blow clamps and withdraw all
lines.’
   She began to look for some main control or master
switch, but there was nothing. ‘Can anyone hear me?’
she said, knowing that she was wasting her time. ‘You
must stop.’
   ‘Countdown to primary burn is now under way.’ The
deck was almost shaking.
   ‘Test mode on all systems is disengaged, all systems
operating within permitted tolerances.’
   ‘Can’t you shut up!’ Tegan yelled in frustration, and
she slammed her fist down on top of the automatics.
The control box shut up.
   Tegan couldn’t believe it. An alarm started ringing
somewhere, and a call of Emergency! Launch abort was
echoing around the rest of the liner, and several lights
on the control console had died whilst others were
blinking furiously.
   She ran back to tell Turlough. For the first time
since they’d arrived, it was starting to look as if the
whole messy adventure might be brought to a safe
conclusion.
   The floor panel was still open, but the door to the
TARDIS had faded again. And it seemed that
Turlough had gone with it.

The rise in engine power prior to the aborted launch
had given Turlough the opportunity he needed. The
underfloor leak had intensified, the door had become
solid, and Turlough had wasted no time in going
through. He made straight for the console room, and
he set his communication cube down by the master
control.
    ‘The Doctor still lives.’ There was no expression in the
voice.
    ‘He’s powerless,’ Turlough said, ‘He’s trapped, he’s
probably dead already.’ He did his best to sound
confident, but he could see too late that it wasn’t
coming through.
    It would have made no difference, anyway. The
Black Guardian’s voice was dark with anger. ‘You
represent a poor investment of my time and energy,’ it said,
and the brightness of the cube began to increase. ‘There
is only one course to follow with such an investment.’
   Without warning, the cube escalated to peak
brightness. The energy explosion that followed was
like that of a bottled sun breaking free.

The Doctor hadn’t been having much success with the
main control handle of the Terminus. He took off his
jacket and tried to force it from every angle, but there
seemed to be no way of moving it. Kari tried when he
became exhausted, and then they combined their
strength and pushed together. The only movement
that the handle made was in the direction that had
already been programmed in.
   ‘Why won’t it move?’ Kari demanded, exasperated,
as they took a couple of minutes to get their breath
back.
   ‘It’s computer-controlled,’ the Doctor said. He was
about to add something else, but he didn’t; instead, he
looked over the console as if he was seeing it in the
light of a new idea.
   Kari knew better than to interrupt. After a few
moments, the Doctor said, ‘The technology here is
phenomenal.’
   ‘I don’t understand why it’s still functional after all
this time.’
   The Doctor tapped the console, thoughtfully. ‘Have
you heard of a timeslip?’
   ‘No. What is it?’
   ‘Something that can happen if you try to make a
jump through time without any adequate form of
control. At least, that’s the theory. You arrive with
your timescale way out of alignment with your
surroundings; subjective time seems normal, but it’s
passing much more slowly in relation to everything
else.’
   ‘You mean... the whole Terminus is on slow time?’
   ‘A neat way of putting it. Yes, that’s more or less
what I mean. What we’re witnessing is probably a
high-speed emergency programme to deal with an
unstable engine – except that it’s taken several
hundred years to get this far.
   Kari shook her head. ‘This is madness.’
   ‘If I’m right, the time differential will make it
impossible to move that lever. It would take the
strength of a giant.’
   ‘A giant?’ Kati said, and their eyes met as they both
had the same realisation. There was a giant already
around. He took the Lazars off into the forbidden
zone.

Olvir, meanwhile, had found the Garm.
    Unfortunately, he seemed to have found it too late.
The beast was empty-handed, and there was no sign of
Nyssa anywhere. Olvir wasn’t sure how best to deal
with it. Intimidation was probably a waste of time, as
he’d found when he failed even to sting it with his
burner – and he didn’t have the weapon anyway, so it
was all rather academic.
    He knew that it could understand at least a few
rudimentary commands. Furthermore, he was wearing
enough of his Vanir armour to look as if he was
entitled to exercise authority. He decided to give it a
try.
    He stepped from the shadows before the Garm, and
his nerve almost failed him. The dark beast seemed to
fill the passageway, and the glowing coals that were its
eyes gazed down on him and their message seemed to
be, I see through you, little man.
