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  away from Schuler-Khan's dazzling orb, dropping down towards the Gyre with its own flickering tail of fire trailing out behind it.

  'What's that?' asked Amy.

  'What's what?'

  Amy nodded towards the sky. 'That,' she said.

  'Oh...' gasped Charlie. 'That's not good.'

  Suddenly, there was a loud bang, like the sound of a firework or a cannon being fired. The streak of light punched its way through a cloud, and was now rumbling through the sky with a thunderous drum roll which grew louder and louder, until it was almost deafening. Amy cupped her ears with her hands and closed her eyes as tightly as she could.

  Seconds later the ground convulsed, as if somebody, some unimaginable giant, had taken hold of the Gyre and shaken it with both hands. Fragments of junk rained down from the structures of the human city, and they heard a cacophony of screams echoing through its streets.

  'What was it?' cried Amy.

  'It was a fragment of the comet,' said Charlie. 'It's started.'

  "That was just a fragment?' said Amy, a little louder than she'd intended.

  Charlie nodded.

  From the watchtowers they now heard the blasting of horns, each overlapping the other,

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  forming a discordant drone that howled out over the city's rooftops, but in the streets around them something else was happening. Peering out from behind a rusting metal crate, Amy saw a large door in a nearby building opening up, and a group of humans spilled out. Leading them was Slipstream.

  'He's here!' she whispered. 'Slipstream. I can see him.'

  Then she saw another face she recognised.

  'And they've got the Doctor!'

  The procession made its way along the street, heading towards the towering wreck. When they reached it, one of the humans began tapping away at a control panel.

  'We have to do something, Charlie! We have to save him!'

  Charlie held Amy's shoulder and pulled her back.

  'What can we do?' he said. There's dozens of them. If we jump out now they'll kill us.'

  Amy struggled free of his grasp, but didn't dare move more than a few inches, so that she could watch the scene once more. Next to the control panel, a large metal hatch opened up, the door coming away on mechanical hinges that groaned and creaked as if they hadn't been used in centuries. Slipstream, the Doctor, and three more humans entered, and then the rest of the humans moved on,

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  rushing down the street towards the city gates.

  "This is our chance! said Amy. 'We've got to do something...'

  'So... Manco, old chap. Which way?'

  The five of them were deep inside the wreck, making their way along a corridor tilted at such an angle that they had to walk along its corner. Sancho had, until now, led the group, carrying a burning torch, and they had come to a junction of three more corridors.

  'It would help if I knew what you were looking for,' said Manco.

  Tuco brushed past and approached Slipstream.

  'Yes, Mr Slipstream. Tuco would also like to know what you are looking for...'

  Slipstream eyed Tuco with a look of disdain, his lip curling up into a sneer, and he sighed through gritted teeth.

  'Is there really any need for you to be here?' he hissed.

  'Oh yes! said Tuco. 'Yes. Tuco must be here. You have the heretics with you. Django wants Tuco here. To watch them.'

  'And must you always refer to yourself in the third person?

  It's a tad egomaniacal, old bean.'

  'Tuco does not understand "third person".'

  'No. I doubt Tuco would. So... Manco... As I was saying.

  Which way?'

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  Manco bit his lip. He looked to the Doctor with a helpless expression, nervously lowering his eyes, before turning to Slipstream once more. 'And as I was saying, it would help if I knew what you were looking for.'

  Slipstream laughed casually, rolling his eyes. 'The hold,'

  he said. 'We're looking for the hold. Where they kept the cargo. Do you understand that word? Cargo?'

  Manco nodded. 'It's this way! he said, pointing straight ahead.

  They moved on. At no point did the Doctor take his eyes off Slipstream. How could he not have recognised him the moment he saw him? But then, to the Doctor, so many years and regenerations had passed since they last met. To Slipstream, it may only have been a few short years, or even months.

