Chapter 12

The Hungry Earth

Rose stepped out of the TARDIS wearing a leather mini skirt, black boots and her union jack T-shirt with a leather jacket. She had Andrea in front of her in her pushchair.

'Behold, Rio,' the Doctor said as he followed her out in his usual tweed jacket, braces and bowtie.

'Nah, not really getting the sunshine carnival vibe,' she said as she looked around the graveyard that they had landed in.

'No? Ooh, feel that, though.' He stopped and looked at patches of bluish grass in the graveyard. 'What's that?' he asked, and then jumped up and down. 'Ground feels strange. Just me. Wait. That's weird.'

'Oi, stop trying to distract me. We're in the wrong place. It's freezin' and I've dressed for Rio. We are not stoppin' here . . . Love. You listenin' to me? It's a graveyard. You promised me a beach,' she complained, but he wasn't there. He'd gone around the church and was crouching down to examine the bluish grass more closely.

'Blue grass. Patches of it all around the graveyard. So, Earth, 2020-ish, wrong continent for Rio, I'll admit, but it's not a massive overshoot.' He looked out over the valley to an old colliery, where a new high tech rig was assembled. 'Oh look. Big mining thing,' he said, trying to distract Rose from fact that she wasn't the girl from Ipanema.

'Oh, I love a big mining thing. See, way better than Rio.' He crouched down to speak to Andrea. 'Rio doesn't have a big mining thing.'

'We're not gonna have a look, are we?'

'Let's go and have a look. Come on; let's see what they're doing.'

They made their way out of the graveyard and down the lane to the colliery. The Doctor read the notice on the gates. 'Restricted access. No unauthorised personnel. Hmm.'

He took out his sonic screwdriver, and sonicked the lock.

'That's breakin' and enterin',' Rose informed him.

'What did I break? Sonicking and entering. Totally different,' he said as he went through the gate. 'Come on, then.'

They went into a Victorian red brick building and walked down a passage. 'What about now? Can you feel it now?'

'Honestly, I've got no idea what you're on about.'

'The ground doesn't feel like it should.'

'It's 2020. Maybe how this ground feels is how it always feels.'

'Good thought, but no, it doesn't. Hear that, drill in start-up mode. Afterwaves of a recent seismological shift and blue grass.' He took a sample of the grass out of his jacket pocket and tasted it.

'Oh, please. Let's not go through all that weird eatin' thing again.'

With an expression of disgust, he took the grass out of his mouth. 'No, you're okay. I'm over that now' he told her, as he opened a door into a workshop. 'What's in here? Hello.'

'Who are you? What're you doing here?' an Asian woman asked them. She looked Rose up and down. 'And what're you wearing?'

'I dressed for Rio.'

The Doctor took out his psychic paper. 'Ministry of Drills, Earth and Science. New Ministry, quite big, just merged. It's lot of responsibility on our shoulders. Don't like to talk about it. What are you doing?'

'None of your business,' the Asian woman said.

The Doctor went over to a bank of monitors and scrutinized them. 'Where are you getting these readings from?'

'Under the soil,' the woman told him.

A man entered the workshop. 'The drill's up and running again . . . What's going on? Who are these people?'

Rose was stooping down, tickling Andrea's tummy. 'Rose, Andrea here in the push chair, and the Doctor. We're not staying, are we, Doctor?'

The Doctor was examining a hole in the concrete floor. 'Why's there a big patch of earth in the middle of your floor?'

'We don't know. It just appeared overnight,' the woman said.

The Doctor went back to the monitors. 'Good. Right. You all need to get out of here very fast.'

'Why?' the woman asked.

'What's your name?'

'Nasreen Chaudhry.'

'Look at the screens, Nasreen. Look at your readings. It's moving.'

'Hey, that's specialised equipment. Get away from it,' the man ordered.

'What is?' Nasreen asked the Doctor.

Rose squatted down by the hole, where a mist was oozing out of the soil. 'Doctor, this steam, is that a good thing?'

'Shouldn't think so,' he told her. 'It's shifting when it shouldn't be shifting.'

'What shouldn't?' Nasreen asked.

The ground started to rumble. 'The ground, the soil, the earth, moving. But how? Why?' the Doctor mused.

'Earthquake?' Rose ventured.

'What's going on?' the man asked.

The Doctor answered his wife. 'Doubt it, because it's only happening under this room.'

