A Fifth Doctor Story

By Clive May (clive@cj4386.demon.co.uk)

Dr Who, concept and characters, is the copyrighted property of the BBC.  No
infringement of that copy right is intended.

The "Rain Room" was first described by Audra McHough.

Thanks to J F G Tesar for pointing out problems, and helping to improve the
story.


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"Obey me!  Obey me - damn you!" the Master snarled.   I tell you, there is
nothing to fear.  Now Obey Me!  - or.."

the Master's black gloved finger hovered over a button on the console.  The
note of rebellion in the TARDIS hum sharpened, held a long heartbeat,
before declining to a sullen, fearful and unwilling compliance.

"That's better," the Master crooned.  "There really is nothing to fear.  I
have the Worm well in hand."

The Master moved around the console, stepping over the legs of the dead
soldier.  The body was clothed only in army issue underwear - the Master
now wore the former UNIT Captain's uniform.  It was a fair fit.  He set
a control,and looked up expectantly at the air near the inner door. A
button was punched.  A shimmering began there.

The wall and floor near that point distorted and seemed to pull away from
the spot in all directions at once, as though the TARDIS wished to withdraw
its substance as far from that location as possible.  The time distortion,
as it retreated away into both the future and the past, manifested itself
as an insanely contorting coronal display.

The halo of light parted like a curtain.  In the middle of the leaf-shaped
hole in the universe, something that was undeniably *not there*, took form.
 Rippling and shimmering, the outline of a tall, snake-slender woman
solidified in the space left in the world.

She was definitely *not there*!

Nonetheless she wore a robe of utter blackness that, not only absorbed
totally all the light, but seemed to suck the soul out of the body.  An
arctic chill seeped into the air.

The large eyes opened, revealing themselves two black voids in the fabric of
reality.  Yet the unness in them was alive with a fierce intellect and a
terrible, terrible need. They roved around the room.  Whatever that black
gaze lit upon, that part of the TARDIS quivered under the sucking emptiness
in those eyes.

At last that terrible gaze fell upon the Master.

Despite his iron control, a little shiver ran down the length of his body.
His gloating smile lost its certainty.

The thing spoke in a ringing voice, like a gentle zyphre blowing over wind
chimes fashioned from ice.  It stroked the very soul, tugged the secret
inner self after its diminishing echoes.  "In all the eons of our race
memory, we have never been *invited* to a nesting."

The creature made a move towards the console, reaching out a hand.  The
Master moved hastily to set a control.  A pale green light shimmered around
the outstretched hand.  With a snarl of rage and frustration, the woman
withdrew it.

"What foolishness is this?  *little man*?  Do you think to say me nay?
Ever we have had our way against the will of your kind.  Ever and again, we
have battered down the defences and taken our right."

The Master laughed softly.  He placed his black gloved hands together and
said: "Ah yes, my dear.  True.  But that was all so long ago.  How long, I
wonder, is it since you were able to *force* a brooding on us?"

The creature did not answer.  The Master went on: "Well, that does not
matter now.  You shall have your right, so long denied you by the unjust
edict of the Time Lords! I have prepared a place for your brood, and if you
will but agree to my plan, I shall place your egg in the very heart of the
source; where things may take their proper course - free from the fear of
discovery and ejection into the void."

"The prey does not bargain with the hunter, little man," she said." For the
prey has nothing to bargain with."

"True," the Master conceded, inclining his dark head in acknowledgement of
the point.

"Then what do you want of me, little man?  Speak plain."

"I want one of your eggs."

"An egg of the Worm Kind?  Why?  Our eggs are of no conceivable use to the
Time Lords?"

"I agree."

"Then why?"

The Master's face became solicitous.  He steepled hands under his chin; his
dark eyes glowed.  " Would you agree, Worm, that every living thing has a
right to perpetuate the species?"

The woman leaned towards him, betraying her interest.  "That is a
fundamental drive of living things, little man." A cautious eagerness
trembled in her voice.

The Master noted that suppressed eagerness with satisfaction.  It was going
to work; he could feel it in his bones.  The Master smiled inwardly.  He had
caught her attention.  She had taken the bait; now to reel in the catch; but
extreme care would be necessary; all the precautions had been taken that
could be taken in dealing with such a dangerous creature.  However, all life
was a gamble...The Master smothered his fears, and made his play.

"Then, Worm, I offer you a chance to breed.  Give me your seed and I shall
ensure that it finds fertile ground in which to grow."

"And why would you do this little man?" Her voice dripped suspicion.  "Your
kind owes us no duty of mercy - nor do we expect any.  For the Time Lords
bear us no good will.  They have proscribed us, and would see us erased for
all time from the universe, were that power in them.  So why would you do
this for us, little man?  We will pay you back only in death; This you know.
 There is nothing for you to gain by aiding us to breed."

"I wish for nothing;" the Master lied smoothly; "save the satisfaction of
seeing a wronged and persecuted people granted their natural rights!  Rights
which have been so willfully denied them.  Now!  Will you give me an egg?"

In answer, the woman brought up her hands and pressed the palms together
before her chest.  Raising them to her lips, she blew gently into the
hollow between the palms, then held them out to the Master.  The hands
opened like the two halves of a shell.  Laying on the left palm, was a white
luminous sphere that glowed and pulsed.

"My Egg, little man.  My hope and my expectation.  Handle it with
reverence, little man,  for it is my most precious thing."

The Master nodded, and took from a pocket, a small cube of transparent
crystal.  Inside, was a sprig of green leaves.  Three luminous white berries
depended from the stalk.  Opening the lid, the Master picked it out.  He
plucked one of the berries from it, flicked it away, and moved forward
without hesitation.  This was the moment of truth.  Had his words been
enough to keep him alive?

If at the last, she was deceiving him?  was not in a breeding phase?  was
in fact playing him along only to trap him?  then he was going to die a
very nasty death.  In order to gather the prize, he must put himself within
her reach.  She had only to brush a finger against his skin to draw out his
soul and consume it.  At that moment, the heart of the TARDIS would lay open
to the merciless imperatives of her maternal drive.  Such a thing would shake
the very soul of Gallifrey itself.

The Master was not tempted in the least to throw away his life for such a
revenge. If Gallifrey fell by his hand, he wanted to be there in person to
bear witness,  and savour the triumph.

holding the sprig in his fingers, at arms length, the Master touched the
bare stalk to the little globe of light.  As the tip made contact, the
creature's hands trembled eagerly at the closeness of her natural prey.

The Master caught his breath, but he did not flinch away.  When the little
green sprig was drawn back, it again bore a third berry, slightly larger and
whiter than the other two.  The sphere pulsed with a faint luminescence as
the inchoate life within quickened in response to the nearness of the
Master's warm hand.  The skin of that hand crawled at such closeness to an
egg of the Worm.  The Time Lords had known no more deadlier foe.  Every thing
about the Worm Race was deadly - even the eggs had to be treated with extreme
caution.  The Worms were the oldest adversaries of the Master's people.
Quickly, he popped it in the box and clicked the lid shut.

His sigh of relief sounded very loud in the strained humming of the TARDIS.
 The Master considered the thing in the gap.  No real harm could be done to
it; but it could be made to suffer pain.  He reached out a gloved hand. He
hesitated, but only for a moment.  It was a small evil, a petty
maliciousness; but he would not forgo the pleasure. His hand closed on the
contact.

The worm woman in the opening was enveloped in a crackling green fire.  The
shape writhed and rippled, lost coherence.  She let out a long agonised
scream.  The figure crumpled up, folded in upon itself.  Howling, the
shrunken worm woman drew off into a vast distance, leaving behind an
agonised wail which haunted the console room long after the opening had
closed with a burst of shimmering coloured light.

"Ah!  Most satisfying!  Most satisfying indeed!" The Master murmured.  He let
out a sinister chuckle.  A smile lit his features, as he watched the fabric
of the room flow back to fill the gap in the continuum.  "And now to plant
this little seed in fertile soil."

He set the crystal box down on the top of the Time Rotor, beside a dark
blue paper crown.  The box did not quite make contact with the surface, but
hovered a fraction of an inch above.  The area just under the box seemed in
constant motion, flowing away in all directions without actually moving.

The TARDIS was adamant; it *would* have no truck with the deadly dangerous
thing - even if its linked Time Lord did.

The master flipped a switch and turned to study the group of four people
displayed on the screen.  He dismissed the Doctor without a thought, and
centred the screen on the serious face of Adric.  He pressed another
button.  A chart appeared across the bottom of the picture, like a prisoner
number on a criminal file.  The master shook his head.  No.  The boy would
not do.  Another adjustment and the screen centred on Tegan.

This one held distinct possibilities.  He studied the psych profile chart
more closely; but in the end he dismissed her from his consideration.  The
Jovanka woman barely registered above 1zero on the psi sensitivity line.
That was a base-line requirement for what he had in mind.  And, perhaps more
telling, she was a little older, more mature, than the Traken.  Her instincts
would be qualified by experience.  There was a good chance that she would
detect and reject the egg.  Still, and he rubbed his chin thoughtfully, she
*was* impulsive, and tended to act before thinking.

But no!

It had to be the Traken girl.  She was the perfect choice, all things
considered - given the fact that she was just newly come to womanhood.  Her
reactions would be instinctive and powerful; their very freshness would
give the worm an edge.  And, most important of all, she had a high psi
sensitivity rating.

The Master rubbed his hands together.  He began to chuckle.  "Excellent!
She will do nicely," he murmured.

Still chuckling, he took out a small device and bent over the dead soldier,
carefully studying the face of the dead man.  When he began setting the
controls on the box, his own features began to writhe and change, to take on
the features of the young man.  He checked them in a mirror, then against the
face of the soldier.  Satisfied, he pocketed the device.

Picking up the paper crown, he adjusted it on his head.  Then he gathered
up the box from the rotor, and headed for the doors.

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The door of the quiet room swung in to admit Adric at a dead run.  A few
remnants of party streamers fluttered in the air behind him.  He looked
nervous and frightened.

Running over to the tall blue box standing in one corner, he pulled at the
doors, frantic with panic. They were locked.  With a little grimace of
consternation, Adric turned to meet his grisly fate.

The Doctor strode in, hat tilted on the back of his head, clutching in one
hand a red party cracker.  In the other was a china bowl, with a helping of
Christmas Pudding.

Voices raised in merriment, interspersed with wild giggling, wafted in
after him.  He turned to watch as Tegan and Nyssa emerged through the
doorway. They wore crumpled party frocks and paper hats.  Their faces were
aglow, wreathed in happy smiles.  They were leaning on each other for
support, swaying unsteadily.  The wine had been flowing freely at the UNIT
Christmas party; and the pair had more than drunk their fill.

Adric's face twisted into a grimace of distaste.  He stood away from the
TARDIS doors.  The Doctor handed him the bowl of Christmas Pudding, and
fished in his pocket for the key.  The boy watched the two women warily,
wishing the Doctor would hurry.  At last, the TARDIS was unlocked.

The Doctor turned to regard the giggling women.  His face was
struggling with disapproval. "If I'd known you two would make such a
spectacle of yourselves," he said  with an unconvincing try at sternness, "I
would have made sure you were safely locked inside the TARDIS."

Nyssa stuck her tongue out at him.  "Spoilsport!" she laughed.

"Nyssa!  I expected better of you." The Doctor contrived to sound
disappointed, but there was a twinkle in his eye and a tiny smile kept
pulling at the corners of his mouth.  Well, it had been a *good* party. It
was nice to see Nyssa shedding her dignified reserve, letting her hair down.
Everyone should do that now and then, and to the Vortex with all the
tribulations of life!

And yet?  He felt a twinge of sadness at the ease with which Nyssa had
abandoned herself to the spiritually empty joy of the moment, shedding her
habitual reserve like a snake sloughing off an outgrown skin.  He had to
admit, the change was for the better; but he could not eschew the feeling
that something beautiful had been lost somewhere during the evening.

"Where's that miserable little creep?" Tegan growled.  She held up a tiny
sprig of leaves.  Three luminous white berries gleamed amid the green.  She
advanced on Adric, lips puckered.  There was a wicked gleam in her eye.
Nyssa burst into another fit of giggling at the look of utter panic on the
boy's face.  He dived for cover behind the Doctor.

"Now then!  Tegan!" warned the Doctor.  "You're frightening him.  He's not
used to your Earth customs."

Tegan focused her attention on him. "But you're not frightened, are you?" she
crooned.  "Big strong Time Lord like you?  And you're always going on about
how we should observe the local customs.  You'll give old Tegan a kiss under
the Mistletoe? Won't you?"

"Tegan!" He exclaimed in some alarm,   then fell silent.  He understood that
this was one tight corner there was no acceptable way out of.  Besides, it
was nice to have her happy for a change.  The atmosphere between them was so
much better when she was not sniping at him with her, sometimes cutting,
sarcasm.  He sighed, and bowed to the inevitable.

"If you must, Tegan."

He closed his eyes, waiting for the ordeal to be over.  Tegan hesitated,
suddenly unsure.  She shrugged.  "Take your chances in life, Jovanka," she
told herself.  "You'll probably not get another." She held the Mistletoe
high, stretched up on tip toe, and kissed him firmly, full on the lips.

In the background, Nyssa raised a small cheer.

Tegan spun round.   "Your turn, Nyssa.  Come on."

Tegan held the sprig of Mistletoe over the Doctor, wiggling it invitingly.
Nyssa hurried over, eager to take her part in this new game.  The Doctor
waited.  For some reason he could not fathom, a feeling of acute foreboding
possessed him; but he was the Doctor; he stood his ground.

Nyssa placed hands against his chest and stretched up, reaching her lips to
his.  Tegan, for some reason,felt a compulsion to brush the white berries
over Nyssa's forehead as the two friends kissed under the mistletoe.
Afterwards, whenever she tried to explain her actions to herself, the only
thing Tegan could remember were eyes, dark and compelling, filling up the
world.

At some point during that brief caress, something fundamental changed for
Nyssa.  Suddenly, it had stopped being a game.  When she stepped back, all
the simple joy had gone from her face.  They both blushed.  A tight bud of
awkwardness blossomed in the air between them, the sudden seriousness
lengthening into an uncomfortable silence.  Neither the Doctor nor Nyssa
were equipped with the ability to, move on from this difficult moment.

It was Tegan who broke the spell.  With a cry of: "Right!  Your turn, Adric!"
she advanced on the boy, a devilish gleam in her eye.  "Come on!  It's quite
painless you know.  Who knows, *boy*, you might even enjoy it."

