Chapter Eleven
The church shuddered again as the Sentience heaved itself together, sliding and thrashing about the eves with Trevithick's energy within it.
The dead figures pressed to the window had redoubled their efforts and Medcalfe picked up a heavy brass candle snuffer with which to defend himself.
A pane of ruby-coloured glass shattered and John Cleminson's pale hand pushed its way through.
Lowcock watched Cleminson's wrist scrape against the broken glass and wondered why it didn't bleed.
Instantly, the cold flesh was bright with blood.
It was necessary to maintain the illusion. To keep them believing.
Need
Need
'Who are they?' cried Jill, throwing her arms around a couple of terrified children.
Medcalfe tried to reply but his throat was bone dry. Cleminson's fingers began to pull at the leadwork.
Lowcock looked about the church for weapons. There were none visible.
A gas-masked soldier thrust his face at the glass and the snoutlike filter crashed through.
There was a strangled cry from a woman crouched by the altar and Jill whirled around. Just as she'd feared, there were dark shapes hovering outside the other windows, their shadows lurching against the glass.
At once, another gas-masked soldier smashed through, his breathing hoarse and terrifying.
Lowcock glanced up at the vaulted ceiling and his heart leaped. He threw himself on to a pew and began wrestling with a mouldering banner which projected over the aisle. He succeeded in prising the lance out of its socket and tottered back to floor level, brandishing the faded colours of some forgotten Yorkshire regiment.
The soldier stood on the wide sill of the shattered window, gazing impassively around him. There were people screaming now and further ghostly figures attempting to force their way inside.
Lowcock sprinted down the aisle, holding the lance like a pole-vaulter, and clambered over a row of broken pews towards the window. He rammed the lance into the soldier's neck and the apparition fell with an agonised cry, blood fountaining from the wound.
Lowcock crouched down and ripped off the gas mask. His spine froze as he took in the soldier's perfectly blank face: a smooth, round head without a single feature.
'George! The door!' Jill called.
Lowcock spun round. The big oak doors were beginning to shake as something battered at them from the outside.
Lowcock bit his lip. 'Albert, Harry, Alan,' he cried rapidly. 'Get those lances down.' He gestured at the remaining banners projecting from the walls. 'And push the pews against the doors. Quickly!'
The villagers were mobilised now, ramming anything they could find against the windows and doors.
'It's no good,' whimpered Medcalfe. 'They'll be in any minute. Oh, God!'
Lowcock began to move towards the doors but stopped as his shoes clanged on a floor tile. He looked down. The tile had a brass ring set into it.
Lowcock rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
The Doctor and Vijay almost fell into the control room. Ace ran to them.
'Doctor? Are you all right? What happened?' Cooper looked across from the buzzing consoles anxiously.
'Vijay? Where's ...?' Vijay looked at her steadily. Cooper felt her throat constrict.
'Oh no.'
'And the old bloke too?' said Robin incredulously.
Vijay nodded. 'It's because of him that we got back.'
Ace looked at the Doctor. 'What were you trying to do?'
He shook his head hopelessly. 'I thought I could reason with it. I'd already spoken to it once. I thought I might find out how to stop it.'
'And did you?' asked Ace.
The Doctor didn't look up. 'I've failed. It's simply grown more powerful.'
Cooper crossed the room and sat down next to him. 'Don't blame yourself, Doctor. You've done your best. No one could ask for more.'
'No one did ask,' he said bitterly. 'I came here to get away from this kind of...' His voice trailed off hopelessly. 'There's no rest for me. I got involved. Yet again.'
Cooper rubbed her eyes. 'What I don't understand is why it - whatever it is - has suddenly become active. I mean, if what you said is right, it's been here millions of years.'
The Doctor shrugged. 'I don't think it was strong enough. Those incidents in the past. The Civil War ghosts. Things before that, even. It must've detected them and made what it could of the situation without being fully aware. Like a hibernating animal turning over in its sleep. For some reason, it's never realised its full potential. Perhaps because this has always been such an underpopulated place.'
'No food,' said Ace gravely.
The Doctor nodded, gazing around the room with red-rimmed eyes. 'Or at least, not sufficient to give it a critical mass...'
Cooper whistled slowly. 'Until they built this place on top of it!'
'Very probably, yes. All that activity, followed by huge amounts of electricity, must've acted as a lure. It started sending out feelers, gauging the potential energy in the village population. So many people with fond memories...'
Ace shuddered. 'It's horrible.'
