* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

 "What am I doing here?" asked Anna, her voice a near-whisper.

 "Two words," replied Stuart. "Fluffy Bunnies."

 Anna sighed, and brushed a stray strand of hair away from her forehead. He was right. It had just seemed a lot less scary back in the student's union when Stuart and Crispin had convinced her to join them on their raid of the labs. She hadn't quite realised that the labs would be dark and cold, and that the shadows would freak her out quite as much as they did. It had just seemed so right back in the smoky bar back at the halls of residence, with Stuart and Crispin talking excitedly, infecting her with their enthusiasm. She steeled herself. She couldn't back out now.

 Crispin returned, scurrying back down the corridor, keeping in the shadows, his shock of blond hair looking faintly ridiculous. "The guard's moved on," he whispered. "Come on."

 He led them gingerly along the corridor to the back staircase, three figures in black, trying to be invisible in the moonlight. Anna felt, perhaps imagined, a blast of cold air, and pulled her donkey jacket around her tighter still.

 "I'm going back!" she hissed. "This isn't going to work."

 "You can't go back. It's all for one and all that stuff -- remember?"

 Crispin looked back at her and smiled reassuringly.

 Anna gritted her teeth and thought of bunnies.

 "Whose lab is this anyway?" asked Stuart, as they reached the basement. Crispin switched on his torch, illuminating the name "Professor Ysabelle Givenchy". Anna swore.

 "This is too big for me -- way, way too big."

 "Huh?"

 "She is like, queen of the cosmetics industry. She pretty much revolutionised it back in the late 80s. She turned cosmetics from something that made you look good and attracted guys into a whirl of chemicals and liposomes."

 "Still no reason to experiment on animals."

 "We're just so far out of our depth, guys. This is big -- way, way too big for me."

 Anna turned, heading back up the stairs, but Crispin grabbed her arm, holding her back.

 "Look, we came in here together, and we leave together, right? You can wait here if you want, but Crispin and I are going in."

 Anna thought for a moment. "I'll wait here."

 Crispin reached into his rucksack and pulled out a crowbar. "Spare key," he grinned, as he pried the door open, splintering the frame and shattering the lock.

 Crispin smiled at Anna, that cute, reassuring smile of his, and walked in to the lab, Stuart following. Anna felt very alone, suddenly, and sat down on the lowest step, hugging her knees. She'd been at university for three weeks now, and she had never felt so alone.

 ***

 Stuart reckoned that Crispin was mad. They'd cooked up the scheme together a few nights before -- it had been just after the party where they'd tried to get new students drunk and recruited into the Rowing Club. Crispin had mixed up his usual lethal cocktail of gin, whisky, cider and blackcurrant and subscriptions had been at al all time high, almost covering the cost of the party. Afterwards, everyone gone off to Professor Bailey's rooms for port. One thing led to another, Stuart had been very drunk indeed, and he had found himself telling Crispin about this girl he'd met, about how he thought she was really nice, and about how he was too shy to say anything to her.

 So Crispin had decided to force things, to create a situation, to throw them together. And Stuart had gone along with it because he always went along with what Crispin suggested, usually in spite of his better judgement, because Crispin was just so... so.. plausible. He made the impossible seem not only possible but downright easy.

 Crispin was mad all right. Charming, but mad.

 And then he followed Crispin into a side-room and he saw the rabbits. Row upon row of tiny cages, hundreds of little rabbits with their faces pressed up against the bars. And he knew that they were doing the right thing.

 Crispin looked at him, their eyes met, they nodded, and started to unlock the cages.

 ***

 Anna remembered the first time she'd seen Ysabelle Givenchy on television. She'd been thirteen, and just back home after her friend Becky's fourteenth birthday party. They'd been to the movies to see '101 Dalmatians', then back for party games and playing with make-up, dressing up and pretending to be film stars. Anna had sat down with her mum to watch a programme about animals. Then her mum had dozed off, and Anna found herself watching the Nine O'clock News.

 The headlines were about an Eco-terrorist raid on a cosmetics plant, where some protestors had freed some cats and rabbits. One image still haunted Anna -- a painfully thin ginger cat, lying on its side, its eyes puffy, too weak to move. And then Ysabelle Givenchy had come one, defending this obscenity. She was a wrinkled hag of a woman - at the time Anna had thought she looked over a hundred years old and was probably a witch. She leered out of the screen at Anna, who fled to the bathroom and was still there when her mother found her ten minutes later. Anna was sobbing, mascara dripping down her face.

 Anna didn't wear make-up again until she was eighteen, and then only rarely, and only certain brands.

 She knew that the guys had started to let the animals free when she saw a white rabbit poking its nose out of the laboratory doorway. She moved forward, squatting beside it and spoke to it in soft tones, reaching forward to stroke it gently between the ears. Cautiously, she slipped a hand underneath it and picked it up, pulling it up towards her face as she stood up.