She held the sprig of mistletoe high.  Though it still had three berries, now
the third berry had existence in the gap of perception between Tegan's memory
and lapsed attention.  It was still there because she remembered it being
there; and the berry remained there because she had not noticed yet that it
might not be. It was a neat trick of perceived reality manipulation - though
basic,  and would have fooled neither the Doctor nor Adric for more than a
second.

However, at that moment, the Doctor was watching Nyssa, and Adric had other
things on his mind.

Taking his chance, Adric bolted for the safety of the TARDIS.  He squeezed
through the doors just ahead of his tormentor, clutching the bowl of
Christmas pudding.

The Doctor was still smiling at all this, but the expression had a distinct
edge of irritation to it.  He made a mental note to confiscate the sprig of
Mistletoe at the first opportunity.  It was nice to see Tegan having a little
fun; but in his opinion, the game had gone quite far enough.

"Come on Nyssa," he urged and stepped inside the TARDIS.

Nyssa moved to follow.  She paused on the threshold.  A ferocious wave of
rejection pressed her away from the doors.  It was like an icy gale out of
the abyss.  She reeled back in confusion and fright at the hostility
emanating from the TARDIS. Surely, it was her friend?  Why had the
machine now turned against her?

The Doctor stepped back out.  He studied her, his eyes narrowing in
concern.  "Are you alright, Nyssa?"

She nodded.  "I'm fine, Doctor." But her assurance lacked conviction.

"Hmmm?  Perhaps a little too much to drink?  Your Traken biology...Here!" He
held out the red cracker.   'Pull!"

Nyssa took the proffered end, gave him a little grin and clung on as the
Doctor pulled.  The cracker banged.  It came in two halves, the contents
scattering on the floor.  The Doctor gathered them up.

'Here.  It was your cracker - you should have the prize." He held out to her
a Ying Yang pendant dangling from a ribbon.

Nyssa accepted the proffered gift.  The strip of satiny material was a half
inch wide, black on one side, white on the other.  The pendant disk was about
an inch and a half in diameter.  The ribbon passed through the black eye of
the white portion of the design.  It seemed of an unusually good quality for
a Christmas cracker novelty.  It was made of some light metal, not the usual
lump of badly moulded plastic in bright primary colours.  There hadn't been
anything comparable in the other crackers.

The ribbon had a twist in it.  Nyssa tried to straighten it out, frowning
down at it when the twist defied her attempts to flatten it.

The Doctor smiled encouragingly at her.  "Why not put it on?"

"The ribbon's got a twist in it.  I can't seem to work it out."

"Here.  Let me," the Doctor offered.

She handed the pendant to him.  He ran the ribbon experimentally through his
fingers.  For some reason, the sight of the material passing over his hands,
sent a chill down her spine.  With an effort, she threw off the feeling of
unease, and asked: "What's the matter with it, Doctor?"

"It's a Mobius Strip."

Nyssa leaned closer, peering at the ribbon looped over his fingers.  "You
mean one of those single sided loops you get when you twist the end over and
join it on to the other?"

"Yes," the Doctor answered her in a thoughtful abstraction.  His fingers
stroked the strip of satin a few times, as though trying to discover some
secret purpose in why someone would go to the trouble of creating such a
geometrically interesting artifact merely for a cracker novelty.  Then he
looked up and smiled.  "You know, something like this could be used as a
valid argument in two dimensions to demonstrate the fundamental principle on
which the TARDIS is constructed."  He paused, realising this was no time for
a lecture on non-Euclidian geometry.  He went on: "I'm afraid I can't
straighten it out without cutting the strip and rejoining it."

A sharp stab of panic filled Nyssa at the thought of scissors snipping the
ribbon.  The air in the room grew chilly.  She shivered as the cold bit
deep into her bones. but the chill was gone almost before she was sure of its
existence.  She forced a smile she did not feel. "Never mind," she said, "I'd
like to wear it anyway." She reached out, almost snatching at the pendant.
"Give it to me! I want...Must, put it on now."

"Must?" the Doctor echoed her with a raised eyebrow.

Nyssa grabbed for it again.   "Please, Doctor..."

"In that case, allow me." the Doctor offered in a mock courteous tone.  He
grinned at her, however, his eyes remained watchful as he looped the ribbon
over her head.  He settled the disk in place at her throat, and stood back to
regard the effect.  The sight of the Ying Yang design against the white skin
of Nyssa's throat reminded him of a half closed eye, watching him with a
twisted stare.  Unaccountably, the sight troubled him, though he could not
say exactly why.

Forcefully, he put his qualms aside.  Reaching up, he pulled the green paper
hat from Nyssa's hair.  He balled it up and put it in his pocket.  Unrolling
the golden crown from the red cracker, he set the crackling paper carefully
over her wavy brown hair.  Then he took hold of her hands, and drew the girl
into the TARDIS.

At the doors, Nyssa flinched; but the chill blast of hostility was not
repeated.  She allowed herself to be drawn across the threshold by the
Doctor's gentle, yet firm, grip.

In the console room, Tegan was dodging about the console in an attempt to
keep Adric from the inner doors.  She was intent on trapping him and claiming
her prize.

"Tegan?  Would you see that Nyssa gets to bed?  I think she's a
little...Ah...Overcome." the Doctor asked her.

Tegan glanced up at the slight accusation in his tone.  "Sure thing," she
said.  Adric took his chance.  He bolted through the inner doors.  "Sissy!"
Tegan yelled after him, but made no attempt at pursuit.

'Really!  Tegan!  A joke's a joke, but .."

"She pulled a face at him.  "It's just a bit of fun," she pointed out, taking
Nyssa by the arm.  She noticed the pendant.  "Hey?  That's neat. I don't
remember seeing it before?  Where'd yer get it?"

"This?  It was in my cracker."

"Hhmph!  All I got was this silly plastic whistle - and it hasn't even got a
pea!" Tegan held out the offending toy for inspection.  Nyssa glanced at the
bright red whistle, evincing no interest.  She swayed and put a hand to her
head.

Tegan regarded her pasty complexion with thoughtful concern.  "You *really*
don't look good at all - come on?  Let's get you to bed, shall we?" She led
the shaky girl from the console room, steering her in the direction of the
living areas.  On the way, Tegan kept a watch out for Adric; but the boy had
made good his escape.

Inside the bedroom, Tegan plucked the golden paper crown, from Nyssa's hair.
She set it on the dressing table, laying the sprig of Mistletoe beside it.
In turning away, she caught sight of the sprig of green in the side of her
vision.  She gained the distinct impression that one of the berries had faded
or vanished; but when she looked directly at the little spray of green
leaves, all three berries were there.  She was about to call Nyssa's
attention to the oddity, when something in her perception of the room
"jerked", leaving her struggling with a suddenly overpowering sense of deja
vu;

She felt she'd been on the point of doing something; but whatever it was
Tegan couldn't, for the life of her, remember what it might have been.  It
was maddening, like having a word on the tip of your tongue.

Frowning in puzzlement, she turned away from the dresser to help Nyssa get
ready for bed.   The girl was regarding her with eyes of ice, which
gleamed with a cold malice. The pendant at her throat was catching the light
as it lay against the skin of her throat, depending from the white spot in
the black portion. Startled by the feral intensity, Tegan took a half-step
back; but at that moment Nyssa smiled;  and the sinister aura of animosity
shadowing her friend evaporated,

"is something wrong," nyssa asked.

"Ehmmm?  No," Tegan answered her, feeling more than a little foolish for
having been so afrighted by a trick of the light.  crossing the room, she
carefully assisted Nyssa off with the party frock, and encouraged her into
the blue silk pajamas Nyssa always loved to wear.  Buttoning the jacket,
Tegan lifted the pendent clear of the collar, running the silken ribbon
between her fingers, to where it passed into the disk through the black eye
spot in the white portion of the design.

She fingered the disk with a thoughtful frown for a long moment.  Something
about the disk troubled her; but she couldn't think what it might be.  At
last, she dropped the pendant and helped Nyssa into bed.  Pulling the covers
over her and brushing a stray curl of brown hair from Nyssa's cheek, Tegan
kissed her forehead.

"There now?  Comfy?" she asked.

"Mmmm.  Yes.   Tegan, it was a great evening.  I really did enjoy myself."

"Great!" Tegan agreed.  "I can't remember when I had so much fun myself, not
since I met the Doctor, anyway." She patted Nyssa's hand.  "Now go to sleep.
Sweet dreams."

Rising from the bed, Tegan crossed to the door.  She took one last look at
the girl tucked up in bed before fading down the light, and pulling the door
closed.

In the soft darkness, Nyssa lay, enfolded in the gentle humming of the TARDIS
engines. For some reason though, she could not relax.  Turning on her side,
she pressed her cheek against the soothing coolness of the pillow.  Her gaze
wandered about the shadowed room, came at last to the dressing table.  A
tiny, dim luminescence glowed there.  It took her some time to realise what
it must be.

The moment realisation came, the pendant at her throat grew chill; and a
strong maternal compulsion welled up within her.  In some ineffably delicious
way, sight of the Mistletoe, lying on the table, tugged on her heart strings.
The exquisitely compelling sound of a baby, crying alone in the dark echoed
in her head.  Unable to stop her ears to that irresistible phantom of want,
or turn her gaze away, Nyssa finally gave in to the demanding attraction.
Getting up, she retrieve the sprig of green from the table. Bearing it in
careful hands back to the bed, she lay down again, cupping the precious thing
tenderly between her breasts, and began a slow rocking back and forth, while
a wordless crooning, rose from her throat.

In minutes, Nyssa had drifted into sleep, troubled by the strangest dream.

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The Doctor had watched the two girls from the console room with a vague sense
of misgiving.  After the door had closed behind them, he'd shrugged and
picked up the bowl of Christmas Pudding from the console where Adric had
abandoned it. Eating slowly, the Doctor had relished the treat.  Eventually,
the pudding was finished.

Glancing around for somewhere to set down the empty bowl, he settled finally
for the top of the Time Rotor.  He began moving around the console, flipping
switches in a desultory manner, setting up a program to slip the TARDIS into
a parking attitude in the Vortex.  Finally satisfied with the program, he
paused, peering around the console room.  A slight frown darkened his
youthful countenance.  Something was not right; but he couldn't for the life
of him work out exactly what it was.

Something to do with Nyssa?

The thought of the girl sent a questing hand into his jacket pocket.  He
lifted out the crumpled green paper crown.  Unrolling it slowly, he carefully
smoothed out the creases.  When it was set right, he held it up, studying it
a long moment, his expression thoughtful.  It did not help to clear his mind
of the unfocused misgivings.  Unable to come to any firm conclusion about
what was troubling him, he set the crown down beside the empty bowl.

He pressed the demat; and sudden fear sank talons of ice into his hearts.

He went reeling away from the console, stunned by the frenzied blast of
someone else's panic.  The air thickened with a grey mist, as moisture was
squeezed from the frigid air.  Frost glittered on the console, on his hair
and hands; Powerful as the assault had been, the Doctor was only momentarily
unmanned.  The next second he was lunging for the console..

To Set the green paper crown down beside the empty bowl.

He pressed the Demat button.  Cocking a head on one side, he listened to the
sound of the TARDIS engines as they ran up to take off.  They sounded sweet
to his discerning ears.  He smiled in satisfaction at how well the old girl
was running; then he frowned as he noticed something odd on the console.

It was sparkling with rime frost.

"Strange?" he muttered.  He reached a hand out and touched the edge with his
fingers.  The surface was cold, bone numbingly cold.  "Now that's odd?" he
mused, feeling the console again.  The top was pleasantly cool.  He smiled,
wondering what it was about the console that had been worrying him a moment
earlier.  He listened to the sweet humming of the engines for a moment.
Then he shrugged.  It probably wasn't anything important.

Gathering up the empty bowl, the Doctor turned and headed for the kitchen;
but in the doorway, he paused to look back.  Something was still niggling at
the edges of his contentment.  The Time Rotor rose an fell, fell and rose
smoothly, crowned by Nyssa's green Christmas crown.  Vaguely, he wondered
what it might be that was making him uneasy.  A moment later, though, he'd
forgotten all about it again.

As the inner door swung too behind him, an ethereal mist thickened around
the central console.  The air over it grew chill. A glittering of frost
settled like a dusting of snow upon the Time Rotor, sifting out of a boiling
of condensing grey vapour.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nyssa walked in a gentle rain, through a flower garden, her heart singing.
The song was wordless, and old as life herself.  The strong, persistent
rhythms of it beat deep in her brain, evoking delicious echoes in her soul,
stirring un-tested emotions in her heart which were, for all their inchoate
nature, powerful.  Though she might not name them, they were understood
instinctively by that part of herself which was woman.

In thrall to these deep rythmns, Nyssa strolled on through the spring time
garden; aware that she was wearing her favourite silk pajamas, but quite
untroubled by this unusual state of affairs.  She wandered on, past flower
beds with many different coloured blooms, planted in an artful arrangement to
create a harmony of hues, pleasing on the eye.

As Nyssa passed by, the colorful rows of blooms nodding in the gentle breeze,
trembled, withered, and died.  For all unknown to Nyssa, a chill winter
shadowed the young woman, setting frosted feet exactly in her footsteps.

At last, the path Nyssa was following, ended at a gate in a high brick wall.
Over that wall could just be glimpsed the living green of tree tops.  Without
hesitation, Nyssa pulled open the gate and went through, leaving the garden
behind.  She wandered down another path towards the edge of the greenwood.
Along the borders of the wood, a small stream ran babbling over a stony bed,
between verdant banks.  Tall rushes, with fiery crowns, rustled along the
river's edge.  The slender green stems were swaying in time to the wordless
song singing in Nyssa's heart.

The path led to a quaint wooden bridge arcing over the crystal waters.  Just
as Nyssa set foot on the bridge, the refreshing rain shower thinned into a
misting drizzle.  She walked over the warped planks and entered the cool,
green gloom under the trees of the old forest.

Somewhere in this forest, she knew, was a secret place, a sacred spot where
the heart of life beat with a savage strength.  The desire to reach that
place consumed her will, compelling her to press on with dogged determination
towards the heart of the forest.  At her throat, the pendant gleamed in the
cosy gloom, hanging from the ribbon through the white eye of the black
portion of the Ying Yang design.

