Chapter One

'You've found someone alive?' Bernice was clambering in, bringing up one of her long legs for leverage. The helicopter rocked a little as it tried to cope with her moving around it. Once inside Bernice needed a moment to compose herself in the face of so much death, but she was soon looking around the compartment.

She located a plastic box with rounded corners, the size of a small suitcase.

'Could you pass me your sonic screwdriver when you have a moment?' she asked, clearly not wanting to interfere with his first aid attempts. There was little more that he could do for the moment but stay with the injured man. The Doctor tried to keep one eye on his patient and one on what Bernice was doing.

A couple of well-aimed squirts of ultrasonic energy released the clasps. Bernice opened up the case.

'Test tubes,' she announced, lifting up the case to give the Doctor a better look. 'Full of red stuff. I can't see any hazard warning stickers, but if you don't mind, I'm not going to unstop them.'

'Soil,' Caldwell croaked.

The Doctor could hear a siren outside. 'An ambulance is coming,' he said.

Bernice was closing up the case and heading for the door. 'I'll go down and tell them,' she said, jumping down.

The Doctor squeezed Caldwell's hand. 'You're going to be fine,' he assured him.

Caldwell gurgled his relief.

Car doors were slamming outside. He could hear Bernice saying something, then male voices replying.

After a moment, a uniformed policeman was poking his head through the doorway. 'Good morning, sir,' he began in a gruff voice, 'The young lady says that you have a survivor in here.' He was a craggy-faced man somewhere in middle age.

A policeman, presumably.