 And she felt something cold and hard pressing into the middle of her back.

 "Don't turn around. I'm not a great shot, but I can hardly miss at this range." The voice was female, and had a pronounced cockney accent.

 Anna didn't even think about turning round.

 "Walk."

 Slowly, Anna walked forward, the rabbit held tight in her arms, into the lab.

 ***

 Stuart had just freed the last of the rabbits, when Crispin called him.

 Crispin had wandered off a few minutes earlier, leaving Stuart to finish opening the cages, pronouncing that he was scouting ahead to see what other acts of urban terrorism he could perpetrate. It took Stuart a few seconds to realise where his friend's voice was coming from. Just beyond the rows of cages was a small carved wooden door, incongruous in the otherwise modern laboratory. Crispin was on the other side of that door.

 "Hang on a second," he replied, pausing for just a second to wonder what on earth they were going to do with the hundreds of rabbits they had set free to roam the lab. Crispin called him again, more urgently this time. He looked around him at the wrecked lab, laughed quietly, and opened the door.

 Beyond was a small lecture theatre, with tiers of seats ranked in a semicircle around a central stage area. The ceiling was a glass dome, open to the sky, and moonlight cast an uncanny pallor over the room, and where the lecturer might have stood was a large chrome and glass machine that reminded Stuart of an industrial washing machine.

 Crispin was standing by the machine, and seemed to be trying to prise it apart. Stuart made his way down to join his friend.

 "What's going on?" he hissed.

 "Look."

 The core of the machine was a perspex cylinder, about seven feet long by three feet across. The top half was hinged, and clearly designed to lift to let a person lie down inside it. Rather than a person inside it, however, a guinea pig was running frantically from one end to the other. Stuart helped Crispin, trying to open the cylinder to release the animal.

 "I suggest that you stop doing that and step away from the device."

 Stuart and Crispin turned as one to see Anna at the door to the lecture theatre, and behind her, the woman who had spoken -- a stunning woman at least six feet in height, with thick black hair, high cheekbones and scarlet lips. She was wearing a tight blue satin dress that left very little to the imagination. Crispin was almost drooling before he realised that she had a gun pointed at Anna.

 He walked forward slowly, hands raised, palms facing forward. Stuart followed, a little behind.

 "Hey -- there's no need to be hasty, now..."

 He tried to sound more confident than he was. He was only twenty years old, and that was far too young to be shot to death by a madwoman with a gun, no matter how gorgeous she might be.

 The woman prodded Anna in the back with the gun. Anna stumbled, tripping down a few steps and landing on her knees. Stuart rushed forward to help her, checked that she was fine, and shot the woman an accusatory glance.

 "There was no need for that!"

 "And there was no need for you to break into my laboratory. That would almost make us even, except I still have my gun."

 She sat down on the top step, idly tossing the gun from one hand to another, keeping it trained on one of them at all times.

 "But this isn't your lab," Anna declared, sitting up. "It said Ysabelle Givenchy outside, and you're young enough to be..."

 "Her grand-daughter?"

 "At a push. I was going to say daughter."

 "Believe me, child, I am Professor Ysabelle Givenchy. I am eighty-two years old. And I would say I look very good for my age."

 "I would have said twenty-nine at most," suggested Crispin, now half way up the stairs, and inching ever closer to Professor Givenchy.

 Anna wriggled her hand into Stuart's. He smiled, thinking how crazy it was, the way things worked.

 "Now why don't you put the gun down, and let us go? We've not done much harm, and we're clearly completely out of our depth here." Crispin's voice was soft and soothing, and Anna thought that Professor Givenchy looked like she was considering releasing them. All the time, Crispin was inching nearer to her, lowering his hands gradually, looking set to pounce and grab the gun.

 Then she fired. Not at Crispin, though, but at a point between his feet. It was enough to panic him, though, and he stumbled, falling backwards and bumping down the stairs to land, head first at the base of the machine.

 Anna scrambled forward, her hands finding the blood that was seeping from a wound in the back of Crispin's scalp.

 "Get back, girl." shouted Professor Givenchy, making her way down the stairs with a disconcerting elegance. "Or my next shot will be through your other friend's skull."

 "I... I don't understand..."

 "No. You don't. It's quite simple though. Throughout the centuries, mankind has searched for the secret of eternal youth. I have found it. No more, no less than endless life and beauty. I can hold back time."

 "You... you're... mad..."

 "Perhaps. But I am also eighty-two years old. Do you doubt the evidence of your own eyes?"

 Anna said, nothing, cuddling closer to Stuart. Professor Givenchy was standing between them and the lifeless body of Crispin.

 "But that's impossible," blurted Stuart.