Overhead, sweet bird-song echoed among the branches, filling the summer
scented air.  A gentle breeze played among the tree-tops, coaxing a rustling
laughter from the leaves.  Nyssa paused, tipping back her head, listening
enthralled at the sound.  She'd never known that trees could laugh with the
simple joy of being in life.

After a timeless moment, Nyssa started forward again, responding to the
tender tug on her heart-strings, passing deeper into the friendly gloom under
the trees, her bare feet brushing through a drift of late blooming bluebells.
Their delicious scent perfumed the warm air.  Nyssa paused again, drawing in
deep lungs full of that sweet fragrance.  It was a heady wine, filling her
with delight; but it was as powerless as a fog in a gale against the tender
temptation which drew on her soul.

She started forward once more, passing between the soaring trunks.  Where her
feet fell, the blue bells withered and died.  Frost sparkled in the footsteps
her bare feet left in the leaf litter; while the cheerful dappling of light
and shade at the wood's edge ghosted into a pattern of cold winter sunlight
and shadow.  In that malign light, the trees loomed over her, their
skeletal branches shutting out the sky.  The grim trunks seemed to crowd
close about her as though determined to bar her passage to the heartland of
the Old Forest.

Something brushed the enraptured girl's cheek.  Nyssa raised a hand to her
face, fingers closing on a withered leaf which crumpled into fragments.  She
peered wonderingly at the sere thing for a long moment, trying to make some
sense of it.  Then she let the fragments fall forgotten, from fingers growing
stiff with cold.

Onwards, onwards, that subtle pressure drew on her heart, urging her
faltering footsteps forward, drawing her deeper into the heart of
the darkness.

Another skeletal leaf settled in her hair.  Yet another fluttered past her
eyes.  Ignoring the autumnal confetti showering around her, Nyssa set her
teeth against the deadening chill and pressed forward through the gathering
dusk.

A menacing silence thickened in the air.  Gnarled roots hooked about her
feet.  Wraith-like serpents of mist, winding among the trunks, slithered with
grim purpose towards the girl. Nyssa shivered as their insubstantial forms
went coiling about her; but the pendant at her throat blazed with a cold blue
fire; and the serpents fell away in tatters of mist.  Brambles raked her bare
ankles with vicious thorns, but fared no better in frustrating her
single-minded purpose.  For the shadowing winter, walking in her footsteps,
withered them, permitting the girl to press blithely forward through the
dying underbrush, her feet treading the skeletal remains into crackling
flinders.

Its first line of defence in tatters, the Old Forest brought to bear less
subtle measures.  On the trunks of trees, Fiendish faces glared at her with
vicious hostility.  Each was a feminine caricature of the Doctor in one of
his five incarnations, their features moulded from traceries of scabrous
bark.  Their mouths - full lipped, fang be-ringed knot holes - gaped wide.
Sibilant voices, issuing from the mouths, whispered dire warnings at her. She
began to experience a powerful desire to turn back, but could not, for
the ineffable summons proved ever the stronger, drawing her onwards.

The voices of the trees rose to a furious scream of hatred.  They exhaled
mightily, their frozen breath smoking in the chill gloom.  The moaning rush
of wind pressed her back.  The girl was momentarily checked; but she leaned
into the gale and with hair streaming and silken pajamas flapping, pressed on
doggedly.

At last, Nyssa came to the place she sought.  Before her, two mighty trunks
stood like the pillars of a gateway, framing a roughly oval entrance.
Between them, she glimpsed a small glade, afire with a shining radiance.

The source of that silvery gleam was a beautiful tree, growing in the exact
centre of the clearing.  The light shimmered from the canopy of twinkling
leaves with which the tree was dressed.  Each point of light which glittered
was a star, each shining leaf a complete galaxy, growing upon the Life Tree,
rooted at the centre of everywhen.

And the Tree was singing.

High and pure, the sweet sound of creation filled the air.

Nyssa's soul was re-awakened to reverence.  Falling upon her knees, she bowed
her head in homage before the Tree of Life.  Between her trembling hands, she
cradled the sprig of green mistletoe, bearing its sacred seed.  The third
berry was pulsing in an eerie counter-point to the song of the Tree.  Almost,
the berry was writhing in its eagerness.

She might have remained thus, kneeling in sublime content before the tree
until time herself ended, had not the excitement of the seed intruded on her
inner peace.  Nyssa let out a long sigh and held out her hands towards the
Tree.  A cold blue fire burned upon her palms.  Reverently, Nyssa blew a long
breath over the seed, fanning it into an ominous red glow.  Leaning down, she
laid the pulsing fire amid the roots.  The tree of Life shivered as though
struck by a gale, shrieking out of the black abyss.  The galaxy-leaves
fluttered in a mad panic.  A nerve searing discord entered the pure song of
life.  Gamely, the song strove on against the moaning of the black wind,
corrupting the purity of the tones.  But the Tree was the strength of life
made incarnate.  Though black death, chill and certain, battered at it, the
seed found no easy victory against such as the tree; and it could not
prevail.

the life and death struggle tore Nyssa's heart asunder.  For though she
reverenced life, the seed of death she had planted this day was truly her
baby.  If her baby was to live, then life herself must die.  Impartiality was
not possible in this fundamental battle. The two sides laid demands of equal
weight upon the girl's divided soul.   Nyssa remained frozen by the opposing
factions, in this war where ambivalence was a futile road which wound in
circles, leading to insanity.

Faint and far off, the wheezing of the TARDIS engines sounded.  The familiar
noise swelled among the trees.  There was at its core, an affinity with the
dark song of death assailing the tree.  As the sound of the TARDIS grew, it
meshed in an uneasy union with the roaring wind.  The TARDIS's wheezing rose
to a screaming crescendo of insanity, battering in a mad frenzy at the
stout heart of the Tree.  But the Tree was old and had grown cunning in its
long existence.  It met the madness, note for note, pure tone matching each
twisted wheezing vibrato.

The corrupted TARDIS redoubled its efforts.  The very foundations of reality
trembled.  Slowly, the wild screaming overmastered the silken silver sound of
the harmony of the universe, beat it down with a ruthless savagery, and
stamped it into glittering shards.

At that exact moment, ambivalence abated.  Nyssa smiled.  The war was over.
Now, her first born was safe.

She rose, the silk pajamas creaking with the cold.  The tree was visibly
wilting before her.  A final autumn had come to that most ancient of
 things. The galaxy-leaves fell, a fluttering rain of sere tears.  They
settled in a grey shroud over Nyssa's feet and the roots of the enslaved
tree.

The sound of TARDIS engines faded.

In the winter-stark woodland about the young mother, a  sullen silence sifted
down. Bone cold, full of another's fear, it was the very incarnation of the
terrible loneliness of the newly born, ejected into an inimical world.

It was the first puzzled silence, before the screaming begins.

Nyssa was still screaming when she hit the floor of her room in a tangle of
bed clothes.  For a long time, she just lay there, face down, whimpering
while the fear and cold abated.  Then, she struggled to her feet.  She peered
around the room.  Frost glittered on the dressing table. the walls were
grey with it. The blankets were stiffening in the icy grip.  Nyssa's hair
sparkled in the dim illumination, as though set with a million diamonded
crown.

She shivered and grabbed up a blanket, pulling it tight about her shaking
shoulders.  Before her on the floor lay the sprig of mistletoe.  There were
definitely only two berries on it now.

With a little groan of weariness, Nyssa crawled into bed.  She wrapped
herself in the blankets and fell, eventually, into an exhausted, dreamless
sleep.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------

An unmistakable atmosphere of "the morning after" hung, pregnant with
regret, over two of the four seated around the table in the small kitchen
area.  The TARDIS hum, usually so soothing, now had an ineffably smug sound
to Tegan's jaundiced ears.  Nyssa had stopped listening to it long since.

The Doctor placed a small glass before Nyssa.  "Here;" he encouraged.  The
bilious green colour of the contents made Nyssa's stomach heave.  She shut
her eyes and moaned.

"I don't want it." She shook her head.  A bad mistake; the room swooped
around her pounding head.

"Come on, Nyssa;" the Doctor urged gently.  "I promise it will help."

"I just want to die!" the Traken girl moaned.  She looked utterly wretched.
Her face was pale and an unhealthy grey colour.  Her shoulders were slumped
in misery;  the brown hair, usually wavy and lustrous, now straggled in rats
tails about them.

Tegan, who looked in no better state, gave her a sympathetic smile of
encouragement.  "It's only a hangover.  You'll feel better in a while."

The Doctor took Nyssa's hand and folded the unresisting fingers about the
glass.  "Drink!  It will make you feel better - trust me!"

Nyssa did, without reservation; and so she drank the vile green stuff,
grimacing at the taste.

"There.  That wasn't so bad, was it?  I think you should go and lay down now,
Nyssa.  I included a very mild Delta Wave stimulant in it to help you get off
to sleep."

Nyssa nodded slowly.  The medicine was already beginning to work its magic on
her Traken biology.  A warm inner glow was spreading through her veins.  She
closed her eyes and sighed as the  delicious sensation of relaxation
eased the unpleasant suffering within.

"Yes.  I think that would be nice." she agreed.  Getting up, she carefully
made her way to the door.  Adric looked up from the book of equations open on
the table before him to watch her exit with a neutral expression.

The Doctor's eyes were full of concern as they followed Nyssa from the
room.  When she had gone, he switched his attention to Tegan.  The
disapproval in them stung the young woman.

"You can't blame me for that," Tegan said defensively.

"Have i blamed you, Tegan?"

"Yes."

"When?" the Doctor asked.

"You're doing it now."

The Doctor frowned.  "But Tegan...I haven't said..."

"You don't have to," Tegan bit back in a bitter tone.

"How then...Tegan?"

"Oh.  Come off it Doctor.  You know exactly what I mean.  You don't have to
say anything.  You just put on that look.  And quite frankly, I'm getting
tired of it.  So you can just stop it right there!  It's not my fault that
Nyssa got in a state.  You're just mad at me because I've spoiled your little
fantasy about her."

The Doctor's face closed up.  Tegan was not usually this perceptive.  He
wondered, in a slight panic, just how deep her penetration had gone.
"Fantasy?" he inquired carefully.

"You know what I mean.  Little miss dignity herself.  All prim and proper.
A right little goody two shoes.  But she's not like that Doctor.  Not deep
down inside.  And I *won't* be labelled as a "bad influence" on her, not by
you or anyone.  Nyssa is not a child, Doctor.  She is a young woman, and
better able than most to handle grown up situations.  She has as much right
to have some fun as me.  You know you can be a real pain sometimes.  I..."
She broke off, not entirely unaware of the hurt she was causing.

Adric had forgotten his book and was watching the spat with a lively
interest.  He did not actually dislike Tegan, but neither did he feel any
particular friendship towards her.  The way she badgered the Doctor sometimes
made him angry because, he felt, with a little thought, she would understand
how unreasonable she was being.

The Doctor said coldly.  "You can be really trying to live with sometimes,
Tegan."

"So!  You don't have to live with me.  All you've got to do is to get me
home , and I'll be out of your way for good and all."

That stung him.

Was that a hint that she knew?  If so, why had she not spoken before.
Tegan was not one to brood on things, or hold her tongue.  However, he felt
certain that if she had not guessed before about his bungling attempts to
put her back into her own time stream, then the ease with which he had hit
exactly the time and date of the UNIT 2000 Christmas party must have been a
dead give away.  Perhaps it was time that he did make a serious attempt to
put her back?

"If that is what you want, Tegan?"

Only now did it dawn on Tegan, the true depth to which her thrust had gone.
Oh!  Rabbits!  You've done it again!  haven't you, Jovanka?  she groaned to
herself.  It was the hangover, of course, wasn't it?  No.  Of course it
wasn't.  She might not often think before she shot her mouth off, but she
couldn't lie to herself.  You're just a bloody great mouth on legs, Jovanka!
she told herself bitterly for the hundredth time.  In a fit of sudden
contrition, she began framing an apology, but was too late, far too late.

The Doctor had already risen, and was stalking stiffly from the room.  She
watched his back out of sight, before turning to see Adric
regarding her with his bright button eyes.

"What're you looking at, creep?" she snarled.

The time had come, Adric felt, when he should speak.  "Tegan.  I do wish
you'd stop antagonising him like that.  Don't you see how much it hurts him?
He..."

"Stuff it!  Creep!" Tegan snapped back, all of a sudden feeling very ill,
grossly hung over, and in no mood to be lectured at by this mere boy.  It was
bad enough when the Doctor "disapproved" in his aggravating way; she sure as
hell wasn't going to take it from the kid!

Adric turned his attention back to the book, without any change of
expression.  But Tegan knew that she'd hurt him too.  A wave of remorse broke
over her.  She'd done wrong again; but not knowing what to do next, or how to
set things right, she got up abruptly, announcing to the room in general: I
don't feel so good, I'm going to have a lay down." With that, she slunk away.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Beyond the french windows, the grey sky wept gentle tears.  The silver
droplets splashed on the patio, on the marble steps, and on the gravel path
that wound away into the dimly perceived garden landscape.  Further out, the
rain watered the vague impressions of formal lawns and flower beds, which
receded into an uncertain distance, vanishing into the misting drizzle.

Nyssa stood on the threshold, watching the rain, listening to her baby crying
alone, somewhere out there beyond the apparent solidity of the Rain Room.
The wanting in that sound bound her heart in chains of steel.  She would
 have to go to her baby.  The doubtful reality of the garden would have to be
dared.  Her baby needed her!  The longer she tarried in the doorway, the more
wretched the sound was making her feel.

In the grate, under that grand marble fireplace, the eternal fire was
burning; but the logs were never consumed.  Nyssa had always found that
unsettling.  She wondered why Tegan and the Doctor spent so much time in this
comfortably melancholic room.  She had never intruded on them to see for
herself.  She could not imagine what it might be that so absorbed them, nor
how it might bridge the gulf between their disparate minds; but the crying of
the baby filled up all her mental spaces, leaving her no resources with which
to think about it.

The demand was remorseless, tugging her attention back to the scene beyond
the doors.  Through the panes, the garden was a thing more suspected than
actually seen.  She felt instinctively that it had no substantial reality;
but she would have to go out there, nonetheless.

An umbrella stand lurked against the wall beside the French Windows.
Projecting from the fake elephant foot were the handles of a number of
elegant silver headed canes and umbrellas.  Nyssa selected an umbrella with a
peculiar question mark handle.  Clutching the grip with grim resolution, she
addressed the doors; but a sudden doubt assailed her.  She hesitated on the
threshold.

