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"No."

It arched towards him, rearing hungrily, teeth flexing. The guards' claws were biting into his arms and Vael was becoming a dead weight.

"All that information you gorged yourself on," he snapped. "What a criminal waste! If you kill me, you'll never find out what's happening before the Future arrives."

"I will know!"

There was a grated clank of metal as the whole Tower that loomed above them shuddered in the latest tremor.

"You see," affirmed the Doctor. "It's all collapsing in on itself. Soon it won't be your miserable world at all."

The Process swept its head up in a wide arc to survey the parlous state of its universe. "More guards!" it croaked to its beetle-headed minions. "Recruit the other Phazels!"

The Doctor decided to laugh mockingly. "Your world's a complete shambles, Process. But not for much longer! Soon it'll be back with its rightful owner!"

"This Wilby, he has nothing to say," remarked the Process. "Bring him in."

The unconscious body of Vael was snatched out of the Doctor's arms. For a moment he thought he recognized the guard that lifted him bodily off the ground. It hefted him clumsily over its shoulder. As it carried him in through the Tower's gate, he cursed himself for behaving no better than so many of the villains and maniacs it had been his lot to overthrow. Gloating was always their downfall.

26: Moon Shadows

The stream had shrunken to a thin, forced torrent as the rumbling Phases of the City edged together. The temporal interface in the air crackled above its course. Mercury was flooding across the wide banks, drowning the sea of light flowers and creating silvered lakes in the bizarre moonlight.

The older Pekkary had built a fire on the higher ground away from the stream. The other Phazels gathered around it as the old Captain produced two dusty bottles out of his coat pockets. Ace used the corkscrew on her IC Swiss Army knife to open them. One bottle of Entre-trois-Mondes cuvée, produce of Trispheres, and one bottle of cheap cooking sherry, both remnants from the TARDIS's wine racks.

"These would be better from the Third Phase of the City, where they've had a chance to mature longer," said Pekkary.

"They'll do," said Ace and swigged at the sherry.

The Phazels passed the bottles between them. They had been silent since Ace had spoken the forbidden. They exchanged glances as if they no longer needed to speak words to communicate. Against all the despair and destruction that worked around them, Ace caught a new sense of relief in the group, a definite warmth of rediscovering something precious and long lost. She had caused that. It could not be wrong.

They lay among the flowers on the trembling ground like the spokes of a wheel, their heads towards the hub of the fire. Both the Pekkarys and Amnoni Distuyssor. Chesperl and Reogus with their outstretched hands intertwined and their futures doomed. Tiny curls of grey drifted from the ground around them, the germinating shoots of smoke that sometimes grew up in the still air to form a forest in this place. Overhead, the new moon coursed slowly up from its birthplace, shrouded in the clouds of dust that rose from the crumbling City.

Ace sat near to the Phazels, the warm glow growing in her. The drink was going to her head, but it didn't matter right now. There'd been nights like this on Horsenden Hill. A fire and her mates and drink and whatever . . . and a hangover in the morning. She understood the memories she had triggered in the Phazels — their previous lives on Gallifrey, the homes and families they had forgotten. Things that in similar circumstances she would have tried her damnedest to leave shut in the cupboard.

There was enough to worry about already. If the TARDIS was protecting the Doctor, how safe were the rest of them? The ship seemed to use them as it pleased. They were the resources available, but the Doctor was the only one the TARDIS really needed.

The fire flickered up into fantastical shapes at the heart of the thought wheel. Different colours and strange