FIVE

John blinked. Had it worked? The Doctor sat opposite on another camp bed, looking tired, the spinning gadget out of sight.

'Did it work? Am I vampire-proof?'

The Doctor cocked an eyebrow, wryly.

'If ten minutes of deep hypnosis is effective, then yes you are. Mind you, it took nearly twenty to get you into a suggestible state. You appear to have the natural suggestibility of a housebrick!'

Pausing, John realised that if the protective procedure took that long, then helping other Trevilho defenders would take too much time. Not only that, the Time Lord was visibly tired. They both needed sleep.

John shook his head, took off his outer clothes, put them under the pillow, lay on the bed and was asleep within minutes. His last image was of the Doctor, sitting on his camp bed, deep in thought, fingers steepled under his chin.

'Wake up there!' said an unfamiliar voice, shaking John's shoulder. The young officer came awake with a sudden start, half-remembering a disturbing dream about revolving mirrors, reaching for a gun that wasn't there, then clenching his fist to strike out –

'Hey, take it easy. Time for stew, if you want a bit of it. They're serving in the canteen down the hall,' said the stranger, a civilian with a hunting rifle slung over his shoulder.

'Ah, the sleeper awakes,' said the Doctor, strolling back into the dormitory with two bowls of stew and slices of black bread, looking much refreshed by a few hours sleep. 'Here, try this, most invigorating.'

The vegetable stew went down well with the hungry officer. He was less sure about the black bread, taking small bites in between eating the thick soup.

'We need to get a look inside that mine,' said the Doctor quietly, standing in front of John and also sipping soup.

The look on the younger man's face was comical; his eyes almost came out of their sockets in disbelief.

'What! Doctor, there are a lot of words in that sentence I don't like – "we", "need", "inside that mine".'

The Doctor nodded.

'Nevertheless, I intend to get inside. At present nobody in Trivelho knows what they are dealing with and you can't theorise without data.'

John suddenly lost his appetite.

'Doctor, the reason they don't know what the vampires are doing is because nobody who goes into that mine comes out again!'

The Time Lord stroked his chin.

'Perhaps, perhaps not. If possible we need to open a dialogue with the Cadaverites.'

John abandoned his bowl and stood up to whisper urgently.

'Don't tell the Russians that, for Heaven's sake! That doctor is only being open about what the others feel, that we're lying and spying in equal amounts. Your lecture didn't carry the audience, Doctor, and saying you're going to speak to these killer creatures will get us locked up.'

'John,' sighed the Doctor, explaining patiently. 'I will not stand by and see these creatures annihilated without at least trying to communicate with them. Genocide is a crime I utterly abhor.'

Privately the Doctor remembered the conclusion to his encounter with the Silurians, when the Brigadier had blown up the intelligent reptiles in their caves. Maybe such an outcome was inevitable here in the Soviet Union, given their ruthless bent with potential challenges to the regime, but he wasn't going to simply let it happen, unprotesting.

An idea came to John.

'The BTR! Kopensky said it's still up at the mine. It has a radio fitted.'

Enlightenment dawned.

'I see. We claim to be going to retrieve this BTR in order to reclaim the radio. What is a BTR, anyway?'

John explained: an eight-wheeled armoured personnel carrier, nicknamed a "coffin" by their Russian crews due to the shape. The Doctor nodded, seeing the possibility of a diversionary trip.

'By the way, John, you're attracting attention in your own right,' he warned. 'Slips in idiom. Let me do the talking when we go back, and follow my lead. Don't be surprised at anything I might say.'

By the time they returned to the mayor's office, only Zelinski and two other KGB men were present, one of them Zhadov, the third a small, lithe man with darting, birdlike eyes. A pair of the surviving MVD soldiers, standing alongside the doorway inside the room, fell in behind John.

'Comrade Kuznetz,' said the KGB man, far too politely. 'You have a suggestion, I take it?'

'There is a radio in the armoured personnel transporter abandoned at the mine,' stated the Doctor. 'We intend to go and retrieve it.'

'Which? Radio or BTR?' asked Zhadov, clutching an AK47 in a businesslike manner across his lap.

'Both.'

Zelinski smiled, with all the humour of a shark.

'Right, your own personal transport out of the mine and across the cordon. Do you really expect me to allow you to leave!'

'Well, yes, actually,' replied John, ingenuously. Zelinski frowned in annoyance.

'He –' and his nicotine-browned forefinger pointed straight at the Doctor. 'He can go, on his own. You –' another stab from the finger at John ' – can stay here as guarantor.'

