Available now:

Apollo 23 by Justin Richards

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The Forgotten Army by Brian Minchin

Coming soon:

The Glamour Chase by Gary Russell

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1 3 5 7 9 1 0 8 6 4 2

Published in 2010 by BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing.

A Random House Group Company

Copyright © David Llewellyn 2010

David Llewellyn has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this

Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

Doctor Who is a BBC Wales production for BBC One

Executive producers: Steven Moffat, Piers Wenger and Beth Willis

BBC, DOCTOR WHO and TARDIS (word marks, logos and devices) are

trademarks of the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under

licence.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored

in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,

mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior

permission of the copyright owner.

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www.randomhouse.co.uk

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

ISBN 978 1 846 07969 6

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paper carry the FSC logo. Our paper procurement policy can be found

at www.rbooks.co.uk!environment

Commissioning editor: Albert DePetrillo

Series consultant: Justin Richards

Project editor: Steve Tribe

Cover design: Lee Binding © Woodlands Books Ltd, 2010

Production: Rebecca Jones

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives PLC

To buy books by your favourite authors and register for offers,

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For Tim, who listens and makes the coffee

IEA BEAGLE XXI/OBJECT 556C INTERNAL

INQUIRY

ITEM 8B: Captain's Journal (incomplete/ corrupted)

The following is property of the Intergalactic Environmental

Agency (IEA) and may be read by authorised personnel only.

Vessel: IEA BEAGLE XXI (Sittuun Operations, K-Class)

Last known location: Battani 045, Object 556/C - Designated 'The

Gyre'

COMM OFF: Cpt. Jamal al-Jehedeh

7

DOCTOR WHO

R e p o r t No : 17 8

D at e : 2 6/ 11/ 33 8 ED

At 06 18 hr s t he B ea gl e ma de a n e mer g enc y

c r a s h la ndi ng ont o O b j ec t 5 56 / C .

W e s ust a i ne d s ever e da ma ge t o a l l

c ont r ol s, eng i n es , a nd na vi ga t i ona l

equ i p m ent . Al l r a ft s hi p s ha ve b een

da ma ged.

Al l e l ev en c r ew m e mb er s s ur vi ved t he

i mp a ct a nd a r e u ni nj u r ed.

T he ca r go is i nt a c t a nd op er a t i ona l.

O ur i ni t i a l i nves t i ga t i ons s u gges t

t ha t [T E X T MIS S I NG ] pr evi ou s r ep or t s

i nc or r ec t a nd [T E X T MIS S I NG ] t he G yr e

i s i nha b i t ed.

W e a r e not a l one her e.

R e p o r t No : 20 1

D at e : 2 4/ 12/ 33 8 ED

[ T E X T MIS S IN G ] negot i a t i ons ha ve

f a i l ed. F i t O f f. Hu ss ei n, Dr Ka ma l ,

a nd Lt S i ddi qu i ha ve b ee n c a pt ur ed a nd

ki l l e d.

[ T E X T MIS S IN G ] u na b l e t o r epa ir a ny

of t he r a ft s hi ps, a nd t he c l oc k i s

c ou nt i ng do wn t owa r ds Da y Z er o.

[ T E X T MIS S IN G ] em er genc y b ea c on ha s not

8

NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

f u nc t i one d s i nc e ou r s ec on d w e ek h er e. T her e s e e ms

l i t t l e hop e of r es c u e.

R e p o r t No : 28 9

D at e : 0 6/ 03/ 33 9 ED

O ur 10 0t h da y on t he G yr e ha s pa ss ed wi t hou t

i nc i de nt .

[ T E X T MIS S IN G ] Ai s ha is r ec over i n g s l owl y a nd Dr

H e eva r ema i ns c onc er ne d b y t he p oss i bi l i t y of

i nf ec t i on. [ T E X T MIS S I NG ] mor a l e st i l l l ow a f t er

t he a t t a c k nea r t he c a nyon, l i t t l e ov er a wee k a go. Lt s

Az i z , S ha r ma a nd S a i d a r e st i l l mi s s i ng, pr es u med

dea d. T her e i s a p er ma nent ca mp nea r t he c opp er

va l l eys , i n t he nor t h, [T E X T MIS S I NG ] we ca n s ee

t hei r f ir es a nd hea r t hei r mu s i c; a t r i ba l dr u m mi ng

t ha t mi r r or s t hei r ba r ba r it y.

[ T E X T MIS S IN G ] b ot h H ee va a nd Ba a s i m t hi n k we

s hou l d l ea v e t he s hi p a nd t r a vel w es t , t owa r ds t he

G yr e' s edg e, but I di s a gr ee.

[ T E X T MI S S I NG ] a nd our mi s s i on i s of ut mos t

i mp or t a nc e.

[ T E X T MIS S ING ] j us t ei ght da ys l ef t . [ T E X T

M IS S IN G ] T he hu ma ns a r e c omi ng.

9

Chapter

1

'OK. What is that?' asked Amy, shouting over the shrill bleeping

noise that screamed out of the console.

'It's a signal! the Doctor replied, never once taking his eyes

away from the screen before him. 'A beacon. An alarm. No... It's

stranger than that.'

All at once the TARDIS shook violently, nearly knocking

them both off their feet.

'And what was that?' said Amy, bracing herself and

struggling to keep balance.

'Well, I'm not sure what that was,' said the Doctor. 'I think we

may have hit some sort of gravitational speed bump.'

'A gravitational speed bump? They have speed bumps in

space? How fast were we going?'

In the centre of the console, the glowing,

11

DOCTOR WHO

crystalline columns groaned and wheezed, as if wrestling

some unimaginable force. The lights began to dim, the

interior of the ship descending into gloom.

'Well, not a speed bump as such,' said the Doctor, completely

unfazed by the dimming of the lights and the monstrous

cacophony being made by the TARDIS. 'More an

abnormality. Smaller than a black hole. Much smaller than a

black hole. But this is where the signal's coming from.'

There was a sudden terrific clanging sound, like that of a

monstrous hammer slamming down onto impossibly large

anvil, and the TARDIS stopped moving.

'OK. I think we've landed.' With a knowing grin, the

Doctor looked up at Amy for the first time in an age. Though

the engines of the TARDIS had stopped wheezing and the

outside world was quiet, the inside was still filled with that

high-pitched bleeping.

'So is it like a distress signal?' said Amy.

The Doctor nodded. "That's exactly what it's like,' he told

her. "The strange thing is, it's a trans-temporal distress signal.'

'Er... English, please?'

'It's a distress signal that crosses time. Very sophisticated,

in its own way. A spaceship leaves Planet A and travels to

Planet B, six light months away. When it gets to Planet B,

something

12

NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

malfunctions. Basically, the distress signal travels back in time

and reaches Planet A shortly after the spaceship has left, so a

rescue party can be organised right away.'

'But if the signal travels back in time, can't they just send the

message to themselves to stop them going to Planet B in the

first place?'

'Oh, Amy Pond... So much to learn. Paradoxes, space-time,

closed time-like loops...'

'OK... So where are we?'

The Doctor beckoned Amy over to his side of the console,

and pointed at one of the monitors. Peering at the screen, Amy

saw the image of a solar system with twelve planets spreading

out from its central star. On the outer edges of the system was a

flashing green dot.

The Doctor drew a circle around the screen with his finger

tip.

'This is the Battani 045 system. That planet there is Jahi

Minor. That planet there... well, I can't even pronounce the

name of that planet. That there is the comet Schuler-Khan, and

that...'He pointed at the flashing dot. "That's us. Thing is...

We've landed on something big and solid. And there's nothing

big or solid this far out.'

He looked across the console room to the door.

'You want to go out there! said Amy. It was a statement, not

a question.

The Doctor returned his attention to her and

13

DOCTOR WHO

smiled. It was a strange, inscrutable smile that took a second or

two to reach his eyes.

'Well! he said, as he left the console and made his way

towards the door with his back to her. 'There is a distress

signal. I'd be breaching all kinds of intergalactic conduct if I

didn't at least try and find out where it came from. Plus... big

mysterious object which shouldn't be here. It would be lazy

not to investigate further, wouldn't it? I mean... Wouldn't it?'

He had opened the door before Amy could reply, and

behind his back she rolled her eyes. She had grown

accustomed to the Doctor's ways. If there was a mystery on

the other side of that door, he was bound to open it.

The Doctor turned around and gestured towards the outside

world with both arms, like a magician unveiling his latest trick.

'Come along!' he said, beaming. 'Onwards and upwards!'

Amy ran across the console room and together they made

their first, tentative steps outside. The sight that greeted them

took Amy's breath away, and the only thing she could do was

laugh, more out of disbelief than anything else.

She wasn't quite sure what she had expected. A rocky

landscape, perhaps, dotted with craters and mountainous

ridges, or a desert. Something a little bit more like the moon.

This was nothing like that.

14

NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

The ground beneath their feet was metal, but neither smooth

nor polished. Rather it was composed entirely of flattened

scraps of junk; some no bigger than a tin can, others the size of

a bus. Stretching out into the distance, this landscape of metal

became jagged in places, rising up in crooked hills and spiny,

razor-sharp ridges. There were plants here and there, but they

were nothing like the plants back home. If it reminded her of

anything, the place resembled nothing so much as an endless

scrap yard, reaching off as far as the eye could see.

Worst of all was the smell. Amy was reminded of bin day in

Leadworth, when the council would come around to collect

rubbish, and sometimes, if you were walking behind one of the

trucks, you'd find yourself downwind of the most terrible

stench. Whatever this world was, it smelled as if it was rotting.

'That's minging,' she moaned, pinching her nostrils shut.

'Oh, I don't know,' said the Doctor. 'I've smelled worse. You

should try sixteenth-century London. Place was an open sewer.

Come along, Pond.'

The Doctor walked out into the metallic valley in which the

TARDIS had landed, and, shaking her head in resignation, Amy

followed.

'Why do you call me Pond?' she asked, after navigating her

way around a particularly tricky

15

DOCTOR WHO

mound of crushed steel and twisted plastic.

'Why? Don't you like it?'

'Well... It's just... Pond,' said Amy. 'What's wrong with

Amy?'

'What was wrong with Amelia?'

'Lots of things. And as for just calling me Pond. It makes me

sound—'

'Nothing wrong with Pond. I'm quite fond of ponds.

Ponds have ducks. Well... Some of them do. And ducks are

great. And as for the name... Lots of great people have had

the surname Pond. John Pond, for example. Astronomer Royal.

Lovely chap. Filthy sense of humour, though. Once told me

this joke about—'

'Enough about my name,' interrupted Amy. 'What is this

place? I mean... It's a planet, but you said there shouldn't be

any planets here.'

The Doctor stopped walking and looked around at the

endless sea of twisted, ancient-looking refuse that surrounded

them.

'No,' he said. 'It's not a planet. For one thing, planets aren't

flat.'

'What do you mean? How can you tell it's flat?'

'The horizon's all wrong. If I'm not mistaken, and I'm not,

this place is flat. And look... Couple of plants here and there,

but the rest is just... well... junk.'

'So... what is it?' asked Amy. 'If it's not a planet, what is—'

16

NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

Before she could finish her question, the Doctor had left her,

running further into the valley. Tutting under her breath, Amy

chased after him.

'What now?' she shouted.

'Oh, you have got to be joking!' said the Doctor, as he

reached a smaller mound of scrap metal jutting out into their

path. With an almost childlike enthusiasm he began lifting

smaller fragments, hurling them away. In a flurrying cloud of

grey dust, the Doctor had uncovered what looked like a

half-buried satellite dish, perhaps two and a half metres in

diameter.

'What? What is it?' asked Amy.

'Oh, this is brilliant,' the Doctor told her.

'What is?'

Attached to the side of the dish's base was a grubby gold

plaque. The Doctor swept his hand across it, clearing away

decades, or perhaps even centuries of grime and dust.

"This! said the Doctor, 'is Pioneer 10.'

Looking over his shoulder Amy saw, engraved on the

plaque, an image of a naked man and woman standing before a

line drawing of the dish.

'A rude picture?' she said. 'You're looking at a rude picture?'

'It's not a rude picture.' The Doctor sighed. 'It's Pioneer 10.

Deep-space probe launched by NASA in 1972. So this is

where it ended up. Quite sad, really.'

17

DOCTOR WHO

'Why has a NASA probe got a rude picture on the side of

it?'

'It's not a rude...' The Doctor sighed once more. 'It's to show

aliens what you lot look like.'

'With our clothes off?'

'Well... yes. You're not born wearing T-shirt and jeans, are

you? Anyway... The idea was that this thing would just keep

flying through space, and maybe one day somebody, or

something, would pick it up. Quite sad, really. For it to spend

countless millennia travelling across space to just end up on a

scrap heap. One great big cosmic sera—'

With a movement so sudden it caused Amy to jump back

and almost lose her footing, the Doctor stood up straight and

spun around on his heels.

That's it!' he cried, clicking his fingers. 'That's exactly what

this is!'

'What? A scrap heap?'

'Yes! Well, no. Not really. It's junk. Lots of space junk.

Gravitational forces, solar winds, pushing and pulling all this

junk until it ends up in one place. That's the thing, see? Two

thousand centuries of space travel and people are still dropping

litter. They'll never learn...'

'Wait. Did you just say two thousand centuries?'

'Yes.'

'What year is this?'

'Er... We left Earth in 2010, or thereabouts, yes?'

18

NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

Amy nodded.

'Well I reckon we're somewhere around the year 250,000.'

Before Amy could say anything, the Doctor crouched

down beside the wreckage of the probe once more, flipping

open a panel at its side.

'Now where... is... it?' he said, drawing his sonic

screwdriver from his pocket with one hand and rummaging

through the inside of the probe with the other. 'Oh! There it is!'

With a high-pitched squeal the sonic screwdriver came to

life, shining a needle-thin beam of green light into the probe's

inner workings.

'Atomic clock.' The Doctor continued. 'Battery's run down a

bit since 1972, but this should sort it. Right... Yes. The year is

250,339. To be precise, it's 14 March 250,339. And it's six

minutes past one in the afternoon.'

He stood up once more and turned around. Amy was still

wide eyed with shock.

'Two... two hundred... and fifty... thousand?' she

spluttered.

'Three hundred and thirty-nine! the Doctor added,

beaming.

'But that's... that's...'

'Yes. Quite distant future, I suppose. For you.'

'Quite distant? Quite? Distant?'

'Well, I don't know why you're so surprised. You've been to

the future. I'd have thought the

19

DOCTOR WHO

novelty would have worn off by—'

'But two hundred and fifty thousand?'

'Yes. That's what I said. And that would certainly make sense

of the size of this thing. It must be hundreds, maybe

thousands of miles across for it to have any sort of gravity.

And an atmosphere.'

The Doctor gazed up at the dark blue sky above them. 'Oh!

There it is!' he said, grinning and pointing up.

'What's that?' asked Amy.

Following his finger she saw, in amongst the twinkling

stars and distant planets, a single glowing object, brighter than

anything else. Trailing behind it was a flickering spectral tail,

with a faint green and purple mist in its wake.

'Schuler-Khan!' said the Doctor. 'The comet? The one I

just mentioned? Only problem is—'

Before he could say another word, they heard the whirring

sound of an engine, and a voice shouted, 'Halt!'

Both Amy and the Doctor looked up to the crest of the scrap

pile, and saw a four-wheeled vehicle, like a dune buggy.

Riding it were two creatures in blue spacesuits, their smooth

bald heads a dolphin-like shade of grey, their faces almost

featureless save for small black eyes and thin, lipless mouths.

Hanging from the side of the vehicle, one of the creatures had

a large and powerful-looking rifle aimed straight at them.

20

NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

'Don't move!' the creature yelled. The engine whirred

once more, the large, heavy-duty wheels spinning up clouds

of dust and shards of metal, and the buggy came rolling down

towards them. After slamming into the Pioneer's dish,

crushing it as if it were made of paper, the buggy came to a halt

in the valley.

Gesturing to Amy that she should do the same, the Doctor

put his hands up.

'Ha!' said the rifle-toting alien. 'Look at this, Charlie.

There's only two of them. There are never usually two of them.

We should take them back.'

The buggy's driver climbed out from behind the steering

wheel, looking from the Doctor to Amy, and then back again.

'I don't know, Ahmed,' he said. 'They don't look like the

others. Look at their clothes.'

'They're humans. What else can they be? We should take

them back to the ship. Your father'll be happy. Maybe we could

use them as hostages. We could bargain with the humans.'

The one called Charlie shook his head. 'No,' he said.

'Humans don't bargain.'

'Er, excuse me...' said Amy, holding one hand higher than

the other.

Charlie turned to her. 'Yes?' he snapped.

'Well... I am human. And we do bargain. Sometimes. I

mean... It depends what it's about, really, but...'

21

DOCTOR WHO

'Silence!' said Charlie. 'So you are humans? What

happened? Get split off from one of your scouting parties, did

you? Sent to spy on us? Track us down? Is that it?'

'No!' Amy protested. 'No, we're not spies. We only just got

here.' She turned to the Doctor. 'Tell them.'

'Right, yes...' said the Doctor. 'You see... We picked up a

distress signal. Which is why we're here. So you might be

just the people we were looking for...'

Charlie shook his head. 'Impossible,' he snapped. 'Our

distress signal stopped working two months ago. And how

did you get here exactly.? If a ship had come in, we would

have seen it.'

'Oh, you wouldn't have seen my ship! the Doctor told him.

'It's only little. Well... On the outside. Plus, it doesn't make

much of a song and dance when it turns up. There it is. See?

Over there.'

He pointed back in the direction of the TARDIS. Charlie and

Ahmed looked to the blue box, dwarfed by its surroundings, and

then at one another.

'What is that?' asked Ahmed.

'I don't know! replied Charlie. 'Probably more junk.'

'Hey!' said the Doctor, offended. "That's not junk, that's

the TARDIS.'

Charlie and Ahmed shook their heads in unison.

22

NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

'All right! said Ahmed. 'Enough with the games. You're

coming with us.' He lifted up his rifle and aimed it at the

Doctor, gesturing towards the buggy. 'Get on.'

Giving the TARDIS a final backwards glance, the Doctor

nodded reluctantly, and then he and Amy climbed aboard.

Amy looked at the Doctor with a scowl. She had expected

him to do more than just hold up his hands and surrender like

that, but then these aliens did have a gun. A gun that was still

aimed at them as Charlie began driving them through the

valley and away from the TARDIS.

'Where are you taking us?' asked Amy.

'To our ship,' Ahmed replied coldly. Though his features

weren't human, Amy knew an expression of hatred when she

saw one.

'Oh, well... this is exciting,' said the Doctor. He turned to

Amy with a grin, and winked.

Amy laughed incredulously, shaking her head. 'You're

crazy! she said. 'We're actually being kidnapped and you're

acting like we're on a daytrip to Longleat.'

'Yes! said the Doctor. 'Cosmic safari. I find it helps when

faced with gun-toting aliens. Say... Ahmed...'

Ahmed turned to the Doctor and adjusted his rifle's aim.

'Yes?'

'I couldn't help but notice... That comet. Up there?

Schuler-Khan? Is it by any chance—'

23

DOCTOR WHO

His sentence was cut off when, from high above them, they

heard a colossal crash. Tumbling down one of the slopes was

a flaming ball of refuse, burning fragments breaking away

from it as it fell. It landed in their path, only a few feet away

from the buggy, and exploded on impact.

Charlie wrenched the steering wheel to one side and the

buggy mounted an embankment with a violent shudder. Amy

braced herself as best she could, clinging to the back of the

driver's seat, but the Doctor was flung clear of the vehicle,

rolling back down the embankment and into the valley.

'Doctor!' Amy screamed, as the buggy came to a halt.

Ahmed looked past her, to the ridge from which the fireball

had fallen.

'We're under attack!' He shouted, lifting his rifle and firing

off several ear-splitting shots into the distance.

Amy's eyes were still on the Doctor, who had landed

perhaps six metres away from them. He was dazed, and it

took him seconds to gather his senses and get to his feet, but

by then it was too late.

There were creatures coming down the hill, creatures

dressed in black and dirty rags. They looked, to Amy, like

hairless chimpanzees, feral and monstrous, and as they

charged down the embankment they hooted and bellowed.

She saw

24

NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

one of them armed with a bow and arrow, the tip of which

blazed with fire. The missile was launched with terrifying

precision and embedded itself, still burning, in the side of the

buggy.

'Get us out of here!' shouted Ahmed. 'Quickly!'

Charlie didn't hesitate. The buggy's engine growled to life

once more, and then tore up the side of the opposite bank, the

wheels skidding from side to side, struggling to grip against

the unstable surface.

Amy reached out from the back of the buggy. The Doctor

was running after them, away from their attackers, but it was

no use. The buggy was too fast, and all too soon the marauders

were upon him with rope nets and shackles.

'Stop!' Amy screamed. 'Please! The Doctor. We have to help

him!'

But Charlie didn't stop. He carried on driving until they

had reached the ridge, and then the buggy was driving down

another slope of twisted, ancient metal towards a desert of

broken glass.

'No!' Amy cried. 'We have to go back and save him.'

From the driver's seat, Charlie looked at her in one of the

rear-view mirrors.

'Save him?' he said. 'What are you talking about? Your

friend just got rescued. You're the one that needs saving.'

25

Chapter

2

Amy didn't need to be an expert in such matters to know, just by

looking at it, that the ship was a wreck. It lay half buried in a

landscape of wreckages, more or less camouflaged by the torn

and damaged remnants of the older hulls surrounding it.

Painted along its side, the letters almost obscured by a layer of

black grime and dust, was its name: BEAGLE XXI.

They drove in through a small opening where the hull met

the ground, and through a labyrinth of low, dark runnels, until

they reached what looked like a loading bay. None of them

had spoken in some time.

Ahmed climbed off first, shouldering his rifle. He still

looked at Amy with distrust and animosity,

27

DOCTOR WHO

and Amy couldn't bring herself to meet his gaze.

'I'll get your father! said Ahmed to Charlie, before walking

out of the bay.

Though she wouldn't admit it out loud, Amy was scared.

Terrified, even. She wondered where the Doctor could be,

what their attackers could have done with him. What if they

weren't attackers? What if they were just rescuing the Doctor

from these aliens? What if she was the one who needed

rescuing now?

All these thoughts were still racing through her mind when

Charlie, still sitting in the front of the buggy, turned around,

resting with his arms folded across the top of the driver's seat.

'Are you OK?' he asked.

The question took Amy by surprise. He had seemed so

cold, so harsh, when they were driving away from the Doctor.

What had changed?

Amy shrugged it off and shook her head.

'This is crazy! she said, looking at him at last. 'I'm not even

meant to be here. This is... this is just insane. I mean... Who are

you? What are you?'

Charlie looked at her quizzically, the smooth and shiny grey

skin of his forehead creasing up into a frown. 'You don't know

who we are?' he asked.

Amy shook her head.

'Well. My name is Baasim al-Jehedeh, but most people call

me Charlie. And we are the Sittuun. If that's what you meant.'

28

NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

'Charlie?' said Amy. 'What kind of an alien name is

Charlie? And your mate, there. Ahmed. There was a boy in

my school called Ahmed...'

'The Sittuun use human names! Charlie told her. 'Our

language is too complicated for human vocal chords to

pronounce and includes frequencies which human ears

cannot hear. It's easier for us to adopt Earth names when

dealing with Humans...'

'But Sittuun...'

'It's the Arabic word for "sixty"! Charlie explained, and

Amy thought she could see his mouth curling up into a smile.

'Our world was first encountered by a Syrian deep-space crew.

The first town they came across had sixty inhabitants, so they

called us "sittuun". Sixty.'

Amy thought about this for a moment, and then frowned.

'OK! she said. 'So you lot were discovered by humans...'

'Actually, we prefer the word "encountered".'

'OK. You were encountered by humans.. .You use human

names... But you don't like humans? And you've kidnapped

me because I'm human? And now the Doctor's been

captured by those... those things... I mean, what were they?'

'You mean you don't know?' said Charlie.

Before he could say any more, they heard the sound of

marching feet in an outside corridor, and they were joined by

Ahmed and another Sittuun. This one, Amy noticed, had a

heavier build than

29

DOCTOR WHO

either Charlie or Ahmed, and along the dome of his head was

a thin, Mohawk-like strip of white hair. His uniform looked

military, with coloured stripes along the breast pocket of his

jacket. He turned to Charlie, and began speaking in a series of

high-pitched whistles and loud clicks. Charlie shrank away

from the older-looking Sittuun, almost cowering.

'I don't get it! said Amy. 'The Doctor told me that the

TARDIS would translate anything people said. Anything.

Anywhere.'

The older Sittuun looked at her with an expression of

condescension and shook his head.

'Dad...' said Charlie awkwardly. 'Speak human, please. We

have a guest.'

'We have a prisoner, Baasim! snapped his father. He turned to

Amy. 'What kind of translation were you expecting, girl?

Vocal modulator? Telepathic field? Those things don't work

on our language. Tell me... Who are you? Where did you come

from? The human city?'

'My name's Amy Pond,' said Amy. I’m from Leadworth.

It's near Gloucester.'

'Gloucester? What is Gloucester?'

'It's a town.'

'But where?'

'Er... Planet Earth?'

'You're from Earth? Planet Earth? You know that you're from

Earth?'

30

NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

'Er... Yes? I'm human, and I'm from Earth. Is that so

weird?'

The three Sittuun looked at one another in surprise.

'Remarkable! said Charlie's father, his tone still hesitant

and condescending. 'Well, isn't that something? She might

just be telling the truth.' He turned to Amy once more. 'I am

Captain Jamal al-Jehedeh of the Beagle XXI. Follow me, Amy

Pond. I'd like to know how you ended up here.'

Amy sat on the edge of a bed in the medical bay while

another Sittuun, who introduced herself as Dr Heeva,

inspected her for cuts and bruises. They had given her a bowl of

soup that tasted strangely of chemicals but not food, and the

four of them now stood around her, looking at her as if she were

a sideshow exhibit or an animal in a zoo.

'It's certainly far-fetched! said Captain Jamal to Dr Heeva. 'I

mean... Time machines. Alien Time Lords. Space whales.

Intergalactic felons. What do you think?'

'Possibly concussion! replied Heeva. 'But she's not like the

others, is she? She doesn't look like them. She doesn't talk like

them.'

'Er, hello?' said Amy, waving her hand in the air. 'I'm still

here?'

The four Sittuun looked at her with something resembling

embarrassment.

31

DOCTOR WHO

'So! she continued, 'I've given you my life story in a

nutshell. How about you lot? What are you doing here? And

what is this place, anyway?'

'This is Object 556/C.’ said Captain Jamal. 'But we call it

the Gyre. It's been here for maybe three thousand centuries.

Shipwrecks and refuse brought together by the gravitational

force of the five nearest stars.'

'Gravitational forces!' Amy said with a smile. 'That's what

the Doctor said!'

"The Doctor?' asked the Captain.

'Her friend! explained Charlie. He lowered his voice. 'He

was the one taken by the humans.'

'Ah. I see. Well, yes, as I was saying, the Gyre has been here

for three hundred thousand Earth years, at least. Growing

bigger and bigger, year after year. It's only posed a problem in

recent months. Ships passing near it began encountering

navigational problems. The gravitational force of the Gyre itself

is beginning to have an effect on the nearest planet's orbit. And

then there's the comet...'

'Schuler-Khan?'

Captain Jamal frowned at Amy and then nodded. 'Yes! he

said, sounding vaguely surprised. 'That's right. Schuler-Khan.

Now... Schuler-Khan's orbit around Battani 045 lasts

eighty-five years, and on previous occasions it has missed the

Gyre altogether. But not this time. The gravitational pull has

changed the comet's course and, in only a few

32

NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

hours' time, Schuler-Khan will crash straight into the Gyre.

Which is why we're here.'

Amy sat on the bed, dumbstruck for a moment. She put

down the bowl of soup and leaned forward. 'You mean to tell me

you came here just to see it get hit by a great big comet?'

Captain Jamal shook his head. 'No, not at all. We came here

to destroy the Gyre. If Schuler-Khan hits the Gyre it will send

chunks of debris the size of cities spinning off through space.

