Chapter 5

She tapped on the door quietly before opening it a crack and peeping through into the room.

It was darkening inside, and Nyssa had to blink several times before her eyes grew accustomed to it after the light in the corridor. The Doctor had dragged a chair across to the room's single large window and now slumped, watching the Janovian sky fill with colours as the second of the suns set. He turned his head wearily, saw her there, managed a brief smile. Placed a finger against his lips and beckoned her into the room.

As she closed the door she saw the reason for his silence. Tegan, who had stayed behind to watch over him while Nyssa snatched a few hours of sleep, was herself lying peacefully dozing, cradled across the arms of a sizeable chair, her legs hanging down over one side and her head lolled back over the other.

Nyssa crept across to the Doctor and sat down on the low windowsill near his feet. The orange of the dying sunlight was blazing through the window to illuminate them both, its glow pooling throughout the near half of the room, stopping just short of Tegan's sleeping form in the far corner where shadows crouched out of its reach. For long minutes neither of them spoke, both contemplating the cityscape stretched out below. The white of the buildings had taken on the colours of the sky. Nyssa was grateful to be reminded of how beautiful the universe could be.

Eventually, she turned her back on the window and studied the Doctor. The grey cast had vanished from his skin and he looked considerably better, but exhaustion dragged at his voice when he remarked, attempting flippancy, "At least we can't complain about the accommodation, eh, Nyssa?"

Still, this time it was 'Nyssa' and not 'Romana', 'Zoe', or even 'K9'. As Verani had promised, the initial disorienting effect of the toxin was settling down. Soon he should be almost back to normal. Except that he'd die, irrevocably, without regular doses of the toxin.

"How are you feeling, Doctor?" she whispered.

"I've been better. But then I've also been worse, so I suppose things aren't so bad." He stretched his mouth into a grin, but it looked as though it was an effort. "Chin up. We'll think of something."

Nyssa nodded, searching for appropriate words to reply and finding none. She turned back to the window, nibbling at her bottom lip. Bands of darkness were beginning to fray the edges of the sky.

"Two hours," said the Doctor, absently.

She waited for an explanation.

"Night on Janovay," he clarified, straightening in his chair. "It only lasts for just less than two hours. Then the other sun rises again."

"It's beautiful."

"Yes." He sighed and leaned forward, clasping his hands together, fingers interlaced. "Nyssa, I want you and Tegan to escape from here if you get the opportunity. I'll try to give you that opportunity, make a distraction somehow... I can't leave, but you don't have to stay. I don't want you to be here when the invasion force arrives."

She'd expected something like this, but she was still a little angry with him, despite knowing he was only concerned for her and Tegan's safety. "No, Doctor," she said firmly.

His sigh told her he hadn't expected it to be easy persuading them to go. "I know you don't want to," he said, irritation creeping into his voice, "But this time things may not work out. Certainly at the moment they don't look very good. I can give you detailed instructions to work the TARDIS. It's risky, but at least it would give you and Tegan a chance to go home..." He trailed off, realising what he was saying, and shook his head. "I'm so sorry, Nyssa. Mind's wandering."

"It's all right, Doctor. But I'm not going to leave. I'll take Tegan back, if I can, if I get the chance and if that is what she wants, but if I do then it will be with the intention of returning."

"There's nothing you can do."

"Perhaps. Perhaps not." She was touched by his sentiment but despaired at his stubborn annoyance. How could she possibly explain to him that while Traken might be destroyed, he had provided her with a new home. With the TARDIS, with him. "Please let's not argue about this," she said, choking back a sob. "I don't have anywhere else I'd want to go."

"All right." He smiled sadly and reached out and patted her shoulder. "It's all right."

"Anyway," she added, hurriedly blinking back her tears. "It may not come to that. Perhaps we'll all find a way out together." She didn't know if she really believed it herself. She studied his face, noticing how the poison had cut lines of illness and exhaustion into his apparently youthful features. "Shouldn't you be getting some sleep yourself?"

"In a little while, when it's dark. A few hours should be enough."

Outside the window, the sunset was reduced to a mere strip over the horizon, the rest of the sky darkened. Shadows had collected in the streets of the city, but the orange light still reflected on the flat rooftops.

"Verani's a Time Lord, isn't she?" Nyssa asked, not sure how he'd take the question, but she had to know if that was what concerned him so much about these people.

The Doctor looked stricken. "She is no such thing," he said, too quickly and too loudly, forgetting that Tegan was asleep. He added, with reluctance, and rather quieter after a concerned glance towards Tegan's chair, "She is something very similar. Too similar for it to be coincidental. But also quite different. I suspect that goes for all the Janovians."

"But how? And what do you mean, 'too similar to be coincidental'?"

"I wish I knew that myself." He flopped back in the chair as if he lacked the energy to sit up straight any longer. "I suspect, though, that someone's been tinkering with their genetic make-up at some point. Especially Verani's."

"In this era?"

"We're here," he reasoned cryptically, his gaze fixed somewhere over in the twilight beyond the window. "Did you manage to get any sleep?"

"Not much. Enough." She realised he was almost certainly changing the subject on purpose, but gave in out of consideration for his fragile state, which she thought probably more fragile than he cared to admit. "Don't forget, I'm not a human." She glanced across at Tegan, who was breathing heavily in her sleep. The position she slept in, sprawled across the seat and both arms of the chair, didn't look overly comfortable. It was only just possible to see the Earth woman's shape now in the darkness.

"I wonder how Verani is," the Doctor mused. "I never imagined she'd be so driven as to do something like this. Poisoning herself as well... I wouldn't have touched the drink unless she had. She knew that. She sacrificed herself."

His guilty sadness told Nyssa that, ridiculously, he felt responsible. She had to remind herself that this depth of compassion was what defined him, and she should have stopped feeling surprised by it. "She chose to do it," she said, harsher than she'd intended. "She had an option."

"Hmm."

It was almost totally dark now. Nyssa realised it was going to be a thorough darkness, because Janovay did not have a moon. They would have only the natural light provided by the stars. She remembered the primitive lamp set on the table next to the bed, and decided she had better light it before it became completely dark. As she moved to do so, she heard the Doctor get up behind her. She turned to see his shadowed form cross the few metres to the bed, walking like someone who'd already walked fifty miles, and collapse sprawled on top of the covers.

"Doctor?" Nyssa asked. He didn't reply. He'd fallen asleep instantly. She left the lamp as it was and crept back across the dark room to the newly-vacated chair in the window.

She sat down to gaze out and watch the night.

"You aren't fooling me, you know," said the Mirosan, whose name Luthen thought he'd heard as Kweril. The statement was a brief respite from the tirade of unanswerable questions and the impact of scaly fists.

While Kweril was breathing heavily from exertion, Luthen was hardly breathing at all, in small, controlled breaths. Pain was no stranger, and he'd suffered worse than this in 'friendly' practise bouts on-board the Vardito, led by instructors who considered a thrashing in front of his unit would give him the motivation to fight better.

It didn't teach him to fight, and he didn't need it to teach him resilience.

"I know how your kind operate," Kweril said. "I know there're more of you out there somewhere. Where are they? When will they attack?"

"I'm alone," Luthen said, indistinct through his split and bleeding lips.

He'd answered the same question several times now, and the mockery of an interrogation had become monotonous. He remembered the disabled ex-Captain who'd lectured them, how he'd said that other races knew nothing about pain, in comparison to the Karalian who lived with it intimately.

He couldn't imagine Kweril getting bored any time soon. The experience of being able to beat one of the feared enemy into a bloody pulp was probably an attraction that would take rather longer to wear off.

Luthen had resigned himself to being a dead man in the moment he'd raised his eyes from Jovanka's disappeared corpse and they'd looked down the barrel of the alien's gun. He'd waited for it, but Kweril hadn't killed him.

A dead prisoner couldn't provide any useful information, after all - a pity he hadn't figured that out before shooting Jovanka. Luthen had been disarmed and dragged through corridors by the Mirosan and a couple of Janovians called in to help. He'd been deposited in a plain, sparsely furnished chamber which was probably meant to be a guest room despite looking like a cell. Ironically appropriate, now it was put to that function in truth. Kweril and his helpers had secured Luthen to what would otherwise have been a comfortable, functional chair. The Janovians had been sent away with the order to 'Go and fetch a Councillor. Any one will do.'

They'd barely walked out the door before Kweril had begun laying into him.

And no, the pain was nothing new and the helplessness, that was nothing new either, but Kweril's grinning face and ready fists twisted up something inside of him where long-overloaded, fused and deadened nerves reawoke in anguish, and made him want to crawl out of his skull to somewhere else - anywhere else.

He wished that Jovanka hadn't had to die.

He contemplated the limited-power micro energy-weapon built into his cybernetic arm, the face of the man he'd killed crippling his resolve. Tied as he was, and at this range, the blast would take out half of the short, bulky alien's torso. But shooting Kweril wouldn't free him, it would be a pointless gesture, another pointless death, what would it matter?

Kweril got tired of waiting for an answer to another question Luthen hadn't heard and hit him again. He felt something break in his nose, and blood begin to trickle down his mouth and chin. He breathed carefully out of the corner of his mouth.

Excited by the flow of blood, Kweril seemed to redouble his efforts, and Luthen desperately cast his mind back to the day he'd woken up to find the Syndrome active and clawing through every nerve in his doomed body, compared with which the present was really nothing, nothing at all.

The sound of violence echoed out of the room into the corridor. It was hardly a sound Councillor Crivthen was accustomed to hearing, and it took him several seconds, standing outside, hearing it, to steel himself to push open the door and walk in. What he saw was not what he had expected to see.

He'd been told of a Karalian intruder. He had not expected that the Karalian would be little more than a child, a youth with a thin, pale face, and scraggy hair growing untidily out of a cropped cut. Children were rare on Janovay, and therefore valued. The fact didn't seem to have made much difference to Kweril, who had secured the boy to a chair with a fairly ridiculous amount of rope, and had presumably inflicted the bruises marring his face.

The Karalian... had his eyes closed, and his expression was blank, as though he suffered nothing at all. Yet he was conscious.

"Where are they?" Kweril asked, still unaware of Crivthen's presence at the door. One of the Mirosan's fists was raised ready to strike whatever answer the youth gave.

"Nowhere," the Karalian replied tonelessly. "There's nobody else with me."

"Enough!" Crivthen snapped, stopping Kweril before his hand fell again. "I will not have your brutality here! Too much has already happened this day, and I am already in mourning for the peace this planet has cherished for generations. You go too far, Kweril."

He saw the Karalian open surprised eyes to stare at him. The eyes were quite normal, although Crivthen noticed, now he had opportunity to, that the youth's left hand was synthetic, but the Karalian still bore little resemblance to the monsters of his race's reputation.

"Sir, they are lower then butchers of children," Kweril said, barely politely. "They decimated my planet. I have seen the results of their invasion, the horrors they committed."

"That is no excuse for behaving like one of them," the councillor retorted edgily. He turned to the captive. "What is your name?"

Eyes flickering nervously between his captors, evidently confused by this abrupt changing of the rules, the Karalian warily said, "Trooper Ryn Luthen, assigned to the battle ship Vardito. But I was separated from my ship, and as I've told this creature - persistently - I am now alone."

There was bitterness in his voice. Crivthen told himself he was getting too old for this, and wondered why it had to be left to him to oversee it, rather than one of the others, both of whom would have been eminently more qualified. But Bannot had been assigned to looking after the other visitors and seeing that they did not foolishly try to leave, and Verani... well, it was best not to think about Verani. "I am Councillor Crivthen," he replied. "And my overeager friend is Kweril, a spacer from Miros II. A planet doomed by your people, as I'm sure you're aware. As such his violent actions are understandable, if reprehensible. However, I would still have you tell us the truth about what you are doing here, and when others are expected to arrive."

