Donna stared in shock as what looked like a computer console simply sighed and vanished. She let the gun fall and then remembered her companions. She turned back to them.

She could see immediately that there was no chance that David would make it. He’d taken four shots to the chest, and the dark, arterial blood was gushing down him. More blood trickled from his mouth as she knelt to try to give him some sort of comfort.

‘No use,’ he told her, gasping with the strain. ‘Too late.’ He looked at the Doctor. ‘Better this way, perhaps. Now Susan won’t have to wait for me to die.’

Controlling the pain he had to be feeling, the Doctor had a hand to his own wound, using his cravat to staunch the flow of blood. ‘She would have looked forward to the rest of your life,’ he assured David. ‘You didn’t have to do this.’

‘Yes, I did,’ David insisted. ‘Get her back, Doctor,’ he begged.

‘He won’t keep her,’ the Doctor swore.

David looked back at Donna, a faint smile on his lips. ‘He always keeps his promises.’

‘Eventually,’ she couldn’t help adding.

David nodded slowly, his face wreathed in pain. Then he simply stopped breathing. Donna felt the tears welling inside of her.

‘He was a good man,’ the Doctor murmured.

‘One of the two in the universe,’ Donna muttered. His head was still in her lap, and she was smeared with his blood. That would wash off, but the memory of David Campbell would not.

There was a noise from the corridor, and the Doctor looked back and then frowned. ‘Daleks…’

Donna looked at him, then glanced at the far door that led to the pit. ‘That’s our only way out now.’

‘And there are more Daleks at the top of it,’ he pointed out. ‘But we’ve no other choice. Come on.’ He pulled her free of David. She winced as the dead head hit the floor. The Doctor jumped for the door‐lock controls, obviously hoping to buy them a few extra seconds.

Then Donna remembered the grenades Barlow had given her. She fumbled them from her bag as the door started to slide closed. Pulling their pins, she rolled them under the descending door. ‘Die,’ she muttered, as she hared after the Doctor.

The door slid shut and then shook from the explosions.

‘They won’t be getting out of there very quickly,’ Donna told the Doctor. They had reached the base of the pit now, and he stood at the foot of the ladder. Forcing herself not to think about what was happening, she moved to him. ‘How’s your shoulder?’

‘I’ll live,’ he answered. His cravat was wet with blood.

‘You can’t climb like that,’ she objected. ‘Here.’ She helped him out of his coat, and then tore a strip from its lining to tie the cravat about the wound. ‘Lousy field dressing, but it should hold for a while.’

‘I liked that coat,’ he objected.

‘I’ll buy you a new one later,’ she promised him. ‘If there is a later.’

‘There’s always a later,’ he answered. ‘The question is, will there be an us in that later?’ He shrugged and then winced with pain. ‘That’s as good as it will get,’ he said, struggling to get hack into the tatters of the coat. She helped him.

‘Can you manage?’ she asked.

‘Is there an option?’ he replied, a broad grin on his face. ‘There’s climbing and maybe dying to be done this day.’ With his good hand, he gripped a rung, and started up. ‘Heads up,’ he murmured.

‘Are you sure you can manage this?’ Donna asked anxiously.

‘We don’t have any choice,’ he stated, exasperation starting to show in his words. ‘Our little bit of sabotage won’t stop the Daleks for long, and all they have to do is to communicate with the ones at the top of this climb anyway. I’m at the top of their shoot‐on‐sight list.’

Somehow that didn’t surprise her.

The first reinforcements had started to trickle in now. Barlow felt a little better about this, but the troops were the lightly armed ones, none with anything that could really take out Daleks. And his observations of the pit area showed that they were still working on something, having hauled equipment up. He strongly suspected it was a replacement transmitter. All he’d managed to do so far was to delay the Daleks a little. Perhaps the Doctor was having better luck. It was time that somebody did.

‘Let’s start moving in,’ he decided. He still had a few of his grenades left, and two of the fresh batch had the more conventional kind. The others would be able to deal with the handful of Robomen still alive, at least. He looked around at the dismal grey sky, wondering if he’d live to see the night fall.

Moving restlessly the Black Dalek demanded a fresh report. The duty officer turned to answer.

‘Repair units have just reached the gestation pool,’ it said. ‘They report that the controls will not respond. Power drain is increasing.’

The Black Dalek considered the matter. ‘They are to destroy the equipment,’ it decided. ‘Immediately!’

‘Destruction of the embryos will leave us without extra units,’ the officer objected.

‘Their destruction will allow us to survive,’ the Black Dalek grated. ‘Other factories exist that can be wakened by our signal. Priority now is communications. Destroy the embryo unit.’

‘I obey!’

The Doctor poked his head over the lip of the pit, and then hastily withdrew it. ‘Barlow seems to have done his job,’ he called down to Donna softly. ‘But, as usual, the Daleks have a backup plan, and they’re building a new transmitter.’

‘Maybe he can destroy this one, too,’ Donna said hopefully, clinging on, several rungs below him.

‘I think he used up most of his ammunition on the first attack,’ the Doctor answered. ‘Unless he can get reinforcements in, he doesn’t stand much of a chance with a second attack.’

Donna didn’t like the way that this conversation was going. ‘And the Daleks are bound to have traced your sabotage of the hatchery by now,’ she pointed out. ‘Is anything going right?’

‘Oh yes,’ the Doctor assured her. ‘Because they won’t discover my real sabotage until after the gestation pool is history.’

Feeling a sudden surge of hope, Donna asked, ‘And what sabotage is that?’

‘The factory,’ he replied, a faint smile on his pale face. ‘I set the controls there to overload, to continually increase the temperature. It’s an electron‐induction furnace, so we’re talking several thousand degrees.’

Donna winced. ‘We’re talking several thousand degrees as in: if we don’t get out of here we’ll get badly sunburned?’

‘Something like that, yes,’ he admitted.

‘And how long do we have before that happens?’ she demanded.

‘Hard to say. But I wouldn’t make any long‐term plans to stay on this ladder.’

‘Thanks for telling me,’ she growled, glancing back down the pit – knowing that there was a possible end in sight was almost impossible to comprehend. Knowing it might mean her own end as well made it less reassuring. ‘If it’s all the same to you, I think I’d prefer to take my chances up there making a run for it rather than waiting here to become a well‐done chunk of steak.’

‘My thoughts exactly,’ he agreed. ‘Shall we?’

‘Why not?’ Taking a deep breath and trying to steady her shattered nerves, Donna followed him up the last few rungs and over the rim of the pit.

As the explosion from the hatchery shook the complex, the Red Dalek in charge of the squad looked towards the computer technician, still scanning the energy readings. ‘Report.’

‘Gestation pool destruction complete,’ it grated. ‘Power levels… still falling rapidly.’

‘Further sabotage,’ the Red Dalek announced. ‘Location?’

The technician worked feverishly. Power levels were dropping dangerously low. ‘The furnace,’ it finally replied.

‘Follow me,’ the Red Dalek ordered its crew, starting down the corridor towards that area. As it moved, it transmitted its report to the Black Dalek.