A rapid, throbbing melody filled the room; a gyroscopic chandelier spun four stories over the dance floor, where floor projectors set the walls ablaze with warm, bittersweet hues. Twin staircases led up from the center of the hall to two gilded decks, each outfitted with all the classic human diversions—food, drink, media, and then something on the topmost floor that blocked off with shades.

Club Gaia was, evidently, the place to be on a friday night—or whatever night it was. (The Doctor was a little fuzzy on the local calendar.) Ilythia, proud owner of one of the planet's mere twelve public space docks, was consequently riddled with tourist traps: Club Gaia, one of the Top Ten such distractions listed in his travel guide, was placed strategically close to the landing pads, so that he had hardly stepped out of the port gift shop when the club's pulsing neon caught his attention from across the street.

—Well, actually, more like punched him in the eyes and burned its impression into them. Talk about blinding . . .

Once inside, though, he could see why it attracted so many people. It was stunning. Columns on the first floor danced with red and yellow light; one of the deck cafes was equipped with hovering stools and lamps, both of which glowed an eery blue; one of the bars was formed out of a huge aquarium. He chose a seat at one of the simpler bars, though, on the ground floor, which had been decorated with orchids. Orchids! So many things lost since Aurora's ancestors made the trip from earth, and yet they still had orchids!

He had only just ordered a drink—mainly to appease the bartender—when he heard a familiar voice:

"Hey! Long time no see."

It was the girl from the shuttle. She had exchanged the black jacket for a sharp red dress, but the skunk stripe remained as full as ever. "Oh, yes! Hi! Hullo!"

"You look somewhat lost. Are you waiting for someone?"

"No, no, I'm just . . . seeing the sights."

"Too bad. You don't look like you should be alone."

He almost said something, then didn't. He considered the drink the bartender had given him and downed it. "Nah, it's fine," he rasped. "Say, I don't think we've properly introduced ourselves."

"Quite right," she said, and they shook hands. "Pleasure to meet you: I'm Camelia Gangway."

That caught him by surprise. "Really!" He grinned. "That's brilliant! That's a brilliant name!" Like a she-chameleon running headlong through a crowd.

"What's yours?"

"Oh—Smith. John Smith."

"Oof."

"Hey now, hang on! That's no way to treat newcomers." She laughed. "So what happened to that video? That whole business with the captain?"

"Hm? Oh, that! Yeah, that's all sorted," she said as she toyed with her wrist key self-consciously. "You remember you asked why I didn't just delete the videos."

"Yes."

"Couldn't. Wasn't my key. My friend and I switched so I could take a holiday on Gettys and I couldn't get mine back till I got to Aurora, and the only reason I'm letting you in on any of this," she said coyly, "is because I see you still haven't gotten your own key yet." She frowned. "How did you get in?"

"Oh—friend of a friend, that sort of thing. They're off, running the place at the moment," he added quickly.

"How does that work if you've never been here before?"

"Ahhh . . . well, when I say friend, I sort of mean family . . ."

Her frowned deepened. ". . . Family that didn't tell you anything about applying for a key?"

He struggled for words. "It's so . . . very complicated.

She eyed him incredulously, but after a moment she shrugged the matter aside. "Alright, then. Would you like some company while you're out, or shall I get out of your way whilst you . . . browse?" She gestured vaguely towards the dance floor.

"Oh, you're not in my way!"

"Good!—Though, I should warn you right now, I've no plans to go upstairs with you."

"Hm? Wha—"

He was interrupted by a scream. The Doctor looked up. The woman responsible was staring—along with the crowd around her—at the bartender, who was pouring out a drink. He must have been at it for some time, because it was spilling all over the sides of the glass, and he couldn't seem to stop. He was too busy convulsing.

As he shook, his flesh began to change: A pallor spread over his healthy pink features in a wave down from his head, blotching horribly in sick green patches. His eyes dulled; and with a final tremor, his body slackened and he dropped the glass to the floor. He looked up with dead eyes and moaned horrifically.

All the while the Doctor sat, transfixed, trying to make out what he was seeing. All around him people were running and screaming, trying to get out. Somewhere in the back of his mind it occurred to him that he was the only one left sitting at the counter. A hand grabbed his arm, and Camelia shouted, "Come on!"

He got up in the nick of time. The bartender, or whatever he had become, had fixed its gaze on him and flung itself clumsily forward just as she pulled him back. Without warning, Camelia whipped something blue out of her pocket and there were three bursts of color that barreled straight into the man's brain, knocking him dead on his back.

The Doctor stared. "What?!"

"Now, come on!" she cried, and dragged him towards the exit.

They had only made it halfway when a fresh scream broke out from across the flood of chaos. The Doctor stopped, squinting, and Camelia followed suit. Another man had gone green on the middle of the dance floor, and was tumbling lamely into those left at the back of the stampede.

Camelia leveled her weapon. "GET DOWN."

