Love and War ( novel ) Love and War was the ninth novel in the Virgin New Adventures series . It was written by Paul Cornell and features the Seventh Doctor and Ace . It introduced Professor Bernice Summerfield . In 2012 , Big Finish Productions adapted the novel for audio to celebrate the 20th anniversary of its original release . Publisher ' s summary . " On a planet called Heaven , all hell is breaking loose . " Heaven is a paradise for both human s and Draconian s — a place of rest in more ways than one . The Doctor comes here on a trivial mission — to find a book , or so he says — and Ace , wandering alone in the city , becomes involved with a charismatic Traveller called Jan . But the Doctor is strenuously opposed to the romance . What is he trying to prevent ? Is he planning some more deadly game connected with the mysterious objects causing the military forces of Heaven such concern ? Archaeologist Bernice Summerfield thinks so . Her destiny is inextricably linked with that of the Doctor , but even she may not be able to save Ace from the Time Lord ' s plans . This time , has the Doctor gone too far ? Plot . Ace attends the funeral of her old friend Julian in Perivale . Afterward , the Doctor takes her to the planet Heaven in the year 2570 . The bucolic planet lies on the border between the human and Draconian empires , and is neutral territory , serving as a cemetery world for both races in their long and sporadic wars against each other and against the Daleks . While the Doctor visits the governmental library in Joycetown in search of a lost manuscript , " The Papers of Felsecar " , Ace gets involved with a group of Travellers , a nomadic bunch that has lived on Heaven for some years now . She quickly falls for Jan , one of the Travellers , and he shares her interest , although he is in an open relationship with another Traveller , Roisa — who is in turn in another open relationship with yet another Traveller , Máire . Ace meets other coloirful characters : Christopher , the sexless priest of the Travellers , who has peculiar powers thanks to a government experiment ; and a guest of the Travellers : archaeologist Bernice “ Benny ” Summerfield , who is conducting a dig at some ancient ruins left behind by the now - extinct Heavenites . Meanwhile , Roisa steps on a filament of a strange fungus . In Joycetown , Phaedrus — priest of the death - obsessed Vacuum Church — conducts a ritual sacrifice of an old friend . The friend ’ s dying corpse is taken over by , and converted into , a fungus — and the fungus is intelligent . It has orders for Phaedrus … later , he encounters Roisa , and warns her of terrible things to come . The Doctor ’ s efforts to find the manuscript are unsuccessful , and he is balked by a nervous librarian . He meets with Miller , the head of the local military detachment , and takes him into his confidence , warning him of the real reason for his visit ; Miller keeps it to himself , but is convinced to help the Doctor . Miller tells him about a mysterious sphere in space , which was spotted briefly before vanishing . The Doctor meets Benny , and she shows him a buried Heavenite observatory with a strange telescope and a decayed body inside — the first Heavenite remains found . The Doctor is disturbed by what he sees there . He accompanies Benny to Joycetown , but they are attacked en route ; Benny shoots off the attacker ’ s arm , but the assailant is not deterred , and escapes . The arm is infected with white fungal filaments . Ace joins the Travellers in “ Puterspace ” , a virtual reality environment that links to the Empire ’ s electronic networks , and which the Travellers use in lieu of drugs to join their minds for rituals and conferences . With Jan , she encounters a being calling himself the Trickster ; and she learns more of Jan and Christopher ’ s history . The two men are old friends ; both volunteered for military experimentation during their service . The experiments took away Christopher ’ s sexuality , but gave him strong psychic powers ; Jan was mostly unaffected , but gained the ability to generate fire on command . As the Travellers gather , Roisa begs the Travellers to leave the planet and leave her behind . They are attacked in Puterspace by a strange sphere , but Christopher sacrifices himself to let the others escape . In the real world , the others bury Christopher ’ s now - empty body , and grieve for him . Ace spends the night with Jan ; later , she dreams of the Doctor bargaining with Death for her life , with Death refusing the deal . In the morning , the Doctor meets her , and is disturbed to find that she slept with Jan ; she assumes he is jealous of her desire for a separate life . During the visit , he shows her a tesseract , a Gallifreyan hypercube , and plays a trick where it disappears between dimensions . He enlists her help in locating the