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The Doctor grinned. 'This may be our second visit, but we are doing it first.'

Beyond the university buildings the trees and hedges were darkening into silhouettes as the sun began to settle towards the horizon. Shadow was reaching across the fields and seemed to drift into the campus, dimming the colours in the small square where the Doctor and Leela stood watching students coming and going.

'It is getting dark,' Leela said, placing her hand briefly on the hilt of her knife.

It was an unconscious gesture the Doctor had seen her make many times, and he took it to be a reassurance reflex. He remembered that an Earth cartoonist whose work he much admired had coined a term for something which offered such irrational comfort and he wondered ruefully if a very large knife really qualified as a security blanket. 'Late summer dusk,' he said, trying to sound especially reassuring, 'is the time of peaceful beauty and quiet contemplation here on this world.'

Leela said flatly, 'Darkness is the time of predators that do not need the light to see what it is they are hunting. Everywhere on any world.'

It occurred to the Doctor that if Leela was not being deliberately downbeat to make some angry point of her own, then she was showing signs of incipient paranoia. 'I think you're doing it on purpose,' he said. 'Since we got here nothing has happened to make you feel threatened.

You have no reason to be afraid.'

At the mention of fear Leela did not bristle with warrior pride the way the Doctor had hoped. There are always reasons to be afraid,' she said darkly.

'The dark is one of them.'

As if in response to her words, automatic sensors reacted to the developing gloom and lights began to switch on across the campus. As well as the standard space lighting there were low level floodlights which glowed gradually brighter round the ornamental lakes, and concealed uplighters among the trees and shrubberies which exaggerated shapes and made elaborate patterns from the foliage.

'I don't imagine this will lighten your mood?' the Doctor asked.

Leela shrugged dismissively. 'Some night predators are attracted to the light.'

Before the Doctor could voice his exasperation Chloe Pennick, the excitable girl who had cannoned into them earlier, came out of the administration office and hurried across the square to where they were standing.

'I've checked the regulations,' she said eagerly. "You're allowed to stage performances on campus 'providing you belong to, or have been invited by, a bona fide student group". I can organise that for you. In the meantime I've booked you into the guest accommodation.'

'How very kind of you, Chloe.' The Doctor beamed 'I think we may be at cross-purposes though. We weren't planning to stay. Were we Leela?'

'I did not want to come here at all,' Leela said, touching the hilt of her knife.

'This is a bad place to be."

Chloe looked nervous suddenly. She glanced from the Doctor to Leela and back to the Doctor. Do you really think so?' she asked, her voice full of apprehension.

'No of course not,' the Doctor said. 'I must apologise for Leela. She's been in a rather primitive mood ever since we arrived.'

Leela said flatly and ungraciously, 'I do not like this place or anything about it.'

'Why not?' Chloe was staring hard at Leela as though she already knew the answer to the question and merely wanted confirmation.

'There is danger,' Leela said.

'Yes,' Chloe agreed. 'I think so too.' She looked at the Doctor and nodded. 'I think so too,' she repeated.

'And what do you think this danger is?' the Doctor asked, wondering if his understanding of young women was even sketchier than he had thought.

‘I am being pursued.'

'You are being hunted?' Leela asked.

Chloe frowned. 'In a way. But it's more haunted than hunted,' she said.

Then she shrugged and smiled a small, embarrassed smile. 'I suppose that sounds silly doesn't it?'

'When you say haunted?' the Doctor prompted.

'It's a sort of demon. I think it might be the ghost of a serial killer?'

'Ah.'