   ‘I’m unarmed,’ Olvir said quickly, showing his
hands. The Garm stopped. Olvir added, uncertainly,
‘Can you understand me?’
   ‘Perfectly,’ the Garm said.
   The voice was a shock. An inhuman, bass-magnified
whisper, it seemed to come, not from the Garm, but
from all around the Terminus itself. In spite of the
strangeness, there was an unexpectedly gentle quality.
   ‘Why are you doing this?’ Olvir said. ‘Why are you
torturing people?’
   ‘I drive the disease from them. All would die, but
many survive.’
   ‘And the last one you treated? Nyssa? Did she
survive?’
   ‘She is recovering.’
   ‘Where?’
   There was an awkward pause. Then: ‘Follow me.’
The Garm turned to go. Olvir, having no better ideas,
did as he was told.

Bor hadn’t moved from the bunk where they’d laid
him. Even if he’d wanted to, he probably couldn’t have
managed it. Sigurd was the only one who stayed
around after trading his rostered duties against a
promise of extra work in the future. He’d had some
absurd idea that he might be able to help. Instead, he
could only witness Bor’s slow defeat by the effects of an
overlong stay in the zone.
   ‘Try to relax,’ he urged, as Bor stiffened with a
particularly bad spasm of pain.
   ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Bor gasped after a while, as the
spasm ended and left him with a few moments of
relief. He’d already had all of Sigurd’s Hydromel,
protesting at the sacrifice. ‘In a couple of hours there
won’t even be a Terminus. Or a company. Or
anything... I found out all about it in the zone.’
   ‘What’s going to happen?’
   ‘That’s the trouble. I can’t remember.’ Bor managed
a weak, wry smile. ‘Short-term memory’s always the
first to go.’
   Another spasm threatened. Bor waited it out, but
for once it didn’t last. Perhaps even that was a bad
sign. Sigurd said, ‘Look, I’ll get more Hydromel.’
   ‘Eirak won’t release any.’
   ‘Who said I was going to ask him?’
   Sigurd went across to the thin curtain that divided
the sleeping quarters from the larger space of the
headquarters section. For all of the great size of the
Terminus, the amount of usable space that was
available to the Vanir had always been small. But even
the best-shielded sections gave only temporary
protection, and without any means of controlling the
circulation of contaminated air their effect was limited.
   The Hydromel container was on open view,. The
two chains that held it down were thin, but the real
problem lay with the trembler alarms to which they
were connected. Any attempt to cut them or to smash
the lock would bring Eirak running. And if that
happened Sigurd knew that, within a few days, there
would be another Vanir lying sick and delirious on the
other side of the curtain, and it would be him. Eirak
could cancel his supply and make it stick. If he could
order Valgard into the zone and get away with it, he
could get away with anything.
   ‘It really isn’t worth the trouble, you know,’ Bor
called feebly from the sleeping area. And the pity of it
was, Sigurd had to agree.
The Garm said nothing more, gliding along ahead of
Olvir. The young raider kept his distance. Silence only
added to the aura of power around the beast, and
Olvir could still remember how ineffectual his burner
had been against its armoured skin. They’d already
come down through open deck areas with strange
markings drawn out on the floor, and passed through
a long corridor that seemed to be lined entirely with
black glass. Now they emerged about half-way down a
metal gantry onto a spiralling access ramp.
   The Garm led him upward. They were back in the
open, and the ramp led them between vertical cooling
fins several storeys high. Olvir took one look at the
drop from the unguarded edge of the ramp, and
wished he hadn’t – the air turbulence between the fins
tugged at him and tried to pull him over. The wind
was nowhere near strong enough, but it was an
uncomfortable feeling.
   They climbed into the support structure at the top
of the fins, and Olvir could see the metal-honeycomb
skin of the Terminus only a few metres overhead. The
ramp ended in a grillework deck that groaned slightly
as the Garm’s weight came onto it, seeming hardly
enough to protect them from the long fall into
darkness below. It began to occur to Olvir that he’d
trusted the Garm too readily, but he was already so
apprehensive that he didn’t think it could get any
worse. Besides, if the animal meant him harm, none of
this would have been necessary.