'Just trying to survive,' said Vijay quietly. 'Like all the rest of us.'
Ace felt Robin's hand slip into hers and was glad of it. 'What can we do then?'
The Doctor rested his head on his hand and sighed. 'I don't know any more. I can't think. I just can't...'
His voice broke into a sob and Ace ran to him, cradling his slight frame in her arms.
'It's OK, Doctor. Come on. You'll be fine. You always are.'
He looked at her but once again his eyes were focused somewhere far distant.
'I saw Susan,' he whispered. 'It knew. It knew everything I'd been feeling. Every pain. Every regret.'
Ace stroked his hair. 'Come on, Doctor. You've got to help us. You've got to give us some ideas.'
'I don't know what to do, Ace! Not this time...'
Ace looked down sadly at her friend. She'd never known him to be indecisive. Even when he was wrong, he would at least put his all into it. Now he sat like a broken man, his spirit crushed by the grief and emotion of a lifetime.
Robin tugged at her sleeve and led her to one side. 'He's lost it, Ace. Can't you see? We can't wait for him to get us out of this. It's up to us. If we can get out of the village...'
'We can do what?' spat Ace, angrily. 'Call the police? The army? Look, Robin, we haven't a clue how to even begin to fight this thing. Besides...'
'Besides?'
'I have to believe in the Doctor. Otherwise there's no point in going on.'
Robin lowered his eyes, defeated.
Ace looked around the control room.
Vijay was sitting in a chair, hugging himself, Cooper with a consoling hand on his shoulder. The Doctor sat close by, head bent, eyes closed.
There'll be no better time, thought Ace. And this was the only way to prove to herself it was true.
She picked a chair some distance away from the others and closed her eyes.
Robin noticed it first, a chill spreading through the air and a pungent smell which reminded him of Dr Shearsmith's empty front room. He looked around rapidly, almost as if he could detect movement in the atmosphere itself.
'Ace!' he called.
The Doctor looked up from his brooding and noticed his companion. She was gripping the arms of her chair, her brow furrowed in concentration.
'Ace? What're you doing?' the Doctor cried, getting to his feet.
'You taught me so much, Doctor,' she shouted, eyes clamped shut. 'Taught me to face my fears, not run away from them. Remember Gabriel Chase?'
'No, Ace! You don't know what you're doing. It'll destroy you!'
The Doctor hared across the room and stood by her, hands shaking.
'I have to know if you've succeeded, Doctor. That we've both come through it together. It's the only way to make you see. You're the only hope we've got of destroying this bloody thing!'
'No! Ace!'
The Doctor reached out a hand to touch her but immediately swung round as light began to dance through the air.
Ace smiled to herself. She had to be strong. Concentrate. Remember. She let distant images swim before her mind's eye.
Yes, that would do...
She was small. Perhaps five or six. The sun was hot and very high in the cloudless sky. There was sea and the reassuring tumble of the frothy waves. White horses, her mum always called them. Mum...
'Dory?'
Her mother was calling for her now. Across that stretch of yellow sand on a faraway summer's day. And calling across the years...
Ace could feel gritty sand between her toes, taste warm lemonade and tomato and egg sandwiches. Feel her cheeks burn as she was forced to change into her little swimming costume without the camouflage of the beach towel. Feel the crack of her mum's hand across her backside when she'd pee'd in the car on the way home...
'Mum?'
'Dory?'
The voice came to her like a rolling wave, breaking on the bank of her subconscious.
A burning, delicious yearning swept through the Sentience and it rippled with pleasure. There was a radiant contact somewhere out on the moor.
It paused in its attack on the church and sent a portion of itself shooting towards the telescope.
Lowcock stood on the threshold of the open vault. The church had become unnaturally quiet, the ghostly soldiers falling back from their assault and stumbling about as though struck blind.
Lowcock lost no time. 'Everyone! Down into the crypt. Quickly!'
He gestured feverishly with his hands and ushered the villagers through the floor and into the vault. If they were lucky, whatever was directing the attack wouldn't know what had happened to them.
Lowcock shoved a young boy down the crypt steps and looked around anxiously. There was no one left to come. No one except ...
Andrew Medcalfe was backing away from the window, a fair-haired man in a trenchcoat advancing down the aisle towards him.
'Andrew!' bellowed Lowcock. 'Get down here!'
Medcalfe stumbled and almost fell over his own feet. He looked over his shoulder, panic-stricken, as Lowcock scrambled out of the crypt.