Two more holes appeared in the floor, and then three more.

'It knows we're here. It's attacking. The ground's attacking us.'

'No, no that's not possible,' Nasreen said.

'Under the circumstances, I'd suggest . . . run!' the Doctor instructed.

They followed his instruction and ran for the door. More holes appeared and the man's foot went down one of them.

'Tony!' Nasreen called out.

'Stay back, Rose. Stay away from the earth,' the Doctor told her.

'Here, have the pushchair,' Rose said, and pushed it towards him. It glided across the room on an anti-gravity field, the wheels redundant when they left the concrete and floated over the holes. She jumped over a hole to help the man called Tony.

'It's okay,' she said as she grabbed his arm and supported him.

As she helped Tony, a hole opened under her feet, and she was suddenly up to her knees in soil. 'It's pulling me down.'

'Rose!'

'Doctor, help me. Something's got me.'

The Doctor parked the pushchair by the door and ran around the holes. 'Stay away from it.'

Rose sank down to mid thigh level, the bottom of her skirt now touching the soil. 'Doctor, the ground's got my legs.'

The Doctor lay on the floor and wrapped his arms around her chest as she sank past her waist. 'I've got you.'

'Okay,' she said, kissing him on the lips. 'Thanks.'

Nasreen managed to pull Tony free, and led him to the door.

'Don't let go,' Rose told her husband.

'Never.'

'Doctor, what is it, and why is it doing this?'

'Stay calm. Keep hold of my hand. Don't let go,' he told Rose, before looking over his shoulder. 'Your drill, shut it down. Go. Now!'

Nasreen and Tony ran out of the room.

'Can you get me out?' Rose asked him. Andrea had started to cry, distressed by what she could see happening to her mother.

'Rose, try and stay calm. If you struggle, it'll make things worse. Keep hold of my hand. I'm not going to let you go.'

Rose's grip started to fail. Now the adrenalin was wearing off, she didn't have the strength or endurance to maintain that kind of grip. 'Doctor, it's pulling me down. Something's pulling me.'

'Stay calm. Now, hold on till they can just shut down the drill.'

'I can't hold on! What's pulling me? What is under the earth? I don't want to suffocate under there,' she said nervously.

'Rose, concentrate. Don't you give up.'

'Doctor? Love. Look after Andrea,' Rose said as she slowly sank past her chest and armpits into the soil.

'No. Rose!' He tried to dig with his hands as he saw the look of terror on his wife's face. 'Rose, NO!' he shouted as she disappeared below the soil. Andrea wailed in distress.

'No! No! No! No! No. No! No. No. No. No.'

Nasreen came back into the workshop, having shut down the drill. 'Where is she?'

'She's gone,' the Doctor said quietly. 'The ground took her.' Andrea wailed again.

'Is that what happened to Mo?' Tony asked him, referring to his friend and work colleague. 'Are they dead?'

The Doctor could still feel Rose in his head. She was unconscious, but alive. 'It's not quicksand. She didn't just sink. Something pulled her in. It wanted her.'

'The ground wanted her?' Nasreen asked with a puzzled frown.

'You said the ground was dormant. Just a patch of earth, when you first saw it this morning. And the drill had been stopped,' the Doctor summarised.

'That's right,' Tony confirmed.

'But when you re-started the drill, the ground fought back,' the Doctor said.

Nasreen was incredulous. 'So what, the ground wants to stop us drilling? Doctor, that is ridiculous.'

'I'm not saying that, and it's not ridiculous, I just don't think it's right,' the Doctor told her, and then realised what he had missed. He slapped his forehead and clapped his hands. 'Oh, of course. It's bio-programming.'

'What?' Nasreen asked.

'Bio-programming. Oh, it's clever. You use bio-signals to resonate the internal molecular structure of natural objects. It's mainly used in engineering and construction, mostly jungle planets, but that's way in the future and not here . . . What's it doing here?'

Nasreen frowned. 'Sorry, did you just say jungle planets?'

'You're not making any sense, man,' Tony told him.

'Excuse me, I'm making perfect sense,' the Doctor said in a hurt tone. 'You're just not keeping up. The earth, the ground beneath our feet, was bio-programmed to attack.'

'Yeah, even if that were possible, which, by the way, it's not,' Nasreen said. 'Why?'

