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But when he split away from the main group she felt bound to follow him. He hadn't joined in the general good humour that the appearance of Dagda's Wheel had instigated. Ace knew that something was going on here.

Just as she had before, she followed him by the clop-clop sound of his wooden sandals striking the floor, and just as before .she managed to lose him when the echoes confused her and sent her off into the maze of corridors. She cursed her bad luck in choosing the wrong path, but determined to find where he was heading.

She came upon him in much the same position he had been in that night, standing at the window gazing outwards. The sunlight fell on to his face but didn't seem to illuminate it. He was mumbling incoherently to himself, his head swaying from side to side. Ace crept a little closer to try and hear what he was saying. It seemed that he was calling to something, but she couldn't be sure what.

Suddenly, as if exhausted, Nuada fell back from the window. He reeled about in the small space of the corridor and then collapsed on the floor, his chest heaving.

Ace came out of hiding and knelt down by him. His eyes were shut and his breathing had slowed now. It was as though he had passed out. Automatically she reached forward to loosen the tightly constricting chainmail vest where its collar embraced his neck. She slipped her fingers into it and tried to find some way of unfastening it. Working her hands around it she brushed back the dark mane of hair from his neck.

With a gasp of surprise she stood back from him. Chulainn had told her about the witch mark and what it meant. How could a member of the Tuatha de Danaan carry the mark on his neck? Nuada was a witch, of that she was certain. Did it mean anything? She didn't know.

But when his eyes snapped open and blazed with red fury, she understood completely why Chulainn feared the witches as much.

15:

Dagda's Wheel

The door at the end of the hangar slid open silently. Goibhnie strode in and halted before his waiting guests. The light gleamed brightly on the reflective visor of his helmet and his fingers moved in unceasing agitation.

'I have decided to adopt your suggestion. It will be interesting to observe how the experimental subjects respond to life without any guiding influence.'

'Might it not be a good idea to reconfine the reject materials?' the Doctor suggested to Goibhnie.

'That would be an essential procedure for the continuing successful development of the experiment. I have issued instructions to my mobile surveillance units to locate the reject material.'

'What's he talking about?' asked Bathsheba.

'Yes, why can't he talk normally?' Stuart agreed. It irritated him that the alien could not make himself clearly understood.

The Doctor explained Goibhnie's words. 'He meant that he's using his dragons to locate the demons.'

'Dragons?' Goibhnie exclaimed, with some surprise filtering through his voice synthesizer. 'That is the name that the Herne creature used for my surveillance units.'

'Herne,' the Doctor mused. 'Yes, where does he fit into your experiment?'

'He does not. I created the Herne specimen in an experiment on Troifres. My initial research for creating a sociological world model involved work on a wide range of protoplasmic material types. One of these, the basic model which I eventually used to create subject species number three, in the course of irradiation sequencing underwent a severe mutation producing a human-type being and the Herne creature. Unexpected and contravening the laws of conservation of mass and energy though this was, it was nothing to the fact that I later discovered that the Herne creature perceives effect before cause, thus running against the psychological, expansionist and thermodynamical arrows of time. It was the Herne creature who gave the initial suggestion that I should look to the legends of the Sol system for my experimental model.'

The Doctor considered this explanation and related