'Get away from me, John!' shrieked the old soldier. 'You're dead. You can't be here!'
'But I am here,' purred the fair-haired apparition. 'Just an old friend coming back to see you. It's been so long...'
Lowcock swivelled his eyes and fastened his gaze on the church's eagle lectern. With a cry, he stormed up the aisle and lifted it into the air.
Cleminson's ghost marched relentlessly towards Medcalfe and the old man fell to the floor, his knees cracking off the floor tiles.
'Please, John. Leave me alone.'
'You were lucky that day, Andrew,' hissed the apparition, its voice disintegrating into a low rustle. 'Some of us weren't so fortunate. I've come back for the future they stole from me.'
He extended a khaki-clad arm and grasped Medcalfe's chin in his pale hand. 'Now, old man,' Cleminson breathed.
Lowcock sprang up behind the figure and swung the massive lectern with every shred of his strength. The great brass eagle slammed into Cleminson's head and took it off in one movement. There was an appalling crack of splintering bone and the head thudded into the pews.
Cleminson's body stood for some seconds like a side-show dummy and then toppled to the floor. Medcalfe stared at it in horror.
'George...' he began.
Lowcock grabbed his arm. 'No time. Come on.'
He thrust him down the stairs into the crypt and followed immediately after, slamming shut the floor plate with a resounding boom.
Ace had formed a picture of her mother now, a composite of every Christmas morning, summer holiday, every blazing row. How many times had that face burned itself into her sleeping mind. She had hated it. Hated it.
The Doctor was standing with his back to the wall, staring up at the auroral display which crackled through the air.
Cooper moved behind the consoles in disbelief. 'Look! Can you see...?'
She jammed her fingers into her mouth as a figure shimmered into view, hovering a few feet from where Ace was sitting.
It was a pretty, middle-aged woman, her face wreathed in smiles.
'Hello, Dory, love. Where on earth have you been? I was worried sick.'
Ace opened her eyes and jumped, shocked at the perfection of the apparition.
The Sentience had found the image of Audrey easy to assume. There was much bile in the girl's memory, much resentment. It shivered inside the golden particles of the woman's body, light bleeding from every pore.
'I'm fine,' said Ace, carefully.
'Ace,' said the Doctor, concernedly.
'It's OK, Doctor.' She stood up. 'I'm fine,' she repeated, turning to address the apparition. 'It's you that's in trouble.'
Audrey smiled. 'Come on, Dory. Don't play games. We're going to the school today to see the Head about that nasty boy Chad Boyle.'
Ace half smiled. It had done its homework. 'You're not my mother,' she said quietly. 'Whatever you are, you're not her. You're not real and I'm not afraid of you. I deny your reality. You have no claim on me!
The Sentience within Audrey grew taller, glaring down at Ace, its face darkening in fury.
'You cannot...'
The voice began to tremble a little, breaking up into a soft rustling sound.
'You cannot...'
Need
Need
The Sentience felt the great hollowness returning. There was nothing for it here.
'Get out! Get out of here!' shouted Ace.
Audrey's image began to disintegrate; glittering particles swirled into a vortex around it.
Ace picked up a sheaf of papers and hurled them at the apparition.
'Get out!'
The papers fluttered to the floor. When they settled, the Sentience had gone.
'Ace!' Robin ran to her and flung his arms around her. She grinned broadly and kissed him.
'Don't worry. I knew what I was doing,' she lied.
Ace turned to the Doctor who was staring at her in disbelief. 'I can face my past, Doctor. Now, what about you?'
The Doctor continued to stare and then ran across the room to Cooper, his hands flapping in agitation. 'Show me your nova! Show me!'
Cooper tapped some figures into the console. The Doctor's eyes flicked down the screen. He drummed his fingers against the console and ran a hand through his hair.
Ace felt a bit deflated. A bit of recognition wouldn't do any harm, she thought.
The Doctor turned full around and his face was suffused with joy.
Lowcock held his breath. The crypt was completely dark but he felt a little cheered by the close proximity of his fellow villagers. Several had pressed themselves between ancient tombs, as if trying to vanish into the walls themselves.
Above them, the stone floor echoed with the sound of footsteps.
Lowcock crossed his fingers.
Please, please, please...
Jill Mason grasped his hand. He could hear her frightened breathing fluttering in his ear.
The footsteps came closer.
The Sentience was on the point of withdrawing from the moor and it boiled and swirled in the atmosphere, struggling to understand its failure. No life form had ever had the will to resist it before. The lure of the past was always so great.