With a hand on the latch, she wondered if perhaps she ought to find the
Doctor?  Treading on the heels of that thought, hustling it aside, came the
wailing of her baby.  The exquisitely excruciating cry swelled in her mind.
It was a thing of razor edged crystal shards, distilled from a vein of the
purest terror.

Nyssa staggered under the impact of that cry.  No!  She must go to her baby.
Her hand closed on the latch.  She had to go now.  Her baby needed her.  She
dragged open the doors and dashed out into the forever rain.

As she ran down the shallow flight of steps, frantic fingers worked the clip
of the umbrella.  It erected with a mad flutter of cloth, into a brightly
patterned canopy.

She got a dozen yards along the gravel path, towards a gate in the garden
wall, before the heart stopping terror abated.  With its passing, Nyssa's
rational self wrestled back control from the deeply instinctive primal part
of her being which had been galvanised by the baby's terror.  Confused, she
stumbled to a halt on the path, struck by a deep sense of misgiving at her
trespass into this nether realm of the TARDIS.  She turned round to look
back.  She knew not what she expected to see.

Perhaps an edwardian house?  Or the steps, the patio and a set of doors,
framing the melancholy quiet of the Rain Room?  But all she could see was a
fountain at the focus of many paths.  Beyond the elegant stone construction,
the garden receded away forever into the mist of silver droplets, cascading
from the clouds.

Well.  It wasn't important.  With a shrug, she spun and went on towards the
wall, cutting across the lawns, taking a more direct rout.  The green of tree
tops peeked over the wall, gleaming wetly in the drizzle.  The imperious
summons was coming from the heart of that forest.

"I'm coming.  Mummy's coming," she cried under her breath, breaking into a
stumbling run.  At the gate, in her desperation to unfasten the latch, Nyssa
abandoned the umbrella.  At last, the fastening yielded. She dragged the gate
open and ran through, leaving the garden behind.  Dashing down the path
beyond, she crossed the quaint plank bridge spanning the shallow stream, and
darted into the green gloom of the wood.

The crying was nearer now.  A dense canopy closed in overhead; the light grew
dim.  Water dripped from the branches.  Dead leaves rustled damply underfoot
as Nyssa hurried deeper into the gloom, drawn on by the panicky wailing of
her baby.

She brought with her a darkness of a different quality that thickened under
the trees.  The air grew chill; frost began to glitter on the leaf litter.
Nyssa pressed on through the growing desolation of the woodland, trailing
the autumnal chill in her wake.

"Mummy's coming!  Mummy's coming!" she cried, her breath smoking in the cold
air.  The crying was scoring deep furrows in her soul.  She stumbled on,
bursting through thickets of dead brambles and nettles, without noticing them
at all.  Faster and faster, she raced between the crowding trunks.

Of a sudden, the headlong plunge ended as the running girl burst into an open
glade, hemmed in by a palisade of mighty boles.  Overhead, a dark sky with a
sparse scattering of dim red stars, showed in ragged patches through an
inter-meshing of winter stark branches.  At the exact centre of the glade, an
immaterial something lent on the dark air.  It possessed the form of a bent,
withered tree bereft of its leaves.  The once silver singing foliage of
galaxies lay now like a grey shroud about the skewed trunk.

Bright and solid, against the stark bony fingers of the branches, a huge
white berry hung.  It hoarded to itself all the life energy, drained from the
mortally wounded tree.  The berry glowed faintly in the dark, a grossly
obscene thing, swollen with the life it had sucked without mercy from it's
unwilling foster mother.  It swayed slowly in a wind blowing out of the
abyss.  Nyssa barely noticed the malign grotesqueness of the scene.  Her
world had focused down on the desperate wail of her baby.

"mummy's here!  Mummy's here!" she crooned, reaching up hands to the bundle.
As her fingers touched, the berry came free from the branch with a succulent
sound, like the tearing of rotten flesh.  The bundle dropped into her
maternal embrace.  With delicate fingers, Nyssa pulled aside the soft white
woollen baby shawl, to expose a perfect little face.  The eyes were squeezed
shut.  The mouth was a rictus of want, emitting a thin wail.  Discontent was
written clear in every pucker and wrinkle.  Tiny hands, balled into fists,
waved with an aimless fury.  Nyssa's heart filled up with a surge of motherly
affection at the sight.  She cuddled the thing to her with an empassioned
embrace.

The eyes opened to form two black pits in the wrinkled landscape of the face.
The crying faltered, then stopped.  The mouth pulled into a smile.  Chubby
hands reached for the cascades of brown hair which fell past Nyssa's cheek.
The baby gurgled happily.  Nyssa's heart missed a beat.  Then the gurgle
altered, becoming a whine of hunger.

Guided by an instinct as old as life herself, Nyssa's fingers moved to
unbutton the pajamas jacket.  The hungry little mouth latched onto her. She
closed her eyes, as waves of tender sensation flooded her.  A smile of
perfect consummation sculpted her lips.

Such joy!

Such exaltation!

Such pain?

Of such was the unholy trinity forged.

Nyssa screamed!

She was still screaming when she landed amid the tangle of blankets on her
ruined bed.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tegan sat bolt upright in bed, her heart pounding.  On the very edge of
sleep, something had brought her wide awake. She cocked her head on one side,
listening.  The quiet hum of the TARDIS filled the room.  Then it came again.
Yes, there was something? But not a scream, more a frightened whimper.

Swinging her legs off the bed, Tegan padded, on bare feet, to the door.  She
checked her reflection in a mirror, patted her hair down, smoothed out some
creases in the cream blouse, adjusted her skirt then pulled the door open to
listen again.  The sound was coming from the door to Nyssa's bedroom.

Tegan crossed the corridor. "Nyssa?  Are you alright?" she called softly at
the door.  There was no answer.  Tegan knocked.  "Nyssa?  Is anything wrong?"
There was still no response from inside;  while the thin crooning continued
to sound through the panel.

Coming to a decision, She pushed open the door and went in.  The lights were
dimmed, the room in shadow.  "Nyssa?"What's the matter?  Are you not feeling
well?" she inquired.

The shadowy shape hunched on the bed stirred.  The sound of the crooning
faltered.  Although Tegan knew it was Nyssa, for some reason she felt a
tiny shiver of fear go through her.

The room was cold.  Nyssa had always preferred a cooler ambient temperature
than herself which was why they were experimenting with separate living
areas; but Tegan was certain she'd never felt Nyssa's room quite this chilly
before.  Moving further into the darkened room, Tegan's foot encountered
something soft and slimy.  She drew back with a gasp, then, getting a hold of
herself, stooped to see what it was.  The lighting, responding to movement,
chose that moment to brighten, revealing the thing to be a silken slipper.
The delicate indoor footwear was damp; there was a rip along one side; it was
caked with mud; and pieces of twig were stuck to the fabric.  A dead leaf lay
on the carpet nearby.  Tegan picked them up.  A heavy, earthy autumnal forest
smell clung to both leaf and slipper.

She straightened.  Crossing to the bed, she peered down at the hunched form
of Nyssa.  The girl was cradling a pillow in her arms, whilst gently
rocking back and forth.

"Nyssa?" Tegan called softly.

The girl did not respond.  Tegan perched on the edge of the bed beside her
friend.  Reaching out a tentative hand, she stroked Nyssa's shoulder.  The
silk was damp, and so cold it drew an involuntary gasp.  "Nyssa?  What's up?
Are you alright?  You're, you're so cold?"

At touch of the hand on her shoulder, Nyssa paused in her rocking motions.
She did not look up, but continued to peer at the pillow cradled in her arms.
Cascading waves of long wavy hair masked her face.

Tegan tried again.  "Nyssa?" She reached out and brushed aside the hair.
"Nyssa?  What's wrong?   What's happened?"

Only then did Nyssa lift her head, revealing a face lit by an
abstracted smile. Her eyes were shining. Tegan drew back, alarmed at the
burning intensity in them.

"Isn't he beautiful?  Tegan, he's just so perfect. I am so happy.  I never
knew it would be like this.  He's so beautiful."

Nyssa's simple conviction so shook Tegan's belief in reality that she was
forced to glance down - just to bolster her certainty in what she knew to be
true.  "But?  Nyssa?  It's only a pillow?"

A sudden doubt clouded Nyssa's expression. Her face was momentarily beset by
confusion, laced with panic; but then the pendant at her throat flashed ,
catching the light as the girl moved; and her features grew soft once more.
the alarm was there and gone so swiftly that Tegan was not certain she'd seen
it at all.

Nyssa smiled indulgently at her and stroked the pillow.  "Oh, Tegan, don't be
silly.  Look!  His little hands! Aren't they just so perfect!"

A sudden fear clawed at Tegan's heart with talons of ice.  She knew by some
deep instinct that there was a wrongness here that the Doctor should know
about without delay.  She rose abruptly, heart fluttering.  "I'm going to
fetch the Doctor."

As she made for the door, a little cry of anguish brought her up short.  She
turned to see Nyssa staring at her.  Fear and panic once more held those
usually serene features in an impassioned grip.  Slowly, grudgingly, a
furious hatred twisted her face, until all that was left of Nyssa were a pair
of horror haunted eyes adrift in a sea of insanity.

"No.  You will not fetch the Doctor;" Nyssa's mouth said in a voice full of
quiet menace.  "He will kill my baby.  I will not let him kill my baby." She
started up suddenly from the bed. She was clutching a carving knife from the
kitchen.  She twisted it slowly, allowing the light to slide along the length
of the razor sharp, silver steel blade.

"I can't let you warn the Doctor, Tegan," Nyssa's mouth  repeated. "I really
can't let you do that."

Tegan's heart leapt into her throat.  The slipper fell from her fingers.
 In stark terror, she turned to flee.

She scrabbled desperately at the door handle.  The damned thing seemed to
have stuck.  A silken swish of pajamas came up close behind.  The skin
between her shoulders twitched in horrible expectation.  Whimpering with
panic, Tegan hauled at the door.  It remained stuck fast.  Madly, she
hammered on the smooth white panel.  It was useless.  It would not budge.
She spun round, flattening herself against the door.

Nyssa stood a few feet away, the knife held ready.  One hand fingered the
pendant at her throat.  It depended from the twisted ribbon, through the
"eye" of the black portion of the design.  She shook her head slowly.  "No,
Tegan.  I really cannot let you warn the Doctor."

She raised the knife and lunged.

Tegan squeezed her eyes shut and screamed, By reflex, her hands went out in a
hopeless gesture to ward off the blow.  The blade took her in the chest, just
under the left breast.  The foot of steel sliced into her heart.  Scarlet
began to spread from around the embedded blade, staining the cream coloured
blouse.

Tegan screamed again, and died.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Doctor winced at the clumsiness of the translation.  Abstractedly, his
hand reached out, lifted the tea cup to his lips.  He sipped
appreciatively.  He set it down on the saucer, turned the page of the fat
book of poetry resting on his legs, and settled himself more comfortably in
the sun lounger.

The tinkling sound of water splashing in the elegant fountain, in the
middle of the small court, soothed his nerves.  This was his special little
hide away, where he came from time to time to get away from Tegan's
sometimes barbed and hurtful words.  At some periods in his long life he had
spent a great deal of time here, tending the flowers and training the vines
around the marble statues, until their hard white aspect was softened by the
green of growing things.

The Doctor winced at the clumsiness of the translation.  He reached for his
cup, sipped the tea, turned the page  - so simple the repetition which
soothed his soul.  He was already reaching for the cup again, when
realisation of imminent deadly danger hit him.

Repetition?

He froze in sudden alarm.  With his mind, he felt for the touch of the
TARDIS.

All was well.  And yet?...

He leapt up, a cold fear closing on his hearts.  One of the benefits of Time
Lord status was an enhanced sense of time and the ability, to some extent, to
stand outside the flow.  He did this now, with growing trepidation and - saw
exactly the thing he most feared.

"Time Loop!" he cried aloud.  The book was tossed aside as he sprinted from
the little court, gripped by a terrible fear that it was already too late -
far too late.  Pounding along the empty corridors, he fancied that the
darkness already encroached at the edges of vision.

He felt the time line jump.  A ghostly image of himself faded before him as
he dashed up to the place he had just reached.  Ready for it this time, he
saw the jerk,  and leapt, riding the wave front like a surfer on the
tides of time.  This time the ghostly fading image of himself was running up
from behind, dashing pell mell for the place he had just left.  The Doctor
did  not see, he had eyes only for the door to the Console Room, grinning
like a death's head for he knew now that he had a chance, a slim one, but a
definite chance - the Worm was a hatchling, plus something must have diverted
its attention at the critical moment or he'd never have got away with such a
simple evasion as counter-jumping the time-line hiatus.

He redoubled his speed and, a moment later, raced into the console room.

The time rotor was moving slowly, half hidden by a cold cloud of vapour which
was moving in an exact counterpoint to the regular motion.

The Doctor sprang to the console.  He applied himself desperately to the
controls, fingers flying over the keys.  A dusting of frost chilled his
finger tips.  Lights and tell tales began to twinkle and ripple in
complicated patterns.  With a little prayer, the Doctor flipped a last
switch.  The strained note of the TARDIS hum relaxed, almost like a sigh of
relief, harmonising with the Doctor's own sigh.  The frost lost its sparkle
and went grey, as it began to melt.  The atmosphere warmed noticeably.  The
pulsing mist over the console thinned away. Standing back, the Doctor studied
the play of red lights on the board.  One by one, they flickered to green.

"There Old Girl," he soothed, patting the edge of the console.  "That
ought to hold it for the moment." He stood a while gazing at the console,
watching the Rotor settle back into a smooth rising and falling.  At last, he
was satisfied with the motion.  He reached out and took up the green paper
crown from the top surface.  It felt chill in his fingers.

For a long time, he studied Nyssa's paper crown, turning it round and round
in his fingers, troubled by a disturbing suspicion about the Traken girl.

Though his fears denied all logic and reason, they would not go away.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The world stuttered, started over.

Tegan lived.

For, even in the pitiless war of attrition that was life, friendship had
power to overmaster the strongest instincts.  By this power to divide
loyalties,had Tegan survived; though she would never know this.

Tegan knocked gently on the door.  "Nyssa?  Are you alright?"

"Tegan?  Is that you?  Come in."

Tegan pushed open the door and went in.  Nyssa was sitting on the bed, a
welcoming smile on her face.  In her lap was a pillow.

"I thought I heard someone crying?  I was worried that it might be you?
What with the party last night?..."

