The hatch opened. He ran into a vault lit by blue neon light. It reminded him of a really naff nightclub.

There was a raised console in the centre of the floor, a white dais.

He ran to it. His palm-print woke it up.

The Guide opened. A column of digitised information erupted like a fountain from the middle of the dais. It just kept going, generating layer after layer of shimmering holograms: diagrams, data blocks, code sequences, text and picture information.

‘Oh my god,’ Rory mumbled, pressing keys and buttons at random. ‘There’s so much stuff! There’s too much stuff! I don’t even begin to know where to look!’

He thought hard, frantically. The hologram of the Doctor was back in the hall, too far away to consult.

How was he going to find anything? How was he—

He thought hard. He tried to stay calm. How hard could it be? Though the Morphans had forgotten the technical aspects of the system, it was probably designed to be a user-friendly, multi-purpose device. It shouldn’t be any more tricky than figuring out the basic functions of a new laptop, or the apps on a smartphone.

He had a fundamental advantage over all the Morphans: he was accustomed to basic interactive technology.

He looked at the streams of overlapping data pouring out in front of him. Amongst it all, he saw a single, small icon:

?

He touched it.

It dissolved. Virtually incomprehensible 3D data continued to blossom around him, but the ? Was replaced by two more simple icons: a human hand and a human mouth.

Did he want to enter his question manually, or by voice?

He touched the mouth.

‘Speak request,’ said the voice of Guide.

‘I need you to open access to the entire Guide database via…’ Rory hesitated. Where the hell was it?

What had the red-eyed thing said?

‘… Terraformer Two, operations management command C, level six!’ he yelled, remembering.

The Transhuman, snarling like a rabid dog, exploded through the Incrypt door behind him.

The console in front of the Doctor lit up. It made the Doctor jump. Deliciously comprehensive quantities of information were uploading into the workstation display.

‘Good boy, Rory!’ the Doctor cried.

‘Did he do it?’ asked Amy, peering out from behind the workstation. ‘Did he? Did he do it?’

‘Yes,’ said the Doctor, ‘he jolly well did. I never doubted him for a moment. I have direct access to our Guide e-manual.’

‘So what’s the matter?’ Amy asked.

‘Gosh,’ said the Doctor. ‘There’s quite a lot of it.

Enough information to… to build a world, in fact. It’s a lot to take in.’

‘Can you do anything with it?’ she asked.

‘It would probably take a normal human days just to browse this, even with a decent search tool…’

‘Doctor! We don’t have days!’ Amy yelled.

Proving her point, one of the battling Ice Warriors flew overhead, hurled headlong by a snarling Transhuman. The Ice Warrior smashed into the plate-glass screen, cracked it, bounced off, and fell onto the deck. Lord Ixyldir had several deep notches in the blade of his war sword, and the monster he was battling was showing no signs of weakening.

‘We certainly don’t,’ the Doctor agreed. ‘But fortunately, I’m not a normal human.’

Rory yelped and tried to put the dais between him and the slavering, grinning predator that was coming for him.

It snarled, head low, back arched, ready to spring.

Of all the possible deaths he’d faced in the last day or so, Rory was pretty sure this was going to be the least pleasant by quite a margin.

Vesta appeared behind it and hit it on the back of the head with a mallet. The creature roared and turned away from Rory for a moment.

‘You’ve still got that mallet?’ Rory said in surprise.

‘I thought it might come in useful!’ Vesta replied.

The monster, uttering a deep, throbbing growl, was now circling them both. It tensed to spring.

Roaring, Jack Duggat charged into the Incrypt and drove the blade of his hoe into the Transhuman’s side.

The impact smashed the Transhuman into the wall.

Straining hard, the biggest of the Morphans leaned on the shaft of his implement and pinned the writhing, howling beast in place.

‘Run away, Elect Rory!’ he bellowed. ‘Take Vesta with you! In Guide’s name, run away now!’

Rory wasn’t having that. Jack Duggat had just saved his life. He ran to Jack’s side, adding his own strength to the labourer’s brawn. They leaned on the hoe, spearing the raging, thrashing Transhuman to the wall.

Vesta joined them, lending her effort too.

‘We can hold it!’ Rory cried. ‘We can hold it!’

The sturdy shaft of the farm implement gave out under the force involved and splintered.

‘Or maybe not,’ Rory said, as he, Vesta and Jack backed away.

‘Doctor!’ Amy yelled.

With a vast, two-handed blow, Ssord had just managed to bury the blade of his axe in the skull of one of the Transhumans, killing it, but it was too small a victory, too late. Lord Ixyldir had been knocked over and wounded. The three remaining Transhumans were about to make short work of the Ice Warrior cohort.

And others - several others - had just appeared in the chamber doorway behind them. Their eyes shone red. Their smiles were steel.

The Doctor had selected a section of the Guide database and centred it on his desk display. His Time Lord mind had picked it out of the mass of data, like a needle in the proverbial haystack. Well, pretty much.

He didn’t want to admit to Amy that he was only fifty per cent sure it was actually the section he needed.

‘Do you know what you’re doing?’ Amy yelled.

‘Yes!’ he shouted back.

‘Do you, or are you just making it up as you go along?’ she demanded.

‘It’s called business as usual! he replied.

He took a deep breath, reached into his pocket and pulled out his sonic screwdriver. He blew on it and rubbed it briskly between his hands as though he was warming up a set of roulette dice.

‘Come on,’ he pleaded, ‘you’ve had quite enough rest for one day! Come on, daddy needs a brand new planet!’

He aimed his sonic screwdriver at the display and pressed the activator.

Chapter

17

Close by Me Forever

Nothing happened.

It only didn’t happen for few seconds, but it felt to everyone concerned like an eternity. They teetered on the very edge of life or death.

Then the Transhumans stopped in their tracks. They stopped fighting. They retracted their claws. The red light in their eyes grew dim. They turned their backs on the battered, bemused Ice Warriors, and slunk away, as aloof and disinterested as cats.

In the Incrypt, the Transhuman pounced and crashed into Rory, Vesta and Jack, and knocked them flat on their backs, but it didn’t kill them. They looked up to see it padding over them and walking away. It prowled out through the assembly hall, through the outer doors beyond, and began to bound away across the snow until it was lost in the darkness.

‘Are you two all right?’ asked Rory, getting up.

Winnowner was peering in at them through the Incrypt hatch anxiously.

‘I thought we were dead,’ said Jack.

‘Get used to it,’ said Rory, ‘that’s how we roll.’

They walked back into the hall together. In the hologram field, the Doctor was beaming at them. Amy, Bel and Samewell were with him.

So were a surprising number of battle-damaged Ice Warriors.

‘I reset their sanction,’ the Doctor said. ‘The Transhumans, I mean. It turned out to be quite a simple instruction in the end. You just had to find the right override.’

‘You did what?’ asked Rory.

‘I countermanded their orders. I sent them back to deactivation. Back to hibernetic suspension. Back to sleep.’