Need
Need
There was still energy to be had, however.
It would simply concentrate its efforts on the church. Drain those creatures dry.
Then came another contact. Begging it to stay, demanding it to stay. A strong contact, no... an unprecedented contact. It was the creature from the monastery again! And this time, he wasn't shielding himself.
There was so much energy there, such a wealth of experience - almost as if he had lived several lives.
The Sentience pulsed an urgent signal and finally pulled free of its earthly prison. Light blasted from beneath the moor, sending tons of soil shooting into the heavens.
The bulk of the Sentience joined with the portion wrapped around the church eves and scorched across the moor, coagulating into a vast, glorious cloud around the dish of the telescope.
'At your mark, Doctor,' said Cooper coolly.
The Doctor nodded and shut his eyes. Ace had shown him the way. If he could only manage it half as well as she...
Memories flooded his mind.
That first visit to Revolutionary France. Times before that. He and Susan travelling alone in the TARDIS, or the Ship as he had liked to call it then.
Fleeing through that terrifying forest to the plain where the TARDIS stood. The months in China with that Venetian traveller. Slowly dying from the deadly radiation of the planet Skaro. And it was Susan who had gone off into the jungle to save them. Brave Susan...
He forced himself to concentrate on her image. That dark, pretty face. That uniform she had first worn at the school and so hated that she'd buried it deep in the TARDIS.
'Oh, Grandfather. I can't be seen wearing that.'
Not 'with it', she had told him. Not the sort of thing for a fan of John Smith and the Common Men. Susan...
And then that terrible day. Defeat of the Daleks and the liberation of Earth but... but he had been forced to make her stay behind. It had been what she needed, what she wanted in her heart. To stay with David Campbell and make a life for herself. A life away from him...
She had stood outside the TARDIS, tears pouring down her face, the key to the Ship clutched in her hand. 'One day, I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back...'
He was here now. Waiting.
'Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. ..'
Come back to me. Come back to me...
'Just go forward in all your beliefs, and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine...'
Come back...
'Goodbye, Susan. Goodbye, my dear...'
Susan...
'Grandfather?'
The Doctor's eyes snapped open. Susan was standing before him, a beautiful apparition, like a shaft of sunlight pouring through storm clouds. Her dark hair wafted around her face and her hands were held open in welcome.
Like an angel, thought Ace.
Light poured from Susan's eyes and mouth like sand from a punctured bag.
'Susan?'
The Doctor's voice was calm and assured.
'I'm here, Grandfather.'
Her voice was strangely beautiful, haunting...
Ace shivered.
'Tell me who you are,' urged the Doctor.
'I am Susan...' the apparition murmured.
The Doctor chewed a fingernail thoughtfully. 'Yes, you're Susan. But tell me why you're here. Tell me what you seek.'
Susan fluttered her eyelids and the light streaming from them stuttered. 'I have always been here. There has always been me. But...'
'But?' The Doctor held out his hands.
Susan's face seemed to fall, as though overwhelmed with sadness. 'There must be more than this. There must have been a better time. Not this need.'
'A better time. A simpler time,' said the Doctor. 'That's what we all yearn for. The pain of wanting to belong somewhere. To go home.'
'Home,' repeated Susan.
The Doctor stepped back a little. Susan raised her head. 'But there is always need. I cannot rest.'
'You have to feed?'
'At first, I had only to consume a very little and was content. But I have grown now, and the need has grown with me.' Susan's eyes began to shine with a fearful incandescence. 'I can smell them,' she hissed, her voice harsher now. 'Their regret. Their yearning for times past. It is so strong, so sweet. They fashion me into what they desire, or what they fear and then... then I harvest.'
'Harvest?' Cooper spat the work disgustedly.
The Doctor silenced her with a gesture. Susan inclined her head.
'There was much energy to be had. I grew stronger as the years passed. I learned how to shepherd my prey together and prevent them from leaving me...'
'What does it mean?' said Ace.
"The sickness anyone feels if they try to leave,' said the Doctor without taking his eyes off the apparition. 'It creates a barrier, preventing them getting out.'
'But not getting in,' said Vijay quietly. 'Like Mr Medway?'
The Doctor nodded. 'Bees to a honeypot.'
Susan smiled slightly. 'I found one who could see as I did. An old man. Through his mind I saw the potential of this world.'
Billy Coote, thought Robin. So his second sight had been real after all.
'And now?' said the Doctor. 'Now that you have grown?'