There are twelve inhabited worlds within twenty-five million

miles, including our own. The impact on them will be

devastating. Our mission was to detonate a Nanobomb in the

Gyre's upper atmosphere, thereby neutralising the threat.'

'A Nanobomb?' Amy winced. 'That doesn't sound good.'

'It's fine, really’ said Charlie, trying to sound reassuring. 'It

releases Nanites which eat up all the metal and plastic in a

matter of seconds. Eventually all that's left is atoms. The

Nanites even destroy themselves.'

'So what went wrong?'

'We crashed,' said Captain Jamal. 'As we were nearing the

Gyre our systems crashed, and then so did this ship.' He

paused, looking down at the tiled floor of the med bay. 'We

thought there was nothing here,' he went on. 'Ships had been

passing this thing for millennia. No one thought it was

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DOCTOR WHO

inhabited. No one thought it could be. There were no signs of

life. But then we got here...'

Dr Heeva stepped in, looking at Amy directly. 'They must

have been shipwrecked! she said. 'Thousands of years ago.

Hundreds of thousands, maybe.'

'Who? Who were shipwrecked?'

Captain Jamal looked up at her, his expression solemn. 'The

ones who kidnapped your friend,' he replied. "The humans.'

34

Chapter

3

The gully was dark and narrow. To either side, two walls of

scrap rose up, cutting down the dark blue sky to a narrow sliver

and, every so often, small fragments of metal would come

tumbling down into their path, kicking up clouds of dust.

The Doctor's wrists were bound tight in front of him with a

thick and grubby length of rope. One of the humans walked

behind, the tip of his spear trained right between the Doctor's

shoulder blades, its sharpened point nudging him whenever he

walked a little slower.

Eventually the canyon opened out onto the edge of a vast

gorge, perhaps two hundred metres across, and unfathomably

deep. Crossing the ravine was what looked, at first, like an

enormous

35

DOCTOR WHO

metal bridge. Only as they got closer could the Doctor

recognise it as a pipe, ten metres or so in diameter. It was

ancient, its rusting trunk draped with creeping green vines.

'That's the exhaust off a Proamonian dreadnaught...' said

the Doctor. 'Do you know something? You could make a

fortune recycling this place. You know, Proamonians only ever

built their ships out of proamonium? Rarest mineral in the

universe, proamonium. Only found on Proamon, funnily

enough.'

'Silence!' shouted the human with the spear. 'You do not

speak.'

The Doctor looked back to see his malevolent glare, and

the human bared his teeth, grunting and snarling, and nudging

the Doctor once more with his spear.

'Ah!' the Doctor gasped. 'Easy... easy... That's actually

quite painful, you know.'

They were crossing the pipe now, the sound of their

marching clanging and echoing beneath them. To either side

of this makeshift bridge, the gorge descended into complete

darkness, its depths enshrouded in a perpetual gloom.

The Doctor looked around at his captors and sighed. How

long had they been here, on this floating disc of space junk? They

were human, he could tell that much, but he doubted any

human being on Earth would recognise them as their own.

36

NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

At the other end of the bridge they entered a murky swamp

of dark green sludge, from which emerged hundreds, if not

thousands, of corrugated plastic tubes, like an artificial

bamboo forest. The humans, the Doctor noticed, were

growing edgy and cautious, and they made their way into the

swamp with slow, deliberate steps. All around them the plastic

tubes dipped and swayed, chiming against one another like

percussion instruments, and the stagnant breeze sang over their

open necks like a ghostly choir.

From nearby they heard a sudden heavy splash, and

everybody froze.

'Sollog! whispered one of the humans, his eyes darting from

side to side.

'Sollog,' said another, drawing a battered-looking sword

from its scabbard.

'Er... Who... or what is Sollog?' asked the Doctor, but nobody

answered him.

There was another splash, and now he heard something

else. Something guttural and animalistic, almost like a belch, or

the sound of a bullfrog.

Another splash. And then another.

The human with the sword was turning now, searching

desperately for the source of those sounds, his expression one

of outright terror. His hands shook as he gripped the weapon's

handle and his jaw was trembling.

'What's Sollog?' the Doctor asked, more

37

DOCTOR WHO

insistently now, but the human didn't answer him. He was

looking over the Doctor's shoulder, his eyes growing wide and

his mouth opening for a scream he'd never start.

The creature that leapt on him was at least a metre long, the

trunk of its body like that of a monstrous slug, and its eyes

jutted out on slimy stalks. Unlike a slug, it propelled itself on

eight long and spindly legs, which protruded from its sides.

It struck the human with such force that it pushed him down

under the water in a split second, its legs wrapped around his

head and upper body. The stricken man thrashed around under

the surface of the swamp, but nobody would help him.

More of the creatures, the Sollogs, were emerging from the

fetid green waters of the swamp. They climbed the plastic

tubes and propelled themselves along with terrifying agility.

One of the humans hit one with a shot from his crossbow, but

was then taken down when another of the creatures leapt onto

his back; its gaping maw filled with circular rows of sharp

teeth opening wide above his head.

Without a moment's hesitation, the humans began running

further into the swamp, the plastic tubes chiming around them.

The Doctor ran as best he could with his hands still tied, but then

he heard a heavy splash. He turned round and saw the human

who had nudged him along with a spear

38

NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

lying face down in the water.

Crouching, and with a great deal of difficulty, the Doctor

grabbed the human by the arm and turned him over. The

human coughed up a mouthful of water, wriggled free of the

Doctor's grasp, and began searching in the swamp for his

spear.

The rest of the group were far away now, still running

through the forest of plastic tubes, their yelling and screaming

getting quieter by the second. The Doctor and his captor were

alone, but for the Sollogs, which were drawing around them in

an ever-tightening circle.

'Cut the rope,' said the Doctor, holding up his bound wrists.

The human shook his head.

'Cut the rope or we are going to die,' insisted the Doctor.

The human looked around at the seven or eight Sollogs that

were crawling and slithering from one pipe to the next. He

turned to the Doctor and, drawing a small knife from his belt,

proceeded to hack through the rope, freeing the Doctor's

hands. The Doctor reached inside his jacket, and the human

flinched, holding the blade a little closer to his face.

'Easy... easy...' said the Doctor, drawing out his sonic

screwdriver.

Close by, one of the Sollogs let out a terrifying hiss. The

human jumped, but the Doctor remained

39

DOCTOR WHO

calm, grabbing the nearest plastic tube, and placing the tip of

the screwdriver against its corrugated shell. As the device

chirruped into life there came, from the open mouth of the

pipe, a deafening, bass-heavy drone. The Doctor pulled down

the pipe, holding it under his arm as if it were a gun, and

aimed it at the Sollogs. The throbbing sound pulsated out of

the pipe, causing everything in its path to quiver and shake,

and the Sollogs began screeching and mewling, before

scurrying away from them.

The Doctor let out a brief, almost nervous laugh, as if amazed

his plan had worked. Then, when the Sollogs were a safe

distance away, he grabbed the human by his wrist, and

dragged him off across the swamp.

'What was that?' asked the human, breathlessly.

'That was improvisation! the Doctor replied. 'And all

things considered, I think it went rather well.'

Eventually they were clear of the swamp and racing across

a glittering white desert. Behind them the Sollogs clung to the

swaying plastic tubes, but they came no further. Turning on

his heels the Doctor watched them massing at the edges of the

swamp, hissing and screeching. Why weren't they still chasing

them? He looked down at the crunchy white crystals at his feet.

'Salt,' he realised. 'It's a salt plain.'

40

NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

He would have smiled with relief were he not thinking

about Amy. Amy Pond, who was somewhere, far beyond the

swamp and the canyon. Alone on a world as dangerous as this.

He had to get back to her, somehow, but his thoughts were

interrupted as he felt his wrists pressed together, and the

all-too-familiar sensation of rough rope being tied around

them. The human he had just saved was binding them together

once more, and had the tip of his dagger pointed towards the

Doctor's face.

'Oh, well that's just charming,' said the Doctor. And I

thought we were friends.'

'You are not my friend,' grunted the human. 'You are my

prisoner. Now start walking.'

They made their way towards those who had escaped from

the swamp moments before them. In the distance, beyond the

rest of the group, the Doctor saw a dark shape rising up

against the perpetual night, an enormous hulk that shimmered

at first, like a mirage. Only as they drew nearer did he recognise

it as the wreckage of a spaceship.

Though it was half buried in the surface, it rose up a quarter

of a mile from the ground, like an iron finger pointing at the

sky. Along its side was painted a single word, GOBO, and

next to it the image of a cartoon clown with bright blue hair and

a crimson, rictus grin.

As they neared the hulk, the Doctor heard the

41

DOCTOR WHO

sound of drumming and saw blazing torches lined up along

fortified ramparts. All around the wreck there were makeshift

buildings: tin shacks and huts; ramshackle turrets and

cobbled-together shelters - a city made of junk. A fanfare of

discordant, atonal horns greeted them from the watchtowers

along the city's outer walls, and the doors of an immense iron

gate groaned open. The drumming grew louder still as they

approached, passing through the gate and into the city, and

then the doors slammed shut behind them with a heavy clang.

When they saw him, the humans in the city began to hoot

and bellow, jumping up and down and beating their chests. A

small child, its eyes glowing with feral intensity, ran up to the

Doctor and kicked him in the leg. Another threw a clod of dirt at

his head, narrowly missing him. His captors shooed them away

with their spears, and took him further into the city.

The buildings that surrounded them looked impossibly

ancient and run-down, as if they had been fashioned as

emergency shelters in a crisis, many centuries ago, but had

since fallen into disrepair. The rooftops were rusted and

sagging, columns bowing beneath their weight. The whole

place stank of smoke and rotting food.

They came at last to the upturned hull of an old deep-space

shuttle. Its shell, which would once have been white and

emblazoned with the livery

42

NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

of whichever space agency had sent it, was now painted, from

end to end, with primitive graffiti. Over and over again, the

Doctor saw a childish interpretation of the clown's grinning

face.

A door in the shuttle's hull swung open with a gasp, and a

human climbed out: a short man with long, greasy black hair

cascading down his hunched back like a river of tar. One side of

his face was tattooed with tiger patterns and his features were

pinched and rat-like. He walked with the assistance of a gnarled

black staff, at the top of which was a human skull. On seeing

the Doctor he laughed in a series of short, staccato cackles,

clasping his hands together with glee. His fingernails were

long, brown talons.

'Ah, Sancho...' he rasped. 'What do we have here?'

'We have a prisoner, Tuco,' said Sancho, the human soldier

who the Doctor had saved. 'We caught him.'

'Yes. A prisoner. Yes,' hissed the tattooed human. 'Yes. Tuco

likes this very much. Yes. A prisoner.'

Tuco approached the Doctor now, inspecting him from

head to toe. He reached out, dragging one of his claw-like

fingers the length of the Doctor's face, from his forehead to his

chin, and the Doctor followed the course of his finger with his

eyes but remained stoic.

'Ha ha!' cackled Tuco. 'He has a funny face! But

43

DOCTOR WHO

he's not Sittuun, no?'

'He was with the Sittuun! said Sancho.

'With Sittuun? With Sittuun. Yes. With Sittuun. Are you a

friend of the Sittuun?'

The Doctor shrugged. 'Well... I'm quite easy to get along

with, I think. So... Tuco...'

Tuco recoiled, as if he had been stung. He frowned at the

Doctor.

'He speaks!'

'Yes, I speak. So... Tuco, as I was about to say before you

had your little... ah, moment there... How long have you guys

been here?'

The humans looked at one another, frowning.

'What does he mean?' asked Sancho.

'Yes, stranger. Yes. Tuco would like to know. What do you

mean?'

'Well... This place. How long have there been humans

here? When were you shipwrecked? That's assuming you

were shipwrecked, and you didn't come here by choice. I

mean, I love what you've done with the place, really, but

still... It's not exactly a holiday resort, is it?'

'Silence!' Tuco roared. 'He speaks the heresy!'

The humans gasped, clasping their hands over their ears.

'I'm sorry! said the Doctor. 'Did I just say something?'

Tuco leaned close to him now, his dark green eyes glowing

with intent.

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NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

'We have always been here! he snarled, baring his yellow,

misshapen teeth. 'There is no shipwreck.'

The Doctor was gazing up now, at the broken hull of the

GOBO ship.

'Er... Excuse me?' he said. 'But... Where exactly do you think

you are?'

'This! said Tuco, grinning ominously, 'is Earth. And you,

stranger, are a heretic.' He turned to the Doctor's captors. 'Take

him away! he hissed. 'Django will decide his fate.'

45

Chapter

4

'But... I saw those things... They weren't human.'

Amy was following Charlie along one of the Sittuun ship's

corridors, though she had no idea where he was going.

'They were! said Charlie. 'I'm sorry.'

'But what happened to them?'

They came at last to a control room lined with banks of

monitors. Charlie sat at one of the consoles and started typing.

After a moment he paused, turning round in his chair.

'We don't know how long they've been here. It could be

thousands of years. They're most likely the descendents of a crew

who were shipwrecked here. They've forgotten everything.

Their technology, or most of it. Their history.'

47

DOCTOR WHO

'But they don't even look human.'

'Well, they do,' said Charlie. 'If you're Sittuun, I mean. Most

of you kind of... well... you all kind of look the same, really.'

He frowned and shook his head. 'I'm sorry! he said. That's

really racist, isn't it?'

Amy couldn't help but laugh. 'Well, yeah... Kinda.' Her

expression became more grave. 'But what about the Doctor? If

they've got him... What will they do to him?'

Charlie shrugged and hung his head. 'I don't know,' he said.

"They killed three of our crew when we first landed, and they

captured another three a few weeks back. We haven't seen

them since. There were eleven of us. Aisha... she was our chief

navigator... She died after being bitten by one of the Sollogs.

So now there's just us four.'

'And how long have you been here?'

Charlie closed his small black eyes and sighed. 'One

hundred and eight days,' he told her. 'We've been here a

hundred and eight days. We're trying to salvage one of the raft

ships, but the Gyre has scrambled all of the ship's navigational

programmes. Even if we could get one of the rafts to fly - and

we can't - it could send us anywhere. We could be floating in

deep space for centuries.'

Amy sat down at the console next to Charlie and put her

head in her hands. When she looked up at him again it was

with a quizzical scowl. 'But

48

NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

what I don't understand is, why didn't you just fire a great big

missile across space to blow this place up? Why did you have

to come here?'

The Gyre! Charlie replied. 'It's strange. It's like it has a mind

of its own. Like it's conscious. It causes all kinds of problems.

The only way to destroy it was to do it up close.'

'And there's just you guys? And just the one bomb? Why

isn't there a whole fleet of ships with lots of bombs out there?'

Charlie laughed. 'A whole fleet?' he said. 'With lots of

bombs? Nanobombs aren't cheap, and the one on this ship is

the largest that's ever been manufactured. It took the combined

funds of eight planets in the Battani system, with emergency

aid from another fifteen worlds to buy just one bomb. That's

why today is our last chance. And so far, it's not looking good.'

'But the Doctor...' said Amy with a troubled look. 'If he was

here he'd know what to do.'

She could feel an anger rising up from the pit of her stomach.

'If you hadn't kidnapped us, we could have helped you.'

'What do you mean?' asked Charlie.

'His ship. The TARDIS. It can take you anywhere in the

universe. We could have got you out of here. But the Doctor's

the only one who can fly it, and now he's gone.'

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DOCTOR WHO

Charlie sat back in his chair, covering his face with his

hands. He uttered something in Sittuun, something blunt and

guttural.

'Did you just swear?' asked Amy.

Charlie nodded. 'We didn't know,' he said. 'You both looked

like them. If we'd just brought you back here, and you'd offered

to take us away in that DARTIS-'

TARDIS.'

'Sorry... TARDIS. If you'd come here and told us that, my

father would never have believed you. He really doesn't like

humans. Many Sittuun don't.'

Amy was surprised. In her lifetime she had heard people

say insulting things about women, Scottish people and

redheads, and sometimes she would take offence. She'd never

imagined feeling offended on behalf of her entire species.

'Why not?' she asked.

'Because,' Charlie said, trying to sound as tactful as he

could, 'humans are superstitious, unpredictable and violent.

You were an apex predator on Earth, and you spread it around

wherever you go. Back on our home world, before humans

turned up, there were no predators. Can you imagine that? Not

a single carnivorous life form on the entire planet. Quite rare,

apparently. But do you know something? It means we evolved

without fear. Without fear, there is no superstition. We have no

myths, no religions, no monsters in our

50

NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

closets. But humans... You're scared of absolutely everything.

And look where it's got you.'

'And what's that supposed to mean?'

Charlie turned away. "The first three... the ones they killed!

he said, his voice a little softer. 'They went to the human city

to warn them about the comet. We were offering to save

them. And the humans... they just didn't care. They didn't

want to know, or listen. They hung the bodies at the city gates

for us to see, and then they came for us. We've been hiding out

here ever since. So if you want to know why my father doesn't

like humans... well... there's your answer.'

Amy nodded, feeling a sudden sympathy for Charlie and

the others, and a terrible fear for the Doctor.

'We aren't all like them,' she said, sounding almost

apologetic.

Charlie smiled at her. 'I know,' he said. 'I know.'

'So what can we do?' asked Amy. 'I can't just sit here and

do nothing. Those humans have the Doctor. God knows what

they've done to him...'

'There's nothing we can do,' said Charlie desolately. 'In a few

hours Schuler-Khan is going to crash into the Gyre. We either sit

here and wait for it to happen, or we detonate the Nanobomb

and get atomised. Sorry, Amy... There's no fairy-tale happy

ending.'

51

DOCTOR WHO

He was looking at her again with a soulful expression

when, from beyond the control room, they heard hurried,

clanking footsteps. The door crashed open, and Ahmed burst

into the room, skidding to a halt. He braced himself with both

hands clasping his knees and gasping for breath, his cheeks

flushed a strange shade of turquoise.

'Come quickly!' he said, still breathless. 'We've got an

incoming ship. Looks like an Earth vessel.'

Amy and Charlie looked at one another and were on their

feet and running in a fraction of a second, following Ahmed

down the corridor to the bridge. Captain Jamal and Dr Heeva

were waiting for them.

'Look!' Ahmed said, pointing up at the sky.

Sure enough, streaking across the sapphire-coloured skies

above the Gyre was a single, small spacecraft. Its hull was a

vibrant yellow with a single red stripe from its nose cone to its

tailfins. It looked, to Amy, more like the kind of spaceship she

had seen in cartoons when she was younger than the industrial

and functional ships she had encountered in her travels so far.

The yellow ship banked sharply to its left, and they could

hear its rockets shuddering and wheezing. It was heading

straight for them.

'It's going to hit us!' cried Dr Heeva.

The Sittuun all hit the deck, and Amy followed suit,

covering her face with her hands and squinting

52

NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

up at the windows through the gaps between her fingers. The

ship was corning closer, bearing down on them but, when it was

only a hundred metres or so away, it stopped very suddenly.

Turning slowly on its axis, the yellow craft shook in mid air,

clouds of black smoke belching out of its vents, and slowly

began its descent.

Amy and the others got to their feet and watched as it landed

with a heavy thump in a dense cloud of dust.

'It's a ship,' breathed Ahmed, his hands and face pressed up

against the window.

'Yes, Corporal Ahmed, we can see that,' said Captain

Jamal.

'No...' said Ahmed, turning around to face them. 'I mean,

it's a ship. We're rescued! We're actually rescued!'

Before Captain Jamal could say anything further, Ahmed and

Charlie had raced out from the bridge. After a second's

hesitation, Amy, Captain Jamal and Dr Heeva followed them.

'It just had to be humans, didn't it?' said the Captain. 'And

you know, we'll never hear the last of it.'

'Quite,' said Dr Heeva. 'And of course, the way they'll talk

about it, it won't just be us these humans saved. It'll be the whole

flipping galaxy.'

Amy scowled at Dr Heeva and the Captain, and followed

after Ahmed and Charlie as they ran

53

DOCTOR WHO

down several flights of stairs to the loading bay's entrance.

Ahmed was carrying his rifle.

'Well...' he said, noticing Amy's disapproving glare, 'you

never know, eh?'

They left the hull of the Beagle XXI and ran out across the

plain to where the yellow spaceship had landed. Written in

dashing calligraphy along its hull was the ship's name: The

Golden Bough.

For a moment, Amy and the crew of the Beagle stood

around the ship, gazing up at it in silenced awe. Under the very

thin veil of dust that had coated it upon landing, its

canary-coloured hull still shone. It could not have looked more

incongruous, in the bleak and barren landscape of the Gyre; like

a glittering diamond in a mound of coal.

When a door in the hull hissed open, all five of them

jumped and took a step back. The door lowered itself with

hydraulic grace, revealing a flight of gleaming chrome steps,

and there was a moment's pause before there appeared, at the

top of the stairs, a man in a shining silver spacesuit. Faced by

Amy and the Sittuun, all of them covered in grey dust, the new

arrival looked strangely glamorous and unfazed. He ran down

the steps, his beaming smile revealing perfectly white teeth.

His hair was styled in a way that reminded Amy of the kind of

film stars she had seen in old movies, and his upper lip was

adorned with a thin and rakish moustache.

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NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

'Afternoon!' said the stranger, as he stepped down onto the

Gyre.

The Sittuun looked at one another, then Amy, and then

back to the stranger, who walked straight up to Captain Jamal,

holding out his hand.

'Dirk Slipstream at your service,' he said. 'You must be

Captain Jamal al-Jehedeh. Am I correct?'

Captain Jamal nodded. 'You are! he said, a little awkwardly.

'Jolly good. So... Seems you chaps have run into a spot of

bother.' Dirk Slipstream gazed up at the wreck of the Beagle

XXI 'Blimey. She's looking a bit worse for wear, what?'

'I'm sorry! said Captain Jamal. 'But... who... are you?'

Slipstream's gaze snapped back to the Captain, his eyes

growing wide. He looked offended in some way.

'I'm Dirk Slipstream! he said, as if that were explanation

enough. 'Formerly of the Terran Airborne Division. Won four

Silver Buzzards at the Battle Of Krontep?'

Captain Jamal said nothing.

'Well, anyway! Slipstream continued, 'I've gone freelance.

Search and rescue mainly. Heard you fellas were having some

trouble out here in the back of beyond, so thought I'd come and

offer you a lift out of here.'

'That's... that's brilliant! said Dr Heeva.

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DOCTOR WHO

Though Amy wasn't even sure if they could, she thought the

Sittuun doctor was about to cry.

'Excellent! said Slipstream. 'Well, chaps and chapesses...

You'd best get your bags packed. You are being rescued!'

Charlie and Ahmed cheered, and Captain Jamal and Dr

Heeva gently embraced one another.

'But...' said Amy. 'What about the Doctor?'

The Sittuun turned to face her, their expressions grave.

'What?' said Slipstream. 'Doctor? Which Doctor?'

'He's my friend,' said Amy. 'And the humans kidnapped

him. They've still got him.'

'Humans, you say?'

'Yes. There are humans here, but they're not... they're not

like us. They're different. They captured the Doctor and they

took him away.'

Slipstream thought on this a moment, pacing back and forth

in the dust and stroking his chin between forefinger and thumb.

'Humans, eh?' he said eventually. 'Must be that settlement I

passed when I was coming in to land. Few miles east of here, if

you can call it east. Blasted thing's as flat as a pancake and

twice as round. Most confounding. So who's this Doctor

chappy then, eh?'

'Like I said... He's my friend. And he's my only way home.'

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NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

Slipstream nodded sympathetically. 'I see! he said. 'Well... I

do hate to see a young filly all upset. Breaks a chap's heart.'

'What are you saying?' asked Captain Jamal, suddenly

concerned. 'You're not seriously thinking of-'

'My dear Captain, back where I'm from we have a little thing

called honour. If there's a poor chap being held by those

savages, it's my job to rescue him. Now who's with me?'

Slipstream turned to face Charlie, Ahmed and Amy. The

younger Sittuun looked at one another.

'We should,' said Charlie.

Ahmed didn't seem so sure. 'Really? But we could just fly

out of here. Right now. We could be gone. We'd never have to

see this place again...'

'But we left him there! said Charlie, looking across at

Amy. 'Her friend. And he could have helped us, but we left

him there.'

Amy didn't have to think twice about it. She turned to

Slipstream. 'I'm in! she said.

'Jolly good. Now, the only trouble is, the Golden Bough won't

take us out that far. The magnetic pole here plays havoc with her

navigation. We'll have to go on foot. Best get everything you

need, and we'll be off in a jiffy. Yes?'

Captain Jamal began shaking his head. 'No! he said. 'No,

this is insane. Mr Slipstream—'

'You can call me Dirk, old chap.'

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DOCTOR WHO

Captain Jamal huffed. 'Dirk... In a few hours' time a comet

will smash into this world. Our mission is to destroy the Gyre

before that happens. We do not have the time for you to launch

some half-baked rescue mission. You have a working ship.

Let's activate the Nanobomb and get out of here.'

Slipstream raised one eyebrow laconically. 'Steady on, old

chap! he said. 'Y'see... The thing I've learned over the years,

Captain, is that there's nothing like bad press to ruin a man's

career. Let me explain... When we get off this barren,

godforsaken world and back to civilisation, do you really want

to be the man who left a fellow traveller to die in the clutches of

those brutes? Do you? No. I thought not. Now you run along

and gather your belongings. I'm rescuing the Doctor.'

58

Chapter

5

From the upturned shuttle near the city gates, the Doctor was taken

by his captors down into a subterranean network of damp, dark

tunnels.

They came eventually to a wrought-iron gate guarded by a

short, plump man with a face like a bulldog.

'Who is this?' grunted the guard.

'He is a heretic,' replied Sancho. Tuco says to put him in a

cell. Django will deal with him later.'

The guard nodded and grunted once more and opened the

gate. They took the Doctor through into the city's dungeons, the

guard waddling in front of them, his heavy bulk shifting from

side to side as he walked.

'Say, Sancho,' said the Doctor.

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DOCTOR WHO

Sancho looked across at the Doctor, his eyebrows furrowed.

'What?'

'We made a good team, didn't we? Earlier on? Us versus

the Sollogs?'

Sancho scowled at the Doctor. 'No team! he snapped. 'You

were a prisoner.'

'Yes, but still... The look on their faces... well, if you can call

them faces... when I did the old trick with the pipe? That was

priceless. Wasn't it?'

Sancho's expression softened, and the Doctor was sure

that for just one second he saw the traces of a smile beginning

to appear.

They came eventually to a vaulted chamber filled with

individual prison cells, and the guard began rattling his

truncheon along the bars.

'Man-co!'

he

sang,

tauntingly.

'Maaan-co!

Hey,

Wordslinger... We've got a friend for you.'

The Doctor looked through into one of the cells and saw a

man sitting on a low cot with his head in his hands. He was

wearing an ill-fitting navy blue blazer with tarnished brass

buttons; a jacket that clearly hadn't been tailored for the wearer.

The man looked up, straight at the Doctor, and smiled weakly.

'He's a heretic, just like you, Manco!' leered the guard. He

unclipped a ring of keys from his belt and unlocked the cell

opposite Manco's. 'Get in,' he snarled, and the Doctor did as he

was told.

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NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

The door was slammed shut with a loud clang and, locking

it, the guard peered in at the Doctor with a toothless grin and

laughed through his nose. Sancho gave the Doctor one last

look, a puzzled frown, and then they left.

When he was sure they were far from the dungeon, the

Doctor surreptitiously drew his sonic screwdriver from his

pocket and aimed it at the lock. It chirruped and squealed, its

thin green beam illuminating the lock, but nothing happened.

He'd thought as much. Some locks were just too old and too

alien for even his trusty screwdriver. Looking up, he saw his

fellow prisoner looking across the dungeon at him from his

cell.

'What... what is that?' asked Manco.

'This?' said the Doctor, holding up the sonic screwdriver.

'Oh... This is just a screwdriver. Though what I wouldn't give

for a file in a cake right now...'

'You aren't one of us,' said Manco.

'No. No... You could say I'm not from round these parts.'

Manco smiled. 'And you're a heretic, they say?' he asked, a

note of optimism and hope creeping into his voice.

'Well... So they tell me,' said the Doctor. 'Not quite sure

what I've done to earn the title, though. How about you? What

did you say to get yourself banged up in here?'

