THE CITIES OF GOLD

Light refracted through the cut-crystal panes, sending shards of broken rainbow leaping about the small, enclosed space of the prayer chamber. Kalton knelt, closing his eyes to the beauty of the scattered beams, centring his thoughts instead on the reasons for his presence here. He had come to pray; to commune with the distant power the architect of this room had believed was in control of his existence; to ask for help in the difficult pregnancy of his wife, Taylinn. She had been carrying the baby for so long now that birth was very likely imminent, and yet for so much of that time she had been in excruciating pain. She screamed in agony whenever she was conscious, crying his name in a voice that made his blood run cold. Her beautiful, wide green eyes had been screwed tightly shut for so long that he had almost forgotten how they had once looked at him; filled with love, and hope for their recent marriage.

"Take care of the baby. Deliver him to us safe and well..." Kalton knew that the baby was to be a boy. He had seen the test results early in the pregnancy, before the troubles had started and before his wife had begun to experience the pains. She didn't know. She hadn't wanted the surprise to be spoilt, and he had kept it from her faithfully. He had even found a book of girls' names, to go with the book of boys' names he had bought, so that she could choose for either eventuality. It had been so much fun to watch her read through them, to play with the sound of each name on her tongue. Now the only words that she spoke were distorted through pain, and she no longer cared anything about the baby's name. All that she wanted was for him to be born, so that she could try to get back to normal.

"Take care of Taylinn. See that she grows stronger." Kalton screwed his eyes up more tightly, trying to focus on all the old meditation techniques once taught to him by his spiritual leader in school. It was so long since he had needed them; so long since he had prayed. Now he was trying to say all those long, twenty years worth of prayers in just a few minutes. The words tumbled out of his desperate heart, but would not burst free from his mouth. It was so hard to ask a power most people no longer believed in for a miracle he was sure could never be granted.

"Are you alright?" The soft voice of the resident advisor made him jump violently. He spun around, almost losing his balance on the highly polished floor.

"What do you want?" he asked. It was hardly the proper way to greet a spiritual advisor, but he felt embarrassed to have been found on his knees before a shrine, praying in a way usually reserved for the handful of old people and traditionalists who still believed in the old ways.

"I asked if you were alright?" The soft voice of the advisor was relaxing. It had a strange effect on Kalton's mind, and he felt himself wishing to open up to the stranger. He closed his heart to such thoughts and clenched his fists.

"If I was alright, would I have come here to pray? Do you think I would resort to such outdated, foolish superstitions if everything was alright?" He stood up, staring down at the advisor, a small man in a rainbow coloured robe. "Stand aside, old man. I have to get back to my wife."

"You shouldn't knock the faith that may yet be your only salvation." The advisor did not move aside, and Kalton loomed over him threateningly. Why did the old fool have to come and talk to him now? It would attract the attention of others, and the last thing that Kalton wanted was for other people to know that he was here. He was above all of this religion and superstition. He had left it behind with his boyhood games. He had still believed in the monsters under the bed the last time that he had prayed.

"I told you to get out of my way." He pushed the old man against the wall, walking quickly past him. The old man fell awkwardly, his head striking the stone flagged floor outside the prayer chamber. Kalton glanced back at the sound, and saw a small trail of blood leaking from the older man's skull. He flinched.

"You are wrong." The old man was struggling weakly, trying to get up but unable to make it even to his knees. His eyes seemed strangely glazed. "You are heading down the wrong path, Kalton."

"I am heading down the right path. Your time is over old man. Religion is over. It belongs in the past, and I was wrong to come here." He turned away. The old man's voice echoed down the corridor behind him, mingling strangely with the flickering shadows of other believers as they came out of their chambers to see what was going on. The effect was a bizarre one, of flashing lights and fluttering echoed speech.

"You are heading for disaster, Kalton. All of you. You do not know what you are doing." Hands reached out to grab the young man, to drag him back to answer for his assault on the old advisor, but he pulled himself free.

"Leave me alone!" His voice sounded panicked, and it bothered him that he was so afraid. What was he scared of? The advisor was just an old man, lying injured on the floor and shouting garbled words which should mean nothing to a man like him.

"I can't leave you alone, Kalton. You're falling. All of you, you're falling! The end is coming, Kalton!" The old man was on his feet now, leaning against his supporters and blinking out from behind a curtain of his own blood. "You're heading straight into your own destruction."

"Fool." Kalton spat the word in anger, stepping out of the place of worship and hurrying away from it into the brightly lit and bustling street. It was full of people, all running about and living their lives. They were all healthy, all strong. The planet was a hive of life and laughter; what could the old advisor possibly have meant? It was all so stupid. What disaster could they be heading for? Why was the end coming? He laughed to himself. It was all stupid; the seeings of some half-mad priest looking to renew his own fading importance. He was a fool himself for listening to it all.

