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The Doctor turned away from the window. don't enjoy being a witness to Armageddon, Brigadier. But the Waro have only themselves to blame. They found a way of controlling their self-destructiveness, but only used that to externalise their rage.'

Liz was surprised. 'In Siberia you said that the Waro were born violent - that they could no more change their behaviour than I could change the number of arms I have.'

The Doctor looked down sadly. 'Perhaps I was being simplistic. Perhaps we all have our choices to make - and enough bad choices become ingrained as character. But a bad character is much more difficult to redeem than a single bad decision.'

Liz couldn't help but glance at Trainor, still breathing heavily from all the excitement, wrapped up in his own thoughts.

Whatever, I must say the destruction of the Waro force here on Earth brings me little satisfaction.' the Doctor continued.

'But the Earth is safe.' said Yates.

The Doctor nodded. 'Of course, and I'm -'

There was a loud explosion towards the rear of the Cargo master, and the plane began to nose-dive. As the Doctor, Liz, and the others clung on as well as they could, a Nedenah made its way carefully out of the cockpit. 'One of the Waro penetrated the Doctor's shielding.' The voice carried no hint of panic. 'A suicide mission. It carried a large bomb. Most of the tail section is gone.'

'Then we're done for!' moaned Trainor.

'Perhaps.' said the Nedenah, smiling.

The C-133 came down steeply, belching fire from the tail section. The undercarriage was jammed, and the blunted nose took the brunt of the impact, thudding into sand and then rock.

The plane skidded across the desert for some seconds, burrowing its fuselage deeper and deeper until eventually it could no longer withstand the pressure, and the entire craft split in two. There was another explosion, a flower of brightness in the desert, as one of the fuel tanks ruptured.

Above the wrecked plane, the sky was at last beginning to clear.

The Brigadier pulled himself painfully to his feet. One eye refused to open, and when he put his hand to his head, it came away sticky with blood.

He saw a huddled body, curled beneath a protective pillar of metal.

'Well, Professor,' said Lethbridge-Stewart, walldng over.

Two crashes in one day should be statistically impossible, so the chances of anything happening on the flight home are -'

The Brigadier stopped. Something was wrong.

'Dr Shaw!' he shouted.

Liz hobbled over, saw Trainor's body, and dropped to her knees. She checked for a pulse at his wrist and his neck, placed a hand over his grey lips, listened to his chest.

When she looked up, her eyes were streaked with tears.

'He's had a heart attack.' she said in a quiet voice. 'Even with the right equipment, I'm not sure I could do anything.'

The Brigadier rested a hand on her shoulder. 'I'm sorry.

Had it not been for -'

Suddenly Liz grabbed Trainor's lapels and screamed into his dead face. 'Why did you have to go now? Why did you have to go when I hate you!' She collapsed, sobbing, on top of the corpse. 'You stupid, selfish bastard.'

Thanks to the skill of the Nedenah, the other occupants of the Cargo master were able to pull themselves from the wreckage and walk away.

The Brigadier, Shuskin and Yates stood with the surviving UNIT soldiers close to Trainor's body, watching as the dark cloud overhead began to fade.

Liz and the Doctor sat on a small rise, their back to the wrecked plane. While the Nedenah walked calmly through sand in the direction of their own craft, the Doctor spoke in shocked whispers, his words only just audible above the screams of the dying Waro.

An hour later, the desert was silent.

FIRST EPILOGUE:

NO WIN SITUATION

'I hear the South American situation is worsening,' said the Brigadier gravely. He turned to the Doctor, and found him absentmindedly throwing bread to the ducks in the lake. said

-'

'Yes.' said the Doctor, looking up. 'And I suspect