   In the far corner of the deck was a square tank
about the size of a double cabin. It had probably been
some kind of monitoring or flow-control room for the
cooling fins, but now the window overlooking the drop
had been covered with metal sheets spot-welded at
their edges. The only other access was by a door with
some kind of wheel-operated lock. The Garm raised a
massive paw to indicate this. Olvir was, it seemed,
where he wanted to be. Wherever it was.
   He looked at the Garm and said, ‘Well?’ But the
Garm didn’t move. This was as far as it felt able to go
without running against some earlier instruction. Olvir
went across to the door and took a closer look. There
was no provision for a key or anything like a key, so it
was possible that the mechanism was just a simple
catch.
   This could be a problem. The simple things always
were. Races sharing some part of their culture and
history could take for granted such things as catches
and switches and dials, whilst to outsiders they became
complex puzzles. Olvir turned again to the Garm. At
least he could try asking for some guidance.
   But the Garm’s head was turned slightly to one side
as if to listen to something that no one else could hear.
Olvir realised that the Vanir must be sounding the
signal to bring the Garm back to the storeyard for
another Lazar. As if in confirmation, the Garm turned
and began to descend the ramp.
   Olvir felt strangely alone. The Garm had hardly
been good company, but at least it had been alive and,
in spite of the surgical alterations that had been
carried out to ensure its obedience, it had seemed
intelligent. Doing the best that he could to fight the
solitary feeling. Olvir set to work on the catch.
   It didn’t take as long as he’d feared. It was simply a
case of performing two operations at the same time,
and the door swung open. As Olvir stepped forward,
hands grabbed him and jerked him roughly inside.
    Taken off-balance, the weight of his armour brought
him crashing to the floor. He had an impression of
dazzling whiteness and a dark shape poised over him
and ready to strike. I’m glad Kari didn’t see this, he was
thinking, what an embarrassing way to go.
    But then vision started to clear, and the dark shape
filled out with detail as its small fist was slowly lowered.
    ‘Olvir!’ Nyssa said. ‘What are you doing here?’
    She climbed off his chest and let him sit up, blinking
at the brightness of the room. It had been tiled in
white throughout, and there was some kind of pulsing
illumination from above that gave off a faint ozone
smell.
    There was also something else; Nyssa was showing
none of the signs of the Lazar disease.
    Olvir said, ‘You came through the cure?’
    ‘Just about,’ Nyssa said, and from her expression it
had been a pretty grim process.
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘Just a massive dose of radiation and nothing else.
There’s no proper diagnosis, no control.’ She gestured
around. ‘And this is supposed to be someone’s idea of
decontamination.’
    Olvir got to his feet. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘The sooner
we can put the Terminus behind us...’
    ‘You don’t understand! There must be thousands of
people who’ve passed through here and think they’re
cured. It’s all just hit and miss. Nobody cares.’
    Olvir tried to get her towards the door, but she
wouldn’t be distracted. ‘Listen to me,’ she went on
urgently. ‘The cure works, but it has to be controlled.
Otherwise you just trade one killer for another!
Radiation-induced diseases that may take years to
show!’
   ‘All right!’ Olvir said firmly. This was a rescue, and
the rights and wrongs could be argued out later. ‘Let’s
concentrate on getting away.’
   Nyssa allowed herself to be ushered towards the
outside. ‘It could all be changed,’ she said as they
stepped out onto the decking.
   ‘I don’t doubt it,’ Olvir assured her. ‘But for now,
we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.

The Vanir hadn’t given the signal for the Garm. The
Doctor had.
   The small box housing the subsonic generator had
been fixed to its upright by a couple of bolts, and
removing it hadn’t been a problem. The Vanir might
have a back-up, but after seeing the rest of their
shoestring operation, he doubted it. Without the box
the Vanir couldn’t recall the Garm; with it, the Doctor
and Kari had the exclusive use of the animal’s
strength.
   The Doctor’s main fear at the moment was that
Eirak and the others might arrive before the Garm
did. It was unlikely that they’d hear the signal at any
distance – the Garm probably had an implanted
receptor somewhere at the base of its brain for that –
but it would soon be time for the next Lazar transfer.
   Kari stood at the pick-up point. She’d found some
white dust and used it to give herself something of the
pale complexion of a Lazar, but under the make-up
she was drained and nervous anyway. At least she
wouldn’t have to worry about the disease itself, if the
Doctor’s theory about a narrow-range virus was right;
although radioactively foul, the Terminus would be
clean as far as the disease-causing organism was
concerned. The evidence was there in the Vanir. For
all of their close contact with the sick, none of them
showed any signs of joining them. They had other
problems.