"Fool," he muttered again, and headed off towards the hospital. He had to see how his wife was, and whether or not their child had survived yet another morning of its mystery illness. That was all that he cared about, and all that he wanted to care about. Nothing else could possibly be of any importance. Right across the city all the other expectant fathers were thinking the same thing.

xxxxxxxxxx

"Now this is interesting." The peculiar little man who had claimed to be everything from a Tibetan monk to a Kalroydian carvet tamer, stepped back from his instruments and examined the central console. It was a tall, flower-shaped monstrosity that erupted from the floor of the TARDIS like an expansive stalagmite looking for its destiny. It appeared to have been carved from dark, hard wood, but its touch was like that of glass; cold and smooth and most definitely un-woodlike. It caught the light in odd ways, when K'anpo lit his circle of candles to meditate, and threw the seven flickering candle flames back across the room in a mad sparkle of flashing refractions. Mike still found it amazing to stare at, and to wonder about. The room was so different to the vast, white space of the Doctor's TARDIS control room. That had been a place of science and of fantasy, where the Jules Verne-like presence of the Doctor had seemed as much at home as he had done in the rambling country seclusion of a place like Devil's End. This TARDIS was as different to his as K'anpo was to the Doctor. Aside from the strange sculpture that was the central console, the room itself was much like some fantastical work of art. The walls seemed to be made from wooden panelling, somehow suggesting both at opulence and at frank simplicity, the floor stone flagging that clearly was not stone and yet looked so much like it. Mike had walked across it once in bare feet after being awakened in the middle of the night by the TARDIS alarm, and had found that it felt more like linoleum than stone; and yet it was rock solid and produced bright, hot sparks when struck at force by metal. Rugs covered much of it, hand woven in the foothills of India and gathered over the centuries by K'anpo himself; at least, that was what he claimed. One in particular looked very like the one that Jo Grant had spread over the floor of her room back at UNIT HQ; and that had come from a Harrods sale just after the Christmas of 1972. Mike knew. He had had to carry it home.

"What's interesting?" He tried to sound as though he didn't much care, although in all honesty there was little that K'anpo had shown him so far that did not delight something inside of him. Their travels together were the sort of excitement that the young human had been searching for for most of his life. He turned from his contemplation of one of the many bizarre and impossible paintings with which the walls of the console room were festooned - in this case a disturbingly feasible and yet clearly unworkable street plan by Escher - and wandered over to join his friend by the central instrumentation.

"My readings." K'anpo tipped his head on one side and frowned at the nearest screen. "According to these we're on Earth, and yet according to these--" he indicated a second screen, "we're nowhere near it."

"So we're lost again." Mike was grinning. They were always lost. It had been with great delight that he had traced part of the fault to a misalignment within one of the directional circuits; only to discover, once it was fixed, that it had thrown the rest of the Ship into even greater disarray. They had, therefore, misaligned the old circuit once again - only to find themselves with even less effective systems than before. K'anpo couldn't see the problem. His philosophy left him happy to drift, trusting in the certainty that if there was somewhere he was supposed to be, then sooner or later destiny would obligingly take him there. For Mike, whose training had been at the hands of the ultra-efficient Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, not to know where you were - and especially where you were going - was not only an example of bad planning but was downright unsoldierly. It was also damned silly. He had become rather good at ceasing to care, but occasionally his military training came to the forefront. Now was one of those times.

"We are not lost, Mike. In order to be lost, one must be trying to get somewhere, and must also be unable to find the way. We are not trying to get anywhere; and therefore we are not lost." The Time Lord smiled, his bright and beady little eyes shining with their usual merry delight. "We do, however, seem to be unable to ascertain exactly where we are."

"Meaning that we're lost."

"Meaning that we have momentarily misplaced ourselves." K'anpo scuttled off to the other side of the console, in order to poke hopefully at one or two other instruments. "The good news is that we've landed, that the air is breathable, the gravity adequate and the humidity level really rather pleasant."

"What do you mean, 'adequate'?"

K'anpo sighed. "Always figures, Mike. Always facts and figures." He shook his head, pointing one finger at his pupil. "You must trust in the powers that guide us."

"If I believed that there was something actually guiding us through all of this, I'd lose my faith in a jiffy." Mike leaned across to look at the screen. It showed the gravity levels outside to be equal to those of the Earth. "Fancy a walk?"

"I think so." The old Time Lord opened the doors, hurrying across with genuine enthusiasm to peer out of the TARDIS. The view was one of open, empty meadows, with a city just visible in the distance. A blue sky was overhead, clear and cloudless, and the air smelt sweet and clean. K'anpo sniffed suspiciously.

"Hmm."

"Hmm?" Mike joined him, stepping out of the Ship into the soft green grass. "What's 'hmm?' about it? Of all the places you've dropped me into, this is actually one of the most pleasant." He stepped away from the TARDIS, turning back to see what shape it had assumed this time. It had had a fascination for trees recently, but this time he was glad to see that it had transformed itself into a rock; a large, sprawling geological masterpiece that reached high into the sky.

