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Bernice could tell that she felt uncomfortable in something that wasn't bullet-proof and laser-resistant. 'Ultimate evil, and all that guff, It's a bit hard to swallow, Professor. If you hadn't stopped it, somebody else would have done. I've seen the future, remember? The future of all this. I was born in it.'

'Time's a funny thing,' the Doctor mused, gazing with a strange expression at the girl who was painting the watercolour landscape. 'Didn't the business with the Monk and his pet chronovore illustrate precisely that point? The lives of every planet, every person and every proton are like trickles of water running down a window. Their courses may look fixed, but if you disturb them early on then they can trickle into another path entirely'

Ace summed up her viewpoint in one succinct word.

Before the Doctor's temper boiled over, Bernice said, 'So, do I take it that the old man sitting over there is you?'

'In a sense.'

'In what sort of sense, precisely?'

'In a rather imprecise sense.'

'He doesn't look very much like you.'

'I was five hundred years younger then,' the Doctor said gloomily. 'You may not believe it, but age has mellowed me.'

Ace snorted.

'You should write your autobiography,' she said. 'Confessions of a Roving Time Lord. You'd sell a billion.'

'Ah,' said the Doctor, 'that reminds me...'

He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a small, leather-bound book.

'A present for you both,' he said.

Bernice took the book from his outstretched hand.

'All-Consuming Fire,' she read, grinning. 'Being a Reprint From the Reminiscences of Doctor John Watson As Edited by Arthur Conan Doyle.'

She rifled through the pages.

'This is weird, seeing them called Holmes and Watson.'

'That's how history remembers them. That's how Arthur protected their identities.'

'Arthur?' Ace looked interested. 'Mate of yours, this Doyle character?'

The Doctor looked away.

'Oh, our paths crossed, longer ago that I care to remember. Arthur Conan Doyle and Rudyard Kipling. Do you like Kipling?'

'I don't know,' Ace replied with a cheeky grin, 'I've never kippled.'

Bernice, who had been flicking through the book looking for her first appearance, laughed suddenly.

'What is it?' the Doctor asked.

'You, after that creature fell on you,' she giggled. 'I still remember the look on your face.'

The Doctor frowned, and gazed at the faded pink stains on his linen jacket.

'I'll never get these blood-stains out,' he murmured.

Bernice hardly heard him. She had flipped back to the start of the book and was already reading the first few words.

Chapter 1

In which Holmes and Watson return from holiday and an illustrious client commissions their services

A reprint from the reminiscences of John H. Watson M.D.

As I flick through the thirty-five volumes of my diary I find records of the many bizarre cases that my friend Sherlock Holmes and I were engaged in over the years. In the volume for eighteen eighty four, to take an example, I see the repulsive story of the red leech and the tale of the terrible death of Crosby the banker. Again, in the tome devoted to eighteen eighty six my eye is caught by the singular affair of the aluminium crutch and its connection with an attempt upon the life of our dear sovereign: a story for which the world is singularly unprepared. It is, however, the year eighteen eighty seven which occupies no less that three volumes of my diary.

Following the tragic curtailment of my marriage to Constance Adams of California I was again living under the same roof as Holmes. I still maintained a small practice in Paddington, but my work was undemanding

- so much so that I had turned my hand to writing an account of my meeting with Holmes for private publication - and I always managed to make myself available on those occasions when Holmes requested my presence (I cannot, in all honesty, say help) on a case.

All through the spring and summer of that year the brass knocker on the door of 221b Baker Street seemed never to