Nyssa stood up.  As she lay the pillow aside, with an exaggerated care, Tegan
noted, with an unsettling flutter of her heart, that the girl was wearing
only one slipper.  She felt suddenly uneasy, though she could not, for the
life of her, say why?

"I feel much better now, Tegan.  That Delta Wave stimulant really did the
trick,"  Nyssa said, kicking off the other slipper with a forced casualness.
She poked it out of sight under the bed with a foot.

the deliberately off-hand action triggered the weirdest feeling of
disorientation that Tegan had ever known.  For some unaccountable reason, she
felt she had trod on something, or remembered that she *was going to* tread
on something.  It was like having a memory of something having happened that
you knew was not going to happen.  The fingers of her left hand were
clutching at a memory of holding something that she knew she had never held.
The thing, whatever it had been, was not there now, and in fact had never
been there at all.

Had never been there?

Yet she had the weirdest sense of having done all this before, only somehow
different.  At the same time, she knew, with absolute certainty, that she had
not, would not, will not.  With a mental effort, she forced the unsettling
confusions to the back of her mind and smiled.

"You sure you're feeling better?"  she asked, studying Nyssa's face.

"Much, thank you," the girl nodded.  "I think i'll take a good long soak in a
hot bath before I get dressed." Absently, she fingered the pendant from the
cracker, hanging at her throat.  It dangled on the twisted ribbon from the
eye in the white portion.  Meeting Tegan's gaze steadily, she favored her
with a radiant smile.  The last lingering shreds  of guilt in Tegan's mind,
for her part in Nyssa's excess of the night before, evaporated under the
warmth of that smile.

Nyssa went on: "Could you find Adric for me?  And ask him to come down to the
small bio lab?  The one off the medical unit?  In about an hour or so?"

"Sure thing - but what do you want the kid for?"

"I found some really strange experiment in some old books; and I want to see
if I can make them work; but the calculations are all third level.  Way
beyond me - I wouldn't even know how to ask them of the mathes program.  If
Adric's busy, or something, the Doctor will do."

Inwardly, Tegan sighed with relief.  That sounded like the Nyssa she had
grown fond of over the last months.  Tegan relaxed muscles she had not even
been aware that she was still tensing.

"Sure.  I'll se to it right now.  About an hour?"

"Yes.  An hour."

"Right!" Tegan exclaimed, and left in search of the boy.

Pausing before his door, she was about to knock when a strange, yet
familiar, noise came to her from inside the room.  She frowned - surely that
was a baby rattle?  Now what would the boy want with something like that?
Probably going to calculate the way the beads bounce around inside, she
thought sourly.  She rapped on the closed panel.

"Who is it?" Adric called from inside.  He sounded distinctly
nervous.

"Tegan.  Can I come in?"

"Why?"

"I've got a message from Nyssa."

A long, doubtful silence  crept out from under the door.  Tegan put hands
 on hips and smiled.  "It's ok, Adric.  I haven't got the
mistletoe."

"Really?"

"Yes.  Really.  Now can I come in?"

"Alright."

Pushing the door open, Tegan entered.  Adric stood in the centre of the room,
wearing a loose pale blue tunic he often wore in the TARDIS.  He was
clutching a pink plastic baby rattle.  He was looking at it with a curious,
faintly puzzled smile on his face.  He gave it an experimental shake, and
looked pleased at the sound it produced.  Tegan had expected to find him
pouring over a book of equations, or staring in abstraction at a computer
screen, full of totally incomprehensible mathematical symbols, not playing
with a baby's toy.

"What'cha got there, Adric?"

Adric held it out to her. "A baby rattle," he said; "I found it in a chest
back there." He waved vaguely at an inner door.  "I thought Nyssa'd like
it."

"Why?"

"Well.  I thought?..." Adric began, frowned in puzzlement, then trailed off
into silence.  The look on his face was almost comical.  He gave the rattle
an experimental shake; but the sound seemed to stir no memory.  At last, with
a sheepish grin, he admitted: "Don't know.  It just seemed like a good idea
when I found it.  Eh?  What do you want, Tegan?"

"Nyssa wants to know if you'll help her with some calculations?"

The boy's grin widened into a genuinely pleased smile.  "Of course."

"Good!  She'll be down in the small bio lab off the medical room.  She's
going to try some experiments, and wants help with the mathes."

"What?  Right now?"

"No.  Nyssa's going to have a good soak in a bath first.  She said in about
an hour.  Will that be alright?"

"Fine."

Tegan turned to go, message delivered.  She paused, thinking this might be
a good moment to try and apologise.  She was just working up to it, when
the Doctor's voice spoke from the air.

"Adric?  Can you hear me?  If you can - come to the Console Room would you?"

Both of them caught the note of controlled urgency in the voice.  Tegan said.
"Oh rabbits!  Now what?  He sounds worried.  I think you'd better get up
there."

"I'm on my way, Doctor," Adric said to the air.  Halfway to the door he
paused, peering bewildered at the rattle in his hand.  He shot a
questioning look at Tegan, who shrugged at him in a "don't ask me".  He
stuffed the toy in a pocket of the loose tunic before hurrying  out.

Tegan trailed out in his wake.  In the corridor she hesitated,
more than a little nervous about what might be up. At the same time, she
was unable to shake an indefinable, yet positively *bad* feeling about Nyssa
loose from her thoughts.  It was something to do with the way the girl had
set down that pillow she'd been cradling.

The simple action had caused a disturbing emotional turmoil within.  The
powerful surge had made her breasts tingle and filled her arms with a diffuse
longing which egged on her uneasiness.  Her body knew instinctively what game
was a-foot, but her brain was loathe to put a name to it - the idea
seeming so ridiculous.

Rousing herself from introspection, tegan called out to Adric's back
disappearing round a corner: "I'll be along.  I just want to have a word with
Nyssa first."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Adric entered the console room.  He paused just inside the door,
peering around.  The Doctor stood at the console.  A large leather bound
volume lay open upon the console.  The Doctor was perusing it through a pair
of half-lensed spectacles.  Everything seemed in order to the boy.  "What's
up Doctor?" he asked, pushing the door to, and moving over to stand next to
the Time Lord.

The Doctor glanced over his half lenses. He noted, with an inward smile, that
Adric had taken the trouble to pin on his badge for mathematical excellence.
It shone out proud on the breast pocket of the light blue tunic.

"A small emergency," he explained.  "I've got it in hand for the moment; but
I fear we might be in real difficulties if I can't find some way to deal with
it properly.  I'm going to need your skill with numbers."

Adric beamed; then a puzzled look came over his face.  "It's nice of you to
ask, Doctor, but the math program in the TARDIS memory would be just as
good."

"The TARDIS might not cooperate." the Doctor said.

"What?  Why not?"Adric moved around to peer at the lights on the console, as
if he might see the reason there.

"We might have a Time Worm in the system."

"A Time Worm?"

The Doctor nodded.  "It's a sort of extra-continuum parasite. A creature of
negative energy that parasitises TARDISes."

Adric was frankly incredulous.  He found the idea of a creature preying on a
TARDIS quite unbelievable, and said so.

The Doctor regarded the boy gravely over his half-lenses a long moment before
replying.  "The parasitic intelligences are all too real, Adric.  My people
call the Time Worms the Maggot Brood, though I've always considered that a
rather pejorative term myself."

"Are they dangerous?"

"Yes.  Very!  To all positively polarised intra-continuum entities.."

Adric looked puzzled.

"Eh - that's you and me and everyone from inside a universal envelope," the
Doctor explained.  He sent his fingers dancing over the controls.  He paused
suddenly and shot another sharp look at the boy.  "I've got it tied down for
the moment; but if I can't find some way to dislodge this one from the
system, then it's eventually going to suck out all the life energy of the
TARDIS and destroy her, and everything within the plasmic shell."

"But how did the TARDIS get infected by this ...  this ...  Time Worm?"

"I have no idea.  The TARDIS has very powerful anti-body
procedures against these parasites.  They usually detect and eject the eggs
long before they can find a niche in which to hatch."

Adric was still not convinced; the concept seemed quite ludicrous.  The
TARDIS was a machine, complex and old and almost alive, but still only a
machine.  He said as much to the Doctor.

"The TARDIS is more a coagulation of primal forces, some of which might be
deemed to have a biological profile, rather than just being an assembly of
inanimate machine parts, Adric," the Doctor explained.  "And TARDISes have
been around a long time - more than long enough for a life form to evolve to
prey on them.  In the early days, we lost many travel capsules, without being
able to explain why, until we discovered the Time Worms.  It's far more
difficult for them to infect us, now that we have the Anti Body procedures;
but its a war without possibility of victory on either side.  They still
succeed in getting in now and then.  Which means we have to update the anti
body procedures..."

The Doctor broke off from his explanation, to flip a couple of switches.
Numbers wriggled across the screen like green worms. "How are you on
transdimensional transformers?" he asked.

"Ok - I think?"

"Good. What is the reciprocal of...," and he launched into a long stream of
numerals.

Adric came back with the answer the moment the Doctor stopped speaking.
"9474.234 - 72."

"And the answer - without the power variable."

"4.9174."

The Doctor frowned.  "Are you sure?"

'Doctor!  Please..."Adric looked pained.

"Yes of course," the Doctor muttered.  "Sorry, Adric.  It's just that with
those numbers, there is simply no space at all left where it could be
lodged."

"Could you have been mistaken about the time loop?"

"No.  It *has* to be in the system somewhere.  It can only get the TARDIS to
loop time if it has a direct link to the command structures.  And there's no
internal volume that is not accounted for.  It simply is not there."

"But it was able to make the TARDIS loop time?"

The Doctor nodded.  "But the contact seemed very tenuous;" he said, more
speaking his thoughts out loud than to Adric.

"Isn't there any other way it can gain access to the TARDIS command
structures? Some kind of ...  Well, I don't know what?" Adric looked
hopefully to the Doctor.

"It has to be a direct link." the Doctor reiterated.  "There are only two
other ways it can maintain a direct link. First, the Worm is in the Matrix.
In which case it's a matter for Gallifrey to deal with."

"Is that likely?"

"No. Most unlikely.  The Matrix has even more efficient anti body procedures
than an old Type Forty." He absently patted the console, just to reassure her
that he meant no disrespect.  "And if the worm can cope with those defenses?
then it will brush aside any anti body programs that we can throw at it.
Besides which, if it's in the Matrix? then someone on Gallifrey would have
notice by this time.  The Cloister Bells would be going hard enough even to
get that lot into action."

He ran his hands over the keys on the console, watching the flickering of
coloured patches on the screen.  He cancelled the display and swung around,
peering over his half lenses at the roundels set in the walls.  "It *has* to
be somewhere?" he mused out loud.

"There was that discrepancy at 1234987.234." Adric pointed out.  He had quite
enjoyed exercising his talent.  So far in his short life, the TARDIS physical
reality construct (which could only be described by reference to a framework
of Block Transfer equations) was the only thing which had given him a real
"work out" mathematically.

"Hmmm - yes." the Doctor acknowledged Adric's words absently.  He began to
fiddle with his stick of celery.  "The trouble is, it might not be a
discrepancy.  Small discontinuities like that occur all the time."

The Doctor dragged off his hat, fiddled with the brim a moment, before
setting it on the top of the rotor.  Taking off the half-lenses, he popped
them into the breast pocket of his blazer and wandered all around the
console.   He completed one full circuit, lost in thought, and had just
started on another, when he stopped abruptly to frown at Adric.

"Where does that approximate to?" he asked.

Adric closed his eyes a moment, his lips working silently. Suddenly, his
eyes popped open.  "Assuming no re-configuration since Castrovalva? I'd say
it was - ah - most probably the Rain Room?"

"Right!" exclaimed the Doctor decisively.  "It might be nothing; but it
can't hurt to check." He swept up his hat as he passed the console,
heading for the door.  "Come along, Adric! I might need your help again."

Adric trailed after him, down the humming corridors, to the portals of the
strangely tranquil room.  The Doctor paused on the threshold.  He peered
cautiously around the book lined study; he saw nothing out of place.  His
gaze shifted to the French Windows.  Thoughtfully, he watched the rain
through the glass panels of the doors for a long moment.  Then he noticed
something on the rug before the doors.  He stiffened as the suspicion which
had suggested itself to him in the Console Room solidified suddenly into a
dreadful fear.

"So, you don't think it's in the Matrix?" asked Adric, pushing past the
Doctor into the room.

"No," the Doctor said, his mind dwelling on an unpleasant dilemma.

Adric glanced around.  The log fire was burning in the marble fire place with
a muted crackling.  The rich aroma of leather bound books wafted from the
book cases lining the walls; the fresh wet smell of the forever rain teased
nostrils; and the comfortable melancholy was soothing to the soul. The
"genius" of this reality construct was a gentle distillation of all these
things.  It hung heavy in the air of the Rain Room, settling like a satin
shroud over the solid-looking, tasteful furniture.

"You said there were two other places?" Adric prompted; but the Doctor was
not listening.

A taunt silence lengthened in the quiet room.  The fire crackled as
 it might have done since the dawn of time.  Outside, the rain
fell.

"Pardon?" the Doctor said at last.  "What was that? Adric?"

"I said: you mention two other places?  If it's not in the Matrix, then
where?"

Again, the Doctor did not answer at once.  His lips drew together as he mused
over his fears, seeking some flaw in his thinking.  The idea was absurd,
dangerously so, and yet he could not, dare not ignore the trail of clues
which led inevitably to...To an outcome he hardly dared to think about.
Eventually, with a great effort, he was able to put the matter aside.  He
returned his attention to the boy.

He said: "It is feasible that it could use the
telepathic link in my mind - hide itself in my head and work the TARDIS
through the connection.  But it's not doing that."

"How do you know?"

"I know, Adric!  If I had a Time Worm hiding inside my mind, I would
know...Adric? Have you tried to go through the doors?"

"Doors?"  Adric echoed.  "What doors?"

The Doctor did not answer.  Instead he pointed to the floor before the French
Windows.  The tastefully patterned door-mat was marked by some wet
footprints.  He crossed the room and went to his knees beside the damp foot
marks on the carpet.  Adric trailed over behind him.  The Doctor was tracing
an outline with his finger.  "No.  Of course you haven't." he answered his
own question.  "This print is far too small."