Susan rolled back her head and laughed, delighting in her own power. 'I shall go on from here till the need is gone. I shall consume!'
The Doctor whipped around. 'Now, Dr Cooper! Now!'
Cooper slammed her fingers across various keyboards and each monitor screen flared with identical data. There was a distant clunk from the dish above. Vijay and Robin looked up.
'Doctor?' said Ace in puzzlement.
Cooper ran a hand over the console. 'That's it, Doctor. All systems overridden and concentrating on Bellatrix.'
The room began to throb with power. The Doctor turned back to Susan. 'Can't you feel it? Can't you feel the energy?'
Susan twisted about, her figure stretching and distorting as she attempted to locate the energy source. Radio waves honed in on the dish of the telescope.
'What is it?' hissed Susan, her hair streaming behind her as though stirred by unseen currents. Light was forcing its way through every part of Susan's face, as though the Sentience were shaking off the image.
'A star,' said the Doctor calmly. 'An exploding star. Pushing outwards in a pure, brilliant surge of light and energy. Can't you feel it? Can't you taste it?'
The Sentience thrashed against the walls, Susan's image flaring and billowing as light fountained from it.
The Doctor ran closer, pressing home his advantage. 'Can't you feel it? The energy of a whole star. It's all yours. Take it. Take it!'
Susan's face seemed to break into a smile before evaporating into a surge of blinding light. Golden fire roared through her until there was only a blazing column of light dominating the room like some biblical miracle.
'I can feel it!' screamed the Sentience, its terrifying voice resonating around the room. The walls began to shudder and crack.
'I can taste it!'
Ace, Robin and Vijay threw themselves to the floor as chairs and papers crashed around the room The Doctor and Cooper gripped the benches for dear life as a freezing wind blasted through the room. 'Is it not... beautiful?'
The Doctor turned away as the column of fire expanded across the room, dazzles of brilliant white light searing his eyes. A screeching cacophony pounded at his ears and he thrust his head under the bench, sweat washing down his forehead.
'Beautiful! Beautiful!'
The Doctor lay down flat and covered his ears with his hands. There was a tremendous wave of energy and he felt his whole body being flattened. His eyes lolled back in their sockets and blood roared in his ears. He rolled himself into a ball and came to rest against the console. Then he opened his eyes.
The makeshift polythene window had burst asunder and a fine rain was blowing through.
Cooper poked her head over the top of the bench and looked around.
Papers fluttered over the consoles.
'It's gone,' said the Doctor, sighing with relief. 'Gone to find its star.'
The Sentience consumed the ancient radiation as it rushed into the telescope's feed. Even at this distance, there was much to enjoy. So much energy pouring out of the dying stellar body. But it was still so far away. So far away.
To consume properly, the Sentience would have to get closer.
It was strong enough now, strong enough to leave behind the planet in which it had always existed.
The energy was weak, but once it had been fresh. The Sentience would have to go back. Back to when the star exploded. And then it would feast.
Back. Back. Back.
Cooper hugged Vijay to her. 'I'm so sorry, my dear friend.' She kissed him and then held him at arm's length. 'There's just the two of us now, I'm afraid. Think we can manage?'
Vijay smiled thinly. He thought of Holly and immediately pushed the thought to the back of his mind.
No.
That was wrong. That's how Holly... that's why Holly died. By not accepting James's death and letting his memory fester inside her. Holly was dead.
He would grieve, very publicly and for as long as it took. But he would remember her with joy.
'I think we'll manage,' he said at last, kissing Cooper fondly on the forehead.
Robin grasped Ace's hand tightly. 'Well?'
Ace gazed into his lovely green eyes and bit her lip. 'I'm going to tell him. Tell him now.'
The Doctor was rummaging through his pockets. He pulled out the small, vellum-bound book which the Abbot had lent him and looked up, as though struck by a thought.
'Doctor,' said Ace quietly. She placed a hand on his sleeve.
'Mm?'
'Doctor, I've ... I've decided to stay...'
The Doctor blinked as though waking up. 'Stay? Here? But you can't. You ...' He stopped and sucked his lower lip. 'Of course you can.'
Ace looked at her shoes. The Doctor turned and regarded Robin. 'I take it you've got something to do with this, young man?'
Robin smiled his cheeky smile. 'Guess so.'
Ace looked deeply into the Doctor's eyes. 'What about you?'
He smiled encouragingly. 'I'll be all right.'
'I will miss you, Doctor.' Ace felt the familiar numb pains spreading to her palms and throat.
