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Garif offered his hand and Login took it. The Decider grinned and said, 'Welcome, Decider Login.'
K9 came to an abrupt halt at a white, bubbling stream which cut directly across his path, separating
him from the Marshmen, whom he could detect ahead of him, moving further into the forest.
There was no way that K9 could traverse the stream, and so he quickly calculated that he would
have to negotiate a way round it, to meet up with a projection of the route taken by the marsh
creatures on the other side.
K9 was aware that statistically there was a good possibility that he would fail to achieve his
objective - his vocabulary did not include the phrase 'taking a long shot'.
Tylos held Romana's arm halfway up her back, his knife still at her throat. Varsh and Keara watched
her haughtily. Adric stood to one side, helpless and ignored.
'Where is this "Doctor"?' Varsh growled.
Romana remained staunchly silent.
'Tylos.'
At Varsh's command, Tylos lifted Romana's arm a little higher, pressed his blade that little bit harder
against the flesh of her throat.
'Tylos, watch out!' Keara screamed.
The warning was too late. Adric had moved quickly, sprinting across the floor and grabbing Tylos
from behind. Romana jumped free and the two youths struggled, Tylos trying to thrust the knife
backwards towards Adric's face. Adric was able to hold the blade back mere centimetres from his
right cheek.
Varsh hovered indecisively nearby, torn between two loyalties.
Adric determined on his strategy. He held Tylos's wrist firmly, then twisted his hand round. Tylos
yelped at the resulting friction burn, and his knife clattered to the floor.
There was a massive general dive for Tylos's knife - Romana was the first to reach it. Whipping it
up, she directed it at Tylos's throat. The youngster backed away, terrified, as Romana advanced on
him.
He found his retreat obstructed by the control console. He was trapped.
Romana surprised them all by turning the weapon round hilt-first towards Tylos. 'Your knife,' she
said, smiling at his bewilderment as he took it from her.
There was an uneasy, uncertain atmosphere in the control room, a silence broken when Adric
spoke up. 'I'm sorry. I am. This is all my fault.'
'What do you want?' Romana asked.
Varsh was left to answer. 'The Mistfall legend is coming true.'
Romana paled. 'And the Doctor's out there!'
She had started to reach for the door lever when suddenly the whole room tilted to one side. The
five figures were thrown across the room, slipping helplessly down the slanting floor to crash into
the wall.
The room levelled out to some degree, but as they clambered upright they could still feel a certain
uneasy sway underfoot.
Adric, shaken and nursing a bang on the back of the head, asked, 'How did you do that?'
Romana looked fearfully around her. 'I... I'm not quite sure,' she said.
Then the room tilted again, this time in the other direction, and once again they were all thrown
across the floor.
Despite the fog, the Doctor's sense of direction was able to guide him back to the clearing where
the TARDIS had chosen to materialise. During that walk he pondered on many things. Once he had
the TARDIS instrumentation at his disposal he could carry out a number of atmospheric tests. And
an energy location sweep of the surrounding forest-lands should be able to detect this starliner
Adric had spoken of.
Entering the clearing, the Doctor fished in his pocket for the TARDIS key. Striding forward, he looked
up and found a gust of wind clearing the fog from the area in which the TARDIS had landed.
The Doctor came to an abrupt halt.
Where the TARDIS had stood there was now only a square of flattened grass. It had vanished.
5
'We Don't Know What's Out There'
The Doctor moved forward until he was on the very spot on which the TARDIS had stood. Sliding
the key back into his pocket, he looked up and around, perceiving treetops dimly through the murky
vapour around him.
Then he saw the shrubbery, revealed to him by another fortuitous breeze. A trail of broken
branches and trodden foliage led away from the clearing. The TARDIS had been lifted and taken in
that direction.
The Doctor hurried away, guided by the trail of ruin through the undergrowth.
A small, scaly hand clutched at the trunk of a nearby tree.
The Marshchild peered round the tree with black, timid eyes, watching the Doctor depart. When the
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