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DOCTOR WHO

Manco leaned to one side, peering out through the bars to

check that the coast was clear. 'I questioned the Story! he said.

'The Story? Which story?'

'The Story of Earth.'

'Right,' said the Doctor. 'Only, you see... that's the thing.

This isn't Earth. You do know that. Don't you?'

Manco shrugged. 'I'm not sure any more. When I was a

child, maybe. They would tell us the Story, and I believed every

word of it, but now...'

'OK. Well... You've got me. I am literally a captive

audience. What's "the Story of Earth"?'

Gazing up at the ceiling, and speaking as if from some

long-remembered recitation, Manco spoke:

'In the beginning was the dark blue night and the silence

and the empty and the none. Into this came Gobo, and He said,

"There shall be a world here in this dark blue night and I shall

call it Earth." And He created the Earth out of all the things the

Olden Ones had left behind, and into the Earth He put

mankind, and He created plants so that they might breathe,

and animals so that they might eat, and water that they might

drink. And around His tower He built a city in which they

might live, and He made the salt plains to guard against the

Sollogs in the West. And to this day Gobo looks down upon

creation from His tower, and the people of this Earth wait for

the day of His return, when He

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NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

shall take them to the land of El Paso.'

Manco looked at the Doctor and nodded, clearly satisfied

that he had remembered it word for word. "There is more! he

said. 'But that's how it starts.'

The Doctor was silent for a moment.

'El Paso?' he said, at last. 'As in El Paso, Texas?'

'Yes. You've heard of it?'

'Heard of it? I've been there...'

Manco shook his head. 'No,' he said. "That isn't possible.

The Story says that only when we have proven ourselves here

on Earth will Gobo take us to El Paso.'

'No, Manco... listen... El Paso is on Earth. This isn't Earth.

This... this is a great big disc of space junk on the outer edges

of the Battani system. It's not Earth. But you know that already,

don't you?'

Manco held the bars of his cell, and stared down at the stone

floor, nodding sheepishly.

'Tell me, Manco... What do you know? Why have they

locked you up?'

Manco was now pacing around the cell, fidgeting and

scratching his head. 'Inside the tower,' he said, his voice hushed

and timid. 'I went into the tower. Nobody goes into the tower,

but Django sent me there. When the great star appeared again.

He sent me there to look for information. Anything that might

tell us what it meant.'

'The great star? You mean the comet? The one that's in the

sky right now?'

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DOCTOR WHO

Manco nodded. 'Yes. The Star Of The Green Tail. So I

went into the tower, deep into its heart, but I found nothing

about the star.'

The human fell silent. He sat on the edge of his cot with

his head in his hands, and the Doctor could hear him

breathing, each breath shaking with emotion, as if he was

about to cry.

'What did you find, Manco? What was in the tower?'

Manco looked up at the Doctor, shaking his head as if he

dared not believe what he was about to say.

"They had screens! he said. 'Like the one in the Chamber of

Stories, but made of glass, and there were hundreds of them.

I tried to make them work, to make the pictures happen, but

there was nothing. There was no power. I found papers,

documents, in a room deep inside the tower. The things I

read... the things that had been written down... his name...'

'Whose name?'

Manco looked across the dungeon, staring straight at the

Doctor. 'His name was Zachary Velasquez of the Gobocorp

Freight Company. He was the captain of the ship. His words

said there had been three thousand of them, before they

crashed. But then, after the crash, there were just five

hundred. They were so scared, he said. All of them. So far away

from home. From Earth.'

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NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

The Doctor stumbled back from the bars of his cell and fell

into his cot, barely able to look at Manco, let alone speak to

him. Though he had guessed at such an explanation for the

humans' presence here, it felt suddenly so much more real to

him. Perhaps it was knowing the name of the ship's captain, or

that there were just five hundred survivors from the crash.

Whatever it was, the cold, stark reality of it hit him in a

juggernaut of emotion. He wondered how long it had taken

the humans who had crashed here, employees of the

intergalactic freight company Gobocorp, to give up all hope.

How much longer for them to forget where they had come

from? How much longer still for them to take the company's

mascot - that grinning cartoon clown on the ship's hull - and

turn it into a god?

'It's true, isn't it?' Manco said at last. 'This is not Earth. We

came from... somewhere else, didn't we?'

The Doctor looked up at him and nodded. 'It's true! he said.

'The tower that you went into... That was the ship. It was a

freighter, carrying cargo from one end of the galaxy to the

other. You are the descendents of the surviving crew.'

'And what about Gobo...?'

The Doctor sighed. How could he explain this without

breaking Manco's heart?

'Gobo was a symbol! he said softly. 'A drawing.

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DOCTOR WHO

Something made up by people on Earth. He isn't real.'

The human was now hunched over in his cot, sobbing. 'I

knew it,' he said. 'And I told Django... about the words I had

read, the Captain's words. Django told me it was a trick, a

trick placed here by the Bad.'

The Bad? Who's the Bad?'

'The enemy of Gobo. The dark one who is the enemy of

mankind. The speaker of lies. Django said it was the Bad who

sent the grey people from the sky, the ones who called

themselves Sittuun. The Bad put those things inside the

tower, to confuse us, but I knew he was lying.'

'Did you try telling the others?'

'I didn't have a chance. Django had me thrown in this place.

Nobody else is allowed into the tower, and I'm the only one left

who can read or write the language of the Olden Ones. It's the

only reason I'm still alive.'

'You're the only one who can read or write?'

Manco nodded, and then, speaking once more as if

remembering a passage of scripture:

'And Gobo came amongst the people and He saw that they

were given to sinful words, and He did take the words away

from them, so that they might speak but neither read nor write,

leaving but one who might still have that gift. The

Wordslinger.'

'And that's you?'

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NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

Manco nodded. 'It passes down through my family. My

mother, and her father before her. But I have no mate, and no

children, so I am the last.'

The Doctor nodded. Manco's last words had struck a chord

inside him, and he looked across the dungeon to his fellow

prisoner with sympathy.

'Tell me about these Sittuun! he said. 'You said there were

grey people from the stars?'

'Yes.' Manco replied. 'The Sittuun came here, to speak with

Django. They said the star would hit this world and destroy it,

and that there were other worlds, with other people, far away

from here. They said the pieces of this world would be

scattered out into the night, and that if just one of them were to

hit another world, that it would kill millions.'

'And is that why they were here? The Sittuun?'

Manco nodded. 'They have a bomb,' he said. 'A bomb that

could destroy the whole world, before the star comes. A bomb

that would save all those millions...'

'And what happened to them? The Sittuun who came here?'

'Django said they were heretics,' Manco replied, his voice

quiet and sombre. 'And he killed them for it.'

From the other side of the dungeon they heard the metallic

wheezing of the main gate being opened, and Manco shrank

away into one corner

67

Chapter

6

Captain Jamal stared at the outer casing of the Nanobomb. It

was a cylindrical drum, almost a metre in length and half that

in diameter. It was one of a kind; there was no bomb more

powerful in the known universe. Deep inside its core there

were a billion Nanites, microscopic robots with one function

alone.

The bomb was designed to disperse the nanites over a radius

of almost five hundred kilometres, a wide enough blast to cover

the Gyre. The explosion itself, if it could be called that, would

last just one-fifth of a second, with some of the Nanites travelling

at over a thousand times the speed of sound to reach their

destination. Once they had been dispersed, the Nanites would

devour everything within the

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DOCTOR WHO

blast radius, whether it be animal, mineral or vegetable. Within

four and a half seconds, an object with the size and mass of the

Gyre, and everything on it, would be obliterated; a vague grey

mist of disconnected atoms floating in the black void of space.

The Captain couldn't look at the bomb without feeling a

tremendous sense of both awe and trepidation. Awe because

of its immense power, and trepidation because he knew that

very soon he would have to detonate the bomb. Whether they

had escaped the Gyre or not.

Without looking over his shoulder, he felt the presence of

another person in the bomb chamber. He turned slowly to see

that it was Slipstream.

'Say, Captain... We're just about ready for the off. Seems the

girl is coming with me, and your two young lads. Hope you don't

mind. Say! Is that it? Is that the Nanobomb?'

The Captain nodded silently.

'Well, isn't she a beaut? Saw one of these go off in the Straits

of Copernicus once, you know. Took out a whole mountain

range in the blinking of an eye. One minute they were there,

the next... pffft! Like that. Gone. Anyway... Thought it best to

let you know we'll be going soon. TTFN, as they say.'

With a wink and a smile, Slipstream left the bomb chamber,

whistling a happy tune as he went.

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NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

His rifle still charging, Charlie sat on the edge of his bed and

watched the glowing green bar creep its way slowly along the

barrel. He had been alone for no more than ten minutes, and all

that time he had waited for a knock, or a voice calling his name,

so it was no surprise when it came.

'Baasim... Can I come in?' It was his father's voice, speaking

in Sittuun.

'Yes.'

The door opened, and Captain Jamal entered the room. He

looked angry.

'You're charging your rifle?'

Charlie nodded.

'Then you're still serious about joining this... Slipstream...

and going to the human city?'

'Yes. Yes I am.'

Captain Jamal shook his head. 'This is insane,' he said. 'It's a

suicide mission.'

'This is all a suicide mission, Dad! said Charlie, getting to

his feet. 'The last hundred days have been one long suicide

mission. We've got no way of getting off this thing, so we can

either wait for the comet to hit us, or we can set off the

Nanobomb. Either way, we're dead. I'd rather meet my end

knowing I'd tried to save someone, than just waiting for death.'

His father closed the door behind him and spoke in hushed

tones. 'It doesn't have to be that way! he said. 'Slipstream has a

ship. A working ship.'

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DOCTOR WHO

'Yes, and he's going to rescue the Doctor. So we're stuck

here until he does.'

'Not necessarily.'

Charlie stepped away from his father and laughed

nervously. What could he mean? He looked at him, trying

to read his expression, but Captain Jamal remained stoic.

'You don't mean...?'

'Baasim... That ship is in fine working order. When

Slipstream and the human girl have gone, we can fly out of

here.'

Charlie started shaking his head. 'No,' he said. 'No, Dad...

I can't believe you'd even suggest that...'

'Why not?' asked the Captain. 'The clock is ticking, son.

Need I remind you that our world is one of those at risk if

Schuler-Khan hits the Gyre? A billion Sittuun men, women

and children. Our family is at risk. Our home. Three human

lives for a billion of your own kind?'

Charlie fell back onto his bed and put his head in his

hands. He knew that his father was, in his own way, right, but

he still felt responsible for Amy and the Doctor. If they had

only given them the chance, when they had met in the

valley, none of this would have happened. Amy and the

Doctor might have been able to help them, as Amy said.

'It's not just three human lives, though, Dad! he said at last.

'What about those in the human city?'

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NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

Captain Jamal laughed incredulously. 'Those savages?' he

said. 'Have you forgotten that those... those monsters have

killed six of our crew? And what is it with you and these

humans anyway? I knew we shouldn't have sent you to the

Lux Academy. You came back, and everything about you had

changed. Calling yourself Charlie... What kind of a name is

Charlie?'

Charlie laughed derisively. 'How many times do we have to

have this discussion, Dad? And last time I checked, Jamal was

hardly a Sittuun name...'

'Don't talk to me like that, Baasim. I may be your father, but

I'm also your commanding officer, and I am ordering you to

stay on this ship. Is that understood?'

Charlie looked up at his father with an insolent glower, but

he knew it was no use. His father wouldn't take no for an

answer, and besides, before he had the chance to argue any

further, there was another knock at the door.

'Yes?' said Charlie.

The door opened just a little. It was Amy.

'I'm sorry... But Dirk says we have to go. Now.'

Charlie looked from Amy to his father, and then back again.

'I'm not coming,' he said.

Amy's

face

became

drawn,

an

expression

of

disappointment. She sighed.

'Really? But-'

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DOCTOR WHO

'I can't,' said Charlie. 'I'm sorry.'

'Right. OK. Well... I'm going. Thanks for...' She paused,

rolling her eyes. 'I don't know... The soup?'

Then she turned her back and walked away. Charlie could

sense her anger. He had been around humans enough to know

when they weren't happy.

'Amy!' he cried out. He made to follow her but, before he

could leave the room, his father had grasped him by the arm.

'You are staying on this ship,' the Captain snapped. 'Don't

think I wouldn't go ahead with the plan if you didn't.'

'Ah, there you are, Miss Pond. Glad you could join us. We're

just about ready for the off.'

Slipstream and Ahmed were in the loading bay, packing

provisions onto the buggy. Amy nodded to each of them in

turn, but said nothing. She just wanted to leave, to get out of

there. Maybe they could rescue the Doctor, and then Slipstream

could take them back to the TARDIS, and they could just leave.

Another moment's hesitation would just be wasted time.

Ahmed looked past her, to where Charlie was now

standing in the doorway.

'Come on, Charlie,' he said. 'We're going.'

'I'm not,' Charlie replied. 'I'm staying here.'

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NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

Ahmed frowned. He looked stung.

'What? But you said—'

'I know. But I can't. I just can't.'

Ahmed turned to Slipstream and then Amy. He looked at the

buggy.

'Well, lad...' said Slipstream. 'What's it going to be then, eh?

Are you coming with us, or are you staying here with your

friend? That's the thing with these Sittuun, Miss Pond. No

fear, or so they say. But it takes fear to be truly courageous...'

Ahmed's expression changed from one of disappointment to

determination. He turned to Charlie.

'I'm going.'

Captain Jamal now entered the loading bay, but didn't speak.

His eyes were fixed on his son with a stern glare.

'And we're taking Ella! Ahmed added, patting the side of

the buggy. 'If that's all right.'

Charlie nodded, but it was as if he couldn't bear to look at

them, his gaze fixed on the ground. Amy caught his glance just

once and shook her head, and Charlie looked away.

'Right-ho!' said Slipstream. 'All aboard. Looks like we're

going.'

Ahmed climbed into the driving seat, then Slipstream sat

beside him. Turning her back on Charlie, Amy mounted the

back of the buggy, bracing herself against its tubular metal

frame. As

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DOCTOR WHO

the engine revved into life, Charlie looked up at her one last

time before they drove out, down a long ramp and out into the

great, grey expanse of the Gyre.

76

Chapter

7

'You know, I've been frogmarched by quite a few people in my time,

but you guys really have it down to a fine art. Did you know

that?'

Neither Tuco nor the guards answered him.

The Doctor sighed. 'Funny word, isn't it? "Frogmarched",

I mean. For one thing, frogs don't march, do they? Well...

Earth frogs don't, anyway.'

Tuco glowered at him. 'What is a frog?' he snapped.

'Oh. Right,' said the Doctor. 'Green thing. Likes ponds.'

'You are not a frog.'

'No, Tuco... I wasn't saying that I'm a frog, I was saying

that... Oh, never mind. I guess some of

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DOCTOR WHO

the more eccentric idioms of the English language have fallen

by the wayside with you people.'

'Be quiet.'

They were dragging him along one of the subterranean

tunnels beneath the human city, past gloomy alcoves in which

cowering, bestial humans sat around flickering fires, gnawing

at scraps of grisly-looking, overcooked meat.

They left the tunnel and passed through a large chamber, at

the far end of which was a white sheet, suspended from the

ceiling. A congregation of perhaps a hundred humans sat

before the sheet, watching as the flickering image of a film

was projected onto it.

There was no sound, only the images, and the Doctor

noticed that it was a Western. A sheriff in a white hat hid

behind a barrel, loading his pistol, while in the distance four

gunslingers in black marched purposefully towards him

along a dusty street. A human in long black robes stood next

to the screen, and spoke in a loud, booming voice that echoed

out across the chamber.

'And Wyturp, brother of Gobo, waited for the servants of

the Bad, who had come to Oh-Kaykrall to destroy him.'

All too soon they had left the chamber and entered another

tunnel.

'What was that?' asked the Doctor.

'That was the Chamber of Stories,' said Tuco.

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NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

'So you have electricity? And films? You have films? And

Wyturp and Oh Kaykrall... Doesn't he mean Wyatt Earp and the

OK Corral?'

Tuco shook his head and grunted. 'Do you know nothing,

heathen?' he hissed. 'They are the stories. The stories of the

Olden Ones, given to us by Gobo through his son Zasquez and

passed down through generations.'

The Doctor thought about this for a moment, and then he

laughed.

'Yes!' he said. 'Of course! El Paso! You've been watching

Westerns. For thousands of years. And without the sound for

most of it. No wonder you're getting the names all mixed up.

Tell me, Tuco... The man back there. The one telling the story.

He mentioned Gobo. Is Gobo actually in any of the films?'

Tuco scowled. 'Of course not!' he bellowed. 'Gobo never

appears in the pictures. That is forbidden. The stories of the

Olden Ones are about his sons, and his brothers, and the Bad,

and the servants of the Bad.'

'Right,' said the Doctor. 'Of course.'

None of them had said a word since leaving the Beagle XXI,

and they were nearing the far side of the desert of broken glass

before Ahmed spoke.

'It's his father,' he said. 'Captain Jamal. He's the one who

got him the job on the ship. He never

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DOCTOR WHO

approves of anything Charlie does.'

'Yes! sneered Slipstream. Typical Sittuun behaviour, that.

I've never known a species like them for red tape and high

horses. Little wonder they've no time for gallantry. They're

too busy crossing Ts and dotting Is.'

Ahmed glowered across at Slipstream and then returned his

attention to the road ahead.

In the back of the buggy, Amy gazed up at the dark blue

skies above the Gyre. There, directly above them, the comet,

Schuler-Khan, was still visible. It looked larger now; near

enough the same size in the night sky as the moon looked back

on Earth.

Behind its shining orb there trailed a narrow mist of green

and purple gas. It looked like a single, colourful and

shimmering flame suspended in space. She turned to Ahmed,

looking at him in the rear-view mirror.

'Why does everyone call him Charlie?' she asked. 'His Dad

calls him Baasim.'

'Charlie's just his nickname! replied Ahmed. 'He studied

ancient Earth music at the Lux Academy over in Sol 1. Sorry...

I mean your solar system. Got his name from some saxophone

player he really liked. Same as Ella here...'

He drummed his hands on the steering wheel.

'Named her after a singer. If you ask me, Charlie's half

human, he's spent that much time

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NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

around them. It's a wonder he hasn't grown a nose and

eyebrows. Ha ha...' He looked at Amy in the mirror. 'Sorry...

That's not very politically correct, is it?'

Amy laughed. She wasn't sure why she should be offended

by someone talking about noses and eyebrows. After all, the

Sittuun were the weird ones for not having them. Weren't they?

When Ahmed noticed her laughing he smiled at her. 'You

know something?' he said. 'For a human, you're all right.'

They had left the desert of broken glass and were now riding

up and over one of the scrap mounds, heading back towards the

valley where the TARDIS had landed. If only, Amy thought, the

Doctor could have given her a driving lesson in that thing

before they had come here. As it was, the console of the

TARDIS was the most confusing thing she'd ever seen; so

many dials and levers, buttons and bells. She wouldn't have

known where to start.

'Say, Ahmed, old chap,' said Slipstream, as they drove on,

past towering columns of scrap metal and the rusting remnants

of long-forgotten spacecraft. 'I trust you know the way?'

Ahmed nodded. 'We went there once,' he said solemnly.

'Just the once.'

Slipstream gazed out from the buggy at the decaying vistas

around them.

'I'd always wondered what this place would be

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DOCTOR WHO

like! he said, his voice sounding suddenly faraway and dreamy.

'Back when I was a boy.'

'You'd heard about it then?' asked Ahmed.

'Oh yes. There were many stories and legends about the

Gyre. Many of them fanciful, of course. After all, nobody had

set foot on this thing. Well... As far as we knew. That only

seemed to lend it a greater air of mystery. It was a truly new

world. A world of our own making. There was talk of a great

treasure being here, somewhere...'

'Treasure?' asked Amy. 'What, like gold?'

Slipstream and Ahmed both laughed.

'What? What's so funny?'

'Ha ha... My dear girl. Gold? Gold's worthless. Were you

brought up in the outer nebulae?'

'Why? I don't get it...'

'Voga and Midas Superior! said Ahmed, sounding far less

condescending than Slipstream. 'Gold planets. Midas Superior

was solid gold from core to crust. Not much left of either of

them now, of course...'

'Well of course,' said Amy, with a trace of sarcasm.

'No! Slipstream continued. 'There may be plenty of gold

here on the Gyre, but that isn't the treasure. Legend has it that

the Gyre was the final resting place of the Mymon Key.'

Amy was pleased to notice that Ahmed looked as clueless

as her at the mention of this name. At

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least she wasn't the only one.

'What's the Mymon Key?'

'Oh, I don't know,' said Slipstream. 'Probably nothing more

than a folk story. A fairy tale. They say it was engineered on a

distant world, out beyond Cassiopeia's Elbow. A device of

unimaginable power. The owner of the Mymon Key could

wield the greatest power in the universe.' He smiled and

winked at Amy in the mirror. 'Still,' he said. 'Probably just a

fairy tale, eh?'

They had entered a long, narrow gully between two vast and

almost limitless piles of scrap, each rising up in sheer cliff faces

to either side. With the nearest stars and planets, and the dim

green glow of Schuler-Khan cut off, the world around them

grew darker and the air a little colder. Amy braced herself

against the cold and shuddered.

With no one in the buggy talking, she was able to just sit

and think, and there were so many things to think about; too

many things. She was reminded of that feeling when, after a

long and heavy night out, it became clear there was no way

home. No taxis at the ranks; the last bus having left several

hours earlier. They were always rainy nights, those times

when she and her friends would find themselves stranded.

Cold and rainy, almost without exception, and home - warm

home and a warm bed - always seemed so far away. She could

almost laugh about it now. On those nights, home

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was never more than five or six miles, walking distance, if you

were wearing sensible shoes, and yet they'd do anything rather

than walk.

Now home was so far away she struggled to grasp the sheer

scale of it, both in miles and years. Looking up into the canyon,

at the thin, jagged splinter of dark blue sky above them, she saw

just a handful of stars. Could any one of them have been Earth's

sun? She wasn't sure. Astronomy had never been her strong

point. Even so, she decided to pick one, and make that the Sun.

It wouldn't make any difference if it wasn't. Just picking that

single star and deciding it was home brought some degree of

comfort; a comfort only dampened by the thought that even if

it were the sun, and even if the Earth was still spinning around

it, it might be an Earth 2,500 centuries after her time.

'Dirk! said Amy, looking at his reflection in the mirror,

'what's Earth like?'

Slipstream laughed. 'Earth? Well, I've only been the once,

Miss Pond. Y'see, I grew up on Titan.'

'But what's it like?'

Slipstream mulled this over for a moment, and grimaced.

'Far too many tourists,' he said bluntly.

It wasn't the answer Amy had been looking for. She wanted

to hear stories about magnificent cities made of glass, or cruise

ships that floated through the clouds. She wanted him to tell

her about robot butlers, or floating cities.

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Still, what else could he tell her? If she had learned one

thing about the future, it was that it was nothing like people said

it would be.

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8

Charlie sat alone in his quarters, looking at the rifle, now fully

charged, that he would never use. He knew that elsewhere on

the ship his father and Dr Heeva would be preparing the

Nanobomb for detonation, and he felt something, a feeling or

an emotion, that he didn't recognise. It was like an aching in his

chest, a real and physical pain. It was a mood that hung over

him like the darkest of rain clouds.

He thought about Amy and Ahmed, driving across the Gyre

in Ella, his buggy, and he realised he would never see them

again. He had known Ahmed almost five years. They were the

same age, and had joined the crew of the Beagle XXI at the

same time. There had been some animosity at first;

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Ahmed taunting Charlie, saying he'd only got the job because

of his father. Of course, this was true, in part, but soon enough

they became friends. They had seen so much of the universe

together; each experience new for both of them. Ahmed was

not just his friend, he was the best of friends.

But something else was gnawing away at Charlie.

Something he couldn't quite fathom. Everything about that

day's events seemed so unlikely. They had been on the Gyre for

more than a hundred days, and there had been no answer to

any of their distress calls. The Gyre was so remote that years

and decades could pass without another ship passing it. And

yet, in a single day, they had been joined by not one but two

separate parties.

Amy, Charlie had decided, was trustworthy. His years at a

university populated largely by humans had given him some

understanding of their ways and customs. He knew when

humans were lying and when they were telling the truth, most

of the time. No, she was fine, and if she trusted the Doctor, then

maybe he was fine too.

Which just left Slipstream.

On and on they drove through the dark gully. Biting winds that

chilled her to the bone came sweeping through its gloomy,

zigzagging corridor. In what little light there was, Amy saw

long-forgotten and discarded relics on the side of the path:

emptied

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containers, shattered belongings. She saw a plastic doll pinned

to the ground by an old oil drum, its hollow eye sockets gazing

up at the dark sky, and it made her sad. Sad because maybe its

owner had died here, or maybe it had been lost or thrown away.

At last they left the gully and reached the precipice of a

vast canyon, across which there lay a wide metal pipe. Ahmed

brought the buggy to a halt, the engine still purring away.

'OK! he said. 'This is where we have to be careful.'

Slipstream looked out across the canyon, squinting his eyes

and toying with the ends of his moustache.

'Well... At least there's a bridge.'

'Except it's not a bridge,' said Ahmed. 'It's a pipe. As in, it's

round. You ever tried steering a buggy on something that's

round?'

'Nonsense!' Slipstream snorted. 'Just keep her straight, and

drive on into those rushes yonder.'

He pointed across the gorge to where a forest of what looked

like tall black reeds were swaying in the wind.

'And that's the other thing! said Ahmed. 'That's where the

Sollogs live.'

Slipstream snapped his head in Ahmed's direction, his

eyebrows bunching together.

'Sollogs? What in the devil's name is a Sollog?'

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Ahmed looked from Slipstream to Amy. He looked

worried. No, more than worried. He looked genuinely terrified.

'They're... they're like slugs! he said. 'Giant slugs.'

Slipstream laughed.

'My dear chap... It'll take more than a few pesky molluscs

to get Dirk Slipstream's knickers in a twist. Drive on.'

Ahmed revved the engine again, and took the buggy closer

to the edge of the canyon.

'Is there another way?' asked Amy. 'Some other way

around that doesn't involve crossing a ridiculously deep

canyon and ending up in a swamp filled with giant slugs?'

Ahmed shook his head.

'Like I said, Ahmed, drive on! said Slipstream. 'There's a

good chap.'

Taking a deep breath and flexing his smooth, grey fingers

around the steering wheel, Ahmed started driving again. They

were on the pipe, now, inching their way forward. The giant

wheels of the buggy grumbled against the thick metal, flecks

and shards of rust falling away and tumbling down into the

darkness like orange snowflakes. Each time they hit a slimy,

gnarled length of vine the buggy bounced. Amy peered over

the side and felt giddy with vertigo.

'Tad faster, if you would...' said Slipstream.

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Ahmed glanced over at him with a resentful sneer, but then

snapped his gaze back to the road ahead, if it could be called a

road. To either side of them it curved around before falling

away altogether. If they over-steered just a little to the left or

right they could lose their grip on the pipe, and be sent

tumbling down into the bottomless ravine. Amy hadn't

breathed in or out in an age.

They were halfway across the bridge when Amy heard it.

Something was tapping on the metal beneath them, like a

metallic Morse code.

'Can you hear that?' she whispered.

'Hear what?' asked Slipstream. He sat with one arm slung

nonchalantly over the side of the buggy, as if he hadn't a care in

the world.

'That tapping,' said Amy. 'Listen.'

'I can't hear anything, Miss Pond. It's your mind... playing

tricks with you. That's the thing with ladies, Ahmed, old chap.

They do have a frightful tendency to let their imaginations get

the better of them.'

I’m not imagining it!' snapped Amy. 'Listen.'

The buggy drove on another two metres, its passengers

silent, and then she heard it again.

'Yeah... I heard that,' said Ahmed.

'Oh, don't you start! Slipstream sneered. 'There's nothing

there. Just drive on. That damned comet will have smashed us

into atoms by the time we

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get to the other side, at the rate we're going.'

There was another tap, this one louder than the last, and this

time they all heard it.

