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‘Yes, said Onya, following his gaze. ‘If we’d put a foot over that line, we’d all be dead.’

It was always the same, Sarah said to herself as they toiled up yet another steep slope. You thought you’d got to the top and there would be another summit waiting for you, even higher, and then another – and another.

‘Well, I don’t mind telling you, I’m pooped,’ said Jeremy.

‘Oh, do stop whingeing!’ said Sarah.

It was even getting the Doctor down. ‘I should both save your breath, if I were you,’ he said shortly.

They straggled up the last rocky incline, all tired, all irritable – except for Onya, who had bounded up the last few crags like a – like a mountain goat? Oh, shut up! said Sarah to herself. As if I could care less about clichés at a time like this!

Onya stood on the crest of the hill and waited for the others. ‘There you are,’ she said, with an expansive gesture.

‘Kimonya, the land in the sky.’

Laid out below them like an eastern carpet woven in green and gold, the valley was shaped like a shallow bowl in the midst of the surrounding hills. A silver ribbon of water wound through the two toy villages, breaking at last into golden glints of sunlight reflected from the wavelets on a lake as blue as the arching sky.

It was the Doctor who put into words how Sarah felt –

how all of them felt, maybe.

‘Perhaps we’ve all come home,’ he said.

Jeremy broke the silence. ‘Hey! Look at those whopping great birds!’

The Brigadier squinted into the sun. Not birds, boy, he thought. Bats. Half a dozen or more. Giant bats.

Onya was laughing in delight. ‘It’s Kaido and his people, coming to meet us.’

What? He should be used to it by now, the vast range of alien races, after the catalogue of shapes and sizes he’d encountered in his time with UNIT, but still... ‘You mean that the Kimonya tribe are bats?’ he said.

‘No, no, Brigadier,’ said the Doctor. ‘They’re riding them.’

By now he could see this for himself. The creatures were not exactly the same as the bats he was used to – their faces were more like cats’ – but like their Earthly counterparts they were covered with fur, albeit of a golden yellow colour, and had leathery wings spanning some twenty feet.

Sitting astride each neck was a small figure dressed in a soft leather tunic, holding on to the ears, which served as a means of control, as the Brigadier could ee as they all came in to land nearby.

When the leading rider jumped off, he saw that far from being a boy, as he’d assumed, he had the face of a middle-aged man – and when he spoke, he spoke in a surprisingly deep voice, a voice which had the ring of authority.

‘Greetings, Mamonya,’ he said, holding out both hands.

‘Our Mother has returned to us.’

‘Greetings, Kaido,’ she replied and lightly touched his outstretched hands. ‘I return with great happiness. I bring more friends to greet you.’

The Doctor stepped forward, copying Kaido’s gesture.

‘Greetings,’ he said.

Kaido smiled and touched the Doctor’s hands. ‘I give a welcome to the friends of Mamonya. You have weak legs.’

Sarah stifled a giggle. Pretty strange way of greeting strangers, thought the Brigadier.

Onya laughed. ‘He means that you look tired. He’s offering you a lift down to the village.’

On the bats?

Sarah said, ‘I’m game.’

The Doctor said, ‘What are we waiting for? Thank you, Kaido.’

Bit of a dicey proposition, thought the Brigadier. Still, he’d try anything once.

‘There isn’t any saddle or anything,’ said Jeremy.

‘Hang on to the fur.’ said the Brigadier.

As they climbed aboard (one per animal, sitting behind the rider), he thought of the long gone days when, as a young subaltern, he’d been stationed in Leicestershire and had ridden to hounds with some of the fashionable hunts.

‘If the Quorn could see me now!’ he said to himself, as they took off in a great flurry of flapping.

‘Wheeee!’ cried Sarah, as they swept into the sky.

I couldn’t have put it better myself, thought Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chairman