Chapter 9

In the coffin-like capsule Tegan tensed, her muscles taut and her face contorted as though in pain. Then she fell into a deathly stillness, and it frightened Nyssa until she realised the device probably slowed its user's breathing to the point of imperceptibility.

She felt the silence descend around her, felt the vast distance which stretched above her head; the echoing empty space of the vaults, all that weight of ground between herself and the surface of Janovay. For once the sound of Tegan's voice was more conspicuous in its absence.

Nyssa was seized by a conviction she wouldn't hear that caustic Australian voice again. She smothered her panic with the same rational logic she'd earlier used to calm her friend - panic increased the likelihood of error, and she could not allow her efficiency to be reduced when she had to determine how to bring Tegan back.

She carefully thought through each step in the operation of the temporal device before she touched anything, re-checking the logic of her guesses. She manipulated the controls with calm, measured movements, stilling the shaking of her hands by force of will. Finally, her hand hovered over the lever once more. "Please," she whispered to the air, and regretted it as the echo bounced the sound back at her from a multitude of directions. She pulled the lever.

When she dared look to the still figure in the capsule, nothing had changed.

Tegan's face was pale, features sculpted in marble; eyes closed, lips held together slackly in a slight frown. A few straggling locks of dark hair stuck out from the head-set. Her body was relaxed from the tightly-wound, aggressive tension which regularly motivated it.

She looked as though she was dead already.

Nyssa stared around the array of controls, feeling panic rise up again. It was harder to retain her control, this time. The responsibility for Tegan's life lay in her hands. It had been her plan, after all. She didn't think she could cope if she had inadvertently killed her friend.

If she could only have taken the risk herself she would have done so far more willingly than sending Tegan, who had a life and a home to go back to some day. Despite knowing that it had been the only way, she still felt guilty that all the risk had fallen to Tegan.

She forced her thoughts back to the device; back to square one. Where had she gone wrong?

Nyssa was so wrapped up in her calculations that she only became aware of the presence of others in the Vaults as they stepped off the stairs onto the metal floor. The echo reverberated through the panel her hands rested on, jolting through her fingers, breaking her concentration.

Hearing footsteps and voices, she backed against the wall out of sight and edged quietly over to the door. One of the voices sounded like Councillor Bannot's. She peered into the main storage chamber, and saw three Janovian figures halted in the central circle, looking around.

One of the people they'd passed on their way to the vaults must have reported them, and so Verani had sent her faithful henchman to bring them back. The lights she and Tegan had switched on coming down had led the Janovians right to them.

Nyssa could hardly deal with three of them. Even had she been prepared to use them, the guns in the vaults were on one of the upper floors, well out of her reach, and everything on this lowest level was of a far more dramatic scale, no use to her in this situation. If she couldn't overpower them, what other choices did that leave her?

She could run, draw them away from the device - that would mean leaving Tegan, risking the possibility she wouldn't be able to come back later, but at least the Doctor would have a chance.

Her other option would be to keep trying. To bring Tegan back before the Janovians found them, and give up hope for the Doctor.

Her thoughts rebelled against that. Yet... she could not ask Tegan to gamble her life on such a slim chance. The plan had seemed comparatively safe before, but what she now proposed was far more likely to lose both than save both. No, she decided with a heavy heart. They had tried, but she had to know when to stop. She would save the friend she knew could be saved, and face the consequences. There might be other chances for the Doctor, later.

She resumed her work as quickly and quietly as possible, desperately stretching her brain to interpret the unfamiliar technology, her guesses growing wilder and more uncertain with each failure.

But fifteen minutes later when they finally found her, she had still not succeeded.

The Doctor squinted morosely into the tea-leaf patterned depths of his empty teacup, not seeing any future there at all. Around him, the extraordinary colours of Janovay's sunrise flooded through the window to fill the room with light. The brightness was depressing; he idly wished for clouds as a match for his mood.

The light fluctuated as Verani paced the length of the small, pleasant room, and her shadow aped her, flitting restlessly across the patches cast on the floor by the rising sun.

The Doctor leaned forward to place the empty cup onto a small table, and the movement awoke the aches in his arms and shoulders. The legacy of his exertions on the roof, all pointless now. Although his plan had worked after a fashion and Verani had given up her efforts to make him save Janovay, his preoccupation with the larger issues had lost him Tegan. There was no victory. He'd known Tegan and Nyssa were planning something; should never have let them out of his sight. He'd dragged them into this. Their lives were his responsibility.

His hands had left bloody fingerprints behind on the teacup. He couldn't help but remember Verani's addictive poison - it was nearly time for the next dose, and the jangling clamour of his outraged nervous system yelled it insistently at him.

Verani cast a veiled glance his way and left off her pacing. She strode to the door, pulled it open, and said tersely to the Janovian menial outside, "Fetch the zayol from my chambers."

The Karalian youth, Luthen, looked up. He had been told about the poison and it had shocked him visibly, which the Doctor had thought an interesting reaction from a career killer. He didn't think Luthen had been a soldier for very long. The youth's single working hand was clutched whitely around his cup, and the tea within had been suspiciously sniffed at before being swallowed with a vigour that suggested he'd had neither food or drink for some time. His hand shook slightly - a mixture of frustrated tension and nervous exhaustion, the Doctor imagined. He made a mental note to keep a close watch on Luthen.

The other occupant of the room was Councillor Crivthen, who rested calmly in a vast armchair, sipping at tea, eyes flickering occasionally around his less serene companions. Kweril had returned to the labs, to the all-too-obvious relief of the Karalian.

They were waiting for news. For Bannot's return. There hadn't seemed to be anything else to do. The Doctor's nerves gnawed at him to do something, anything - he wasn't used to inactivity being the only option. But he was a Time Lord, and history was being made here. He could not let himself become an influence to change post-determined events. He kept his nerves tightly under control.

The menial returned with the poison. Verani poured two glasses from the jug, handed one to the Doctor and kept the other herself. She sipped at hers. The Doctor distastefully gulped his down and set the empty glass out of sight on the floor beneath his chair.

"Your hands should have medical attention," Verani remarked. "And you, Luthen, you need food, rest - and medical care for your arm."

Luthen regarded the blood on his uniform shoulder with faint surprise. He'd clearly forgotten about the cut - the Doctor felt guilty about the injury, but there were plenty of worse mistakes he'd made to diminish it to a very little guilt. "It's nothing," the Karalian said. "I can hardly feel it."

Verani nodded. "I heard the Karalian are immune to pain. I wasn't sure it was true."

The Doctor glanced at her with suspicion, concerned she was continuing with her 'studies' of the enemy, but it seemed her remark was innocent enough. He shifted his attention to Luthen, quite certain that Verani's supposition was not true. Such a degree of control over the nervous system seemed an unlikely feature of a race physiologically so close to human as the Karalian. More likely, it was nothing more than an unwillingness to admit pain, practiced by any number of aggressive and ritualistic warrior races.

He did not have chance to question Luthen about the matter. Even as he opened his mouth to speak, the door was flung open by a breathless Janovian who skidded to a halt in front of Verani, face stretched in fear. It was the most emotion he'd seen any of these people display - but, well, however rigid a people's mental discipline, true colours showed in a crisis. The Janovians were living, feeling beings, not quite the machine-like ciphers they appeared.

"The Karalians!" the Janovian gasped. "They've been sighted from the tower."

Verani's face wiped blank of expression. "Go to Kweril in his laboratory and tell him they are here. Extend to him our gratitude. Tell him to take his ship and leave while he can."

"If he has a ship, can't he take some of you with him?" Luthen asked, then shrank back as though he regretted his interruption.

Verani looked at him with a trace of sympathy. "His ship is only large enough for a handful of people. Who would go? Who would stay? Besides, this is all Karalian space now. There is only a slim chance he might reach safety somewhere."

The Karalian youth lowered his guilty eyes. The Doctor, who'd stood at the arrival of the menial, placed a hand on his shoulder in a gesture of comfort Luthen seemed to badly need. "It's not your fault. No use blaming yourself."

Verani turned to Crivthen. "Gather together the people and tell them, my friend. You comfort them more than I. I..." She glanced glassy-eyed out of the window, at the empty sky. "I will go to the Watch-tower. To watch." Her gaze shifted onto Luthen and the Doctor, participants in Janovay's inevitable destruction by race and by inaction. "You two come with me."

It was a request neither of them could in conscience refuse.

Bannot was beginning to think the lighted vaults were nothing more than a decoy when he reached the gap in the wall and incautiously looked in. Within, the girl Nyssa, unaware of his presence, worked upon the machinery that filled the side room, her small hands flying over the controls. With alarm he saw that the other young woman, Tegan, was actually inside the machine.

"What are you doing? Is she all right in there?"

Nyssa jumped at the sound of his voice and spun around to fix him with a haughty, frightened glare. "She's fine. At least - I hope she is. I'm trying to make the device let go of her. Please let me finish and bring her back. We'll come quietly. We were trying to use this machine to help the Doctor, but it's no use."

Bannot regarded the jumble of loose machinery that sprawled across the room. If he were Verani, he thought, all this might mean something, might pick knowledge from some hidden part of his brain. But as it was, he understood nothing of it. Obviously Nyssa understood to some degree. As he watched, she spun around and impulsively pulled a lever before he could object.

Nothing happened. She stared ruefully at the control panel and shook her head. "Wrong again."

Maybe she understood rather less than he'd thought. "What is all this?" he asked, curious despite himself. No Janovian understood technology; it was forbidden to explore any advances in their fixed ways of living. But he'd often... wondered.

"It's a time machine. Unfortunately it isn't a very good one. And I don't have much knowledge of this kind of technology. But it worked when I sent her... I have to get her back." Her hands were clenched, knuckles white with strain.

He nodded. "I'll give you some more time." He didn't see what harm it could do, and couldn't very well leave the other girl trapped. "You will come back with me once you succeed?"

"Yes. I promise I will. Thank you. But now I... need to concentrate. Please."

Bannot would have preferred to watch her work, but he could see her point. The safety of the other girl depended upon her concentration. He went to wait in the main chamber.

He instructed his fellows to return to Verani and report that he would bring the two alien females back presently, and she should concern herself no more on the issue. Then, he stood leaning against the wall, studying the machines stretched out in their endless rows.

He had not been waiting long when he noticed the low thrumming from above. The sound was quiet at first, but grew steadily louder. In seconds it was a roar and the vaults were shaking with it, infinitesimal tremors running through the walls and floor. He stepped away from the wall, staggering as the faint motion confused his balance.

Nyssa ran out of the side room and skidded to a halt when she saw him. "What's happening? That sounds like an engine of some kind... a ship's drive..."