"Hmm," was all that K'anpo would say on the subject. "I don't think much of the local pollution levels."

"Pollution? The air here is the cleanest I've smelt in ages. There's no smog above the city, the trees show no sign of acid rain damage..." Mike went over to the nearest one to give it a closer inspection. "It's like Earth must have been, before the industrial revolution."

"No." The little man shook his head earnestly. "It's like Earth will one day become, if it carries on the way it has been in your time. It's like you must hope Earth never becomes." He pulled the TARDIS doors shut. "Pollution does not have to be visible, Mike, nor does it does have to be odoriferous. Once a civilisation has achieved great heights of technology they find many new ways to poison their surroundings; many that even your industrious race has not yet discovered."

"You make me so proud." The human shrugged. "Come on, let's take a look around. There might be something that you can do to help out."

"Such as solving the problems of a whole race of advanced beings?" K'anpo laughed lightly. "These things are not for men such as I to control, Mike. Now the Doctor, perhaps, would go running off to the city and immerse himself in its comings and goings, its problems and its solutions. I, meanwhile, would much rather pay a visit to the local library."

"Never a quiet moment, hey K'anpo?"

"One day you might be the one sitting in the library, and marvelling over the exuberance of your youthful acquaintances." K'anpo gave a bright smile which suggested that despite his words he was anything but old, and set off towards the city at a brisk pace. Mike had to hurry to catch up with him.

"We must be very close to Earth," he mused as they went. K'anpo frowned.

"Why do you say that?"

"Daises." Mike crouched on the grass for a second, running his hand across its surface. A light coating of dew clung to the tips of the green blades, wetting his skin with its cool touch. The familiarity of it all was astounding. Many of the places he had visited since leaving UNIT had seemed strange; even the air felt alien. This place was as familiar as his aunt Rachel's kitchen on Christmas morning.

"Daises?" K'anpo crouched beside him, peering at the grass as though his sight had suddenly become bad. "Ah yes. So they are. Or something very like them." He stood up again and Mike followed suit. "Buttercups too; and dandelion clocks."

"And that tree over there is an oak." Mike frowned. "At least I think it is. Benton's the expert on trees. I never got much past the 'It's not pointy so it must be deciduous' stage."

"It most certainly is an oak." Choosing to ignore the younger man's self-confessed ignorance, K'anpo frowned. "I suppose it's possible that the breeds are the same. Races similar to humanity exist all over the galaxies, so there's no reason for the trees to be different, especially given the similarity of the air and the gravity."

"You're the expert." Mike strode on ahead. He heard birdsong, and found himself recognising it. Blackbird, and quite unmistakable.

"No wonder the TARDIS was confused. It is very like Earth." K'anpo was wandering along behind, making no effort to catch up. Mike had to stop and look back to be sure of catching his words.

"Are you sure it isn't Earth?"

"Oh I'm quite sure, Mike. According to the time scale we're in a period when your race was not nearly developed enough to have built the city we're approaching."

Mike grinned. The last time they had stopped off planet-side, the TARDIS had told them that they were on Earth, 1910. They had turned out to be on Peladon, and given the presence of an Earth ambassador, it clearly had been considerably later than the twentieth century. K'anpo noticed the tone of the other man's smile, and frowned in response.

"You doubt, Michael. Doubting is for immortals, who have time to worry over minor details and discrepancies. The rest of us must merely accept what is, and trust in it. Life is too short to ask questions of things that we would be better merely to accede to."

"By all means." Mike was rather of the opinion that their location and period in Time were rather more than mere minor details, but he saw no sense in arguing. "Then perhaps we'd best hurry on to the city, and ask somebody there. They're sure to know where we are. Or at least I hope they do."

"One can usually rely on the natives in such matters." K'anpo quickened his step, finally catching up with Mike. "Come along, my boy. Don't dawdle."

"Perish the thought." They hurried along together, moving at a pace that was almost indecent in its haste, particularly when compared to K'anpo's more usual meanderings. Soon they were within the confines of the city, where men and women of definite humanoid appearance gave them not so much as a second glance. Mike looked about, staring up at towering buildings of steel and glass, and cars that seemed to owe more to the principle of the hovercraft than to the four wheeled machines he had been used to on Earth, in the 1970s.

"You see what I mean, Mike? More advanced than Earth, at least as you know it." K'anpo was rubbing his hands together in evident glee. "I really don't think that I've the slightest clue which world this is. I couldn't even make an educated guess. It's quite marvellous don't you think?"

"If you say so." They walked on together down the wide, clean street, exchanging occasional greetings with those amongst the passers-by who seemed inclined to acknowledge their presence. "Do you suppose we should ask somebody?"

"Ask somebody what?" K'anpo peered into a shop window, waved briefly to the assistant inside, then pointed at some object displayed in the depths of the building. Mike couldn't see what the object he was supposed to be admiring was, so he smiled in what he hoped was a suitably impressed manner and nodded in authoritative surety.