'Stop you drilling,' the Doctor told her. 'Okay, so we find whatever's doing the bio-programming, we can find Rose. We can get her back. Shush, shush, shush. Have I gone mad? I've gone mad!'

'Doctor,' Nasreen said.

'Shush, shush. Silence. Absolute silence. You've stopped the drill, right?' he asked Nasreen.

'Yes.'

'And you've only got the one drill?'

'Yes.'

'You're sure about that?'

'Yes,' Tony confirmed.

'So, if you shut the drill down,' he said, lying on the floor and listening to it. 'Why can I still hear drilling? . . It's under the ground.'

'That's not possible!' Tony exclaimed.

The Doctor climbed to his feet, took out his sonic screwdriver, and sonicked the computer monitors.

'Oh no, what, what are you doing?' Nasreen asked in alarm.

'Hacking into your records. Probe reports, samples, sensors . . . Good. Just unite the data, make it all one big conversation. Let's have a look . . . So, we are here and this is your drill hole. Twenty one point zero zero nine kilometres. Well done.'

'Thank you,' Nasreen said with pride. 'It's taken us a long time.'

'Why here, though? Why'd you drill on this site?' the Doctor asked her.

'We found patches of grass in this area, containing trace minerals unseen in this country for twenty million years.'

'The blue grass? Oh, Nasreen. Those trace minerals weren't X marking the spot, saying dig here. They were a warning. Stay away. Because while you've been drilling down, somebody else has been drilling up.'

The deep sensor readings resolved themselves on the screen. 'Oh, beautiful. Network of tunnels all the way down.'

'No, no, we've surveyed that area.' Tony told him.

'You only saw what you went looking for.'

'What are they?' Nasreen asked.

'Heat signals. Wait, dual readings, hot and cold, doesn't make sense. And now they're moving. Fast. How many people live nearby?'

'Just my daughter and her family,' Tony told him. 'The rest of the staff travel in.'

'Grab this equipment and follow me,' the Doctor ordered as he grabbed the pushchair.

'Why? What're we doing?' Nasreen asked.

'That noise isn't a drill, it's transport. Three of them, thirty kilometres down. Rate of speed looks about a hundred and fifty kilometres an hour. Should be here in ooh, quite soon. Twelve minutes. Whatever bio-programmed the Earth is on its way up, now.'

'How can something be coming up when there's only the Earth's crust down there?' Tony asked the Doctor as they carried the equipment along the path towards the row of terraced houses.

'You saw the readings.'

'Who are you, anyway? How can you know all this?' Nasreen asked.

Slow red lightning forked across the sky. 'Whoa, did you see that?' she asked.

'No, no, no,' the Doctor said despairingly. He took out his catapult and picked up a stone, shooting it into the air. It hit an energy shield and vaporised. 'Energy signal originating from under the Earth. We're trapped. We can't get out and no one from the outside world can get in.'

'We're trapped, and something's burrowing towards the surface?' Nasreen wanted to confirm that she had understood the situation.

'Get everyone inside the church.'

In the porch of the church, Tony's daughter, Ambrose and his grandson, Elliot were waiting for him.

'Where's Mo? Is he with you?' Ambrose asked him.

Tony avoided answering her question. 'This flaming door. Always sticking. I thought you were having it fixed.'

'Dad!'

'Something's happened to him, hasn't it?' Elliot asked.

Inside the church, was a nice stained glass window behind the altar, but the small building was now just used for storage. Ambrose had listened to Naveen's explanation, while the Doctor fixed up the geologist's equipment.

'So we can't get out, we can't contact anyone, and something, the something that took my husband, is coming up through the Earth?'

'Yes,' the Doctor confirmed. 'If we move quickly enough, we can be ready.'

'No, stop. This has gone far enough. What is this?' Ambrose said, not believing a word of it.

'He's telling the truth, Love,' Tony told her.

'Come on. It's not the first time we've had no mobile or phone signals. Reception's always rubbish,' she said, trying to rationalise the situation.

'Look, Ambrose. We saw the Doctor's . . .' Nasreen look to the Doctor. 'Friend, partner, wife? Get taken.'

'My wife,' he said quietly. 'Rose . . . Her name is Rose.'

'We saw Rose get taken, okay? You saw the lightning in the sky. I have seen the impossible today, and the only person who's made any sense of it for me, is the Doctor.'

'Him?' Ambrose asked in disbelief.