He rose, his expression bleak. For a long moment, he stood by the windows
gazing around, while grim thoughts cast a black shadow on his mind.  He was
certain now that there must be an unpleasant corollary to what he had to do
next. but he withheld his thoughts from the boy.  It could serve no purpose
to burden Adric with the fears which were tormenting him.

"Well?" inquired Adric, when the silence lengthened once more.  "Is it
here?"

The Doctor shook himself alert.  "No."

"So.  What do we do now?"

"For the moment," the Doctor said slowly, "there isn't much I can do, except
set up a security wall and run the engines a bit to see if I can flush it
from the system into the open."

"Is there anything I can do to help?" the boy asked.

"No!" the Doctor snapped, his voice edged with an unwonted sharpness.

Slowly, drawing out Nyssa's green paper crown, he  smoothed it out.  He held
the flimsy scrap of green up before his face, his eyes hard, his features
set with determination.  No.  There was no point in troubling the boy
unnecessarily.  It was not as though there was a choice in the matter anyway.
The thing *had* to be done.

With sudden savagery, he balled up the crackling green paper and flung it
into the fire where it was consumed by the forever flames.  Turning on is
heel, the Doctor strode to the door, leaving a concerned Adric to stare after
him.

- - - - - - - - - -

Broodiness!  Tegan unwilingly admitted to herself at last.  The sensation
flooding her body was a powerful flood of maternal feelings; and the cause of
her delicious discomfort was not in doubt.

A few years ago, she had been present when a cousin had given birth.  The
new-born babe had been put into her arms.  The floods of tender sensation she
had experienced then found their echo in the emotional turmoil she was now
experiencing.  She was leaning against the wall, just inside the Bio-Lab,
struggling with this inappropriate emotion,   which surged up within every
time she looked at the slender form of Nyssa.

The Traken girl stood, head bent together with Adric, in earnest discussion
of some abstruse matter next to a laboratory bench covered with a complicated
array of glassware.  From time to time, Nyssa would point to some part of the
array and launch into an explanation that was complete gibberish to Tegan;
but which would set Adric's head nodding eagerly.

Every movement of her clean limbs, every syllable of her words dropping from
the exquisite mouth was sending new shivers of motherly sensation through
Tegan.  Yes.  Broody was exactly the word, she nodded to herself.

She crossed her arms over her breasts to stifle the uncomfortable tingling
Nyssa's mere presence set going in them.  Her nipples were stiff and tender.
These physical phantoms of motherhood, she remembered experiencing whilst
watching her cousin nursing the new baby; but why should Nyssa be having this
effect on her.  That troubled her more than a little and, she noted, she was
not the only one being affected by this powerful maternal aura emanating from
the girl.

Adric had a rather foolish smile on his face.  He'd pulled the baby rattle
from his pocket and was holding it out to Nyssa.  The look of delight in her
face sent a redoubled surge of tenderness through Tegan's entire being.

"Oh!  It's perfect!  Thank you, Adric.  Thank you;" Nyssa cooed.  The girl
was almost gushing; which was not like her at all.  She took the rattle and,
for a horrified moment, Tegan thought she was going to kiss Adric in a
spontaneous show of affection for the thoughtfulness of the gift.

Tegan pushed her self upright.  That was certainly not the Nyssa she knew at
all.

Adric's grin had gone all soppy, his usually hard, button bright eyes taking
on a softer aspect.  Tegan turned away, struggling with the confused mix of
emotions ravishing her as yet unfulfilled motherly instincts.  There was even
a touch of jealousy in there somewhere because of the attention Adric was
paying to Nyssa; and that couldn't be right.  She didn't even like the boy
very much.  She didn't want to watch this.  She started out the door.
Exactly at that instant, the note of the TARDIS altered.

It was a subtle shift, but one which she had learned to associate with
imminent dematerialisation.  So, the Doctor had succumbed to his wanderlust
again?  Where were they off to this time? Somewhere quiet, Tegan hoped; but
with what had already happened to her so far since entering the TARDIS, there
didn't seem much chance of that.

The lighting dimmed suddenly.

Nyssa screamed.

It was the most awful scream that Tegan could ever remember.  It froze her to
the spot, raising hackles all over her body.  A wave of goose flesh rippled
down her spine.  She'd heard people screaming before, done a fair bit of it
herself, but nothing quite like the agonised sound which was now
reverberating from the white walls.  It was the very worst - ever!

The sound of dematerialisation ceased abruptly.  The scream diminished away
into a shivering whimper.  The illumination brightened.  Tegan half turned to
re-enter the Bio-Lab.

Dense billows of a grey fog swirled in the room, thickest around Nyssa.
Enreathed in the glittering mist, she was swaying from side to side, her
hands clasped to her breasts.  The pink rattle was sticking out from her
clenched fingers at an obscene angle.  A crown of frost diamonds sparkled in
her hair.  While Tegan looked on, transfixed, The girl uttered a low moan and
sagged into Adric's arms.  The boy lowered the shuddering form to the floor,
and knelt beside her.

The baby rattle, dropping from lax fingers, bounced across the floor.
Rattling merrily, it fetched up against Tegan's feet, shocking her out of
immobility.  She was on her knees beside Nyssa in a flash.

The girl was unconscious.  Tegan was reaching down a hand, when the sound of
take off rose again, more intense this time.  The wheezing seemd somehow
softened, and over laid by the gurgling of a contented baby.

A bone cold chilliness began to radiate from Nyssa.  The pendant at her
throat was flickering, the white and black portions flipping back and forth
in a grey blur.  The shining mist thickened about the girl, cocooning her
recumbent form like a shroud.  Wrapped in the sparkling vapour, Nyssa's body
began to fade.

Tegan uttered a gasp of horror.  She reached automatically to grab a hand;
but like cold custard, Nyssa's substance oozed through her grasping fingers.
Tegan shuddered in stark horror at the slimy feel of the melting flesh.  She
jerked away, snatching back her hand, utterly, utterly unmanned.  Her hand
was on fire with an arctic cold - so stiff that it would not close into a
fist.  She clasped it to herself, whimpering.  The flesh had a sickly
parlour, glassy and congealed looking.  While she sat nursing her burning
hand in a daze of horror, the take off sound reached a peak, and died.  The
underlying cooing of the baby grew discontented.

Amazingly, before her shocked and disbelieving gaze, Nyssa solidified.

Again the sound mounted, and again Nyssa faded.

Adric leapt up.  "We've got to stop him;" he cried.  "It's the
take off engines!" He turned to race from the bio-lab.  "I've got to stop
him!  He's killing her!"

The sound of the engines mounted up once more in fretful echoes, straining to
a final crescendo.  In that instant, Nyssa faded completely out of existence.
There remained only a ghostly doppleganger made of mist, which silently
thinned away right before Tegan's horrified gaze.

About the stunned woman, kneeling in the now empty bio-lab,  the note of the
engines settled into the contented hum of the TARDIS in flight.

Somewhere, a baby was cooing with pleasure.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Adric!" the Doctor cried, "Keep shaking that rattle!"

The contented gurgling of a baby, echoing throughout the TARDIS, had died
into an ominous silence, laden with waiting.  A chill grew in the air.  The
lighting dimmed.  The hum of the engines took on a strained note.

With renewed vigour, Adric began to shake the baby rattle. The happy
burbling once more filled the air.  The room warmed appreciably; and the
light level recovered.

Tegan was biting her lower lip with impatience.  She was deadly afraid for
Nyssa.  "Can't you do something?" she implored.  "Nyssa -"

The Doctor glanced up from his frantic setting of controls. "I am doing
something, Tegan!  Be patient!  I'm working as fast as I dare.  This is a
very dangerous manoeuvre - "

"When is it ever anything else?" Tegan bit back with sarcasm sharpened by
desperation.

The Doctor adjusted a last control, hesitated a moment over the activation
switch, considering the dangers of his plan.  Quickly, he ran the program
through his mind, looking for flaws.  There were bound to be some; and
there was not the time to track them all down.  It would take one only to
kill them.  With grave misgivings, he pressed the switch.

The materialisation sound swelled in the room.  The gurgling twisted into a
scream of infantile rage.  An arctic chill gripped the room.  Grey mist
congealed in the air over the console, discharging its own mini snow storm.
The smooth rise and fall of the Time Rotor became jerky, while the TARDIS hum
died to a strangled whimper.  The light level dimmed, plunging the room into
an artic mid-winter.

"NO!" yelled the Doctor, slamming a hand down on another control.  Time
stuttered.  Reality jerked.  The forward flow of the "now" resumed.

Tegan blinked, confused by the two memories, laid one over the other in her
mind.  Both seemed utterly real, the frigid dark, and the "normal" reality of
the console room in which she now stood.  Except that now, before the inner
door, stood a blue Police Box.  Only it didn't seem quite right?

Tegan stared and stared, knowing that there was something wrong, but could
not work out what it was.  "Doctor -" sh ecried.

"Quick!" exclaimed the Doctor.  "inside - now!" He lunged for the
enigmatic box.

  "It's the wrong way round!"  Adric said.  "Like a reflection."

The long sought comprehension dawned on Tegan.  She went to speak; but the
Doctor grabbed her by the wrist as he pelted past.  He hauled her
unceremoniously to the box, shoved open the door, and flung the
startled woman inside.

"Adric!  Come on!" he urged as the boy stood gawking at the reflected
version of the TARDIS.  "There's no time to lose!" He flung out a hand,
grabbed Adric by the sleeve and swung him through the gap, piling in behind
the boy.

On the threshold, he shot a look back over his shoulder into the console
room.  Across the far side, the doors stood wide.  Tegan was in the act of
going down on one knee, hands flung out to fend off contact with the floor.
Behind her, Adric was skipping aside to avoid tumbling over her; and behind
him, the Doctor caught a glimpse of himself in the threshold, looking back
over his shoulder into yet another console room.  His stomach churned with
sudden nausea, before the closing doors shut off the unsettling sight.

Tegan scrambled to her feet.  Across the slowly moving central element of
the console, another TARDIS stood against the inner doors.  It seemed to be
the right way round this time.

"Quick!" the Doctor urged, and raced towards  this new manifestation of the
time space machine.  He pushed open the door and plunged inside.  "Quick!
COME ON!" the Doctor's urgent voice drifted back.

It was all proving a bit much for Tegan.  The young woman just stood gaping.
On his way past, Adric grabbed her hand, hauling her to the TARDIS.
Without preamble, he stuffed the unresisting woman through the doors.

Hand in hand, the pair ran out into a summer rain shower.

Around them, stretching away in all directions was a formal garden,
enclosed by a high brick wall.  Nearby, it looked solid and real, but
further off it faded away into the misting rain.  The scene reminded Tegan
of the half seen vista glimpsed through the patio doors of the Rain Room.
The Doctor was nowhere in sight.

Tegan turned through a complete circle.  "Doctor?" she yelled.  "Where are
you?"

The only answer was the soft pattering of the silver rain.

Tegan put hands on hips an regarded the boy.  "Now what?"

The Alzarian shrugged, a gesture he had learned from the Earth woman.  He
pointed with the rattle.  "What's that?"

"It's a fountain," Tegan told him.

The boy moved to the stone structure.  He dabbled his fingers in the dark
water, peering through the rain rippled surface to the depths.  Eyes wide
in sudden astonishment, he gasped and drew back.

"Adric?  -" Tegan cried in alarm.  She started in his direction, then
stopped abruptly as something moved in the upper periphery of Tegan's field
of vision.  By reflex, she looked up.

Tegan screamed.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Doctor plunged through the entrance to the reflected TARDIS, ready for
anything, except perhaps what he encountered.

The first thing he noticed was a gigantic depiction of the Seal of Rassilon
on the gleaming white wall opposite.  Below that symbol of the Time Lord's
power, were the delivery bays of the Great Loom.  Standing by the reception
cocoons was a girlish form in Traken robes.  She was cradling a pillow in
her arms.  Nyssa's head was bent over the bundle.  She was cooing
soothingly to it; the crooning filled the grand chamber, with an ethereal
weave of beautiful sound.

The Doctor approached, alert for the attack that he knew would have to
come.  "Nyssa?" he called quietly.

The girl stopped crooning and looked up.  Her eyes were on fire with
maternal love.  Her arm tightened protectively around the pillow.  She
smiled.  It was a bleak cold thing that stretched her mouth into a feral
snarl.

"Keep away!" she snarled.  "You must not hurt my baby...I won't let you!"

The Doctor stopped.  He held out a hand towards the tense girl.  "Nyssa?
Nyssa - you must listen to me.  It's not your baby;" he explained in a
gentle voice.  The look of agony that crossed the girl's pale
countenance, wrung his hearts.

"NO!" she shrieked.  "It is my baby.  He is beautiful,  and - and you
mustn't hurt him! You mustn't!"

"Please, Nyssa," the Doctor persisted.   "You must give it to me now,
Nyssa.  If you do not then it will kill us all." He risked another step
forward.

Nyssa looked wretched and desperate.  She squeezed the bundle to her breast
and backed away towards the reception cocoons.  "No, Doctor.  You're wrong.
Not IT, HE!  HE is my little darling; and HE couldn't harm anyone.  He's
only a baby - a harmless baby.  MY baby!

And there, thought the Doctor grimly, lies the only hope we have of getting
out of this alive - the fact that it was an infant, unskilled in dealing
with a harsh environment.    He readied himself to spring.

The bundle in Nyssa's arms wriggled.  A squeal of panic reverberated in the
great Loom Reception Hall of the Time Lords.

"Please!  Doctor!" the girl cried.  Her expression was a mask of warring
emotions.  "Please! Don't make me hurt you!  Please don't!"

Nothing you could do could hurt me any more than this, he thought, and
lunged for the girl.

A sharp shriek of terror was loosed from the bundle in Nyssa's arms.  The
girl screamed.  Spinning about, she ran to the Loom Master's console.
Without hesitation, her hand slammed down on the activation switch.  The
mighty Loom engines began to hum.  Hatches over four of the delivery pans
slid aside. The birthing platforms slid forth, each bearing a full
sized body.

The trays nestled up to the reception cocoons.  As they clicked home, the
familiar forms upon them stirred, and sat up.  As one, the four former
incarnations of the Doctor, swung legs to the floor. Mist congealed in
the air about the cocoons.  The four figures stood, the mist wreathing them
in a grey shroud.

"Kill him!" screamed Nyssa.  "He wants to kill my baby!  Kill him!"