"Ask somebody where we are. And when." He forced a smile at a passer-by who had strayed close enough to hear his words. "That was why we came here?"

"No no no. We came here so that I could have a look at the library." K'anpo smoothed out the lapels of his loose white shirt and straightened his little mock-satin scarf. "Besides, one doesn't just walk up to strangers and ask them what year it is. It draws unnecessary attention, which is something I like to avoid."

"It is?" This was news to Mike, but the human did not bother to argue. "You don't want to know where we are?"

"I feel certain that it cannot possibly matter." K'anpo sighed. "Still, if it makes you feel better." He stepped up onto the low-running wall surrounding a nearby sculpture of some ilk, and hooked his thumbs into his lapels. "Excuse me! Ladies and gentlemen, please!" Everybody in the street came to an immediate halt and he smiled in delighted appreciation. "Thankyou! Thankyou very much!"

"Get on with it." Beginning to feel somewhat uneasy at the centre of all this attention, Mike felt his hand fall unbidden to the laser pistol in his belt. He didn't like to think why his instincts had caused such a movement, and he also didn't like to think about how rarely those same instincts were wrong.

"Ladies and gentlemen, my friend and I are new in these parts; travellers from a far and distant place. I was wondering if you could tell us what planet this is, that we now find ourselves upon? We would be most grateful, as we appear to be somewhat lost."

"To put it mildly," muttered Mike under his breath. K'anpo flashed him a mock glare.

"You are strangers here?" One of the townsfolk had stepped closer, and something about his stance made Mike step in front of K'anpo. His hand tightened on the butt of his pistol.

"Do you have a problem with that?" he asked. The townsman before him smiled a grim, distinctly unpleasant smile.

"Offworlders are not welcome here," he said darkly, his eyes showing a particularly unfriendly glitter. He waved his hand towards the pair, glancing back at his fellow locals. "Take them!" Four of the other townsfolk grabbed Mike and K'anpo. "You are accused of trespassing in the city, and of being aliens without license to move about amongst the people of this planet."

"Oh." K'anpo looked positively crestfallen. "I can assure you that we meant no harm. Please take me to somebody who is in charge, and I would be happy to explain my presence here and my--"

"Silence! You will not speak!" The man who had ordered their capture stepped closer to the prisoners, taking Mike's gun. "We find you guilty as charged. The sentence is execution, and is to be carried out immediately."

"It is?" K'anpo shook his head mournfully. "Oh dear."

xxxxxxxxxx

Rachda was bored. It was a sensation that he was quite familiar with, having spent much of the last seven months feeling that way. Nothing was happening, and he was beginning to feel sure that nothing ever would. He had joined the group because he felt sure that what they were doing was right; and because he had been hoping for a little excitement. It was an illegal organisation, after all. Instead he found himself sitting behind a desk from six until two every day, staring out of the window as the citizens walked past. He fingered the gold Necklace of Merit that he wore, and wondered if he would ever get the chance to win another. He had always planned as a child to win at least five; maybe to beat the record of winning eight before he turned thirty. He was twenty-five now, and he had only one. He wasn't going to win any more if he spent the rest of his life working for an illegal organisation supposedly working against the leaders of his people.

"Do you ever wonder why we're here?" The words startled him, and he glanced over to the room's other occupant as though only just remembering that his companion was there; which he had. Lonis was twenty-one, built like a beanpole, and possessed a shock of flaming red curls that knocked at least five years off his appearance. He favoured the fashions of the society they had abandoned; an excess of material at the moment, leading to swathes of extra cotton in his shirt that billowed about his body at his every movement.

"That's just what I was wondering." Rachda sighed. "It's so boring here. When I joined up I thought we were going to do something decisive, and instead I've spent more than half the year sitting up here watching day-old security reports and getting spots in front of my eyes. Even if something does happen, by the time we get to hear of it it'll be too late to actually do something." Lonis frowned at this outburst.

"I didn't mean why are we here. I meant why are we here here? If our race is really dying, as the advisors tell us, surely there must be some reason for it? Something that we did wrong? And if there is a reason for our extinction, then surely there must also be a reason for our original creation?" He seemed happy with this question, and nodded to himself. Rachda sighed. Great. Of all the people to be sealed into a room with for the next eight hours, he had to be here with a philosopher. He forced a smile.

"We're here because the biological conditions on the planet were conducive to our evolution and development. We're dying out because our people think that they can cheat nature. They're destroying the planet and they're destroying themselves." He shrugged. "There's no Grand Plan there, Lonis. It's just life."