  On their last meeting, the Doctor had been too late to stop him from committing his crime. The ship had crashed and hundreds of people had died. The only thing the Doctor could do was stop him before he made his escape with literally millions of precious stones, but stop him he had. He had stood in the courthouse as Slipstream was sentenced to one hundred years imprisonment for every one of his victims; seventy thousand years in all, a sentence he could never hope to survive. Unless, of course, he escaped.

  And now Slipstream had given the humans

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  the location of the Sittuun hideout. As Tuco and Sancho had taken them out of the throne room, Django was already planning his attack.

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  The dazzling light from Schuler-Khan reflected off the crystal surface of the great salt plains, making it look almost like an ocean on a summer's day. The human city was far behind them now, as they made their way west.

  From a distance, at the edges of the swamp, they would have appeared as a shimmering mirage; the dark line of humans, some marching and some riding great clunking, wheezing contraptions, powered by steam or by levers, like handcars from the distant, Earth-bound past. It would have been silent at first, this shimmering apparition on the horizon, framed between the twinkling white desert and the dark black silhouette of the tower. Then, slowly, the sound of the humans'

  progress

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  would grow louder: the crunching of a hundred pairs of feet on salt crystals; the rusty whine of turning wheels and the mechanical thump and hiss of the engines.

  Sat on top of the largest vehicle was Django, his throne transplanted from its chamber onto a machine that propelled itself along on eight mechanical legs. His long, scraggly hair and bedraggled robes rippled in the breeze behind him, giving him the appearance of a human flagpole or a mascot.

  His face was caked in thick make-up. His skin was a deathly shade of white, his mouth framed with a garish crimson smile and his eyes with bright blue hoops. Dark black lines like sickles arched up on his forehead.

  His gaze was fixed firmly on the horizon, beyond the swaying plastic tubes of the swamp. Django smiled maniacally and gnashed his teeth. He looked skywards, to the burning light of the star that grew ever bigger above him, staring into its light until it hurt his eyes, and tears were streaming down his cheeks. The tears drew jagged streaks of blue and red across his face as they fell.

  If there was only some way he could send a warning. Something that might alert the Sittuun...

  The Doctor hadn't spoken for some time. The five of them -

  Tuco, Sancho, Manco, Slipstream and the

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  Doctor - had passed through numerous passages, climbing flights of stairs and metal ladders. In one room they had found nothing but glass sleep pods, each one containing a skeleton.

  The higher they climbed, the more they heard the wind howling through the rusting hulk. Sometimes the howling would stop, and there would be an eerie silence but for their footsteps. Then, every once in a while, they would hear the sound of something crashing in the distance, and the ground beneath them would shake.

  The Doctor paid little attention to any of these sights and sounds. His mind was working overtime. Amy was out there, somewhere. Amy Pond from Leadworth. What was a girl from Lead
worth doing in a place like this? If she was with the Sittuun, then she was in danger. He had to warn them. He had to get out of the human city and back to the TARDIS. He had to at least try and convince the humans to save themselves, or allow him to save them. So many things to consider, and so little time.

  'Say, Slipstream...' he said, stomping up to the front of the group. "This thing... that you need my assistance with?'

  'Yes?' Slipstream looked at him with one eyebrow arched.

  'What is it? What are we looking for, exactly?'

  Slipstream sighed. 'I don't think you'd believe me if I told you, old chap.'

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  Try me.'

  'Very well. We are looking for the Mymon Key.'

  The Doctor gasped. 'But... but that's impossible.'

  Slipstream started laughing, his laughter echoing along the corridor and deep into the bowels of the ship. 'Oh, that's priceless, Doctor. Really, it is. You're the last of your kind, and you still manage to toe the party line, even when there's no party left.'

  Manco was looking at them both and frowning. 'What is the Mymon Key?' he asked.