'Why me!' asked John. He recognised the other man's sense of holding a trump card.

'Because while Agent Kuznetz is on file, you are not. You are a spy!'

All three of the KGB agents stared hard at John, who returned a bland and disdainful look. They must have doubts, because if they were certain he was a spy, then he'd be under arrest by now.

'My dear chap, of course he's a spy!' declared the Doctor loudly.

Had John not been forewarned, his surprise would have given him away instantly and despite the preparedness, he felt his stomach flip over. The Doctor, on the other hand, seemed quite impossibly jolly.

'What? What did you say?' asked the man with the AK47. Zelinski peered closely at both men. The silence in the room became so pronounced that the carriage clock on a sideboard could be heard clearly, ticking the seconds away.

'I said, of course Ivan Izvestilnyuk is a spy. That was his job. However, Vanya is an agent of the GRU, not the KGB. So you won't have him on your files.'

'GRU. Main Intelligence Administration. Military, eh?' mused Zhadov, cradling the gun. Zelinski remained silent, though his jaw clenched.

John might have been thrown by the stupefied response of the three men opposite. The Doctor, however, fully realised what he'd done. The GRU formed an intelligence organisation based on the Soviet military, rather than an espionage organisation per se, such as the KGB. The two organisations were separate and, frequently, mutually hostile, refusing to co-operate or share data. Their bureaucratic inertia would operate in favour of the two time travellers

'Eighth Directorate,' agreed the Doctor. His offhand manner implied that the KGB agents ought to know what the Eighth Directorate did. When they failed to respond he gave a sigh and rolled his eyes – if he'd been wearing his cape it would have been thrown back in a dramatic gesture.

'Eighth Directorate? You know, responsible for spying on NATO countries? Captain Izvestnilyuk infiltrated the British Army and posed as an officer for several years, reporting back to Moscow.'

Zelinski's face expressed surprise, caution and disbelief all at once.His colleagues were less extreme, merely nodding in acknowledgement.

'Yes, exactly, quite right,' said John, joining in and beginning to enjoy himself in the persona of a spy.

'So, unfortunately, he may have acquired a few foibles from the milieu he operated in. I'm sure you understand,' continued the Doctor, making a conciliatory gesture with his hand.

'The fascist running dogs infected me with their bourgeouis behaviour,' admitted John, biting his cheek to avoid smiling.

'Very well! You can go to the mine –' and here Zelinski pointed to the Doctor. 'You will stay here in Trevilho!' indicating John this time.

'The Doctor needs an escort,' protested the officer, feeling a familiar flush in his cheeks, heralding a loss of temper. Any argument was stalled when the Time Lord placed a hand on John's arm, shaking his head gently.

'No, I'll be fine on my own. In fact I prefer it this way.'

'You're not getting a vehicle,' said Zelinski, pettily. 'We don't have fuel to spare.'

'Good - I don't want one. The noise would alert those creatures in the mine to my arrival.'

With that parting shot, he was gone, abruptly. Several minutes later, which implied a delay downstairs, John watched the tall, white-haired figure from an upstairs window, heading out across the square to the mine road at a considerable pace.

The Doctor didn't feel quite as confident as he looked. Originally he planned to travel by jeep, completing the last part of the journey on foot. To obtain transport against Zelinski's wishes would be difficult, perhaps not possible, and would eat into the time left. Travel on foot it was, then, a reliable method if slower than he liked. He patted his hip pocket, recipient of a map courtesy of Evgeniy Klimentov, who caught him in passing on the stairs. The Time Lord had cause to be thankful for this chance meeting later on. Avtandil had approached him at the top of the steps outside, catching him alone, pressing a small, flat package into the Doctor's hand.

'My family always took this into battle against the infidel. Turks, Nazi's – try it on these vampires.'

The wooden tenements and stone official buildings around the town square became low wooden huts further on, housing individual families, and then came the zone of damage beyond, where the vampire creatures fought the town's defenders. Hundreds of houses and huts had been destroyed by dynamite and fire, leaving the roadway scattered with soot, splinters and other light debris. This desolate band of ashy ruins petered out quickly, snow lying on the oldest of them. Fresh snow blown onto the road made it's surface occasionally treacherous, however charming the effect in aesthetic terms. Strange, thin, non-human footprints were still visible on the muddy ruts in the road itself, and on patches of snow alongside the road. The Doctor kept an eye on these whilst walking, noting how the prints were spaced out to judge stride and therefore height, where the heel and toes dug in as evidence of speed, how deep the depressions were to gain an idea of weight.