"It's a waste." The younger man stared at his monitor screen. "We were a great civilisation, Rachda. I've been reading the books--"

"Oh great..." Rachda whispered the words to himself, but all the same he was sure that his associate had heard. Just what he needed; a philosopher and a reader. It was understandable in a way, he supposed. Lonis was young and idealistic, and he had joined the society to try to change things; to slow the rot, or maybe even to stop it. He still believed that the great civilisation spoken of in the histories had been a golden period of prosperity, and that it could be achieved again. Rachda knew better. He had seen the other books, the ones that the public and the society he had joined both disapproved of. They spoke of the truth; the famines and the poverty, the diseases which had been rife. They spoke of the grand, rich rulers with their mountains of gold and their weeks of feasting and festival; and of their cowed and starving subjects without money or food enough to live by. There had been pictures of the people starving by the roadside, and of the rebels lying dead in their hundreds after massacres led by the security council.

"You don't believe in anything, do you Rachda." Lonis sounded disapproving, and his older companion smiled to himself. Did he believe in anything? Really? It was hard to say.

"I don't believe in the pathways that our fellow citizens are following, Lonis," he said at length. "But I don't believe in the pathways that some of our fellow society members are trying to lead us down either. Out in the streets you see a dying race, where less children are born each year and those that do are weak and feeble; but I won't save them by taking them back through the pages of history, and building a new civilisation to mimic the old. Your golden period was golden only on the surface, Lonis. Underneath it was built on blood and death."

"Then what are you here for? Where do you want to lead our people?"

"Nowhere." Rachda turned to stare out of the window again. "If the time has come for this race to die out, no amount of philosophy and old-fashioned teaching is going to save it. We can try to persuade the rest of the people that they're heading towards their own destruction, but we can't make them believe it. We can't make them do anything. I joined this society because it might just give me the chance to come through this; to be sure that if any of us are to survive, I'll be amongst them. The end is closer than any of us think."

"There will be no end." Lonis turned away, staring once more at his screen, watching the pictures roll by in all of their silent tedium. "We will find the way."

"I hope so Lonis. For your sake." Getting to his feet, Rachda moved closer to the window. He could see the citizens below going about their business. His eyes seemed drawn to two of them, marching purposefully along the street with all the certainty of true natives, and yet clearly without a clue as to where they were heading. He frowned. The pair appeared to be conferring about something, standing as they were beside a large shop window, whispering and gesturing at the people about them. Finally one of the pair leapt up onto the wall beside the sculpture of the long-dead King Hedos - a vaguely surreal work by one of the last generation's most famed artists, although to Rachda's mind it was a desperately ugly piece best consigned to the bottom of the nearest lake - and began to address the passers-by. Rachda did not catch many of the words, but he heard enough to know that the pair were from another world. He groaned. Just as he was beginning to get used to being bored... He turned about, heading for the weapons store in the corner of the room, remembering his companion only at the last minute.

"Come on Lonis." He checked the charge on the closest gun, hefting the weapon in his hand as though familiar with its weight. "We have to go."

"Go? Go where?"

"To the street. There are offworlders down there."

"Offworlders?" Lonis hurried to the window. "Real offworlders?" He sounded excited, and Rachda almost rolled his eyes in exasperation. "We should call in, make sure that HQ wants us to intervene. I mean, if we go out there we'll be revealing our hand - this whole base will be useless and everybody will know which side we're on. We'll be useless as operatives on a local level, and--"

"Dammit Lonis!" Rachda threw the nearest laser rifle at him and raced towards the door. "We lost the last three offworlders through talk like that. Get moving!"

"Of course." Humbled, the younger man followed him along the corridor. They reached the street just as the pair of strangers were dragged to their knees. One of them, the older of the pair, had closed his eyes and was looking relaxed and calm. The younger man was struggling violently. A belligerent citizen - Gallden, Rachda thought his name was - was pointing what looked suspiciously like the strangers' own gun right at the pair. The crowd was beginning to chant in anticipation of the kill.

"Hold it!" Rachda raced forward, his rifle levelled. Gallden glanced up.

"Rachda?" Questions flew across his face, to be replaced by sudden realisation. "You're an objector. You've joined the rebels."

"Shut up. Just hand those two over. Now."

"You're making a big mistake."

"One of us certainly is." Stepping forward, Rachda took the gun from Gallden's hand, then gestured for the pair on the ground to stand. They did so quickly.

"I'm much obliged to you, sir." The smaller of the pair gave a funny little bow, his bright and merry eyes fixed intently on Rachda's face. He found the scrutiny off-putting, and glared.

"Just move it. Come on Lonis, lead the way out of here. Hurry!"

"You'll never get away, Rachda! The security forces will take you before you can get out of the sector!" Gallden's voice faded behind them as they ran, drifting into inaudibility as they rounded a corner, coming at last to a hover-car parked in a square. Rachda gestured inside.

"Listen old chap. We appreciate the assistance, but--" Rachda cut the younger stranger off with a jerk of his laser rifle.

"We don't have time," he said pointedly. "Please. The security forces will be here in minutes."

"But--" The offworlder seemed inclined to argue, but his older companion shook his head.

"This man is right, Mike. We must trust him to know the situation here. Come along."