   Kari glanced at the Doctor. ‘You’re sure this will
work?’ she said.
   The Doctor gave her a confident smile. ‘Trust me,’
he said. And he thought to himself, I hope I don’t regret
this...
   The Garm was with them before they knew it. He
emerged from the shadows as smoothly as a dark
sunrise and then he hesitated, looking from one to the
other as if he was unsure of what to do next.
   ‘Go!’ the Doctor urged. The plan was that Kari
should retreat before the Garm, leading him back
towards the Terminus control room. The Doctor
would follow with the subsonic generator, ready to use
it as a crude training-aid if it should be necessary.
   But Kari said, stiff and panicky, ‘I can’t remember
the way.’
   ‘Deception is unnecessary,’ the Garm told them, and
the Doctor and Kari exchanged a look of
astonishment. ‘You’ve given the signal. I have no
choice but to obey.’

It was a relief to put the storeyard behind them. An
appearance by Eirak and the others at this late stage
would at best delay them, and time was already
impossibly short. The line which marked the edge of
the forbidden zone was a paradoxical indicator of their
safety.
   The Doctor led the way, following the control cables
again to the bridge of the Terminus. The Garm
hesitated a little when faced with an ascent into areas
that it had never seen before, but the persuasion of the
subsonics over-rode everything else.
   Just as they were coming level with the point where
Bor had attempted to damage the lines and had
instead succeeded in damaging himself, the whole of
the Terminus seemed to give a distinct tremble. It
happened again as they reached the control room, as if
the whole massive structure of the ship was beginning
to absorb the strain of the forces that were to come.
The Doctor wondered for how long the Terminus
might hold out. Would it be destroyed in the blast
along with everything else, or would it make another
one-way leap into nowhere on the crest of the
shockwave? Either way, they’d never know.
   The Garm had trouble fitting into the narrow space
of the control room. The Doctor saw with alarm that
the handle had almost completed its closure. They had
minutes, at the most. He hurriedly explained what he
wanted the Garm to do, feeling precious time slip by as
he talked.
   The Garm looked at the handle. It jerked down
another fraction.
   ‘I’d appreciate it if you’d hurry,’ the Doctor said.
   The Garm turned the glow of its eyes onto him.
‘This is necessary?’
   ‘If you can return the handle, I can disconnect the
circuitry controlling it.’
   ‘And if I fail?’
   ‘Don’t fail.’
   The Garm positioned itself with a hand clamped
over the handle and its back against the rear wall of
the control room. It overshadowed the dead pilot,
making him seem like some grotesque doll. First it
tested the resistance of the control. Unsatisfied, it
shifted position slightly. Then it threw all of its
strength into a single, powered effort. There was a
sound like old leather creaking, like bundles of cane
being twisted together, and the Doctor quickly slid
around in order to get to the contacts that were under
the console surface.
   There wouldn’t be any time for elaborate work, and
even if there had been the Doctor lacked the necessary
familiarity with the design. What he intended was a
more precise version of what Bor had tried to do.
Bor’s mistake had been in trying to disconnect the
controls when the process was already too far along to
be reversed. First the main handle had to be returned
– which was why they needed the Garm – and then the
contacts could be broken so that the engines could
never again be returned to their dangerous state.
   But the handle wasn’t moving.
   The Garm seemed to have stopped its descent, but
that was all. The Terminus was vibrating again, an
earthquake that rippled through the floors and walls
and echoed in all the open spaces. Stopping the handle
just wasn’t enough.
   ‘You have to push harder,’ the Doctor said.
   Without wavering, the Garm raised its head. Its
bright eyes fixed on the Doctor. ‘It’s the only way,’ he
said quietly, knowing that he was asking the Garm to
go to the limits of its strength and beyond. He also
knew of the savagely unfair advantage that possession
of the subsonic control had given him.
   ‘Please,’ Kari said.
   The Garm bent its head, and made another and
greater effort.
   The handle started to move.
    It was slow at first, but then the Garm started to
pour on the power and make the most of its success.