  The Doctor turned to him. "The Mymon Key was an energy source. A limitless energy source. Forged on Mercutio 14 by the Hexion Geldmongers. Whoever owned the Mymon Key would have the power to do anything. It drew its power from gravitational force. It could drive a ship safely through a black hole. It could be used to tear the fabric of the universe apart. Wars were fought over it. Endless wars.

  Nobody had the right to that kind of power.'

  Slipstream nodded, grinning. "That's the one!' he said, cheerily.

  'But the Mymon Key was destroyed...'

  Slipstream shook his head. 'No, Doctor. Not destroyed. It was taken back. When they realised the damage their masterpiece had caused, the Hexion Geldmongers took it back to Mercutio 14 and locked it inside a casket, an intricate puzzle box.'

  'But...' The Doctor was breathing heavily now, 142

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  shaking his head and running his hands through his hair. 'The wars didn't end there. Mercutio 14 was attacked. It was destroyed. The Mymon Key was destroyed with it.'

  Slipstream patted the Doctor's shoulder playfully, still smiling. "Fraid not, Doctor. You see, that's the thing with wars. All that chaos and confusion. Seems the casket was seized before its makers were wiped out. Only problem was, the Geldmongers were a crafty lot. Only somebody fluent in Hexion could unlock the casket, rendering its contents quite worthless. It found its way to a museum of antiquities back in the thirty-first century. From what I can gather, there were budget cuts, you know how things are. The casket was sold to a private buyer in Andromeda. It was in transit when the ship carrying it simply vanished. Pfff! Like that.'

  'This ship...' the Doctor whispered.

  Slipstream nodded. 'Well done, Doctor. Not just a pretty face, are you?'

  'And how do you know all this?'

  'Well, Doctor, for all of its many faults - the knuckle-headed guards, the freezing cold, the dreadful food -

  Volag-Noc does have a rather splendid library. Awful lot of potboilers and bad thrillers, of course, but the history section was superb. I was looking at a seventy-thousand-year stretch, Doctor. Plenty of time to read.'

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  The Doctor shook his head, his eyes screwed shut. 'And you sold out the Sittuun for this?'

  Slipstream leaned in close to the Doctor and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper.

  'I wouldn't worry too much about them, Doctor. That canyon? To the west? Only bridge across it is gone, I'm afraid.

  Kaput. Those savages won't get far.'

  Eventually they came to the end of another corridor, and passing through a large hatch they found themselves in a cavernous room, flanked on both sides with enormous glass screens, each one blank, lifeless and grey. The hatch led out onto a narrow walkway, below which the room fell away, perhaps thirty metres beneath them. They were in the nerve centre of the ship, the control room. Thousands of years earlier, it would have been filled with crew members, hundreds of them. Now it was home to nothing more than tangled vines and swirling clouds of dust.

  'This is the room! said Manco. 'The one I told you about.

  The screens... they don't work.'

  'Oh, we'll see about that,' said the Doctor.

  He marched along the walkway, past Tuco and Sancho, until he reached a bank of consoles, which he studied for a moment.

  'Doctor...' said Slipstream. 'We've no time for fun and games.'

  'See this?' said the Doctor, pointing at his face.

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  'This is me concentrating. Which means it's your turn to shut up!

  Slipstream lifted his gun. 'See this, Doctor? This is a gun.

  Which means you'll do as I say.'

  The Doctor smiled. 'Nice try, Slipstream,' he said. 'But you need me, remember? Now this won't take a moment...'

  Before Slipstream could say another word, the Doctor had his sonic screwdriver aimed straight at the console. It buzzed into life, and all at once the console was lit up with flashing lights.

  'What is he doing?' hissed Tuco. 'The tower is sacred. The tower is the home of Gobo!'

  Sancho marched towards the Doctor, raising his spear, but then, one by one, the giant screens that lined the walls of the control room flickered on, each one showing nothing but fizzing white static. Sancho froze.