book ; she meets the librarian , who seems afraid , but drops a hint as to where to look in the library computers . Meanwhile , a guard named Kale meets with Miller and reports a ( fabricated ) attack by Sontarans , and requests to go to the orbital station to scan the planet for incursions . Miller allows it , but notices that Kale ’ s arm is in a sling . The Doctor talks with Jan about Ace , and then enters Puterspace . He is attacked by Vacuum Church assassins ; Christopher appears and rescues him . Christopher reveals that his powers allowed him to copy his mind into Puterspace as software before he died ; he is working out a way to control his own dead body as well , via the Puterspace jack in its brain . However , before the Doctor can leave , Phaedrus enters Puterspace and catches him in a software trap , forcing him to relive painful memories of his third incarnation ’ s death . Ace arrives to rescue him , but is caught in the trap herself , and it shifts to her memories of Perivale . There she learns from the Doctor that the real enemy is a fungal race called the Hoothi , which absorbs its victims and gains their memories and minds . Ace sees her dead friend Julian there , and the Doctor realises the Hoothi have replicated her house from his memories , not from Ace ’ s , indicating that after his death , the Hoothi absorbed him . The Doctor briefly liberates Julian ’ s mind , and Julian in turn restores Christopher ’ s program ; Julian is reintegrated into the group mind by Phaedrus , but Ace liberates them by reversing the trap onto Phaedrus and making him relive his worst memory — in which he euthanized his own mother . With the Doctor , she escapes Puterspace . While they recover , Roisa gives the Doctor a drink from a Heavenite goblet that was once stolen from the Vacuum Church . The Doctor and Ace lead the Travellers in a raid on the library . There they are intercepted by Vacuum acolytes , who have been absorbed by the Hoothi . Ace kills them with Nitro - 9 , setting the library ablaze in the process , but not before they infect the librarian — but just before he converts to fungus , he unlocks the computer , allowing them to find out where the manuscript is hidden . They find that it was last released to Bernice Summerfield . On the way out , they meet Miller , and he learns that the Sontaran invasion was a lie ; and Kale has been infected by the Hoothi spores . Kale , it seems , is the assailant who attacked the Doctor and Benny ; his arm in a sling is fake , concealing a cache of the spores . He has now infected the entire orbital station crew , and removed the station from action , leaving the planet defenceless until help arrives — in a week . The Doctor again tries to get Ace to give up her romance with Jan , but to no avail . He retrieves the manuscript from Benny , and finds his own handwriting in it , though presumably from a future incarnation . It acts as a Rosetta Stone of sorts , allowing him to translate Heavenite writing left behind in the observatory . Ace confers with Benny , and they discuss their respective and checkered pasts ; Benny admits that she faked her credentials years ago , and is not really a professor . She travels in search of the truth about her missing father , who may be among the dead buried on Heaven . Ace spends the night with Jan , who tells her his secret name , Aradrath , meaning “ one big fire ” . During the night , mysterious figures release spores into the Traveller camp , infecting some of the Travellers . Christopher also appears , having regained control of his body after a fashion , and collects most of the spores , which will not harm him ; he also warns Ace that remaining with Jan will require a sacrifice . The observatory writing leads the Doctor and Benny to the graveyards , where they find that every body is infected with the spores , and indeed , have not decayed — all part of the Hoothi plan . He gets Benny ’ s team to rush and dig up the observatory , as it is intstrumental to his plan . The Hoothi , via Kale , try to crash the orbital station onto the dig , but the Doctor threatens Phaedrus to divert it ; the Hoothi need Phaedrus alive for now , and they destroy the station before it can crash . The Doctor returns to the camp , and levels with everyone about the Hoothi : They are an ancient , fungal race , which absorbs and utilises the living and the dead alike in efforts to conquer the galaxy . They were believed to have fled after failing once to conquer Gallifrey ; but now they have returned . They exist in sub - hive minds as part of the greater group mind , and each sub - group travels in a massive organic sphere , composed of the remains of absorbed creatures . Centuries ago , they farmed the Heavenites for raw material , until they eventually claimed the entire world ; the observatory was left to guard against their return . Now they are returning , and their long game will pay off ; they arranged to have Heaven made into a cemetery world , filling it with a vast army of the dead , which they are coming to claim for use in their conquest . They can see and hear through their living victims , and can control the victims ’ actions , or take over at any time . The spores cannot be cured . The now - liberated observatory contains a special telescope that can penetrate the Hoothi sphere ’ s ability to conceal itself . Roisa , knowing she is infected , goes to blow up the Vacuum Church in a suicide bombing , but can ’ t pull the trigger ; Phaedrus forces her to meet the Hoothi that is located in the basement . Jan realises what has happened , and takes matters into his own hands ; he takes some of the others and steals a shuttle , intending to set it as a passive projectile in orbit to destroy the Hoothi sphere . Ace and Máire follow him and sneak aboard . When he discovers Ace , he asks her to marry him if they survive . She agrees , and everyone but Jan waits in the shuttle ’ s escape pods . Jan will activate the final course of the shuttle , and then enter a pod himself , and launch the pods . However , when the ship appears , everyone except Jan , Máire , and Ace explodes into fungus ; and even Jan is clearly infected , as he can ’ t fire the engines . He ejects Ace , Máire , and one of the others . Ace loses her mind briefly from grief ; but the Doctor ’ s hypercube appears in her hand , containing impressions of Jan , which pull her back to sanity . Máire ’ s pod crashes into the Vacuum Church , doing much damage , but not destroying the church , Phaedrus , or the Hoothi . When the Doctor learns that Ace followed Jan , he is appalled , and immediately takes the TARDIS — with Benny — to the Hoothi sphere . The Hoothi — or rather , three of the four in their subgroup — meet with him , and reveal that he himself is infected , having received a spore from the drink given to him by Roisa . They will refrain from taking him over , and allow him to leave with Ace , if he destroys the planet ’ s military communication equipment so as to prevent the empire ’ s Spacefleet from arriving . However , they infect Benny ; but the Doctor secretly prevents the infection , feeding the Hoothi images from his mind to make them think they were successful . As the Doctor and Benny leave , they see Jan ’ s body among the other captive forms . The Hoothi sphere enters the atmosphere , and sends down subspheres and stairways to receive their infected dead , which burst to life from the ground all over the planet . Along the way , the dead attack and kill many of the living , breaking down settlements and buildings . The Doctor sends Benny to recover Ace , who has crashed in the forest . Christopher joins them as well . Phaedrus , considering his work complete , enters Puterspace still haunted by the death of his mother ; Ace arrives and follows him in , seeking revenge for Jan ’ s death . The Doctor , meanwhile , deactivates the comm equipment . He goes to the Vacuum Church and enters Puterspace to rescue Ace ; however , with Christopher ’ s help , he exploits the remnants of Jan ’ s consciousness inside the group mind , horrifying Ace . Rather than try to save Jan , he persuades Jan to ignite his pyrokinetic power — and the sphere , filled with flammable gases , explodes , destroying the Hoothi inside and breaking their control over their army . It was all a part of the Doctor ’ s plan , including leading Jan to confront the Hoothi , as he knew that Jan was infected ; however , Ace cannot forgive the Doctor for manipulating sacrificing her lover to win this battle . As the colony picks up the pieces , Ace returns to the church — but finds Phaedrus still alive in the basement . Phaedrus kills himself , and is absorbed by the fourth Hoothi , which has been in the basement all along ; it could still salvage the situation with enough blood — and Ace will provide that blood . The captive Roisa pushes her toward the Hoothi . However , Máire is still alive in the wreckage , and she shoots and kills Roisa . Ace calls on the last of Julian ’ s mind inside the Hoothi , and makes him rebel momentarily ; and he causes the Hoothi to explode and die . The Doctor searches for Ace , and bears witness to Christopher ’ s final death , as he can no longer maintain his body . He finds Ace and tries to apologise to her ; but her love for him has turned to hatred after his actions , and she refuses to go with him . She stays behind with Máire and the remaining Travellers , keeping only the hypercube — she even leaves her jacket with the Doctor , indicating her break from her life with him . He returns with it to the TARDIS … where Benny agrees to join him . After all , as she points out , he needs someone to remind him who he is , and to give him a reason to fight .