    The Doctor waited as long as he dared and then
started to pull out handfuls of wiring; he’d already
chosen the areas that he wanted to disconnect, and he
hoped that the flashing and the smoke from under the
console wouldn’t make him miss anything.
    ‘That’s it!’ he said at last. The Garm had been
holding the handle hard against its backstop. For a
moment, it seemed unable to release itself from the
strain. Then, with the suddenness of a collapsing fire,
it fell back.
    The handle didn’t move. They listened. The
Terminus was still.
    ‘Have I served you well?’ The Garm was exhausted.
‘You certainly have,’ the Doctor told it.
    ‘Then do something for me.’
    ‘Name it.’
    ‘Destroy the box. Set me free.’
    The Doctor didn’t even need to weigh the
arguments for and against. He dropped the signal box
onto the floor and stepped on it, hard. It made a
satisfying crunching noise under his heel.
    ‘Rest,’ he told the Garm. ‘You’ve earned it.’ And
then he glanced at a relieved-looking Kari and
indicated that they should leave the control room.
    ‘Now what?’ she said on the approach walk outside.
    ‘We finish what Bor started. If we break the control
lines, we’ll be making double-sure that this can’t
happen again.’
    But it wasn’t going to be so easy. They knew as
much when they saw Valgard at the far end of the
catwalk, grinning like a madman. Olvir’s burner was in
his hands, and it was covering them.
   ‘Look,’ the Doctor said, ‘whoever you are, we
haven’t got time for this.’ Kari said nothing; she was
staring at the burner, wondering what its loss might
imply for Olvir.
   ‘Just carry on down,’ Valgard said, and he used the
muzzle of the burner to usher them towards the
descent.
   ‘You’re taking a very narrow view of this,’ the
Doctor told him as they reached the base level and
moved over towards the main tunnel, but Valgard
wasn’t impressed.
   ‘I want to stay alive,’ he said. ‘If that’s a narrow view,
then you’re right.’
   They moved down the broad walk with shadows all
around. The overhead lights mapped out the way
ahead, a series of isolated pools. The Doctor said, ‘And
you’re happy to see things go on as they are?’
   ‘Happy?’ Valgard echoed bitterly. ‘This is the
Terminus. Nobody’s happy here. Staying alive is all
that counts.’
   ‘Things could change,’ the Doctor suggested, but he
wasn’t too hopeful. All of Valgard’s mind was
concentrated on his own survival, and he wasn’t open
to any new ideas that didn’t appear to fit in.
   It was over in seconds. There was a shout from
somewhere in the darkness, Valgard spun around to
cover himself against a possible attack, and Olvir
rammed him squarely between the shoulders from
behind. Valgard toppled like a broken statue, and the
burner skidded out of his hands to land almost at
Kari’s feet. She had it levelled in less than a second.
   ‘Just freeze,’ she told Valgard, and he abandoned
any idea of resistance.
   Olvir picked himself up, and Nyssa came forward
out of the shadows. The Doctor’s relief and delight at
seeing her safe was evident.
   ‘I’m fine,’ she assured him, ‘but listen. I’ve
discovered something. They’re using crude radiation
to cure the Lazar disease.’
   ‘I suspected something like it.’
   ‘But the system they use is nearly as dangerous.
There’s got to be some way of making the Terminus
company understand.’
   ‘You’ve thought of a better way?’
   ‘Ask the Garm. He’s used to handling radiation, but
they just treat him like a slave. You know he can’t do
anything of his own free will?’
   The Doctor was about to tell her that the Garm had
been released from the influence of the subsonic
generator, but Valgard beat him to it.
   ‘She’s sick,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t know what she’s
talking about.’
   Nyssa turned to him, making her point with such
force that he flinched. ‘With changes the Terminus
could work,’ she insisted. ‘It could be a decent
hospital.’
   Valgard shook his head, wearied by what he
considered to be her excessive optimism. ‘The
company isn’t interested.’
   ‘No? And what about you? What about the other
Vanir?’
   ‘That doesn’t make any difference. We can’t do
anything without Hydromel, and the company
controls the supply.’
   ‘But if you could get it from somewhere else, you’d
be free of their control, wouldn’t you?’
  Valgard stared, awe mixing with a tiny dash of
hope. She means it! he thought.

Bor would swing from one extreme to the other. A
moment ago he had been incoherent, but now he was
lucid.