Half the room obliged, clearing her line of sight, and she fired. A bolt of red went bang out of the barrel and straight into the man's head. He collapsed, but his limp arm fell haphazardly onto a poor woman who failed to roll out of its way.

She hesitated. The woman whimpered. Then, aiming low, Camelia shot her.

"What?!"

Someone from the second deck shouted "There's more upstairs!" and they looked up. Torrents of humanity spilled down the stairs and over the rails, though the Doctor didn't see any more of the green effect.

"We need to get out," she hissed.

"Right. Yes. Off we go!"

They made a dash for the exit only to find it blocked by a wailing, writhing mass of people pressing themselves against the doors. Apparently something had jammed in the chaos.

"Wonder if it's a pull, not a push?" he mused aloud.

"Wha—!" She gaped indignantly, then punched his arm.

"Ow! Hey!"

Someone shrieked. "They're coming down!"

Now he saw: A dead-eyed woman dragging herself on all fours across one of the cafe floors to the staircase, and a dead-eyed man trudging over the deck above. Right! Time to move. "Out of the way!" He plunged headlong into the crowd and wrestled angrily with the bodies locked tight in his way.

He glanced over his shoulder. The man above had reached the edge of the rail: without hesitation he clambered over and fell to the ground floor with a sickening thud. Like a lemming. He didn't appear to be getting up, but there was still the woman crawling down the stairs, and the Doctor wasn't making any progress cutting through the crowd.

"Use your chest," Camelia suggested.

"You know, a little help—"

But she was already on it. "HE'S INFECTED!"

He nearly tripped and fell as people fled out from under him. "Really!" He pulled out his screwdriver and ran to the door.

"Yeah, actually, he's not. Sorry, people."

"Thank you."

He aimed the screwdriver: A quick buzz and the door swung open. He was nearly run over by the mob, ducking out of the way the outside of the door just in time. He peered through the glass, searching for Camelia, and saw the cadaverous woman instead. She had reached the ground floor and was inching forwards on her belly, lethargically but steadily. Then he spied a skunk stripe: Camelia got her gun out and blasted the woman. Then she holstered her weapon and, finally, ran out the doors to join the Doctor. He considered locking the doors to contain any other tainted humans that might be inside, but it occurred to him there might still be a few healthy people left in the club and thought better of it: At any rate the greened lot didn't seem mechanically inclined enough to handle door knobs.

It was then he noticed something strange. Something really strange.

The rioting had stopped. Almost as suddenly as it had begun. Human beings, one after another, having tripped over each other as they piled through the door, came to a walk within a moment of leaving the building. Once on the street they slowed down, caught their breath, dusted themselves off, and wandered away from the scene calm as you like.

His astonishment must have shown on his face, because Camelia asked him what the problem was. "What . . . No one's shocked, no one's stunned, no one's phoning emergency services or asking what's going on . . . It's like it never happened!" It was a incontrovertible fact of life: When homo sapiens met with horror, they feared, they fled, and they went into shock. But here there was no shock; a few people gasping for breath, but no shock.

"Someone will have called containment," said Camelia. "They should be here in a few minutes."

He stared at her. "'Containment'?"

"Yeah . . . Why not? There a problem with containment?" She stared back, equally confused.

"Alright, no, sorry, just tell me—What is containment'?"

She raised an eyebrow. "It's . . . the squad . . . that handles the outbreaks?"

"What do you mean, 'outbreaks'?!"

Suddenly, realization came into her eyes. She looked at him with some mixture of horror and disbelief. "You mean . . . there really isn't any rhixis on Hecate?"

Rhixis. Ahhh. He had a feeling he was finally getting somewhere. He asked her what she meant.

"I mean . . . you know . . . rhixis . . . You've never heard of it? . . . No one on Hecate . . . breaks into a green state out of nowhere and then dies?"

Hecate was well populated and he couldn't completely rule out the possibility that such things never occurred, but what he'd seen in three hours on Aurora he'd neither seen nor heard of in three weeks on Hecate. "No. —Well, I've never seen it, at least."

"Oh my gosh . . ." She stumbled towards a nearby bench and sat down, gaping. ". . . I can't believe this . . . I thought it was all rubbish. I never would've dreamed . . . But why?"

She was talking to herself now. He needed more information. He sat down beside her. "Tell me more about this, this 'rhixis'. Are you saying it's a disease?"

She nodded numbly. "Yeah . . . No one really knows what it is. It just happens. One day you're absolutely fine, minding your own business, and then suddenly you've gone green and your flesh starts to fall off."

He made a face. "Is it contagious?"

"Oh, yeah! You touch someone with it, you catch it in seconds. But no one knows how people get it in the first place."

"And how long has this been going on?"

"When hasn't it? I can barely remember when the reports first started coming. It's been about . . . twenty years, I think?"

"What?! . . . And your doctors have found nothing?!"

"Well, not for lack of trying," she said, a little defensively. "They're working like mad at the hospital right now. They have to; Chancellor Barkhoff's son's got it, too. Second in a row."

