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'But what about Steve?' Nina protested. 'We've got to warn him!'

The Doctor shook his head. 'We can't warn him unless we tell him the truth, Nina, and you know perfectly well that he wouldn't believe a word. Besides, now that he isn't in contact with the pendant, it can't do him any more damage. Ruth's the one who needs us now. Help me to help her.'

She started to rise, thought of Steve again, hesitated.

'Please?' the Doctor said gently. 'I really do need you.'

Doubt gave way to another emotion entirely, and Nina went with him.

TROUBLE

The sun was near to setting, and a break in the clouds let through the bars of slanting light that made the south-western sea look like a sheet of aluminium. The wind still gusted strongly, whipping Nina's hair stingingly across her face and snatching her breath away as she and the Doctor started up the cliff path. She wasn't good at altitudes, and although the cliffs hereabouts weren't as high as many in Cornwall – Hell's Mouth further down the coast was a dizzying example – they were still big enough to give her a nervous pang when she dared to glance over the edge. The fishing boats on the quay looked like toys, and even the breakers seemed nothing. Her stomach gave a queasy lurch and she looked away.

The Doctor slowed as they neared the holiday chalets, studying them alertly. They were all occupied; lights shone from windows and the muffled blare of a television clashed with the softer, natural sounds of sea and wind.

'No cars,' he said.

'They park them higher up,' Nina told him. 'There's a space that's accessible from the road.'

'Right. Well, this doesn't look like a likely hiding place for Ruth, but just to be sure ...' He took a black and silver device about the size and shape of a fountain pen from his pocket, and began to pan it slowly across the area around the chalets. Nina half expected something weird to happen, but nothing did, and after a few seconds she said, 'What's that?'

'A scanner, of a sort. Tells me whether there's anything untoward around – living entities, anomalous technologies, things like that.'

'And is there?'

'Nothing stranger than a TV with bad reception.' He smiled, but only briefly. 'Onward and upward!'

They left the chalets behind and the path turned more steeply upwards, following the line of the cliff edge. A short flight of steps cut roughly into the turf brought them to the highest point; as they reached the top the wind suddenly and violently increased, blasting straight in off the Atlantic and making Nina stagger and clutch at the Doctor's arm to steady herself. Someone who obviously knew all about Cornish weather had built a length of metre-high stone wall here, between the path and the drop to the sea, and Nina hunkered down in the lee of it, thankful for the shelter.

'Where does the path lead from here on?' the Doctor asked, raising his voice to be heard above the wind.

'On round the cliffs,' she called back. 'But there's nothing except heather and gorse until you get to the next beach.'

'How far's that?'

She shrugged. 'Two miles. Maybe three.'

'Any dry hiding places?'

'No. Not a thing.'

'All right.' The Doctor turned and looked landward, at a nearby area of bare, thin and sandy soil, strewn with stones. Behind it, where the cliff rose in a bluff, a narrow, rectangular and clearly man-made fissure gaped. 'What's that?' he asked, pointing at it.

'An entrance to one of the old mine workings,' Nina told him. 'The area's riddled with them.'

'Can one go in?'

'Yes, but not very far. A short way down the tunnel there's usually a drop straight down into a shaft or an adit – that's an air outlet.'

'Mmm ...' The Doctor walked towards the bluff, then took out the black and silver device again and pointed it at the fissure. A few seconds passed, then he made an adjustment with his thumb, pointed the device again, waited.

'Anything?' Nina asked.

'Not a sign.' He sighed. 'A great pity. It seems like such an obvious

location: almost the only one possible, in fact. But this device