'Me,' the Doctor said with a smile.

'Can you get my dad back?' Elliot asked the Doctor with a childlike directness. Everyone in the room stopped and looked at the Doctor for the answer.

'Yes. But I need you to trust me and do exactly as I say from this second onwards, because we're running out of time.'

Ambrose heard the way the Doctor talked to her son, and she believed him. 'So tell us what to do.'

'Thank you. We have eight minutes to set up a line of defence. Bring me every phone, every camera, every piece of recording or transmitting equipment you can find. Every burglar alarm, every movement sensor, every security light. I want the whole area covered with sensors.'

The Doctor felt Rose come back to consciousness.

['Urgh. Where am I,'] he heard her think.

['I was going to ask you that,'] he thought to her lovingly. ['Are you okay?']

['Apart from being in a glass coffin, yeah I'm fine. Is Andrea all right?']

['Yes. She's here in the church with me . . . missing her mum.']

'Let me out. Can anybody hear me? I'm alive in here! Let me out!' he heard her call out. He then felt her start to panic. ['Oh my God, I've been buried alive!']

['No Sweetheart. You are underground, but you're not buried,'] he reassured her.

'I know you're out there. My name is Rose Lungbarrowmas and you'd better get me the hell out of here or so help me I am going to kick your backside. And when my husband gets here . . . Well, then you'll be for it.' That was more like the Rose Tyler he knew, and then he felt the fear creep back. 'Please?'

Through her eyes, he saw a figure lean over her. "Shush" the blurred figure said.

'Did you just shush me? Did you just shush me?' ['He just shushed me!'] she thought indignantly.

He then felt her stress levels go through the roof. 'No, no, no. No, don't do that. No gas. No gas!' ['Doctor, they're gassing me in this coffin!']

Rose coughed and started to pass out. The last thing she remembered before she lost consciousness was her husband, vowing that he would come and get her.

The equipment was quickly set up in the church, and the dots were still heading up towards the surface on the computer screens.

'Right, guys, we need to be ready for whatever's coming up,' the Doctor told them. 'I need a map of the village marking where the cameras are going.'

'I can't do the words,' Elliot explained. 'I'm dyslexic.'

'Oh, that's all right, I can't make a decent meringue. Draw like your life depends on it, Elliot.' The young lad smiled and hurried off to draw a map that would make the Doctor proud.

'Six minutes forty,' Tony announced from the workstation.

With just five minutes to go, the new CCTV array was ready. 'Works in quadrants. Every movement sensor and trip light we've got. If anything moves, we'll know,' Tony said.

'Good lad.' The Doctor crouched down in front of Andrea in the pushchair, and saw that she was dozing.

'She's beautiful,' Nasreen said, smiling at them. 'You and your wife must be very proud.'

The Doctor stood up. 'Yes we are, although I do wonder about the life we lead and how suitable it is for a child.'

Nasreen reached out and rubbed his arm to comfort him. 'Hey. All through history families have been living lives like yours. They tamed the Wild West, colonised Australia, and I bet every father wondered the very same thing.'

He nodded and smiled at her support. 'We've only got four minutes left. I need to assess our resources.'

'You'd better get a move on then,' Nasreen told him. 'She's asleep at the moment. Why don't you leave her here and I'll keep an eye on her till you get back.'

'Oh I couldn't impose.'

'It's no imposition. I've got to stay here anyway to watch the equipment, and the quicker you get this sorted, the quicker she gets her mother back,' she said as she stooped down and looked at Andrea.

The Doctor saw how she looked at his daughter. 'Do you have a family?'

'No, never found the time. Too busy trying to follow Arne Saknussemm to the centre of the Earth,' she joked, and then thought he was asking something else. 'Oh, but don't worry. I'm from a large Asian family; I got plenty of practice looking after my younger brothers and sisters.'

He gave her a lopsided smile. 'I'm not worried. It was the way you looked at Andrea . . . I see Rose look at her like that.'

Nasreen smiled. 'Go on. Get moving. She'll be fine.'

'Thank you.'

Outside Ambrose's house, the Doctor was examining the inside of her meals on wheels van.

'Oi! What're you doing?' Ambrose called to him.

'Resources. Every little helps. Meals on wheels. What've you got here, then? Warmer in the front, refrigerated in the back.'