Kweril snorted, and said with contempt, "The only way to get the truth is to beat it out of him. These creatures are liars and fiends, and asking them gently will achieve nothing."

"That may be the case, but I would still prefer to do so first before proceeding with more drastic measures!" Crivthen snapped. "And if you would give the boy a chance to reply, perhaps we might learn something."

"I have told the truth," Luthen protested. "Several times. I don't know anything except that my people are supposed to be here soon. I'm not sure how I got here, but I promise you I'm alone. I'd hardly be here in this state if I was part of an army!"

The words had the ring of truth to them. About to question further, and wondering whether it would be wise to at least loosen the restraints holding the Karalian, he was distracted by the sound of somebody entering the room behind him. He turned to see Verani, looking haggard and ill but at least as though she knew where she was and understood what was happening around her.

"I heard there was a Karalian," she remarked, leaning on the wall for support, overpowering weakness held at bay at the edge of her voice. "I came as quickly as I could."

"Verani, you should not be here. You should be resting."

The protest went unnoticed. Verani was staring at the Karalian, who'd straightened, startled, at the mention of her name. He knew she was seeing the same thing he had - a child, just a child, dressed up as a soldier. But there was steel in her eyes when she looked upon the captive.

"He says his name is Ryn Luthen, madam, and that he is alone here," Kweril said nervously. Verani had the ability to unsettle, at times.

"Good," she said softly. "Good." They were all staring at her, waiting for her to clarify her extraordinary remark. The Karalian had real fear in his eyes for the first time, and Crivthen wondered at his odd reactions. "This could be our chance, the chance we need that will win us the war. Don't you see, my friends?" She visibly forced herself to stand up straight, away from support, denying her weakness. "We've been given a specimen. An experimental subject. With this we can learn about our enemy, about their strengths and their weaknesses. We can find out how to defeat them. With this-" she stressed the impersonal term as though denying the Karalian a life and identity "-and with the help of the Doctor and his friends to rediscover our technology, our chances increase that we will after all find a way to win."

Brilliant light blazed through Tegan's closed eyelids to bring her back to consciousness. She blinked, seeing nothing but a red haze, and groaned as she tried to move and a crippling agony shot through her body. Still blinded, she wondered where she was and what had happened to her. Then the pain concentrated itself in her neck and back, and she realised she hadn't been shot or otherwise mutilated, but had in fact simply fallen asleep. She became painfully aware of the hard bar of the chair arm which felt razor sharp under her shoulders.

"Rabbits," she muttered. She was sprawled across the chair in the Doctor's room, having fallen asleep when she was supposed to stay awake to make sure he was all right. The light which had woken her was the early morning sun, blazing through the window.

Gritting her teeth, she swung around in one swift, bloody-minded motion, unhooking her legs from the chair arm, and standing up. She mouthed 'ouch', followed by several less gentle words, then, massaging her aching neck, she searched the floor for the shoes carelessly kicked off several hours before. They were under the chair. Retrieving them did nothing whatsoever to help the state of her back.

The Doctor's hat was also on the floor. She picked it up and hung it on the back of the chair. The Doctor himself was still peacefully snoozing, flat-out on the bed, fully dressed. Another time, it might have been funny.

It finally registered upon her brain that there was someone else in the room. They were sitting in the chair by the window, they were watching her, and they had probably been watching her for some time.

"Ha ha ha," she mouthed silently at Nyssa, whose face was adorned with a rare grin. She jerked a hand, thumb pointing, towards the door, and received a nod of understanding in return.

Outside in the corridor, Nyssa outlined the conversation she'd had with the Doctor the night before. When she explained how he'd asked them to leave without him, Tegan said, "I hope you set him right about that idea."

Nyssa nodded seriously, and she remembered that the Trakenite didn't have anywhere to go, any home to escape to. Images of Brisbane and London and the safe tedium of ordinary life flashed across her mind and, for a moment, it looked appealing.

She shook her head to clear such thoughts from it. She wasn't leaving.

"If we did get a chance to escape," Nyssa added thoughtfully, "We wouldn't actually have to leave. Maybe we could do something."

"Do something? What could we do? It's poison - and from what Verani said it's pretty permanent, as well as being unique to this dive of a planet."

She shrugged. "If I could get back to the TARDIS, to the laboratory there, there might be something I could do. But I'd need a sample of the toxin."

"And Verani sent people to stand guard on the TARDIS," Tegan said. They stared at each other glumly. She sighed, and patted Nyssa's arm in a gesture as much meant to console herself as her friend. "Keep thinking."

Tegan remembered the struggle down the stairs and then being shown to rooms by a Janovian menial whose conversational skills had extended to the occasional nod or shake of the head. She'd wondered if they weren't allowed to speak.

Verani had gasped out a few more facts about the poison before she'd been carted off by her shocked people. As far as Tegan understood it, the poison did not kill outright but even one dose made the body reliant upon it, and without regular daily doses, the victim would die slowly and painfully. Evidently even the Doctor's alien physiology wasn't immune to it.

It was an effective, if ruthless, way to force someone to help you, she thought. And ran through her head satisfying images of strangling Verani.

"Do you think this place has coffee?" she asked Nyssa, who just looked mystified.

At that moment the door opened a crack and the Doctor's head peered around it. His eyes focused on them blearily. "Ah," he said. "Good morning. Why are you standing around in the corridor?"

"We're standing around here so we don't wake you up," Tegan replied, deadpan.

He rubbed his eyes, squeezed them shut for several seconds, then opened them again with rather more comprehension in them. "Oh, good. Well, since I'm awake now you don't have to stand out here any more, do you?" And he disappeared back into the room.

Tegan and Nyssa exchanged weary glances and followed.

"I wonder when Verani and that lot will turn up and put us to work," Tegan said. "They don't have much time. I'm surprised they gave us the chance to rest at all."

"Verani won't have been in any fit state to insist," Nyssa reminded her. "And the others don't seem to share her ruthless streak. They're probably too polite. Besides, we wouldn't be any good to them if we were too exhausted to work."

"If I've recovered, Verani will have." The Doctor was standing staring out of the window. Tegan joined him and saw the Janovians in the street going about their business; much like the day before, only more so. They were speeding up the unearthing of their technological heritage. "It won't be long before they arrive to demand our cooperation." He paused and frowned thoughtfully. "I hope they bring breakfast."

"Breakfast," she muttered disgustedly. Then she re-thought her stance and asked, "Do you think they have coffee?"

"We can always hope."

Tegan studied him. He looked all right, if slightly drained, and he seemed cheerful enough. She didn't trust his appearance of health, but decided not to make a fuss about it. She'd make sure she stayed near him, though, just in case.

Presently there was a tap on the door and Verani entered, followed by another Janovian with a tray. "Good morning," Verani said civilly.

The Doctor ignored her and walked over to examine the tray. "We're in luck, Tegan. Breakfast." In afterthought, he smiled absently at Verani and returned her greeting, observing, "You look well."

"So do you. I'm glad. There is much to be done, and we must start work soon."

The Doctor took the tray and immediately handed it to Tegan, who set it down on the chair and regarded it with suspicion. The jug of drink definitely wasn't coffee. She sniffed at it warily. It was fruit juice, and breakfast was a plate piled high with what looked like some sort of sweet pastries. She wondered whether to trust it.

"It's quite all right," Verani said dryly. "There is no reason for drugs or poison now. I have already achieved what I want."

Tegan glared at her and looked to the Doctor for support.

"I imagine it should be okay," he said. "They have to feed us." She couldn't tell whether he was being sarcastic, but she was hungry and if she didn't eat the food the Janovians supplied it didn't look as though she'd get to eat at all, so she poured herself a drink of fruit juice and defiantly picked up a pastry and bit into it.

Verani smiled with a kind of drawn amusement. "I'll leave you for now. I'll send someone shortly to escort you all to the vaults. I will meet you there." With a half-bow and a smile that was almost an apology, she left the room, her silent companion trailing after her.

"Well," Nyssa said. "At least we got food." She picked up one of the pastries and studied it intently, as if she was going to write a thesis on it or something.

"They taste all right," Tegan said. She turned to the Doctor. "You're going to do what they want, then? Help them?"

"Yes." He looked uncomfortable. "After a fashion. I've no desire to die yet, and while there's life there's hope. And hopefully something will come up if we play along for the moment - that is, if you're still set on staying here?" He must've seen the answer in their faces. "Although whatever happens, I can't ultimately save them. Either I'll fail, or I'll have to refuse them at the last. It can't happen. It didn't happen. The problem is, Verani knows that, she's anticipating that refusal, and with the intelligence and ruthlessness she's shown so far, that worries me a great deal."

Tegan read in his expression that he didn't see any way out. She sighed and reached for the tray again. Might as well enjoy breakfast, if nothing else.

Chapter 6

The dusty street where the entrance to the vaults had been dug out was incongruously bright with activity. The Janovian workers seemed to have increased their efforts tenfold and there was a steady stream of artefacts being loaded onto departing carts. It should have been a miserable day, with every life on the planet doomed, but instead both suns blazed down from a cloudless sky. The Doctor, shirtsleeves rolled up in the heat, sat on a stack of loose paving slabs at the edge of the dig and watched Janovian children playing in the dust.

With some small portion of his mind he was aware of background noise, of Tegan's voice sounding from across the other side of the vast pit, complaining, demanding loudly to be told how long they were going to have to wait for Verani, who had after all summoned them there in the first place. Mostly, however, he was concentrating on the children.

There were two of them, both looking the equivalent of about seven or eight, in human terms, but from what he knew of the Janovians it was hardly sensible to think of them in human terms. The little girl and boy played with a very solemn, very Janovian dignity, yet at least they played.

It was strange to watch. The Doctor mused on the implications of the presence of children in Janovian society, wondering how it fit in with what he suspected the Janovians were. He wondered if it was a natural mutation, a twist of evolution putting things back the way it considered they ought to be, before sentient beings who considered they knew better had mucked around with them. On the other hand, and perhaps more likely, it had been done by artificial engineering. He tried to work out how long it would have taken for the changes to occur naturally, and to work out how that would fit in with his developing theories, but there were so many other factors and possibilities, and it all became so convoluted as to evade even the brain of a Time Lord.

A cart clattered past the children and a shower of small items were shaken from it as its wheel bumped over an irregularity in the paving. The two children retrieved the fallen objects and ran after the cart, throwing the mislaid items back with unerring aim. For a moment, the Doctor saw the Janovian race as a well-tuned biological machine, with its different components acting in harmony, even these smallest - then the illusion dissipated and there were just two children, running and tripping and quietly laughing across the dusty road.

They made him smile, until he remembered they were doomed as the rest of their race, and as impossible to save.

He was drawn out of his contemplations by the tap of a hand on his shoulder and Nyssa's voice. "Doctor - Verani's here."

"Ah." He stood up, the motion bringing on a few twinges of pain, a reminder of the ravages of the poison, that he locked away in a corner of his brain unimpressed by them. He tore his eyes from the children and took his hat off to fan the hot air away from his face. "Time for the guided tour then, I take it? I hope you remembered the tickets."

Nyssa frowned. In her heavy Traken clothes she looked hot and unhappy. He offered her his hat. They walked around the dig to where a bad-tempered Tegan was standing next to Verani, and Nyssa fanned her face with the hat, and the Doctor remarked, "Don't worry, I imagine it will be cooler underground."

They were now standing directly below the facade of the building which he had been informed was the oldest structure above Janovian soil, the first structure the Janovians' technically-minded ancestors had built when they settled the planet.