"I hope you're right, K'anpo." Mike climbed into the hover-car, stepping back into its interior to allow the others to board. Lonis gestured to the seats at the back of the vehicle then hurried to the cockpit, where Rachda was already starting up the engines.

"Where are we going?" K'anpo asked as they began to rise into the air.

"Home," Lonis told him, twisting around in his seat to look back at them both. "I'm sorry about what happened back there, but our people are experiencing difficulties of late, and it's made them suspicious."

"Difficulties?" Rachda had set the car on auto-pilot, and he turned around now to face the two strangers. "This planet is dying, gentlemen. Our people have pushed it to its furthest limits, and there are no resources left for it to fall back on. You chose a very bad time to come here."

"How bad?" Mike asked, with the horrible suspicion that he already knew the answer. Rachda favoured him with a grim smile.

"Bad enough for me to suggest that you start praying. If you're very lucky, there might just be enough time for you to leave here before this whole planet blasts itself out of orbit and destroys all the life on its surface." He turned slightly to stare out of the window. "We're living on a bomb, and the clock is about to run out."

xxxxxxxxxx

They flew for an hour, heading out of the city and over the very meadows that K'anpo and Mike had so recently walked through. From the air the countryside seemed even more familiar in its form. The gently rolling hillsides and moss covered stone; the easily recognisable strata in the rocks and the growth patterns in the trees and bushes; all were as Terran as any scene on Earth. Mike felt as though he were flying over the English countryside on a warm morning, watching a flock of familiar birds spread out on the grass, searching for food to feed their young. He could see sparrows and starlings, the occasional thrush - even a robin, standing on a tree stump and singing its little heart out. He watched it as the hover-car came in to land, standing its ground even as the other birds flew away. It chirruped defiantly at the people who dared disturb its song.

"Earth..." he said softly. K'anpo nodded.

"Quite. Quite so, yes."

"I beg your pardon?" Rachda, who had finally got around to some belated introductions just before landing, clambered out of the craft and came to stand beside them. "You know this place?"

"I could almost believe so." Mike smiled at him, knowing that the other man could not possibly understand. "It's so like my world that it's uncanny. I can't understand how it can be so similar, and yet - and yet be a completely different planet - an entirely separate civilisation."

"Your planet is called Earth?" Rachda tried the word out. "Where is it?"

"I don't know." Mike smiled at him, offering a faint shrug. "We're a little lost. Our instruments don't tend to be terribly effective as a rule."

"Hmph." K'anpo turned away, looking almost affronted by this imagined insult to his beloved machine. "Rather than discuss the shortcomings of my ship, can I ask where we are now? This doesn't look like a particularly sheltered place if we're to have planetary security following us."

"Don't worry about them." Lonis strode ahead, heading for a large outcrop of rock rising up between two trees. He hammered on the sheer face of the outcrop with his rifle butt, then stood aside with the gun resting on his shoulder. "No one will find you. You'll be safe in here."

"Where exactly is here?" Mike went over to join him, watching in clear uncertainty as the face of the rock slid aside. A long, well-lit passageway was revealed, leading in a gentle slope downward.

"Our headquarters." Rachda stepped into the tunnel. "It's perfectly safe. Listen, if I wanted you dead I'd have left you to Gallden and his collectivists. Here." He pulled Mike's gun from his belt and handed it over. "Does this make you feel any better?"

"It goes some way, yes." Mike stuck the pistol back into its holster, then glanced back at K'anpo. "What do you say?"

"Advance, Michael. Advance!" As enthusiastic as always, K'anpo practically bounced into the tunnel. "Come along, come along."

"Is he always like this?" Whispering the words at what he hoped was a discreet volume, Lonis hooked a thumb at the Time Lord. Mike raised his eyebrows, opening his mouth to speak.

"Yes, he is." Somehow having arrived back beside them, K'anpo leaned in close to whisper his answer in the same discreet tone used to ask the question; then he scuttled away down the passage once more, vanishing from sight around the first corner. Mike smiled.

"Actually he's usually a lot worse."

"You have my sympathy."

"Hurry up." Ushering them into the torch-lit passageway, Rachda turned about to pull the door back into place behind them. "We'd better get after him before he runs into the guards at the other end."

"Good point." Lonis hurried off, rounding the last bend in the tunnel just as K'anpo, a few yards ahead of him, reached the exit. The two guards there spun to face him, guns drawn.

"Good morning!" He looked positively delighted to see them, rubbing his hands together as though they were cold. "You must be the bouncers. I'm very pleased to meet you, my name is K'anpo, and--" He broke off, looking past them to the cavern beyond. "What a lovely place you have here. The instrumentation looks most familiar, although..."

"Put your hands above your head and turn to face the wall." The nearest guard shoved his gun into the Time Lord's chest. K'anpo frowned up at him.

"I'm a pacifist you know. You're not supposed to point your guns at me."

