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someone, or something, was coming towards the wreck and that it was not far away.
    When she was satisfied that she had done her best, she sat down at the makeshift table fashioned out of an empty computer cabinet laid on its back and gazed through the hatch at the hot dry wilderness. Her head was cocked on one side like a listening bird. Occasionally she glanced fearfully at the bunk, worried that her secret would be found out. Then, as a sudden afterthought, she jumped up and gathered up some of her rock specimens and brought them to the table. Settling down, she started sorting them into different orders as if she were classifying her collection like an expert geologist.
    A few minutes later she froze rigid. She had heard the dreaded lurching, scrabbling approach of the hybrid mutation that tyrannised her wretched castaway existence on the desolate arid world of Dido, the Thirteenth Planet.
    Koquillion was coming.
    The tall hissing figure loomed in the hatchway and manoeuvred itself into the compartment where it towered over her, hideous and threatening.
    ‘You have been outside,’ the creature rasped.
    Vicki glanced over at the bunk and kept quiet. ‘Stand up,’ Koquillion commanded.
    Vicki obeyed, backing away up the sloping curve of the hull.
    ‘What were you doing out there?’
    In sudden panic, Vicki tried to think. ‘Walking,’ she whispered.
    The monster hissed angrily. ‘In future you will venture no further than fifty of your metres from the wreck. Is that understood?’
    Shaking with terror, Vicki nodded and mouthed ‘yes’.
    Koquillion turned and scanned the compartment with its bulbous red eyes. Then it stalked towards the bunk, its talons scraping against the hull with piercing shrieks that set Vicki’s teeth on edge as she cowered by the radar. She held her breath as the creature reached for the blanket with its lobster claw. Her eyes stared in stark desperation. She gnawed her fist in abject terror.
    Then Koquillion swung round. ‘You were dragging something from the ruins,’ it rasped.
    Vicki racked her brain. She nodded. ‘Yes... stones... I collect them...’ She edged to the table and picked up one or two of her specimens. ‘They are very beautiful.. She held them out, like an offering to appease an angry god. ‘Your planet is very...’
    Koquillion’s claw slashed through the air and sent the stones smashing against the radar equipment. They shattered in a brilliant shower of multicoloured crystals.
    Vicki drew back against the bulkhead, as far as she could away from the hissing horror.
    Koquillion seemed to hesitate a moment, as if concerned that the delicate equipment might have been damaged. But the monster recovered its composure almost immediately. ‘I am going to talk to Bennett. Remember, you both depend upon me for your very existence.’
    As Koquillion turned towards the internal hatch leading through the debris to Bennett’s compartment, Vicki mustered all her meagre courage and stepped forward. ‘I... I heard a noise... up on the ridge...’ Her voice trailed feebly into silence. She took a deep breath. ‘It sounded like an explosion.’
    Koquillion whipped round with a ferocious hiss. There was a terrible silence. Vicki hung her head submissively and waited, numb and almost senseless. Then she heard her tormentor speaking as if from a long way off:
    ‘A spacecraft arrived here.’
    ‘The Seeker ?’ Vicki heard herself blurt out in a shrill and hysterical voice. She knew her question was absurd.
    ‘The occupants were warlike,’ Koquillion told her.
    ‘They wanted to destroy. They could have destroyed you and pillaged your Astra Nine . I could not allow them to survive. I could not have protected them from my kind as I protect you and Bennett.’
    ‘What did you do to them?’
    ‘They have been entombed within the mountain. If they are not already dead they will soon perish of hunger and thirst and lack of vital oxygen...’
    Koquillion’s words struck a chill into