 "Of course it isn't!" snapped the professor. "I spent my life time developing this treatment. I can reach between the moments and snatch back the stolen years. This machine has made me young, and soon it will make me rich."

 "Why.. why do you keep it hidden here?"

 Anna tried to stand up, with Stuart's help. The professor paused, thinking for a moment, keeping the gun trained on Anna.

 "I developed the principle last year," she began, "and began to build the apparatus. I worked alone, and in secret, since the nature of the work is so sensitive. I worked long hours, forced myself. I was old. I made... a mistake.

 "The Fountain Machine derives its power from the temporal vortex that binds all things together. It is a wild force, an unpredictable force, but the machine tames that power, directs it, focuses it on one task and one task only. I let some of the vortex escape.

 "I saw it escaping the machine, rushing towards me, all green and blue swirls. It knocked me off my feet, and I landed on my back, just where you're standing now. I blacked out, and when I woke up I was young again, as you see me now.

 "After that, it never worked quite right. I am the only successful product of an experiment from the machine. Until now. Experiment Four has finally succeeded. That guinea-pig was on the verge of death when I put it into the machine."

 She waved her gun at the machine, and the guinea-pig battered its head off the nearest surface on cue.

 "So we are now ready to try it on a human guinea-pig."

 She smiled, a broad, toothy, malevolent grin, and Anna shuffled round behind Stuart.

 Crispin was moving, quietly, standing up behind the professor, one finger to his lips in a warning to the others not to say anything.

 "So, which will it be? You, girl? Or your boyfriend there?" A wry grin flicked across her lips as she had an evil thought. "Which one of you wants to go through puberty backwards?"

 There was an almighty crash as Crispin brought a chair smashing down on the machine, splintering the central cylinder. It was followed by a range of explosions from the rest of the machine. The professor screamed with rage, and ran towards the machine, with Anna and Stuart fleeing for the door, Crispin close behind.

 The walls crackled.

 A complex pattern of lightning played across them, illuminating them from within. They seemed almost alive.

 A sudden wail from the professor made them turn. She was on her knees in front of the machine, sobbing. Sparks were flying from all parts of the machine.

 "I think it's going to explode," breathed Anna. "We have to get her away from it."

 "But..." protested Stuart.

 "Come ON!"

 And she half pulled him back down to the machine, which was whining, an eerie noise, rising in pitch.

 As they struggled with the sobbing professor, trying to haul her to her feet, Anna caught a glimpse into the cylinder. The guinea-pig was now little more than a pile of bones. Anna thought she was going to throw up.

 Professor Givenchy's knees unlocked and they hauled her to her feet. She seemed to be in a state of shock.

 "What have you done?" she whispered, incredulous, as the machine exploded.

 With a sound like a windstorm, a whirlwind of green and blue spiralled up from the wreckage of the machine, as fragments of glass and steel sprayed out across the lab. It hung for a moment in mid-air for a moment, a ball of swirling potential, before blasting out in all directions. Crispin raised his arm to shield his face and was blown back against the wall by the force of the explosion. The fragments of the machine fell on him like harsh rain, dying back as the noise diminished.

 He waited thirty seconds after the last fragment fell before he moved his arm. The room was a wreck, with bits of machinery and broken benches all around.

 Three bodies were lying at the foot of the steps. He scrambled down to check on his friends. They were alive, but groggy, and seemed unharmed. Both Stuart and Anna were trapped under large pieces of the machine, though, and he couldn't free them. He needed help.

 He was half way back up the stairs when he realised that the light had changed. Looking up, he saw that the sky had changed. Where there had been a clear moonlit sky was a whirling vortex of colours, swirling towards him, giving the impression that the whole room was somehow moving through them. And more, there seemed to be figures -- giant, ghastly figures, moving outside, *looking* in at him. Something was seriously wrong.

 He flung open the door and stepped through into the outer lab. Only it wasn't the outer lab. It looked like a monastery, or a cathedral. A high passageway, built from red sandstone, and lit by a row of tall candlesticks led ahead into what seemed to be a larger chamber.

 He half-ran, half stumbled forward, along an avenue of thirty-seven alcoves, each with a statue in it, into the room at the end of the corridor.

 This was even more impossible than the corridor had been. He stopped to take it in.

 To his left, three steps led up to a set of double doors with a stylised spiral crest above them. The wall next to the door was lined with bookcases that reached up towards a ceiling invisible in shadow. In the centre of the room was a sort of bandstand made of girders with some sort of primitive looking electrical device in its centre, blue columns rising and falling in its central cylinder. To his right was an open fire, in front of which a man and a woman were sitting drinking tea.

 "Hello," said the man standing up and reaching out his hand in greeting, "I'm the Doctor and this is my friend Grace. Do you think you could explain quite how you managed to get into my TARDIS while it's in mid-flight?"

 To Be Continued...