Tegan was glaring at Verani. "Can't we hurry up and get out of this heat? I thought you people were in a hurry. Your sense of urgency doesn't seem to have prevented us from having to wait here half an hour."

"Hush, Tegan," the Doctor said, half-heartedly, but for once it worked and she fell into a sullen silence. Verani inclined her head politely, then slid down on her knees at the hardened mud edge of the pit and eased herself as far down the side as possible before letting go. She landed on her feet. The drop was at least three metres.

"No," said Tegan. "Absolutely not under any circumstances whatsoever."

"Motion seconded," murmured Nyssa.

The Doctor sighed, and prepared to climb down after the First Councillor. "I'll catch you," he promised.

Tegan scowled and didn't wait for him. She went to the edge of the pit and repeated Verani's manoeuvre. She didn't land on her feet, but hit the ground and rolled. Evidently she had climbed enough trees in her childhood to know human ankles did not usually accept the kind of stress Verani had just subjected hers to. The Doctor followed and between them they helped Nyssa down.

"Finished?" Verani asked sardonically, and pretended not to hear Tegan's muttered reply. She stared at the Doctor, and her chin jerked up like she'd had a low-voltage shock, "I apologise. I forgot that your companions are not made of such stern stuff as we are."

He elbowed Tegan before she responded to that one, disconcerted that Verani had again plucked the thought from his mind.

The hatch the Janovians had unearthed was at the far side of the pit they'd dug out searching for it. The workers had cleared, and the Doctor couldn't recall noticing them pack up and leave. The Janovians seemed to be proficient at unobtrusiveness, as though it was a genetic trait. He stood with the others at the side of the hatch and stared down at a treacherous looking metal staircase that wound down below the city for an untold distance. There was a feeble joke of a hand rail, and the stairs were steep and narrow. There was nothing else visible beyond but darkness.

"Looks like fun," Tegan said and, addressing Verani, "What is it with you people and steps?"

"What about light?" Nyssa asked.

"There are switches at various levels of the stairs," the First Councillor said blandly, slipping into her Seer mode with ease as she began to descend. "Powered by self-contained energy units. The workers switched them off when they left to conserve power. Follow me. I will not let you fall."

The Doctor waved the others on in front while he paused briefly to examine the seals on both the hatch and its surround. "Interesting. Vacuum seals to prevent decay or corrosion in stored items. The vaults could have been here a very long time indeed." Noticing how far behind he was, he abandoned his study and hurried after his companions.

They passed several levels on the way down, all of which Verani dismissed as already cleared out and/or catalogued. As they descended, she flicked small switch mechanisms fixed to the side of the handrail, and the lights of each level they passed blinked on before them and off again in their wake. The Doctor had taunting glimpses of rows of carefully stacked and preserved items, mechanisms and machines he almost recognised the outline of but would need a closer examination to confirm. Types of technology that did not belong in this time and place at all.

The descent had an almost supernatural feel to it. Where they had previously roasted in the hot sun above ground, now they shivered in the cold dark. The darkness itself, thick as a shroud and surrounding their current small oasis of light in all directions, would have been oppressive enough, but added to it there was the weight of ages and the sheer history exuded by the contents of the vault. The unknown peered at them from the blackness on all sides. It seemed they would never come to the end of the stairs, would simply walk downwards forever.

The Doctor found himself tiring and recognised the symptoms of the same in the others, but Verani was forging on ahead, apparently unwilling to stop, though she must be feeling the same exhaustion dragging at her, and he could hear her breathing in harsh gasps. He could only conclude that they were nearing their destination, and so he said nothing.

The air was stuffy, but not so much as he might have expected. There was no dust. He wondered at the immensity of the task the Janovians' ancestors had faced, first of constructing the artificial underground system, then of placing everything inside it, then of sealing it tight and airless to preserve the items left within. A quite miraculous achievement.

Ahead, Verani flicked on another switch. She had stopped on a solid platform, where the staircase ended. She looked up at them, the bold bone structure of her face made cadaverous by the meagre light. She said, "This is the lowest level. Here are the machines I want you to see."

In the lab where Jovanka had died, Luthen lay strapped to a mockery of an examination table, trying to make pictures out of the oddly-shaped cracks in the ceiling because the other option was watching Kweril take apart his cybernetic arm.

There was no danger of outright violence again with the old councillor in the room, but Luthen thought he preferred the role of prisoner under interrogation to that of experimental subject.

He knew it had been night, briefly, and now it was day again. He was contemplating sleep. He couldn't imagine Kweril minding much, engrossed as he was in his task.

The Janovians didn't seem to tire. Crivthen hadn't left to rest at all, yet despite his age was none the worse for the constant activity. The elderly councillor intrigued Luthen. He hadn't seen many people who were old before. All the others had been aliens too. The Karalian never lived so long.

Crivthen hung around the edges of the room like a shadow, avoiding the gaze of their lab-rat. Luthen didn't want anyone's pity, let alone an enemy's, but he still wondered about the old man, and about the Janovians with their obedience to Verani, which was occasionally reluctant but never actively questioned. As though it had been programmed into them, somehow.

Verani had declared it useless to try to get any information from him, and though she'd looked apologetic about Kweril's actions he didn't think that was the reasoning behind her decision. He sensed she was ruthless enough to employ whatever methods proved necessary. No, she'd looked at him and she'd seemed to look through him, seemed to take from his mind that he knew nothing and wouldn't have told them anything if he did. She'd ordered him brought to the lab instead, where Kweril was set to work.

She'd helped the Mirosan for a while, her expression oddly detached. Then she'd left, abandoning him to Kweril until Crivthen reappeared and was stern and disapproving again. After that, Kweril made an effort to restrain himself and complete his task with purely scientific efficiency.

Luthen had given up trying to reason with them. He was too tired, and besides, why should they listen to him? To them, he wasn't a sentient being. He was a monster, a killer... a subject to be caged and studied.

Nyssa stood with the others within the glow given out by the last light at the base of the stairs, feeling the press of the depths above and the weight of the darkness all around. She tried to look upon the vaults with scientific detachment, but somehow they unnerved her anyway.

"It's like some mythical tomb!"

Tegan's voice was a nervous, slightly giddy half-whisper, but it still caused Nyssa to tense in fear as its quavering sound echoed around the unseen boundaries of the darkened space, flung hollowly back at them from all sides. She hugged her arms around her chest in an effort to defeat the cold, and thought of the vastness implied by the echo. Looking upwards, she saw nothing. The tiny light cast pitifully and failed to reach the ceiling. And Tegan was right - it felt more like some ancient hall than a functional storage chamber. The air was thin and cold. She tried to guess at how far underground they were and her calculation left her breathless.

The loudness of the echo had shrouded all of them in silence again. Only Verani had moved, to the curtain of blackness past the extent of the lit area, both arms outstretched to feel her way. With abrupt success, she flooded the lowest level of the vaults with light.

As Nyssa's vision cleared, the full enormity of the chamber they stood within became apparent. Around the stairway was a roughly circular space perhaps twelve metres in diameter, wherein lay only empty floor. Around this, and away from it, there stretched many corridors bounded not by walls but by rows of equipment stacked high and single machines too large to stack. Occasional columns rose up to the ceiling and it was in front of one of these, upon which was fixed a complex series of switches, that Verani stood.

The incongruity of the floodlighting which illuminated every corner, dissolving the vault's mysterious shadows, took away none of the unease the vast chamber held. Instead, seeing it in stark detail increased its grip of terror. Nyssa felt fingers of ice tighten inside her chest.

The Doctor, she saw, was similarly stricken by the sight of the machines. He gave her a look of trepidation equalling her own and headed for the nearest aisle of machinery, walking with a fearful lassitude that she'd really rather not see in him. She wanted decisiveness, brilliance - a plan to get them far away from all this. But miracles weren't always possible to deliver. She followed him.

In the background, she was aware of Verani speaking. Her low voice sounded like a dirge. "I can't See any of these," she explained. "Only emotive impressions. Pain and death. Nothing I can work with - nothing I can use to work them with. Kweril says they're too advanced, he doesn't understand them, except that they are machines of war and that it would be potentially disastrous to ourselves to tamper with them, lacking knowledge. That's why I brought you here. You recognise what they are, don't you?"

They had reached the threshold of the aisle and, staring down it, Nyssa felt as though all the breath had been squeezed out of her by the sight, It left her speechless and stunned. The end of the aisle was only just visible in the distance. So many, she thought. Too much...

"What is it?" Tegan asked. "What's wrong?" From the tone of her voice she had already guessed the answer.

Nyssa remembered to breathe again and forced her gaze away from the vault's contents, sweeping over Tegan's eyes to meet the Doctor's. He looked appalled. She could imagine his horror at the idea of using any of this equipment against the Karalian. Or any sentient race.

He answered Tegan. "This place is lined with the worst horrors and nightmares technology has produced. It's a maze of instruments of genocide."

"Then it can defeat the Karalian?" Verani asked.

"Oh, yes." He had taken his hat off and now held it to his chest in a funereal gesture. "With some of the machines in here..." He faltered, frowned, then finished lamely, "I'd say you could stop their invasion, yes."

Nyssa knew he'd been about to say that with some of this equipment, they could not only destroy the Karalian invasion fleet but every Karalian alive and every planet they occupied. Some of the machines appeared more advanced than Traken's technology had been. She stood in front of a device whose purpose she pieced together by logical extrapolation from its recognisable components. "You could destroy an entire planet with this," she said, hearing her own voice a horrified whisper.

"Well, fortunately we don't need to go quite that far," the Doctor said quickly. "A few ships should be quite adequate. Once they see what we can do that should send them, ah, scuttling back to their other conquests." His voice was more breathless than usual, and she knew he was still playing along with Verani, desperately lying through his teeth.

"Well," he continued, grinning nervously and glancing at each of them in turn. He put his hands into his pockets, paced a few steps, then returned to his original spot. "We'd better have a look around and see if we can find something slightly less dramatic than this delightful contraption-" he reached out as though to pat the machine Nyssa had referred to, then changed his mind "-to do the job, hadn't we?"

Nyssa sighed. "Yes, Doctor."

Tegan, she noted, just glowered, looking uneasy and bored.

"Wake up." Luthen groaned, tried to roll over and found he couldn't. He was strapped to a smooth surface. Then he remembered, and rolled his head to face the direction the voice had come from, opening gummed-shut eyes. He saw only Kweril, so he closed them again. He no longer had any control over his cybernetic arm - the Mirosan must have discovered how to disconnect the power.

He felt a clawed finger prod him in the ribs with sufficient force to pierce the skin. He reluctantly opened his eyes again, but found Kweril's back to him - the alien was leaning over a nearby lab table analysing blood samples. He'd just woken him up for the sake of it. Luthen scanned the rest of the room - as much of it as he could see - and saw the old councillor still there in the furthest corner of the room, looking disapproving but not actively doing anything to stop Kweril's small cruelties.

"Enjoying yourself?" Luthen asked. Kweril didn't spare him a glance but, craning his head, he could see the skill and concentration with which the alien tested the blood samples. "Do you sideline in neural surgery as a hobby, too?"

"I do this and that." The reply was hissed with dismissive contempt, but there was a hint of something else in there, a faint uneasiness about the topic.

"Yes, but what do you do? How is it you can use all these kinds of equipment?"

"Silence!"

A raised claw was halted by a look of reprimand from Crivthen.

"Salvage, wasn't it, you said?" the councillor asked, frowning bemusement at Kweril's antagonism.

"Salvage," Kweril repeated. "An expert in everything."

Luthen laughed. It felt bizarre to be able to. "Salvage," he said. "Smuggling, perhaps? Piracy? Thievery? That's why you escaped when your planet's citizens were called up to fight in the war. You were on the wrong side of the law to be called. All that righteous anger and you're nothing but a common thief!"