"Kweril is the only person on Janovay with a starship, and it is a small vessel. I'm sure it couldn't be responsible for this." Bannot looked around, confused as she was, but cut off from the outside world by unmeasured depth there was no way to determine what was happening. The shuddering was still increasing - whatever was causing the ground to tremble, it was possible the underground structure of the vaults wasn't stable enough to withstand it. "We should get out of here. It may not be safe."

"No! Tegan's still in there. You said you'd give me time... I can't leave her!"

"You must. For all we know the vaults could come down on top of us. I'm sure your friend wouldn't want you to die with her. If everything seems safe, I promise I'll bring you back later. I don't want her to die any more than you do. But your life is important too, Nyssa. Come with me, please."

"I'm staying," she said, her face white, her eyes huge and dark and determined. "I can't let Tegan down." She ran back into the side room before he could stop her and scrabbled at the wall to the side of the opening. She was too slow to shut him out. Bannot was already inside the by the time the wall had begun to close up and it did not take much strength to eject the slight girl from the room. A shove sent her sprawling through the closing gap, tripping and falling to her knees on the floor, and he ducked out after her just before the edges sealed shut.

"Later," he said firmly, taking her hands and pulling her up. "Think about it sensibly. When we find out what the disturbance is, and if the vaults are still intact when it stops, we'll come back. Please. I'd rather not force you to leave, but I would do so rather than allow you to endanger yourself."

She glared at him as the roaring changed pitch and grew louder than ever. She was very young, Bannot thought tolerantly - genuinely young since her people, as he understood it, had only the one life, and so she was exactly as old as she appeared. Her anger lasted for only a moment. She had a good command of logic. Her only chance had already passed and there were no other options left. She nodded and said tersely, "All right."

The floor jumped suddenly underfoot and some of the stored items cascaded down from their neat piles with echoing crashes. Nyssa went very pale. She grabbed hold of his arm and started dragging him towards the stairs. "We have to get out of here! If there are active power cells in any of those, we're dead!"

Bannot might not understand the language, but he agreed with the general proposal. They dashed for the stairs, dodging around precariously leaning piles and the occasional plummeting machine.

Verani stood, straight and poised, in the watch-room of the tower. She stared fixedly, not at the screen in the ceiling that mapped Janovay's skies and the Karalian fleet that glittered as dots not yet discernable from the stars, but out across the rolling blue-green countryside of Janovay, a world more beautiful than most.

To the Doctor, her silent despair was an accusation. He hadn't helped them. He'd gone out of his way to avoid doing so. Maybe to be waiting with her, with the bright dots of the Karalian fleet above his head, was nothing more than justice. He turned away from Verani and descended the upper steps of the staircase to see how Luthen was doing. The old joke about Daleks and stairs seemed to be almost as valid for Karalians.

"I'm all right!" Luthen yelled, with a trace of irritation, before the Doctor could ask. He was several steps below, clumsily hauling his cybernetic leg, every step a challenge in its own right. Nonetheless, the Doctor went to help him scale the remaining distance, and they sat down to rest on the top step.

Once Luthen had recovered from the climb, he craned his neck around the watch-room with amazement. "So they didn't bury all their technology."

"No, this was far too crucial to bury. Their ancestors knew your people would be coming from the time they first settled here. They've been watching the skies for you for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years."

"My people aren't going to wipe them out, you know," Luthen said, all unhappy sincerity. "It's their knowledge - their skills - all that technology - that we want. Karalians don't kill. Not unless there's no other choice. Life is valuable."

"Hmm." The Doctor nodded non-committally. That the Janovians had been wiped out by the Karalian invasion was historical fact. All it took was an order from an unstable commander for the general policies of a race during war to go up in smoke.

"You don't believe me?"

"Things go wrong." He nodded towards Verani. "She's seen the death of her race. I come from a time where its all history."

Luthen's head sagged. He was unable to argue with that.

"Anyway," the Doctor said briskly. "I think we owe it to Verani watch the proceedings with her, don't you?" He met the young man's eyes, then stood up and helped Luthen to climb clumsily to his feet. It wouldn't be polite to deprive Verani of at least the satisfaction of their guilt. The Doctor would watch what he had failed to prevent.

They crossed to the window to stand beside the First Councillor. Her eyes were fixed now upon the people gathering in the street far below. Their figures were dots the size of ants. The dot standing on the steps of the council building must be Councillor Crivthen.

"He's telling them about the ships, before the rumours spread through unofficial channels," Verani said. "It should have been my task, but it is better he should do it. The people listen to him, they feel with him, they let him comfort them. I can only lead them."

"You gave everything for them," Luthen said unsteadily, speaking when words failed the Doctor entirely. "You couldn't do more, ma'am. It isn't your fault."

Almost every Janovian in the city had to be down there, the Doctor thought, watching the crowd grow larger every second. It took several minutes for it to stop growing and to settle. The Doctor gazed down at the population he'd deliberately failed. Crivthen's figure stepped to a more visible location and began to address the Janovian people, his arms moving in expansive gestures to animate his speech. Though he couldn't be heard from such a great distance above, it was possible to judge the content and effect of his words by the rippling motion of the crowd.

The Doctor tore his eyes away from the apocalyptic sight, to the array of cloudy stars above his head. One of the stars was growing, beginning to take on a distinct shape.

"Luthen..." The Karalian turned around, and he jerked his head indicatively to the ceiling.

Luthen blinked dully at the approaching light. "Advance landing party. To collect specimens and fly-by the local land to map out the territory."

"Specimens?" the Doctor queried.

"People," Luthen corrected with a sigh.

"Something's happening," Verani said, drawing their attention back to the ground. The crowd was rippling with action, faces tipped to the sky. Verani frantically raced around the watch-room, staring through the windows until finally she stopped still, halfway out of an east-facing window. "You can see it," she breathed, her voice raw with apprehension.

The Doctor joined her, and in that short time it had already become unnecessary to lean out to see the ship, a small dark shape in the sky growing in size as the distance between them shrank. He gently took hold of Verani's shoulders and pulled her back into the safety of the watch-room.

Luthen, he saw, hadn't moved. The Karalian stood tightly wrapped in his own thoughts.

The ship was close enough now to see details, and the details were much as the Doctor had expected from what he'd already seen of Karalian technology. Crude and bulky as their cybernetics, ungainly and blocky with the same unfinished look to it. Even from the still-considerable distance he could tell it was large. It seemed to be getting faster as it approached, although he knew that to be a trick of the distance. It would be deccelerating to land.

The three of them, Janovian and Karalian and Time Lord, watched in silence as the warship drew so close it dominated the sky, casting a great shadow over the city as it blocked the single risen sun. As it swept overhead it seemed very low indeed.

It was coming in to land on the edge of the city, the Doctor realised, his eyes and brain tracking and calculating its progress.

Near the vaults.

If she looked up, Nyssa knew she would see only the lit scaffold-like frame of the metal staircase winding endlessly higher until it shrank beyond sight. All the rest was darkness, and not even the point of daylight which marked the entrance could be seen. But she wasn't looking up. All she saw was the next step - and after that the next, and the next. Her legs strained endlessly to conquer them, her footing unsteady, her breathing harsh and painful, her head reeling with the weight of her thoughts.

Nyssa felt sick as she hurried after Bannot in their frantic ascent through the darkness, and it wasn't from the physical exertion. She'd abandoned both her friends now. What was left? She had no other home but the TARDIS, no other family but those she'd failed and, in failing, condemned to death. It did no good to tell herself dispassionately that there had been no choice. She still felt she there was something, somehow, that she could and should have done. She should never have sent Tegan in the first place, not when she knew it wasn't certain she'd be able to bring her back.

Bannot's assurances they'd return meant nothing if any of those damaged devices still had active power. If their destructive mechanisms hadn't been activated by the fall, radiation leakage could still prove deadly. Enough to kill Tegan, down there in the machine. Herself, if she tried to return. It could be too late for her and Bannot even now, unfelt radiation already suffusing their cells.

They were halfway to the surface when the noise and tremors suddenly ceased. Nyssa almost lost her balance on the steps, used to compensating for the juddering motions. She exchanged glances with Bannot, who had hesitated elegantly mid-stride. He caught hold of her arm before she could take even the first step of a potentially suicidal dash back down into the vaults.

"Not yet," he said, his youngish face creased in polite concern. "We should find out what happened - and if it's likely to happen again. And, if the machinery which fell is as dangerous as you fear, we should proceed with extreme care when we do return."

In the face of his sound reason and iron grip, Nyssa had to agree. But still the risk seemed less terrible to her than the guilt of not going. For a moment, she almost fought him, before logic kicked back in and she nodded reluctantly, lacking the energy to speak. More slowly, they proceeded onward up the stairs; Nyssa still breathing in gasps after their initial sprint, Bannot not even out of breath.

But she was beginning to feel a trace of resentment towards the unflappable Councillor Bannot, who always had an answer for everything and delivered it with that unchanging condescending smile.

Chapter 10

The spaceship's bulk was a dark mass blocking out the horizon. Nyssa's breath caught in her throat at the sight of its black shape looming over the whitewashed street leading from the vaults to the city walls. It was enormous, many times the size of the Janovian houses, but for all its size a rather primitive example of spacefaring technology. Its sides were scarred with old burns and marks from a multitude of different weapons technologies, repaired and patched over with a basic kind of efficiency. But it was still impressive, especially in view of the fact most of the city would have fitted inside its bulk.

"By Razathon's beard." Bannot's stunned exclamation pulled her eyes from the spaceship and she turned to help him up out of the dug-out pit. He climbed easily to his feet and brushed the dust from his robe. "No, that is not Kweril's ship."

"It must be the Karalian," Nyssa breathed. With all that had happened she had, incredibly, allowed the thought of an alien invasion fleet landing on Janovay in the near future to slip her mind. The threat had never seemed very immediate compared with Verani's. It had always been in the future. She hadn't really thought on how the future could as easily be 'tomorrow'.

She was wondering why the streets were so empty when the little band of people rounded a corner some way down a nearby street. About a dozen figures, only two of them wearing Janovian robes. The others were dressed in grey uniforms, and carried bulky energy weapons.

"Soldiers!" Nyssa exclaimed. "Those people with them, aren't they the ones you sent back to Verani?"

Bannot nodded grimly. "Come on. Let's get out of here before they see us." He caught her arm, spurring her on as they broke into a run for the sanctuary of the council building.

Nyssa heard shouts from the Karalians before they'd gone more than a few steps. She didn't dare look back to see how close the pursuit was, but her spirits sank. She knew she couldn't run very far. The climb up from the vault had already drained too much of her energy. Bannot might make it, but she was coldly certain she could not.