There was a loud sound, like thunder, and the thrum of rotor blades. "That'll be containment," she said. They watched as a troop of men in full-body suits and gas masks roped down around the club from helicopters.

The Doctor noticed rifles slung across their backs. "Oof. Don't know what they hope to accomplish with those, seeing as how you shot most of the infected."

She grinned. "Yes, I did."

He frowned, mind back on the problem. "How often does it happen? The outbreaks, I mean."

"Mmm . . . well, I dunno . . . I can only speak for myself. But I see one every . . . two weeks or so. You hear about it more on the news."

"And you just happen to be carrying a gun—to a club!—for just such an occasion." He stood to his feet. "What's with that, anyway?"

She stood up with him and pulled out her little blue pistol. "Oh, this? It's a hand-me-down from my sponsor's old teacher. Are we going somewhere?"

"I am. I've got to get back to the docks."

"You're going back to Hecate?"

"Yeah." He had to get back to the TARDIS. If he could trace this nightmare back to its origins maybe he could help put an end to it.

"Well, good luck."

"What do you mean?"

"Port'll be closed till the area is deemed safe again. And even if you make it to the space station, don't you need some kind of special clearance to fly to Hecate?"

"What?! How long is that gonna take?—and what do you mean, 'special clearance'? I got out of Hecate without a problem!"

She almost smiled and stopped herself; apparently his distress was funnier than he realized. "Well, one, it'll probably be a few days before containment sounds the all clear, and two, how do you not know about that? That's how it's been for five years."

He blinked. ". . . Has it?" he asked, rather lamely.

"Of course!"

"Since when?"

"I don't know; now as I think about it, it probably has something to do with Hecatians not getting sick."

"Five years, and no one's allowed onto Hecate? . . ."

"Oh, people are allowed, it's just very difficult. I know of one man who couldn't get back for a year."

Well, that he could probably bypass with psychic paper. "What about getting up in the first place, then?"

"That'll take awhile. You see, the docks will technically be open tomorrow, but for the next week they won't accept any passengers who haven't been stamped by the hospital first; whenever there's a outbreak the government blocks all exit routes and asks the people in the district to get checked for rhixis before trying to leave."

"I see, so it's a screening process."

"Basically."

"So we could possibly still have some of the disease on us?"

She shrugged. "Probably not. As a rule, you're clean until touched by someone who's been infected, and when that happens you turn green, too."

He frowned. "And yet, somehow, people still catch it spontaneously. I can understand the need for caution . . . Where's the nearest hospital?"

"Ilythia General. Just a few streets down."

"Alright, then. Is that where they're treating the chancellor's son, by any chance?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"Ohhh, just thought I'd pop in, ask around."

Her eyebrows went up. ". . . You're just going to waltz inside and ask to see the country's medical research?"

"Well, maybe not ask, exactly."

She narrowed her eyes. ". . . Alright, that's enough. Who are you?"

"Hm?"

"Who are you, really? You're not just some John Smith from Hecate who keeps forgetting to get a key made and happens to know someone who lets him into an expensive club anyway. I'd say you were a government agent, except you keep asking stupid questions. I'd even say you were a spy, but even if you were a Hecatian spy and somehow didn't know about rhixis you'd know better than to make that obvious. Now, I don't have a problem with any of this," she said, raising her hands diplomatically, "except that now it just got interesting and I'd really like to know."

"Yeah . . . I guess that's fair. I'm the Doctor."

She blinked. ". . . Well, then, I guess the truth comes out! Doctor who?"

"Just 'The Doctor'."

"Doctor of what?"

"That's it, just Doctor. Doctor of my own. Freelance. Sort of."

She peered at him, scrutinizing, and something akin to amusement came into her eye. ". . . You know, the worst part is that I believe you."

"Brilliant! Let's go, then!"

"Wha—hold on, off with you? Now? You're going to go poking around right now?"

"Of course!"

"And you expect, what, you'll . . . uncover some crucial element that will lead you to a cure and solve the whole problem?"

"Worth a try."

"You really think you can do that?"

A smile played at the corner of his mouth and he shrugged mildly. "Maybe."

"And you want me to come with you?"

"Yeah! Why not?"

"Well, I . . ." She scoffed, looked back down the street where they'd come, frowned, scoffed again, then swung her hands out in resignation. ". . . I've got a life," she ended drily.

"Do you?" He grew serious again. "Because it seems to me, you do an awful lot of traveling alone for someone with very pressing ties."

"And you would know, I suppose?" She gave him a wry smile.

He hesitated. Just for a beat, though. "Ah, well! I guess that's all up to you. Think you'll find anything more interesting to do today?" He raised his eyebrows innocently and turned on his heel.

He went five, ten, twenty steps, and at last the sound of jogging caught up to him. "The hospital's down that street."

"Right!"

"I hate you."

"Awww, no you don't."