Ambrose put an armful of a shotgun, croquet mallet, cricket bat and a tazer on the seat. 'Bit chilly for a hideout, mind.'

'What are those?' he asked her suspiciously.

'Like you say, every little helps.'

'No, no weapons. It's not the way I do things.'

'You said we're supposed to be defending ourselves.'

'Oh, Ambrose, you're better than this. I'm asking nicely. Put them away.' He waited for her to put the items back in the house, and then led her back to the church.

There were less than three and a half minutes left, when Elliot ran in with his map. 'Look at that,' the Doctor said in admiration. 'Perfect. Dyslexia never stopped Da Vinci or Einstein. It's not stopping you.'

'I don't understand what you're going to do,' Elliot told him.

'Two phase plan. First, the sensors and cameras will tell us when something arrives.' He took out his sonic screwdriver and held it up. 'Second, if something does arrive, I use this to send a sonic pulse through that network of devices. A pulse which would temporarily incapacitate most things in the universe.'

'Knock 'em out. Cool.'

The Doctor liked Elliot. He had spirit. 'Lovely place to grow up round here.'

'Suppose. I want to live in a city one day. Soon as I'm old enough, I'll be off.'

'I was the same where I grew up.'

'Did you get away?'

'Yeah.'

'Do you ever miss it?'

The Doctor paused and thought about home. 'So much.'

'Is it monsters coming? Have you met monsters before?'

'Yeah.'

'You scared of them?'

'No, they're scared of me.'

'Will you really get my dad back?'

'No question.'

'I left my headphones at home,' Elliot told him, and headed out of the door. The screen displayed one minute to go.

The Doctor went out to the graveyard to see how the sensor array was coming along. 'How're you doing?' he asked Ambrose, who was connecting a camcorder to a mobile phone.

'It's getting darker,' she noticed. 'How can it be getting dark so quickly?

'Shutting out light from within the barricade. Trying to isolate us in the dark. Which means it's here,' the Doctor said as the ground started to rumble.

Inside the church, Nasreen watched the targets move upwards. 'They're close to the surface now.'

She put her hand on Tony's and their eyes met. They realised at that touch that they had feelings for each other that they had not admitted to. They embraced and kissed.

Nasreen smirked. 'Tony.'

He smiled. 'Like you didn't know.'

The countdown on the screen reached zero and the dots stopped moving. In the porch, Ambrose tried to open the door. 'I can't open it. It keeps sticking. The wood's warped.' The Doctor tried pushing with his shoulder.

Tony went to the door when he heard them trying to get in, and pulled the metal ring door handle, as the Doctor and Ambrose shoved with their shoulders. Together they forced the door open and hurried inside as the ground started shaking. Stacked objects began to tumble off the shelves.

'See if we can get a fix,' the Doctor said and then the lights exploded, and the computers went dead.

Tony inspected the equipment. 'No power.'

'It's deliberate,' the Doctor told him.

'What do we do now?' Nasreen asked.

Nothing. We've got nothing. They sent an energy surge to wreck our systems.'

'Is everyone okay? Is anyone hurt?' Nasreen enquired of the group.

'I'm fine,' Tony said.

'Me too,' Ambrose replied, and then there was a big rumble that shook the church.

'Doctor, what was that?' Nasreen asked him.

'It's like the holes at the drill station,' Tony told them.

'Is this how they happened?' Nasreen asked.

The Doctor lay on the stone floor and listened. 'It's coming through the final layer of Earth.'

'What is?' Nasreen asked him.

The building stopped shaking, and an ominous silence fell.

'The banging's stopped,' Tony observed.

Ambrose looked around the church. 'Where's Elliot . . ? Has anyone seen Elliot? Did he come in . . ? Was he in when the door was shut? Who counted him back in? Who saw him last?'

'I did,' the Doctor admitted quietly.

'Where is he?' Ambrose asked him.

'He said he was going to get headphones.'

'And you let him go?' she asked him accusingly. 'He was out there on his own?'

They heard a banging on the door. 'Mum! Grandpa Tony! Let me in!' Elliot called from outside.

'ELLIOT!' Ambrose shouted through the door.

'Let me in.'

'He's out there. Help me!' she said as she pulled at the metal ring handle.

'Open the door. Mum! There's something out here.'

'Push, Elliot,' Ambrose instructed. 'Push, Elliot. Give it a shove.'

'Mum. Hurry up.'

'Mum,' they heard him say quietly.