An energy beam shot through the air inches from her right leg and drew a charred brown burn-scar across the wall of a nearby house.

"Keep going!" Bannot said, his grip on her shoulder hauling her onward as she faltered. But, overbalanced, she fell, skinning the palms of her outflung hands and knocking the breath from her body.

Bannot skidded to a halt and knelt to help her up - and spun to the ground in sprawling disarray as an energy beam flared past Nyssa's face and caught him in the right shoulder.

Nyssa blinked, the aftermath of the beam making coloured spots flare in front of her eyes. When her sight cleared Bannot lay, unmoving, face down on the street. She crawled to his side, reaching out with bloody hands to turn his still form over so she could examine the injury. As she did so, she noticed with horror that he didn't seem to be breathing. An involuntary sob of despair escaped her throat. Another corpse on her hands. "No!" she said, shaking him. "Councillor Bannot!" She touched the charred area of his robes, of his chest. Pulled the tattered cloth aside. The burned edges of the wound underneath sickened her. There was no blood; the searing heat of the beam had cauterised the injury instantly. She didn't know enough about Janovian biology to guess at what kind of damage had been done internally.

The clatter of many pairs of running military feet coming to a halt called her attention to the Karalians, and she looked up from the body to a circle of faces.

She was astonished to see the faces of people. She'd been expecting something like robots, with little humanity left in them. But these were people. Most of them had at least one cybernetic limb, and there was one individual whose only flesh part appeared to be his head, but the Karalians all had human faces.

There were eight of them, a mix of male and female. None of them older then thirty, most much younger. The captive Janovians weren't among them, probably under guard elsewhere, maybe taken back to the ship.

A woman trained her energy weapon on Nyssa, and a stern glower informed her to stay still if she wanted to stay alive. But for that brief threat, the group seemed oblivious to her; they had matters to deal with amongst themselves. The woman, who seemed to be in charge, glared around the other Karalians. "You call that a disabling shot?" she barked, her voice rough-edged with the raw sound which comes from habitually talking in shouts. "Look at him! Alive, remember! What use is a corpse?"

One of the men holstered his gun with a degree of shame. "I didn't know he was going to move, ma'am. I was aiming for his legs."

"Nobody else was aiming for them at all. We could have caught them without damage." There were several moments of heated argument until the woman shouted over the protests and they quieted again.

The young man knelt down next to Bannot's corpse, casting a quick glance at Nyssa who'd been sitting in the dust watching the feared Karalian enemy squabbling with increasing incredulity. He examined the injury briefly. "Lung shot. We can repair this, but... I don't know." He removed a glove and set the fingers of his single real hand to Bannot's neck. "I can't feel a pulse. Looks like he's dead."

"Let me see." The woman shoved her compatriot aside and, awkwardly because both her legs were synthetic, she knelt down next to Bannot. She reached for the dead man's wrist but, before her fingers could connect, a strange luminescence began to creep over Bannot's body. The woman jerked back and staggered clumsily to her feet, as though expecting an attack of some sort. The Karalians reached for their weapons.

"Don't!" Nyssa yelled, scrambling on her hands and knees to place herself between their guns and the man who wasn't quite dead. As the dazzling light slowly engulfed Bannot's form, she breathed in sharply and forgot to breathe out. Within seconds, he was glowing all over with alien energy.

She'd seen this before.

Gradually, the light dissipated, and what it left in its wake was not the man who had been lying there dead but a man who choked breath into his lungs and who, gasping in great lungfuls of air, sat up so that the torn cloth fell away from his unmarked shoulder, and stared wildly around the hostile group. His eyes settled on Nyssa, filled with a helpless confusion she remembered well.

"Oh, no..." she breathed. She should have foreseen this, after the Doctor's hints. She caught the stranger's shaking hands in hers, knowing that he would need support. "It's all right, Bannot. It was an accident. It's all right."

The Karalians shifted uneasily on their feet, looking at a loss. The woman in command radiated hostility, as though she resented her lack of control over events. "What's happened to him?" she snapped, clutching her gun like a talisman.

Nyssa looked up at them, feeling strangely detached. "He's regenerated."

Luthen stared down at the ship which had settled into a noisy landing just outside the city walls. He recognised the patches on its sides, the old scars and newer wounds in its shell. It had been all the home he'd had since beginning his military service. His friends, his comrades, were on board that ship, the Vardito. People he knew by face and by name would be part of the force responsible for the destruction of Verani's world. Jovanka had been right when she accused him. The order to join the invasion fleet must have come in after his own disappearance but, still, if not for the accident he would've been on that ship, one of the invaders.

Closing his eyes, he leaned forward over the waist-high walls of the watch room, head rested on folded arms.

Someone touched his shoulder. He expected it to be the Doctor but when he turned around it was Verani who stood there. "Your grief gives me hope for your race," she said, her voice unusually hesitant, lacking her normal power. "It isn't your fault, Luthen. Perhaps when you return to your people your grief can change them, a little, and perhaps if that is true then I can feel we will not have died for nothing."

"I wish I could stop it all." Luthen's fists clenched in frustration. "I never wanted to hurt anybody. I never had a choice. Karalians are either killers or techs, and I never had the brains to be a tech." He blinked angrily. He was supposed to be battle-trained, and this woman the enemy.

"Luthen," the Doctor interrupted, sharp with concern. According to Verani, the Doctor was a dying man, but he neither looked nor acted it. "You said that ship was collecting specimens, people."

He nodded.

The Doctor sighed and turned his back on the view, leaning against the wall as though whatever he was thinking drained his remaining energy. "Councillor Verani. All the people on Janovay-" he pointed a finger downwards "-are right here. Except for Nyssa and Tegan, who may be safe enough in the vaults where Karalian scanners cannot reach them, and the people you sent to bring them back. Why should they land where they have except for convenient access to the only isolated specimens on the planet?"

Verani nodded slowly. "Bannot." Her stricken eyes flickered back to the ship, then returned to Luthen. "What happens to the people they collect?"

Luthen shook his head, not wanting to tell her. Reluctantly, he said, "Examination and experimentation. They'll want to know about your race's biological and genetic make-up, your chemical tolerances and physical capabilities. About... about what you intended to do with me, except they've had practice and training, and they won't relent partway through. I... I'm told they try to be as humane about the proceedings as possible."

She gave a stony, unconvinced frown and returned her gaze to the ship.

The new Bannot still looked young, but perhaps a few years older than his previous incarnation. The elegant perfection of form and his smoothly handsome features had not survived the transition and his new body suffered by comparison. His hair was a slightly lighter shade of brown and was longer, falling to his shoulders in straggling locks. His nose was overlong and too pointed, and though his features were pleasant enough they were not so overwhelmingly perfect as they had been. His wide brown eyes contained more sensitivity and less calm logic.

The hands Nyssa clutched were raw-boned, only a token layer of skin stretched over them, and she guessed that, standing, he'd be visibly taller than before and markedly thin.

It looked rather as though his form had been hastily assembled into the best that could be managed by his violently enforced regeneration, as though the circumstances of his death had tailored the form of his next life.

He smiled a little hesitantly up at her with his vague, confused eyes and his slightly crooked mouth - a defect she wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't looked so flawless before. "Nyssa," he said, his voice gentler than the old Bannot's. "Are you all right?"

She blinked back frustrated tears. His death had, in part, been her fault. "Yes," she said. "I'm fine. And so are you, now. Do you... remember what happened?"

He looked beyond her, bringing the Karalians around them back to Nyssa's attention. His eyes flicked briefly around the circle of armed men and women, and a frown skittered across his expression, an irritation that would never have penetrated his previous self's measured calm. "Yes, Nyssa. Karalians with guns. Regeneration. A thoroughly unpleasant experience." He shifted, gathering his balance to stand. The Karalians' guns wavered nervously.

"You people!" Nyssa snapped, the thread of her patience giving way as she caught Bannot's hands and helped him to his feet, placing herself stubbornly to block their line of fire. Once she had him standing, she rounded upon them in fury. "Look at him! He's obviously unarmed and still weak. And the Janovians are peaceful, non-violent people. What you just saw is normal for his race and no threat to you. Why don't you use your brains and stop acting like trigger happy thugs!"

The woman in command glared sourly at her and asked, cagily, "You're not a native of this planet?"

Nyssa reviewed what she'd said and realised her admission, but didn't see any harm in it. "No, I came here with some friends. We're travellers. We got caught up in this business by accident."

Bannot swayed at her side, looking around the Karalians who stared back with a kind of fearful awe. His hand caught Nyssa's shoulder, maybe for balance, maybe because he'd heard the dangerous tone in her voice. "I, however, am a native of Janovay," he said. "My name is Bannot. I'm one of the Janovian ruling council. Please pardon me if I don't extend you a welcome to our world."

This edge of sarcasm, slight as it was, astonished Nyssa and made her wonder how much of the Janovians' reserve was a product of the sterile environment. And how much effect the violence of Bannot's regeneration might have had upon his personality.

"This is Nyssa," he added, when she made no effort to introduce herself. "An alien to this planet, as she has said."

The Karalians seemed uneasy. A few of them were looking around as though they expected the Janovian populace to attack in force.

"Sergeant Dunae of the Karalian military arm," the woman returned. "You are prisoners of the Karalian Union. The rest is of no consequence. We're leaving and, whoever and whatever you might be, you're coming with us." She nodded to a few of her command and two soldiers took Bannot's arms while another reached for Nyssa.

"No!" She felt a chill run through her as it hit her for the first time what her capture would mean for Tegan and the Doctor. She backed away, casting a plea around the group as various weapons clicked into firing position. "I can't go with you! I have to get back to my friends. I'm not even from this planet! I've been here only two days. Please let me go! My friend Tegan might die if I don't go back to help her."

Bannot cut in, "I see no reason for you to keep Nyssa when you have me. I told you, I'm one of the Janovian ruling council. All the leverage and information you need. Let her return to her friends and leave this place before the killing begins. She's just a neutral bystander, no use nor threat to you."

Dunae blinked at them, no emotion but irritation touching her expression. "Everyone's useful," she rapped. The Karalian who'd been foiled before secured a painfully tight grip on Nyssa's arm and she yelped in pain. The hand holding her was undoubtedly not flesh and blood. She could feel the cold of the metal through her sleeve, the hard edges and inhuman strength of its grasp.

Nyssa's hopes shattered. While she hadn't wanted to desert Bannot in his newly-regenerated condition, as long as Tegan and the Doctor remained alive her loyalties lay first with them. If she couldn't save Tegan, and if she could do nothing else to remedy their situation, she'd at least wished to be at the Doctor's side when the apocalypse hit. But now, there would be nothing she could do for her friends. She could not even die with them.