'And I shall miss you too, dear Ace.'
She flung herself into his arms and he held her tightly.
Ace pulled away, tears stinging her eyes.
The Doctor looked at the book in his hand. 'Would you do one last thing for me?'
'Of course,' she said, sniffing back tears.
'I want to test out a theory. Will you come with me, in the TARDIS? One last time?'
Ace was taken aback. She looked over at Robin and then back at the Doctor. She owed it to him. 'Er ... yeah. Yeah! Why not?'
The Doctor smiled and hurried over to Vijay and Cooper.
Ace embraced Robin and kissed him fondly. 'Won't be long. Promise.'
He kissed her full on the lips, lingering for a long minute.
'Vijay,' said the Doctor. 'This nova of yours. What's the distance from Earth?'
Vijay shrugged. 'About a hundred and ten parsecs.'
The Doctor did a lightning calculation. 'Of course!'
He dashed across the room and lifted his hat. 'I hate goodbyes. I'll have Ace back here before you can say John Robinson.'
He pushed open the double doors and was gone.
Ace turned to them all and shrugged. 'I'll be back soon. Promise. Bye!'
Robin looked longingly after her. The doors clattered and then immediately swung open again. Ace popped her head round the jamb. 'Merry Christmas!' she cried and vanished.
The Doctor was scrabbling at his watch chain for the TARDIS key. He looked up at the sky which had cleared completely, leaving a dark, star-filled expanse. In Orion, one particular star was blazing wonderfully.
Ace ran up behind the Doctor. 'What's the theory then, Doctor?'
He spoke as he walked. 'The nova is one hundred and ten parsecs away, or thereabouts.' He pointed into the night sky. 'See it?'
Ace craned her neck. 'Oh yeah.'
'Well, what's that distance in light years?'
Ace grimaced. 'Erm...'
'There's 3.259 light years to a parsec, or 19,160,000,000,000 miles, so...'
'About three hundred and thirty light years?'
The Doctor smiled triumphantly. 'About, yes, about. But I'm willing to bet on another figure.'
Ace was intrigued. 'What?'
The Doctor pulled up sharp. 'Three hundred and twenty-four,' he grinned.
George Lowcock counted to ten and pushed at the floor plate. He looked around the darkened church. Starlight glinted off the fallen lectern. The place was utterly silent.
Lowcock threw back the floor plate and clomped his way up the steps from the crypt.
He wandered down the aisle, conscious of the shadows looming in every corner, and grasped a tall candle. Fumbling in his pockets he produced a lighter and lit the candle, holding it high above his head.
'Nothing,' he whispered, then raised his voice so that the villagers in the crypt could hear him. 'Nothing! They're gone!'
Slowly, like shell-shock victims staggering from a bunker, the residents of Crook Marsham filed from the vault, blinking bemusedly.
Jill ran straight over to Lowcock. 'Are you sure?'
Lowcock held up his hand. 'Listen.'
Jill pricked up her ears, expecting the tinkle of breaking glass. But a gentle sound was struggling to make itself heard at the edge of her awareness. A low, repeated hoot.
'It's an owl,' she whispered.
Lowcock smiled.
The Doctor patted the TARDIS affectionately and pushed the key into the lock.
'Have you back in two shakes,' he said to Ace, pushing open the door. Then he looked at her. 'Thank you for coming with me.'
She smiled. 'Least I could do.'
They went inside.
The tertiary console room was just as they had left it. The Doctor stepped over to the console and let his fingers flutter over the controls.
Ace picked up Susan's uniform and folded it neatly over the mirror, smiling wanly to herself. The TARDIS had been her home for so long. The only real home she'd ever known, and now...
'Aha!' cried the Doctor. 'I knew it. It's travelling backwards in Time. Fingers crossed, we should be able to get there first.'
'Get where, Doctor?'
The Doctor turned and his eyes were twinkling with mischief. 'Why, Crook Marsham, of course.'
Ace frowned.
The night was warm and balmy. Campfires glowed distantly.
'Captain!'
Phillip Jackson turned to the soldier behind him. The fellow was pointing towards the castle.
'What is it?'
'There's someone there, sir. I swear it. Down there, by the gates.'
The Doctor stepped from the TARDIS and looked around. The night was pleasant, the air sweet. This was more like it.
Ace emerged behind him. 'Where are we?'
'I told you. Crook Marsham.'
Ace looked at the imposing castle next to which the TARDIS had materialised. 'When?'
'Sixteen forty-four,' said the Doctor.