'Come on,' Tony complained to the stuck door before it finally opened.

Ambrose rushed outside. 'Elliot! Where is he? He was here. He was here. ELLIOT!'

'Ambrose, don't go running off!' the Doctor told her as she ran down the church path.

'Ambrose!' Tony called after her.

'Elliot, it's Mum,' Ambrose said as she moved through the graveyard. She found his headphones on the ground. 'Nooo!'

Something knocked her over and pinned her to the ground. 'Get off me!'

Tony grabbed man-shaped thing from behind and pulled it off his daughter. It wriggled free, and he shined his torch on a human sized reptilian biped. It flicked its extensible tongue which stung his neck, and then it ran away.

'Dad!' Ambrose cried.

'What happened?' the Doctor asked urgently.

'My dad's hurt,' she told him.

'Get him into the church now.'

'Elliot's gone,' Ambrose said. 'They've killed him, haven't they?'

'I don't think so. They've taken three people when they could've just killed them up here. There's still hope, Ambrose. There is always hope.' He was saying that not only for her, but for himself as well.

'Then why have they taken him?'

'I don't know. I'll find Elliot, I promise. But first I've got to stop this attack. Please, get inside the church.'

'Come on, Dad.'

'No, I'll be fine Love. You go inside. I'm going to help the Doctor catch the thing that took my grandson.'

The Doctor donned a pair of infra red sunglasses, and spotted a dark shape moving through the bushes. 'Cold blood. I know who they are,' he said to himself.

He went to the van and got the CO2 fire extinguisher. Something hissed nearby and he let it off, causing whatever it was to scream. Tony burst out of the back of the van, and he and the Doctor bundled it inside.

'We got it!' Tony exclaimed.

'Defending the planet with meals on wheels,' the Doctor joked. Their high five was interrupted by another rumble.

'What was that?'

'Sounds like they're leaving.'

'Without this one?'

The energy dome became transparent, letting the sunshine in. 'Looks like we scared them off,' Tony said.

'I don't think so. Now both sides have hostages.'

They drove back to the church, and secured the prisoner in the crypt. 'So, I think I've met these creatures before. Different branch of the species, mind, but all the same. Let's see if our friend's thawed out.'

'Are you sure? By yourself?' Tony asked.

'Very sure.'

'But the sting?'

'Venom gland takes at least twenty four hours to recharge. Am I right? I know what I'm doing. I'll be fine.'

Tony left, and their prisoner moved out of the shadows, her chains rattling.

'I'm the Doctor. I've come to talk. I'm going to remove your mask' he told the humanoid reptile. The mask looked like a reptile face, with very big black eyes. He removed it gently.

'You are beautiful,' he told her. 'Remnant of a bygone age on planet Earth. And by the way, lovely mode of travel. Geothermal currents projecting you up through a network of tunnels. Gorgeous. Mind if I sit?' He sat down on a wooden chair.

'Now. Your people have my wife. I want her back. My daughter wants her mother back. It would be better if you gave her back willingly, because believe me, you do not want to make me go and get her.'

With that said, he tried to elicit some information. 'Why did you come to the surface? What do you want? Oh, I do hate a monologue. Give us a bit back. How many are you?'

'I'm the last of my species,' the prisoner said quietly.

'Really. No. Last of the species. The Klempari Defence. As an interrogation defence, it's a bit old hat, I'm afraid.'

'I'm the last of my species,' she repeated.

'No! You're really not,' he said forcefully. 'Because I'm the last of my species and I know how it sits in a heart. So don't insult me . . . Let's start again. Tell me your name.'

'Alaya.'

'How long has your tribe been sleeping under the Earth, Alaya? It's not difficult to work out. You're three hundred million years out of your comfort zone. Question is, what woke you now?'

'We were attacked.'

'The drill,' he realised.

'Our sensors detected a threat to our life support systems. The warrior class was activated to prevent the assault. We will wipe the vermin from the surface and reclaim our planet.'

'Do we have to say vermin? They're really very nice. I even married one.'

'Primitive apes.'

'Extraordinary species. You attack them, they'll fight back. But, there's a peace to be brokered here. I can help you with that.'

'This land is ours. We lived here long before the apes.'

'Doesn't give you automatic rights to it now, I'm afraid. Humans won't give up the planet.'

'So we destroy them.'

'You underestimate them.'