She wondered half-heartedly about the woman's objection. A Karalian proverb or propaganda? It had the feel of a practised phrase. The woman's gaze still lingered on Bannot, as though she couldn't tear her eyes away. "Can all your people... 'regenerate'?" she asked, a strange quality to her voice.

Bannot nodded. "If the degree of damage is not too severe."

The interest which flared in the woman's eyes was calculating. Nyssa knew what the Karalian were about - technological and genetic scavengers, their motives for their invasions no more than plain greed. People or not, they had no more morals than the Cybermen. The way the Karalians all adopted expressions of anticipation and excitement at Bannot's words... She was just a windfall for them, an unexpected bonus.

Everyone's useful...

"This could be it," said an anonymous voice from the middle of the group. "It really could. I never saw anything like that before..."

"Silence!" Dunae yelled, turning on them with undue fury reddening her face. "I'll have no speculation before we know the facts. None! We have to get them back to the ship. Later, we'll find out if they're any use. We don't operate on guesswork."

Nyssa struggled in the unbreakable grip, but Dunae waved her gun and asked, "Do you have lives to spare?" and she shook her head and ceased her resistance.

Bannot couldn't walk quickly enough for them, and had to be half-dragged. He sagged between two Karalians, in front of her as Dunae led the group down the street towards the ship, snatching the occasional glance back over his shoulder to see if she was all right. Nyssa tried to match her steps to those of her captor to avoid the indignity of being dragged along. She drew in a breath as she saw how the Karalians had got past the city wall. A hole several metres wide had been blasted out of the stonework. Rocky debris was strewn across the street.

A Karalian woman stomped out of a nearby house, followed by a bedraggled Karalian man covered in pale dust. Dunae stopped the procession and snapped out a demand for a report.

"Ma'am," the woman said wearily. She couldn't have been more than about seventeen. "The two specimens ran away in the confusion. These people, they're fast, and they seem to have unbelievable stamina. We were unable to catch them."

A smile touched the corner of Bannot's new mouth.

Dunae snorted irritably. "Well, we'll have to make do with what we have. The rest of the population are too concentrated within the city centre, and we're out of time." She raised her voice. "Everyone back on board ship! Those left behind will find a reprimand on their record if they survive the experience!"

They clambered over rubble, through the gap in the city walls. Nyssa fell several times, landing on the sharp edges of newly-blasted rock, cutting her hands and arms and bruising her knees through the fabric of her clothing. Bannot's Karalian guards lifted him up bodily and carried him over the obstruction. Obviously he was worth more to them than she was. Maybe they imagined they could steal the secrets of his regenerative physiology. If that was so, they'd find themselves confounded - it would require a far more advanced understanding of the sciences than the Karalians displayed to unravel the secrets of Time Lord - or, if not, then surely equally complex - genetics.

The ship loomed above them. She could see the exterior works of the drive visible along the scarred metal of its underside, could see it was in a bad state of repair. Borrowed and patched technology, like that of all scavengers. Halfway along its length a ramp led down from a hatch, looking ridiculously small against the enormity of the space vessel. Nyssa and Bannot were dragged towards it.

As she was hauled inside the alien ship, Nyssa snatched a last glance upwards to the sky. The second of the two suns had risen, painting the world gloriously bright.

Another beautiful day on Janovay.

The Karalian ship receded into nothing more than another dot that wasn't a star on the starscape of the watch-room's ceiling. The Doctor's eyes, following it, stayed fixed long after it had joined the others in stationary orbit, marking its position into his memory from habit rather than any plan of rescue. There was nothing positive he could do which would not also risk altering the course of the invasion.

"They've found their specimens," Verani said.

The Doctor frowned. For all he knew, the Karalians had left empty-handed. More likely with Bannot or one of the other Janovians. But worry tickled at the back of his mind. Nyssa and Tegan would almost certainly have been in the vaults, safe from this threat at least. Yet... Nyssa had been interrupted...

"It seems we have a temporary reprieve, anyway," he said, "while they put together the information they've gathered. They know Janovay has no weapons technology, no space travel and no allies to help them. They'll take as long as they need."

Verani's mouth thinned into a sour line. "More waiting."

He nodded. "Nothing any of us can do except make the best of the time that's left. I suggest we all get some rest. Luthen, when was the last time you had any sleep, or food for that matter?"

The Karalian jumped at being addressed, and spun around - he'd been looking out of the window again, his back to them. His eyes were reddened. He seemed to be a bundle of nerves, thoroughly unhappy at being cast as one of the villains. He stammered, "Crivthen gave me food... that was yesterday morning, I think. I had a little sleep in Kweril's lab."

"Well, we'd better tackle those stairs again and get you taken care of," the Doctor tutted. "Eh, Verani?"

"Of course."

The Doctor leaned over the side of the tower. Down in the street, the crowd had begun to dissipate now the visible threat had gone. The people presumably would ready themselves in whatever way helped them best to cope with the end in sight. Crivthen's lonely figure lingered atop the council building's steps.

"Let me help you." The Doctor turned at the sound of Verani's voice, and watched her take Luthen's arm as they started to descend the stairs. The Karalian looked, if anything, scared witless by her concern. The Doctor snatched a last wistful glance at the vista of the Janovian countryside, then trailed after them, absently kicking at the supports of the handrail as he walked.

At least her concern for her enemy had given Verani something to think about other than her people's impending destruction. For himself, the Doctor had no distractions. Nothing to be done that wouldn't risk interfering with Janovay's future history... He wasn't used to facing the world without a future, without any reserve plans or desperate last-minute solutions.

He'd won. Janovay was doomed. Yet he did not feel victorious. Like poor Luthen, he felt like the villain.

It wasn't a feeling he was comfortable with.

He watched Verani and Luthen to divert his thoughts. The Janovian and the Karalian. The victim and the destroyer. Both equally polite and concerned about the other's hurts.

It could have been funny, in a macabre sort of way.

He wondered again about the supposed Karalian immunity to pain. There was nothing, he was certain, extraordinary about Luthen's physical make-up except for the almost barbarically primitive cybernetic implants. For all intents and purposes, the Karalian were basically humanlike - there was a lot of it around. This fable about the race's resilience worried the Doctor for reasons he couldn't place. He was reminded that Luthen's rescue on the roof had occurred after almost two days' deprivation of food and sleep and no small amount of physical battering. There was something about the Karalians, then...

His thoughts were beginning to explore some interesting theories by the time they reached the base of the staircase.

"I'll show you to a room," Verani said to Luthen. "You can get some rest. Doctor, what do you intend to do? I... l will give you a supply of the Zayol if you wish to return to your TARDIS and leave."

He shook his head. "I can't leave without Tegan and Nyssa. I'm not sure what's happened to Tegan. I'm not totally convinced she's dead." He considered the problem. They were in a kind of limbo, right now. The time between when Tegan had arrived in the past and when she was supposed to have died, according to Luthen, had been less than a day. Twelve hours, say, at most. That was how long he'd have to wait. After that time had passed, he could safely go to the temporal device and see what, if anything, he could salvage without risk of changing what had already happened. Nyssa... well, he would not be able to explain things to Nyssa, and contacting her too early would also be risking altering Tegan's fate. He had no choice but to leave it for now, and try to live with the guilt sawing at his nerves. "I'll wait with you," he told Verani.

She nodded understanding, and turned as a Janovian rounded the end of the corridor and hurried over to her, stealing her attention.

The Janovian was streaked with blood and out of breath. Her eyes widened. "Where is Bannot?" she asked urgently, by which the Doctor surmised this was one of the Janovians sent to the vaults.

"Bannot was taken, First Councillor. There was nothing we could do. Gheran and I saw our chance to run and took it. Bannot was injured; I do not know how badly. Gheran was shot in the arm. The wound is being treated. I came straight to you."

Verani nodded wearily. "Very good." The news wasn't unexpected.

"There is... more," the Janovian added, his eyes flickering to the Doctor.

Chapter 11

Nyssa clutched the bars of the cell so hard that bones showed white through the joints of her fingers. She'd felt drained since the Karalian scientists had drawn their over-generous blood sample, and the patch on her left arm where they'd taken a tissue sample smarted underneath its dressing.

The Karalians' treatment had made her feel like an exhibit at the zoo the Doctor had once taken her to visit on Earth. The sky had been grey and it had rained that day on the human tourists huddled inside their coats, the water dribbling down through the tops of the open-air cages and churning the animals' habitats to mud. The Doctor cheerfully ate an ice-cream cone in the downpour and said they didn't mind, and though she understood the importance of study and preservation, she'd felt a little sad for the caged creatures. Now, firsthand, she found it a thoroughly humiliating experience. But she was going to learn what she could from their captors, too, so she gazed out at the ship's laboratory, studying in return the Karalians' scientific operation.

The cell was in the furthest corner from the door, all-too exposed to the view of anyone in the lab, and it seemed there was always somebody in the lab. There was no night and day, no downtime here. The warship's population lived their life in the rhythm of shifts, not days. There would be no time when Nyssa and Bannot were not under the view of the members of the Karalians' scientific corps who worked at their benches, sometimes speaking to each other in friendly, half-shouted tones that felt out of place in this environment where the lab rats were people.

The lighting was unrelentingly bright. Occasionally, interested eyes would glance her way, and she would meet their gaze with defiance. Or a Karalian would wander over to frown into the cage close-up, and then she would shrink back out of reach and try to deny them their examination.

It had been a surprise to her to find such an extensive facility on board a warship, but she supposed the Karalian must be a largely ship-based culture, with people living on board for months, maybe years on end, and of course they'd need scientific facilities to analyse their captive peoples and technologies. It was a curiously organised form of piracy.

Her gaze settled upon Dr. Vyrs, the only one of the scientific corps who had been identified within her hearing. He seemed to be the most senior of the Karalian scientists, surprising to her because he was no older than thirty; a thin, anaemic man lacking any visible cybernetic enhancements. He hunched over a lab bench, peering at blood samples with his forehead creased in concentration.

"I wonder what he'll make of your blood, Councillor Bannot," she said over her shoulder. She added to herself with quiet vindictiveness, "I hope it confuses him utterly."

She loosed her grip on the bars and flexed her bloodless fingers. She felt faint. She'd wondered whether it was procedure for the Karalian scientists to draw more blood than they needed, to weaken their specimens and make them more malleable.

The framework of their cell was a mesh of thin bars crossed into squares large enough for her arm to fit through to the shoulder but offering no weaknesses for a breakout. It formed the shape of a cube about four metres across in any direction. The mesh was self-contained, independent of the ship's structure, running along inside the two walls the cell backed against, covering panel joins and a tantalisingly large ventilation grill. It extended, too, across the floor, making footing difficult. It was obvious the Karalians were well accustomed to keeping a variety of peoples securely confined. She didn't think even the Doctor would have been able to escape.