'It's probably nothing. Just a lot of old rust rattling around

inside the pi—'

Before Slipstream could finish his sentence they saw it. The

Sollog. It crawled up from the side of the pipe with spider-like

movements, its slimy trunk squirming between eight gangling,

bony limbs. For a moment it just stood there, blocking their

path, but then its eyes lifted up on gelatinous stalks, and it

stared right at them. Then it hissed.

Slipstream moved fast. Drawing his pistol from its holster,

he aimed and fired at the creature, a pulse of green light

flashing towards it. The Sollog moved even faster, and dived

out of the way, its sucker-like feet clinging to the pipe.

'Damn and blast!' shouted Slipstream.

He took aim and fired again, missing the Sollog but hitting

the side of the pipe, splitting it wide open in a cloud of powdered

rust. Slipstream turned to Ahmed, his face contorting with rage.

'Drive!' he yelled. 'Damn you, drive!'

The Sollog hissed at them again and charged at the buggy,

ramming into it with shocking force. As Ahmed slammed his

foot into the accelerator the back end of the vehicle swerved

wildly to the left, one of its wheels slipping down into the

gaping hole left by Slipstream's second shot.

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The buggy shook violently and Ahmed was thrown from

the driver's seat and onto the pipe. He landed on his side and

slid down, further away from the buggy, until he was hanging

over the gorge, holding on to the edge of the blast hole by his

fingertips.

'No!' Amy screamed, reaching out for him, but it was no

use. He was too far away.

Slipstream had already climbed into the driver's seat. He hit

the accelerator, and the buggy's wheels spun and howled

beneath them.

'What are you doing!' cried Amy. 'We have to help him!'

But Slipstream wasn't listening to her. He drove on along the

pipe, the buggy swerving from side to side. With a sudden

gasp, Amy climbed up onto the buggy's frame, looking back to

where Ahmed was still hanging from the side of the pipe.

Even though the Sollog was still giving chase, scuttling after

them with its eight legs a blur of motion, she prepared to jump,

closing her eyes, and holding her breath.

'Don't even think about it, Miss Pond,' said Slipstream.

With one hand bracing the steering wheel, he had turned

around and had his pistol aimed straight for her. 'Get back

where you were.'

Terrified, Amy sat back down, and Slipstream fired

another shot at the Sollog. This time the creature was not so

lucky, and it burst in a shower of

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dark green gunk. The blast from the pistol slammed straight into

the pipe, tearing open another gaping, smouldering wound.

Beneath them, the pipe groaned; a metallic howl that echoed

down into the canyon. It shuddered and shook, and slowly they

felt it beginning to sag.

Fissures appeared around the second crater left by

Slipstream's gun, spreading wider. The pipe was splitting in

two.

'No!' said Amy, more to herself than Slipstream. 'No... I've

got to help him.'

She closed her eyes again. This was it. She could stay in the

buggy, or she could jump out. Slipstream was facing forward

again, his eyes focused on the other side of the gorge. This was

her chance.

Taking a deep breath she stood and she jumped. The split

second before she landed seemed stretched out into an eternity,

when all around her became silent, and in that boundless

moment she thought about home, and the Doctor, and the dress

she might never wear.

She landed on her side with a heavy thump, rolling twice

before coming to a stop, and she spread her arms and legs as

quickly as she could and held on to the pipe, fearing it might

dip once more. Then, when she had gathered herself, she stood

and began running back to where Ahmed was still clinging to the

gaping hole by his fingertips.

'It's OK!' she shouted. 'I'm coming!'

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She was halfway to him when the pipe groaned again, and

now she heard a monstrous crunch as it began to buckle and

break. Again, the world slowed down, and she looked back to see

Slipstream reach the far side of the canyon, the buggy

screeching to a halt. She turned once more to Ahmed, and saw

his expression of fear.

Then the pipe broke.

Amy breathed in as the ground beneath her fell away.

Looking down, she saw Ahmed, falling from the pipe, his

mouth open in a scream she couldn't hear, before he was

swallowed by the darkness.

She turned, and realised she was floating, or rather falling,

and she reached out with both hands, grasping at the pipe that

had, until seconds ago, been beneath her feet. Her fingers

clawed at nothing but its rusty shell until, and not too soon,

they found a length of vine, and she clutched at it and held on

to it for dear life.

The pipe swung down and slammed into the face of the

gorge with a bellowing clang, but still she held on. Then there

was silence.

Amy looked up the cliff face to its edge.

'Help!' she screamed. 'Please! Help me!'

After several long and agonising seconds, Dirk Slipstream

appeared, leaning over the precipice.

'Help me!' Amy cried once more.

'Oh dear,' said Slipstream. Terribly sorry, Miss Pond. I'm

afraid this is where we part company.

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You see... I've got a rather pressing matter to attend to.'

'What?' Amy snapped. 'What are you talking about?'

'It's a shame, really. Always looks good, rescuing girls.

Anyway... So long.'

He offered her a final, mocking wave of the hand before he

vanished, and Amy heard the revving of the buggy's engine.

After a few seconds there was silence once more.

Amy clutched at the vine, and though a part of her was

screaming and telling her not to, she looked down. The black

and bottomless depths of the canyon stretched out beneath

her, and looked for just that moment like a vast, malevolent

grin.

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Chapter

9

From the tunnel, they climbed a spiral staircase that corkscrewed

its way up a dank and gloomy tower, until eventually they came

to another chamber, even larger than the last. This one was

dimly lit with flickering torches and fluorescent strips that

blinked on and off. The chamber's ceiling was supported by

columns made from old oil drums, and the central knave was

lined with grisly, humanoid statues, cobbled together from

shreds of scrap metal.

At the far end of the aisle a large metal panel bearing the

image of Gobo, the cartoon clown, was riveted to the wall. The

blinking of the fluorescent strips and the flickering of the

torches cast twisted, monstrous shadows onto the clown's face.

Beneath

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the image was a raised platform, on which sat a large iron

throne.

When they had reached the far end of the knave, the guards

dropped the Doctor to the ground, and he landed with a heavy

thud.

'Ow!' wheezed the Doctor. 'Easy...'

He heard a drum roll from beyond the chamber, a slow and

funereal pounding that grew louder and louder. Tuco had

climbed onto the platform's edge, and he held up his staff, his

menacing green eyes fixed on the chamber's ceiling.

'In the beginning! he bellowed, 'was the dark blue night

and the silence and the empty and the none. And into this

came Gobo. Chosen is he who rules this Earth. Chosen is

Django the Wise, son of Rojo the Victorious, of the line of

Zasquez. All hail Django!'

The guards around the Doctor echoed Tuco's words, and

then, from the platform's side, another human entered the

chamber. He was tall in stature, and long-limbed, his straggly

brown hair reaching down to his shoulders, his face half

hidden with a mottled birds nest of a beard. His eyes were

wide, the pupils so large they reduced his irises to nothing,

making each eye appear as black as obsidian. He gazed down

at the Doctor with an almost casual indifference and sat on his

throne.

For a moment there was near-silence, the only sound in the

chamber the buzzing of the fluorescent

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strips and the gentle but ominous lapping of the torch flames.

When Django breathed it was with a coarse, diseased rattle,

like the sound of bare branches creaking in a storm.

'Who is this?' he growled, his deep voice echoing through the

chamber.

'He is a heretic! said Tuco. 'Our men found him beyond the

canyon, in the valleys. He was with the Sittuun.'

The Doctor was now standing again, brushing the dirt from

his jacket and straightening his bow tie. 'I take it you're

Django,' he said.

Django stared at him, his manic eyes peering out through

the strands of dirty hair that formed a thin veil across his face.

'Yes. I am Django. And who are you?'

'I'm the Doctor.'

Django smiled, a graveyard grin of tombstone teeth. 'And

why are you here?'

'Well... I'm here because your people threw a rope net over

my head, tied my hands together, dragged me here and then

threw me in a cell.'

'Do not joke, Doctor... It won't save your life.'

'Right...' said the Doctor, hesitantly. 'OK... I didn't realise

this was a life-and-death situation. Well, OK... Maybe the

thought had crossed my mind. But nobody had mentioned it...'

Django grunted, looking across at Tuco. 'You say he's a

heretic?'

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Tuco nodded. 'Yes, Master. He spoke about a ship. He said

this is not Earth. He claims knowledge of the times before the

Earth. Before even Gobo.'

Django gasped, sitting back in his throne and looking at

the Doctor with evident disgust.

'What could you know of the times before the Earth, you

insolent swine?'

The Doctor paused for a moment. Should he speak again?

He'd tried arguing his point with people like this, of many

different species, on many different occasions, and it rarely

got him anywhere. Still, what else could he do? He took a deep

breath.

'I know who you are,' he said. 'I know what you are. I think I

know what this... this world... this place you call Earth... I

think I know what it is. Why it's here.'

'Impossible,' Django sneered. 'You can know nothing of

these things. They are the knowledge of Gobo.'

'OK,' said the Doctor. 'What about just now? You called

me a swine. Do you even know what a swine is? Do you have

pigs here?'

Django frowned, turning to Tuco. 'Tuco,' he said. 'What

are "pigs"?'

Tuco shrugged.

'See!' said the Doctor. 'You're using words and you don't

even know what they mean. Words that got passed down,

generation after generation, and

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lost all their meaning. Listen, Django... mate... we can carry on

talking about heresy and the Story of Earth and Gobo the

Great and Terrible until the cows come home, even if you don't

have any cows, but you need to know... Something very bad is

about to happen to this place.'

Django smiled again, brushing some of the hair from his

face, and he leaned forward in his throne.

'Oh yes, Doctor?' he said. 'And what is this "something

bad"?'

"The star,' said the Doctor. "The Star with the Green Tail,

or whatever it is you choose to call it... The one that's in the sky

right now? That star is a comet. It's called Schuler-Khan. It is a

ball of rock and ice about five hundred metres in diameter, and

it is heading straight for us. By my calculations, it will hit this

world in less than a day's time, and it will kill everyone and

everything here. You included.'

Django sat back once more. He smiled, and then he clapped

his hands together with glee.

'Ha! Doctor... This is what you have to tell us? This is the

heresy for which you will risk your life? Do you think we have

not been told these lies before?'

The Doctor frowned. 'I'm sorry... What do you mean?'

'The Sittuun. The grey people from the sky. Messengers of

the Bad. They came here and they

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told us the same. And do you know what I said to them?'

'No.'

'I said to them, "Prove it." I said, "If what you tell us is true -

that we are all from some other place, and that this star is

coming to destroy us - prove it." And they couldn't. They

showed me images, pictures on a screen, and they spoke of

numbers, but these things prove nothing. We have been here for

thousands of years. Our stories are as old as the sky. How could

they not be true? So I say to you, Doctor... If what you are

saying is true... Prove it.'

'What? Now?'

'Yes, Doctor. Here and now, prove that we are from this

other place.'

'Well... If you would let me into your tower, maybe I could

find-'

'Nobody goes into the tower.'

'Well, then... how am I supposed to pro-'

'Prove it here. And now.'

'But... that's just... Django, that's not possible. I can't prove

it here and now, but if you just gave me the chance to-'

'Do you see?' said Django, grinning at Tuco and the other

humans gathered in the chamber. 'See how the lies of the Bad

are exposed! You heard him! You heard him say the words: "I

can't prove it." He can't prove it. You can't prove it, Doctor, and

neither could the Sittuun. They told us they had

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come to destroy the Earth. To save it, they said. Yes... Save it,

from the star they call "comet".'

'And they were right!' the Doctor shouted, allowing his

frustration to show for the first time. 'They were telling you the

truth, Django. They were trying to help you.'

Django shook his head, still smiling. 'No, Doctor. They

weren't. And we killed them for their lies. The star is not

"comet". These are the lies of the Bad. The star is Gobo.'

'What? What? Are you out of your mind?'

"The star is Gobo, Doctor. The star is here to take us from the

Earth, to the land of El Paso.'

The Doctor sighed and closed his eyes, his shoulders

slumping. He looked down at the ground. What could he do?

There were hundreds, maybe thousands of humans living in

the city. Thousands of lives, and no matter how ignorant or

savage they were, no matter how badly they had treated him,

he couldn't bring himself to let those lives be extinguished

because of one man's insanity.

'Please,' he said. 'Django, I am begging you... You have to

listen to me. I have a ship... It's in the valley where your men

found me. It can take you anywhere. There must be children

here. At least let me save them. I can take them to another

planet, somewhere safe. Or... or...'

He pulled at his hair, thoughts racing through

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his mind at such a rate he struggled to keep up with them.

'Maybe I could... maybe there's some way we could use

the TARDIS to...'

'They will be saved, Doctor! said Django, rising from his

throne and glaring down at him. 'When Gobo has come, they

will be saved.'

'No!' the Doctor cried. 'They will be killed. You will be

killed. All of you.'

Django turned to Tuco. 'He is a heretic! he growled. "The

penalty for heresy is death. Take him to Lake Mono.'

With a dismissive gesture of one hand, Django walked out

of his throne room, a coterie of guards following closely

behind. From the platform Tuco looked down at the Doctor

and laughed.

'Ha ha...' he said tauntingly. 'No need to worry about

"comet" now, Doctor. You are going to Lake Mono.'

The Doctor chewed his lip and gazed up at Tuco with a

grimace.

'And I'm guessing that's not a good thing...'

Tuco shook his head, still smirking maliciously.

'Oh no! he cackled. 'Mono is a lake of acid, in which

nothing can survive. Guards... Take him away.'

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Chapter

10

So this is it, thought Amy. I'm going to die here in this horrible

place, and nobody will know. Everyone back home will just think

I've run off to somewhere far away and exotic, like Thailand or

South America, and the worst thing is, I won't be anywhere. Not

for them. I won't be anywhere for another two hundred and fifty

thousand years. I'll just be gone. Vanished.

Her entire body ached, a throbbing pain that grew more

intense with every passing second. She had managed to wrap

some of the vines around her arms and legs, but they were

slippery with slime, and she wasn't sure how much longer she

could hold on, or how much longer the vines would hold. All

she knew was that she didn't want to let go.

Looking up she saw the comet, Schuler-Khan.

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It appeared even larger now than the last time she had looked

at it.

Maybe, she thought, if I'm lucky, that thing will hit this place

before I fall.

The thought made her shudder. Would that really be

preferable? She hated thinking that way, but could see no other

way out of this. What if she let go, and the canyon was even

deeper than she could imagine? Deeper than any canyon on

Earth? What if it was almost literally bottomless. She could fall

for hours, days maybe. Her hands gripped the vine a little

tighter than before, and another spasm of pain shot through her

muscles.

But what was that? She could hear something, from above

the canyon's gaping, crooked maw. A heavy whirring. Was it

the buggy? No, it was a different sound, almost like a

helicopter. Daring to open her eyes once more, she looked up.

The sound was getting louder.

She looked across to the far side of the canyon and saw

something emerging from above the crest of a jagged plateau.

It looked almost like a spaceship of some sort, but it was

smaller, perhaps no bigger than the buggy. The craft rose up

high above the narrow, twisting gully through which they had

travelled, and then dipped down towards the canyon,

sweeping from side to side like a mechanical bumblebee.

Only as it drew closer could Amy see the pilot in its cockpit.

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It was Charlie.

The tiny flying craft came down into the canyon, its small

body kept aloft by twin blades. The canopy swung open on

hinges, and Charlie leaned out.

'Amy!' he shouted. 'I'm going to come in close, but I'll need

you to jump. Can you do that?'

Though she knew she shouldn't, Amy looked down into

the abyss once more and felt a lurching sensation in her

stomach. She looked up at Charlie and nodded.

'Right... OK...'said Charlie.

With the canopy still open, he pulled the joystick just a

fraction of an inch. The flying craft drew closer, turning in

mid air so that it was now only a few metres away. Amy could

feel the downdraft of wind from its rotors. Her arms and legs

were in agony now, and her hands were numb. Charlie was

reaching for her from the cockpit, but the distance between

them could have been miles as far as she was concerned.

'OK, this is as close as I can get,' said Charlie. 'You have

to jump. On the count of three. OK? One...'

Amy closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

'Two...'

She opened them again and nodded.

'Three!'

Amy jumped, and for just a fraction of a second she was

neither clinging to the pipe nor safe inside

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the cockpit, but floating, floating above the black void of the

canyon. A single thought raced through her mind, but it was a

thought built on so many others.

I can't believe this is actually happening.

Just seven words, in all, but each one loaded with meaning.

She couldn't believe she had jumped. She couldn't believe she

was jumping onto some kind of spacecraft. She couldn't believe

she was jumping onto some kind of spacecraft on an alien

world light years from Earth, at some point in the very

distant future.

That was what she was really thinking, when she thought

those seven words and so, when she landed in Charlie's

arms, and he held on to her tight, her first instinct was to

laugh. Charlie closed the canopy and steered them up out of the

canyon's jaws, and they were flying now over the swamp of

swaying plastic tubes. Looking down, Amy saw Sollogs,

perhaps hundreds of them, scuttling through the swamp. It

was then that she started to cry.

Charlie brought them down a little way past the swamp, on

the edge of the great salt flats.

'We can't fly much further, or we'll be spotted,' he said.

The cockpit was cramped with the two of them, its confines

clearly designed for just a single pilot and no passengers, but

Amy didn't mind. It felt

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like she had spent an eternity clinging to that pipe, staring down

into an infinite space. The experience had left her far from

claustrophobic.

'What happened?' asked Charlie. 'Where are Slipstream

and Ahmed?'

Amy wiped the tears from her eyes.

'Ahmed's dead! she said. 'And Slipstream... Slipstream

just left us there.'

'I'm not surprised! he said. 'There's a lot Slipstream didn't

tell us.'

Charlie looked out through the window at the glittering

white desert before them and closed his eyes.

'Ahmed's dead?' he asked.

'Yes. I'm sorry.'

Charlie took a deep breath and then sighed.

'We have to go back! he said. 'My father is setting off the

Nanobomb. He's going to take Slipstream's ship.'

'What? But we can't... The Doctor.. !

Charlie hunched over in the pilot's seat with his head in his

hands. 'I knew you were going to say that.'

'Well I'm not going without him. He's my only way home.

No... It's more than that, actually. He's my friend. I'm not

leaving him here.'

Charlie sighed. 'OK. Look... The Nanobomb's detonation

sequence lasts one hour. It's designed to allow you time to get

to a safe distance. If we go

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now, we might just have time to go to the human city and get

him.'

'Really?'

Charlie nodded, but now he was looking back across the

salt flats at the towering black hulk on the horizon. Amy

followed his gaze and saw the flickering orange lights in the

watchtowers.

'Only trouble is! said Charlie, 'we have to find a way in. But I

think I have an idea...'

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Chapter

11

Without a doubt, the Gyre was the ugliest world he had ever visited.

He had seen the manure oceans of Caranexos and the living,

breathing, continent of Mrag on Hellion D, but nothing

compared to this.

Everything about it was aesthetically distasteful. The

landscape was a barren wasteland of twisted metal and spilled

chemicals. The plant life consisted largely of spiky green shrubs

and things with thorns. And as for the wildlife...

Dirk Slipstream's once immaculate silver spacesuit was

now soiled, from his collar down to his ankles, with the

viscous remains of almost every Sollog he had vanquished in

the swamp. Those disgusting creatures had insisted on bursting

almost every time he shot them, showering him in

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a green slime with the consistency of tar. Still, once he had

killed the first six, the others had learned their lesson and run

away.

The buggy had taken quite a beating, passing through the

swamp. The towering plastic tubes had played havoc with its

chassis, and one of the rear wheels had been punctured. Still,

it was in good enough condition to get him across the salt

plain, and that was what mattered.

The only problem was, he hadn't quite figured out a way to

get back when he was finished, but he cast this moment's doubt

to the back of his mind. Dirk Slipstream always found a way.

After all, he'd found a way out of Volag-Noc after six years

of imprisonment there, and the judge at his trial had told him

it was inescapable. He had found a way to steal the Golden

Bough from its rightful owner. He had found his way to the

Gyre with only hours to spare.

Yes. Dirk Slipstream would find a way.

As the buggy neared the human city, Slipstream heard the

sound of drums and a fanfare of horns. He drove on until he

had reached the gates, and then he climbed out. A human

guard stood in one of the watchtowers, staring down at him.

'Good afternoon!' said Slipstream. 'I don't suppose you

could be a gent and open up these gates for me, what?'

The guard grunted something, and then turned

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away, speaking to somebody on the other side of the outer

wall. Seconds later the gates began to open, and a small army

of guards spilled out onto the salt flat, all of them brandishing

weapons. A handful of them set about attacking the buggy

with their cudgels and blades, slashing at its tyres and denting

its body, and one of them grabbed Slipstream and put a knife

to his throat.

'Steady on, chaps,' Slipstream laughed. 'Not much of a

welcoming committee, I must say. I suppose the phrase I'm

looking for is "Take me to your leader".'

'So... The Beagle XXI. Your ship...'

'Yes?'

'Is that a Sittuun ship?'

Charlie turned to Amy, frowning. 'What do you mean?'

'Well... Was it made by the Sittuun? On your planet? It's

just the name "Beagle". It's not Arabic like your names. It's an

English word.'

They were still walking across the salt flat. They had been

walking for what felt like an age, and the human city didn't

seem any nearer.

'It's a human ship,' said Charlie. 'And it's European.'

'Right. OK. So do you guys work with humans a lot, then?

When you're not stuck here, I mean.'

'Yes,' said Charlie. 'Our company, IEA is a

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multi-world organisation, but right now it's mostly human and

Sittuun.'

'Right. And you went to a university near Earth, yeah?'

'Ye-es. And?'

'Well... If you work with humans, and you went to

university with lots of humans, what I don't get is why your

Dad, and the others... why they have this big problem with

humans.'

Charlie sighed. 'I thought we'd been through this.'

'Yeah, but it can't just be because we're superstitious and a

bit, well, warmongery. I mean... Is that all it is?'

Charlie laughed softly. 'And "warmongery" isn't enough?' he

said. 'No. For what it's worth, I don't think it's just that. But

that's just my opinion.'

'So what do you think it is? If it's not just all the ghost stories

and warmongering?'

'Earlier on, when I was telling you why we're called

Sittuun, why we have Earth names, I told you we were first

encountered by that Syrian crew, yes?'

'Yeah. I remember that bit.'

'Well... Think about it. That's when we were first

encountered. By an Earth crew who had travelled through a

wormhole using Earth technology. Humans were the first

aliens we ever encountered.'

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Amy thought about this for a moment. They were both still

walking, flakes of salt still crunching with every footfall. Then it

came to her.

'You mean you guys had never been into space?'

Charlie nodded.

'So! Amy said, smiling now, 'you mean to say that humans

were all, you know, spaceships and wormholes, and you guys

were really primitive?'

'Er... we prefer the word developing.'

'But... why? Why weren't you travelling into space? I

mean... You guys seem really intelligent. Way more

intelligent than most of the humans I know. And you don't

have any of the weird superstitions or... or... hang-ups that we

have. My friend's grandmother still thinks you can tell

somebody's future by looking at tea leaves. And you're telling

me we're more advanced than you?'

Charlie shrugged. 'You know what I think?' he said. 'A part

of me thinks it was your superstitions and your myths that got

you there in the first place. We had nothing like that. We had

our science and our history, but we didn't ask too many

questions. We had no sense of mystery. On Earth you were

making up stories about the stars and the planets hundreds, no

thousands of years before you went there. And I think that

made you want to go even more. This mad drive to answer all

the questions, and then ask yourselves some more. The

Sittuun

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don't like questions we can't answer right away.'

He stopped walking, and looked out towards the human

city, shielding his eyes from the light of the comet, which

seemed to grow brighter with every passing minute.

'I can see Ella,' he said. 'She's parked at the gates. And they've

trashed her. Typical. Right... Do you remember the plan?'

Amy took a deep breath and let it out slowly. 'Yeah. I think

so.'

'OK. Show me.'

Amy rolled her eyes, and then adopted a hunchbacked

stance, twisting her face into a bestial frown. 'I have a prisoner!

she grunted.

Charlie laughed and shook his head. 'OK. That was a bit

much,' he said. 'Do it again, only this time try and make it a

little bit less "impression-of-a-caveman".'

Tutting under her breath, Amy adopted the stance again. 'I

have a prisoner,' she said.

This time Charlie nodded. 'Yeah,' he said. 'Much better.'

In the throne room, Tuco stood on the raised platform and

held his staff aloft.

'In the beginning was the dark blue night and the silence

and the empty and the none. And into this came Gobo. Chosen

is he who rules this Earth. Chosen is—'

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'Yes yes yes. Get on with it! said Dirk Slipstream. 'I haven't

got all day.'

Tuco scowled at him. 'All hail Django!' he snarled,

bringing down his staff with a triumphant thump.

Slipstream smiled knowingly, rubbing the palms of his

hands together as if he were awaiting a prize.

Seconds later, Django entered the room followed by his

guards. He climbed up onto the platform, and sat on his

throne, looking down at Slipstream with an air of wild-eyed

curiosity, as if caught in the middle of some mind-bending

trance.

'Who are you?' he croaked. 'Who sent you?'

'Oh, nobody sent me old chap. This is more of a solo

venture. You see, I believe I have information you fellas may

find interesting.'

Django looked at Tuco, raising one eyebrow, and Tuco

shrugged in return. Django's lunatic gaze returned to Slipstream.

'Yes? And what is this information?'

Slipstream smiled, his snow-white teeth twinkling in the

dim glow of the torches.

'The Sittuun hideout. I know where they are. I know where

their bomb is kept. You know about their bomb, don't you?'

'The bomb is the work of the Bad!' Django roared. 'They

wish to destroy the Earth.'

Slipstream cleared his throat, trying not to

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laugh. 'Yes. Well, quite. And I know where it is.'

Tell me!'

'Easy, old boy. You see... There's something you can do for

me in return.'

A deathly silence fell over the room and Django sat back on

his throne, scratching at his straggly beard with long, bony

fingers. His breathing grew heavy, a wheezing death rattle,

and his lips curled back from his crooked, ashen teeth.

'What is it you want?' he asked.

'I want to go into your tower,' said Slipstream. 'This tower

with... whatsisname... Gobo on the side of it.'

'Why?'

'Well, old chap... Just so happens there's something I want in

there. It's nothing of interest to you, but it's very valuable to me.'

Django's expression darkened. 'Nobody goes into the

tower,' he said. 'Nobody.'

'Ah, but then of course I do know where the Sittuun are

hiding. Don't I? I thought maybe, on this occasion, you could

make an exception.'

Tuco glanced anxiously from Slipstream to Django. He

hunched himself over at the side of the throne and whispered

into Django's ear:

'Master... He may be right. We need to find the Sittuun.

Gobo grows greater by the day; his light gets ever brighter. If

they explode the bomb... boom! What then?'

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Slowly, Django began to nod. 'Yes! he said. 'Yes... Maybe

he is right.' He turned to Slipstream. 'Very well. You may go

into the tower.'

Slipstream beamed. 'Ah, marvellous. I knew you'd see

sense. Now... I'll need two things. First, a guide. Is there

anyone who knows their way around the ship... I mean, the

tower?'

Django and Tuco looked to one another. Tuco nodded, as if

he understood some unspoken sentiment.

'There is one,' he said. 'The Wordslinger, Manco... the

heretic. He has been into the tower.'

'Jolly good. I'll take him.'

'But he is our pris—'

'I won't hear a word of it. That tower of yours is a quarter of

a mile tall. I'll need a guide, so I'm taking Manco...'

Tuco looked at Django, who gave his consent with a

dismissive gesture of the hand.

'And this other thing?' Tuco asked. 'What is this other thing

you need?'

They had left the city on its far side, behind the great towering

hulk of the Gobocorp ship. Looking out into the distance, the

Doctor saw another seemingly endless landscape of jagged and

misshapen metal; mountains of debris, and valleys and

canyons etched out of refuse.

'Tell me something, Sancho,' he said to his

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guard. 'Your city... and your tower... is it by any chance the

centre of the world?'

Sancho looked at him with a quizzical frown. 'Hmm?'

'Your tower. Is it slap bang, right in the middle of the

world? Dead centre? Like a bulls-eye?'

Sancho shrugged. 'S'ppose so.'