He met very few people on his journey. Most of the town's population, he guessed, were sleeping in the daytime to be ready for the struggle to come that night, hiding, or trying to get past the cordon around the town. Nobody in their right mind would head for the mine either, he told himself with grim amusement, seeing an elderly man sporting an immense white moustache, sitting on a stool in front of a crude brazier, stare at this mysterious stranger on the road out of town.

'Here! Where are you going!' called the man, emphasising his point with a shotgun. 'That's the mine road.'

'The mine is where I wish to go. We need the radio left up there,' explained the Doctor.

'Oh aye?' said the elderly gunman, eyeing the other warily. 'Says who?' he added after a moment.

'Comrade Zelinski says so.'

'Oh! Oh. That's different. Do you need a guide?'

'No. No, thank you. I only need to follow the road.'

'I could come with you, if you like. I ain't scared. The Jerries didn't scare me. The Yankees don't scare me. These fish-belly-coloured blood-suckers don't scare me.'

'Er – quite. No, no thank you again. I shall be safe in daylight.'

'Better get a move on, then, mate. Daylight don't last long up here. Oh – stick to the road. There's old tin-mine workings and shafts scattered about and you won't see 'em because of the snow.'

He gave the Doctor a cheery wave and went back to warming his hands at the brazier.

'Yes. Yes, er, quite.'

'And watch out in these ruins. There's some of them things hiding in the dark, down where the sun can't get 'em.'

The Doctor's footsteps took him further along the road, enabling him to admire the snowy countryside, the thick fir forests and cloudless blue skies, and his enjoyment of the countyside was dimmed only by what lay at the end of his trip.

'Wonderful scenery,' he murmured to himself. 'Lovely people. Dreadful political system.'

On he plodded. The mine road inclined slowly upwards, gradually becoming sunken between great banks of piled earth and snow. A darker patch of white in the ditch alongside the road caught the Doctor's eye, causing him to pause and move over to investigate.

At first glance the object appeared to be wrinkled bedlinen, twisted into a human caricature; a caricature with horribly contorted features, and clenched fists. With a start of surprise the Doctor realised he was looking at a dead vampire. Deciding that he needed to gather data, he climbed down into the ditch, standing over the body, giving it a poke with his sonic screwdriver. Dry skin flaked off where he pushed, and the slight pressure made the whole corpse move.

'Dessicated,' said the Doctor to himself. 'Completely dried out. Killed by ultra-violet, grilled by infra-red. Oh what we have to thank the sun for.'

Standing still momentarily (it remained too cold not to be moving for long, despite the sun) he mused as to why the single creature lay fallen in the ditch. Perhaps it was the first Cadaverite to venture outside into the open air, getting caught by daylight beyond the sheltering darkness of the mine, dying within seconds in the ultra-violet barrage. Nothing definitive suggested itself, so he continued walking. The high banks climbed higher, the road swept around and the Doctor found himself standing at the entrance to Nickel Extraction Combine Number One.

The whole site lay in an old, oblong quarry, whose steep sides prevented snow from lying, and which prevented the mine workings from being seen on the level ground above. To his left stood a small prefabricated building, with the MVD insignia painted on the door, which stood ajar. A broken window stared blankly out at the world.

'Hello?' he called, pushing the door fully open. No reply. Not that he expected one, not really. An overturned mug on the floor, lying amongst stools and a desk, gave the only clue to whatever sinister events the room had witnessed.

Back outside again, the Doctor looked to see the mine entrance, which was blocked from view by what looked like the power plant, and beyond that the garage where the mine vehicles were kept. The whole area possessed an air of abandonment and once again nobody could be seen. The abandoned BTR stood away in the open, a good five hundred metres off, parked in the space between the bulk hopper and settling ponds.

'Later,' said the Time Lord to himself and the empty mine workings. His first course of business was to see if any of the mine staff survived, possibly hiding in the buildings. Five minutes later he concluded that if any survivors were still there, they were deliberately hiding. Back to the BTR in it's isolated position, then, sitting out in the middle of the quarry.

'Nowhere for those with malicious intent to hide, at least,' said the Doctor to himself. 'First things first: the radio.'

After all, he needed to show something to the highly suspicious Zelinski back in Trivelho, explaining the whole journey away as a trip to get the radio and nothing at all about communicating with the Cadaverites.

The big, boat-shaped vehicle had no conventional doors; there were hatches on each side, which were secured from the inside. Covers for the front windows were propped open, revealing an empty driver's cab. A pair of hatches stood upright on the top deck, in front of a gun-turret looking like an inverted saucepan. The Doctor hauled himself up by climbing on a wheel, standing on the top deck and peering into the forbidding darkness of the interior.