With a sigh, she turned, leaning back against the bars. In depressed silence, she ran her eyes over the interior of the cell. Bannot was sitting crossed-legged on their only item of furnishing, a simple foam mattress pulled over into the far corner where shadow provided a pitifully meagre sort of privacy.

Bannot didn't look much like a Janovian. He wore a Karalian uniform minus insignia which had been brought to replace his burned and ruined robes. With his youthful looks he could have passed for just another Karalian soldier, except he lacked the stony cast to the eye which seemed the Karalian standard. His hair hung in tatty strands. His meditative posture might have been an attempt to regain his previous incarnation's aura of calm, but he looked strained and couldn't hide it. His hands were coated with a sheen of sweat and he'd rested them on his knees to stop them shaking, but not before Nyssa had noticed. The bandage on his arm matched her own. Red soaked through the white of the dressing.

He looked up at her and his mouth twisted into a smile that wasn't very steady. "Why should they have any trouble with my blood?" he asked curiously. That was another thing she'd noticed about him since his regeneration - the interest with which he eyed the Karalian technology and listened to the scientists speak. If he'd been interested in these very un-Janovian matters before, he'd hidden it well.

"Your genetic structure is like the Doctor's," Nyssa explained. "Very complex. Much more so than mine. Because you can regenerate, and because of other things too I suspect. I don't think the Karalian are advanced enough to understand it. I certainly hope they're not. It could cause some very messy complications."

"Your people are more advanced than the Karalian?" he asked. "Where was it the Doctor said you were from? Traken? Where is that?"

She shook her head sadly. "Nowhere anymore. It was destroyed. I'm the only survivor of my people. But... it was, or will be, many years and light years from here."

"I'm sorry about your people, Nyssa," Bannot said.

She found herself unable to reply. The Janovians were going down the same road. She wished she could have helped them, in defiance of history.

When the Karalians had taken the blood and tissue samples, Bannot had been silent where the Doctor in his place might have made quips, tried to win over the enemy, kept up an encouraging commentary to Nyssa. It had made a valuable point to her. She should not trick herself into thinking of him as being like the Doctor just because his race seemed to have similar physiological peculiarities.

Bannot did not possess the Doctor's experience or resilience. He would not be pulling any last-minute escapes out of a hat. In many ways, Nyssa herself was the more capable of the two. Bannot had lived out his life on a quiet planet without technology.

That realisation placed another weight on her shoulders. She could think of precisely nothing to remedy their situation.

She picked her way across the barred floor of the cell and sat down next to Bannot on the mattress. He shifted to allow her more room, uncrossing his legs and hunching up, arms curled around bended knees. A curiously defensive posture, almost childlike. He poked absently at the red stain on his arm. "You have a lot of experience of the world, travelling with the Doctor," he said, not looking at her. "I suppose we on Janovay must seem very sheltered to you. I've never been in a spaceship before, not in hundreds of your years of life."

"That isn't necessarily a bad thing. The more advanced a society is, the more likely it is to destroy itself or become a threat to others. I've seen it happen. Look at the Karalians. Janovay's beautiful."

"Not for much longer." He sat up straighter. "I don't know what you'd think of it if you'd lived there years. Nothing ever changes... changed... on Janovay."

Nyssa nodded slowly. She rather suspected it had been intended that way.

"I don't know what's wrong with me." Bannot stood and crossed the cell to stand at the bars where she had before, his new tall and emaciated frame more lanky than ever in the Karalian uniform. "I'm thinking thoughts I've never had before, saying things I'd never have said, before. I'm not sure this regeneration's done me any good. I don't even know what I look like yet." He caught hold of the bars with shaking hands, and Nyssa realised with concern that he seemed more unsteady now than he had when they'd been brought on board.

She'd felt the ship lift off as they were walking through the confusing maze of corridors to the lab soon after boarding. There had been no screens or portals from which to watch Janovay receding into the black void of space, only her own imagination to provide the image. From the note of the ship's engines, they'd entered planetary orbit. Janovay was still there, so very close but far out of reach.

Nyssa pulled her sleeve down over her hand and, reaching through the bars, began to polish a square section of the wall with her fist.

"Look, Bannot," she said when she could see her own face staring back at her in it, bloodlessly white. She pulled him in close to see. On hands and knees he squinted into the wall, his expression first blank, then elastic as he pulled his features through a series of experimental contortions. How strange it must be to not recognise your face in the mirror, Nyssa thought. The Doctor knew this. She could only imagine.

"I suppose it could be worse," Bannot said, pulling back, and she moved to help him regain his feet. Standing, he swayed, but waved away her assistance. "I had no control over the regeneration, this time. It was too violent, too unexpected. I almost died."

"How many times have you regenerated before?"

"Only once."

Someone rattled the cell door, causing them both to jump. Sergeant Dunae was outside, the cell's electronic key in one hand and her gun in the other. She opened the door. "You're to come with me. Dr. Vyrs and Captain Alzen want to speak to you."

"Speak to us?" Nyssa repeated. "Are you sure that's right? I thought you people just wanted to study us."

Dunae's eyebrows impatiently climbed her forehead, and she levelled the gun with a loud click.

The drifting shaft of sunlight streaking through the narrow window broke Luthen from sleep, falling hot and dazzling across his eyes. He blinked to wakefulness, his thoughts muzzy and confused. Cold angular metal - his inoperative cybernetic arm - dug painfully into his ribs, and he shifted and sat up with a groan.

The glare stung his raw eyes. He felt like he needed to sleep for another week, but he was too restless to doze off again now that at least he no longer seemed tired to the point of collapse. There was too much happening to sleep through.

He rolled off the bunk in a clumsy clatter of machine parts. Sleeping was a lot less comfortable now than before the Syndrome ate his leg and arm. He picked himself up from the floor and made a token attempt to smooth out the creases in his grey uniform. He must look a mess. The Sarge would've been livid if he'd presented himself for morning inspection looking like this. The thought made him grin. He might not be made for the military, but at least he had the satisfaction of knowing it hadn't been made for him, either.

He left the small room and went to find Verani and the Doctor. The Janovian populace were as averse to conversation as ever, but he managed to get one of them to point him in the right direction, and he found the pair in the room that had served as Kweril's lab. They were sitting drinking tea.

At least, Verani was sitting. Quite calmly, in the chair Luthen had spent the best part of a day secured to. The Doctor walked around the lab and poked interestedly at piles of equipment and substances in phials. As Luthen watched, he stuck a pencil into a phial of green liquid and then squinted at it with interest as the green stuff ate all the lead from the middle, sizzling fiercely.

Not looking up, the Doctor said with faint disapproval, "Three hours of sleep isn't much after over two days' deprivation. I didn't expect you'd be up and around again so soon. But then, there is the remarkable recuperative power of the Karalians I've been hearing so much about." The latter, he added in a tone obviously meant to mean something, and he flicked a brief penetrating glance over the top of the phial.

"We're resistant to pain," Luthen said, "apparently. In comparison with most other races. I don't think it's quite the same thing."

The Doctor dismissed it with a wave of his hand. "I hear accounts you're all too well familiar with this room and its former occupant."

"Yes."

"Well, Luthen, our Mirosan friend appears to have gone missing. We'd assumed he'd left in his ship, but his ship's still where it was. So, just to be careful, you'd better stay around Verani or myself until we find out what he's up to. You didn't exactly seem his favourite person, and while there's nothing he can do against the Karalian as a whole he may decide there's nothing to stop him taking a few potshots at you." The Doctor fished some kind of visual aid with thin gold frames out of his coat pocket and propped it low on his nose. He squinted at the green liquid again through the lenses, then raised his eyes to peer at Luthen over their rims.

Luthen, thinking of the vengeful Mirosan, shivered slightly, absently gripping his useless left arm with the fingers of his living right hand.

"Oh, yes," the Doctor said, his interest in the phial vanishing. He discarded it on a random shelf, and tossed the useless pencil into a mound of machine parts on the floor. "Let me take a look at that arm now, see if there's anything I can do." He briskly cleared a space on Kweril's work bench with a careless sweep of his own arm and waved Luthen over.

"You know Cybernetics?"

"I dabble in most fields," he said. Verani raised her head briefly and smiled, then settled back into silent meditation, her eyes focused a million miles away. Luthen wondered if the Janovians had any meditative preparations for death. Then again, maybe she was just thinking.

He rested his cybernetic arm on the work bench and fished from his pockets the mechanisms Kweril had removed, making a little pile of them at which the Doctor directed a distressed grimace. "I can help," Luthen said. "I have a basic idea of where all the mechanics go. I just couldn't mend it myself with only one working arm."

But he'd mistaken the alien's meaning. The Doctor picked out a semi-disassembled item from the pile. "This is a laser."

"Yes. It isn't very powerful, it's only a backup. I have other weapons."

An unfathomable expression on his face, the Doctor pushed the laser aside. "I'll just get the arm working for now, and leave out the extras."

Unsure what his problem was, Luthen just nodded warily. It would be a relief to have use of the arm again, even if he did have to sit through the Doctor's critical examination of his Karalian cybertechnology in the bargain. He selected the essential components from the machine pieces and watched, adding occasional advice and instruction, while the Doctor tried to reassemble his arm.

"I suppose you have a lot of experience with these mechanical problems," the Doctor remarked aggrievedly after Luthen pointed out he'd been trying to fix a component in place upside-down.

"Only a few year's worth. The Syndrome's only been active since I was seventeen. I've had the cybernetic replacement parts three years. We were trained to do basic repairs and maintenance in the field."

"'Syndrome'?" the Doctor asked absently. Chewing his lower lip in concentration, he didn't look up from his work.

"You haven't heard of it?" It wasn't so surprising, he supposed. The Doctor had travelled a great distance across space and time to Janovay. This era, and the Union and its adjoining territories, were unfamiliar to him. The Janovians probably didn't themselves grasp the details of the Karalian curse. It was reasonable that the Doctor should not know of it.

"No." The Doctor gave a satisfied "huh" as the last of the mechanical parts fell into place. Luthen found he was able to move his arm again, and flexed it experimentally. The delicate joints in his synthetic hand and fingers remained immobile, probably unfixable outside of a Karalian parts centre, but having control over the more robust mechanisms at elbow and wrist again was definitely an improvement. He grinned, then noticed the Doctor didn't look happy at all. The alien set down the tools, stood back and aimed a disturbingly intense stare at Luthen. "What are you saying? What is the 'Syndrome'?"