"It's alright. He's with me." Hurrying towards the small gathering, Lonis pushed aside the guns pointed at his newest acquaintance. "K'anpo is an offworlder. Rachda and I have brought him to speak with Vaser." The guards moved away, allowing them to walk past, and Lonis leaned closer to K'anpo.

"Be careful," he hissed, keeping his voice barely above a whisper. "These people are jumpy. There's a lot at stake, and it's made them all very on-edge; very suspicious of outsiders."

"Is that why offworlders are being executed on sight?" K'anpo asked him. Lonis shook his head.

"Not exactly. The general population believes that the problems our civilisation has been experiencing recently are something to do with outside interference. I suppose it's easier to put the blame on strangers than it is to shoulder it ourselves." He shrugged. "The people on this planet have always been very nationalistic; very individual. They've always kept to themselves and believed in their own strengths - convinced themselves that they're better than any other race in the universe. It's just the way that they are."

"I see." K'anpo frowned at him. "A dangerous state of mind, but I'm glad to see that you don't adhere to it."

"I've seen the truth." Lonis gave him a smile that was infinitely sad. "After centuries of supremacy in this sector of space, of self-sufficiency and the accumulation of wealth, we have to face facts now. We've driven this planet into the dust, and it can no longer sustain us."

"And whereas your people choose to hide from that, and to blame others for it, this community here is seeking to find another way?" The little Time Lord nodded in satisfaction. "Commendable. Highly commendable, especially when it clearly brings you into conflict with your families and friends."

"We're outcasts, yes; criminals even. But that doesn't matter - how can it when soon there won't be any of us left?" They glanced back as Rachda and Mike joined them, and Lonis gave another sad little smile. "As you saw, though, the people out there are stubborn, and they're not prepared to listen to our side of the argument. I can only believe that we're seriously running out of time and options."

"We're already out of time." Rachda gestured for them to follow him down a secondary tunnel that they were now approaching. "My last estimates give us days before the planet loses the last of its grip and sends us all spinning into space . It's not even time to get the ships prepared."

"You're sure it's that imminent?" Mike shared a glance with his travelling companion. "We have room enough in our ship for... for probably several thousand of you at least. Wouldn't you say K'anpo?"

"Of course, of course." The monk nodded slowly. "Although the more ideal solution would be to persuade the others that their time is drawing near. Perhaps there is some answer that we can discover, if we all work together, that will prevent this planet from leaving its orbit."

"There's nothing that we can do. When we don't even know why it's happening to begin with, there's very little that we can do to prevent it." They had reached the end of the secondary tunnel, and as Rachda muttered this last finality they emerged into a vast space underground. It seemed to have been formed from the hollowed interior of an entire mountain; a spectacular cave of almost cathedral-like splendour, the walls veined with minerals and the ceiling a barely visible peak of cragged rocks and gothic magnificence. The walls stretched away before them, hidden behind serried ranks of military-style dwellings that appeared to have been made from kits of corrugated aluminium pieces. People milled about, some armed most not, many looking as though they had nothing to do. A few children played about in the empty spaces, and from somewhere came the bleat of a goat. It was a large, fully formed community hidden within a mountain, and K'anpo felt his heart warming towards the people within it. Their desperation to save their people had made them outcasts; chased away to this underground retreat by the very people they were trying to save.

"Rachda?" It was a woman's voice, and they all turned as one to face in the direction from which it came. A young woman was coming towards them, dressed in simple grey clothing, her hair cut in a functional, utilitarian style. She was small and blonde, probably about forty, and something about her suggested that she was a scientist. She was accompanied by another woman, this time in clothes that bore more than a hint of military styling, with a clear suggestion of insignia on the shoulders. She was tall; about the same height as Mike and with a similar build, and she wore her long, dark hair in a simple ponytail. Her appraising, green gaze had covered the entire group before Rachda had had a chance to respond to her somewhat perfunctory greeting.

"Karys." He stepped forward, shaking her by the hand, then nodded at her older, blonde companion. "And Sara. How have you been?"

"Fine." She didn't look fine, thought Mike; her skin had a hue that was worryingly similar to the pale grey of her clothes. She was pregnant, he realised, and he felt a jolt of sympathy. What must it feel like to bring a child into the world when that very world was on the verge of ending? "We've found a drug that counters the pain to some extent, but the scientists say that there's no way of stopping it all. The pain won't end until the baby has been born."

"I had hoped..." Rachda let the words trail away. "Never mind. It's good to see you looking so well." She gave him the sort of answering smile which told everybody that she knew he was lying about her appearance. "Still, I was forgetting myself and the news is important." He gestured to Mike and K'anpo. "These men are offworlders. Lonis and I saved them from a bunch of townspeople, and I didn't know where else to bring them. They have transportation, and they seem to think that they can help us."

"I have every intention of helping you," K'anpo announced, leaving Mike thinking back with amusement to his friend's earlier declaration that such tasks were not his intention at all. "Perhaps you will allow me to introduce myself. I am K'anpo, teacher and..." He smiled. "Teacher and philosopher, I hope."

