Part 44 (1/2)

And was gone.

Jason slowed and stopped, standing in the spot where his son had disappeared.

He turned back, helpless. Joel stood in the doorway of the van, watching him.

'See you later, kid,' said Jason, and marched back to the van. 'What was that you said about backup?'

Benny and the Doctor tumbled to the ground. The gra.s.s around them was scorched, the air s.h.i.+mmering with heat.

Isaac grabbed his daughter, lifted her head into his lap.

Tony and Bridget knelt down beside the Doctor.

Bridget thought they would both be dead. But Benny was coming around. Her clothes were singed and scorched, but her flesh wasn't, as though the flames had come out of her.

Isaac stroked her hair.

'I let her go,' gasped Benny. 'I let her go, Doctor. Oh G.o.d, are you all right?'

The Doctor sprang to his feet, looking around wildly. The bearded man, Tony, almost fell over with shock.

Bridget began, 'You all right, mate?' But he waved his hand at her, looking down at Benny. 'Did you see it?'

Benny sat up. 'He's already in the silo.'

'How do you know?' said Isaac.

Tony said, 'I thought she was Death. I thought she'd got a head start.' He shook his head. 'It's true what the Book of Names says. Death doesn't have a name.'

'Her name was Caroline Grey,' said the Doctor.

'She's not Death,' said Benny. 'She's dead.'

'She spread herself so thin that there was finally nothing left.' His voice rang out, louder than the ringing in their ears.

'She was a first-year archaeology student. She found an ancient Youkalian time-travel device which discharged the remnants of its power through her.'

The Doctor spun round, as though lecturing some unseen crowd. 'She grew up on Mars,' he shouted, 'where her family bred orchids, but she couldn't remember any of their names, and she was very good at origami, and she couldn't remember her own name, and her favourite flavour of ice cream was b.u.t.terscotch!'

The others were staring at him. He put his hands over his face and ran them suddenly, sharply back through his hair.

'Come on,' he said. 'There's no time to spare.'

The sky yacht was parked above the forest, disguised as a low cloud. After tugging on their armour, Roz and Chris ran their handscans over the area, raising them up to the base of the s.h.i.+p, above the tips of the trees. You could just make out the metal if you squinted the right way.

'No obvious traps,' said Roz. 'In any case, I can't imagine anything that'll bother, er...'

Ms R opened the boot. The fifth member of the party came s.h.i.+mmering around the car.

It was a smear of red, hovering in the air, like an error made by a careless landscape artist. You could see through it, barely, the outlines of the trees diluted by its rich colour.

Roz didn't know what it was, and she didn't want to know. She just stood the h.e.l.l out of its way as it blurred suddenly, leaping into the air.

Its tip slapped against the airlock of the yacht and stuck fast. It pulsed for a moment, and became more solid, wiggling itself invitingly.

Roz gritted her teeth and took hold of its sinuous body.

She expected her hand to go right through it, to discover that it had no substance at all, that it was just a wisp of colour in the afternoon sun. Instead her fingers met a textured, ropy surface that gripped her as hard as she gripped it.

She resisted the urge to pull her hand away, and started to climb up the living rope. Chris followed after a moment, and then Ms R. The Ra'ashet waited, picking its teeth. Roz glanced down at it. Yeah, the red thing probably couldn't have borne its weight as well as all of theirs, she guessed.

At the top, the red thing extruded some of its rough surface to loop around her hips as she picked the lock. The Doctor had pinched all of Albinex's security codes while he'd been aboard.

They had to wait while the airlock cycled, clinging awkwardly to the red thing. Roz hoped the fuzzy colour was as strong as it seemed.

'Look out!' shouted Ms R.

A hairy, warm hand reached down and grabbed her wrist and pulled her into the airlock.

'Chris!' Roz yelled. Oh great, give him even more ideas, she thought, as the Ogron tried to break her neck.

They'd slipped past patrols, avoided a jeep, and now they were standing at the base of one of the squat, cylindrical buildings. There were two dead guards at the entrance to the silo.

Bridget covered her mouth with her hand. Isaac and the Doctor knelt by the bodies. 'They were stabbed to death,'

said the Time Lord shortly. 'With a long blade, by the look of it.'

Isaac shook his head. 'A sword?'

'Maybe he doesn't fancy using projectile weapons around a nuclear warhead,' said the Doctor. 'Bridget, thanks - get yourself away from here as quickly as you can.'