With an eerie dream-like quality, the four Doctors spread apart to form a
semi circle.  They began to float towards him, drawing after them the
thickening veil of mist.  The Doctor backed away, feeling the first whisper
of the void chill caressing his cheek.  The for spread their arms wide,
linked hands, and came forward to claim his soul.  Behind them, Nyssa
looked on with eyes of crystaline fire.

"Kill him!" she commanded.  "Kill the infanticide!"

The Doctor drew in a breath of the bone chill air to speak, to cry out to
Nyssa, to find some words that might thaw her frozen heart.  Even as he did
so, and the void cold crystalised inside his lungs, he knew that it was
hopeless.  She would not hear him.  Nyssa was totally obsessed with the
mother love, engendered by the worm, for its survival.

He turned to flee - it was the only choice left to him.

Though it was immature, the worm was cunning in its fight for life.  It
intended to survive.  It had provided against this eventuality.

The Doctor fled through the entrance and...

...Into the Grand Reception Chamber.  From the opposite wall, the mighty
silvered seal of Rassilon looked down on his desperate plight with cold
indifference.  By the reception cocoons,  Nyssa stood, cradling the
bundle.  The girl looked on with those eyes of crystaline fire.

The Doctor hardly noticed.  His attention was riveted on the four engines
of his death moving to trap him in an arctic embrace.  The sight so
unmanned him that a little cry of horror escaped his lips.  He stumbled to
a halt, his eyes darted from one crudely realised figure to the next.

The four figures had an obscene familiarity, though he recognised them not
at all.  The one on the left seemed made up of patches of irregular and
clashing colours which shifted and meshed together like fangs closing in
flesh.  Next in line was a short figure, whose essence seemed a question,
with umbrellas for legs and arms.  The next was a vague long coat and long
hair.  The last was merely a shifting formless something, inchoate and
unrealised.  The only thing they had in common was the face.  That was the
worst of all.  Where they should have been, were only shocking pink ovoids,
completely smooth and devoid of any features.

Behind them, Nyssa looked on satisfied.  "Close the circle," she commanded.
"Close the circle and save my baby."

His four future echoes joined hands.  They began to close in with deadly
intent.  If he did not do something *now*, he would be trapped in the
doorway between realities.

The Doctor spun round.  His four former selves were upon him, arms spread
left and right.  If they once completed the circle, then his life was done.

To his left, hands touched.  The Doctor dived to the right, seeking a way
of escape.  Before his desperate gaze, hands touched there too, fingers
inter-linking.  He was trapped, lost in the instant of the now, between
what was and what might have been.  Mist materialised in the air about the
Doctor, frost glittered.  The killing cold kissed his soul and sucked the
last remnants of his powerful life presence from his body.  Like a grey
shroud, the mist carried by his incarnations settled over his frozen form.
The silence of the void, indifferent, unending, cold, settled in the stark
chamber.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tegan's yell of surprise jolted Adric out of his astonishment.  He jerked
upright; saw Tegan staring up at the clouds where a gigantic, misty vision
of his own face hung over them, peering down. As the pair watched, the
image faded into random shapes in the scudding cloud layer.

Tegan let out her breath.  "Weird," she hissed through her teeth. "What the
hell's going on here?"

Adric shrugged.  He pointed at the rippling surface of the basin.  "When I
looked in there, I was looking down on us here by the fountain.  And -
 there I was! looking down into the fountain? And -"  Adric broke off; he
frowned as an outrageous idea struck him. "A reflection encompassed
infinity?"

"What's that?"

 "a very difficult concept - mathematiclly." Adric informed her.      "I
wonder -" He fell silent, his lips working soundlessly.

"Adric?  What is it?  Are you alright?"

The boy totally ignored her.  There was a glassy look in his dark eyes.
His lips worked in a tense silence.

Tegan felt suddenly very cold.  "Adric?" she cried.  "Adric?"

There was no response.  The Alzarian was completely absorbed in some
abstruse mathematical problem.  Tegan reached out and shoved his arm.  With
a little yelp of pain, she snatched her hand back - he was colder than an
iceberg.

Now what?  Panic rose like a tide within her soul.

"Come on, Jovanka! Get a bloody grip!" she encouraged herself. "Brave
Heart, Tegan!"

She felt instantly better for that; but the ghost of a smile died a-borning
on her lips as, far off and low, the sound of a girl singing, drifted
to her.

"Silent Night.  Holy Night - "

In Nyssa's lilting voice, the poignant words of the carol rose over the
pattering rain.  It was an achingly sweet sound, mesmeric and compelling.

"All is calm.  All is bright - "

Tegan listened enraptured, despite her desperation.  She forgot Adric.

"Round yon virgin - Mother and Child - "

Tegan turned her head from side to side, trying to fix the source of that
sound.  A splash of colour caught her eye.  A brightly patterned umbrella
lay abandoned near to an open gate in the wall.  A slight breeze rocked the
canopy of bright cloth back and forth, in time to the sweet singing.

In a dream, Tegan floated towards it.

The singing stopped abruptly.  There was a long, pregnant hesitation, as
though a breath was being held while Tegan took up, and examined, the
umbrella.

By the fountain, Adric stood, statue still. A sheen of frost glittered on
his exposed skin.  The boy stood in his own little snowstorm.  Around him,
an ever widening circle of blasted and frost withered grass grew a-pace.

Tegan averted her gaze, her skin crawling.

Nyssa's voice rose strong and triumphal over the pattering rain.

"Oh come all ye faithful - "

The umbrella slipped forgotten from Tegan's fingers.  The open gate
beckoned.  Beyond, a small stream babbled; and across the water, summer
bedecked trees laughed in a playful breeze.  The sight and sound filled
Tegan with a surging sense of elation.

"Joyful and triumphant -"

Low, slow and echoing sang that ethereal voice.

Compelled, Tegan moved through the gate, crossed the plank bridge, and went
in under the trees.  Sudden darkness pressed in; a wintry chill ran icy
fingers along her spine; but Tegan pushed on into the night time forest.

"Oh come ye, oh come ye - "

Tegan stumbled onwards, moving further into night.  It grew darker yet, the
 sort of darkness that seeps unbidden into the soul, and undoes the self.
She faltered to a stop, and stood undecided, until before her she saw a
light high up, through the web of winter dead branches imprisoning the sky.
She started forward again, unaccountably cheered by that faint spark of
light in the heavens.  It seemed somehow a beacon of promise, in a world of
weary hopelessness.  Renewed in spirit, Tegan pressed forward again.


"Oh little Town of Bethlehem - How still we see thee lie."

Abruptly, Tegan came out of the wood.  Before her, the ground sloped down
into a shallow valley, then rose in a rocky hillside.  The dim shapes of
buildings clung to the steep way.

"Above thy deep and dreamless sleep - the silent stars go by."

Tiny sparks of light wavered in the windows of those houses.  High above in
the sky the star glittered and flamed.

"Yet in the dark streets shineth, the everlasting light!"

Tegan was drawn to the stable by the flickering radiance shining from a
cave in the hillside.  It had been fitted out with byres and a manger.  The
lambent light came from a tiny oil lamp.  Two oxen looked on with large
curious eyes, made bright by the lamp light.

Nyssa was there.  The young woman was crouching over the manger, stroking a
pillow laid in the hay.

"The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight." Nyssa
finished, letting her voice die into silence.

Tegan took a deep breath and entered.  She crossed to stand behind the rapt
girl.

"Nyssa?" she called softly.  The oxen stirred, somewhere a baby made a
small, frightened noise.  The flame of the lamp flickered, sending shadows
licking about the walls.  Nyssa did not move.

"Nyssa?" Tegan called again.  She reached out a tentative hand to touch,
and paused at the biting cold emanating from the silk covered shoulders.
"Nyssa?"

The Traken girl stirred.  She reached down into the manger and gathered up
the pillow with a loving tenderness.  She straightened and turned, cradling
the bundle of white to her breast.

She began a gentle swaying back and forth, crooning a wordless lullaby.
All the while, she  watched with a rapt maternal gaze, the thing cradled
against her breasts.  Frost glittered on her eyelashes, in her eyebrows and
hair.

Suddenly the singing died.  The silence reached for Tegan's throat.  Nyssa
looked up.

The hackles all along Tegan's neck stood rigid.  Goose bumps rippled
all the way to her heels.  She staggered back, a tiny strangle cry of
horror escaping her bloodless lips.

Eyes of ice, bright as jewels regarded her from Nyssa's waxen countenance.
 At her throat the pendant moved back and forth in time to her rocking,
fixed through the eye of the black portion.

"The circle is closed." she said.

Tegan turned to flee.  Blocking the entrance to the cave, were four men in
the garb of Roman soldiers.  They were crowded about a tall wooden cross.
the form of a man, bloody and broken, dangled from the tree.  He was
stirring feebly.  As Tegan watched one of the soldiers jabbed a spear into
his side.  The suffering man groaned, drew in a last shuddering breath, and
gave up the ghost.  He sagged forward, his thorn crowned head lolling.
Beyond the cave mouth, a white wilderness of snow stretched into a grey
dim.

"Thus is the circle of life closed."

Tegan swung back to the thing that had once been her friend.  The bundle in
her arms was pulsing and squirming, growing fatter and fuller with every
passing instant.

"All things are circles," the young mother intoned in Nyssa's voice.
"Mirrors reflecting in mirrors, creating infinities, yet constrained
between surfaces of infinite depth - this for the boy, Adric.  And for the
Doctor?

She fell silent a long moment, fingering the twisted ribband about her
neck.  A particularly savage joy flamed coldly in the eyes.

"For the would-be infanticide, the prison of the sterile cycls of his
regeneration and death set to spinning down the spiral strand of his life
pattern, curving and endlessly recurving inwards and downwards without end
or beginning.  Such has ever been his bane - turned now to the salvation of
my baby."

Nyssa fell to crooning and swaying, leaning down over the bundle.  It
seemed for a long moment the girl had forgotten Tegan, who began to edge
away and look round for some way of escape from this madness.  She was
brought up short by Nyssa's voice, which seemed touched with an almost
regret.

"And for Tegan, the least of the trinity - the simplicity of the circle of
life itself, from birth," she brushed a loving hand over the pillow, "to
death," she indicated the crucifixion, " and so back to life.  An enduring
pattern.  and one older by far than these events drawn from your mind."

Tegan shivered and clutched at herself as fangs of ice closed in her soul.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Adric did not *love* mathematics; he *was* the love of mathematics.  It was
not what he did; it was what he was...

...And it was killing him.

He knew the answer was correct - he just couldn't achieve it.  With
feverish application, he set forth the equations, laying them down in a
path of reason; but, no matter how he tried to keep the path straight, it
twisted over and recurved back on itself and came back to the beginning.

Only it was not the beginning, only a negative continuation of the path.
Round and round this endless one-sided mathmatical construct he raced,
endlessly curving inwards upon himself, while all about and through the
substance of his being, a killing cold seeped, drawing off his life energy.

He knew very well the reason why he could not find an end to the path of
equations.  That was plain - Paradox! the fundamental rules governing the
form of this universe would not permit Paradox.

Somewhere, the contented gurgling of a baby faltered into a discontented
whine.

The answer was there; but a pathway could *not* be constructed that could
lead him to it.

The contented gurgling resumed.  The chill bit deeper into Adric's soul.

Adric was about to redouble his efforts, when a thought occurred to him.

The baby fell silent, listening, waiting.  A tense, fearful anticipation
gripped the void about the boy.  But Adric just smiled.  The answer was
simple.  If the rules governing the universe did not permit, then away with
them, and form a new set of fundamentals which permitted a path to be laid.

He, Adric of Alzarius, could do that.

"Block Transfer Computations," he said aloud.

The baby screamed in panic.

Adric ignored it, his lips forming the reality shaping equations.  He went
forward steadily, with resolution, though he knew that one slip or
hesitation would mean disaster.  Adric went forward, sure-footed in the
shifting sand of reality transformation.  He pulled back his conscious mind
to allow his instinctive "feeling" for the numbers to take the venture
forward.  The problem of the reflected infinity had become academic now;
but he solved it anyway, just for the sake of tidiness.  Then he brought a
pathway into being, opened his construct, and stepped through in search of
the Doctor.

In the void left behind, was only the panicky shrieking of a terrified baby
and the soothing crooning of a concerned mother.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------


Nyssa smiled in satisfaction,  cuddling her baby.  Before the doting
mother, in the arch between the past and the future, a vast glittering
pyramid of ice had formed.  Trapped in it's heart was the most dangerous of
the enemies of her baby.  Soon, even the Doctor's iron constitution would
succumb to the killing cold.  When that happened, her baby could grow in
safety.

Unseen, beside her, one of the delivery pans slid from the Loom.  It
snicked into place against the delivery table.  The lid lifted, and Adric
slid to the floor.

Nyssa spun round.  She hissed an inarticulate curse at him.  The boy
ignored the blast of icy breath that seared his cheek, his lips working to
form the transformers.  At his back, the mighty wall dominated by the Seal
of Rassilon, mutated into a magnificent marble fire place.  The
confection of carved marble was patterned after the one in the Rain Room,
only swollen to monstrous proportions.  A vast wave of heat radiated from
the roaring logs in the grate.

Nyssa screamed, and fell back from the wave of heat.  She turned her back
to the inferno, protective of her baby.  She began a staggering run; but
she got only three steps before, in a sudden roaring rush, she blossomed
into a pillar of incandescent flame.

An agonised scream rent the air.  The nerve twisting sound, a
mixture of rage and pain, reverberated about the vast hall.  Slowly, that
tortured sound diminished away, sinking down with the pillar of flame that
had consumed the reflection of the young mother.

Ignoring the heart rending cry, Adric continued his muttering.  He pointed
at the iceberg in the arch.  Already torrents of water streamed down its
flanks.  A mighty gush of steam rose, called forth by the boy's imperious
gesture.  The clouds of vapour swirled about the melting block.  For many
seconds the chamber echoed to the thunder of cracking ice, the slide and
crash of crystaline shards slithering to the floor, and the hissing of
steam.  Then, from the boiling fog,  stepped the Doctor.  He took a few
shaky steps, half raised a hand, tried to speak, then staggered to a halt.
  He sagged to the flooded floor.

Adric went to him, still muttering the transformers.  He assisted the
stricken Time Lord to is feet.

"Adric..." the Doctor gasped.

"Adric nodded, his lips working.  He raised a hand and the fire flowed into
a cave mouth in a rocky hillside.  With Adric supporting the Doctor, they
stepped inside the cave.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tegan turned to flee.  She collided with the Doctor and Adric who had just
emerged from the opening in the world, that the crucifix had become.  Tegan
clutched herself to the Time Lord, completely unmanned, and shaking like a
leaf in a gale.

