The City of Glass was raised up on a bed of stone.

it was only as the small party who'd beamed down from the Nepotist came within a mile of the place that they realised this.

The black rock was riddled with caves, each of them lined with ice blistered and cracked like mouths and throats plagued with ulcers.

The team were spoilt for choice... which cave to take?


Captain Blandish picked one of the hazardous apertures quite at random and determined this would be the one.

'But how do you know?' the Doctor teased.

'Instinct,' grunted the captain.  'When you've been on as many missions as I have, you learn to listen to your gut feelings.  And right now my guts are gurgling pretty insistently that this is the one.'

The cave mouth glittered with ice, drawing them in.  'Quite,' said the Doctor.  'I bow down to your greater um... instincts and experience.'

'Huh,' said Blandish, and scowled at the Time Lord, who was now egging everyone up the glassy slope.

'Captain!'  Belinda was panting a little with effort and irritated by the fake fur of her snorkel hood.  'Captain, communications with the ship are breaking up.  Once we're inside the cave we won't be able to speak with them at all.'


We're being jammed,' the captain growled.

'Indeed,' said Garrett, who was peering into the pale cavern.

Timon brought up the rear, blaster drawn, looking somewhat nervous.

The Doctor led the way.  Blandish let him.  Let him handle the danger.  If anything leapt out at them, let the Doctor get it first. It would be no loss.

As they pushed along, their sheepskin boots started to fill with meltwater.  It was becoming wetter as it grew grew darker, and yet there was a definite sense of walking up into the Glass City of Valcea.  Perhaps they were succeeding after all, in creeping up on the inhabitants unsuspected.

Captain Blandish was quietly excited.  He tried not to give feelings away as they inched up the sheeny tunnel, but his mind ran with images of what they might come across in the city above.  It was his explorer's instinct taking the helm.  This was the reason he was Captain, after all.

Garrett made them pause while he felt around in his backpack.  Then he produced torches for them lime-green tubes, stuffed with luminous gel.  He reminded them all how expensive these things were and to be used only in the most vital (and dark) of their expeditions.

The Doctor peered at the torch he was handed, his in face a ghastly green in its baleful light.

'But these are Ffenitrite bulbs!' he gasped.  'These have been outlawed for years... even in your time!'  When he used that phrase 'in your time' he couldn't keep out a note of accusation.  Belinda was at his shoulder.

'What's wrong with them?'

'They're alive!  There are living creatures trapped in here!  These devices are barbaric'  With that he threw his own torch down on the frozen ground, where it exploded in a brief flash of green shards.

'You idiot,' Blandish burst, shoving him back.

All five stared down at the wreckage of the Doctor's lamp.  In among the broken glass there was a host of writhing luminous worms.  They seemed startled by their sudden liberty.

'Now, don't the rest of you get any ideas and copy this stupid bastard,' Blandish warned.

'No fear, shuddered Belinda, moving away from Ffenitrite worms.

'Happy now, Doctor?' Garrett asked him sardonically.

'Yes,' he said, and stomped off ahead, leading the way into the dark.