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"Time is so cruel," he said. "It's the worst monster of all. It has the most tricks and it always wins in the end. But I can't fight it alone. I need you, Ace."

The tears came in a flood at last. She howled.

"Stupid little creature," sneered the voice from the first cocoon. "She'll get herself killed making that row."

"Shut up, Vael!" growled the Doctor and his authority was unchallengeable.

Ace sat and cried until she ached.

Finally the Doctor said, "Hush Ace, hush. I cannot ever wipe this terrible memory away from you. Not with love or hypnosis. You will always remember."

She turned her head towards him. His eye was watching from a gap low in the mesh of the second cocoon. Blue, green, grey. Soft as water, fierce as the sky.

"But I need you Ace. I'm the fool and you're my best friend. You saved me. You kept my memory alive. Until the memory was real again.

She ran her hand across her tearstreaked face and through her straggled and filthy hair. The knife lay beside her on the floor. She reached for it and looked to his eye again.

"Please," he said.

She crawled across the walkway towards him. The brittle filament snapped easily under the blade. The cocoon fizzed apart and he somersaulted to the floor. He caught her in his arms and the tears came again.

"Tell Mum I'm sorry," she choked.

"No need, no need," he said, gently rocking her. "Ace, I swear it will never happen. Trust me. That possibility's a long way away."

"Shonnzi," she gulped. "He helped save you too."

"And we'll save them . . . somehow."

There was a teeth-jolting clank. The whole Tower shuddered.

"No more tears," he said and fumbled for his handkerchief. He couldn't find it, so he dabbed at her face with his ragged pullover. "You'll get dehydrated and I'll get soaked. We have a Beginning to catch."

She nodded towards the other cocoon. "What about him?"

The Doctor smiled and whispered, "Someone's been keeping an eye on young Vael. He has friends in very high places." Raising his voice, he added, "But his Nanny definitely doesn't know best, although she certainly ought to know better."

Ace showed little sign of interest, so he set to work on the cocoon with the knife. "The trouble is, she shouldn't be allowed to know anything at all."

The cocoon unravelled with a fizz and Vael tumbled out. "She wouldn't be here without me," he said.

29: Beginning Again

The Phazels crouched on the high platform where they had been left. A series of mechanical devices had carried the palette through the framework of the iron Tower. Finally, it swung down the rim of a vertical wheel and jolted to a halt over a deep well. The hollow shaft at the heart of the fortress was broken by a circle of similar upright wheels. Light from the moon overhead shone down through the gantries. Steam rose from grinding engines in the mechanized Hell below. Something new was happening. The girders creaked their protest as the engines turned faster and faster.

Across the chasm, the Opposite wheel was lowering a second platform to their level. On it stood the group of guards. Motionless and implacable. Each carrying another insect helmet for the recruitment of its own younger self.

The other wheels began to turn, each lowering their own platforms out over the well. The new palettes stopped level with the first, overlapping their neighbours, until a wide floor area was formed over the abyss like the plug of a volcano.

Guards and Phazels faced each other across the area. Rustred and dust-grey pawns in some diabolical chess game. Or so the Doctor thought as he watched from the walkway high on the side of the well. He pulled Ace and Vael back into the shadows as the last wheel carried its platform down into the arena.

On the palette stood the younger Process. The repulsive leech leaned its head vulturelike over the edge to view its victims. Beside it was another figure — the guard who had been Shonnzi, with the Pilot who would be Shonnzi slumped over one shoulder.

All Time was being swept away. Everything the