A glare from Crivthen wasn't enough to stop Kweril's violent retribution that time, but Luthen was so giddy with revelation he hardly felt it.

"At least I'm not a murderer," the Mirosan snarled.

Luthen felt blood welling from deep clawed scratches down the side of his face, and angled his head so it didn't run into his eyes.

"Don't do that again." Crivthen's tone suggested he was beginning to lose patience.

"We were a peaceful race once," Luthen said. "Content on our own planet. We had enough technology to be comfortable, our society was stable, population laws kept the numbers manageable, there was no need to expand. No need to fight. Do you know how it all started?"

"You're butchers and sadists, and I don't want to hear any excuses," Kweril hissed. "There are no excuses. I don't want to know."

"No," snapped Luthen. "But you're going to hear it."

The Mirosan paused in his task to slap a scaly claw across Luthen's mouth, hard enough to aggravate the previous cuts' bleeding and open more new ones. "Is that so?"

Crivthen gave Kweril an acidic glare. "I said there's no need for that. Let the boy speak. He may even say something useful."

"The Syndrome came," Luthen said. Talking pulled at the cuts around his mouth, but he ignored the sensation. "Out of nowhere. We still don't know what caused it - whether it was something we did or something alien. And it decimated our population. We looked to our allies for help but they ignored us, afraid of contamination. In desperation we tried to contact some of them, sent ships, and the ships were refused even the most careful quarantined contacts. Some of them were destroyed. That's why we learned to fight. We had to fight. Every world the Karalian conquer adds a little more scientific knowledge to the pool, but it's not enough, not yet, to cure the Syndrome. Maybe nothing ever will be. But our leaders have a responsibility to the Karalian people, not to the aliens who denied us from the beginning."

"You destroy planets," Kweril said. "You invade them and you infect them. And some of them, the ones whose native races can't handle the Syndrome as well as yours, they die." He'd set his clawed hand around Luthen's throat while he spoke, and Luthen stopped breathing. Couldn't breathe. He felt the claws drawing blood from his neck.

"Let him go!" Crivthen snapped. The old man approached Kweril with such anger in his eyes that for a moment it seemed he'd attack his ally. "Whatever his race has done, you will keep your hands from him. You will conduct only the tests agreed upon - and I can barely bring myself to condone those!"

The Mirosan let out a brief snarl then did as asked, and Luthen quietly enjoyed the luxury of breathing again. Kweril stooped to hiss in his ear.

"I will kill you," he snarled, and shot a look of pure poison at Crivthen before backing off.

Tegan had decided she liked the vaults marginally less than she liked Verani, which she hadn't thought possible. Furthermore, she disliked intensely feeling like a spare part while the Doctor and Nyssa walked along the aisles of destructive technology, discussing the various items, an enthusiastic Verani tagging along behind them. Tired of their incomprehensible conversation, and the Doctor being too focused on the task of lying through his teeth to Verani even to provide his usual patronising explanations to her, Tegan wandered away from them.

She frowned at the machinery she walked past, wondering if, had she been born in the kind of world Nyssa had, she would have learned to understand such things any better or if they'd still have gone way over her head.

She knew she was moving further away from the others than she perhaps ought, but she was too annoyed to care. The initial shock of Verani's actions in trapping them, which had caused them to band so tightly together, was passing and leaving a futile numbness in its place. And the vault was making her feel... weird. Ghostly shivers that had nothing to do with the cold crept down her spine.

She wanted do something to help the Doctor, but the situation did not require actions. Or at least, none she could think of, and subtlety was not one of her strengths. She felt crippled by the inaction and it made her want to scream in fury or hit something.

Her vague explorations led her to the other side of the level, where the equipment looked more like component or broken parts than complete gadgets. She carried on down the aisle, sparing a glance back once to find she could no longer see the others in the aisle opposite. They must have moved on to another part of the vaults. Not being able to see them made her feel as though she was alone there. She ignored the heightened feelings of fear, telling herself she was being silly. There were no monsters here, nothing hiding in the dark. No dark for it to hide in.

She carried on walking. A blank wall waited at the end of the aisle. Once she reached it, she would walk alongside, following it around until she found where the others had gone.

She arrived at the wall. She turned and leaned against it, looking back the way she'd come, past the stairway in the centre of the level to where the others weren't. Her breathing was the only sound she could hear. Seized in a moment of weariness and grief, she closed her eyes, feeling tears spring up. She wondered why she'd joined the Doctor again in Amsterdam, when she'd had the choice. Were their own deaths on Janovay all that was left?

The wall she was leaning on 'clicked'.

She sprang away as though it had burned her and spun around - to witness a small section some four by four metres large dissolve away to reveal another room.

It had been visible, she realised, thinking back to her approach. The wall had not been smooth, there had been dark lines on it tracing the shape of that square opening. There hadn't been any at the end of the other aisles. Had her subconscious headed her deliberately toward this part of the vault?

She looked through into the room. More machinery. Just one, in fact, on its own. A large one. Something important? It had clearly merited special attention.

Tegan looked around, and still couldn't see any sign of the others. The opening up of the wall had been utterly silent - they wouldn't know anything had happened. She took a step towards the gap, then stopped. No, she decided. She wasn't damn well falling for that one. She'd find the others first, then there could be someone to wait outside in case the wall closed up again.

"Doctor!" she yelled, steeling herself for the horrendous echo. It still made her jump. "I've found something!"

There was a reply from somewhere. She couldn't tell where because the echo threw the voice around, and she realised it must have done the same with hers. She ran back towards the centre of the level, where the stairs were, figuring she'd be able to spot them from there. The Doctor and Nyssa ran back into the central circle a few moments before she reached it herself.

"There's another room!" she said, between gasps for breath. "Down there. The wall opened up!"

She showed them back to it at a slower pace, and couldn't help but notice how the Doctor's expression became more severe the closer they got. Verani materialised to join them, but Tegan missed the exact moment of her ghostly arrival. When they reached the opening, Nyssa and Verani remained outside, just in case.

It wasn't a large room, and the device filled most of it. Compared to some of the machines in the vault, it wasn't huge. It didn't look like any kind of weapon. It was a sprawling mass of circuits, tubes and wires that looked as though they'd been pulled out of something else entirely different and patched together. They stretched along the walls and ceiling and some of the floor itself, so that stepping into the room was more-or-less stepping inside the actual device. Into the wall of circuitry that practically covered the far end of the room were set people-sized capsules, with transparent fronts. Fixings to hold a person could be seen inside them, straps and electrodes and what-not. A helmet-like thing that presumably went over a head.

"What is it?" Tegan asked. Her voice was shaking, as in fact she was herself, and she didn't know why. "Some kind of torture device?" Then she saw the Doctor's expression and clamped her mouth shut.

He was horrified. She thought it was probably a good job Verani couldn't see it from where she stood. Nyssa stepped into the room while the First Councillor, mindful of duty, stayed on the threshold.

"It's a time machine," the Trakenite said quietly. "Isn't it?"

"In a very limited way, you could say that it was," he replied.

"Gallifreyan?"

"No." He seemed to be making an effort to recover his composure. "Not exactly. Parts of it are."

"Salvaged?" Nyssa moved over to the capsules for a closer look.

"Yes. Salvaged from a TARDIS, by the look of it. And a much more advanced model than mine. I barely recognise how they've developed and improved some of these components. Please don't touch anything!"

"Sorry, Doctor." Nyssa drew her hand back.

He apologised for snapping at her.

Tegan was paying them only minimal attention. She stared at the machine. It seemed as though there was something staring back at her from it. She felt cold and sick, and wanted to look away but couldn't. She continued to stand there and meet its gaze while the Doctor and Nyssa discussed the workings of the device in a debate where the ratio of technical gobbledygook to plain sense was about ten to one. Words and phrases she could comprehend floated occasionally through to her.

It's a time machine. Right, she understood that. The words chased each other around inside her head while she stared at it. A limited one. It can only travel within a limited time period, and it can't travel at all in space. It can only transport a few people, and even then they have to return to this space and time - it isn't permanent translation from one time period to another. The device anchors the body of the user. It was probably very dangerous to use, and next to useless for most practical purposes.

None of that explained why it was looking at her.

Then, it stopped. Tegan shook her head to clear it and wondered what kind of messed up hallucination that had been. She stared at the hunk of metal and parts that was nothing more than just that, and then the Doctor broke her attention and scared her half to death by clapping a friendly hand on her shoulder and telling her it was time to be going.

"Don't do that!" she snapped. "I almost hit the ceiling!"

He looked bemused, and she mumbled an apology. He shrugged, and continued a string of conversation she'd missed the beginning of, "Anyway, it's no good to us, and time is short. So..."

He and Verani were already walking away. Tegan and Nyssa exchanged glances and trailed after them. She could hear the Doctor saying to Verani, "You remember the one? Yes, well, I expect that will do the job adequately, if you'd arrange to have it transported to somewhere we can set it up - the observation tower should be adequate - then I think we're in business... "

Tegan glanced back in the direction of the separate room and its time device. The door was still open. They hadn't shut it, and it wasn't going to shut itself. Getting paranoid, she told herself, but couldn't laugh.

"You found something, then?" she asked Nyssa, mostly rhetorically, and tried to forget the rest.

Chapter 7

"Yow!" The Doctor pulled his hands back from the suddenly live circuit and rolled out from under the bulk of ancient, stroppy machine parts salvaged from the vaults. He lay on his back for several seconds staring at his smouldering fingers, then said, in a puzzled voice, "I'm sure that shouldn't have happened."

"Is everything all right?" asked Councillor Bannot. He'd been hanging around since Verani had left some hours ago. Even with the poison, she didn't dare leave any of them alone.

"It should be," the Doctor replied. "I'll have this sorted out soon." He contemplated the circuitry within the opened-up panel and tried to think of anything else he could ‘find wrong'. This stall would only be good for another few hours, if that. The excuses were beginning to get rather feeble. The trouble was, they had to be good enough to fool Verani, who would look at it and spout a string of technical knowledge that exceeded his own. Fortunately, she wasn't capable of stringing it logically together to operate the machines herself, as though some fail-safe inside stopped her, but she knew enough to figure out a trick.

They'd set up the machine at the top of the watch-tower. It had taken most of the day and now the night approached again. Tegan and Nyssa, who needed sleep, had gone back to their rooms hours ago. The only real problem with the machine itself was connecting it to a power source, but the task would not have been a problem had he wanted to do it.

Refusing meant condemning the entire Janovian race.

He tried to think about the possible consequences for the universe if he changed the course of history, but as Verani said, it was still weighing a possible against a definite. There was always a chance both could survive.

It would be immensely irresponsible for him to gamble the universe's temporal stability for the sake of a few thousand people on an obscure colony.

He was delving back into the workings of the machine, occasionally blowing on his burned fingers, when Verani returned. He heard her ascend the last few steps and stalk into the tower room.

"Doctor?" she said.

He emerged from beneath the machine and squinted up at her. She was holding a tray with two glasses of familiar liquid balanced on it. "Ah. Afternoon break. Do you have any tea and biscuits? No, I suppose not." He stood up and brushed down his clothes, removed his half-frame glasses and deposited them in a pocket.

Verani dipped her head at Bannot, and then towards the door. Bannot made himself scarce. It was strange how she seldom needed words to command her subordinates. She held the tray out to the Doctor and he took one of the glasses. She took the other and discarded the tray on the stone floor. "How is the work proceeding?" she asked politely.

"Ah... it's coming along. Should be finished tomorrow, I imagine. Plenty of time yet, isn't there?"

"No," she said. She drained her glass. He noticed how her exhaustion seemed to fall away from her as she did.