'In for a penny, in for a pound,' he muttered to himself and dropped into the gloom. A strange, unpleasant, penetrating stink he gradually recognised as cordite permeated the vehicle, which was cramped and full of military kit; no radio, however. Taking a step further forward, towards the rear of the BTR, he nearly trod on a number of empty cartridge cases.

Sudden movement at the rear of the vehicle made him stop and listen.

A heap of discarded military fatigue lying there coats silently rose and fell apart, revealing white, writhing limbs. Slowly, one of the Cadaverites stood up, or as nearly as it could in the cramped interior. Glaring red eyes focussed on the Doctor, and long, thin arms reached out.

'I'm a friend,' said the Doctor, calmly, showing that his hands were empty. 'I come in peace,' he added.

The bone-white creature opened it's mouth wide, revealing an impressive array of teeth, hissed like a kettle on the boil and lunged at the Doctor, who immediately stepped backwards, only to slip on the empty cartridge cases and fall backwards to the floor. Before he could move again the creature pounced.

SIX

'So, how do you make silver bullets?' asked the Mayor.

John sighed. He patently lacked the Doctor's ability to influence by implication, and his patience. The latter lack meant getting away from Zelinski, who would end up with a broken jaw otherwise.

'You can't just melt this lot down and dip whole bullets in it,' he said, indicating the various pieces of silver scattered on the tarpaulin atop the conference table. The assembled Russians, a good two dozen of them, looked puzzled.

'If you do that, the bullet's calibre will be increased. Your weapon will jam. Dipping only the very tip of the bullet will mean the silver vapourises during it's trip down the barrel, fouling the lands and grooves. Jam again.'

Ooh's and aah's from the listeners. A few looked impressed, a few – including the citric female doctor – looked unconvinced.

John continued: a bullet-mould making whole replacement bullets would be needed, plus an unseating tool to remove the normal bullets from rounds –

'This is Trivelho, Agent Izvestilnyuk, not the Tula Arsenal!' interrupted one of the MVD soldiers. 'We don't have any such things.'

'I have,' said a familiar voice, interrupting the interrupter. It was Semyon, the weary leader of the patrol that had captured John and the Doctor. 'For my hunting rifle.'

'Great! One problem solved. Can you melt the silver down too? Good. Take some of this silver and get making rifle rounds.'

Semyon took a small silver plate and left for home and his bullet making press.

'Very good. One person with one rifle. Whatever next!' commented the female doctor.

'Recall your Lenin,' retorted John, recalling Lenin's quotes from one of the history modules on his course, along the lines of one man being able to make five drawing-pins in a day but a production line of five men being able to make five thousand. 'Doctor -?'

'Natashka Irinovna,' replied the woman, looking uncomfortable at the jibe about Lenin.

'Shotgun shells, unlike rifle rounds, are relatively easy to alter. Open the tube at the top, pour out half the shot, replace with bits of silver - we don't even need to melt it down – and reseal the tube. We set up a line – one man opens, one man pours, one man replaces with silver and the last one seals up again.'

That impressed the Russians, though John didn't know if they liked the idea or the quote from Lenin more. Kopensky set about organising half a dozen men into the Shotgun Shell Refilling Collective, as he dubbed it. The armour of Bolshevik jargon seemed to have worn off him, leaving a man altogether more prepared for compromise and innovation.

Bondarski, the mayor, nodded in appreciation.

'Anything else?' he asked, a note of eagerness in his voice.

Yes, replied John, still thinking. To carry out his next idea meant using delicate hand-drilling equipment, and industrial abrasives.

'The mining factory,' suggested a large bald man, wearing small steel-framed glasses, which he polished at intervals whilst listening. 'We have both types of equipment, plus the electrical power to use them. I am the senior foreman, and have the keys to get us in.'

Kopensky volunteered four other people to assist, including Senior Foreman Osip, Natashka Irinovna, an MVD soldier and a brawny mine-worker dubbed "Shovels". Osip led them across the town square, where a few people had begun to set up impromptu shelters already; the Doctor's recommendation seemed to have been accepted. They took a belt of machine-gun ammunition and magazines of ammuntion for AK-47's.

Inside the factory, sunlight poured in from a glass roof. The place smelt of oil and dust, smells associated with machinery at work and made more poignant by the utter silence and stillness.

'What is your idea, Comrade Izvestilnyuk?' asked Osip.

'Simple enough. Firstly, we file the tip of each bullet flat.'

