Part 11 (1/2)

'Come on in,' he replied. 'It's lovely.'

'Not likely,' she said, though she walked down to the water's edge and allowed the tide to swirl in around her feet.

She was right. Despite the heat of the day, the water was freezing. Within a minute her feet were aching with cold right through to the bone.

Andy stood up and waded towards her. Tegan couldn't help thinking how great he looked in his tight blue trunks, water trickling through the wiry hair on his chest, dappling his broad shoulders. Suddenly, five feet from her, he leaned forward, scooped up two great handfuls of water and drenched her.

She leaped back, gasping. 'You beast!' she shrieked when she managed to get her breath back. She kicked water at him, but it was no more than a token gesture. Andy was laughing so much that he fell backwards into the water anyway.

At HMS Bilford the Brigadier's brainstorming session was continuing apace.

'Could this infection be transmitted from person to person, Doctor?' Turlough asked.

'It's possible,' the Doctor said. 'I'll know more once I've pinpointed its exact nature. So far it's proving impervious to a.n.a.lysis.'

'We could set up a lab for you here, Doctor, if that TARDIS of yours doesn't carry the necessary equipment,' the Brigadier said with the trace of a smile.

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. 'Thank you, Brigadier, but I don't think that will be necessary.'

'It's not a bad invasion plan... if it is is an invasion plan,' an invasion plan,'

Benton said, then reddened when everyone looked at him.

'What I mean is, well it's sneaky, isn't it? Coming in by the back door, so to speak. And somewhere like this, well it's the obvious place. Lots of people coming and going all the time.

You could pick up the infection here, then go back to, say, London or Glasgow or Birmingham and spread it on there. It could be all over the country in no time.'

'It is is a feasible scenario, sir,' Mike Yates said. a feasible scenario, sir,' Mike Yates said.

'Alarmingly so,' the Brigadier agreed. 'How long before this infection begins to take effect, Doctor?'

'A matter of days, it seems, though I suspect it rather depends on the individual and the level of contact. Our young friend in the mortuary had been in the town only four days, you say?'

Mike nodded. 'He arrived last Wednesday.'

'Hmm. Then a solution must be found quickly.'

'I'll leave that up to you if I may, Doctor, whilst I concentrate on containing the problem,' said the Brigadier.

'Contain how?' asked Turlough.

'First of all by attempting to get the necessary authority to quarantine the town, close down the beach and ban the sale and consumption of seafood.'

Mike pulled a face. 'With all due respect, sir, I think that might prove difficult. This is is the height of the season, after all. There's bound to be a huge amount of opposition to your proposal, both locally and nationally.' the height of the season, after all. There's bound to be a huge amount of opposition to your proposal, both locally and nationally.'

The Brigadier was silent for a moment, then he nodded thoughtfully. 'Yes, I do take your point, Yates. I'll just have to convince the chaps at Whitehall that we're facing a national emergency, won't I?'

'Yes, sir. But I still don't think it'll be easy. So far the only evidence we've got that there's anything amiss is the chap in the mortuary, and he alone hardly const.i.tutes the beginnings of an epidemic.'

'What about the other people given hospital treatment after last night's incident?' asked the Doctor. 'Did none of them exhibit similar symptoms to the dead man?'

'Not as far as we're aware, Doctor,' said Mike.

'Perhaps they went out of their way to keep themselves covered up,' suggested Benton.

'Hmm,' said the Doctor. Abruptly he slapped his hands down on his knees. 'Well, whilst you concentrate on containment, Brigadier, Turlough and I will attempt to get to the heart of the matter.'

'How?' Benton asked.

'By setting the TARDIS coordinates for the area in which Mr Elkins saw the object come down.'

'Won't that be rather dangerous?' Turlough asked, trying to conceal his alarm.

'Not at all,' said the Doctor airily. 'The TARDIS has an in-built ability to seek out the nearest safe landing spot - which is why she never materialises inside solid objects or underwater. If there is a solid, hollow object - a s.p.a.cecraft, for instance - on the ocean bed, you can rest a.s.sured the TARDIS will find it.'

Charlotte had never had a harder night to get through. She had finally drifted off around 5 a.m., just as it was getting light. When she had seen the result of the test she had begun to shake - not just her hands or her arms, but her whole body, as if someone had started a powerful motor chugging inside her belly.

Dropping the strip of plastic she had rushed to the toilet and thrown up. So violent had the reflex been that she had been terrified the foetus might be harmed, and yet there was a part of her that thought that losing the baby at this early stage would maybe not be such a bad thing. She had thrown up twice more, and each time she had felt certain that if it happened again it would turn her inside out. When the urge finally subsided, she sank to the toilet floor, trembling and weeping.

How long she sat there she wasn't sure. She might have been there all night if it wasn't for the thought that Mum - or even worse, Dad - might wake up at any time, needing the loo. Though she felt drained of energy, she pushed herself to her feet, flushed the toilet and stumbled back to her room.

She flopped on to her bed, curled into the foetal position, and dragged her bedclothes over her legs.

She lay like that for a long time, her mind full of rus.h.i.+ng thoughts. Before she had known she was pregnant, she had decided that she was going to keep the baby, but now she didn't really know what to do. She felt sick and lost and frightened.

Finally, around dawn, exhaustion overtook her and she slipped into a sleep that was ragged and fitful with half-remembered dreams. It was the sound of someone banging on the door that dragged her out of sleep.

She opened her mouth to shout 'Hang on', but the sound that emerged was, 'Nu-arrm.'

'Charlotte, it's Mum. Are you up?'

Her mother's voice crystallised her thoughts, cut through the last clinging threads of sleep. Sitting up, she called in a cracked voice, 'Hang on a minute, Mum.'

She took several deep breaths in an attempt to rouse herself and tried to rub the tiredness from her eyes before realising it was deeply ingrained in her body. She was halfway across the room when something on the carpet tugged at the edge of her vision. She looked down and saw the pregnancy testing kit. She scooped it up and shoved it into her suitcase, beneath her underwear. When she opened the door seconds later her smile belied her cras.h.i.+ng heart.

'Hi, Mum,' she said, speaking quickly to hide what she felt sure was a guilty expression. 'Are you OK?'