Bevin was horrified.

 Never had she been as afraid as she was at this moment.

 Up until now, she had seen no sign of Jacob. She was awfully worried that he was already lost. Even worse, she could think of nothing to do. She was strapped down too tight. Panic was beginning to grip her.

 She looked about frantically. Already several Cybermen were closing in on her. One spoke.

 "Bevin, stop." The voice was completely emotionless. But Bevin was near to blacking out. There was only one possibility she could think of that would permit a Cyberman to call her by any name, let alone her first name. It was Jacob.

 "Resistance is useless."

 Bevin fainted.

 * * *

 The Mara was disgusted.

 No one likes being turned on and off like a lamp. In frustration, it banged against imaginary walls. It kicked imaginary babies. It messed with reprogramming.

 Whoah! Now what was that!? Something rather unusual was happening. Fear was constantly being built up, and shut off.

 Although not a moral being, the Mara disliked this sort of behavior. The more typical "constant stream" sort of energy was more to its liking. It was predictable, reliable. But this on/off sort of fear which the Mara was becoming aware of was definitely going to have to change. Time for some slight programming modifications. Just a data push here, another there.

 Anyway, beings without emotional response such as those, that were being created here were of no use to such a one as it. Their usefulness, or rather their uselessness, would soon change.

 The Mara stopped shooting itself in its imaginary head.

 "Resissstance is uselessssssss," it hissed, chuckling.

 * * *

 "Oh, joy," the Doctor thought.

 "If isn't one thing, it's another."

 "Out of the frying pan into the fire."

 "Away from the Cyberclunks into a sun."

 "Oh joy".

 The Doctor knelt before the eons-old console, wondering where to begin. The shock he had received upon trying to remove the dematerialization circuit hadn't been particularly comfortable, and it was safe to assume that all the other components of this oversized TARDIS would be protected by similar defense systems. And anyway, trying to take the dematerialisation circuit out again now, in mid-flight, wouldn't be quite the safest thing either. Particularly with all the people on board. Or outside board.

 "To make matters worse," he thought as he heard the lift grinding down the shaft, "I'm about to receive company."

 How do you miss a planet?

 In space it's remarkably easy. Usually, you have to do your best to actually hit the darned thing. Most of the time, you're going so fast, that you have to hit the brakes, otherwise you'll go flying off at a tangent.

 This huge time and space machine was trying to hit something unbelievably small. A star. Sure, it was hot as hell and something to be viewed from a distance, but the amount of empty space around it was much greater than the volume of the star itself. All he would have to do was to make a mild angular change in the trajectory. If the Doctor did this while they were very far away, they would miss the sun entirely.

 The computer, he noted, still produced output on ticker tape. A wee bit old, wasn't it?

 Actually, he had known this as soon as he had stepped into this massive planetoid.

 Enough rambling: time for some reprogramming.

 The Doctor cracked his knuckles, stood up, and began tapping keys like mad. He began to smile.

 Behind him, the lift came to a rather absurdly silent halt. In contrast, the door clanged open, and the heavy footsteps of a metallic man came closer to the console.

 "Resistance is useless."

 * * *

 Wil backed away from the approaching giants.

 "Now, now. We don't want to do anything foolish," he warned.

 The hulks gave no response, except that they raised their silver weapons and pointed them at him. In the reflection of their weapons, Wil saw a glowing red. He whirled around. "Do not move," he heard from an emotionless voice behind him, "Your actions cannot be tolerated. You will be converted immediately, or you will die."

 The sticks of crystal were red again! And they were no longer pushed deep into the control panel as he had done just one minute before.

 Wil, in frustration and certain that he would die no matter what he did, grabbed one of the crystals.

 As he slowly turned around, he slipped the crystal out of its socket. Thus, he could not see how it turned black, with swirls of puke green whirling in its depths. He could also not see how these swirls slowly formed into a snake, which began to emerge from the crystal and wrap itself around his arm.

 Wil lowered his head and walked past the Cybermen towards the egress. As soon as they were lined up next to each other, so that the one would serve as cover from the other one, he jabbed the crystal from below into the closer Cybermans' control panel.

 The crystal slid in without a sound. No sparks. No nothing. Although Wil was not around to see, since he had made a dash toward the door, he realized that he had heard nothing of any damage he might have done. Yet the prickling between his shoulder blades, where the jolt of a death ray should come, remained unsatisfied in its expectation.

 Surprised that he was not yet dead, and humming "Good bye, cruel world. I'm leaving you today. Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye," Wil turned to glance back as he raced through the door. In surprise he stopped dead (so to speak).