"No, I suppose not." He sighed and squinted into the depths of the drink. He'd been beginning to feel a little frayed at the edges. He drank, thinking it tasted like orange juice. He felt immediately revived and rather depressed.

"It has to be said, you're taking this quite lightly. All things considered, you seem to be finding it very easy to save our world." Her voice was polite but her eyes were sarcastic.

"Yes, well. Something like this seems to happen every few weeks or so. You could almost say it was in my job description."

Verani, unamused, placed her empty glass on the floor and knelt down beside the energy projector; peered underneath it at the opened panel. "How much more do you have to do to this?"

"There's a slight problem with the matter-energy transmuter circuit that has to be sorted out, and then there's the power source which will have to be left for the morning now, I can't work in the dark, and then..." His words trailed off as she reached into the live circuit, disconnected the two wires he'd twisted together wrongly and replaced them where they were supposed to be.

When she stood up he saw her hands were burned; a fact she ignored. "It's fine," she said. "You can rest for a few hours and finish connecting the power supply after dawn. Then you will show me how to use it."

The Doctor sighed. The crunch point was approaching. Verani knew it too.

He looked out of the tower room's many windows. The red of the sunset was beginning to taint the sky.

"I hate the days on this planet," Tegan said to Nyssa, who looked almost as tired and dishevelled as she felt herself. "Or nights. Or lack of. Or whatever." She stared at the sunset outside the window. "We're waking up as the sun's going down. It's ridiculous."

"Not really." Nyssa spoke lightly, smiling a knowing smile. "It means we've got two hours of darkness to work with."

"You're planning something." Tegan stared at her incredulously. "You were planning something before we went to sleep - when you suggested we went to sleep! - and you didn't say anything?"

"Would you have slept at all if I had?"

She could find no reply to that, nor did she want to try. Eagerly, she asked, voice hushed because a guard was probably still snooping at the door, "What is it?"

"It's just an idea." Nyssa looked uncomfortable, her previous confidence dissipating. "It's probably a little silly. I don't know if it will work."

"Well, go on."

"I'm not entirely convinced it's wise. I know the Doctor would disapprove."

Tegan felt chilled. "It's something to do with that time machine, isn't it?"

She received a reluctant nod in reply. "The problem is, it's dangerous. And it relies rather a lot on you. I've been thinking about the temporal device ever since we saw it, trying to work out if there's any way it could help us. The Doctor said it was useless for any practical purposes, but I think he's wrong. If we could escape to reach it, I have an idea how we can use it to get us out of this."

"Why me, Nyssa? You know I don't know anything about this technical stuff-"

"Exactly. The device requires its operator to be inside the machine in order to time travel, but it needs to be activated and controlled from the outside. You couldn't do that. I'm not entirely sure I can, but I could make educated guesses."

"So it would have to be me inside that thing?" Tegan didn't know what to think. The very idea scared her silly. "But why? What could we do anyway? We can't stop any of the things that have happened from happening, can we? You know what the Doctor says about that sort of thing."

"Yes, but... I was thinking, what if we did something that wouldn't change what has happened so far, except until we knew we'd done it? Something that would make things look just the same, but once we knew it was there it would allow us an escape."

"Eh?"

Nyssa stood up and paced agitatedly. Tegan had seldom seen her so worked up, she was usually the very essence of calm. "I've worked out a formula for a toxic substance that would have the same superficial effects on the Doctor and Verani as we've seen, but which would not be deadly. The laboratory in the TARDIS contains all the substances you'd need, labelled in sealed containers. You could use the machine to travel back, then you could replace Verani's store of the poison..."

"Me? How could I possibly mix anything up from a formula? It'd be as likely to kill them both outright! I can't do it, Nyssa."

"No." Nyssa shook her head in morose agreement. "It was a stupid idea. I might end up killing you. You might end up killing Verani and the Doctor - and that's even assuming we managed to do all the rest in the first place."

They stood in silence for several minutes, and the more Tegan thought about it the more Nyssa's plan seemed to make sense. "Let's do it," she said. "It's the best chance we've got - heck, it's the only chance we've got. We don't seem to have much to lose. If we stay here, we'll either become corpses or Karalian cyborgs, and I don't like either of those options. This way at least we have a chance to save ourselves and the Doctor."

Nyssa stared. "You really mean that?"

"Yes - if the Doctor was never really poisoned, all we have to do is escape from the Janovians, and compared with Cybermen and the Master and Omega and all that, well - it'll be a piece of cake."

"Cake? Oh, I see." Nyssa contemplated the floor. "It will be a terrible risk. And if the Doctor finds out I don't think he'd be happy."

"Don't tell him them," Tegan said. "Tell him if he gives us that chance to escape he suggested we'll try to get to the TARDIS and away."

"I don't like the idea of not telling him what we're doing."

"We can't tell him. He might stop us, or even tell the Janovians so we can't do it. There's nobody at the vault now. Once we're out of this building and away from Verani we should be all right. We have to try!"

"Yes," Nyssa sighed. "In that case I'd better explain that formula to you. Unless you can get it exactly right we can't risk it. We're playing with some very toxic substances here."

"That's for sure," Tegan agreed dryly.

A familiar polite tap on the door made them both jump and exchange panicked glances. "Now?" Tegan whispered, suddenly nervous. She hadn't expected they'd have to put their plan into action quite so soon.

Nyssa nodded grimly. The door opened cautiously and the Doctor peered around it. Seeing them standing awake, he flung it fully open and walked in, beaming, to bid them a bright "Good evening." Bannot lurked in the doorway behind him, but there was no sign of Verani. Seeing them looking, the Doctor added, "She went off somewhere when I left the tower. You can relax." He seemed to sense their tension hadn't eased by much. "What is it? What's wrong?"

"We need to talk to you. In private." Tegan directed a meaningful glare at Bannot.

The Doctor stared at her a moment in suspicion, then turned around and apologised politely before shutting the door in the Janovian's face. "What are you planning?" he asked.

Tegan steeled herself to the lie. "I want to go home, Doctor. I'm not staying here to be killed or turned into a cyborg. You said earlier you'd give Nyssa instructions of how to operate the TARDIS, and she could take me to Earth. I've decided to take up that offer. I'm sorry."

He looked more suspicious than relieved. "Tegan..." He hesitated and shook his head, evidently deciding against whatever he'd been about to say. "Yes, you're right. You have to leave." He seemed to collect more enthusiasm as he spoke. She felt guiltily, letting him think they were escaping to safety when the reality was anything but. He looked across to the window, where the curtain of darkness outside was almost complete now, and he had to realise that there was no accident to this timing.

"Since now is our best chance, we must act at once. Nyssa, you must remember these instructions... ah, no, I've a better idea." He made a thorough search of his pockets, producing eventually his half-frame glasses - which he put on - a small notebook, and a green crayon. He began to scribble furiously, inclining the notebook towards Nyssa and speaking all the time, a fast and furious tirade of incomprehensible technical garbage that made Tegan's brain hurt.

If their plan didn't work she might never see him again. She might die. He might die. Tegan bit her lip and tried to hold back tears; it was no time to damn well start blubbing. She scowled because the alternative would show too much complicating grief their plan really didn't need. She watched Nyssa pretending to concentrate on the notebook.

The Doctor finished writing and thrust a handful of torn out pages into Nyssa's hands. He stared at the notebook and crayon, then gave those to her too. He pulled his half-frames off and shoved them into a pocket. "Now, we don't have much time. The night is short, as it were. I'll distract Bannot, and you run. I have an idea to stop them from chasing after you. These people don't have much heart for this sort of thing without Verani's orders, and if I can keep her occupied... well, never mind that. Goodbye, Tegan, Nyssa." His voice was quick and breathless, but it slowed down for the last few words, as though that was something he couldn't hurry.

"Goodbye, Doctor." Tegan angrily stifled a sob, and consequently the words came out far harsher than intended. Nyssa echoed the words with calm sorrow.

He stared at them both in turn, as though fixing them in his mind to remember, then rushed for the door. Stopped with his hand poised over the handle and turned back.

He said, "Whatever it is you're planning, don't. Just leave... Please?"

Before either of them could reply he was through the door, shoving past Bannot, yelling "Catch me if you can!" in a crazy, crazy voice, and he was running down the corridor away from them, coat tails flying in his wake. Bannot stared at Tegan and Nyssa, who stared back and shrugged. Then the Janovian recovered his senses, and sense of priority, and sprinted after the Doctor, legs flapping ridiculously in his white robes.

Tegan turned to Nyssa, who was shredding their route back to Earth into pieces the size of confetti that fluttered to the floor, fragments of scrawled green handwriting bisected by jagged torn edges.

"Come on then!" she snapped, and she grabbed Nyssa's hand, pulling her out of the room. Nyssa quickly recovered her balance and they ran, hand in hand, heading away from where the Doctor had led Bannot.

Verani was back, Luthen noticed. She walked quietly into the room and crossed over to where Kweril was examining small parts of the laser removed from Luthen's cybernetic arm, Crivthen peering uncomprehendingly over his shoulder.

Luthen had been released from the examining table and was now slouched in a fairly comfortable chair. They hadn't tied him again because it was unnecessary; his synthetic limbs were deactivated, and he couldn't do anything to remedy that without attracting notice.

He watched his captors closely, hoping for some distraction he might use to repair his leg, although his chances of escape even should he succeed seemed slight. Verani stood and watched Kweril work, and silence filled the room, until presently the Mirosan's incredulous curse broke it. He brandished a handful of laser parts at the two Janovians, hissing, "Do you know what this is?" Unsurprisingly, neither of them replied. Verani looked irritated. "It's a laser - and it was working. Until I deactivated it, it could have fired. He could have killed us all. Do you know what this means?"

"What does it mean?" Crivthen asked impatiently.

"It means we're meant to have caught him. It's a trap! Why else would he hold from killing us? It's all a Karalian trick!"

Luthen, overcome with disbelief, laughed. His laughter sounded manic, edged with despair, and too late it occurred to him that this reaction would only appear to confirm the Mirosan's suspicions. "It's not true," he said quickly. "You can't think I'd put myself here, willingly."

Kweril slammed the handful of components down on the table, with a shattering sound. "It's a distraction! We're meant to concentrate on interrogating him... while they arrive earlier than his whinging tells us!"

"Told you what?" Luthen snapped. "I've told you nothing! What kind of a trick could... you can't be stupid enough to believe-" In his fury, he tried to stand, but his leg gave out and he fell back into the chair. He cursed. Cursing hurt his torn and bleeding face. He cursed again. He wanted his laser back.

With a strength that amazed, Verani casually restrained Kweril's angry lunge towards him. She looked undecidedly between the two of them, evidently aware Kweril's deduction didn't necessarily follow from the facts. "Maybe," she said carefully. "I will find the Doctor and make him finish the weapon now. Then we will match the Karalian violence for violence, whenever they arrive."

She halted halfway to the door, and said, "There probably isn't any point in continuing this now the Doctor has come up with an altogether cleaner solution-" She did a double-take when she realised what she'd just said, but let it stand. "But you may continue if you judge it profitable for future encounters with the Karalian. I leave it in your hands now." Her sweeping gaze encompassed both Kweril and Crivthen equally - subduing a flutter of panic in Luthen's gut, fear that he'd be left completely in the Mirosan's hands. She turned again to leave.

The door burst open before she could set her hand upon it, and she stumbled and caught her balance against the wall. The breathless Janovian menial stammered out a stressed apology before announcing, "The Doctor and his companions have escaped!"

The impact on Verani was much the same as if she'd been slapped. Her balance wavered, then her back straightened, her chin raised, and fury sparked in her eyes. "Continue," she rapped, white-lipped.