"Sara." The pregnant woman shook his proffered hand, clearly warming to his bright smile. "I'm in charge of food in our community. This is Major Karys, our head of security."

"Major." K'anpo frowned up at her. "You're not going to point a gun at me are you? Only I don't seem to have much luck with the military, on the whole."

"I have no intention of pointing a gun at you." She frowned. "Unless you think there's some reason why I should?" She was clearly suspicious of them, which was only to be accepted Mike supposed, given her position of such responsibility. He couldn't help thinking that he wouldn't have trusted them, had he been her. In his loose cotton clothing and woven sandals, K'anpo did not really look as though he was much use to anybody, and Mike himself was not exactly the image of military efficiency these days. He caught her passing a glance over his burgundy cords and pale blue, wide collared shirt and found himself wishing that he had not become quite so lax about uniform. Only his old UNIT jacket suggested that he was anything other than a wandering civilian who had taken a wrong pathway; that and the laser pistol in its holster at his belt. The belt and holster were both UNIT-issue; the gun was not. He had taken it from a weapons store on Altairus VII, when he had been helping to storm the stronghold of an evil military dictator.

"Captain Mike Yates, United Nations Intelligence Taskforce," he said briskly, stepping forward and snapping to attention. It had been a while, but he had found before that such things were driven too deep for him ever to forget. She answered his salute and nodded.

"I've never heard of your organisation, but that's not surprising. We don't mix much with other races."

"That's okay." He flashed her a very unmilitary grin. "I don't even know what your race is."

"Touché, I suppose." She shrugged. "This way. We have to talk."

"Jolly good." K'anpo suddenly looked excited again. "I want to talk to somebody about the situation on this planet. What's causing the gradual destruction of its stability, and what is all this about problem pregnancies? I get the impression, my dear," this to Sara, "that your own experiences are not unique. And I wondered also if there might be an anthropologist somewhere amongst your number? The similarities between this planet and that of my young friend Mike here are quite amazing. Perhaps I could read a history of your people? It wouldn't take long."

"Anthropology isn't really one of our priorities." Karys gestured once again for them to follow her. "Hurry along please. We have a great deal to discuss, and I imagine very little time in which to discuss it. There seems to be little enough of anything here, but Time is one thing that is in particularly short supply."

"Of course. Of course, of course, of course." K'anpo nodded very hard, and his round little face broke into a wide, beautific smile. "I put myself completely in your care, Major. I bow to your undeniable authority." She eyed him with one raised eyebrow and Mike had to fight not to smile.

"Ignore him," he advised her. K'anpo glared at him. Karys gave her head a slight shake then started away across the vast, communal cavern.

"You can speak first to our head scientist," she said over her shoulder as they went. "I'm sure that he can answer your questions. After that your time is your own, and you can go where you like. Except back to the surface."

"Our ship is on the surface," Mike told her. She held his gaze for a long moment before giving him a short, careless shrug.

"I'm sorry. There will be people up there looking for you four right now. I won't let you put our base at risk by going back up just yet."

"We may not have the time for such luxuries as security, Karys." Rachda sounded serious and she frowned, then shrugged again.

"We may not have the time for anything soon, but that doesn't alter my orders. You won't leave here. None of you."

"Are you crazy?" Mike stepped forward, but her gun was in her hand before he had even got close. "This world could be about to end, and the only way to safety is above ground. You have to let us go there!"

"I can't do that. Our surveys show that there is enough time to get our ships finished, and our people on board them before this planet leaves orbit. Having you go back to the surface puts all of that in danger, and I won't let you risk their lives."

"The surveys were wrong, Karys. We don't have time to finish the ships, let alone load them. K'anpo says that he has room for us all in his vessel, and maybe the chance of making retreat unnecessary." Lonis sounded very young as he made his own contribution to the argument, but nonetheless Karys gave him the same audience that she had given the others. She was silent for several seconds.

"I don't believe you," she said finally. "The surveys can't possibly be wrong, and there is no way to prevent the destruction of our civilisation. You will stay here. All of you."

"You could be condemning us all to death!" Rachda started towards her, but she turned her gun to face him.

"Don't try it."

"You're mad!"

"Maybe." She gestured with her gun. "Get moving, all of you. You'll have plenty of time to get comfortable down here over the next few weeks. When it's time to leave, we'll leave together."

"We'll die together," Rachda told her, but she didn't seem even to hear. Instead she herded them all towards the largest of the aluminium shacks. Mike leaned close to Lonis.

"Is it true that we only have a few days before the end?"

"If Rachda says it, it's true." The young man looked wide-eyed and afraid. "But Karys will never let us leave."

"We'll find a way." Mike's eyes were burning holes in the back of the young major's head as he tried to think of some way of persuading her to change her mind. He had to find a way. Otherwise they were going to die; and so was every other person on the planet.

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