"Amnos' Syndrome," he supplied. "AmnoSyn. Named after the man who first caught it. Wherever he caught it from is a mystery. But in its active stage it spreads like nothing else. It wasn't long before our entire race was infected. It's a corrosive disease that starts at the extremities and works inwards. The Karalian race has been looking for a cure for generations. You didn't think we went around invading planets for fun, did you?" Even talking to the Doctor, whose interest was genuine and benevolent, he couldn't keep the bitterness from his voice.

There was a clatter as Verani stood up, casting her teacup carelessly aside. It rolled over and teetered, rocking, on the edge of the workbench. After a moment, her face wiped blank, she turned her horrified eyes to the window and her back upon them both.

The Doctor looked very concerned indeed.

"We're all born infected with it, but it doesn't become active until later in life. Usually between the ages of fourteen and twenty, though some people live a lot longer before it activates. Once it's active, you've got maybe five or six years assuming they manage to stop the initial spread of the disease before it eats too much of you. The cybernetics aren't for decoration, Doctor."

"I never thought they were," he said quietly. He took off his gold frames and rubbed at his eyes with the thumb and forefinger of one hand, wincing. "So... now we know. There lies the source of the Karalians' mythical resilience. You've all lived with pain so long it's lost it meaning. You're all dying slowly, living as best you can in the hopes you can free the next generation from the curse. I'm sorry, Luthen. I had no idea."

Luthen shrugged uncomfortably. "People don't want to believe the truth. That the Karalian war effort was created by other races, when we were turned away from any medical aid, time and time again, because they feared the Syndrome, until our only hope was to take that technology by force."

The Doctor, nodding, sighed and bent morosely forward, resting his forehead on his hands, arms steepled, elbows perched on the edge of the lab table. "You know," he said, mock-conversationally, his voice pitched higher than normal, "Five minutes ago, I didn't think it was possible for things to look any worse."

"What-what's the matter?" Luthen asked. "How have things become worse?"

"Maybe they haven't, from your point of view. But there's a bigger picture to be considered here. This quiet part of the galaxy is a favourite research project for a number of archaeologists of the future who have made extremely well documented studies of the extent of the Karalian Union's territory.

"And your people, who are questing for a cure for this 'Syndrome'... have just snatched a bioelectronics expert from a future society several times more advanced than anything this part of the universe currently has on offer."

Nyssa held her arm crooked through Bannot's to steady him as they walked through the corridors of the Karalian ship. In truth, she found the physical contact comforting. The sterile impersonality of the bright, white corridors grated on her nerves.

As they passed some sort of sickbay she caught horrific glimpses, through observation windows and opened doors, of Karalians in various states of cybernetic disassembly. She presumed they were having their artificial parts repaired or serviced, and she strove for dispassion, telling herself this must be a very everyday procedure for the Karalian, but nothing could inure her to the sight of their chopped-off, scarred limbs. More disturbing still were their faces, alive as ever - talking, laughing, joking.

It's their normality, she thought, suppressing a shudder.

Bannot gripped her arm tighter, his expression a mixture of fascination and revulsion.

Further on, in a side ward down a corridor branching off from the main route, she saw rows of beds containing other Karalians, their bodies buried under blankets. Most of them lay still, unmoving, looking dead. These hidden figures bothered her more than the others. She had a feeling that if they weren't covered she'd see horrors. From her calculations of the ship's layout after they'd traversed several more corridors, Dunae had taken an unnecessary detour to make sure they passed that ward.

We are meant to see this. Why?

When they arrived at their destination, Nyssa was surprised to be shown into a small, tidy office and not an interrogation room. The office surprised her, too, in of itself, for she would have expected something bare and soulless, but it was a warm room, painted pale beige, with a crisp style of decor featuring straight lines and rare patches of geometric ornamentation. Some of it was worked in pale wood. A few extra trimmings suggested someone who spent a good deal of time in there and had tried to personalise it a little. Her eye was caught by the pictures on the walls of Karalian faces, a few of them quite accomplished paintings rather than photographic representations. A stray paint brush rested incongruously among the stationery arrayed on the desk.

Well, the Karalians must have plenty of spare time on board ship, in between their target planets. It shouldn't surprise that they had hobbies.

Dr. Vyrs was leaning against the wall in the far corner of the room, to the side of the desk, his expression sour as ever. The man behind the desk must be the Captain himself. His short and stocky build was so distinct as to be obvious even sitting down. His left arm was cybernetic below the elbow joint. His eyes were a pale crystalline blue, undeniably intelligent, and Nyssa's expectations of seeing an older man in the role were foiled as they had been with Vyrs.

His head was shaven so that only the slightest stubble of hair remained, a military affectation it seemed several of the more 'senior' Karalians adopted. Nyssa had wondered about it. It gave the impression of increased age and thus authority. She was beginning to suspect something was unusual about the Karalian life expectancy.

When he spoke, the Captain's gruff voice was not unkind, maybe even a little... apologetic? "You realise, of course, that you are already contaminated. There is no longer any 'you' or 'us', we are all the same now. You can't go back. There is no escape. We are not your enemy, but your only friends, your only hope. Your family. You are now Karalian."

There was a brief silence in which Dunae stood impassive, Vyrs fidgeted, and Captain Alzen's eyes tracked between Nyssa and Bannot, trying to gage their reactions.

"What do you mean, 'contaminated'?" Nyssa demanded, fists clenched with the effort to keep her voice from trembling.

Vyrs cursed and muttered, "I really hate it when they don't know."

"Know what?" Bannot asked, straightening and moving away from Nyssa. When he leaned forward to place his hands firmly on Alzen's desk, it looked very much like assertiveness, and not inability to stand without support. "Janovay's not the most advanced of planets. We can't know unless you tell us. Using small words if possible."

Nyssa stepped forward too, needing the proximity of an ally. Her hand returned to his arm, no longer for his benefit even in pretence.

Alzen massaged his forehead with his flesh fingers. Without meeting their eyes, he launched into an explanation which Vyrs cracked his knuckles impatiently throughout: "You can consider yourselves ambassadors for the people of Janovay within the Karalian Union, but you are Karalian now. You already carry the Syndrome. Don't delude yourselves into thinking us your enemy, because you'll find no other home now. Nobody else will harbour you. You're infected. If you want to live in hope, you can only join us whole-heartedly. Or else you can slink quietly away to die, giving up all hope of a disease-free existence for your descendants."

"A disease," Nyssa said slowly. "The Syndrome." All her preconceptions and deductions about the Karalian Union crumbled. All the possibilities she'd considered, yet this one had never entered her mind. The Karalians were victims, too. That was how they assimilated their conquests so easily and absolutely. Once exposed to the Syndrome you were Karalian. Their racial identity was defined by a disease.

"Those people we saw." She turned to Dunae angrily. "I thought you took us past those rooms on purpose. You meant to show us what was in store for us. You were trying to manipulate us."

Dunae nodded cagily. "Standard procedure."

"Shock tactics," Nyssa corrected.

"If you like."

"It's the truth, isn't it?"

The Captain coughed, drawing their attention. "You seem to be taking this very calmly..."

"My name is Nyssa of Traken," she filled in. "I'm not from Janovay. And you don't need to use coercion to gain my help."

"Nyssa," Bannot said with concern. His hands left the desk to grasp her shoulders, and his knees buckled. She clasped her arms about his waist, struggling to keep him from falling. He continued nonetheless, "You know what the Doctor said. You can't interfere-"

"Can't I? Bannot, the Doctor's only guessing. And he may know about the Janovians' fate but I'm not so sure about the Karalians. I know techniques and theory more advanced than anything they'll have seen. I can help them. Imagine the suffering - there are millions of Karalians. Billions. Likely more than a thousand aboard this ship alone. So many people infected, living in pain and dying in misery. How can I not help? What about you? You're contaminated too, now." She looked to Captain Alzen and Dr. Vyrs, who were watching with confused incredulity.

"My people excelled at medicine and bioelectronics. Give me a laboratory and some time. I'll see what I can do."

Chapter 12

"You can't mean that," Luthen said, his chin jerking up. He took a dangerous step closer. "We've been searching for a cure for generations, and now there's finally a possibility of finding one you want to snatch it away?"

"I don't want to!" the Doctor protested. A deliberate breath, a brief closing of his eyes, searching for calm. The situation on Janovay had set his nerves far too much on edge. He sidestepped Luthen, paced back and forth across the tiled floor while the Karalian watched him with new suspicion. "But Nyssa's from your future, as I am. As far as history is concerned, she isn't supposed to be here. If she finds a cure for the Syndrome it could change the timeline just as drastically as saving Janovay would."

"Could or could not. Perhaps and perhaps not," Verani said dryly. "You're not really sure, are you, Doctor? But, as we have seen, you would prefer to err on the side of the rather vague threat to the masses than the definite threat to a single race."

The Doctor gave Verani a frown, but could hardly blame her or Luthen for their bitterness. He said, the pitch of his voice rising in agitation, "It would be very nice if we could all go around changing the wrongs of the past to make the universe a better place, but that isn't how it works. We'd be more likely to wrap up this part of the universe in a neat little temporal paradox which even the Time Lords wouldn't be able to fix. Don't you see we wouldn't be saving the Karalians, or Janovay, in the end? You have to look at the big picture. Sometimes there's really nothing you can do about the details... the individuals."

"You don't believe that, do you, Doctor?" Verani asked softly.

"I can't say I haven't bent the rules a few times trying not to believe it, but this is a case of why the rules were made! I have to get to Nyssa and stop her before it's too late."

"No," said Luthen. His real hand bunched into a fist at his side, and the Doctor regarded the Karalian warily. "What if this was always meant to happen, and... and your reality is the mistake?"

"An interesting question theoretically, but the universe doesn't count upon time travel as part of the natural order. The original timeline is the stable one."

"Wouldn't your people help us if they knew the Janovians were of their race?"

Taken aback by the suggestion, it took several seconds for the implications of what Luthen was asking to sink in. "No!" he said. "My people must not find out about this. And for your information, Verani and I are not of the same race. It's a simple matter of similarities in biological make-up. Just like Karalians and humans, despite there being no relationship whatsoever between Tegan's race and yours."

Verani smiled sardonically. "What if there was and you didn't know it? I remember the Ancestors. They escaped here to set up their colony on Janovay, fleeing the War in the Future."

"I didn't hear that and you're not going to repeat it!" the Doctor yelled, throwing his hands up to cover his ears. "If what you're talking about is my - my people's - future I can't afford to hear it!" Verani's smile subsided into a grimace and he cautiously lowered his hands.

"I've always known the future of my people," she said. "It's my duty, as it was that of my father before me, and all of my line back to the first generation."