Osip nodded.

'Yes, yes, there are grinding wheels, over in the corner behind the painted blue line. They can do that.'

'Good enough. Once the tip is flat, we hold the bullet vertical and drill down into the flattened area, using a bit about – oh, say one-sixteenth inch diameter. Two millimetres,' he added hastily, seeing incomprehension at the Imperial measurement. Osip nodded again, pointing to a row of workbenches and a vertical drill.

'Right. The molten silver is poured into the hole made by the drill. Any excess is filed off, and for extra effect we knock a cross into the top of the bullet with a chisel.'

Predictably, Natashka took exception to this.

'Stupid religious Christian nonsense!' Kopensky caught her eye and coughed diplomatically.

'Er, not quite, Natashka Irinovna. A bullet so altered will fragment inside the target, causing very severe wounds.'

'Correct,' said John. 'The silver is prevented from vapourising, or fouling the barrel or breech. When the round hits it's target, one of these leech creatures hopefully, the silver gets projected forward, creating a dum-dum effect.'

Natashka looked thoughtful at this news. She glanced at Kopensky, then at John.

'The whole thing is completely against the Geneva Convention, doctor,' confirmed John. 'Though I doubt our opponents will bother to complain.'

They set to with a will, working out a routine over their first half-hour. Gradually, the pile of altered bullets grew larger, until they had run out of silver.

'One belt of machine-gun ammunition and two hundred Kalashnikov rounds,' declared Kopensky, greatly pleased. 'We will issue the bullets in clips of ten. Now we really have the ability to kill those vile creatures!'

Great, thought John sardonically. Glad to have made your day.

Shovels carried the magazines and belt of bullets, ambling along with John at the back of the group as they left the factory and returned to the town hall. By this time, not even an hour after they first traversed the town square, more families had arrived.

'Think they know something we don't?' asked Shovels. 'Holy mother, am I glad the family live in Leningrad.'

'You're not local?' asked John. Shovels shrugged his big shoulders, making the ammunition belt dance on his back.

'I live here when I'm doing shiftwork at the mine. Otherwise it's back in Leningrad, where my lad will be drinking himself silly and chasing skirts without me to keep him in line, so let's hope this whole business gets finished soon, eh?'

'Dead right,' replied John, secretly amused at the mundaneness of Shovel's worries. The smug feeling wore off rapidly when nobody in the town hall admitted seeing the Doctor return.

'How long is it until nightfall?' asked John, getting agitated. "Soon" was the composite answer from different people. "Too soon", said Semyon, half-dozing on a chair in the marbled foyer, cradling a rifle.

'Right,' muttered John. 'I'll give him ten minutes longer.' Seeing an abandoned AK47 lying under a table, he took it, jingling a pocketful of appropriated rounds from the factory that had somehow stuck to his fingers. Semyon watched him without moving or commenting.

'How long does it take to get to the mine on foot?' asked John, aware his weapon-stealing had been witnessed.

'Half an hour,' said Semyon, closing his eyes. 'Longer in the dark.'

Falling backwards hurt the Doctor, knocking the wind out of him on the hard metal floor, an indignity he might have suffered with impunity if the circumstances were not so dangerous. Without room to roll sideways, and no space to flip backwards, he was unable to avoid the attack of the Cadaverite.

The squalling creature landed on top of him, surprisingly light, breathing horrid fumes that denoted an apalling diet, incisors clashing together. Before the Doctor could react, the attacker's squealing rose to a shriek, it's skin blistered into great red blotches and it fell backwards into the darkened interior of the BTR.

'Sunlight!' realised the Time Lord. His fall had carried him into the sunlight, faint and feeble yet still a lifesaver, that shone into the body of the BTR through the open hatch above.

Obey! came a familiar sensation, that of mental communication. So rare amongst humans, that the Doctor was unready for it. He slowly regained his feet, looking at the stricken Cadaverite, shaking in agony on the vehicle floor.

Obey, and come to me, slave.

'I most certainly will not!' replied the Doctor, treating the creature with caution.

Not human! came the Cadaverite's startled realisation.

'Correct, I am not human. Why did you attack me?'

This one is dying, trapped without food, now scorched by the bad light. You were consumable.

'This is monstrous!' exclaimed the Doctor, genuinely horrified at what he heard. 'Cadaverites do not kill to feed off others.'

You will learn, stranger, projected the dying alien. Unfamiliar with this species' mental patterns, the Doctor felt sure a laugh came at the end of that statement, a mental laugh of considerable venom.