Ace laughed in surprise.
The Doctor gazed up at the battlements. 'The light from the exploding star has taken three hundred and twenty-four years to get to Earth. Which means?'
'Which means that it actually went nova in 1644!' cried Ace delightedly. 'You are devious, Doctor.'
The Doctor shrugged and smiled. 'I aim to please.'
He strolled over to the cold stone walls. 'My guess is that the Sentience will follow the fossil radiation back to when it was new, by going back through Time. To this evening.'
'But how can you be so exact?'
'Another guess. This is Marsham Castle, in which our friendly local Cavaliers are currently being frightened out of their wits. Ah, there they go!'
The castle gates burst open and the Royalists ran out, screaming in terror.
The Doctor pointed up at the battlements, where a ball of fiery light was forming. Ralph Grey looked over, his face a mask of horror, and then threw himself into space. Ace grimaced.
'It must've returned to its normal state now,' said the Doctor. 'And remained undisturbed as its future self arrives.'
He looked about. There was silence. The Doctor checked his pocket watch.
Phillip Jackson rode up to the gateway, dismounted, stepped over Grey's body and disappeared inside the castle.
The air was suddenly alive with power. Ace felt the hairs on her arms and neck stand up.
'Here it comes,' whispered the Doctor.
The castle began to seethe with light, the old stones themselves rippling and blurring.
'The castle was destroyed by a mysterious fire!' shouted the Doctor above the rising din.
'This is it?'
The Doctor nodded, beginning to run back to the TARDIS.
A few moments later, Jackson dashed from the gates, mounted his horse and galloped away.
Ace could feel the heat blasting against her as the castle became virtually transparent. Halos of blistering fire roared through the masonry.
'This is it!' cried the Doctor. 'The Sentience leaving Earth to find its star. Come on!'
He pushed open the doors of the TARDIS and ushered Ace inside. Seconds later, the old ship protested out of solid existence.
The castle reached optimum brightness and then erupted into an immense fireball with a sound like planets colliding.
The Doctor fussed over the console, mumbling to himself. He glanced at the scanner and then whooped with delight. 'There!'
They were in space now, and the roundel screen was dominated by an incredible outpouring of light and energy.
The Bellatrix double comprised a white dwarf star and its companion. In the course of time, the companion star had grown enormously, but its evolution had been halted by the proximity of the white dwarf.
Material began to bleed from the companion on to the dwarf until it reached its maximum permissible mass. At this point, the Chandreskhar limit, the dwarf underwent a massive thermonuclear explosion.
The Sentience, however, knew nothing of this. All it could feel, all it could taste, was the bounty of the exploding star. It slipped free of Earth's atmosphere and sped across the galaxy at incredible speed, throbbing with power.
In an instant, it was there, writhing and wallowing in the astonishing blast of energy.
'Need!' it sang to itself.
'It'll stay there until the star has exhausted itself,' said the Doctor. 'Let's nip forward a bit...'
His fingers danced over a row of buttons.
Ace checked her watch. They'd been gone a good while now but this was a time machine, after all. The Doctor could drop her off only a minute after they'd left. She thought of Robin and smiled. The Doctor glanced at the scanner and frowned. 'It's gone.'
'What about the star?'
'Finished. Dead.' He stabbed at a display before him. 'Wait, I've got a trace. We can follow it.'
Ace joined him at the console. The Doctor frowned and then smiled. 'Clever. Very clever...'
The Sentience had sensed the star diminishing. How long it had hovered there, drinking in the beautiful energy, it couldn't tell. But what was time to it? Now it was free to roam through space, consuming anything it came across. The eater of stars!
It sent out a portion of itself and suddenly shuddered with delight. There was another star, somewhat more distant, but so powerful!
Seconds later, the Sentience was storming out of the galaxy.
Ace regarded the Doctor steadily. 'Where's it going?' 'Out of the galaxy,' said the Doctor wonderingly. 'Out towards Andromeda.' He looked up and smiled. 'M31. The Great Spiral.'
'And what's it looking for? Another nova?' The Doctor leant on the console and looked at her. 'No, better than that. A supernova.' He checked his instruments. 'Yes, there it is. It's found one. A big one too.'
The Sentience groaned with delight as the energy from the blazing red star flooded into it. If it could go on discovering these sources, these dying stars then, perhaps, the need would be fulfilled. Perhaps it might rest, at last...
The Doctor chewed his fingernails anxiously. 'We'll go forward in Time again and see what it's up to.'