  At the console the Doctor tapped at keys and flicked switches, and the screens turned from a jittering blizzard to a single, vibrant shade of blue. The Doctor hit a final switch, and the blue became the image of a man, his face repeated dozens of times the length of the room. The man wore the khaki uniform of a pilot, his surname, Velasquez, stencilled onto his chest.

  'I am Captain Zachary Velasquez, of the Gobocorp Freight Company! he said, his voice booming and echoing in the cathedral-like space.

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  'What is this?' bellowed Tuco, seething and clutching at the handrail with his bony fingers.

  Velasquez continued: 'The GFC Herald of Nanking has crash-landed on this world, at the outer edge of Battani 045. Of our 3,000-strong crew, only 500 are left. If you are watching this, there is every chance that we are all dead. Earth is twenty-five light years away, and our location remote. May God have mercy on our souls.'

  The Doctor hit a button. The image on the screens fizzed and crackled, and then they turned once more to that brilliant shade of blue. Breathing heavily through his nostrils, Tuco turned to the Doctor.

  'What is this outrage?' he howled. 'What heresy is this?

  Doctor? Tell me!'

  The Doctor turned to Tuco, pocketing his sonic screwdriver. 'I'm so sorry. It's who you are. You're the survivors.'

  Tuco shook his head and tore at his robes with clawed fingernails, his voice reduced to an anguished wail.

  By his side, Sancho looked out across the chamber full of glowing blue screens with an expression of horror.

  'E-earth?' he stuttered. "This isn't... this isn't Earth?'

  The Doctor shook his head.

  'But... but... he said "ship". The man... the man 146

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  said ship. He said they crashed here. And Gobocorp. What is Gobocorp?'

  The Doctor turned back to the console and pressed another burton. Once again the screens came to life with the image of Captain Velasquez. The Doctor twisted a dial, speeding through the last few seconds of the video, and now they saw the image of an animated clown, Gobo, carrying a parcel. The clown placed the parcel on the ground, opened it, and a bright red balloon came floating out. As the balloon rose up into the air, the Gobo popped it with a needle, and the word 'GOBOCORP' appeared in its place.

  'Gobocorp!' said a big and cheerful voice which echoed across the room. 'For all your delivery needs, go Gobocorp!'

  Sancho turned away, closing his eyes as if to b
lock out what he had seen.

  'No...' he whimpered. 'No...'

  Then he turned to Tuco.

  'You lied to us! he raged. 'You... Django... Lies. It was all lies. Must tell the others. Must tell everyone.'

  Tuco glowered at Sancho, shaking his head, the spittle in the corners of his mouth whipped into a foam.

  'No!' he screeched, charging towards the guard. 'No!'

  With terrifying violence, Tuco struck Sancho 147

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  across the head with his cane, dazing him and, in one ferocious move, he pushed him over the side of the walkway, sending him rumbling down into the depths of the control room, where he landed with a heavy thud.

  It happened so quickly the Doctor had no chance to intervene. 'No!' he shouted. Tuco! What have you done?'

  'You see?' said Tuco. 'This is how the heresy spreads. You, Doctor! You are to blame!'

  He lifted his cane once more, preparing to launch himself at the Doctor, but found himself staring down the barrel of Slipstream's gun.

  'Don't think so, Tuco, old chap. We've wasted enough time.

  Let's move on.'

  Braced against the console, the Doctor let out a long shuddering breath. Slipstream was ushering Tuco and Manco along, still aiming the gun. He turned now to the Doctor.

  'You too, Doctor,' he said.

  Unseen by Slipstream or the others, the Doctor hit one last switch before they left.

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  Captain Jamal sat at the controls of the Golden Bough. He'd never flown a ship like this before. The thing was practically an antique, and it was neither a military nor a commercial craft, that was for sure. This was the kind of ship that men like Dirk Slipstream flew for no other reason than to show off. Hot rods, they called them. An old Earth term, apparently. Sure, it was probably fast and it would turn enough heads, but the thing was of little practical use.