'Tell me what you mean –' he began, then stopped, seeing that the Cadaverite lay still and silent, twisted into a painful death-throe.

'Entirely un-necessary,' he mused quietly to himself, saddened as always by death. '"Consumable" – why use that concept, I wonder?'

Casting around, he spotted the radio, a sturdy military version bolted to the vehicle chassis. Using the sonic screwdriver allowed him to remove it in thirty seconds, able to be removed from the personnel carrier if need be. The next pressing issue to be faced was communicating with the Cadaverites in the mine.

The light outside, when the Doctor clambered out of the dark vehicle interior, felt less intense than before. Dusk threatened; a pale rose tinted the sky above, indicating that the sun would soon be setting.

'But screw your courage to the sticking place,' muttered the Doctor to himself, not under any illusions about how dangerous the task ahead would be. A jump to the ground from the BTR's top deck allowed him to move towards the mine entrance behind the settling ponds' concrete apron. Cover meant protection from prying eyes, both useful and comforting. Despite the great empty, motionless gantries, conveyor belts, hoppers, wash chambers and rollers to his left, the Doctor felt any threat came from the mine entrance.

Hopping over the low concrete apron of the settling pond, to land in ankle-deep sludge, the Doctor tutted in annoyance. At least his good, hand-stitched shoes were safely back in the TARDIS. He slowly waded to the other side, his feet making obscene noises in the plastic muck.

Ahead loomed the vehicle park, a huge shedlike building that housed all sorts of bulldozers, dump trucks, tractors, drills and mysterious motorised equipment. The Doctor scurried along the west side of the structure before poking a wary nose beyond the wall.

One hundred metres away lay the mine entrance. This was no minor accessway; after a hundred years of exploitation the opening stood thirty feet tall and at least fifty across. Light railway tracks entered on the side nearest the Doctor; great arrays of conveyor belts, boxed-in by wire cagework, stalked out of the far side on stilt-like metal legs, heading over to the deserted processing area.

'Step into my parlour,' said the Doctor to the silent mine, half-amused at his analogy.

The closer he got to the entrance, the larger it grew. Sixty feet high and a hundred across, at a rough estimate. Cables and lamps were stapled into the rock ten feet above ground leve, disappearing into the mine and casting a faint glow into the quarry, a sure sign that night approached.

'Hello!' called the Doctor, loudly, putting all the fearless intonation he could muster into the single word. "Helloooooo" echoed the tunnel. "Hellooo" echoed the quarry walls.

Hello, came a Cadaverite greeting. Hello not-human.

Straightening his spine, the Doctor boldly walked into the mine. "Strode" rather than "walked" would be more accurate, since it conveyed the import the Doctor hoped he possessed. There was little he could do from now on to prevent hostile action against himself, all the more so if what he suspected about these creatures was true.

The tunnel divided into three within fifty metres of the entrance, overhead conveyor belts arcing to deliver their payload to the world outside, silent and still. The miners who excavated this particular mine had been able to follow veins of nickel horizontally, going underground when the quarried ores were exhausted, without needing to sink any deep vertical shafts. Given his encounter with mines at Llanfairfach, of recent memory, the Time Lord felt happier walking instead of descending in a cage.

'Eeny meeny miny mo,' he declared, deadpan, pointing at each entrance in turn, and ending up with the middle one. Within seconds of moving forward he realised there were faint footsteps keeping pace with him, subtle padding noises that might originate from unshod feet on a rocky surface.

One thing he felt grateful for was the plentiful supply of light. The quarry's electrical plant must still be working, generating power for the lighting systems in the mine, because the uninterrupted trails of bulbs, dangling from cables on the tunnel walls, remained brightly illuminated, banishing darkness. Nor were the tunnels confined or claustrophobic; quite the opposite. A double-decker bus might have driven along the main tunnels without any problem, four-abreast if need be. A novitiate in the mine needed to keep an eye out for channels in the floor permitting cables or drainage to cross the roadway, an omission the Doctor suffered twice at the cost of a grazed shin.

Moving down an inclined slope, which turned back on itself in a hairpin and then hairpin-turned again, the Doctor slowed, not being sure this was the correct way.

Keep moving, came the silent communication from his unseen hosts.

Okay, this is the right way to go, he commented to himself. At around thirty metres lower than the entrance, to judge by the difference in air pressure here.

A faint whiff of organic corruption eddied out from an unlit gallery to his side, swirling briefly around him, nearly making him start in surprise, which would have been a mistake. Considering that he was already under observation, from the nearly-silent trackers, no reaction to any unexpected stimuli was the preferred option. If the Cadaverites suspected that he suspected – well, a quick death would be the easy way out.