'Right. I... see. Interesting.'

They took him out across a vast plain of copper that had

turned green with rust; a single concave sheet of metal

perhaps half a mile across that may have looked, from some

distance, like a pasture, until they came at last to the lake's

edge. The lake itself was immense, a bubbling cauldron of

dark and toxic waste that hissed and fizzed at the shoreline.

Jutting out over the lake's surface was a long, sturdy panel that

was riveted into the ground at its base.

'You're making me walk the plank?' said the Doctor. 'You

know, not even pirates made people walk the plank. Well...

Earth pirates didn't, anyway. Common misconception.'

'You walk up there,' said Sancho, gesturing towards the

iron jetty with his spear.

The Doctor sighed. His hands were still bound with rope,

and, despite several surreptitious attempts to free himself

using every trick in the book, he'd had no success. However

devolved these humans were, they certainly knew how to tie

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a good knot, he had to give them that. Of course, he could

always try and make a run for it. None of them had firearms.

He'd just have to hope their aim with arrows and spears wasn't

particularly good; but then he doubted that very much.

'Sancho! he said softly. 'You don't have to do this. I can help

you. If you'd just—'

Sancho jabbed him in the back. 'You walk up there!' he

barked, more insistently than before. The other guards were

growing restless, rattling their spears threateningly.

The Doctor nodded, and began walking up the ramp, out

over the lake, with Sancho following him every step of the way.

When he had reached its end, the Doctor looked down into

the acid of Lake Mono and took a deep breath. He had faced so

many dangers before, found himself in so many situations

from which there had seemed no obvious way out, and yet now

he found himself stuck in a tight spot by some rope handcuffs

and a handful of angry humans armed with spears. In his many

lives he had fallen great heights and been shot. He'd lost a hand

and grown it back. He had seen the end of the universe, and

lived to tell the tale. But acid... Acid was something else. Acid

would rule out a regeneration. Acid would be final.

'You will die now! said Sancho, nudging him with the spear

once more.

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The Doctor closed his eyes. He thought of Amy, and he

wondered where she was. Maybe there was some way out of

this for her at least. Maybe the Sittuun would take her away,

somewhere safe. Perhaps he could draw some comfort from

that. He opened his eyes again, his toes now inching over the

jetty's end. He could feel the chemical warmth rising up from

the lake's surface, the noxious fumes stinging his nostrils.

Looking back across the curved field of verdigris, he saw a

single dark figure making its way towards the edges of the lake.

It was Tuco. He had no doubt come here to witness the Doctor's

execution and gloat.

'You will die now! said Sancho.

The Doctor nodded. Looking down, he saw his reflection

warped and shimmering in the surface of Lake Mono, and he

prepared himself for death.

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Chapter

12

Captain Jamal sat at the control panel, his hands held over its

many buttons and dials. His eyes were closed and he

breathed slow and deep, holding each breath a few seconds at

a time.

He opened his small, ink-black eyes and looked up at the

bomb casing itself: the giant drum fixed in place by rigid

brackets; the words GENETEC-KHALID SYSTEMS printed

on its side in blood-red lettering, and below them the instructions

- how to activate and deactivate the bomb.

'Captain...'

Turning in his chair, he saw Dr Heeva in the entrance to

the bomb chamber, her expression fraught with anguish.

'Yes, Dr Heeva?'

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'Captain... I've been outside. The drums are getting louder.

Something's happening.'

'I know.'

'We have to act now.'

Captain Jamal nodded. 'Yes. I know.'

'Have you heard no word from Charlie? I mean... Baasim?'

The Captain shook his head. 'No! he replied despondently.

'No... He's so wilful sometimes. He takes after his mother.'

Dr Heeva looked down, as if in shame.

'And what do I tell her?' asked the Captain. 'When we get

home, I mean? How do I tell her that I just left him here, to die?'

Dr Heeva crossed the room, placing one hand on the

Captain's shoulder.

'Don't ask me that,' she said. 'Please... You know how

difficult it is for me, talking about her. How can I answer that

question?'

'No, Heeva... Please. This has nothing to do with... with

US. I thought we'd agreed... What's happened here, in this

place... When we've left, that's it. It's over. You know that.'

Heeva nodded, tearfully. 'Yes. I know.'

Captain Jamal closed his eyes and sighed. 'And the drums

are getting louder?' he asked.

Dr Heeva nodded.

'And how long until the comet's impact?' Captain Jamal asked

her.

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'A hundred minutes, Captain. We have just one hundred

minutes.'

They hid behind a mound of sagging metal and torn plastic in

one of the city's side streets, if it could be called that. Though

almost everything on the Gyre had been manufactured at

some point, time had weathered it down to a point where it

appeared almost organic, as if the bizarre formations rising up

around them had formed naturally over millions, rather than

thousands of years.

On the other side of the mound the humans were milling in all

directions. There were people pushing wheelbarrows and

people lugging barrels on their backs. Two men walked by

with what looked like barbecued Sollogs on a long, metal

skewer. From somewhere in the distance, Charlie and Amy

could hear the sound of drums and tribal chanting.

'OK...' whispered Charlie. 'I can't believe that actually

worked.'

'Well, drama was one of my best subjects in school,' said

Amy. 'Natural performer, my teacher called me.'

Charlie nodded, smiling nervously. 'Yeah,' he said. 'That

was pretty good, I must admit. You had me scared for a

moment. And that guy in the watchtower fell for it hook, line

and sinker. You make a convincing human.'

'Er... Excuse me? I am human.'

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'Yeah, but... You know what I mean.'

They heard the sound of marching. Peering out from the

side of the mound, Amy saw a platoon of humans armed with

spears trudging past. They were heading towards the main

gate.

'OK...' she said. 'What now?'

Charlie glanced down and shook his head. 'I don't know,'

he said. 'I've never been here before. And this place is

massive. The Doctor could be anywhere.'

Dr Heeva stood on the bridge of the Beagle XXI, and looked out

through its windows at the desert of glass, and in the distance,

the mountains. The fires there were growing brighter with

every passing minute, and now she could hear the drums,

even from inside the ship.

What were the humans doing?

She had been waiting for Captain Jamal for what felt like

an eternity, having left him alone in the bomb chamber. She

knew, or thought she knew, how difficult this must be for

him. His only son was out there, somewhere - on his way to

the human city, perhaps - and there was little chance of his

return.

It was almost impossible for her to separate her feelings

from the urgency of the situation, the two were so entangled.

She and the Captain had comforted one another in the months

following the

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NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

crash. The rest of the crew were so much younger than them,

and treated both the Captain and Heeva differently, with an

almost parental reverence and distance, which left them

somewhat isolated. It was only natural that, as the two most

senior crew members, they would enjoy each other's company.

Now that there was a chance for them to leave and survive

this nightmare, she didn't know what to think. What would

life back on their home planet be like? Would she ever see

Jamal again? Would they be able to talk about anything that

had happened on the Gyre? When he was back with his wife,

would he find some way to blame Heeva for his son's death,

some way to take his feelings of guilt and transplant them

onto somebody else? A part of her, just a small part, wished

that she had gone out there instead of Charlie. If she had taken

the helipod, Charlie would have had no other option but to

leave with his father. At least then nobody could have blamed

her for anything.

The entrance to the deck slid open with a hiss, and Captain

Jamal stepped into the room. He braced himself against the

door frame, his head hung in shame.

'I can't do it! he said. 'He's my son. If we can just wait...

Thirty minutes...'

'But Captain...'

'Please, Heeva. I'll prepare Slipstream's ship. Just let me

wait another thirty minutes.'

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Dr Heeva nodded and looked out from the bridge across

the desert of glass. There, in the valleys to the east, she saw

the orange light of distant fires flickering against the metal

hills. Just thirty minutes, the Captain had said.

But did they really have that long?

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Chapter

13

'Oh... We're back here, then?' said the Doctor.

Sancho, his guard, sneered at him with a sideways glance.

They were in the throne room at the top of the decaying and

ramshackle tower, the torches and fluorescent tubes flickering

around them. Django and Tuco were already on the platform,

beneath the faded, grinning face of Gobo the Clown.

'Your life has been spared! rasped Tuco. 'You are very

lucky.'

'Yes, funny that! said the Doctor, with sarcasm. 'You see,

Sancho here was about a split second away from pushing me

into a pit of acid (don't worry, Sancho... No hard feelings) and

you still haven't told me why I was spared.'

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He heard the sound of shuffling feet, a slow and steady

march, and more humans entered the throne room, bringing

with them a man in a silver spacesuit. The latter walked

straight up to the Doctor, holding out his hand.

'The Doctor, I presume!' he said with a gleaming smile.

'Spiffing to see you again!'

The Doctor frowned. 'I'm sorry...' he said. 'Have we met?'

'Oh dear,' said the man in the spacesuit. 'Please don't say

you can't remember me. That would be frightfully awkward,

wouldn't it?'

The Doctor's eyes grew wide and his jaw dropped. 'Oh

no,' he groaned. 'Dirk Slipstream.'

'At your service!' said Slipstream, still grinning. The Doctor

still hadn't shaken his hand, so he dropped it to his side.

From the platform, Tuco had been watching this scene

with reptilian fascination and a quizzical scowl, but now he

stepped down and approached them.

'You... know each other?'

The Doctor nodded and sighed. 'Yes,' he said. 'We've met

before.' He turned to Slipstream. 'Last time I saw you, you

were behind bars... rightfully behind bars... on Volag-Noc.'

'I know!' said Slipstream, still smiling graciously. 'And you

were the chap who put me there. Remember that?'

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'Yes. Yes, I do. The Belaform Diamond Heist.' The Doctor

turned to Tuco. 'This man crashed a passenger ship into a

diamond depository on Belaform 9. Killed six hundred

passengers and a hundred people at the depository, just to

steal some jewels.'

'My finest work! said Slipstream, beaming proudly. 'The

perfect crime. Or at least it would have been, if you hadn't

interfered. Still, Doctor. Let bygones be bygones is my

motto. After all, we've both changed. You've changed

considerably. Had some work done?'

The Doctor glowered at Slipstream. It was then that he

noticed Manco standing behind him, surrounded by the small

army of human guards.

'Manco!' he said, suddenly a little more relieved. 'What are

you doing here?'

'He is your guide,' hissed Tuco, before Manco had a

chance to speak.

'Guide?' asked the Doctor. 'What do you mean, "guide"?'

He turned to Slipstream, who winked back at him. 'Going

on a field trip, old chap. And you're tagging along for the

ride. You see, your services are of use to me. That's why I

had to reel you in with the old trans-temporal distress signal.

Knew you'd never come if I just asked politely.'

'It was you...' said the Doctor, his brow furrowing with

resentment.

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'Oh yes. I knew if there was one man who'd pick that signal

up sooner or later it was the Doctor. I stayed in geostationary

orbit around the Gyre waiting to pick up your signal. And

look... Here you are! And not a minute too soon.'

From his throne, Django now rose to his feet. His tall,

angular frame towering over the other humans as he stepped

down from the platform, his grubby white robes billowing

behind him. He brushed his way past his guards and

approached Slipstream.

'And now,' he purred huskily, 'you tell us where the Sittuun

are hiding.'

They had made it perhaps fifty metres further into the city

before they had to hide again. Something was happening, that

was for sure. The streets were a hive of activity now, with more

and more armed soldiers gathering near the gates. What were

they doing?

Looking up, Amy saw that she and Charlie were at the base

of the wrecked spacecraft. Its colossal bulk towered above

them, piercing the wisps of grey-green cloud that drifted over

the Gyre.

Beyond the stark, black outline of the wreck, too bright to

look at for more than a second, the Schuler-Khan comet grew

bigger still. Just looking at it made Amy shudder. But there was

something else in the sky. Something that seemed to break

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NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

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.

137

Chapter

14

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

Leadworth 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,

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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

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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 block 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

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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.

148

Chapter

15

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.

The controls were so archaic he was vaguely surprised to

find an autopilot. Still, he was pretty sure he had it all figured

out. Now if he could only bring himself to call Dr Heeva to the

ship and take off, make that final move. Leave the Gyre.

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But it wasn't just a case of leaving the Gyre. If that was all

it came down to, he'd have activated the bomb and left right

away. No, something else was keeping him here, stopping him

from leaving. His anger had subsided now, and in its place he

felt something strange and unsettling. An emotion that was

different to anything he had felt before. If he hadn't known

better, he would have thought it was a human emotion. Fear.

'Captain Jamal!'

The voice of Dr Heeva spoke to him from the cockpit's

intercom.

'Yes, Dr Heeva. What is it?'

He looked up from the windscreen of the Golden Bough

towards the deck of the Beagle XXI. Dr Heeva was standing

in its windows, holding the microphone to her mouth.

"There's a signal, Captain. It's coming from the human city.'

'What kind of a signal?'

'It looks like Morse code, sir.'

'Morse code? Who uses Morse code these days?'

'I don't know. I can barely make it out. There's a flashing

light... Looks like it's coming from the tower; from the old

wreck. But I can't read Morse code.'

'OK, Heeva. Read it out to me. Tell me what it says.'

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One by one Dr Heeva read out the dots and dashes of the

signal, and one by one Captain Jamal translated them into

letters.

'H... u... m... a... n... s... a... t... t... a... c...k…i…’

That was when he was stopped. At the other end of the line,

Dr Heeva was silent. He looked up at her once more.

'It's the humans...' gasped Captain Jamal. "The humans are

coming.'

Dr Heeva nodded, closing her eyes. 'Then I'll do it,' she said.

'Do what?'

I’ll activate the bomb.'

They were surrounded by Sollogs on all sides. The monstrous

slimy creatures slithered through the stagnant green waters of

the swamp and scuttled from pipe to pipe, drawing around

them in an ever-tightening circle. Some of their vehicles had

proven useless crossing the swamp, and had been left on the

salt flat. Others, such as the contraption carrying Django on his

throne, were more robust.

Django looked around, at the swarming Sollogs, and he

bared his teeth and snarled at them. Around him, his men

fought with the creatures, lunging at them and skewering them

with spears, or shooting them with arrows, but they were

outnumbered.

As all hope seemed lost, there came from the

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sky a series of loud crashing sounds, each one more deafening

than the last.

Django looked up from his throne and saw, high above,

what looked like falling stars, tearing through the dark blue

sky - so bright it looked as if the night itself had been ripped

into shreds. The falling stars passed over the swamp, heading

east, and then there was a sound like thunder, and the ground

beneath them shook. The plastic tubes that shot up from the

surface of the swamp clanked and rattled, and the waters

sloshed around their legs.

The Sollogs were startled, their attack on the humans

forgotten in an instant. They scurried in all directions, breaking

from their packs.

Django began to laugh.

'A miracle!' he roared, then pointed east to the far side of the

swamp. 'We move on!'

They marched on through the swamp, hacking away at the

plastic tubes with their swords and spears, until at last they

reached the edge of the canyon. Half of the metal pipe that had

been a makeshift bridge was still hanging from their side of the

gorge, but over on the other side they saw the point where the

fallen stars had crashed.

The high cliffs to either side of the distant gully were

beginning to collapse: mountains of refuse hundreds of metres

tall now crumbling, sending countless tons of metal

plummeting down into the canyon.

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Django stood up from his throne, holding his hands

towards the sky. His army could only look on, as the canyon

before them began to disappear, its dark void filled with the

falling wreckage. Great clouds of dust and smoke billowed up

from the chaos and the noise below them, and Django was

laughing.

When it had stopped, and the dust had settled, they saw

before them not an impassable gulf, but a shallow trench.

'Witness!' shouted Django. 'Witness the might of Gobo! We

move on!'

At his order, the humans marched on, down into the shallow

ravine and ever closer to the Sittuun's hiding place.

Several storeys below the bridge of the Beagle XXI, the

Nanobomb sat in its chamber. The room was silent and still,

and would have been completely dark had it not been

illuminated by the light from the bomb's counter. The digits

counted down, second by second.

00:59:23...

00:59:22...

00:59:21...

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Chapter

16

The cargo hold of the GFS Herald of Nanking was vast. No, the

Doctor decided. Vast was too small a word. Four letters, one

syllable. Vast was far too small. Humungous was getting there,

but still didn't do it justice. As they entered the cavernous

space, with Tuco now carrying the flaming torch, their voices

echoed out into the gloom, bouncing through deep gullies of

crates and containers.

'Crikey! said the Doctor. 'It'll be like finding a needle in a

haystack. Or rather, it'll be like finding one specific needle in a

pile of near-identical needles.'

With the ship having crashed at such an angle - its front half

buried in the Gyre and the whole ship turned slightly on its side

- the cargo hold was

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like the inside of a cube balanced perfectly on one corner. Most

of its contents had been sent tumbling down to one end of the

room, where the containers lay in a disorganised mound.

'Not necessarily, Doctor! said Slipstream, producing a

small hardbound book from his pocket. He flipped it open,

licked his thumb, and began flicking through the pages.

'This book lists all of the passengers, crew and contents for

the Herald of Nanking on the day she went missing. Only

thing it doesn't have is schematics. Seems the Herald of Nanking

was quite the mystery, back in the day. A small army of

obsessive enthusiasts would pore over her every last detail

and concoct all manner of outlandish theories to explain her

disappearance. And this book lists not only the contents of the

ship, but also their location.'

Slipstream craned his head back, looking up into the far

corner of the room.

'I say... Tuco, old chap, could you lift the torch a little higher?

You're hogging all the light.'

With a derisive grunt, Tuco lifted the torch. The feeble light

spread itself a little further into the room, pushing back the

shadows.

'Up there! said Slipstream. 'Row F. Level 3. Let's get

climbing.'

Like mountaineers in the foothills of a mountain range, the

four of them set about climbing up

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NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

over the rugged landscape of shattered crates and debris, past

stacks and shelves that had buckled and sagged after

millennia of neglect. From somewhere, out beyond the ship's

hull, they heard another thunderous boom. The room shook

violently, flakes of orange rust raining down from the ceiling.

The Doctor felt both of his hearts beating faster than before.

'So, Slipstream...' he said.

'Yes, Doctor?'

'When we're done here, when you've got what you want,

we're leaving, yes?'

Slipstream shrugged. 'Wish it was up to me, old chap,' he

said. 'I only arranged for you to be spared today. Didn't quite

have the clout to get you off all charges, I'm afraid. What say

you, Tuco? When we're finished, can the Doctor leave?'

'No! Tuco snapped. 'He is a heretic and a prisoner of

Django. He will be thrown into Lake Mono.'

'Ah, see?' said Slipstream. 'Sorry, Doctor. Them's the breaks,

as they say. Damned nuisance. Can't say I envy you.'

The Doctor turned to Tuco. 'Tuco... Listen to me. In

another hour or two, there won't be a Lake Mono. You hear

those noises outside?'

Tuco shrugged; a gesture almost of denial.

'But you can hear them. Can't you?'

'Maybe.'

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"That noise is the sound of little bits of comet slamming

into this place, tearing it apart. I'm talking little bits of comet.

About this big?' He held his finger and thumb no more than

three inches apart. 'The comet... I mean the actual comet... Is

hundreds of metres across. Bigger than this room. When it hits

us, this world will be destroyed. Everyone will die. Do you

understand that?'

Tuco looked at him coldly, narrowing his eyes. "Then it is

the way of Gobo,' he growled with a sinister smile.

As they climbed further up towards the high corner of the

cargo hold, Manco walked beside the Doctor.

'It's no use,' he said. 'They won't listen. They never listen.'

They were halfway up the mountain of upturned crates when

they heard something fluttering around their heads. It sounded

to the Doctor like moths on a summer's night, hovering

towards the nearest source of light. They halted abruptly, none

of them daring to move. Tuco's face was frozen with alarm,

the hand in which he carried the torch shaking.

Something small passed between the Doctor and the

flickering light; something tiny and dark and silhouetted

against the flame.

Tuco jumped, losing his footing and falling onto his back.

The torch landed beside him, but the

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flame carried on burning.

Now the Doctor could see more of the flying creatures,

none of them any bigger than his thumb. He crouched down

beside where Tuco had fallen, squinting at them in the dim

light. Lifting it from the ground the Doctor moved the flame

through the stygian gloom, and saw dozens, perhaps

hundreds, of tiny airborne forms.

One of them came right up to his face, hovering before him

with its wings flapping into a blur. The creature was limbless,

but for its wings; its scaly body was a golden shade of orange,

its eyes like tiny silver pennies. Its mouth tapered away into

what looked like a beak.

'Hello!' said the Doctor, holding up his hand and offering it

a gentle wave.

'What the devil is that?' Slipstream gasped, looking at the

creature with an expression of disgust.

'I think it's a fish,' said the Doctor. 'A flying fish. Literally.'

From his side he heard the sound of Slipstream's blaster

powering up - a thin whining sound that rose in pitch.

Slipstream lifted the gun, and aimed it straight for the tiny

flying fish.

'Blasted pests!' he barked. 'Planet's infested with 'em. If it's

not the savages it's eight-legged slugs, and if it's not them it's a

flying piranha!'

Before Slipstream could fire, the Doctor reached

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out, grabbed the gun by its barrel, and gently steered his

aim away from the fish.

'Does it look like a piranha to you?' he asked. 'Look

around you. Do you spot much in the way of meat? And look

at Tuco. He's never seen one of these things before. They must

only live in here, inside the ship.'

Tuco was on his feet again, brushing the dust and flakes

of brown rust from his clothes. All at once the flying fish

swarmed around him, nibbling at the air like goldfish taking

their food from the surface of a fish tank.

'What are they doing?' Tuco growled, squirming with

displeasure.

'The rust! said the Doctor. "They're eating the rust.'

'I still say we should kill 'em,' Slipstream snapped. 'Just

in case.'

'Yes, well you would. But not everything here is as

mean-spirited as you.'

Slipstream scowled at him and, for the first time since they

had become reacquainted, the Doctor could sense the

simmering resentment beneath Slipstream's cool, suave

exterior. However cordial he might be playing this, Slipstream

clearly wasn't here to let 'bygones be bygones', as he had put

it. When all this was over, when they had found the Mymon

Key, Slipstream would no doubt look for his revenge.

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They heard another crash from outside the ship. This one

sounded closer than any they had heard before.

'Come on! said the Doctor, holding up the torch and leading

the way. 'Let's find your key.'

As the light around them grew dimmer, Slipstream, Manco

and Tuco followed him. Up and up they climbed, the incline of

spilt containers getting steeper, until at last they reached the

upper corner of the room.

'Here it is,' announced Slipstream. 'Row F. Level 3.'

He seized the torch from the Doctor's hand, and began to

navigate his way around the buckled shelves and fallen crates.

'It must be here somewhere...'

The others could only stand there and watch him.

Somewhere beyond the cargo hold and the ship there was

another thunderous boom. The Doctor looked at Manco and

then at Tuco, who was still watching him with simmering

malevolence. With Slipstream distracted by his search for the

casket, maybe this was his opportunity. Maybe he and Manco

could make a run for it. With Sancho gone, they could get past

Tuco easily enough. They could leave the cargo hold and the

ship, and escape from the human city. Maybe they could find

their way to the Sittuun, and Amy, before it was all too late.

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But something was keeping him there. A feeling he didn't

want to acknowledge. It was curiosity. The Doctor wanted to see

the casket and its contents. He needed to see it. Mercutio 14 was

now no more than a burnt and barren rock, devoid of life. The

Hexion Geldmongers had been extinct for millennia. The

Mymon Key, their greatest and most terrible creation, was the

stuff of legends. He had to see it. That was what was keeping

him there.

'I've found it! Slipstream gasped, his voice trembling with

emotion. 'I've found it.'

The Doctor ran to his side and looked over his shoulder.

Then he saw it: the gleaming cobalt box, its lustre only slightly

tarnished by the thin film of dust on its surface.

Slipstream swept over it with his hand, and now the Doctor

saw the markings on its surface -an ancient language that

hadn't been written down or spoken in hundreds of thousands

of years.

'Give it to me,' said the Doctor.

Slipstream lifted the casket, which was no bigger than a

shoebox, free of the cluttered mound of fallen crates, and

looked back at the Doctor, smiling awkwardly.

'What did you say?'

'I said give it to me.'

Slipstream frowned quizzically, as if taken aback by the

Doctor's tone, and then the Doctor reached forward and seized

the box from his grasp.

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The Doctor ran his hands around the casket, his fingers

tracing their way through the intricate markings. He held the

casket up to his ear as if listening out for something the

others simply couldn't hear. He shook the box, and listened to

it once more.

'It's broken,' he said.

'Well, I'm not surprised, old bean,' snapped Slipstream.

'What with you shaking it about like that.'

'No... It's always been broken. The whole time it's been

here.'

'What do you mean, broken? The key?'

'No... Not the key. The casket. The anti-gravitational field

isn't working. The key... the key has been working the whole

time.'

Slipstream stood at his side and pointed at the markings.

'And this?' he said. 'Can you read this?'

The Doctor nodded reluctantly. 'You know I can.'

'And what does it say?'

'They're instructions,' the Doctor replied. 'But you knew

that already.'

'Perhaps I did. Then I'd suggest you follow them, Doctor.

Follow the instructions and open the casket.'

The Doctor shook his head. 'I can't,' he whispered. 'I can't

let you have the Mymon Key. It's too powerful.'

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DOCTOR WHO

Slipstream lifted his blaster and placed its barrel squarely

against the Doctor's head.

'Open the damned casket! he snarled. 'I won't ask you a

second time.'

He could see them now, blazing towards them in a shimmering

cloud of dust; the dark mass of humans tearing their way across

the desert of glass.

The engines of the Golden Bough roared into life with a

terrific whoosh and the whole ship shuddered.

'Dr Heeva! said Captain Jamal, speaking into the

intercom. 'What is your location?'

'I'm on Deck 3.'

'Then hurry. They're almost here. We have to get out of here!'

He looked back across the glistening desert, and saw the

black haze separating out, the individual forms of the humans

and their ancient, makeshift vehicles becoming visible.

Somewhere in amongst the mob he saw a single figure riding

on an arachnoid, eight-legged vehicle - a figure dressed in

flowing white robes - and he knew instantly it must be their

leader.

'Please, Dr Heeva... Hurry!'

Heeva came running from the loading bay door, but stopped

at its control panel and began hitting the keys.

'What are you doing?' the Captain hissed into

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the intercom.

'I'm closing the doors! said Dr Heeva. 'If we leave them

open, the humans will get to the bomb. They might be able to

deactivate it. We have to close the doors.'

There isn't time.'

'Then go.'

'I can't. I won't leave without you.'

Dr Heeva turned from the control panel and looked up at

him. There were tears streaming from her small black eyes and

rolling down her pallid, grey cheeks.

'Please! she said. 'Just go.'

Captain Jamal closed his eyes. From beyond the hull of the

Golden Bough, he could hear the sound of Schuler-Khan's

fragments slamming into the Gyre. And he could hear the

humans, their machines clanking and hissing, and their heavy

feet stomping as they ran. They bellowed and they hollered,

their animal cries echoing out into the perpetual night.

Heeva continued hitting keys on the control panel, turning

her head every so often to watch the humans' progress. The

hatch began to rise up, like a metal jaw, but then the control

panel exploded in a shower of sparks, and Heeva jumped

back, startled, to see the shaft of an arrow jutting from its

smouldering remains.

Captain Jamal rose from his seat, pounding his fists against

the window.

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DOCTOR WHO

'Get out of there!' he roared. 'Get out of there now!'

Heeva turned, looking up at him, and she smiled. A sad

smile of resignation. The second arrow hit her in the chest,

sending her reeling back against the hull of the Beagle XXI, and

she slumped forward, falling to her knees. Seconds later, the

humans were upon her.

Captain Jamal could do nothing but fall back into his seat

and hit the thrusters once more. With a monstrous roar, the

Golden Bough rose up from the surface of the Gyre, spinning

round on its axis. Below it the seething black mass of humans

swarmed towards the Beagle XXI and, for just a few seconds, the

Captain saw their leader staring up at him, his face caked in

gaudy, clown-like make-up.

He was laughing.

The casket's exterior was a puzzle in itself; a puzzle crafted

millennia ago by a race who were now extinct.

With Slipstream's gun still trained on his head, the Doctor

slid the last piece of the puzzle into place, the tiny cobalt tile

moving smoothly along a groove and stopping with a click.