   ‘Am I dead yet?’ he said. He sounded puzzled.
   Sigurd returned to his side, a half-filled cup of water
in his hand in case Bor should need it. ‘No,’ he said.
   ‘Funny. I could have sworn...’ Whatever he was
going to say, Bor put it from his mind and brightened
up a little. ‘Still, it’s a relief. I’m hoping for something
rather better on the other side.’ He frowned. ‘Sigurd?’
   ‘Try to sleep.’
   ‘Sleep! It’s all I can do to... stay awake for more than
a minute...’
   Sigurd stood, and looked down at Bor with sad
compassion. This will be the end of us all, he was
thinking. Thank you, Terminus Incorporated. Thanks
for nothing.
   There was movement on the other side of the
curtain, people entering the tank. Probably Eirak and
the others taking a shift break. Sigurd went through,
and came face to face with Valgard.
   He motioned to Sigurd to be quiet. He was slightly
flushed and his eyes were like flinty points, certain
signs of a Hydromel high. He said, ‘I’ve got some
people with me.’
   Sigurd watched, bewildered, as a line of strangers
came trooping into the converted tank. The Doctor
was first in line, and he went straight to the Hydromel
case. Nyssa, Kari and Olvir gathered around him. ‘I
assume this is it,’ he said.
   ‘Now, wait a minute,’ Sigurd said, pushing his way
through the group, but Valgard’s hand landed on his
shoulder and held him back. The Doctor was already
crouching for a closer look at the trembler alarms.
   ‘They say they can free us from the company,’
Valgard told him.
   ‘You believe that?’
   ‘You know anybody harder to convince?’
   The chains were already off, the alarms disabled.
‘Burner, please,’ the Doctor said, and Olvir,handed
the weapon over.
   Sigurd said. ‘If this is just some madcap scheme for
getting back at Eirak...’
   The lock of the Hydromel case was vaporised in a
moment, and the Doctor lifted the lid. He removed a
phial and handed it to Nyssa.
   ‘You’re the expert,’ he said. ‘What do you think?’
   She inspected it against the light, and then twisted
off the glass seal and gave a cautious sniff. As she was
doing this, the Doctor turned to Kari and said in a low
voice, ‘While we’re sorting things out here, perhaps
the two of you would like to go back and finish Bor’s
work on the control lines.’
   Kari nodded, Olvir retrieved his burner, and the
two of them left in silence. Nyssa, meanwhile, had
completed her brief inspection of the Hydromel.
   ‘It’s crude stuff,’ she said. ‘Probably organic.’
   ‘Can you synthesise it?’ the Doctor asked.
   ‘I can probably improve on it.’
   Sigurd still wasn’t convinced, and he was
determined not to be ignored. He said, ‘How’s this
supposed to free us from the company?’
   Nyssa explained it patiently, as if to a child.
‘Terminus Incorporated only control you because they
supply you with Hydromel. But if you produced your
own...’
   ‘Here on the Terminus,’ Valgard added, and Sigurd
suddenly grasped the idea.
   ‘Is it possible?’ he said.
   Nyssa gave him a pained look, as if he was doubting
her abilities. ‘Of course. The company won’t be able to
do a thing about it. Who’s going to risk coming here to
argue?’
   There was a groan from Bor, over on the other side
of the tank. Sigurd glanced over, and then he grabbed
one of the Hydromel phials from the case. ‘I’m with
you,’ he said, and then he hurried over to attend to
Bor.

Eirak had been a little perturbed by the shudders that
had gone through the frame of the Terminus ship, but
he’d thought them nothing new. Some of the liner
dockings could be clumsy and rough, and would
produce the same effect, and the same must be true of
some of the so-called ‘clean boats’. Nobody amongst
the Vanir knew what happened to the Lazars once the
Garm had taken them away, but it seemed a safe
assumption that an infection-free shuttle must dock at
some other point to take away the cured... or the dead.
   No, Terminus-quakes were nothing new. These
were bigger than most, but Eirak was distracted by
another preoccupation – the disappearance of the
subsonic generator.
   ‘I want it found,’ he was saying yet again as he
entered the headquarters tank, and a couple of the
Vanir trailed along behind in the hope that he might
be able to give them some practical suggestion on how
to go about this. ‘Without it, there’s not a thing we
can...’ He tailed off as he saw Valgard.