"Yes. What you remember is the future. A future in which the Janovians died and the Karalian Union presumably went on to ravage this corner of the universe for another few centuries. Which means that we can't afford to change any of it! I thought you understood that." He swung around to address Luthen, whose confusion was evident. "You can see that, can't you? I wouldn't be harming your people. They've been given a chance history never meant them to have, and it may seem unfair to take it away but it is also necessary!"

Luthen stammered, "I... I don't know. I don't know anything about these things. Jovanka tried to explain about changing the past-"

"Tegan," the Doctor sighed. "She made quite an impression on you."

"She saved my life! She saved my life at the cost of her own, and you wouldn't even save her..." He faltered. "You wouldn't save her for the same reasons you say we have to stop any chance of your other friend developing a cure."

"Yes!" exclaimed the Doctor. "That's right."

"Maybe Nyssa won't help," the Karalian said. "Or maybe you underestimate her ability to cure the Syndrome - after all, thousands of our scientists have been trying for years."

"She wanted to help us in defiance of logic," Verani pointed out.

"She has the knowledge of the sciences they need, and she doesn't know for sure about the Karalians' fate," the Doctor said. "If she'd rather gamble on that ignorance than refuse to help them... It's too great a risk. I need to get to her."

"Isn't all this a bit academic when we can't get onto the Karalian ship to do anything about it?" Luthen asked testily. "We'd be shot down before we got anywhere near."

"Not in the TARDIS." The Doctor pulled the key from his pocket and swung it on its string. "Who's coming with me?"

Verani shook her head, folded her arms across her chest. "My duty is here with my people. What happens to the Karalians does not concern me."

"Luthen? Do you want to go home?"

"I'll come with you." There was darkness in Luthen's gaze and the Doctor knew it was unlikely to be from desire to help his own mission that the youth offered to accompany him. Luthen owed his loyalty to his people first, in spite of their atrocities. The Karalians had been searching for their miracle cure for just too long.

But he nodded and grinned cheerily, "Good. It's not the same on my own. Verani..." He caught one of the First Councillor's hands and clasped it in both of his, a genial farewell gesture. "I'll be back," he said. "I have to retrieve Tegan yet. Until then..."

Irony raised Verani's eyebrows, and the morose smile which touched her mouth suggested she knew something he didn't. Her eyes were sad as she said, "Goodbye, Doctor."

The Doctor hesitated, torn between the need for haste and the desire to question her reaction. With a snap decision, he caught Luthen by the arm and hustled him out of the room, calling back to Verani, "See you soon!"

He thought he heard her reply, softly, almost prophetically, "I doubt it."

"Do you think she means it?" Alzen asked, staring at the door out of which Sergeant Dunae had just escorted Nyssa and her Janovian companion, taking them to a lab so Nyssa could begin work. He tapped his metal fingers on the edge of the desk, making small, blunt staccato sounds, an exercise to increase the dexterity of the cybernetic joints that had become a habit.

"Don't get your hopes up," Vyrs said, a harsher note in his voice than just his usual brusqueness. Alzen could almost see him deliberately crushing any faint stirrings of hope.

Doctor Vyrs didn't, and never yet had, suffered from the full-blown effects of the Syndrome. In him, the disease was still in its dormancy. At thirty-one, he was one of the oldest Karalians to survive intact, but he still had the Syndrome to look forward to, and over the years its stretched-out inevitability had put a dark edge on his naturally caustic and dry personality. Alzen had known him a long time.

"She doesn't know what she's up against yet," Vyrs continued. "Even if she has skills and is willing to use them, she's only guessing that she can do anything. Probably wishful thinking. She'll fail, just like everyone else."

"She seemed remarkably confident," Alzen said. "Her reaction was hardly normal." Absently, he picked up the paintbrush from the desk and twirled it in his cybernetic fingers. He'd always been left-handed; typical that the Syndrome should have taken that hand.

"No," Vyrs agreed. "Physically she's almost Karalian, you know. The differences are so minor as to be insignificant. Her friend... I've never seen anything like Janovian physiology. It's a pity it isn't any help to us. It tested as having a high vulnerability to the Syndrome because of the regenerative capabilities and the other frills, would you believe? But that girl... she acts like she's seen a lot more than the natives. Her capture by us was hardly the worst thing that's ever happened to her. You can see it in her eyes. I wonder what her story is."

"You could ask her," Alzen suggested with a hint of sarcasm. "You know. Conversation. The act of communication. Talk to somebody other than me for a change."

Vyrs glowered, then relented and sighed heavily. He was not a man who made the best of the Karalians' lot, but there was a feeling person inside there - somewhere - if you only took the time to look, as Alzen had. "It won't work, you know," he said. "Dangerous to even think of any other possibility."

Alzen shrugged. He knew that if Vyrs really thought so, he wouldn't continue to search so hard as he did.

"Here." Dunae stopped in front of a door off the corridor. She punched its control panel and it slid open. "You can work in here."

Nyssa looked up from the papers she'd been studying, surprised. It didn't seem more than a few seconds since she'd started skimming over the files on the Syndrome that Vyrs had given her. She'd read through a good portion the bulky file while they walked through the corridors of the huge spaceship, oblivious to her surroundings and Councillor Bannot's weight on her arm.

They were back in a familiar area of the ship. This place was not very far from the main laboratory where they had been held prisoner. It made sense: the scientific facilities on the ship would be bunched close together for convenience. The awareness of their former cage's proximity unnerved her and, stepping forward over that threshold, she shivered a little in anticipation.

But the small room Dunae showed them into was very different to the overwhelming noise and size of the main laboratory. It seemed well stocked with equipment, a vast array of full jars and packets lining the shelves and refrigerating units covering two of its four walls. A large work surface stood in the centre of the floor, and a few comfortable-looking chairs lounged in an alcove next to the door.

"Most of what you need should be in here," Dunae said. "If you need anything else, ask. If we can get it, we will."

Nyssa nodded, distracted helping Bannot to sink into a chair.

"Sorry," the Janovian said. He rubbed at his forehead. He seemed distant, confused. There was a sheen of moisture on his skin. "It must be the stresses of regeneration catching up with me."

Dunae snorted without any real malice as she closed the door. She flopped into the chair next to Bannot, her posture a disdainful slouch which hadn't manifested in front of either her superiors or those under her command.

Nyssa left Bannot to dump the heavy pile of papers down onto the work table, but no sooner had their weight left her hands then she was turning back. "He's ill, isn't he?" she demanded of the Karalian sergeant. "You know something, don't you?"

Scowling, Dunae said, "The blood samples we took showed a high vulnerability to the Syndrome in his race. You'd better work quickly on your miracle cure, because your friend here's probably dying already. He's alien enough for the disease to be unpredictable for us. We can't do anything to help him. It happens. We came across it recently on Miros II."

She said it emotionlessly, but horrors haunted her eyes. What Dunae must have seen, if Miros had been such a catastrophe... although their moral sensibilities had not impressed much so far, the Karalian did not deliberately kill. In fact, their society seemed very much geared towards the preservation of life. Nyssa saw through her cold front, saw pity there, and unhappily turned back to her substantial research. Another life at stake. There was so much on her head now that the extra pressure of Bannot's probable impending demise didn't seem to add anything palpable to the strain already weighting her mind. She found her place in the notes and continued scanning the Karalians' research.

It didn't take too long to ingest what was known about Amnos' Syndrome, and she was beginning to develop some ideas by the time she set the papers down again.

"I'll have to do some tests," she said. Dunae glanced up from her patient slouch and nodded a glassy-eyed acknowledgement. Nyssa was very conscious of the sergeant's eyes upon her as she explored the small laboratory, opening cupboards and refrigerator units. It felt uncomfortable to be so closely watched, especially when there was no hope in Dunae's eyes, only hostility for the person who'd dared bring up the possibility of hope.

She gathered a little pile of equipment and arranged it on the table. There was a diagnostic computer, fairly primitive in design but it would be useful nonetheless. It could scan and analyse the samples she set up competently enough. She spent several minutes interpreting the peculiarities of Karalian technical systems and shortly managed to get it operational.

"I'll need some of your blood, for a sample of the Syndrome," she said to Dunae.

"His or yours would do just as well by now."

"Bannot's race is very different to either of ours." Nyssa kept her voice level and reasonable. "And I can't even be sure I've picked up the contagion yet, or that it would show up in its early stages if I had. Your blood would provide a much more reliable sample."

"All right," Dunae conceded. She rolled up her left sleeve with some difficulty. Bannot had fallen asleep and his head slumped against her shoulder, his breathing almost imperceptible, his skin pale. Nyssa hoped it was backlash from his recent regeneration, but it was equally possibly the Syndrome beginning to take its grip. Dunae studiously ignored him, which surprised her a little until she remembered that the Karalian were used to looking after the sick as a matter of course.

They were also used to medical procedure. The sergeant didn't flinch as Nyssa drew her blood.

She returned to the work table and stared into the red liquid. It looked perfectly normal. Nothing to see. Yet she shuddered to look upon it. In there lurked the enemy, a scourge that had ruined millions of lives.

Luthen followed the Doctor across the grasslands at an awkward, lopsided run, his cybernetics putting him at a distinct disadvantage.

"Wait!" he yelled at the Doctor's coat-tails. The alien turned around and continued to run, backwards, for several steps, then slowed to a walk. Luthen asked, "What's the hurry, anyway? If your TARDIS is a time machine, what does it matter how long we take? Can't you set it to arrive on the ship at whatever time you please?"

The Doctor looked appalled. "That would be cheating. Irresponsible behaviour like that creates just the sorts of problems we're trying to avoid."

"But nobody would know."

"That doesn't mean the meddling isn't still there, imprinted on the timelines."

Luthen sighed. "Verani," he began, more conversationally, falling into step as the Doctor settled into a brisk stride he could just about match. "Can she really see the future? I mean, Jovanka said the First Councillor had visions, but I thought that was just superstition. Verani, though... she seems to really know things."

"Yes, she does," the Doctor agreed. "But don't worry, there's nothing magical about Verani's case of second sight. Her Ancestors came from the future, further forward than myself. What Verani calls Sight is nothing more than a genetically programmed racial memory, filled with all the information the Janovians would need to survive... and to die. They couldn't, of course, keep records. Nobody was to know who they were or where they'd come from." He was almost talking to himself as he finished, his voice little more than a murmur.

Astonished, Luthen asked, "How do you know that?"

"It's her bloodline. They carry the memories. It had to be genetic. Once I had an idea what the Janovians were, I knew what Verani's powers are really about. She's their control, a living databank. Except she broke. Too mortal... Trust them to overlook that."

"Control?"

"To keep them in line. They hid themselves down a historical dead end. Whoever fixed it that way originally must have thought it the only way they could hide - without a future. Verani's bloodline was meant to ensure that everything stayed according to plan."