 The view was heart-stopping. The Cyberman whom he had stabbed was nothing if larger. The crystal stuck out of its chest, and was blinking as the Cyberman's chest panel had been blinking before. Around the Cyberman's arms were snakes, and it was impossible to tell whether they were real or merely painted. "They can't be painted", Wil mumbled. The emotionless mouth remained as it was, except that it now had a turn of truly evil. Wil wasn't sure how that could be, yet that's how it was. The body of the Cyberman had changed completely. What before was a burnished silver was now a burnished silver with green tint.

 "Resistance is useless," it hissed, chuckling.

 * * *

 Nana Bevin was tired. She was no longer young, and this sort of activity was nothing if not strenuous. And whereas she knew before that everything was going to have at least an ending where her younger self would survive, everything that the Doctor had said, and the obvious fact that everything that was happening was diverging from what she remembered had happened before, was convincing her that her younger self was in no way certain to survive.

 This had to be ensured. She had expected that she herself would die, but young Bevin must survive. She would do anything to make certain of this.

 Well, as much as her tired and age-weakened body would allow her to. She pushed herself up from the sofa, where she had been sitting and pondering her plight, dozing off in between, and shook herself. "Must do something," she muttered, and went off to find herself.

 The last time she had lived this, she had let herself be caught by the Cyberbuttheads and discovered that the soul of a man she had loved beyond thought, a man she had let herself be caught to save, had been imprisoned by logic circuits. Could a soul survive such torment? These deep and sad thoughts went with her as she made her way to the spaceship, in search of herself.

 "Stop," came a voice she had heard before from behind her, "Resistance is useless. You will be assimilated."

 "I know," she smiled as she turned around. "We've already had this bit. You needn't repeat yourself. Well, let's be off."

 Nana Bevin strode towards the door of the Sumaran ship, and the Cyberman had to hurry to keep up. "You will stop at once!" it intoned. "All attempts at escape are futile."

 "Wow!" Bevin exclaimed, "did you look that up in the thesaurus?"

 "Quiet! Proceed into the ship now."

 "Well, make up your mind," Nana murmured and walked into the ship.

 * * *

 Wil didn't remain for the weirdo Cyberman to notice him. It was already dismantling the Cyberman which had been standing next to it. For what reason, he could not guess, but obviously something rather unusual had happened to the green Cyberman. He could feel the very hatred that it emanated.

 And fear began to build in him. Wil might not be the bravest of people, but he always saw it as wise to run when the odds were less than rosy. Wil had always attributed this sort of thing to wisdom. What was it he had heard somewhere: "A battle avoided is one not lost". Well, now his wisdom was telling him that the creature he had left behind needed his fear. So, he did his best to control it. Not an easy task in a ship filled with Cybermen. Amazingly enough, those Cybermen he encountered in his flight seemed to be distracted by something else. At any rate, they were ignoring him. He dashed past those he saw. At the entrance to the ship, he saw Bevin's Nana turn around to look behind her, out of the ship.

 "Not feeling well?" she asked to something behind her. "Well, that's to be expected. You should be careful when dealing with me. I'm a witch you know. Always know the future, make people feel bad, Oh dear, where's my cat. Dern it, she's never around when you need her. Well, I'll continue on into the ship, if ye don't mind. There's a good fellow."

 Wil ran up to her.

 "Nana!" he whispered, out of breath. "Don't go in! There's something eviller than the Cybermen! We've got to go."

 "Yes, I feel it. I've never felt anything like it before. And that means something else is going on, which didn't happen last time. You are one of the major unexpecteds in this story. What have you done? I feel the evil that has been awakened. No, no don't worry," she soothed him, "I'm not blaming you. I'm the one to blame. I just want to save my granddaughter. Please help, and tell me what has been going on since you came here."

 * * *

 "Hold on just half a moment. I'm almost done," the Doctor called, holding up his hand. "Just trying to save you, me, the planet. Actually, trying to save the entire adventure. Why do I bother, I ask you? This sort of thing always ends up in more bother. I save you, you go out and do some more nasty things. Then I save them, then they go out and behave stupidly. Well, wisdom of the ages, I suppose. I'm getting old."

 "Yes, Doctor. You probably are." An evil voice emanated from the Cyberman. "Yet age changes nothing in the ability to die, or have fear. You are afraid, Doctor, aren't you?"

 The Doctor's eyes widened. "Oh dear", he murmured.

 To be continued...