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'Would it?' Stuart asked. 'Are you saying that this Herne bloke goes backwards in relation to everyone else?'

'That's a very succinct way of putting it. I wonder to what extent he has a true contra-temporal existence.'

'He has resisted all my attempts to analyse him,' Goibhnie told the Doctor.

'Hardly surprising if he knows in advance the ways in which you would no doubt test him.'

'Perhaps that is the case.' Goibhnie seemed annoyed. 'Now, if you would come with me I shall view the locations of the rejects.' He led them out of the hangar, along a featureless corridor and into a large dark room, one wall of which gave off a dim luminescence. The other walls were bare.

'Seating for three human subjects,' Goibhnie commanded and three forms rose out of the floor. Stuart eyed them with interest. There had been no indication - no cracks, no panels – that the chairs had been concealed there; they had simply extruded themselves and were continuous with the material of the floor. The Doctor sat on one of them and it instantly contoured itself to fit him perfectly. Bathsheba and Stuart followed suit.

'World map of experiment code Ternog, surveillance unit locations.' The wall suddenly became a screen showing an overview of the entire world of Tír na n-Óg.

Bathsheba leaned forward excitedly, hardly noticing that her seat changed to accommodate her new posture. She had seen a map of Tír na n-Óg drawn by her brother David and so she could pick out familiar places. A bright red light glowed where Dinorben lay and acted as a reference point for Bathsheba. To the north of Dinorben were the forest of Coed, the mountains of the Allan Clwff and the land of the Clyr. To the south lay the forest of the Sidhe, the land of Teirion, which the people of lord Barras and the Firbolg hotly disputed, and the mountains where the Fomoir dwelled. To the west of Dinorben, beyond the southernmost extremities of the mountains of the Allan Clwff were the Marches which stretched for more than a hundred miles before they reached the sea. To the east lay farmlands, then a low range of mountains and then nothing, a barren wasteland which had never been crossed and hence was unmapped by the cartographers of Tír na n-Óg. On this map it was equally devoid of features.

Over the surface of the map moved thirty or so white pinpricks of light - the dragons, if Bathsheba understood what had been happening correctly.

'Relay targeting information from surveillance units to screen, including last known locations and extrapolated movement patterns,' Goibhnie instructed.

A host of green dots leapt on to the screen. Most of them were north of Dinorben, and to Bathsheba's eye they appeared to be making towards it.

Goibhnie turned to the Doctor, 'This is the present situation. As you can see they are too widely spread at the moment ... '

'They've been causing havoc all over the place,' the Doctor told him.

‘. . . but computer analysis suggests that there is some general movement towards the transmat device. This creates an ideal solution to the problem. If, as would seem to be apparent, for some reason the rejects are attempting to escape from the Ternog experiment, then we need merely reprogram the transmat device to transport them back to the storage module.

'Aren't you forgetting something?' the Doctor asked.

'I hardly think so. I am a trained scientist, and I take into account all factors when preparing experiments. The possibilities for experimental error are so great that such an approach is essential in even the simplest technique.'

'But the semiorganic silicate computer transfer device is in the middle of a large population at present. For the demons to reach it they would have to pass through that population.'

'They'd wipe it out,' Stuart said.

'I do not see that as a problem. I can restock from the original source world.'

'How can you be so callous?' Stuart asked. 'These are lives we're talking about. Real lives - not fairy tale monsters … or aliens.