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Trix fell silent.

‘What was all that about?’ Fitz asked as Trix reached them. Trix inclined her head slightly and frowned. ‘The Olga Korbut impression.’ Fitz turned to the Doctor. ‘You should have seen her.’

‘Are you all right, Trix?’ asked the Doctor, peering at her face. ‘You look a bit flushed.’

‘I’m fine,’ she said, but Fitz could hear something odd in her voice – something forced and awkward. He saw her eyes dart towards the tree trunk from which he’d been ejected so recently, and then back to his face.

‘Good, good,’ said the Doctor, taking her hand and giving it a squeeze. ‘Well done, by the way; how did you find us?’

Trix’s eyes looked slightly glazed as she replied. ‘Trove had a remote control for his surveillance cameras – we used it to follow you.’

‘Very enterprising!’ beamed the Doctor. ‘Now we’ve got to work out what to do.’

‘About Tain?’ Trix asked.

The Doctor nodded. ‘Tain’s initiated something he calls his Gaian phase.

The energy wave racing across the planet – it’s breaking down and recreating everything, everyone, as part of one huge organism. We have to stop it before it’s too late.’

Trix’s mouth tightened, and again she glanced at the tree trunk.

‘Just one question. . . ’ said the Doctor, fixing her with a frown. ‘How d’you know about Tain?’

‘What?’

‘Tain. How d’you know about him? His name.’

Trix didn’t answer. Instead, her hands shot out and punched each of them in the chest, bowling them backwards, head over heels, into the bushes.

Fitz yelped, and through the tangle of branches and the aching pain in his ribs, he saw Trix calmly turn away and head for the entrance to Tain’s duct.

‘What the hell’s got into her?’ he moaned as he struggled to his feet and helped the Doctor to his. When he looked back, he was just in time to see Trix physically force open the tree with her bare hands and climb inside. Silently, it closed up behind her and she was gone.

‘What indeed,’ said the Doctor. ‘Did you see her eyes? And her skin. . . her hand was burning up. And there was something else. . . ’ His voice tailed off.

‘When I touched her. . . there was something else. Something in there with 205

her. We need to go back in.’ He patted his pockets. ‘But we need a weapon.

I’m not comfortable on counting on eau de Tain as a defence. And I’m betting it won’t work against Trix!’

Fitz suddenly remembered Trove, holding a shiny metal thing near to Sensimi’s head. Where was it? His eyes scanned the grass, and he saw it, a silvery glimmer in among the green. He glanced up to catch the Doctor’s eye.

‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ he whispered.

‘What do you think?’ replied the Doctor – and they both dashed for the device.

But the Doctor was quicker, and snatched it up, holding it above his head.

His eyes held a childish glee, and for a second, Fitz wanted to wrestle him to the ground for it. He caught sight of Calamee, her face smudged with tears, looking up at them both, and he suddenly felt stupid. He reached out and put his hand gently on Calamee’s shoulder.

Only then did Fitz realise that the Doctor was racing for the tree, following Trix.

206

Chapter 24

‘There are always choices!’

Tain knew that his time was almost up. For all these long months, he’d battled with the cold, implacable personality of the Trojan as it had attempted to sequester the ship, his body. And until the last few days, Tain had always felt he was winning. But the Trojan had been clever – no, Tain corrected himself, as he felt his digestive subsystems come under the control of the intruder, not clever: just very well programmed.

He’d tried arguing with the Trojan, bartering with it; he’d even tried just chatting. But it was a construct designed with a purpose, and simply couldn’t be engaged on any of those levels. It no more responded to Tain’s reasoned pleas than would a virus. All Tain could do was to shift his resources across the complex battlefield of his body, holding back the construct in one place while trying to guess where it might deploy itself next; building