"But who or what were they hiding from?"

The Doctor said, severely, "I have no intention of trying to work that out. I'm trying very hard to forget the little Verani did tell me."

"But Janovay is a sham? Set up to fool... someone."

"Persons unknown and to remain unknown, yes. And history itself, of course. They made themselves an inextricable part of universal history, so nobody could remove them before their time. Buried in the past. They must have been very desperate-"

"Doctor," Luthen warned. "You said you weren't going to think about it."

"Yes. Indeed. Well, here we are."

They stood again in front of the blue box. The Doctor raised the bit of metal he'd been swinging in his hand, the double of Jovanka's key, and set it to the lock. The TARDIS opened with a friendly click that Luthen could've sworn sounded almost like a greeting. The Doctor grinned and walked inside. He shrugged off his jacket and hung it on the hat stand with the manner of someone coming home after too long away.

"Hello, old girl," he said to the air. He flicked a lever on the hexagonal console and the doors slid shut. "Luthen, this is the TARDIS. Say hello nicely."

Luthen wasn't sure if he was joking. "We've met," he said. "I came here with Jovanka. She had one of those keys, too."

The Doctor nodded. "They were supposed to use the TARDIS to return to Earth, Tegan's home planet," he explained morosely. "I should have known they'd never be so sensible."

"I wish I could have saved her," Luthen said. "I'm sorry, Doctor. If I'd been a little quicker... if I'd shot Kweril first... But I hesitated, I was too slow, and she died."

"I'm hardly going to berate you for not slaughtering another living being," the Doctor said with a frown. He flinched, forehead creasing in pain, and rubbed at his temples before regrouping. "And you shouldn't berate yourself, either. But perhaps you should consider a career change, Luthen. I have a feeling the military is not for you."

Luthen laughed, but bitterness choked off his mirth in short order.

The Doctor concentrated on the TARDIS console, hitting switches and squinting through his gold frames at flickering readout screens. The lighted column in the centre of the octagonal console started to rise and fall, and there was a brief groaning, churning noise. "Well, we should be there in a minute."

Luthen looked up, alarmed. "But we're not moving." The only sensation of movement was a low humming that seemed to reverberate through his bones and his cybernetics.

"Yes. A smooth trip." The Doctor took his coat from the hat stand and appeared for the first time to notice the blood staining it. With irritation, he tossed it back. It missed the prongs and landed in a heap on the floor.

He flicked a switch on the console. The column stopped moving and the noise ceased.

"Come along," he said brightly, heading for the door, and Luthen followed, wondering what his Karalian compatriots would make of the Doctor.

SAMPLE 129...
SUBJECT DIAGNOSIS A-S- CORRUPTED
PROGNOSIS TERMINAL
SAMPLE 130...
SUBJECT DIAGNOSIS FREE FROM A-S- CORRUPTION
PROGNOSIS NORMAL
SAMPLE 131...
SUBJECT DIAGNOSIS A-S- CORRUPTED
PROGNOSIS TERMINAL

Nyssa's eyes ached from long hours of close work. She stared at the diagnostic computer's flickering screen as it ran through its examination of her treated samples. She was so tired she almost missed the one that mattered. In the moment it took to register, she was already reading on down the list. Her weary eyes leaped back up the screen as realisation hit.

She quashed her initial excitement. It could be a mistake. She'd have to repeat the process she'd used for sample 130 several times on different specimens of the Syndrome before she'd know for sure.

She returned to her notes from 130, doggedly checking and rechecking every detail, knowing the Karalians had never expected her to succeed and she might not get another chance if she made a mistake on her first attempt. Eventually she looked up to Sergeant Dunae, still in the chair by the door with a semi-conscious Bannot slumped against her.

"I've done it," Nyssa said hoarsely.

"What?" Alzen choked, unable to believe what he was hearing. "Don't be ridiculous. Of course she can't have done it."

"That was my reaction," said Vyrs dryly. His face was twisted in an expression which had never touched his features before - a broad, toothy grin. "Until I'd checked and double checked her results. It's true. Believe it. She's found the cure. In a little less than a day, she read through the results of a century's previous study and had an embryonic version of the formula prepared. I've never seen anything like it. Her people, wherever they are, must be advanced beyond belief."

Alzen's legs felt abruptly very weak and he found it necessary to sit down. The edge of his desk was nearest, and he almost missed it in his shock.

"Has she finalized a usable version of the formula?" he asked, abruptly realising the degree of responsibility now weighted upon him. "We have to get this out, quickly as possible. Just think, there are Karalians dying out there - and they don't need to anymore. If anything should happen to this ship, we can't afford for the cure to die with us."

Nyssa sighed as she read the computer's analysis of the hurriedly submitted sample and, with minimal fuss, rolled up her own sleeve and injected a dose of the formula. The Syndrome was indeed swift to take hold. It had settled in the cells of her body already, only hours after her first exposure to it.

She wouldn't have halted to use the formula on herself if Bannot hadn't insisted she do so, illogically afraid that what was happening to him might also begin to take hold upon her. Once done, she returned to adapting the cure for Bannot's Janovian physiology. It was a sideline she wasn't sure the Karalians would care much about, and one which had developed considerable urgency, so she worked through her tiredness while the Karalians were still running around in the initial confusion engendered by the news.

Bannot was in a bad way, and deteriorating rapidly. It had started about an hour ago, as she was finalizing the last details of the formula. There was no longer any doubt that it was the Syndrome at work; it was active already, thin red lines creeping across his fingers and hands visibly marking the beginnings of the nerve inflammation.

"Don't worry," she said, afraid her own strain showed in her voice. She was so tired, and concentration was difficult, and she was terrified of making a deadly error. "I've almost done it. You'll be all right, Councillor Bannot." It was not fair that he should die. He had already gone through enough.

He met the disease with the familiar Janovian calm, eyes closed in silent meditation to control the agony he must surely be in. Dunae had left for a while to spread the news, but had returned and she sat as before, though apparently now by choice rather than orders, looking after Bannot while Nyssa worked.

Nyssa was racing against time to beat the disease before too much irreversible damage was done.

"Ready," she gasped finally, as the diagnostic computer spat out a ream of encouragingly positive text. With trembling hands, she transferred a likely amount of the mixture into an injector, and saved Bannot's life and limbs.

As Bannot relaxed into a healing sleep cradled by the brusque Karalian Sergeant, Nyssa rubbed her eyes, fighting against her own tiredness - and thought, wearily, that the Janovians were certainly very vulnerable to Amnos' Syndrome.

"You're the saviour of the Karalian Union," Vyrs said to her as she was escorted through the corridors of the ship, flanked by the head scientist and Captain Alzen. "There aren't the words to thank you for what you've done."

"All I want is to get back to Janovay to my friends," Nyssa said. "As soon as possible. I'm happy to have been able to help you, but my friends were in trouble when I left. I have to return."

She also needed sleep. It had been over two days since she'd slept. Exhaustion dragged her steps, and only her sense of triumph kept her on her feet, but she did not want to dilute the focus of her request. The reward of release had not been in her mind when she'd offered to help the Karalians, nevertheless that hope leaped up in her now.

Karalians peered at her through open doors and glass observation windows as they walked through the ship, looking on with an awe Nyssa found bizarre and uncomfortable.

Saviour of the Karalian Union...

"We will return you to your people. It's the least we can do," Vyrs said congenially. Dr Vyrs was a changed man. The bitterness that had animated his thin frame had evaporated in the space of an hour, alongside the Syndrome itself.

She hoped the Doctor was all right. The Janovians obviously hadn't managed to force him to destroy the Karalian fleet, but then she had never imagined they would. Still, she worried about what he'd been planning when she and Tegan left him. She wondered if anything could be done now for Tegan, who'd been over a day inside the temporal device.

"And we must distribute your cure to the people of Janovay," Alzen added. Nyssa, distracted, mid-yawn, barely heard him.

Sergeant Jisa Dunae remained where she was after Nyssa left with Captain Alzen and Doctor Vyrs. For a long time she sat unmoving, staring at nothing; conscious of Bannot's weight across her lap, of the ever-present chill of the unfeeling metal which began just above her knee joints.

Amnos' Syndrome was gone from her body. She was immune to it now. She'd never suffer its agonies again.

She'd been the first living subject the cure had been tested upon. Nyssa had been unsure, but she'd insisted upon volunteering her services. It was the point when she'd realised all of it was for real. It was happening. The Syndrome was defeated, after years of savage battle.

Dunae wasn't sure what she would do. She sat and thought, numbly, of a future where it was no longer necessary to fight. For the first time in her life she would have a choice.

Bannot shifted and groaned and blinked himself awake. Awkwardly, Dunae helped him to sit up. He thanked her with a gentle, crooked smile and calmly studied his hands. He showed them to her wordlessly. They were covered in angry red Syndrome lesions that would soften over time to pale white scar tissue. But it was no longer getting any worse.

"She saved us," Bannot said quietly. His voice seemed to carry peace within it. "It's such a terrible thing, that all her people are dead. They must have been something."

Dunae wasn't sure what he was talking about. There was a jumble of emotion inside her at the speed and scope of the day's events. She realised with faint horror that not only was she grinning like an idiot, but moisture had begun to leak from her eyes.

Bannot looked at her with concern.

"I'm all right," she said. "Really. It's gone. Everything's all right. But it's gone. What are we going to do with our lives now?"

"This is the communications room," Alzen said. "I never thought this would be the scene of the historic event, though of course I dreamed it. I suppose every ship's commanding officer does."

Nyssa looked around the equipment lining the walls - an elaborate communication system, by the standards of Karalian technology, maintained in far better repair than most of the rest of the ship. So maintained for just the purpose for which it was about to be used, she realised. With this equipment they could broadcast information to every Karalian ship and planetary base.

That information being the cure to Amnos' Syndrome; the formula which Vyrs held in his hand, contained within a squat, round disc. Nyssa had helped Vyrs to translate the cure into data that Karalian scientists would be able to interpret.

Alzen took the disc with an unnecessarily elaborate care and fed it into the machine. He tapped at the console, making small lights dance. The display called up on the screen showed a starburst of lines radiating out from a central point, connecting to an array of variously distant objects. Karalian ships and installations in relation to their own present location; too many of them to count. Those dots represented thousands of Karalian labs and Captains and Chief Scientists. Nyssa stared at the network that would spread the formula around the stars.

"This button-" Alzen tapped the console next to a red control "-will broadcast the cure to every Karalian communication system. I'd like you to do the honours."

Too tired to be awed by ceremony, Nyssa leaned forward and wearily pressed the button, changing irrevocably the face and the future of the Karalian Union.