'You underestimate us.'

'One tribe of homo reptilia against six billion humans? You've got your work cut out.'

'We did not initiate combat, but we can still win.'

'Tell me where my wife is. Give us back the people who were taken.'

'No.'

'I'm not going let you provoke a war, Alaya. There'll be no battle here today.'

'The fire of war is already lit. A massacre is due.'

'Not while I'm here.'

'I'll gladly die for my cause. What will you sacrifice for yours?'

Back in the church, the Doctor told them his plan.

'You're going to what?' Tony asked in disbelief.

'I'm going to go down below the surface, to find the rest of the tribe, to talk to them.'

'You're going to negotiate with these aliens?' Ambrose asked, as disbelieving as Tony.

'They're not aliens. They're Earth-liens. Once known as the Silurian race, or, some would argue, Eocenes, or Homo Reptilia. Not monsters, not evil.' He thought about that before continuing. 'Well, only as evil as you are . . . The previous owners of the planet, that's all. Look, from their point of view, you're the invaders. Your drill was threatening their settlement. Now, the creature in the crypt. Her name's Alaya. She's one of their warriors, and she's my best bargaining chip. I need her alive. If she lives, so do Elliot and Mo and Rose, because I will find them. While I'm gone, you three people, in this church, in this corner of planet Earth, you have to be the best of humanity.'

'And what if they come back?' Tony asked. 'Shouldn't we be examining this creature? Dissecting it, finding its weak points?'

The Doctor was horrified. 'No dissecting, no examining. We return their hostage, they return ours, nobody gets harmed. We can land this together, if you are the best you can be. You are decent, brilliant people. Nobody dies today. Understand?'

Nasreen applauded his speech, and followed the Doctor as he grabbed the pushchair and went to the TARDIS.

'No, sorry, no. What are you doing?' he asked her.

'Coming with you, of course. You need a babysitter. What is it, some kind of transport pod?'

'Sort of, but you're not coming with me.'

'He's right. You're not,' Tony told her.

'I have spent all my life excavating the layers of this planet, and now you want me to stand back while you head down into it? I don't think so,' she said.

'I don't have time to argue. Andrea will be perfectly safe inside. Safest place in the universe.'

'I thought we were in a rush.'

'It'll be dangerous,' he said, trying to discourage her.

'Oh, so's crossing the road.'

He remembered Rose using that line on her mum once. He was desperate to get going and get Rose back. 'Oh, for goodness sake. All right, then. Come on.'

'Hey. Come back safe,' Tony told her.

'Of course,' she said as she stepped into the TARDIS.

'Welcome aboard the TARDIS,' the Doctor said. 'Now, don't touch anything . . . Very precious.'

'No way!' Nasreen exclaimed, open mouthed in wonder. 'But, but that's . . . this is fantastic. What does it do?'

'Everything. I'm hoping, if we're going down, that barricade won't interfere.'

They were knocked off their feet.

'Did you touch something?' the Doctor asked her accusingly.

'No. Isn't this what it does?'

'I'm not doing anything. We've been hijacked. I can't stop it. They must've sensed the electromagnetic field. They're pulling the TARDIS down into the Earth.'

The TARDIS came to a sudden stop, throwing the Doctor and Nasreen to the floor. 'Where are we?' Nasreen asked.

'Give me a minute to put Andrea to bed in the nursery and I'll find out.'

Loose soil was raining down, gently, from a hole above the TARDIS as they stepped out into a tunnel. 'Looks like we fell through the bottom of their tunnel system. Don't suppose it was designed for handling something like this,' he said.

'How far down are we?' Nasreen asked.

'Oh, a lot more than twenty one kilometres.'

'So why aren't we burning alive?'

'Don't know,' he said, enjoying the fact that there was something he didn't know. 'Interesting, isn't it?'

'It's like this is everyday to you.'

'Not every day . . . Every other day.'

They walked down a tunnel as the Doctor talked. 'We're looking for a small tribal settlement probably housing around a dozen Homo Reptilia? Maybe less.'

Nasreen went down a side passage and stopped. 'One small tribe,' she called to him.

'Yeah.'

'Maybe a dozen?'

'Ah,' the Doctor said as he came and stood beside her. They were looking down from the platform they were on, over a vast city filled chamber. 'Maybe more than a dozen. Maybe more like an entire civilisation living beneath the Earth.