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By Root 688 0

could tell, what she was following was a perfect and unchanged trail. It had not deteriorated at all, not even in the smallest ways. It was as though Pertanor and Rinandor had run through no more than an hour before. Apart from the squad snake and herself, nothing had crossed this trail, nothing had stirred small shiftings of soil, no sap had risen to slightly lift some parts of squashed ground plants, no broken stems of taller bushes had withered significantly. Leela thought about telling the Doctor that there was something wrong, but he seemed so interested in his conversation with the two toodies that she was reluctant to interrupt with something that would probably sound silly and unimportant.

She did not want to look as if she was trying to force them to pay attention to her.

Leela signalled the three of them to follow and, setting a relaxed pace, walked along the trail which, according to what Pertanor had said, would lead first to the clearing that no longer contained their grounded spaceship. She felt that the Doctor could have told them that the TARDIS had also disappeared, but when he did not she had to assume that he had a reason of some sort.

Despite the slow pace, Leela had got some distance ahead of the others when she saw the water, dark in the brightness of a wide clearing. She approached it carefully.

The water looked clear but the angle at which the light was striking it made it difficult to see below the surface. There was a small island in the middle. Nobody had mentioned a lake lying directly across the trail she was following. Rinandor had mentioned losing equipment packs but she had said nothing about leaving them on an island in the middle of a wide expanse of what looked like very deep water. Leela bent down and put her hand in the motionless liquid. It was just warm enough to be difficult to feel: blood warm, she thought, or was it the same temperature as the heavy damp air?

In the black depths, something stirred and drifted up towards the vibrations moving on the surface.

There was nothing left of the route they had marked through the jungle growth. It seemed to stop at some invisible dividing line. One moment it was there, and then it was gone.

On one side of the line it was easy to see the trail: it was almost a pathway. On the other side it simply faded away: everything they had broken and scorched had grown back and healed over. It was as if nothing had ever passed that way before.

‘They couldn’t have found us even if they were looking for us,’ Sozerdor whined.

‘Stop talking like an idiot,’ Fermindor said flatly. ‘They had the coordinates, same as we did. They didn’t need a trail, or weren’t you paying attention? We were just trying to make it easier for them to catch up.’

‘But they didn’t catch up, did they?’ Sozerdor was triumphantly gloomy.

Kley adjusted her wrist compass reference points and checked that she was tracking correctly. ‘We’ll probably come across them,’ she said, realising as she said it that it was not the most well-chosen of phrases and that someone was bound to pick up on it.

Sure enough Sozerdor grizzled, ‘Why is that not a comforting thought?’

‘You’re not here to be comforted!’ she snapped. ‘Shut up and do your job!’

‘I see,’ he moaned. ‘Everyone’s decided to pick on me, have they? It’s not my fault it’s all gone wrong, is it? I didn’t get us into this mess, did I?’

‘No, and you’re not going to get us out of it either,’ Belay said. ‘Be quiet, So, you’re not helping.’

Fermindor walked up and back along the border between trail and non-trail. He was looking for the kink in the original line of march which had to be the explanation for its sudden disappearance.

Kley watched him for a moment and then said, ‘We didn’t deviate.’

‘Maybe the soil changes here,’ Belay said. ‘Special growth hormones, or... or...’ He shrugged helplessly.

‘Maybe it isn’t real, Fermindor said. ‘Maybe the runner’s messing with our minds.’

‘How would he do that?’ Kley said dismissively.

‘Yeah, what is he?’ Sozerdor demanded. ‘A superbeing?

Mighty-firster, Lord of the Runners?