Since all attention was hooked on the menial, Luthen took the opportunity to begin surreptitiously trying to bring his artificial leg back online, and tried to put aside for the moment the indication of those words which sent his thoughts spinning.

Jovanka was still alive somewhere. He could save her yet.

The long corridor he'd turned down led to a dead end, but he could hear pursuit too close behind to turn back now. A window in the far wall beckoned, and the Doctor skidded to a halt in front of it and stared out. The Janovian street two floors below was barely visible in the darkness, and it looked a long way down, but it wasn't far enough.

Bannot rounded the corner at the end of the corridor. He'd been joined by three or four more Janovians, and they followed close after him. The Doctor couldn't see many options - he refused to resort to violence. He began to climb out of the window, rough edges of stone scraping skin from his hands as he swung over the sill and hung by his fingertips against the outside wall of the building, feet scrabbling for a hold. His pursuers sounded far too near.

Toes caught in a crack in the stonework just as his hands were beginning to slip. The light from the open window made it slightly easier to see through the dark blanket of the Janovian night. He looked around frantically, knowing that if he didn't move Bannot and the others would simply grab his arms and pull him helplessly back inside. There was a drainage pipe about a metre away on his right. Too far to reach easily, but there was nothing else.

The noise of their footfalls announced they were almost upon him. The drainage pipe was metal, slightly rough with corrosion. It might be solid enough to hold his weight...

The Doctor tensed in preparation, then realised there was no time to prepare. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly, opened them again quickly when it occurred to him he'd rather need to see, and trying not to think about it too much, he launched himself across the gap.

He caught hold of a ridged join in the pipe, more by accident than design. He had time to curl the fingers of one hand around it, but then the wrench of his falling weight defeated his grip. He felt the joints in his fingers pop. He slid down a few feet before managing to close both hands around the pipe. Like sandpaper, the rusted metal sawed off the top layer of skin from his palms and he yelped in pain, but didn't let go.

"Doctor!" He looked up to see Bannot's face peering out over the ledge of the window now above and to the left of him. The councillor's features were dark and invisible against the backdrop of light. The Doctor was too busy getting his breath back to reply. For a long moment, the sound of his own breathing was all he could hear.

By the time he'd recovered his breath he'd decided that answering Bannot would be a waste of time. He ignored the councillor and stared up, craning his neck around to see the upper floors of the building towering overhead. A long distance, and one that had to be travelled quickly, despite the pain of his damaged hands, if he was going to provide Tegan and Nyssa with the cover they needed for their escape. He needed to draw Verani's attention to himself, to make her overlook his companions. Her people never acted violently without her express orders, and if she didn't send anyone after Tegan and Nyssa, it was quite possible nobody would pursue them.

"Doctor, listen to me!" Bannot called. "This isn't solving anything. We don't want to harm you. What can you possibly achieve by this, except to cause harm to yourself, and perhaps even death?"

"Ah, well," the Doctor said. "I should think that's as much your problem as mine, wouldn't you?"

He began to climb.

"I'm worried about him," Tegan said, as they rested a moment at a blind corner on the stairs leading to the ground floor. "What do you think he intends to do?"

Nyssa shook her head, breathing in small gasps. "I don't know," she said finally. Her hair hung over her face and her expression was invisible. "But whatever he's doing, it's succeeding in distracting the Janovians. And remember, our escape may be his only chance."

"That's no good if he dies now!" Tegan snapped, immediately regretting the volume of the words, but not nearly as much as she regretted the words themselves. Nyssa had no answer to that, merely continuing to shake her head and breathe shuddering gulps of air. Tegan realised her friend wasn't necessarily out of breath from running, and guiltily gave Nyssa's arm an affectionate but businesslike squeeze. "Come along," she said firmly. "It's not going to happen. Forget I said it. We're going to succeed."

Luthen tried again to bend his knee, and was so taken by surprise when it worked that he had to clamp his jaw down hard upon an exclamation. He shot a covert glance at Kweril and the Janovians, hoping they hadn't noticed.

The leg worked, but whether it would remain working once he stood and tried to run, after Kweril's tampering, was another matter. Even if it did, could he escape while quite literally disarmed, his cybernetic arm a hollow shell with most of its circuits scraped out and strewn across the lab workbench?

He waited. He didn't have long to wait. Verani hurriedly departed the room with Crivthen and the menial at her heels, and he was left alone with Kweril.

Ten minutes ago he'd been dreading such an eventuality. Now he welcomed it. It was an effort not to grin with anticipation as the Mirosan approached. Kweril scowled at him in silent contemplation, then said, disgustedly, "Karalian. So much blood on your hands. So many races you've walked over and brutalised." He shook his scaly head. "And you really don't look like anything at all."

Luthen lashed his cybernetic leg out in a swift arc and knocked Kweril's legs from under him. He landed in a colourful, scaly heap on the floor, and Luthen stood and swung the foot of his cybernetic leg onto the Mirosan's neck, pressing down hard. If he leaned his weight forward now, his enemy's neck would snap. Kweril knew it too, and stared up fearfully, yellow eyes wide in terror.

"Not so threatening without a gun, are you?" Luthen remembered the way Kweril had killed Jovanka, who had only been trying to prevent slaughter. Disgustedly, he kicked the Mirosan in the side of the head. The alien lapsed into unconsciousness.

Luthen scraped the parts of his arm off the workbench and into his pockets. He couldn't repair the damage one-handed, but he wasn't going to leave them around for Kweril and the Janovians to play with. He reclaimed his weapons and strapped them into their customary places about his person.

He resisted the urge to kick Kweril's unconscious body as he left the lab.

Tegan helped Nyssa to hide the unconscious Janovian they'd run into, hauling him into the shadows of the steps leading up to the council building.

She'd noticed there was some kind of commotion going on, on the upper floors. She could see the figures outlined in the windows over at the far side, heads craning out and up. After a brief moment of panic, Tegan had realised she and Nyssa weren't the focus of their attention. What was the Doctor up to?

They didn't have time to worry, they had their own task, and the Janovian night was only two hours long. They had to trust the Doctor to know what he was doing.

She signalled to Nyssa silently, and together they headed down the street, blanketed by the protective darkness, back towards the vaults.

She was nothing more than a featureless white face staring up at him from the shadows below. Her voice was a frail sound almost dissipated by the breath of the night wind. "Come down," Verani pleaded. "You can't do this to us. You can't do this to yourself."

"You haven't given me much choice," the Doctor yelled back. He was hunched uncomfortably on the edge of the roof, gripping at square white tiles whose own hold on the roof was less secure than he would have liked. His hands oozed blood, making his grip precariously slippery.

Verani was leaning head and shoulders out of the window nearest to him, which was some metres away, tucked just below the slope of the roof. Above him, across the expanse of the roof, the watch-tower loomed, a vast dark shadow blocking out the stars. "You can't do this!" Verani yelled again. "Doctor, we need you to save us!"

"The rest of my obligations need me to fail," he replied. "What else would you suggest I do?"

"Come back in and talk about this," she begged. "I never wanted to be responsible for your death. Please..."

"Responsible?" he snapped. "You poisoned us both! How responsible an act was that? I'd say you're pretty responsible for all of this mess by anyone's standards!"

"I know," she said. "I know, I'm sorry..." The rest of her plea was torn away by the wind. The Doctor, in truth, felt sorry for her. But he had to push her to distraction if Tegan and Nyssa were to escape, and keep her too worked up to sense that was his real intention.

Except he was beginning to realise that, while the present situation had initially been only a stall to let Tegan and Nyssa slip through the Janovians' fingers, he couldn't escape the conclusion that the lie itself offered an inarguably logical, if bleak, solution. Perhaps the only one available. He was running out of options and out of time, and was afraid he would weaken if he continued to feign support for the Janovians, afraid he'd help them for real after all. If he carried out his threat and jumped, history would be safe.

He'd given Tegan and Nyssa the instructions to escape in the TARDIS, assuming it worked, but wherever it took them the chances were it would be better then Janovay on the eve of the apocalypse. Even if they were planning something other than escape, once he was dead they'd have no choice but to leave.

He stared downwards. It was too dark to see the ground from so far above. The climb to such a height had been nightmarish, but he'd had to be sure a fall would mean certain death in order to threaten Verani with it. He'd survived such a fall before by way of his fourth regeneration.

This time, there would be no survival.

Chapter 8

There was something going on in the council building. The few Janovians Luthen saw in the corridors were grouped around street-facing windows, their necks craned upwards to the roof. Avoiding recapture didn't prove to be a problem, with their attention averted elsewhere, and the one time he turned a corner and almost ran straight into one of them, the alien just blinked at him vaguely and carried on as if Luthen wasn't there.

He ought to leave, but curiosity pulled at him. It might, he thought, be something to do with Jovanka and her friends. If he could find them, warn them of what had happened... what was going to happen. She'd saved his life. If he could, he'd save hers.

After some searching, he found an unoccupied window and, casting a nervous glance down the length of the empty corridor, leaned out of it. Balance was difficult with only one usable arm, the other arm a dead weight he had to drag along.

Stretched out precariously, he could just about see the figures on the roof, some distance to his right and several floors above. His breath caught in his throat when he saw the figure sprawled on the very edge of the roof, almost hanging over.

A voice rang out on the night air, drifting down to him. Verani's. She said, "Don't jump, Doctor. You're not really prepared to trade your life for the sake of a theory? If you'd only see reason... none of us need die. The only casualties need be the Karalian invaders. Come back inside and we can talk about this over a cup of tea."

Luthen was jolted by her reference to destroying the invasion fleet, jolted again when he registered how Verani had addressed the man. Doctor... Luthen stared at the figure Jovanka had pointed out from the hilltop two days ago. There was no sign of Jovanka herself, or the other girl; he wondered where they were, hoped it wasn't already too late. The Doctor's plight looked like a diversionary tactic, but still... he didn't look very safe up there. Even as Luthen watched, the Doctor's balance faltered, one foot slipping over the edge, and he clutched frantically, arms flying out in windmilling circles as he tried to catch a hold and only displaced roof tiles. Several of the tiles cascaded down, and a series of splintering sounds echoed back up from the ground.

It would be quicker, Luthen thought, to warn the Doctor about what was going to happen to Jovanka, rather than trying to find her himself when he knew so little of the city and its layout. She could be anywhere. Maybe the Doctor already knew where she was. He made his decision, aware with a kind of hollow despair that it might lead him back into Kweril's clutches, later. But he recalled the way Jovanka had spoken of the Doctor, the respect bordering on awe she had concealed beneath her flippancy. He was probably their best chance at this stage, and Luthen owed her a debt he was desperate to somehow repay.

He drew himself back inside the window, and was made painfully aware of the strain leaning out so far had put upon his arched back. Another ache for his collection. He forced it to the back of his mind as he ventured deeper inside the council building, searching for stairs to the upper floors.

The Doctor clung to the slope of the rooftop, arms splayed out, his shoulders pressing against the tiles whose corners dug viciously into his skin. His hands were slicked with blood, shredded by the sharp edges, and they drew dark patterns when he shifted his grip. But there was nothing to hold onto except the loose, unstable tiles, and they cascaded from the roof to shatter far below if he tried to put too much weight on them.

The near fall had shaken his resolve. It was one thing to risk his life for the odd hopeless cause, but another entirely to deliberately and knowingly discard it. Yet it seemed the only option left. Verani had seen to it that his choices were limited to helping the Janovians or death. He was only anticipating the eventual effects of Verani's poison, except that this way dispensed of any opportunity for him to be compelled to change his mind out of either threat or pity.

Janovay's timeline depended upon his death here and now. If what he suspected about the Janovians themselves was true, that only compounded the issue. Their existence was a paradox in itself. Their continued existence into the future of a universe never meant for them... well, who knew what disastrous effect that might have, how many elaborate knots it would tie into the course of future history?