Ahead, after running level again, the tunnel came to a T-junction. The new tunnel ran past to either side for hundreds of metres, punctuated every fifty metres by a new tunnel opening.

Left, instructed the watchers. Left it was, then, past abandoned excavation machinery, pneumatic drills, small electric carts and portable lighting stands, a few of which displayed bright metallic scars on their paintwork. Stopping to examine the detritus more closely, the Doctor caught a glimpse of reflections in the metalwork, reflections of creatures abnormally pale and thin. He also noticed cartridge cases on the floor here, about a dozen or so. A few of the MVD soldiers made it this far, he realised, straightening up and pretending not to notice the silent, stealthy pursuit.

No more mental communications came until he reached the end of the tunnel, where another one began at right angles. Guessing that this was the only option he could take, the Doctor moved along it.

This tunnel had narrowed down from the huge entranceways. A single truck could move down this one, alongside the motionless conveyor belt running at hip-height. Before the things tracking him could come round the corner, the Doctor snatched up a phone from the bright yellow emergency box, set a few metres into the tunnel on the right hand side. Yes, there was still a signal. He replaced the phone with equal haste – best not to alarm the Cadaverites.

Abruptly, the tunnel became a chamber, where countless irregular columns supported the roof, which remained at the same height. Loose rock lay piled or swept up around the columns. More abandoned machinery stood neglected here, where there were fewer lights. Which must mean this gallery had been mined of all it's nickel and left behind, mused the Doctor. There ought to be a continuation of the tunnel – aha! There it was! Almost opposite the tunnel he'd entered by. He nearly moved on before noticing a slightly darker patch of chamber wall to the right.

Their footsteps are still at least fifty metres away, calculated the Doctor. Long enough to examine briefly.

The darker patch turned out to be a narrow tunnel, only large enough for a single person to traverse, without any lighting that he could see. Faint light from this exhausted gallery allowed him to look only twenty metres within the passageway.

Scuffling sounds drawing nearer sent him striding across the gallery to the tunnel entrance, wondering why such a ridiculously –

- it must be an escape route, he realised. In case of accident in here, or an adjacent gallery, the narrow passage would enable miners to escape.

Back in the better-lit and larger tunnel, the Doctor felt a cold draught of air swirl up around his feet, reaching his neck.

'Peculiar!' he said to nobody. 'There shouldn't be air currents like that in here, not at this depth and distance from the entrance.'

Also, pointedly, this mine didn't have any extraction equipment for cleaning the mine air. A series of eddies like that might be caused by the mine architecture and design being altered by the blasting that exposed the Cadaverites.

Another hairpin descent took him still lower after a minute of walking. The rock walls here were lighter in colour than the previous ones. After a few metres, ragged tarpaulins hung from hooks screwed into the tunnel walls blocked his way. Batting each one aside dislodged quantities of dust. After these came a series of warning signs "DANGER! BLASTING IN PROGRESS!" "DANGER! EXPLOSIVES!" "DANGER! DO NOT PROCEED BEYOND THIS POINT UNTIL PERMISSION IS GIVEN!"

This, realised the Doctor, this zone was where the mine engineers had blown a new gallery. And found an underground cavern unsuspected and undetected on any chart or geological survey.

A number of hard hats lay on the tunnel floor ahead of him. The emergency phone, in the yellow and black-striped box secured to the tunnel wall, dangled limply on it's cord, twisting slowly. Whatever happened here, in reality days ago, might only have occurred minutes before. Sealed off here underground, divorced from daylight, the mine environment held to a strangely timeless present.

'Hello?' called the Doctor, loudly and (he hoped) confidently. A faint echo, dulled by the tarpaulins behind, rang in the damp, dead mine air.

Forward, came the silent call.

'Once more unto the breach,' announced the Doctor to the hidden watchers doubtless at his back. The tarpaulins whispered and rustled, shedding dust. He walked forward, to a very crudely excavated gallery that ran at right angles to the better-finished tunnel behind him, with great bites taken out of it's far wall by explosives. Dust and rubble lay all along the tunnel floor, marked with innumerable footprints, both Cadaverite and human.

In the centre of the mine gallery, looming like a gaping mouth, dark and sinister, sat the opening into the cavern beyond. Pale figures bobbed and ducked at the entrance.

Come here, non-human, they whispered to his mind.

The cavern, once he crossed the threshold, was every bit as dark and lightless as he expected. Illumination was limited to the glow from the entrance cast by lights in the tunnel, and the glaring red eyes dotted all around that closed in remorselessly.

