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Bloodthirstiness.

He had seen it on the face of his companion as she whirled in the uncertain torchlight, her Aztec weapon dripping with the precious liquid. Ace the fighter, and more: Ace the killer.

He had searched her eyes for a flicker of the Blue horror, expecting to find that influence again, soaked up into her mind like coloured ink into a white carnation. But he hadn’t found it. The Ace who had wielded the sword, pulled the trigger, was his Ace.

He was going to have to do something about it.

His torch‐beam flared on metal.

He traced the shape, carefully. A jagged edge, a ragged curve. The chunk of silver lay against the wall of the cave, a meaningless shape, perhaps as large as a hub‐cap. He turned the form around in his mind, trying to make sense of it.

The metal curved slightly outwards. He did not dare come too close, or touch it; the radiation detector was screaming. He ran the torch at random over its surface, until he found a black line, a curve, a series of dots…

It suddenly fell into place.

He was looking at a ruptured fuel pod from an Exxilon spacecraft, a sphere containing an opaque tube of plutonium. Even with the metal torn, the force‐field would have held the radiation in. But once its power source had begun to run down…

He could imagine the artefact as part of the Aztecs’ baggage as they meandered down from the north: a holy relic, part of a spaceship that had crashed or been abandoned. The interference of the Exxilons had been essential in the development of the Inca, whose civilization had peaked around the same time as that of the Mexica.

How long ago had the spacecraft broken up – or been disassembled? Had the Exxilons also performed their experiments on the Aztecs, and if so, why was there no other evidence of it? Was an alien even now manipulating the Indians, manipulating him?

He found he was sinking his teeth into his bottom lip. It was like finding all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and not knowing what the picture was meant to be.

And the cave wanted him to stay.

Its walls curved over him and around him like loving arms, wanting to hold him, hold him like a lost child and never let him go.

* * *

Iccauhtli said, ‘So then Chief Coxcox praised his soldiers, and said, “The Aztecs are cowards, none of these captives are theirs.” But then he saw that thirty of the captives had only one ear. Coxcox said, “Why is each captive missing one ear?” And the Aztecs reached into their packs and showed that they had cut an ear from each warrior they had taken in the battle. In this way they proved that they were the bravest of all.’

‘Right,’ said Ace. Achtli was nodding, with a broad grin on his skinny face. The tale was obviously an old favourite.

The little group fell silent for a moment, each one listening for the Doctor’s return. Achtli shuddered, sensing something his companions couldn’t. Ace found herself thinking of Preston, his little world stained forever by the Hallowe’en Man.

She thought of all the stains on her own life. She thought of Mike lying like a shattered doll on the stairs of his house, the splintered banisters strewn across the floor. She thought of the sound Daleks made when you killed them, the organic hiss of a shattered carapace, like the noise of chips in hot oil.

Stained.

Achtli was touched by that nameless Blue horror, as Cristián had been. As she had been. She remembered spitting out that awful word, a word she couldn’t remember how to pronounce. They were all being progressively contaminated by the whatever‐it‐was.

She didn’t feel any different… at least, she didn’t think she felt any different. How had it been for the Hallowe’en Man, in those last desperate minutes, alone in the crowd – clutching his gun?

His gun.

A tiny noise made her spring into a crouch, before the brothers could react. ‘Doctor,’ she said.

* * *

She thought about it later, curled up in the canoe, wrapped in the patterned blanket, her head resting on her folded arms. The Aztec brothers were silent, Iccauhtli once more