From inside the box he heard the turning of cogs, a low

whirring sound, and then the casket opened. Its panels slid

away and fanned out, like the wings of a butterfly emerging

from its chrysalis.

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There, resting in an intricately moulded block of quartz, was

the Mymon Key.

'Let me see it!' snapped Slipstream.

Roistering his gun, he snatched the casket from the Doctor's

grasp and lifted out the Key, holding it up to the light. It was

unfeasibly small: a block of gold the shape of a pebble, in the

centre of which was a single aperture. Tuco and Manco were

beside him now, staring at the Key in awe.

'Hard to believe, isn't it?' said Slipstream. That something

so small could hold so much power.'

'Too much power,' said the Doctor coldly.

'Oh, really, old chap? This, coming from the man who

travels in time and space, interfering with historical events? Bit

rich, don't you think?'

'Even its creators realised their mistake,' said the Doctor.

'Why do you think they locked it away?'

'Yes, curious that, Doctor. They locked it away. They didn't

destroy it. They locked it in a box that could only be opened by

one of their own. Or, indeed, by someone such as yourself.

Somewhat ironic, don't you think? If you hadn't foiled my

plans on Belaform, we'd have never met. If we'd never met, I

wouldn't have known of your vast knowledge and your

legendary command of alien languages. I'd never have thought

to reel you in, and none of this would have been possible.

Funny how things turn out, isn't it?'

'And what will you do with it?'

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'Oh, what won't I do with it, Doctor? A limitless energy

source? Where does one begin? I could start by holding every

planet and colony in Sol 1 to ransom. Think of it as a kind of

taxation. Ten per cent of net profits on all industries or I turn the

sun into a black hole. How does that sound?'

'You're insane...'

'Dear me, Doctor. Insane? Is that the best you have to offer?

I would have thought it takes absolute clarity of mind to think as

I do. Now come along... We literally haven't got all day.'

Slipstream pocketed the Mymon Key and drew his gun from

its holster, gesturing with it towards the lower end of the cargo

hold. With careful, tentative steps the four of them made their

way back down the uneven slope of upturned containers, their

path barely illuminated by the torch. As their footsteps stirred

up clouds of ancient dust, the flying fish swarmed around

them, nibbling at the air.

'So, Slipstream...' said the Doctor, 'Did you ever stop to think

about why the Gyre is flat?'

'I'm sorry, old chap... What do you mean?'

'Well... This place isn't the only pile of junk in the universe.

But it's the only one that's flat.'

'Hadn't given it much thought, to tell you the truth.

Astrophysics is more your area of expertise.'

'Well, then, maybe you've wondered why the Herald of

Nanking crashed here in the first place.'

'Again, Doctor... Such considerations are for

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academics, not me.'

'Of course. But, you see, places like this - galactic junk piles -

they form in perfect locations. Points in the universe where the

gravitational forces of all neighbouring stars and planets

converge.'

'Yes, Doctor.' Slipstream sighed. 'All very interesting, I'm

sure...'

'And the Mymon Key draws its energy from gravitational

force.'

'Yes? And?'

'Which would make this the perfect home for the Mymon

Key.'

Slipstream clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

'Ever the sentimentalist,' he muttered. 'So you're saying this

place is the Mymon Key's home? That this inanimate lump of

metal is happy here?'

The Doctor shrugged. 'Yes! he said. 'I suppose lam.'

'Oh, please. Really? Dear oh dear... Of all your arguments so

far, Doctor, that must be the weakest. You want me to leave the

Mymon Key here so it won't get homesick? You'll have to do

better than that.'

The brushed steel casing of the Nanobomb was lit up red with

the light from its counter:

00:45:00...

00:44:59...

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DOCTOR WHO

00:44:58...

With every passing second, the room remained silent, but

for the single, high-pitched beep. Then, from beyond its door,

there came the sound of many footsteps.

The door suddenly shuddered with a tremendous bang, a

rounded dent appearing in its surface. Another bang, and

another dent, this one more pronounced than the last. With the

third heavy bang the door flew in on its hinges, slamming back

against the wall with a thunderous clang.

The humans stood in the corridor, three of them still

holding on to the girder they had used as a battering ram.

Django stepped past them and entered the bomb chamber, his

flowing white robes dragging along the floor behind him.

He approached the bomb, his eyes growing wide with

wonder, and he sighed with satisfaction, placing his hands on

its shining steel shell. He closed his eyes, and began to laugh.

'We have it!' he said. 'We have the weapon of the Bad.'

He turned to face his men once more, pointing back

towards the fixtures that held the bomb in place.

'Break it out! he growled. 'We are taking this back to the

city.'

They left the cargo hold and passed along a narrow

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NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

corridor that was tilted downwards, clinging to rusting pipes

and decaying vines for balance. Tuco was muttering under his

breath.

Tm sorry, Tuco, old chap! said Slipstream. 'You'll have to

speak up. I can't hear you.'

'This is sacrilege,' hissed Tuco. 'We have desecrated the

Tower of Gobo. You are stealing his treasure.'

'Oh, so it's Gobo's treasure, now, is it? First we have the

Doctor telling me it belongs here, and now you're telling me it

belongs to a cartoon clown. Well that's just spiffing, isn't it?'

Tuco wheeled around, holding the flaming torch to

Slipstream's face.

'You will pay for this when Django finds out. Oh yes...

Tuco will tell Django all about this, and Django will make you

pay.'

Slipstream glowered at the human, his eyes growing wider

with impatience. They moved on down the tunnel, coming

eventually to the vast chamber of the control room, and the

cage-like walkway above it.

'Ah!' said Slipstream. 'We're here again. Yes... I think I can

remember the way from here.' He turned now to Tuco. 'Sorry,

old chap... What was it you were saying, back there? In the

tunnel? Something about telling Django about this and Django

making me pay?'

'Yes,' said Tuco. 'Django will make you pay.'

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'Hmm. Not sure about that.'

With that, Slipstream aimed his gun and fired. The blast

slammed into Tuco, flinging him over the edge of the

walkway. Seconds later, his body landed in the depths of the

control room with a heavy thud.

The Doctor and Manco looked at one another and then

Slipstream, both wide-eyed with shock.

'Yes! said Slipstream, smiling malevolently. 'Seems we've

come to the end of the road, chaps. You've rather outlived

your purpose, I'm afraid. Very handy when we were

navigating all those tunnels, but now... ?'

'No, Slipstream,' said the Doctor. 'Don't do this. You've got

the Mymon Key. You can just leave. I won't try and stop you.'

Slipstream laughed. 'You're a terrible liar, Doctor,' he said.

'We both know I could fly out of here and wherever I went

you'd be waiting for me. No... Consider this my insurance

policy.'

Slipstream aimed the gun at the Doctor's face, still

grinning. He thumbed a green switch on the side of the blaster

and it emitted a shrill squeal that rose in pitch.

'Now I'd like to say this will hurt me more than it'll hurt you,

but it won't. It really won't. Goodbye, Doctor.'

His finger curled around the trigger, and he laughed with

a brief derisive snort, but then he

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NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

froze. His evaporating smile was replaced by a look of utter

horror.

'Don't even think about it, Slipstream. Put the gun down.'

Standing behind him, with the barrel of his own gun

touching the back of Slipstream's head, was Charlie, with

Amy by his side.

'Damn and blast!' said Slipstream.

He spun around on his heels, ready to fire, but Charlie was

quicker, and punched him full force in the face, breaking his

nose. Slipstream staggered backwards, dropping his gun.

Acting quickly, the Doctor picked it up from the ground and

hurled it out across the control room. The blaster tumbled

through the air, spinning end over end. When it hit the ground

it fired once, sending a bright green bolt of light ricocheting

around the control room. Screens shattered and wall panels

exploded, lighting up the vast room with cascading sparks.

Then there was silence.

'Whoops,' said the Doctor. 'Should have thought that one

through. Everyone OK? Manco? Amy?'

Manco nodded sheepishly, clearly dazed by everything

that had happened in the last thirty seconds.

Amy simply beamed at him, and the Doctor smiled back.

Desperately, Slipstream scrambled to his feet, and was

about to make a run for it when Charlie

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DOCTOR WHO

pinned him up against the railing, aiming the gun at him once

more.

'I don't think so, somehow! he said. 'Not this time. Give

me one good reason why I shouldn't just shoot you. Right

now.'

'Er... Hello?' said the Doctor, standing at Charlie's side.

'Remember me? We met earlier. Got off on the wrong foot, but I

reckon we can put that behind us. Anyway... I think there's

been enough death for one day. This man belongs behind bars.

We're taking him with us.'

Still seething with anger, Charlie glowered at the Doctor.

Then he looked at Amy, and the look she gave in return was

clearly all it took to persuade him.

'OK,' he said. 'Come on, then. Let's go.'

They left the control room, and made their descent

further down into the ship, along the last stretch of corridors

that would take them out into the human city.

As they walked side by side, the Doctor turned to Amy.

'So...' he said. 'How are you? Miss me?'

Amy nodded enthusiastically, her eyes dewy with the

promise of tears, and then she threw her arms around him with

such force that it knocked the air out of his lungs.

The Doctor laughed and parted her back. 'I'll take that as a

yes,' he said, then whispered in her

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ear: 'I'm so glad you're OK.'

They carried on walking.

'Well, yeah,' said Amy. 'I'm fine. And actually... Seems to me

that you were the one who needed rescuing this time.'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'Back there? You were in quite a lot of trouble. Until me and

Charlie turned up, that is.'

'Oh really? Until you and Charlie turned up? So... You and

Charlie, eh? Been making friends, have we?'

'And what's that supposed to mean? Are you jealous?'

'Jealous? Me? What? No! Jealous? I don't know what you're

talking about.'

'So I'm not allowed to make friends with other aliens, is that

it?'

'Don't be facetious.'

'Ha ha... You are. You're jealous. You're, like, green with

envy.'

'I'm not even going to dignify that with a response.'

'Ha... The jealous Doctor. Oh, that is priceless.'

'I am not jealous.'

'You so are. What's your doctorate in, anyway? Got a PhD in

jealousy, have you?'

'Be quiet.'

They had reached the ship's exit. Manco tapped a code into

the door's control panel and the hatch

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opened up. Holding the others back with a gesture of his hand,

he leaned out into the street.

'What do you see?' asked the Doctor. 'Is the coast clear?'

Manco shook his head.

'No. They're near the western gate. Lots of them. We can't go

that way. We'll have to use the south gate. Follow me.'

Walking in single file, the five of them stepped out of the

ship and into the streets of the human city, with Charlie and

Slipstream trailing behind. Charlie alternated his aim between

Slipstream and the far end of the street, where a crowd of

humans were congregating at the gate, as if in anticipation.

'What are they waiting for?' he asked.

The Doctor pointed at the sky, and looking up Charlie saw

the blazing orb of the comet. It looked now like a ferocious

eye, its centre so bright as to appear almost black. Its edges

were lost in a shimmering haze.

'They're waiting for that,' said the Doctor.

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Chapter

17

The small lump of ice and rock entered the upper atmosphere

of the Gyre with a cacophonous bang, its outer crust breaking

away like a shower of sparks. As it plummeted towards the

surface, it dragged behind it a quivering tail of fire and smoke,

and it made a sound like the rumbling of heavy thunder.

Down and down it fell, piercing a hole through the muggy

green clouds, travelling at hundreds of metres a second,

before slamming into the salt plain with astonishing force.

Though the fragment was no bigger than an egg by the time

it struck, it left a crater more than four metres across, and sent a

rippling shockwave out across the plain, hissing through the

salt crystals.

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It had crashed into the humans' path, no more than a

hundred metres ahead, and all of them cowered in its wake,

diving to the ground and covering their heads as if expecting

a second onslaught.

All of them except Django.

Next to his throne, strapped to the eight-legged carriage

with lengths of rope, was the Sittuun bomb. He couldn't read

the markings on its outer casing; they were written in the

language of the Olden Ones, which only the heretic, Manco

the Wordslinger, could understand. Nor did he really

understand the digital display, and the numbers that changed

with every passing second. He knew enough, however, to

understand that these digits were counting down.

00:34:01...

00:34:00...

00:33:59...

'We move on!' Django yelled at his men, who were slowly

beginning to gather themselves. 'We move on!'

The caravan of humans began moving again, their

machines hissing and chugging away, the foot soldiers

trudging through the salt.

Django didn't take his eyes off the bomb. To him, it wasn't

just a bomb. The truth was, he had little understanding of what

it actually did. The Sittuun had tried to explain, when they sent

their

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emissaries to the human city, but he hadn't really listened.

Their words meant little to him, and he had little time for them.

They were liars and servants of the Bad, of this he was sure.

Why else would they wish to destroy this world before Gobo's

return?

Django thought about the Bad. He remembered, as a child,

being taken to the Chamber of Stories by his father. There, he

and the other children were made to sit and watch the silent

images of the Olden Ones projected onto a great screen, while

one of the city's elders would tell them what the story was

about.

The Bad didn't always look the same. His face would often

change, but he always wore the same clothes - a black hat with

a wide brim - and he often had a moustache.

The Bad had haunted Django's childhood nightmares, and

had plagued his waking thoughts. He had known, early on, that

the Star with the Green Tail would return in his lifetime. The

Elders had predicted it. They had taught him that with each

visit the Star drew a little closer to their world, and that one day

it would come to them. They had taught him that the star was

Gobo, and that one day it would save them from the Bad.

Now that day had come. The Bad had sent his servants, the

Sittuun and the one calling himself the Doctor, to ruin

everything, but Django had thwarted them. He had their bomb,

and he had the

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one person capable of disarming it. Manco.

'Warning. Warning. Coordinate delta three nine is corrupted.

Warning. Warning. Coordinate delta three nine is corrupted.'

The voice of the Golden Bough's alarm remained unnervingly

calm and impassive, speaking in a dull, pre-recorded

monotone, though the ship itself was struggling to stay in the

air. As good a pilot as he knew he was, and as hard as he tried,

Captain Jamal simply couldn't make it fly in a straight line.

Each time he set the coordinates to fly east, towards the human

city, the ship would bank sharply to the left or right, as if it

was being rebounded by a magnetic force.

To make matters worse, lumps of smouldering rock were

raining from the sky.

One of the comet's fragments had clipped a tail fin, though

not enough to compromise the ship. The Captain had been

lucky. This time.

Speed was the thing, he had decided. He simply couldn't get

enough velocity on his approach to punch through whatever

force was affecting the ship's systems. He needed more of a

run-up, but that would mean flying away from the city and

even the Gyre itself.

After his fifth attempt had failed, he realised it was his only

choice.

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NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

Of course, he didn't have to go to the human city at all. He

could leave the Gyre, right there and then. He could steer away

from the salt plains and the distant city, and set a course for his

home world. The journey might take a month or two, but he'd be

free of this place once and for all.

Except his son was down there, somewhere.

When he'd first sat at this ship's controls he'd felt what he

thought might be fear for the first time in his life; but it wasn't

a fear of the humans, or what they were capable of. It wasn't a

fear for his personal safety. It was fear for his son. He had

fought long and hard to get him a job in the IEA. He had fought

for his son's place on the Beagle XXI's mission to the Gyre. His

son was only here, on this terrible, barren world, because of

him.

He wasn't going home alone.

The Captain steered the ship away from the city one last

time, so that now all he could see ahead was the dark blue sky

and the twinkling of distant stars. He hit the boosters, and was

pinned back in his seat by the sudden thrust of acceleration,

and he watched the sky grow darker still as the Golden Bough

left the Gyre's thin and almost imperceptible atmosphere.

When he was a hundred miles out, he turned the ship around

in a long and graceful arc, and now the Gyre lay before him; a

vast and jagged disc of gnarled grey metal, fused together over

aeons. He

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saw it in its entirety, from edge to edge. He saw the light from

the nearest stars glittering on its crooked metal mountains, and

he saw the vast white void of the salt plains near the human

city. Looking up, he saw the blazing inferno of Schuler-Khan,

now perilously close to the Gyre; pieces of it falling away like

drops of burning rain.

This was it. This was his chance.

Captain Jamal pushed the control column forward, and

began his descent.

'Manco, old chap... I thought you were showing us the way

out of here?' said Slipstream, his voice laced with disdain.

Charlie nudged him with the rifle. 'Hey... Do us all a favour

and shut up,' he snapped.

'This is the way out,' said Manco, mindless of the bitter

exchange between Charlie and Slipstream. 'It's the only way

out.'

They were back inside one of the buildings in the human

city, creeping along a low passage, the walls of which were

fashioned from beaten panels bearing the logos of

long-forgotten companies. Some of them were logos Amy

recognised, brands that had existed in her time, back home.

Seeing them like this - tarnished and faded - made her feel sad,

though she couldn't quite fathom why.

Maybe it was the thought that all the effort that people put

into their lives, all that time working

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NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

hard to buy things, could be reduced to nothing more than

junk. Or the fact that everything looked so old. No, not just old.

Everything looked ancient. The adverts for sportswear and soft

drinks that lined the passage looked as weathered, as ancient

and otherworldly, as Egyptian hieroglyphs and Roman

mosaics.

Eventually they left the passage and found themselves at the

entrance to a large, almost church-like space, where dozens of

humans sat before a large canvas sheet. At the back of the

chamber an ancient projector clicked and whirred. Its single

lens cast a prism of multicoloured light onto the sheet, on

which two Wild West gunslingers stood at opposite ends of a

dusty street lined with clapboard shop fronts and saloons. One

wore a white cowboy hat, the other black. Their hands were

poised above six shooters in leather holsters, and the man in black

scrutinised his foe with narrow, vulpine eyes. Amy was sure she

had seen the film somewhere before, maybe on TV on a rainy

Sunday afternoon. Why were these humans, in the year

250,339 watching it?

Standing beside the sheet, holding a rusted length of pipe

like a staff, was the Elder - a human in dark black robes, his

long, matted grey beard reaching all the way down his chest.

His voice echoed out over the otherwise silent chamber, and

Amy, the Doctor and the others stopped in the

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DOCTOR WHO

narrow entrance and listened to him.

'And the Bad travelled to El Paso, where he met with

Zasquez, son of Gobo. And he said to him, "Where have you

taken mankind? I wish to destroy them, for I hate them all." And

Zasquez said, "My father, Gobo, has taken mankind far away

from this world, to a place called Earth, so that they may be

safe..."'

Amy turned to the Doctor.

'What is this?' she whispered. 'Why are they watching

Westerns?'

'My guess?' the Doctor replied. 'Somebody on the ship had

a big collection of Westerns. They've developed an entire

culture based around the scraps of what survived the crash. Old

Westerns... a cartoon clown...'

'But surely this film's got nothing to do with Gobo?'

'No. It hasn't,' said the Doctor.

His face suddenly lit up with a smile.

'You... are a genius.'

Without another word, he walked out into the room,

making no effort to conceal his presence. The bearded man in

black robes stopped talking and looked at the Doctor, his

mouth opening and closing but failing to form words. One by

one the humans sitting before the screen turned around, and

they looked at the Doctor with the same expressions of shock

and confusion.

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NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

'Who... who are you?' asked the Elder.

'I'm the Doctor. And you, my friend, are talking rubbish.

Eighteen-carat, unadulterated rubbish.'

The Doctor produced his sonic screwdriver from his

pocket, and pointed it back across the room at the projector. Its

tip burned with a glowing emerald light, and the image on the

screen flickered and shuddered, freezing for a few seconds

before starting again. Now they heard the character of the man

in black, the Bad as they called him, speaking with his own

husky voice.

'You know you can't win this, Shane. Whyn't ya just get on

your horse and ride out of here while you still have the

chance?'

Then the man in the white hat spoke.

'Not today, Ramirez. You killed my brother.'

The room erupted into excited chattering, and from the

narrow entrance Amy watched on, confused. What was the

Doctor playing at? They had to get out of this place, and

quickly, and there he was fixing their projector. Was he mad?

'They speak!' cried one of the humans. 'I can hear them!

The Olden Ones! They speak!'

As the Chamber of Stories descended into chaos, Dirk

Slipstream began backing away from the small party who were

still hiding in the passage, moving as silently as he could. He

had made it no more than five paces when Charlie wheeled

around and aimed his gun at him.

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'Yeah... Nice try, Slipstream,' he growled. 'Now get back

here.'

Slipstream cursed under his breath and joined them once

more, and this time Charlie didn't take his eyes off him.

'OK!' shouted the Doctor, rushing to the front of the room.

'Right... Listen up. This story, the one you're watching. It's a

film. If I remember rightly it's a film called The 8:10 To El Paso.

It's got nothing to do with Gobo, nothing to do with the star

with the green tail. It's a Western. See... That guy there? His

name isn't Zasquez. It's Shane. Zachary Velasquez was the

captain of a ship that crashed here thousands of years ago.

He's not in this film. And him? He's not the Bad... His name is

Ramirez. And they're both actors. But that star... the one that's

in the sky right now... that star is very real. And when it

comes here, when it hits this place, it will destroy everything.

Now... I think I can help you. No... I know I can help you... But

you have to follow me. We are leaving this city, and we're going

to my ship. And then we're leaving this place. For good. There's

no coming back.'

The room fell silent. The Doctor looked at them all, his

expression one of hope and quiet desperation.

'Well... Are you with me?' he asked, but still there was

silence.

The bearded man in the black robes stood before

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him, glowering at the Doctor. 'Leave this place! he said.

'I'm sorry...' said the Doctor. 'Didn't you hear what I just

said?' He pointed at the screen. 'Didn't you hear what they

said? They're not talking about Gobo. They're not talking about

this place, or about the Olden Ones. It's just a film. You have to

believe me. You are all in great danger.'

The Doctor looked to the audience, but none of them spoke.

Not one of them even moved. Amy now knew what the Doctor

was at least trying to do, but she also knew it was hopeless. She

and the others stepped out from the tunnel and into the room,

making their way gingerly towards the Doctor, as if they were

treading across a minefield.

'Doctor! she said. 'We have to go.'

The Doctor started shaking his head.

'No...' he said, still talking to the audience. 'You have to

believe me. Please. I'm trying to save you.'

Manco placed one hand on the Doctor's shoulder.

They never listen! he said quietly. 'We must go now.'

'Come on! said Charlie more forcefully. 'We haven't got

time.'

He grabbed the Doctor roughly by the arm, pulling him out

of the room, away from the screen and the silent audience, and

the Doctor struggled in his grasp, still facing the humans.

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'Please!' he shouted. 'If you stay here you are all going to die\'

He was still calling out to them when he was far away from

that room and the humans, too far away for them to hear him.

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Chapter

18

In the short time she had known him, Amy had never seen the

Doctor like this. She had seen him angry, and thoughtful, and

upset, but this was different. He hadn't spoken since they had

reached the south gate of the city and made their way out

onto the salt plain. He looked pale and drawn, and so much

older, his boyish enthusiasm nowhere to be seen.

She could understand why. There had been children in

the crowd watching the old film. Children who were now

doomed, whichever way you looked at it. She had half

expected the Doctor to come up with some last-minute

solution, something which would solve everything, but the

expression on his face told her that wasn't about to happen.

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They were about a hundred metres away from the human

city when Manco stopped walking. The Doctor turned around

to face him.

'What's up?' he asked.

'I'm not coming! said Manco. I'm staying here.'

The Doctor blinked twice and started shaking his head.

'No, Manco, listen... We can get you out of here. We can take

you far away from here.'

I know, Doctor. But I'm staying.'

'But why? You know what's about to happen.'

'Yes.'

'So come with us.'

I can't. Where will you take me, Doctor? Earth? The real

Earth? What would I do there? Would the humans there accept

me? Would they treat me as their own? I doubt that. I'm like

those... those fish that we saw... inside the tower. You said

yourself, that's the only place where they exist. And the key... the

one we found there. You said it belonged here, that there was no

other place for it. Well that's me. There is no other place. We

aren't like the humans on Earth, Doctor. We've been here too

long.'

'But, Manco, please...'

'No, Doctor. I'm staying.'

Charlie moved to the Doctor's side. 'Come on... We have

to go. If I know my Dad he'll have programmed the bomb by

now. We don't have any time.'

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The Doctor turned to Slipstream.

'The Key! he said. 'You still have it.'

Slipstream huffed indignantly, reaching into his pocket and

lifting out the polished, golden orb.

'Yes.'

'Give it to me.'

With another petulant huff, Slipstream handed the key to

the Doctor, who in turn gave it to Manco.

'Take this with you,' he said. 'It belongs here.'

'Yes, Doctor,' said Manco, with a sad smile. 'And so do I.'

He nodded at each of them in turn, but said nothing more,

and then he walked back towards the human city, still holding

the Mymon Key in his hand.

'Let's go! said Charlie. 'There's nothing you can do, Doctor.'

They walked on across the salt plain, with Amy at the

Doctor's side. She looked up at him, trying to find the right

words, but it was no use. What could she say that would

make him feel better? Everything seemed so hopeless. The

only thing she could do was reach out and hold his hand, and

she was grateful, if just a little surprised, when he squeezed it

in return and kept on holding it as they walked.

Charlie and Slipstream were in front, with Charlie's gun

still trained on the prisoner.

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'So! drawled Slipstream, 'Do any of you bright sparks

know how we're getting back to my ship? The bridge is out,

and that swamp is infested with man-eating slugs. Any

suggestions? Anybody?'

'We'll take Bird! said Charlie.

'And what, pray tell, is Bird?'

'The helipod. I left it on the edge of the swamp.'

'But wait! said Amy. "There was barely enough room in that

thing for two of us, let alone four.'

Slipstream laughed incredulously. 'Oh, well isn't that

marvellous? Alien Boy's plan involves squeezing four fully

grown adults in a flying shoebox. That's just spiffing.'

Charlie scowled at him. 'We could always leave you here!

he snapped. 'That would suit me right down to the ground.'

'Yes, I'm sure you'd like that, wouldn't you?'

The Doctor let go of Amy's hand, and he took several long

strides so that he was now standing between Charlie and

Slipstream.

'Play nice, children! he said, then pointed at the sky. 'Look!'

The four of them had stopped walking and now, looking up,

they saw something hurtling towards them. It started as just a

tiny, yellow dot hovering above the horizon, but gradually it

grew bigger, swaying from side to side and juddering violently.

'That's my bloody ship!' shouted Slipstream.

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'Why of all the-'

'But who's flying it?' asked Amy. 'I mean... You're here.

Charlie's here.'

'It's my Dad! said Charlie, smiling. 'It has to be!

Just then, as all four of them were about to breathe a

collective sigh of relief, three chunks of comet came streaking

out of the sky, screaming like fireworks. The Golden Bough

swooped and dived between the missiles with the fleetness of an

insect, dodging each of them, but now the fragments were

bearing down towards the salt plain.

They slammed into the surface of the Gyre, only a few

hundred metres away from where they stood, and there was

but a second's pause before the deafening triple boom

knocked them to the ground. They scrambled to their feet as

quickly as they could, and started running.

The Golden Bough was getting closer now, still jerking

about in the sky. It passed over the distant swamp, the tall

plastic tubes swaying wildly in its wake, and it came out

over the salt plain, its thrusters stirring up great clouds of

powdered salt.

Amy tripped and fell as she ran, grazing her hands on the

rough ground. She cried out in pain, but the Doctor lifted her

to her feet with his arm around her waist, and he half carried

her as they ran on, ever closer to where the Golden Bough now

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hovered over the salt plain, only a short distance away.

As they drew closer, they could see Captain Jamal at the

ship's controls. He looked angry, or frustrated, and the ship

lurched turbulently, as if it was bouncing on waves. Each time

it lowered it would get to within a few feet of the surface before

being launched back up into the air thirty metres or more.

They heard the Captain's voice, amplified by speakers in

the ship's hull.

'It's no use!' he shouted. This thing won't land. The

systems are all shot. It's this place... the Gyre...'

In the distance another fragment of the comet came

crashing down with a thunderous boom, and the ground

beneath them convulsed.

Everybody turned to the Doctor.

'Why's everyone looking at me?'

Amy's eyes grew wider and she hunched her shoulders.

'Er... Because you usually have all the answers?'

'Oh. Right. Yes. Charlie!'

Charlie nodded.

'The helipod... Where is it?'