    ‘Pleased to see me?’ Valgard said. ‘I want you to
meet some people.’
    The Doctor and Nyssa nodded amiably. They stood
one to each side of the Hydromel container. Eirak
could see that it was open.
    ‘All right, Valgard,’ he said. ‘What do you think
you’re doing?’
    ‘I think you owe me something,’ Valgard said, and
as he spoke Sigurd and Bor emerged from the
bunkhouse section of the tank. Bor was sick-looking,
but with the Hydromel’s help he could stand. He had a
blanket wrapped around his shoulders.
    Sigurd said, ‘We’d like to talk about the small matter
of your position here.’
    ‘“Bring back the intruders”’, Valgard quoted, ‘“and
my position is yours.” Remember?’ He gestured
towards the Doctor and Nyssa. ‘Here they are.’
    Bor said, ‘We all think it’s time for a little chat.’
    Eirak looked from one to another, all around the
room. He was beaten, and he was starting to perceive
it.
    The Doctor said, ‘Before you start, perhaps one of
you could show us the way back to the liner. There’s
still a lot to be done.’

The workload that the Doctor had in mind included
effective decontamination of both the TARDIS and its
occupants, and repair of the damage that had
projected them into this situation in the first place.
When this had been carried out, the Doctor intended
to leave the decontamination gear for the Vanir to use.
There was no way that he could reverse the radiation
damage that they’d already suffered, but at least he
could slow its effects.
   Olvir and Kari had already made their own plans.
They were going to take the next ‘clean boat’ out and
start a search for the Chief.
   ‘Nobody ditches us and gets away with it,’ Kari said.
   There was one other issue to be resolved. But the
Doctor knew that it wasn’t in his hands.
   He and Nyssa were taken to the docking platform
by Valgard. The liner’s door was still sealed, but
Valgard took a complex metal shape from under his
cloak and placed it on the outer skin alongside the air-
seal.
   ‘It’ll be a relief to see the TARDIS again,’ the Doctor
said.
   ‘And Tegan,’ Nyssa added. A flicker of doubt
showed in the Doctor’s eyes. Through all of the trouble
they’d experienced since their arrival, he’d at least
been able to console himself with the thought that two
of his companions were safely outside the danger area.
But why couldn’t he feel confident?
   The door raised itself automatically, and Tegan
stood before them.
   She looked a mess. Her clothes were torn and she
was smeared with dirt and grease from head to foot.
There were streaks across her forehead where she’d
tried to wipe sweat away with an oily hand.
   The Doctor’s worst fears had been realised. ‘What
are you doing?’ he said, and he was obviously
annoyed.
   ‘I was trying to reach you,’ Tegan said, scrambling
to get her ideas together. One moment she’d been
looking for a way of opening an impossible door, the
next moment it had opened. ‘Turlough went back to
the TARDIS on his own.’
   ‘I told you not to follow me.’
   ‘Doctor,’ Nyssa urged, trying to be conciliatory, ‘Say
you’re pleased to see her.’
   ‘I am pleased to see her,’ the Doctor snapped,
sounding quite the opposite. ‘But she shouldn’t have
tried to follow us.’
   ‘You don’t understand,’ Tegan began, but the
Doctor wasn’t prepared to listen.
   ‘We’ll talk about it later,’ he said, and then he and
Valgard went through into the liner.
   Tegan looked after them, dismayed. ‘Why is it
always the same?’ she said.
   ‘There’s a lot to do,’ Nyssa said.
   ‘There’s always a lot to do.’
   Nyssa took her arm. ‘Tegan,’ she began delicately, ‘I
have to tell you something.’
   Valgard and the Doctor were already some way
ahead. Tegan looked after them for a moment. She
hadn’t yet told the Doctor about the complex sequence
of events that governed the appearance and
disappearance of the door to the TARDIS. Well, let
him find out for himself, since he didn’t want to hear
what she had to say. Turlough had already done the
work of solving the puzzle, and when the maintenance
drones had finished their repairs on the automated
control centre then the launch sequence would resume
and the doorway would return. She turned to Nyssa.
   The Doctor, meanwhile, was discussing strategy with
Valgard. ‘You need publicity,’ he was saying. ‘Get. rid
of the secrecy that surrounds this place, and Terminus
Incorporated won’t be able to do anything against you.