'I come in peace, to negotiate,' he announced. The red eyes got closer. 'You must listen to me!' Still they closed in, near enough for him to hear their owner's breathing. 'The humans above are able to obliterate you – and you are the last of your race!' he concluded, desperately.

A sudden phalanx of white, taloned arms reached out for him, dragging him to the floor …

Zelinski elbowed aside the MVD sentry at the entrance to the cellar stairs, well aware that nobody here would dare to shoot or even challenge him.

'Emergency business,' he grated in passing, happy to get out of the roasting March sunshine, surely a record for this season and month. Then it was on to a supposedly deserted basement, and a supposedly deserted room, and their entirely concrete and absolute captive.

Using the key to unlock the door, Zelinski stopped at the threshold to examine the interior: huge mahogany table with Hideous Vampire Monster secured via steel cable; several flimsy stools; shoddy table supporting KGB-issue radio; radio; miscellaneous notebooks, pencils, codebooks, erasers, rulers and sharpeners.

Time to make a report.

An impatient John hopped from one foot to the other. The AK47 clutched in his hands looked toylike, and he flicked the selector switch out of further impatience.

'Look, mate, dancing like that isn't going to get the job done any quicker,' said the mechanic, sounding half-amused and half-annoyed. 'In fact, given your total lack of ability to manage a beat, which is distracting my attention, the job will take longer.'

The criticism stilled John's awkward prancing. He felt like simultaneously patting and punching himself: the compliment for finding a workshop-cum-shack behind the mine factory, and a mechanic willing to fix one of the battered caterpillar tractors sitting idle there; the chastisement for finding the slowest, most arthritic mechanic and the most decrepit tracked vehicle in existence.

Long, slow minutes passed. The mechanic's assistant, a brawny middle-aged woman with a maze of wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, treated John to a drink. Rashly, he drank it in one long gulp, anticipating the gassy hit of a lemonade swill. Instead his throat closed up as if unseen hands were clutching at it and his eyes watered, causing a rapid blinking.

'Ooh. I'm impressed. Down in one. Not many can manage that,' commented the woman. John, temporarily unable to speak, merely nodded, realising that he'd been handed a glass of neat vodka. Seeking to divert his attention whilst the alcohol gradually relented of it's death-grip on his throat, he wandered over to the rear of the big, delapidated shack. A bizarre stretched motorbike-hybrid crossed with caterpillar tracks caught his eye, and he turned to the woman, who noted his interest.

'That, love, is a Kettenkrad. The Fritzes used them. Why, I don't know. You'd be better off in a Gaz, all those overlapping wheels just trap ice and stones.'

"Fritzes" must equate to the Wehrmacht, of World War Two, realised John. Feeling a return of feeling to his vocal cords, he pointed at a large shed on skis.

'And what's that thing! Since when did we start putting outhouses on skids?'

This earned him a frosty look from the woman. Rather belatedly John realised that she might well have lived through the Second World War up here in the frozen north, fighting off the Nazi hordes. And the Finns, though he was a bit hazy about the Scandinavian part of the Eastern front.

'This –' and she smacked the metal hull with a resounding thump – ' – is an Aerosan, love. Built locally. "Outhouse on skids" indeed!' She stopped to look closely at John, who gave her his best winning smile. 'That wooden cross on the back isn't a crucifix, love, it's a propellor. This little darling used to scoot over the snow in hot pursuit of the Nazi swine. See those chisel marks on the door? Each one of those is a dead Nazi.'

'The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi,' paraphrased John, mangling a John Wayne line. The beefy woman perked up at this, nodding to herself.

'There. Done,' announced the mechanic, his wrinkled walnut of a face creasing up in a smug grin. 'Although why you'd want –'

'Yesyesyes,' snapped John in reply, whisking the keys up from the mudguard top, brushing past the boiler-suited artisan, and dropping heavily into the frayed bucket seat. He turned the keys and the neglected, ancient diesel coughed and rumbled into life. Fumbling across the dashboard, he threw switches until the headlights came on and gleamed into the dusky town streets.

The mechanic leaned into the cab.

'Don't over-rev, or you'll kill the engine – fan's not working properly. Plus, she won't do more than fifteen kilometres an hour, unless you get a following wind on a downhill stretch.'

Nodding at the well-meant sarcasm, John let in the clutch and the ungainly brute of a machine lurched forward.

'Goodbye, love!' called the woman, and John, in a moment of inspiration, blew her a kiss.