The Doctor's arms went about her, pulling the distraught woman in close for
a moment.  Over her shoulder, his eyes met the eyes of crystaline
fire,blazing in the waxen face of the Traken girl.  Then, gently he
disentangled Tegan and set her to one side.

"Nyssa?  You *must* give me the worm," he said, straining for all the force
of persuasiveness at his command.  "Nyssa?  You MUST give it to me now."

Nyssa raised an ugly blaster.  "Leave me be," she snarled.  "You WILL not
harm my baby."

The Doctor took a step forward.  "Nyssa! It will kill us all if you do
not!"

"Then we die!" Nyssa said calmly. "We die that my baby shall know life." It
was a simple statement of a mother's  love - obvious, factual, and
unarguable.

The Doctor did not argue.  He tensed, ready to spring.  He doubted it would
do any good; but he was entirely out of choices.

"NO!" Nyssa screamed.  She swung the blaster to point at Adric.  With
deliberate intent, she squeezed the firing stud.

Adric muttered furiously.  For a long heart beat the universe held its
breath; but no lethal ray struck the boy down.  Instead, the gun blossomed
into a bunch of roses.

Nyssa glanced down, amazed at the flowers clutched in her hand.  Blood ran
from between her spastically squeezing fingers as the thorns tore into
flesh.  An inarticulate scream of fear and hatred lashed the chill air.
She hurled the roses at the Doctor, as he leapt at her to wrestle the
bundle from her grasp.  There was a long, frantic moment of struggle,
before the Doctor staggered back, gripping the white bundle tight.  It was
writhing in his grasp like a demented snake.  The terrified screaming of
the baby echoed in the cave, filling up the world.

Tegan pressed hands over her ears, her loyalties riven by the sound.  The
vulnerability and fear in that sound touched some profound part of Tegan's
motherly instinct that brooded in the dark, awaiting its chance in the sun.

"MY BABY!  Please don't kill my baby!" Nyssa shrieked. She flung herself
to her knees, and began shuffling towards the Doctor, hands upraised in
beseeching supplication.  "Please!  Not my Baby!  You can't kill my baby -
 pleeeeesse!"  The stricken girl clawed and scrabbled at the Doctor's legs.
Tears, welling from those cold eyes, froze on the cheeks, creating
glittering daggers of ice like fangs.

"Please!  Please!" she pleaded, sobbing wildly.  "Not my baby.  Please not
my baby."

"I must," cried the Doctor, struggling to harden his hearts to the terrible
task.  "It will kill us all."

A long despairing sob of negation wailed from the girl.  She dragged at the
Doctor's legs in an orgasm of anguish and despair.  "Please.  Please.  Not
my baby."

"Tegan?  Get that pendant off her!" the Time Lord commanded.  "Do it!
now!" he added wen he realised her riven loyalty, written plain in the
indecision on her face.  Tegan made no move to comply.  She just stared at
him, wrestling with an urge to attack him, to snatch the bundle away and
cradle it to herself, to protect the baby.

"Please?" the Doctor implored against the terrified crying of the babe and
 the sobbing please of Nyssa dragging at his legs.

Tegan decided.  It was the hardest thing she had ever done. In a daze,
Tegan reached down, slipped fingers under the ribbon and ripped the pendant
free from Nyssa's neck.

In that instant insanity piled upon madness, giving birth to horror.

Faint and far of, the TARDIS engines began to wheeze an angry protest.  The
groveling form of Nyssa began a writhing metamorphosis.  Tegan reeled back,
her flesh crawling at the macabre transformation.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the bio lab, the sound of the TARDIS' engines rose and swelled.  By the
bench, where Nyssa had fallen, a patch of grey mist thickened.  It flowed
out from a central egg shape to take the form of a prone body.  The
manifestation of chill mist solidified slowly, pulsing in time to the
swelling engines. The noise ended with a resolute thud. The form jerked
spastically.

With that evidence of physicality, Nyssa of Traken returned to herself.
Her eyelids flickered open. For long seconds, she stared uncomprehending at
a blank ceiling.  Eventually, she sat up.

Something slithered from her throat, trailing a snake of broken ribbon -
the pendant from the cracker?  She moved by reflex, to catch it; but it
eluded her cold fingers and clinked to the floor, where it lay like a
twisted and half shut eye, staring up at her.

She made no move to pick it up.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the stable, the Worm Mother continued to clutch at the Doctor.  She
continued to sob, wail, and plead in utter desperation.  With a great
effort, the Doctor stopped his ears to the desolate sobbing, as he
continued to grip the bucking bundle.  The icy cold of the Worm Seed sucked
on his soul; but he would not loosen his grip.  He *knew* what had to be
done.  Painful as it was, it MUST be done - and quickly!

"Adric?  Quick, boy!  Open the Plasmic Shell!" he commanded.

Of a sudden, the Worm Mother drew back, gathered herself, let out a
screech of insane fury and flew at the Doctor.  Her long slender fingers
curved into clawed talons. She struck at his face, aiming for the eyes.
The Doctor jerked away; but the tips of those razor sharp talons raked
across his cheek.  Thin red lines materialised on the skin.  The Worm
Mother snarled in triumph, and made another grab for her baby.

The Doctor twisted aside.  The slashing claws ripped through his blazer.
Adric's voice rose, mumbling the Mantra of Block Transfer Computations; but
the Worm Mother was only slowed momentarily.  She lunged again.  The Doctor
back-peddled hastily.

"ADRIC!" he yelled.  "Open the way!"

"NO!  Doctor," the boy cried.  "There is another way, a better way!"

As he left of the transformers, the walls of the cavern sagged inwards,
pressing in close.  The Worm Mother became suddenly still.  Unconstrained
by the boy's continuous remodeling of the fundamental of the universe, she
came once more in possession of her full range of powers. She reached out a
hand towards the Doctor, a shining light of triumph in the black
nullity of her crystaline eyes.

"Your soul for your crimes, infanticide," she intoned solemnly.  "A fair
exchange.  And when my baby comes full into his power and birthright, I
swear he shall lead the crusade against your entire race of infanticides.
For the moment after I consume your soul, the way will be open to us.  Such
a way as shall not admit of closing.  Thus, the Time Lords will pay!  There
will be such a feasting!.."

The Doctor shuddered, and fell back as a wave of dizziness spun him about.
He felt his life energy being sucked from him.  A vast chill flowed back to
fill up the void left at his core by the consuming of his soul.  He was
becoming an empty husk.  Contesting every inch conceded, the Doctor
inexorably lost the light.

Seeing the Doctor withering before her horrified eyes, Tegan gave no
thought to her own safety.  She lunged at the towering black form that
filled up the stable.  As the furious young woman cannoned into the Worm, a
bone numbing cold enfolded her. The light in Tegan's mind drew off into a
limitless distance.  A great roaring filled up her senses.

Then through that roaring, she heard the mumbling of Adric.  The sound
seemed solid, a physical thing.  A moment later, she was back in the
stable.  The walls had retreated; they had become solid once more; and the
Worm Mother had shrunk to normal proportions.

Adric had resumed his Block Transfer mantra; single handed, he was holding
the Worm in check, and the world in being.

The Doctor, who looked etiolated and grey gasped out.  "Open the way.
Eject them into the void."

The Worm Mother turned a look of vicious hatred on the boy.  She
moved to strike him.  Tegan stepped between them.

"Do IT!  Adric!" ordered the Doctor.

Adric nodded.

At that precise moment, all the fight seemed to go from the sinuous form of
the Worm Mother.  Her aura of power visibly waned. She shot a long yearning
look of desire at the bundle in the Doctor's arms.  She seemed to wither,
to crumple up and collapse into herself.

The sight cut Tegan to the heart.  She moved forward, impelled by her own
as yet unexercised maternal feelings, holding out her arms to the
distressed being.  It was no longer a terrible monster that would kill them
all, it was a despairing Mother whose baby was to die and whose death she
had no power to prevent.  Compassion called to want and two kindred spirits
held silent, but intense commerce, the one with the other.  Much mutual
feling flamed betwixt the two.  the Worm Mother let out a forlorn wail and
fell into Tegan's arms, sobbing miserably.

"ADRIC!" the Doctor yelled again.  "Adric!  Eject them!"

Adric, stared at Tegan comforting the creature, with an ineffable anguish
torturing his boyish features.  Compassion moved deep within his being.
His expression changed, moulded itself into grim determination.  Slowly, he
shook his head, and held out the rattle to the Doctor.  His eyes implored
permission in an urgent, unspoken appeal.

The Doctor stared at the toy for a long moment.  He knew what Adric
intended.  His mind churned in a turmoil of indecision.  It would be
hideously dangerous; but the humanity of the idea appealed to him; but what
right did he have to gamble the safety of the universe against this boy's
mad scheme to succour first this grieving mother, then the whole of her
kind?  The worm kind were destroyers; they had always been destroyers; it
was what they were, not what they did.  Without destroying other life, they
could not live.  But was that not true for all life, even to the lowliest
bacterium or virus?  And again, no sentient life asks to be made in the
form it is; and they were not intrinsically evil.  They sought no dominion,
only to fulfil the overmastering urge to perpetuate the species which is the
 inheritance of all living things. So surely...surely they had a right to
some sort of existence?

But at risk of the Universe?

What should he do?

The Doctor glanced down at the bundle in his arms.  It lay still now,
quiescent, knowing its fate, accepting with a stoic forbearance the cruelty
of an inimical universe which would not suffer it to be.  A thin, high
keening of terror rose from the Worm infant.  The Worm Mother too was
moaning in a deeper counterpoint which phased in and out of harmony with her
baby's expression of fear.  It was a nerve tearing outpouring of loss; for
the Worm Mother understood that her babe was doomed.  In her grief, she
coiled herself down even tighter against Tegan, who cradled the distraught
creature against her, giving without stint what comfort there was in physical
contact.  Their two pairs of eyes were on the Doctor, accusing, fearful, and
glistening with tears.

What should he do?

At last he spoke.  "Do it!"

Adric grinned broadly, and nodded in affirmation. He raised the baby rattle
on high.  His voice sang out clear and pure, forming the Block Transfer
computation equations that reformed reality.  The rattle began to sing in
an eerie counterpoint.  The sphere of plastic shimmered and expanded
outwards in a silent silver explosion to encompass the entire universe.  In
an instant, it had reached the edge of everything, and rebounded from the
void dark.  In the blink of an eye, it had shrunk back to the plastic
sphere of the baby rattle.  The ovoid was black and opaque, studded with a
million jewelled lights.

Adric's voice shifted into minor keys.  The diamond studded satin black
rippled and reformed, settling into a round window on a new world.

With reverent hands, the Doctor took the rattle from Adric.  He held it up.
Through the curved window of worlds could be seen a reflected version of
the stable, containing only the snake slender woman.  She was holding in
her arms her Seed which was stirring and pulsing with vitality.  As the
trio watched, the Worm Mother held the precious gift tight to her heart.
She began a gentle swaying, to a haunting lullaby old as life itself, which
rose in her throat.

An echo, of an echo, of an echo of that ageless rhythm of living haunted
the shadows of the stable cave.  That soft sound discovered a gentle
resonance in Tegan's heart strings. The young woman found herself swaying
irresistibly in time to that ageless melody of life.

The woman in the sphere suddenly looked up at them.  Her face fairly glowed
with an inner light of gratitude, for an unlooked for salvation.  Then, she
turned, and walked from the cave into the shining light of the orchard of
strange trees, just glimpsed beyond the cave opening.

A terrible pang of loss ran Tegan through the heart.  She unconsciously
drew closer to the Doctor, seeking comfort in the physical
nearness of another.

"Doctor?..." she began uncertainly.

"It's alright, Tegan.  Everything will be alright now.  They are quite
safe," the Doctor reassured her gently.

Moved by the sudden strength of the unfamiliar emotion welling up within,
the Doctor did an unusual thing.  Greatly daring, he slipped an arm about
the young woman's shoulders, and gave her a hug of reassurance.  "She has
gone now into another place, prepared by Adric for her and her kind." He
turned a warm smile, touched with misgiving, upon Adric.  "Well done,
Adric.  That was very well done."

Adric stood a little straighter under that praise.  It was especially
welcome, as he knew that the Doctor was aware of the full price that would
fall due for his temerity in doing this thing.  That price would be for
Adric of Alzarius alone to pay.

"Thank you," said Adric in simple acknowledgement of the Doctor's praise.
For that praise alone, the game had been worth the candle.  He was
satisfied.

"Now!" the Doctor went on with a forced briskness, "if you would be so kind
as to open a way back to the real world?"

"Of course," Adric said; but the boy that still lingered within
 hesitated a long moment; but Adric had taken a step along a road to
maturity this day which brooked no turning back. The womb safety *must* be
left behind at some point.  That there was no life beyond, saddened
Adric; but that was no good reason for hanging back.  There was something
very calming, he realised,  about inevitability - it freed the spirit so.

He gave a little half nod; his voice rose, alive with the possibilities
encompassed by the transformers, whose cost was high, whose price could not
be eschewed and whose payment must now fall due.

The cave mouth shimmered into a mirror; or perhaps it was a window showing
the cave beyond?  Abruptly, the boy turned and strode with purpose towards
the man.  The two images met and merged, twisted together into a whole, and
vanished.

The Time Lord eased Tegan from him.  He took her hand, an action that
seemed so natural and right, and drew her across the shimmering division of
worlds.  Side by side, they merged into their own reflections.

And stepped into the "other" TARDIS console room, through the doors of the
internally reflected TARDIS.

A young man stood by the console watching them.  At first glance, he looked
just like the boy, Adric.  Though nothing definitive could be seen in his
outward physical presence, his demeanor was indelibly marked by a new
maturity.  It was something in the eyes?  in the calmness of the gaze?

Without speaking or meeting the young man's eyes, The Doctor drew Tegan on
to the doors, through them and into the relative reality of the console
room beyond.

Adric watched them go.  A slightly haunted expression fought its way onto
his face, as fear made a last sally against his resolve; but before it
could gain a good foothold, the firm set of his mouth ruined its
bridgehead.  It wasn't as if it mattered anyway.  With renewed resolution
the young man turned and passed into the outer universe.

The Doctor set a control on the console.  The familiar noise of take off
filled the room; and the reverse TARDIS faded from sight.  At that moment,
the inner door burst