He was fairly sure the only reason their idyllic existence on Janovay for thousands of years had been permitted or possible was because it was destined to come to a thorough end at a solidly predetermined time.

If he was going to jump, now was the moment. He shifted his stance, heels braced against the gutter, trying to fight the illogical impulse to move carefully when, really, it was immaterial.

"No!" screamed Verani, from the window below, as she finally understood he was going to do it. She wailed incoherent promises about how she would not try to coerce him into helping them if he came down, but he couldn't trust her. He already knew the survival of her race meant considerably more to her than her integrity.

He noticed that she'd leaned right out of the window, her arms outstretched. If he jumped, she clearly intended to try to catch hold of him as he fell past her, which would undoubtedly overbalance her and drag her down with him.

But... now was the time. And, he reminded himself sternly, Verani was already dead. Twice over. Poisoned. Buried beneath several millennia of past. If she wanted to anticipate her demise by a few days, that was up to her.

He heard something shift behind and above him but, wedged as he was with his back pressed hard against the angle of the roof, he couldn't turn around to see. They must have sent someone to fetch him in. No more time to waste.

"I'm sorry," he said to Verani, sincerely. But still he took a deep breath...

...And a step forward into nothing.

Luthen's searching brought him eventually to a guest chamber with a small window cut into its angled ceiling. He put the glass through using his immobile arm as a club, and smashed away all the little shards that lingered around the edges. He tore sheets from the bed into thin strips, tied them together, and knotted one end around one of the bed's thick, wooden legs and the other around his cybernetic ankle.

Tying knots one-handed was no joke. He cursed as he tried to hurry the process.

He hauled a small table underneath the window and awkwardly climbed up and out, onto the unstable tiles. The highest point of the roof was a few metres above him. From his calculations, the Doctor should be just over the other side.

Tiles moved beneath his foot, cracking and skidding down, too fragile for his heavy cybernetics. He gripped, one-handed, eyes shut, cursing, terrified. He didn't want to do this. But Jovanka had died for him, and she probably hadn't wanted to do that. He shouldn't fall if the knots he'd tied held. No, he'd probably only be smashed to pieces as his improvised rope sent him crashing against the side of the building.

Verani's scream forced him into action and he disregarded his own fears and scrambled up the slope of the roof.

A hand like a vice closed around the Doctor's trailing wrist.

There was a brief, dizzying instant when he thought his arm was going to be pulled out of its socket, and another when it seemed whoever had caught him was going to be dragged down after him.

Then, he was held suspended over the empty air by his wrist, looking up dazedly into the pale, frightened face of a young man he'd never seen before.

Luthen grit his teeth as the Doctor's weight dragged him further down the roof. His head and shoulders now hung out over the edge, and the sharp corner of the gutter sawed into his right shoulder as the weight on his arm forced it down. Blood crept down his sleeve to slick his grip on the Doctor's wrist.

The alien man's drawn face stared up at him, lined with pain and confusion and a crazy desperation. Luthen's tenuous grasp was the only thing currently extending his life, but his expression had nothing of gratitude. If anything, he looked annoyed.

"Young man," he said, with difficulty. "Although I have to admire your heroic intentions, this really has nothing to do with you. Would you please desist this interference and let go of my arm!"

Luthen, dragged a little further off the roof by the Doctor's weight, blinked in the face of the distance spinning below and jammed his mechanical arm into the gap left by several fallen roof tiles, twisting it until it was wedged solidly in place. He felt the strain at the point where the artificial limb joined his shoulder, and hoped it wouldn't prove too much for the joint. He didn't want to think about the ugly possibility of the mechanical arm tearing away to leave only a bloody hole in his shoulder.

The Doctor appeared to have noticed Luthen's cybernetics for the first time. His eyes widened, irritation dispersing. "Karalian?"

Luthen nodded, although he wasn't quite sure of the significance. He wished Jovanka had explained more to him of events on Janovay, but then they'd both been rather distracted and short on patience. "I'm going to pull you up," he said, relieved that the man's reluctance to be saved had dispersed. "Hang on."

"There's not much else I can do." The Doctor's face broke into an inexplicable grin. As Luthen hauled awkwardly, one-handed, the Doctor reached up his free hand and caught the edge of the gutter. No, thought Luthen. He didn't fall, he was jumping. He meant to die. Why does my appearance make a difference?

"You're here early!" The Doctor's tone managed to be both relieved and grim. "I though the invasion force wasn't due for another day or so at least."

There was no chance to explain. Verani's demanding voice rang out from below, echoing off the walls, hollow in the night air. "What is happening up there? Doctor?"

Luthen discovered he lacked the leverage to pull the Doctor back onto the roof. Miserably, he called down to the woman, "Councillor Verani? I've got hold of him, but I can't pull him back to safety. Can you send someone to help?"

The Doctor's head snapped up, and he pinned Luthen with a hard, intense glare. "You know her. You're not-" He began struggling again, and the hand clasped around the edge of the gutter loosed its grip.

"Who is that?" Verani asked, while Luthen struggled with the sudden increase in weight. "The Karalian?"

"Yes, ma'am. Please hurry. Doctor, stop!" Though he was still anchored, his lower body slid down the roof until he lay horizontally against the gutter, close to being pulled over the edge, his cybernetic arm twisted almost intolerably.

"Let go," the Doctor said, his voice rising desperately, almost pleading. "I may have to die but I don't want to take you with me!"

"It's not just me you'll take with you!" Luthen yelled. "Your friend, Jovanka. I saw her die! Yesterday! Today she's still alive - so far. You're the only one who can stop it from happening! You have to listen to me..."

The Doctor's struggles stilled again. His free hand crept back to curl bloodily around the gutter, and he hauled himself higher with an impossible strength, bringing his face inches from Luthen's. "What did you say?"

Before Luthen could respond, something brushed past his arm, and a length of rope slapped down onto the tiles. He craned his neck around to see shadowy Janovian figures higher up the roof, waiting to haul them both back to safety.

"This place is even more creepy in the dark," Tegan said, trying to suppress the tremor in her voice. She blindly ran her hands over the smooth wall at the top of the vault's long, narrow metal staircase, searching for the switch. Nyssa's formula was spinning dizzily around in her head, her mind unable to stop repeating it, again and again like a stuck record, because the Doctor's life depended upon her remembering it. Her heels skidded on the metal of the stairway and she was terrified of slipping, hurtling down the dratted stairs in the dark.

"Try to keep calm." Nyssa's silhouetted figure knelt outside the hatch, framed by the Janovian night sky no less dark than her shadow but distinguishable by its scattered cascade of tiny stars. "The only thing here that can harm us is our own panic. If you keep calm, there's no danger of stumbling and falling."

"I know, I know," Tegan grumbled. Sometimes, she wondered if Nyssa had been rather anaesthetised to danger by the things she'd been through before Tegan really knew her. Or maybe it was some hippy alien peace-with-the-universe kind of thing; Traken sounded like it might've been a bit like that, from what she'd heard. "Nothing down here but a load of old junk. Not even any spiders." It didn't help. The future was down there - and the past, she supposed - and who knew what she could be heading towards. If things went wrong, where would that leave her? Stranded at the beginning of Janovay's evolution with only a bunch of bacteria for company, that was where. If she was lucky.

Her fingers finally caught the switch, and she flicked it down. Light washed around them, outlining the dark gap where the square hatch opened up onto the night, illuminating Nyssa's worried face with merciless harsh edges to age her ten years or more. Below them, beyond a stretch of lit stairway, more darkness squatted ominously.

The light didn't help. Tegan felt worse than ever. The faint trembling in her limbs ever since their easy escape increased. She couldn't silence the corner of her brain that insisted on repeating Nyssa's formula constantly. She felt sick.

She helped Nyssa climb down onto the stairway. Nyssa gripped her arm in what was probably intended to be a comforting gesture as they began to descend into the vaults, but the unnecessary vice-like tightness of the grip informed Tegan - rather painfully - that she was not the only one who was stressed.

The two Janovians lowered Luthen back down through the rooflight, retaining their grip on each of his arms until his feet touched the floor, when they released him with a kind of detached care. His cybernetic arm dropped uselessly to his side, dragging at his shoulder. He stretched the other to ease the ache from its muscles. The Janovians seemed indifferent to his all-too-obvious race, an extreme contrast to Kweril's unreasoning hatred.

He picked at the improvised sheet rope still firmly attached to his ankle as the Janovians pulled the Doctor inside. It occurred to him that if he ran now, before Verani and perhaps Kweril arrived, it might be possible to escape. He could stay out of sight until the fleet came. But... had he told the Doctor enough? Could he help Jovanka, if Luthen fled now, without further explanation?

He couldn't risk Jovanka's life on his ignorance. His feet rooted themselves to the floor, giving the rest of him no choice but to stay.

He threw the mess of torn sheets back onto the room's single little bed, and moved clear as the Doctor, shrugging off the Janovians' aid with brisk politeness, grasped the sides of the rooflight's frame in his tattered hands and swung down incautiously into the room. He staggered as he landed, and Luthen caught hold of his arm.

The Doctor's hands had left bright smears of blood adorning the window frame. He said, "Thank you," absently, and brushed down his beige coat, not appearing to notice that all this gesture achieved was to streak red across the pale material. He wasn't looking at Luthen, but seemed distracted. Thinking, Luthen decided. Thinking very hard.

As the Janovians climbed in, the Doctor seemed to pull his thoughts together. He straightened, weariness falling from him, and directed at Luthen a penetrating stare somehow both interrogative and sympathetic. "Young man. I hope what you have to say is significant. The temporal balance of the universe itself may have been placed in jeopardy by your interference."

Luthen blinked. All he'd done was save a man's life. "I don't understand what you mean. All I know is that you might have the knowledge to save Jovanka. I had to save you to help her."

"Tegan!" he seized on the name. "You said she was in danger?"

"I said she was dead!" The Janovians in the background looked mystified, and Luthen thought, looking at the Doctor's expression, that that made four of them.

"Dead? Tegan?" the Doctor repeated softly in a puzzled, fragile voice. "No, no. She can't be. I only saw her about an hour ago."

Luthen added quickly, "She's not dead yet. I saw her die two days ago, but here and now it hasn't happened yet. We can still save her! We have to find her - her and the other woman, they're going to try something with some sort of... of time device, and it's going to go wrong. We have to stop them before it's too late!"

The explanation didn't comfort the Doctor very much. He'd paled further still, as though something had just clicked inside his head and it appalled him. Luthen remembered Jovanka talking about paradoxes, and changing the past, and a weight seemed to compress his chest, making his breathing difficult. "You can do something, can't you?"

But the Doctor's expression was shattered. He closed his eyes in what seemed a deliberate exercise to regain his calm. When he opened them again he looked resigned, and no less bleak. "You'd better explain it to me from the beginning," he said, in a soft, insistent voice that brooked no argument.

The Doctor listened intently to Luthen's tale, wanting to hear what the Karalian had to say before Verani arrived to complicate matters all the more.

The fact the youth didn't understand the events he was describing didn't make for much clarity in his account, but the Doctor could fill in the gaps well enough. When he'd given them cover for their escape, Tegan and Nyssa had gone straight to the time machine in the vaults. Tegan would go back in time, and Luthen would meet her, and he would see her die - all within hours of their initial arrival on Janovay.

Except it hadn't happened yet, and didn't have to happen now. Luthen had opened up the pathway to a choice. One he wasn't allowed to take. One he'd already refused to take for the sake of a people. One he'd already refused, too, to take for a single person.