He cast a glance at the scanner and his eyes began to widen.
'What is it, Doctor?' said Ace worriedly.
'If we're lucky...' he said under his breath.
Ace shrugged. 'What? The star burns out?'
'No, no. Remember what I told you.'
'It turns into a pulsar, right?'
'Yes,' said the Doctor quietly. 'Unless the core of the star is too massive for the neutrons to support it against gravity. In which case the core continues to collapse.'
Ace shrugged. 'Well?'
'Continues to collapse until the gravity at its centre is strong enough to form...?' The Doctor raised his eyebrows expectantly.
Ace frowned, then smiled, then grinned as she realised what the Doctor was implying.
The Sentience was aware of the star's death. Immediately, it began to monitor the space around it for more energy. It was colossal now, stretching shimmering tendrils into the vacuum.
It would leave and find more stars.
Nothing happened.
Once again, it attempted to leave and found that it could not. It desired to be elsewhere and this had always been easy to accomplish. Why not now? Besides, since it had grown greater the need was greater.
Already, the yawning emptiness seemed to burn within it.
The Sentience flexed a tendril but was dragged back remorselessly towards the dead star.
This was impossible. It had to move. Get away. The star had nothing left to give. There was no more energy. There was nothing but oblivion.
For the first time in its ancient life, the Sentience felt something akin to panic. It tried to wrench itself free, lashing its tendrils in fury, but the gravity of the star wouldn't permit it. Not even the Sentience could escape from a Black Hole.
For a long moment, an eternity of experience flashed through its consciousness. Sir Brian de Fillis and his wife, Harry Cooke and his daughters. Dyson and Scott from the archaeological expedition. Dr Shearsmith, Jack Prudhoe, Win Prudhoe, Betty and Lawrence Yeadon, Abbot Winstanley...
Need. Cannot die. Still need. Must go on. Must...
Holly Kidd. Edmund Trevithick...
Must go on... Must... Must...
The Sentience shimmered briefly like a firefly.
Then a curious peace came over it as it vanished forever.
Perhaps it had finally come home.
The Doctor flicked a switch and the scanner roundel darkened to the same hue as the others.
'It's over,' he sighed. 'Consumed by the black hole.'
Ace breathed out delightedly. 'Well...'
'Yes. Time you were getting back.'
The Doctor looked at her steadily. He didn't want to let her go but under normal circumstances he would have done.
Under normal circumstances.
But there was more at stake now...
'Crook Marsham 1968, here we come,' he said brightly.
Ace had nothing much to pack and returned to the tertiary console room with her rucksack and bomber jacket. Her tape deck would have to stay as it was anachronistic and liable to cause a few raised eyebrows. Come to think of it, by the time Ian Brown and the Stone Roses came round, she'd probably be too old to like them any more. Funny thought. But she had Robin now...
She walked into the room uncertainly. The Doctor was at the console and the TARDIS was just materialising.
'Doctor?'
He turned.
Ace bit her lip. 'Everything we talked about before. You will be OK now?'
The Doctor smiled. 'You know, the Elizabethans thought nostalgia was a diagnosable disease. Perhaps they were right.' He sighed. 'Thanks to you, Ace, I know that what's done ... is done. No sense living in the past. The only way for me is forward. Always forward.'
Ace moved to hug the Doctor one more time but he shook his head. 'Just go. I'll slip away quietly. No fuss.'
Ace nodded silently, feeling the tears well up in her eyes. Then she ran through the double doors without looking back.
Expecting the familiar moorland, she was somewhat surprised to find herself on a broad stretch of beach.
The sand glistened like pomegranate seeds and the sky above her was a lovely, dusky purple. A breeze was blowing through a dense forest to her right. Three moons hung low over the horizon.
'Doctor,' she said in a low whisper. 'You've got it wrong.'
She ducked back into the TARDIS. The tertiary console room was empty and silent, save for the familiar hum of machinery. Ace noticed several switches clicking into life.
Ace stepped over the threshold. The doors swung shut of their own accord and the TARDIS dematerialised automatically.
She grasped the brass door knob and threw open the interior door, racing into the corridor beyond.
'Doctor! Take me back! I have to go back! I have to!'
There was no reply. Ace ran down the corridor, fresh tears springing to her eyes. 'Doctor! You promised! Take me back!
The light in the grey corridor was dim and cheerless. Ace wheeled around, already hopelessly lost. She slid down the roundelled wall and buried her head in her hands. 'Take me back.'
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