Above them, the Golden Bough bucked and shuddered

again, its thrusters howling and kicking up swirling tornadoes

of dust. Charlie had to shout

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just to be heard above the noise.

'It's at the edge of the swamp!' he said, pointing into the

distance. 'Over there!'

'Right!' the Doctor yelled in return. He looked up at the

ship, and at Captain Jamal, gesturing wildly with his arms and

pointing at the sky.

'What are you saying?' shouted Captain Jamal, his voice

still booming from the speakers. 'I don't understand!'

'GO UP!' yelled the Doctor. 'GO! UP!'

Captain Jamal looked down at his son, and Charlie

nodded. There was a moment's unspoken communication

between them, when Amy saw just how deeply afraid they

both were. And Charlie had told her the Sittuun had no fear...

With a terrific whoosh, the Golden Bough rose up into the dark

sky, and the Doctor, Amy, Charlie and Slipstream carried on

running across the salt plain, towards the swamp's edge. As

they neared it, they saw countless Sollogs, their bodies

liquefying into a greenish ooze, lying in the salt.

'What's happening to them?' Amy asked, still running.

'It's the comet,' the Doctor replied. 'They're running

scared, and they don't care where they're running.'

'Kind of like us, then?' said Amy.

The Doctor smiled at her. 'Well, I'm not scared. You scared?

I'm not scared.'

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'Yeah, pull the other one.'

Twenty metres ahead of them, the ground burst open as yet

another sliver of the comet slammed into the Gyre. Salt

crystals and lumps of misshapen metal came raining down

around them, but they didn't stop running.

'OK,' said the Doctor. 'Maybe just a little bit.'

They ran around the outer edge of the crater left by the last

fragment, and Amy saw how it went down, deep below the

surface of the salt plain, its centre filled with bubbling,

molten metal. The thought that one of those things could hit

any of them at any given moment, and that there was nothing

they could do about it, filled her with terror, a terror that

coursed through her veins and made her run even harder and

faster than before.

She looked at the Doctor, and wondered if he really did

feel fear. If he did, it didn't show in his face. He looked like he

had done this, or something like this, a thousand times before.

Based on her experiences with him so far, she'd say he

probably had, and this made her feel very suddenly that little

bit safer.

When they reached Bird, Charlie's helipod, Slipstream

stopped running, struggling to catch his breath, and he braced

himself on his knees.

'That thing?' he said. 'We're flying in that contraption!'

Charlie nodded.

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'Are you insane, man? It's like a child's toy!'

'I know! said Charlie. 'Two of us'll have to hold on to the

outside.'

He looked from Slipstream to the Doctor and back again.

'Oh, I see! said Slipstream. 'So I take it I'm one of the two,

then?'

'Yes! Charlie replied bluntly. 'You are.'

Without further hesitation, he opened up the helipod's hatch

and climbed inside, inviting Amy to join him. Amy turned back

to the Doctor.

'You should get in! she said. 'Charlie can take us back to the

TARDIS, but you're the only one who can fly it. You should be

inside, where it's safer.'

The Doctor looked at her with an expression she couldn't

quite read. He looked surprised, sad and deeply moved, all at

the same time.

'No! he said. 'No. You get in. I'll be fine. Trust me.'

Amy nodded and climbed into the helipod, and then Charlie

closed the hatch behind them. Seconds later, the engines

whirred into life, and the twin horizontal propellers behind the

cabin began chopping at the air. The Doctor took up his

position to one side of the craft, his feet balancing precariously

on one of its runners, clinging by his fingertips to the cabin's

roof. He looked at Slipstream. 'Are you coming?' he asked.

Slipstream looked back across the salt plain;

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at the smouldering craters that pockmarked its glistening

surface and at the fires that had broken out in the human city.

He sighed and closed his eyes, then he climbed onto the

helipod. The Doctor slapped his hand twice on the cabin roof,

and they took off.

Inside the cabin, Amy and Charlie sat squeezed into a seat

designed for one.

'OK. Where are we going?' asked Charlie.

'Take us to the TARDIS! Amy replied. 'Remember? Back

where you found us?'

Charlie nodded. He lifted a small receiver to his mouth, and

twisted a dial on the dashboard.

'Golden Bough, Golden Bough...' he said. 'This is Bird 1. Are

you receiving me? Over.'

There was a moment's near silence at the other end of the

line, when all they could hear was the faint hiss of static, but

then...

'Hearing you loud and clear, Bird 1.' It was the voice of

Captain Jamal. 'What is your location? Over.'

'We're heading back to the copper valley, to the Doctor's

ship. He can bring us to you. Over.'

'Copy that, B ird 1.'

Another pause, but Amy was sure she could hear the

Captain breathing at the other end of the line.

'I'm so glad you're OK... Charlie,' he said at last, his voice

now trembling with emotion.

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'Copy that, Dad,' said Charlie. 'Over and out.'

They flew west, over the tangled black nest of plastic tubes

and putrid green waters of the swamp. The helipod flew only a

short distance above the tubes, the downdraft from its

propellers striking a series of ghostly, atonal chords as they

passed over them.

The Doctor rapped his knuckles against the window three

times.

'What is it?' Amy asked.

The Doctor pointed skywards.

'Higher!' he mouthed. 'We need to go higher!'

Amy turned to Charlie. 'He says we need to go higher.'

'Well we can't,' Charlie replied. This thing isn't designed to

carry this kind of weight.'

Thunk-thunk-thunk. The Doctor was knocking at the

window again, and still peering in at them both.

'Higher!' he mouthed, pointing at the sky. 'Go! Higher!'

Amy shrugged helplessly, and then she heard a heavy

thud, and the back end of the helipod seemed to dip back, as if

burdened with yet another passenger.

'What was that?' she asked. 'Charlie... What was that?'

Charlie leaned to one side, trying to see what had

happened in one of the helipod's mirrors.

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'Not sure! he replied. 'But it didn't sound good.'

Something was happening outside the cabin. The Doctor

was balancing with one foot on the runner, and frantically

kicking at something out of Amy's view. Slipstream,

meanwhile, edged his way towards the front of the helipod's

cabin, as if he was backing away from something. The

Doctor pulled himself back, and now both he and Slipstream

were nearing the nose of the helipod, both still facing

backwards, wide-eyed and almost paralysed with fear.

There was a heavy but somehow soggy-sounding thump as

something landed on the transparent ceiling of the cabin, and

Amy looked up to see a single, suction-cup foot stuck to the

glass.

'Oh no! she said, and then again, 'Ohhh no.'

Another slimy foot came down and attached itself to the

cabin roof. Then another. And another.

The Sollog crept its way out over the top of the helipod, so

that it was almost blocking Charlie's view of the landscape

ahead. Its eight feet hit the glass with a series of sickening

plops as it drew closer to the Doctor and Slipstream.

'Please let it eat Slipstream... please let it eat Slipstream...'

said Charlie, and Amy looked at him, shocked though not

necessarily appalled.

'Do something!' she said.

'Like what?'

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'I don't know. Try jiggling it up and down.'

'Jiggling it up and down? What does jiggling mean?'

'You know... jiggling. Go up and down. Try shaking it off.'

'Right. OK. Jiggling.'

Charlie gripped the helipod's control column and began

shaking it vigorously. The whole craft shuddered in mid air, its

nose tipping suddenly towards the ground and then jolting

back up again. The Doctor and Slipstream both stumbled back,

barely managing to hold on, and the Sollog staggered clumsily

from side to side.

'Do it again!' Amy shouted.

Charlie nodded, and once again the helipod jolted up and

down. This time the Sollog lost its footing altogether, and was

sent skidding back across the roof, emitting a monstrous,

high-pitched scream as it fell. There was a sickening splatter and

crunch as it was sucked into one of the propellers, and a bright

green gunk was sprayed out in all directions.

Hit full force by the shower of slime, the Doctor and

Slipstream fell from sight.

'No!' Amy screamed, her hands pressed flat against the

glass.

She couldn't see either of them. All that was visible,

through the film of green slime now drizzling down the

window, were the smouldering

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mounds of junk and the burning craters below them.

Then, with a heavy thump, a single hand came up and

grasped the helipod's nose. It was followed, seconds later, by

another, and then she saw the Doctor, pulling himself up. He

was covered in what looked all too much like snot, and was

far from amused. Bracing himself against the winds and the

jolting movements of the helipod, the Doctor leaned around

the nose of the craft. Reaching out with his hand and straining

with all his strength, he lifted Slipstream up to safety.

'Did he have to do that?' said Charlie, shaking his head.

'Yes,' Amy replied, and then, as if it were self-explanatory,

'He's the Doctor.'

A red light started flashing on the dashboard, and a loud

repeated buzzing sound filled the cabin.

'What's that?' asked Amy.

Charlie took in a deep breath and winced.

'We've lost engine one,' he said. 'We're going down.'

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Chapter

19

The helipod clipped the razor-sharp ridge above the valley, and

the jagged metal sliced through one of its runners like a hot

knife through butter, narrowly missing the Doctor's foot.

For just a fraction of a second, the craft seemed to recover,

rising up above the valley, its single working engine howling

with the effort, but then it plummeted again. The runners met

the ground with a terrific screech, showers of bright orange

sparks erupting in their wake.

The Doctor looked at Slipstream across the nose of the

helipod. Though only an hour or so earlier the man had tried

to kill him, the Doctor took no pleasure in seeing him look

quite this terrified.

'Hold on tight!' he shouted.

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With its runners still squealing against the embankment of

scrap metal, the helipod raced down the hillside like a

toboggan, every slight bump causing it to shudder violently.

Inside the cabin, Amy and Charlie were helpless at the

controls. There was nothing they could do now but wait for the

moment when they would reach the bottom.

That moment came a split second later, when the helipod

came to a sudden, crashing halt. The Doctor and Slipstream

were flung clear of the craft, tumbling end over end through the

dust and the refuse.

Landing awkwardly on his back, the Doctor coughed and

spluttered and groaned with pain before getting to his feet. The

dust and debris were beginning to settle, and he saw the helipod

resting nose-first in a mound of scrap. Its hatch creaked open,

and Amy and Charlie climbed out, both still dazed by the

impact.

'Where's Slipstream?' Amy asked, as she made her way

toward the Doctor.

Scanning the bottom of the valley, the Doctor saw

Slipstream lying face down and spread-eagled. He ran to his

side, and turned him over. He was still breathing, but his eyes

were closed.

'He's OK,' said the Doctor. 'Unconscious, but OK.'

'That's a shame,' said Charlie. 'Can't we just

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leave him here?'

'No!' shouted the Doctor and Amy in unison.

'Joke! It was a joke! Well... kind of.'

Charlie shook his head. Leaning forward he lifted

Slipstream from the ground with surprising strength and in one

swift move hoisted him onto his shoulder.

'Right!' said the Doctor, clapping his hands and rubbing

them together. 'The TARDIS!'

They ran through the valley, away from the upturned,

buckled wreckage of the helipod. All they could hear now was

the heavy, thunder-like boom of the comet's fragments

slamming into the Gyre; a distant, monstrous drumbeat that

rumbled and echoed through the night.

It crossed the Doctor's mind, for just one terrifying

moment, that when they got to the TARDIS they would find it

smashed into a million pieces at the bottom of a gaping crater.

Nothing was certain any more. His mind was plagued with the

image of the humans in their makeshift theatre, watching ancient

films on a sagging canvas screen. He replayed that moment

over and over again in his mind, trying to think of something

else he could have said or done, something that would have

convinced them to join him.

But then what would he have done? Would a hundred of

them have made it across the swamp full of Sollogs? Would

even two more have been

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able to cling to the helipod? As much as it pained him, he had

to face the fact that there was little he could have done.

At least, he told himself, Amy was OK. More than OK, in fact.

The little girl from Leadworth with the monster in her wall, the

little girl who had waited so patiently for his return, was

running across this terrifying alien landscape with a

confidence that took him almost by surprise. If leaving the

other humans here to meet their fate was a loss, then having

Amy beside him took some of the pain out of losing.

And the TARDIS was exactly where they had left it, and in

one piece.

When it first appeared around the corner, Amy turned to the

Doctor, beaming, and he smiled back, and together they ran

the rest of the journey, even faster than before. The Doctor

stood before the TARDIS, placing his hands on its bright blue

wooden exterior. He laughed with relief, and then he opened

the door and ran inside, and Amy followed.

'Home again, home again!' said the Doctor, gazing up at

the ceiling of the control room. 'Did you miss me? I missed

you...'

'Er... you do know that you're talking to it?' said Amy,

standing at his side.

'Oh yes. And she can hear every word.'

Behind them, Charlie was dragging Slipstream

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through the open door. When he was only a little way in,

he dropped him to the ground and gasped.

'It's... it's...'

Amy and the Doctor spoke as one: 'Bigger on the inside

than it is on the outside?'

Charlie nodded, and the Doctor and Amy gave each other a

'high five'. The Doctor turned to Amy and frowned.

'I'm not sure about that.'

'About what?'

'The high five.'

'Are you not?'

'No. Are you?'

'Hmm. Not really, no.'

'Right. I just thought I'd try it out for size, but now... No.

I'm not so sure.'

'OK. Well let's not do it again.'

'OK.'

'Right.' The Doctor turned to Charlie. 'Charlie... shut the

door. Amy... see if you can wake up Sleeping Beauty over

there. And let's get out of here.'

'Aye aye, captain! said Charlie, offering a mock salute and

slamming the door shut.

The Doctor rubbed his hands together and began

operating the controls of the TARDIS, pressing buttons and

pulling levers. The columns in its central console rose and

fell, glowing with

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an otherworldly brilliance, and the room was filled with a

metallic roar, the sound of time and space itself being folded

as easily as a child might fold a piece of paper.

In the valley of ancient scrap metal, and in a blaze of white

light and crackling bolts of electricity, the TARDIS vanished as

quickly as it had appeared.

Seconds later, in an eruption of fire and debris, the valley

itself was destroyed by another hurtling fragment from the

comet Schuler-Khan.

Manco sat at the base of the tower which had once been the

Herald of Nanking, and he looked up at the grinning, cartoon

face of Gobo. He thought about the Doctor, and his friends,

and even Slipstream, and he wondered if they had made it.

All around him, his people cowered before the tower on

their hands and knees and begged Gobo to save them. He

couldn't bring himself to tell them it was all a lie. They wouldn't

listen and, besides, what comfort would that bring them?

Better, he decided, to leave them clinging on to hope. After

all, for all the knowledge he now had, what hope had it given

him? As scared as those around him might be, he was the only

one who understood how truly desperate the situation was.

He thought now about the three Sittuun who had come to

their city, and told them about the 'comet'. He remembered

how desperate they had

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sounded, when they explained their mission and what would

happen if it failed. They had talked of a dozen neighbouring

worlds, places the humans had never heard of. Billions of lives.

It was a figure Manco had never even considered. Django had

simply laughed at them before passing his sentence, condemning

them to death.

And now Django was out there, somewhere, doing

everything he could to stop the Sittuun, mindless of what

would happen to all those other worlds, and all those other

people.

Manco was lost in these thoughts when all around him the

people began screaming. He looked around and saw them

gazing up, still wailing, and pointing at yet another blazing

fireball as it tore across the sky.

It smashed into the tower, straight into the colossal face of

Gobo, punching a hole straight through the enormous metal

structure and erupting from the other side in a great big ball of

fire and tumbling debris. The image of Gobo was no more, a

gaping, smouldering cavern all that was left. Shards of metal

rained down into the city's streets. With an echoing metallic

groan, the back end of the Herald of Nanking began to collapse,

falling away from the rest of the structure and crashing down

onto the city.

Its scale was so vast that it seemed to move quite slowly. It

hit the ground with a deafening

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crunch, tons of metal caving in and disintegrating on impact,

and a volcanic plume of dust was flung up into the air.

Manco could only look on in awe, while those around him

ran screaming from the dust cloud.

'Are you Manco?'

The voice stirred him from his thoughts, and he saw one of

Django's guards, sneering down at him. The air around them

was choking up with dust and smoke. Manco nodded.

'You're coming with us,' said the guard, grabbing Manco by

the arm and pulling him to his feet.

'But where are you taking me?' asked Manco.

'To Django.' The guard replied, with murderous intent.

First there was the noise: a harsh metallic grinding coming

from somewhere deep inside the ship. Then a red light on the

dashboard began to flash, and he heard the ship's voice, as

nonchalant as ever.

'Warning. Warning. Foreign object located in loading

bay. Warning. Warning. Foreign object located in loading

bay.'

Activating the ship's automatic controls, Captain Jamal got

up and ran from the cockpit down into the bowels of the

Golden Bough. There, between stacked containers, he found a

dark blue box with a white light flashing on its roof. The light

stopped and the loading bay was silent once more.

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Captain Jamal held his breath.

The door opened, and through it, for just one moment, the

Captain was sure he could see what looked like a cavernous

control room. But that was impossible. Wasn't it?

Then he saw his son.

Charlie stepped out of the blue box, looked at his father

and smiled - an awkward grin, as if he wasn't sure what his

father's reaction would be.

Captain Jamal ran to him, and threw his arms around him,

and held him as tightly as he could.

'I thought I'd lost you,' he gasped. 'I thought I'd never see

you again. What happened to Ahmed?'

'He didn't make it,' said Charlie, solemnly. 'What about Dr

Heeva? Where is she?'

Captain Jamal shook his head.

'Oh, Dad... I'm so sorry.'

There were other people stepping out of the blue box now.

First Amy, and then the stranger the Captain had seen with

them on the salt plain, the Doctor, came out, pulling an

unconscious Slipstream by his arms.

'Somebody give me a hand with this?' said the Doctor. 'For

a skinny bloke he's quite heavy.'

Captain Jamal nodded, and helped the Doctor carry

Slipstream to a corner of the loading bay, where they sat him

up against one of the crates.

'What happened?' asked the Captain.

'Long story! the Doctor told him. 'In a nutshell,

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Slipstream here's a bit of a bad egg.'

'A bit?' said Amy. 'He tried to kill you.'

'Well, yes... But he didn't. Thanks to you and Charlie.

Splendid work. Both of you. Now, Captain... We have to get

out of here. Like... Now.'

Captain Jamal nodded urgently, and ran from the loading

bay back to the cockpit with the Doctor following close behind.

He took to the ship's controls, deactivated the automatic pilot,

and hit the thrusters.

The Golden Bough tilted back, the view from its windows

turning from the sprawling grey landscape of the Gyre to the

vast canopy of space. The engines roared, the whole ship

shuddering, but something was wrong.

'What is it?' asked the Doctor. 'What's happening?'

'I don't know!' said Captain Jamal. 'Something's pulling us

back. We're moving backwards.'

'So put your foot down!'

'I'm trying that, Doctor, but it's no use. We're going to

crash.'

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20

Slipstream was still out cold. Amy had tried shaking him gently

to wake him, but it wasn't working. Even the jolting and

shuddering of the ship had done nothing to bring him around.

Eventually, losing patience, Charlie stepped forward and

slapped him hard across the face.

'Oh, that felt good,' he said.

Slipstream stirred.

'I swear... I was nowhere near the convent,' he mumbled

drowsily. Then he opened his eyes suddenly and sat up

straight. 'What? Where am I? What's happening?'

He looked around the loading bay, and at the TARDIS.

'We're here!' he said. 'We're on my ship? But

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how did we—'

'The Doctor! said Amy. 'He saved you. We could have left

you back on the Gyre.'

Slipstream glowered at her and then rubbed his eyes with

the palms of his hands. As he lifted himself up, clinging on to a

crate for balance, they heard the sound of clanking footsteps,

and the Doctor came running down from the cockpit.

'Slipstream!' he shouted.

'Oh, hello, Doctor. Seems I owe you a debt of gratitude, or

some such nonsense.'

'The Mymon Key! said the Doctor. 'Where is it?'

Slipstream frowned at him. 'I'm sorry, old chap. Have you

lost your marbles? We left it on the Gyre. Don't you remember?'

'The real Mymon Key! the Doctor snapped. 'You still have it.

Where is it?'

Amy and Charlie looked at one another in shock, before

turning back to Slipstream.

'What?' said Amy. 'But we... he... I mean... we saw it... and

he gave it to Manco... What's happening?'

Slipstream closed his eyes and groaned. 'You know

something, Doctor? You must be the most infuriatingly

astute man I have ever had the displeasure to meet.'

'So you do have it?' said the Doctor.

'Well what if I do? I'd say it was small reward for

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all I've had to endure in that dreadful place.'

'We're crashing, Slipstream. The Mymon Key is pulling us

back to the Gyre. That is why we had to leave it there. We can't

take it with us.'

Slipstream was backing away from them now, shaking his

head.

'Oh, no... I'm not falling for that one. You just want to keep

it for yourself, don't you? No... I don't think so, somehow.'

He had stepped back no further than three paces when he

found himself staring down the barrel of Charlie's blaster.

'Give it to him,' said Charlie. 'Give it to him, or I'll

redecorate this ship with bits of your head. How does that

sound?'

Slipstream groaned, his whole body practically vibrating

with anger. Begrudgingly he reached into his pocket and

produced the shining, golden orb.

'You can't say my copy wasn't a spot-on replica, though,' he

said, holding it in the palm of his hand. 'Six months in the

prison workshop, that took me. Damn you, Doctor.'

The Doctor snatched the Mymon Key from Slipstream's

grasp.

'Right,' he said. 'Only one thing for it. I'm going back to the

Gyre.'

'What?' gasped Amy.

'I have to,' said the Doctor. 'If we just jettison it, there's no

way of guaranteeing it'll go back to

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the Gyre. It could just hover in space, and then all this... the

Gyre, the shipwrecks... would start all over again. I have to

take it back myself. I have to finish this.'

'Are you mad?' said Charlie. 'The bomb detonates in less than

fifteen minutes. You'll never make it.'

The Doctor looked at them, his drawn expression of quiet

contemplation turning rapidly into a smile.

'Really?' he said. 'Just watch me.'

They dragged him, holding him by the arms, through the

ruins of the city, past smouldering lumps of debris and the

burnt-out shells of houses like rotten, hollow teeth. Some

streets were impassable, choked up with thick black smoke,

and every building engulfed in flames. Others were filled

with people, many of them screaming helplessly at the sky as

everything around them burned.

It was the end of the world.

Even Django's palace was no longer there. Most of it had

been pulverised when the tower collapsed. At least a quarter of

the city had been destroyed in an instant, and the fires were

beginning to spread. Flickering orange tongues of flame, some

of them hundreds of feet tall, arced up over the ramshackle

dwellings, scorching everything in their path. Pieces of the

shattered tower were still falling away

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NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

from what was left of it. Manco watched as a panel perhaps

fifteen metres across buckled from the heat of the flames, its

rivets popping out of their fixtures like bullets, and then the

panel came falling down, tumbling towards the streets and

landing with a deafening clang.

They entered a dark runnel that led into the heart of the

city's oldest depths, passing through the Chamber of Stories on

their way. The audience still sat before the screen, which was

blank now, the projector having been smashed into pieces by

the Elder, or perhaps one of his assistants.

'Be not afraid! said the Elder, his stentorian voice booming

out across the chamber. 'For the Star is almost with us. Gobo

the Great, creator of us all, is coming...'

In the fleeting seconds before they dragged him on into

another tunnel, Manco looked out at the congregation, and saw

the expressions of fear and hope on their faces. It was almost a

relief to be taken away from that place, so he wouldn't have to

see them again.

'What is it? What's wrong?'

The TARDIS shook forcefully, and the Doctor struggled to

stay upright, clinging onto the console with all his strength. The

glowing columns rose and fell, but with jerking, unsteady

movements and the familiar, ancient groan of its drive sounded

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choppy and distorted. Little wonder, the Doctor thought, that

ships had crashed on the Gyre and been unable to leave. And it

was all thanks to the Mymon Key.

When it finally came to a halt, things were far from still. The

ground was shaking, and from beyond the TARDIS's doors he

heard the thump thump thump of Schuler-Khan's fragments

slamming into the Gyre, more frequently than before. There

was now barely a second between each impact.

He ran from the console, opened the door, and stepped out

onto the edge of the salt plain. What had once been a pristine

lake of glistening white crystals was now a blackened landscape

of burning craters, billowing pillars of smoke rising up into the

sky; the clouds above were lit up orange by the flames.

And there, only a few metres from where he stood, was the

swamp. There were fires there, too, and the corrugated plastic

tubes were melting from the heat. Somewhere in amongst the

inferno, the Doctor could hear the sound of screaming Sollogs.

The Doctor took the Mymon Key from his pocket, and he

looked down at its gleaming, polished surface. Once, the

Hexion Geldmongers had been a great species, their empire

spanning whole galaxies. Now, their civilisation was no more

than a footnote in history, and this tiny golden orb was all that

remained of them; the last memento of

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an entire race.

All that power. There were so many things he could do with

something as powerful as the Mymon Key. So many things he

could put right. With an object that powerful he would be

invincible. Nobody would dare challenge him. He could take

the TARDIS through black holes, crossing into parallel

dimensions without worry. As small and inanimate as it was,

the Mymon Key was the key to the universe itself.

No. The Mymon Key was too powerful for anyone to own,

even the Doctor. He had to place it somewhere beyond

temptation.

He closed his eyes and held his breath, and then, in one swift

move, he hurled it into the swamp.

'He's done what?'

Captain Jamal stood from the controls of the Golden

Bough, pacing back and forth and shaking his head in disbelief.

'We have to wait for him,' said Amy. 'He's coming back.'

'Oh, you think so?' said the Captain. 'That world is being

smashed into pieces by the comet. The Nanobomb detonates

in ten minutes. He's insane. We can fly out of here now. The

ship's working fine now that he's taken that... that key, or

whatever it is, away.'

'Exactly. And that's why we have to wait for

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him. It's only because of him that we can fly out of here.'

Captain Jamal looked from Amy to his son, who stood near

the stairs leading down into the loading bay.

'Dad! said Charlie. 'Please...'

Captain Jamal sighed. 'Very well! he said. 'He's got eight

minutes. If he isn't back by then we're leaving.'

Amy closed her eyes, breathing out slowly. "Thank you.'

She about-turned, and made her way past Charlie, back

down the stairs into the loading bay. There was no way she

was leaving without the Doctor. Not now, not after all that

had happened to them that day. She had waited a very long

time for him to come back to her - fourteen years in all - and

while his timekeeping might leave a lot to be desired, she was

pretty sure he would not have left without her.

Their escape from the Gyre, and from this distant future, was

so close she could practically taste it. No... She had made up

her mind. She wasn't going without him, and so she would wait

in the loading bay for the TARDIS to return.

When she got there she found it empty. She hadn't

expected the TARDIS to be back so soon, but she had

expected to see Slipstream. Where had he gone?

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Tiptoeing silently across the room, she glanced behind each

stack of containers, and was about to call for Charlie when she

felt an arm around her throat, and the cold metal of a gun

against the side of her head.

'You stupid people never learn,' Slipstream whispered in

her ear. 'Never leave the prisoner unattended, and for pity's

sake don't leave him in the place where he keeps all his guns.'

Before she could scream, he clasped his hand over her

mouth, and began dragging her back across the loading bay.

In the far corner, near the ship's rear, was a small circular

hatch, and Slipstream pressed his foot down onto a lever at its

side. The hatch opened with a hiss, and then with one violent

shove he pushed Amy down through the porthole.

She landed with a thump in a tiny, cramped space, like the

inside of a ball. There were two small chairs, and a panel of

controls, along with a tiny circular window through which she

saw the burning landscape of the Gyre far below. Slipstream

jumped in after her, still brandishing his gun, and he quickly

set about flicking switches. The lights on the miniature

dashboard flickered into life, and the hatch door closed behind

them with a bang.

'What are you doing?' Amy shouted.

'That Key was mine, damn it!' hissed Slipstream, still

punching keys. 'Do you have any idea how

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long I've planned this? Do you? I'm not letting some

time-travelling do-gooder and his silly little girlfriend ruin

everything. Not today.'

'I'm not his girlfriend, actually! snapped Amy, but then her

voice was drowned out by the sound of a familiar and listless

pre-recorded voice. 'Initiating escape sequence. Please

authorise.' Slipstream slammed his fist down on a bright red

button, and all at once Amy felt her stomach lurch. Then they

were falling, away from the hull of the Golden Bough, rumbling

through the air, end over end, and hurtling back towards the

surface of the Gyre.