Forget the shame and the mystery, and emphasize the
treatment.’
    ‘There isn’t any treatment without the Garm,’
Valgard pointed out. ‘You’ve seen to that.’
    ‘I took away the compulsion, that’s all. I’m sure
you’ll have no problem if you invite him to co-operate.’
    ‘Co-operate?’ Valgard said with some incredulity.
‘The Garm? You’re joking. The Garm’s just a dumb
beast.’
    ‘Then I think you’ve got a surprise coming,’ the
Doctor said.
    They were about to climb the stairs between decks,
but a loud protest from behind made them stop. The
Doctor looked back and saw Tegan, shocked and
worried, pulling Nyssa forward.
    ‘Doctor,’ Tegan was saying, ‘Doctor, talk to her!’
    Nyssa was looking at the ground, and she seemed a
little embarrassed at being made the sudden focus of
attention in this way. The Doctor said, ‘What is it?’
    Nyssa looked up at him. ‘I’m not coming with you,’
she said.
    And, deep inside, he’d known it. He’d known from
the moment he’d seen her again, eyes blazing with
righteous fury at the poor excuse for a caring process
that she’d been put through. Lives were changed by
such experiences, and there was no going back.
    ‘There’s the Hydromel to be synthesised, and I can
do it,’ she added. ‘That’s what I was trained for. I
don’t regret one moment of the time that I’ve spent on
the TARDIS and I’ll miss you both, but I’m needed
here and I’m not going to walk away.’
    ‘Please, Nyssa,’ Tegan said tearfully, but Nyssa
wasn’t to be shaken.
   ‘My mind’s made up,’ she said. ‘Let’s not fall out
over it.’
   The Doctor said, gently, ‘I suppose you understand
the commitment you’ll be taking on.’
   Nyssa nodded. ‘Yes.’
   ‘And that life here’s going to be hard. Not to
mention dangerous for a while.’
   ‘And interesting, and fulfilling...’
   ‘All right,’ the Doctor said, holding up his hand and
smiling. He’d got the message. Nyssa was fully aware
of what she was taking on, and she was determined.
With some pressure he might just be able to dissuade
her, but he doubted it. And it would be something
they’d both regret, for ever.
   For Tegan, the enormity of the moment obscured
all long-term considerations. ‘She’ll die here,’ she said,
almost wailing.
   ‘Not easily, Tegan,’ Nyssa told her. ‘We’re both
alike. Indestructible.’
   And then they hung onto each other tightly for a
few moments. The Doctor watched. It had happened
before and it would happen again, and it seemed that
the loss of every member of his ever-changing team
took a little piece of him away with them. They were
spread through time and through space, all of them
reshaped and given new insights through their travels.
   Their loss wasn’t too bad a price to pay... not when
they gave him a kind of immortality.
   He turned to Valgard. As he’d said, there was still a
lot to be done.
Turlough groaned as he came around. Every bone in
his body seemed to have been shaken and twisted.
Even the backs of his eyes hurt. He wanted nothing
more than to lie on the hard floor of the console room,
savouring the relief of not moving.
    But the Black Guardian had other plans.
    ‘Boy?’ he was whispering. ‘Wake up, boy.’
    Turlough tried to open his eyes, to lift his head. He
made it on the second attempt, and was immediately
sorry.
    ‘The Doctor is returning.’
    He struggled to get the console room into focus. He
could remember a blinding light, and the pain that
had come with it. The blackness that had followed had
been bliss, but it hadn’t lasted.
    The contact cube was on the floor about a metre
away. It was blackened and charred, useless-looking.
Turlough said, ‘What did you do to me?’
    ‘You will recover.’
    But if the cube was ruined, how... Turlough still
couldn’t think straight. ‘I can’t do it,’ he said. ‘Kill the
Doctor yourself, I don’t care. I just can’t go on.’
    Darkness filled his vision from side to side, and
Turlough looked up in awe as his controller stood over
him, the very spirit of evil set walking. The Black
Guardian’s breath sent a chill across his skin.
    ‘This is your last chance. I will not say that again. You will
kill the Doctor!’
    Turlough had failed once. It seemed he wasn’t to be
allowed to fail twice.
