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YES! 'the voice roared. YOU'RE MAD AND YOU'RE DEAD!'

The shout was so deafening it made Chloe's jaw clench and her ears sing, and she knew immediately that no one else would have heard it. She looked round for some clue, some possible link to the normality of the student union bar, but there was nothing. Would it come now, screaming and bellowing from the door, leaping and crashing into the window? She could feel her chest constricting and compressing. She panted, struggling to fill her lungs with thin, unbreathable air. Blood hammered in her eyes and rattled thickly in her ears. She grabbed the edge of the table and held on grimly. This time she would not run. This time she would keep her nerve no matter what happened.

'Are you all right, Clarry?'Josh was staring hard at her.

IT'S NOT CLARRY IT'S CHLOE!' a voice shouted but she wasn't sure whether it was her voice or the demon's. The others were looking at her now. Was it because they could hear the voice?

'Chloe?' Meg reached towards her, but it seemed as if her arm was getting longer and longer and she was getting further and further away. 'Is it a panic attack?' Meg's distant voice was full of concern. 'Breathe slowly, Chloe. Try to breathe slowly. Deep slow breaths.'

BREATHE YOUR LAST BREATH,' the demon cackled. ETERNITY IS AN

AIRLESS AGONY OF PANIC!'

Chloe's hands slipped off the edge of the table as she pushed herself to her feet. She would have fallen headlong if Ralph had not caught her and steadied her. 'I must go,' she said, or whispered, or shouted. She pulled free of his arms and ran for the door.

'RUN! RUN!' the voice exalted. YOU CAN RUN BUT YOU CAN'T HIDE!'

Somewhere in the chaos of her panic Chloe heard Josh say: not one of your more coherent demons then and thought: it shouts cliches too. But it didn't stop her terror, and it didn't stop her scramble to escape.

Sobbing incoherently and half-blinded by tears she wrenched open the door to the bar and plunged out into the sunlight. Almost immediately she cannoned into someone and fell on to the hard paving stones of the small quadrangle. Pain jagged through her knees and hands.

'Are you all right?' a friendly voice inquired. 'Don't try and move for a moment.'

Chloe peered up and saw a tall man dressed in a long coat, with a long scarf and a soft felt hat jammed over curly hair. There was a girl dressed as some sort of primitive hunter-gatherer standing beside him.

'What do you think, Leela?' the man said. 'Any broken bones?' He squatted down on his haunches and smiled at Chloe. Despite the pain she felt more relaxed almost at once.

'She will be bruised, nothing more,' the girl said without making any move to examine her.

'How can you tell from there?' Chloe asked. 'X-ray vision?'

'Leela's an expert,' the man said. 'She was trained to break bones for a living. No, I phrased that badly. She was trained to break bones to stay alive.'

'There's a difference?' Chloe asked as he helped her up.

'The Doctor has never understood the way of the warrior,' the girl said.

"The way of the warrior?' Chloe looked from the man to the girl and back again. Is this street theatre?' she asked, smiling.

Barry finished cataloguing the tapes and filing his notes. He completed the diary entry and the experiment log and tabulated the predictable, if disappointing, results of the day's test programme. Then he yawned copiously, stretched his cramped shoulder muscles and scratched his crotch.

'Nice manners,' the voice said from the doorway. 'But I suppose that's to be expected from Ghostbuster Bazzer, the pusher of scientific envelopes.'

'Professor John Finer as I live and breathe,' Barry said, genuinely surprised to see the physicist. 'You forgot ventriloquist, conjuror and children's party entertainer by the way'

'Your more reputable work is not my concern,' Finer said, the half-smile doing nothing to soften his narrow face.

Barry resisted the urge to throw something heavy at him and said instead, 'I don't think you've ever been