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21

Shielding his eyes against the heat and the light of the flames, the

Doctor watched as the Mymon Key sank down into the green

waters of the swamp. In the last few seconds before it vanished,

its polished gold surface shone out from the murky sludge, and

then it was gone. Satisfied that it was done, that it was finished,

the Doctor turned his back on the swamp and started running

back towards the TARDIS.

He felt the ground beneath his feet tremble as, somewhere

in the distance, another ball of rock hit the Gyre, but still he ran,

and he was almost through the door and back inside the TARDIS

when he saw something falling from the sky. For once, it was not

a fragment of the comet but something small and

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man-made, and it descended towards the Gyre suspended

from a parachute. As it got closer, the Doctor realised what it

was.

It was an escape pod.

It only took another second or two for him to work out

what that meant. There was only one person crazy - or

greedy - enough to come back to this place.

The pod landed on the salt plain with a heavy thump, the

parachute stretched out behind it on lengths of rope, bouncing

and rippling in the wind. All around it the surface of the salt

plain was being torn up by falling embers, their sudden, fast

descent marked by a scream, like the sound of rockets being

fired. Pieces of shrapnel, torn up from the Gyre's surface,

were flying in all directions, making the Doctor's journey all

the more perilous. As he ran towards the pod, he shielded his

eyes against the flying shards of metal and rock, and the

stinging spray of salt crystals. But still he ran.

The pod's hatch opened with a hiss, and he saw Amy

climbing out. She landed a little awkwardly on her knees, and

looked back over her shoulder as Slipstream clambered out

after her, a blaster in his hand.

'Slipstream!' shouted the Doctor, struggling to be heard

above the howling winds and the vociferous rumbling of the

comet fragments as they fell. When Slipstream saw him, he

smiled callously

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and grabbed Amy, his arm around her neck and the blaster

pointed at her head.

'Don't try anything, Doctor,' he said. 'Just give me the key.'

'I'm afraid I can't do that, Slipstream.'

'Oh, really? Well that is a shame. Doesn't do my reputation

much good... shooting young girls. Gives a chap an awful lot of

bad press. Just give me the key, Doctor...'

'I can't. I don't have it.'

Slipstream seethed, his eyes bulging with agitation.

'Don't... have it?' he snarled. 'What do you mean, you don't

have it?'

'I mean I don't have it,' said the Doctor, rolling up his

sleeves and turned his pockets inside-out, one by one. The

only thing he had to show was the sonic screwdriver. 'I've

thrown it away. See?'

Slipstream rolled his eyes and gasped for air, his anger now

reaching a level of hysteria. He pushed Amy away with a

violent shove and aimed his gun at the Doctor.

'You did what?’ he screamed.

'I threw it into the swamp.'

'Oh, well, wasn't that grown-up of you, Doctor? Poor little

Time Lord can't have it, so no one else can.'

He was marching towards the Doctor, still brandishing the

gun, but then he pushed the Doctor

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out of his way and carried on stomping towards the swamp.

'Slipstream... Don't!' the Doctor cried. 'Even if you do find

it, what will you do then? You can't escape from this place with

the Mymon Key.'

'I'll find a way!' Slipstream roared, without looking back.

'Dirk Slipstream always finds a way!'

Amy ran to the Doctor's side, pulling gently on his arm.

'Doctor... We have to stop him... Those things are in there.'

But Slipstream had already begun wading his way into the

swamp, the green water rising up past his ankles and his knees,

until he was waist-deep in it.

'Slipstream!' the Doctor cried, running towards the swamp's

edge. 'Come back! You'll never make it!'

'Won't I, Doctor?' yelled Slipstream, pushing aside the

tightly packed plastic tubes, moving further and further away

from them. 'Just watch me!'

He had disappeared now, lost in the forest of melting black

plastic, and then the Doctor and Amy heard a familiar screech:

the sound of the Sollogs. The swamp was lit up with the flare of

Slipstream's blaster, and the sound of each shot rang out, for a

moment drowning out even the noise of the Gyre's destruction.

From somewhere deep inside the

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swamp, Slipstream screamed, still firing his gun, and then the

gunshots and the screaming came to an abrupt end.

The Doctor looked away, his eyes closed. He put his arm

around Amy's shoulder.

'Come on,' he said. 'Let's go.'

They ran across the salt plain to the TARDIS, neither of

them speaking. The Doctor slammed the door behind them

before leaping across the room to the console. Even with the

doors shut, they could still hear the Gyre being smashed apart in

its final, calamitous moments.

The glowing column began to rise and fall, and the room

was filled with the sound of its metallic yawn, intertwined

with a single, shrill tone that rose in pitch. The Doctor looked

at Amy across the console and saw her expression of relief.

There were no words that could properly express how glad he

was to have her safe, and that they'd both got away from the

Gyre in one piece. All he could do was smile at her, and Amy

smiled back.

The sounds of the TARDIS died down, and they stepped

out through its narrow door into the loading bay of the Golden

Bough.

'You know, that still freaks me out a little bit,' said Amy.

'What does?'

'Well... The doors close and you're in one place. And then

you open them again, and you're

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somewhere completely different.'

'A bit like an elevator, then?'

'No. It's nothing like an elevator. I mean, at least with an

elevator you're in the same place, you're just on a different

floor. With this... You're on a different planet. Or in a different

year.'

'Yes. Well... that's kind of what the TARDIS does.'

'I know that... But it's still weird.'

They left the loading bay and climbed up its staircase to

the cockpit, where Captain Jamal and Charlie were waiting for

them. When he saw Amy, Charlie beamed and let out a long

sigh of relief.

'You're OK!' he said.

Amy nodded.

'And Slipstream?'

The Doctor shook his head.

'Good work, Doctor,' said Captain Jamal, and then, a little

sarcastically. 'So do I have your permission to get us out of

here?'

'Yes you do,' said the Doctor. 'You really do.'

'Ah, Wordslinger...' Django purred as his guards dragged

Manco into the dungeon.

With the palace destroyed, Manco had been taken deep

under the city, back to the dungeon where, until only a few

hours ago, he had been a prisoner. It felt strangely appropriate

that it should end there.

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Django was sitting on his throne next to the Sittuun's bomb.

Manco glared at his leader with resentment and anger, but

he bit his lip and remained silent.

'Do you know what this is?' asked Django, placing one

bony, almost skeletal hand on the bomb's outer casing.

Manco nodded. 'It's the bomb,' he said quietly.

'That's right,' said Django. 'It is the bomb. It is the work of

the Bad. There are words on the bomb, Manco. Words written in

the language of the Olden Ones. Instructions.'

Manco looked down to where Django was stroking the

bomb, as if it were some kind of pet. He saw the words

'DEACTIVATION PROCEDURE' written in blood-red print,

and next to those words a small clock, on which he saw the

numbers counting down.

00:01:20...

00:01:19...

00:01:18...

'You must disarm the bomb, Manco. Disarm the bomb and

we shall all be saved from this world. Gobo is coming.'

Manco shook his head. 'It's not true,' he said. 'None of it is

true. If we deactivate that bomb the star... the Star with the

Green Tail... it'll hit our world, and destroy so many others.'

Django's eyes grew wide and his lips curled

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back from his greying, jagged teeth.

'There are no other worlds!' he roared. 'There is only the

Earth, the creation of Gobo!'

'That's not true! said Manco, softly. 'The man, the Doctor...

He told me so. He told me I was right. We aren't from here,

Django. We never were.'

'I have no time for this heresy. Disarm the bomb, Manco.'

One of the guards now stood at Manco's side, a sword

against his throat, but Manco shook his head.

'No,' he said. 'Because I saw what the Doctor tried to do.

He tried to save us. He stood there, in the Chamber of Stories,

and he told people the truth, but they wouldn't listen. He is a

good man, better than any of us, and it broke his heart. There

were children in that room, Django. Our children. And your

words, and your lies... You've condemned them all to death.

No more should have to die because of us, because of what

we've become, what you and those before you turned us

into. It ends here and now, Django. You can threaten me with

weapons all you like. I'm unarmed. I'm not a warrior... I'm the

Wordslinger. My only weapon is a word, and that word is

"No".'

Django rose up from his throne; his eyes bulging with

impotent rage, the tendons and veins in his scrawny neck

sticking out like the grooves in an ancient tree trunk, and

spittle foaming in the

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corners of his mouth.

'I command you to disarm the bomb!' he howled.

Manco laughed.

'And what are you going to do, Django? Kill me? You can't

hurt me any more than you already have. We're dead already,

and we have been for a very long time.'

Manco looked once more to the bomb, and the numbers

counting down on its display.

00:00:04...

00:00:03...

Django let out a terrifying, angry roar, and leapt towards

Manco with his arms flailing wildly, but Manco just closed his

eyes and smiled.

00:00:02...

00:00:01...

She had expected a noise; a tremendous bang that would

deafen her and shake every bone in her body, but there was

nothing. There wasn't even a flash of light, or a mushroom

cloud, or anything else Amy might have expected from a bomb.

The explosion, if it could be called that, was silenced by

their distance, and by the vacuum of space, and instead of a

flash or an inferno all she saw was a darkness; a great gaping

darkness that opened up like an aperture in the heart of the

Gyre. In only a few seconds this darkness spread

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its way out across the bleak, metallic landscape, devouring

everything in its wake. Mountain ranges disappeared in the time

it took her to blink. The salt plains, the canyon, the desert of

glass, all vanished in a fraction of a second.

As the Gyre evaporated before their eyes, all that was left,

barely visible against the infinite black canvas of space, was a

vague haze, as translucent as a fine mist. The comet,

Schuler-Khan, travelling at fifty kilometres a second, punched

through the haze, causing it to swirl and spiral in its wake, but

nothing more.

Captain Jamal and Charlie let out a triumphant cheer, the

Captain patting his son on the back, and putting his arm around

his shoulder.

'We did it, Charlie! he said. 'We actually did it.'

The Doctor was quiet. He had taken the co-pilot's seat but

hadn't watched the Gyre's destruction with the others. It made

Amy feel almost guilty for watching it herself. After all, it

wasn't a firework display. They had just watched a whole

world being destroyed.

As she looked at the Time Lord, her expression crumpled

into a sympathetic frown, and she placed her hand on his

shoulder.

'Hey... are you OK?' she asked.

The Doctor looked up at her, as if snapping out of a

daydream.

'What's that?'

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'I said, "Are you OK?"'

He thought about this for a moment, his eyebrows

bunching together, and then he looked at her again.

'Are you OK?' he asked.

'Yeah. I'm OK,' replied Amy.

'Then yes... I'm OK.'

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22

The Doctor looked out from the windows of the Golden Bough at

nothing but the twinkling stars, the nearest sun, and a handful of

shining planets, all of them millions of miles away. With the

destruction of the Gyre not one, but two civilisations had been

erased from the pages of history, for ever. The descendants of the

Herald of Nanking's crew, who had survived for hundreds of

thousands of years on that remote and barren world, were

gone, as was the Mymon Key. Soon enough they would all be

forgotten and never spoken of or thought about again. This was

the rhythm of the universe, as predictable as a metronome.

Civilisations, great and small, come and go; some are

remembered for a while, but all of them forgotten in time.

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The Doctor was joined eventually by Captain Jamal, who

stepped into the cockpit and took to the pilot's seat.

'Well, Doctor... I don't think I can even begin to tell you how

grateful I am.'

The Doctor frowned at him. 'Really?' he said. 'Why?'

'Well... Everything you did back there. We'd never have

made it without you.'

The Doctor sighed. 'Do you think so?' he said. 'You should

be thanking your son. He got me out of quite a scrape back

there. And he was the one who flew us back to the TARDIS. I

can't say I did a great deal, to tell you the truth.'

'Nonsense,' said the Captain, smiling softly. 'Neither

Charlie nor I had even heard of the Mymon Key. Without you it

would have stayed on the ship, with Slipstream, and we would

have crashed. I lost enough crew on this mission. I couldn't bear

losing my son too.'

The Doctor nodded, but his expression was still morose.

Captain Jamal scrutinised him, as if trying to read his thoughts.

'You're thinking about the humans, aren't you?' he asked.

'Yes! replied the Doctor. 'There were so many of them. And

there was nothing I could do.'

The Captain nodded sympathetically and sighed.

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'While we were on the Gyre! he said, 'I told myself the

humans were just savages. They certainly acted like savages. Most

of them, anyway. And I told myself they were savages because it

made my job easier. When they turned down our offer of help I

knew that there were only two ways it could end. We could

detonate the bomb and destroy the Gyre, or the Gyre would be

hit by a comet, and pieces of it would be flung out across this

entire system.'

He pointed out through the window, at one of the distant,

shining planets: a tiny speck in the distance which looked a

pale shade of blue.

'See that planet? That's our home world. There are a billion

Sittuun there. My family, my friends... they are all there.

Everything and everyone I've ever known. Our projections

showed a ninety eight per cent chance of it being hit, should

Schuler-Khan impact with the Gyre. The loss of life would have

been catastrophic. But even with that in mind, and even after I'd

learned to think of the humans as savages, I couldn't bring

myself to do it. I sat there, with the bomb, but I couldn't set it.

Tell me something, Doctor... We saw a signal, in Morse code,

from the human city. Was that you?'

The Doctor nodded.

'I thought so,' said Captain Jamal, smiling. 'Well that signal

probably saved our lives. Most of our lives, anyway. You

know something, Doctor? For one who looks so young, you

have an air about

237

DOCTOR WHO

you. Like a man who's seen the universe several times over.

I can't quite describe it. You've done this sort of thing before?'

'Yes. I suppose so.'

'And do things always go to plan?'

'Sometimes. Not always.'

'And this time?'

The Doctor shrugged and shook his head.

'Then I'd suggest, Doctor, that you think about it this way.

Today you saved three lives several times over. Because of

your warning, the bomb was activated and the Gyre destroyed.

One world has been destroyed, but another twelve in this

system are safe. The most important choices that we make in

life are never the easiest. You're a good man, Doctor, and

you did everything you could. We all did.'

'So I suppose you'll be going soon?' said Charlie.

He and Amy were in the loading bay, sat on crates

either side of the TARDIS. Amy hadn't spoken in some

time, and the silence was beginning to feel awkward.

'Yeah,' she replied. 'Soon.'

'Right. And this thing really can travel in time?'

Amy nodded.

'So you could go anywhere?'

'Yeah. Just about. Although I'll have to go home sooner

or later. I can't keep putting that off.

238

NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

I've got such a big day tomorrow. If you can call it tomorrow.

I mean... It's not really tomorrow. It's a day two hundred and

fifty thousand years ago. And between you and me, I'm having

such a hard time getting my head around this stuff. It's like

jetlag. But really, really bad jetlag. Like, when you get jetlag

your body thinks it's nine o'clock in the morning, but it's three

o'clock and everyone else is still asleep. Right now my brain

thinks it's the twenty-first century. I've run around a spaceship

in my nightie. How weird is that?'

Charlie laughed. 'Yeah. That is kind of weird. So... Have

you got anyone back home?'

'What do you mean?'

'Well... Like, a boyfriend or anything?'

'It's a bit more complicated than that,' she told him,

chewing her lip anxiously.

'Oh. I see. Only... You know, if you and the Doctor were

planning on hanging around for a little while, maybe coming

back to our planet for a bit, I thought, maybe...'

'Were you about to ask me out on a date?'

Charlie looked down at the ground, his cheeks turning a

funny shade of turquoise. He could feel himself blushing, but

was unable to stop it.

'Oh my God! You were!' said Amy. 'You were asking me

out on a date! But... you're an alien!

'Er... so are you,' said Charlie. 'From my perspective, I

mean. I'm sorry. Forget I said

239

DOCTOR WHO

anything. I understand. It's the no-nose thing, isn't it? Lots of

Earth girls freak out with the no-nose thing. And that's fine. To

be honest, I find eyebrows a little bit weird. I mean... It looks

like your eyes are wearing tiny little wigs or something.'

Amy started to laugh and couldn't stop. She laughed until

there were tears rolling down her cheeks, doubled over and

hugging herself and almost falling from the crate. Charlie felt

himself blushing again.

'What?' said Charlie. 'Well they do. I'm sorry.'

Tiny little wigs.. .'Amy laughed. That's... that's hilarious.'

She wiped the tears from her eyes and took a deep breath,

trying her best to compose herself.

'Oh, this is still so weird. I haven't laughed that hard in

quite a while. I wasn't sure I still could... after that place.'

And now the smile faded from her face, and she looked

thoughtful and pensive once more.

'I just keep thinking about the people who were there,' she

said. 'I mean... I'm a human, and they were humans, but they

seemed so different, when we first saw them. And then I

started noticing things, when we were in their city. Familiar

things. The things they were saying and doing. And I

thought, hang on... they're not that different. They're not that

different at all. I mean... All the wars and things that happen

back on Earth. All

240

NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

the violence. How are we any better? And is that all we're really

good at, at the end of the day? Just being horrible to each other?

Certainly seems like it sometimes.'

Suddenly, Amy looked very sad and troubled, but Charlie

knew exactly what to do. He got up from the crate, and crossed

the loading bay to the far corner, where the Sittuun's

possessions and supplies were stacked. He opened up what

looked like a silver briefcase and took out a small white plastic

cube. Placing the cube on top of the crate next to Amy's, he hit

a button, and seconds later the loading bay was filled with the

sound of an old, 1940s big band and then a woman's voice,

singing: 'Let's build a stairway to the stars...'

'What's that?' asked Amy, scrunching up her nose.

'That...' said Charlie, 'is Ella Fitzgerald. And she was human.

Brilliant, isn't it?'

'Well... It's not really my kind of music. It's like the kind of

thing somebody's grandmother would listen to. But... yeah... I

suppose it's all right.'

'All right? All right? It's beautiful. We don't have anything

like this back home. We don't have songs. We don't even have

music. When I think about humans, Amy... I don't think about

wars or anything like that. I think about this. This is what you

lot are capable of. This and so much more. And it's beautiful.'

241

DOCTOR WHO

Amy laughed softly.

'I guess! she said. 'You're not going to ask me to dance, are

you?'

Charlie shook his head and smiled. 'No! he said. 'Sittuun

don't dance.'

Just then they heard the clanking sound of footsteps on the

stairs and a familiar voice, singing along: 'The moon will guide

us I As we go drifting along...' The Doctor stepped down into

the loading bay.

'Ella Fitzgerald!' he said. 'You know, I once jammed with

her at the Roseland Ballroom. I played recorder. Didn't go

down too well with the audience. Or her, for that matter.

Anyway... Are you ready?'

Amy nodded. 'As I'll ever be.'

'Very well! said the Doctor. 'In that case... to the TARDIS!'

He pointed at the little blue box with a dramatic flourish and

then frowned.

'Was that a bit much?'

'Yeah! said Amy. 'It was a bit. Don't do it again.'

'Right. OK. Funnily enough, it didn't feel the right last

time I tried it.' He turned to Charlie. 'Goodbye, Charlie.'

'Goodbye, Doctor.'

With a sad, crumpled smile, Charlie looked at Amy.

242

NIGHT OF THE HUMANS

'Bye, then! he said.

'Yeah! said Amy. 'Bye.'

And then she reached up and gave him a single kiss on the

cheek. With his face once again turning an embarrassed shade

of turquoise, Charlie laughed nervously, and gave a small

bashful wave as the Doctor and Amy stepped into the

TARDIS and closed the door behind them.

Moments later the light on its roof began to flash and the

loading bay was filled with that noise, like the sound Charlie

imagined a galaxy might make as it turns. First the TARDIS

became translucent, the wall behind it appearing as a faint

outline, and then the blue box and its two passengers were

gone, leaving Charlie alone with the music.

243

BEAGLE XXI!OBJECT 556C INTERNAL INQUIRY Final

Conclusions

Though a thorough cross-system investigation found

no records of 'the Doctor' (presumed human) or ^Amy

Pond' (presumed human), both Captain Jamal

al-Jehedeh and Lt Baasim 'Charlie' al-Jehedeh

testify that, without their assistance, escape from

Object 556/C would have been impossible, and the

mission would have failed.

It is the decision of this board that all

information regarding the human inhabitants of

Object 556/C and the final fate of the Herald of

Nanking should remain classified, in the

245

DOCTOR WHO

interest of Human-Sittuun relations. The death of

the wanted criminal Dirk Slipstream has been

reported to both the Volag-Noc facility in Mutter's

Spiral and the Intergalactic Crime Bureau.

It is this board's recommendation that all crew

members of the Beagle XXI, surviving and deceased,

are awarded the highest commendation the IEA can

offer for their bravery and commitment: the Silver

Helix. We would also recommend that Cpt. Jamal

al-Jehedeh and Lt Baasim 'Charlie' al-Jehedeh are

promoted forthwith, to the ranks of Admiral and

Lieutenant Commander respectively.

'The Doctor' and 'Amy Pond' are awarded the

Civilian Cross in absentia.

File status: Closed.

246

Acknowledgements

Big thanks to everyone at BBC Wales and BBC Books who

helped along the way, including Gary Russell, Justin Richards,

Steve Tribe and Edward Russell. Special thanks also .to Lord

Tinlegs (aka EF), who listened to the story in instalments, and

to the writers and other animals with whom I discussed ideas,

including Joe Lidster, Scott Handcock and Oli Smith. Lastly, a

posthumous thank you to Vaughan Williams's Sinfonia Antartica,

which became the soundtrack to this book as I was writing it. If

you've not heard it, I believe it is readily available on LP and

cassette.

247

Coming soon from BBC Audiobooks:

by James Goss

When the TARDIS arrives in Smyrna in 1929, the Doctor

and Amy find themselves in the middle of an

archaeological dig. Soon a terrible chain of events is set in

motion, and the Doctor is confronted with an ancient evil...

by Stephen Cole

On Orkney in the near future, the construction of dozens of

new electricity pylons is met with local resistance. Just as

the Doctor and Amy arrive, the protestors are terrified to

see the pylons come to life and begin to walk...

Available on CD from www.bbcshop.com and all good

booksellers. Pre-order your copy now!

Also available to download from www.bbcaudiozone.com and

other audio digital retailers.

Available now from BBC Books:

by Justin Richards

£6.99 ISBN 978 1 846 07200 0

An astronaut in full spacesuit appears out of thin air in a

busy shopping centre. Maybe it's a publicity stunt.

A photo shows a well-dressed woman in a red coat lying

dead at the edge of a crater on the dark side of the moon,

beside her beloved dog Poochie'. Maybe it's a hoax.

But as the Doctor and Amy find out, these are just

minor events in a sinister plan to take over every human

being on Earth. The plot centres on a secret military base

on the moon - that's where Amy and the TARDIS are.

The Doctor is back on Earth, and without the TARDIS

there's no way he can get to the moon to save Amy and

defeat the aliens.

Or is there? The Doctor discovers one last great secret

that could save humanity: Apollo 23.

A thrilling, all-new adventure featuring the Doctor and Amy,

as played by Matt Smith and Karen Gillan in the spectacular hit

series from BBC Television.

Available now from BBC Books:

by Brian Minchin

£6.99 ISBN 978 1 846 07987 0

New York - one of the greatest cities on 21st century

Earth... But what's going on in the Museum? And is that

really a Woolly Mammoth rampaging down Broadway?

An ordinary day becomes a time of terror, as Ice Age

creatures come back to life, and the Doctor and Amy meet a

new and deadly enemy. The vicious Army of the Vykoid are

armed to the teeth and determined to enslave the human

race. Even though they're only three inches high.

With the Vykoid army swarming across Manhattan and

sealing it from the world with a powerful alien forcefield,

Amy has just 24 hours to find the Doctor and save the city. If

she doesn't, the people of Manhattan will be taken to work

in the doomed asteroid mines of the Vykoid home planet.

But as time starts to run out, who can she trust? And how

far will she have to go to free New York from the Forgotten

Army?

A thrilling, all-new adventure featuring the Doctor and Amy,

as played by Matt Smith and Karen Gillan in the spectacular hit

series from BBC Television.

Coming soon from BBC Books:

by Steve Tribe

£12.99 ISBN 978 1 846 07986 3

The inside scoop on 900 years of travel aboard the

Doctor's famous time machine.

Everything you need to know about the TARDIS is here

- where it came from, where it's been, how it works, and how

it has changed since we first encountered it in that East

London junkyard in 1963.

Including photographs, design drawings and concept

artwork from different eras of the series, this handbook

explores the ship's endless interior, looking inside its

wardrobe and bedrooms, its power rooms and sick bay,

its corridors and cloisters, and revealing just how the

show's production teams have created the dimensionally

transcendental police box, inside and out.

The TARDIS Handbook is the essential guide to the best

ship in the universe.

Coming soon from BBC Books:

by Gary Russell

£6.99 ISBN 978 1 846 07988 7

An archaeological dig in 1936 unearths relics of another

time... And - as the Doctor and Amy realise - another place.

Another planet. But if Enola Porter, noted adventuress, has

really found evidence of an alien civilisation, how come she

isn't famous? How come Amy's never heard of her? Come to

that, since she's been travelling with him for a while now,

how come Amy's never even heard of the Doctor?

As the ancient spaceship reactivates, the Doctor

discovers that nothing and no one can be trusted. The

things that seem most real could actually be illusion.

Obvious illusions could be real - and deadly.

Who can the Doctor trust when no one is what they

seem? And how can he defeat an enemy who can bend

reality itself to their will? For the Doctor and Amy -and all

of humanity - the buried secrets of the past are very much a

threat to the present...

A thrilling, all-new adventure featuring the Doctor and Amy,

as played by Matt Smith and Karen Gillan in the spectacular hit

series from BBC Television.

Coming soon from BBC Books:

by Oli Smith

£6.99 ISBN 978 1 846 07989 4

Colorado, 1981. The Doctor and Amy arrive in

Appletown - an idyllic village in the remote American

desert where the townsfolk go peacefully about their

suburban routines. But when two more strangers arrive,

things begin to change. The first is a mad scientist

-whose warnings are cut short by an untimely and brutal

death. The second is the Doctor...

As death falls from the sky, the Doctor is trapped. The

TARDIS is damaged, and the Doctor finds he is living

backwards through time. With Amy being hunted

through the suburban streets of the Doctor's own future and

getting farther away with every passing second, he must

unravel the secrets of Appletown before time runs out...

A thrilling, all-new adventure featuring the Doctor and Amy, as

played by Matt Smith and Karen Gillan in the spectacular hit

series from BBC Television.

Coming soon from BBC Books:

by Una McCormack

£6.99 ISBN 978 1 846 07990 0

In the city-state of Geath, the King lives in a golden hall,

and the people want for nothing. Everyone is happy and

everyone is rich. Or so it seems.

When the Doctor and Amy look beneath the surface, they

discover a city of secrets. In dark corners, strange creatures

are stirring. At the heart of the hall, a great metal dragon

oozes gold. Then the Herald appears, demanding the

return of her treasure - the 'glamour'... And next come the

gunships.

The battle for possession of the glamour has begun, and

only the Doctor and Amy can save the people of the city

from being destroyed in the crossfire of an ancient civil

war.

But will the King surrender his new-found wealth? Or

will he fight to keep it...?

A thrilling, all-new adventure featuring the Doctor and Amy, as

played by Matt Smith and Karen Gillan in the spectacular hit

series from BBC Television.

Coming soon from BBC Books:

by Justin Richards and Mike Collins

£16.99 ISBN 978 1 846 07984 9

Station 7 is where the Earth Forces send all the equipment

captured in their unceasing war against the Daleks. It's

where Dalek technology is analysed and examined. It's

where the Doctor and Amy have just arrived. But somehow

the Daleks have found out about Station 7 - and there's

something there that they want back.

With the Doctor increasingly worried about the direction

the Station's research is taking, the commander of Station 7

knows he has only one possible, desperate, defence. Because

the last terrible secret of Station 7 is that they don't only store

captured Dalek technology. It's also a prison. And the only

thing that might stop a Dalek is another Dalek...

An epic, full-colour graphic novel featuring the Doctor and Amy, as

played by Matt Smith and Karen Gillan in the spectacular hit series

from BBC Television.