He listened with a rising feeling of numbness to Luthen trying to repeat verbatim what 'Jovanka' had given him in lieu of reasonable explanation. Tegan obviously hadn't understood a great deal about what was going on either. The Doctor tried to keep his grief at Tegan's fate locked to the back of his mind. The Karalian's tale was confused. They knew so little about what had really happened. They knew so little about the technology involved. Anything was possible. He should not grieve until he knew for sure. Should not contemplate any foolish acts.

Sensible objectivity was not so easily put into practice. He'd never been especially good at it. Adric's death was still a raw wound in his memory.

He studied Luthen. The young man couldn't have been more than twenty, but the presence of his artificial limbs demonstrated suffering disproportionate to his short life. He made the Doctor decidedly uneasy. This was not what he had expected of the notorious killing machines of the Karalian Union. He'd anticipated something machine-like and soulless, a Cyberman by any other name. Luthen, though, was clearly not a product of a uniform society. Not a small machine part of a larger machine, but a random, flawed individual like most humanoid cultures produced. And random limb replacement as opposed to cybernetic enhancements by obvious overall design, did not suggest that Karalian cybernetics had arisen through deliberate choice on their part, but suggested a cause beyond their control. Karalian cybernetics, the Doctor mused, were a symptom, or perhaps a cure - but they were not a self imposed, supposedly self-improving, disease.

This particular Karalian cyborg looked unsteady on his feet and, to the Doctor's eyes, was suffering from shock and exhaustion, though the youth might act like those things didn't exist. Some of his cybernetic parts rather obviously weren't working properly.

Luthen rushed through his escape from Kweril and his antics on the roof, and finished, "We're wasting time. We have to go, now! If we hurry we might yet be able to stop them."

The Doctor glanced at the two Janovians and knew they would do nothing to prevent their leaving. He hesitated, remembering his protestations to Verani about the timeline, to Nyssa and Tegan when Adric... This wasn't quite the same situation. He hadn't seen it with his own eyes. The temporal device was an unknown and erratic piece of technology.

Luthen's expression in the face of his hesitation was shocked betrayal.

"If you won't go, I will!" the Karalian snapped. He got to the door before turning back, with baffled helplessness. "Where is the time device? Jovanka said something about vaults-"

The Doctor made his decision. "You're quite right. We're wasting time here. Come along. I'll explain everything on the way."

He marched past Luthen, flung the door wide, and walked over the threshold and straight into Verani.

"Where do you think you're going?" The First Councillor extended both arms full out to block the corridor. Kweril and Crivthen hovered behind her, the Mirosan looking as though her authority was the only thing restraining him from attacking Luthen on the spot.

"Verani," the Doctor said. "We really don't have time for this. This is a life and death situation. We need to get to the vaults right away."

"Unnecessary," she responded. "I've already sent people to bring back your two companions. You can set your mind at rest, Doctor. They'll be returned here safely. Bannot will take care of that."

The Doctor breathed a sigh of relief but his irritation with her seemed to intensify. He said, "What's all this about, anyway, Verani? I heard what you said out there. No more coercion. You seem to have forgotten it very quickly, for someone with such a unique memory. And I have a bone to pick with you about this young man here. You knew about him. You knew. This is your average Karalian soldier, and you wanted me to destroy them all for you?" His words trailed away, swallowed up by fury.

Verani frowned, but the Doctor must have hit at least one nerve, because she lowered her arms and took a step away from him as though to emphasize his freedom. Inadvertently, this also opened the way for Kweril, who overcame his restraint and launched himself forward. Luthen had been watching for any such move, but still Verani acted before he did. Her arm rose to block Kweril's path, and he grunted and fell back as her slim wrist caught him across the neck.

Verani neither flinched nor made any sound of pain. "You," she said, and there was something frightening and authoritative in her voice as she turned her hard gaze on the Mirosan, "Have been given far too much rein here already. You will not attempt to do any further harm while you remain on this planet." Kweril quailed beneath her stare, and Luthen couldn't see how anyone could dare disobey the intellect behind her eyes. She turned them upon him as he watched.

"I owe you a debt of gratitude and an apology which words can never express," she said as he wondered if he'd be able to run fast or far enough to escape that gaze. "I should not have allowed the things Kweril did. I was led by desperation, and it blinded me to cruelty." She bowed her head to him.

He stammered, taken aback, "Ma'am... I'm the enemy. We're at war. You owe me nothing! My people-"

She said, intensely, "You saved the Doctor. My madness almost killed him. I almost caused a death. I almost caused a thousand deaths. I would have killed all the Karalians I could. Used all the weapons I could. If we were capable of that, what would be the point in our survival?"

The Doctor had been quiet, either listening or thinking. He said, suddenly, "I'm very glad you've had a change of heart, Verani, but I think we have other problems. Tegan and Nyssa. You say you sent Bannot after them?"

She nodded.

"But, don't you see, Bannot's had no contact with Luthen, he doesn't know what we know! Something happened to make their plan go wrong. Tegan was stranded in the past because Nyssa wasn't there to help bring her back and she couldn't operate the device alone. They were interrupted. They were interrupted by Bannot when Nyssa was trying to operate the temporal device! Bannot's intrusion is going to cause their plan to fail! To cause Tegan's death!"

He tried to push Verani out of the way. Luthen leaped past while she was distracted, but Kweril was behind her and floored him with a snarl and a trip that knocked his legs from under him. He crashed to the floor, adding more bruises on top of his bruises. A dizzy glance over his shoulder told him the Doctor was having no more luck against Verani. Their struggle was more civilised; they stood facing each other, eyes inches apart, the air all but crackling between them.

"No, Doctor," Verani said. "It's too late. It's already happened. Her fate is sealed, isn't that so? Just like ours. I can't let you put the timeline in danger for the sake of a single life, can I?" She smiled, and the Doctor looked stricken.

Luthen cast a grateful glance to Crivthen as the old man hauled Kweril off him, then pulled the gun from his belt and fired a bolt of energy at the wall next to Verani's head. Everyone stilled except Verani, who calmly turned around.

"We're going to help Jovanka," Luthen barked, struggling to his feet. "Just because I don't want to hurt anyone doesn't mean I won't if I have to. Doctor, come on. We have to go now!"

But the Doctor shook his head. "No, Luthen. She's right. It's already too late. Violence is pointless at this stage. We have to let events run their course. If Tegan hadn't met you in the past, you wouldn't have met me to tell me, and nobody would have been here to go back and help Tegan. It's a paradox, and we can't do it. I'm sorry. And anyway," he breathed, "If the temporal distortion I'm sensing is any indication, they've already activated the device."

How he knew that, Luthen couldn't imagine, but then the man was an alien. Without the Doctor's support, he felt his own resolve crumbling. Alone, and out of his depth, how could he stand up to them all? Crivthen. Kweril. Verani. The Doctor... He threw the gun down, and slumped heavily to the floor.

"Why are you apologising to me?" he asked. "I only knew her for a day or so. She was your friend."

Thin-lipped, her face drawn and pale, Nyssa went over the machine in silence, her hands running lightly across the controls as though the contact might help her to understand them better. Her expression was of deep concentration. Eventually, she said, "I think I have it. From what the Doctor told me, and what I know of the components, it seems to work a little like a transmat capsule, with many of the same basic mechanisms. In fact, parts of it may once have been a transmat capsule - it looks as though it was improvised from a number of separate systems. Of course, this device will transport you to a different temporal location, rather than a different spatial one."

Tegan opened her mouth to protest that since she didn't understand the scientific stuff anyway, Nyssa's explaining it wasn't a lot of use, but then realisation dawned that Nyssa's monologue wasn't for her benefit, but rather a clarification of her ideas by voicing them, and she snapped her mouth shut again.

"As far as I can gather," Nyssa continued uncertainly, "The device anchors the body of its operator and sends them to a different time. I'm not sure how that works. What is certain is that you have to return here, and probably soon. It could be very dangerous for you to use the device for too long. It must put a considerable strain upon the operator, and even more so if they're not a time sensitive."

"So you'll have to bring me back after a few hours, then," Tegan filled in, liking this idea less and less. "Say, is the time you experience waiting here going to be the same as passes for me, in the machine?"

"That's a good question." After some thought, Nyssa nodded. "Yes... yes, it should be. We'll have to agree upon a time. I think two hours would have to be the limit. Will that be enough to get to the TARDIS, mix the formula, and make the substitution?"

Tegan shook her head doubtfully.

"Possibly not," Nyssa agreed. "But since I don't know if I can even bring you back, or how long it might take, I'd be unwilling to risk much more than that. And, remember, we don't know how long it will be before the Janovians think to come looking for us down here."

"We could do a test run," Tegan suggested. "Send me for a short trip first, and start trying to bring me back at once. If you have problems, well, I'll try to get to the TARDIS anyway, and see how much I can get done in the time it takes you to figure things out. Maybe I'd have chance to finish the formula, even to get it back to the city. If everything runs smooth you can send me back to complete the job knowing exactly what you're doing."

Nyssa nodded slowly, apparently satisfied with the more cautious approach. "And I would know how to bring you back quickly if any of the Janovians show up." She crossed over to one of the capsules and said, "You need to be in here."

Feeling uncomfortably like some sort of sacrifice, Tegan climbed awkwardly into the grasp of the machine. The capsule's narrow confines made her feel claustrophobic.

"You'll feel a slight pressure on the back of your skull as the headset falls into place," Nyssa warned, reaching up for the helmet device, but before her hands were anywhere near it an electronic whir sounded close to Tegan's ears.

She sensed the automated motion of machinery close above her head, and bit her lip as the tickling sensation at the back of her skull and neck recalled to mind in unwanted detail the needle-thin spiky filaments adorning the inside of the headset. It didn't hurt, but it was just as well the constricting space of the capsule almost totally immobilised her as the itching sensations drove deep into her brain. She screwed up her face, glad she couldn't see what was happening, and clamped her lips closed on a whimper.

"Don't worry about the filaments," Nyssa advised, wincing in sympathy. She looked strained and worried and, Tegan reflected, she wasn't the one with bloody needles sticking into her head. "If you were a time-sensitive they'd allow you to tap directly into the temporal device and give you a lot more control from the inside. As it is, and with me here to operate the controls, I'm not sure how necessary they are. They're quite harmless, though. They're far too fine to cause any damage."

"R-right." Tegan crossed her eyes in an attempt to see the headset now firmly settled upon her brow. "Harmless. Yeah." Thinking that if she ever got out of this alive she was going to get really, really drunk.

"All right," Nyssa said quietly, backing over to one of the control consoles. "Ready?"

No! her mind screamed, but her mouth betrayed her, as it often did, and was saying "Yes" before her brain could stop it. She spouted Nyssa's formula aloud for one final check, and the Trakenite nodded approval. Tegan regretted the lack of any glaring errors which might have worked to postpone the ordeal a little longer, but reminded herself sternly that this was the Doctor's only chance of life. Nyssa's too, since she would clearly rather die with him than leave Janovay without him.

"I'll see you soon," she said. "We'll go shopping in London when this is all over. There's this place called Harrods I really have to introduce you to. We'll run up the most astronomical bills the galaxy has ever seen on the Doctor's credit cards, 'cause he'll sure owe us for this one. You'll see." She grinned, trying to hold back the moisture at the corners of her eyes.

Nyssa's smile was shaky, but her hands were sure as she leaned over the control console and pulled a series of levers.

In the blink of an eye, Tegan Jovanka's reality burst apart...

...time shattered into so much jagged confetti...

...and in that instant, and three days ago, the energies tapped by the device tangled around a helpless humanoid body flung into the vortex by a spaceship drive malfunction, in the moment before death...

...and the TARDIS, plucked from its course by the random energy fluctuations, materialised on Janovay.