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"It was a long time ago."

"How long? It can't be that long. What are you hiding?" Fresh worries had begun to force themselves into her thoughts. Very carefully she said, "We are talking about the Doctor, aren't we?"

The light guttered out. There was no reply.

"Shonnzi? Are we talking about the Doctor?"

"Yes." He sounded almost reluctant.

"Well, thank God for that."

"It gets hot. The light."

"Is the Doctor all right?"

Shonnzi sighed. "We'll stay here. The others won't be long."

"What about the Doctor?"

"You never stop asking questions," he retaliated. "Just wait, will you? It's been a long time. And when the grumblies get here, let me do the talking."

Ace flopped back on to the musty clothes, too tired to argue. "Will they know?" she asked. "Is it safe?"

"Nothing's safe."

"I just want to know what's going on."

His eyes flickered in the pool of starlight from the porthole. "Come on, Ace," he said quietly. "I thought you'd tell us that."

Vael slipped into a side alley. The arteries were deserted. The Phazels had gone. And so had he. Now what?

The guards were still in the atrium. Their high insect voices fluting and twittering urgent messages back and forth from the Watch Tower. Instructions from the Process.

Vael was shaking with what he had seen. The dark apparition. The accusing finger pinning him down. Like a questioning eye, another riddle from the Sphinx.

"Who is to blame?"

An alarm bell was clanging out its threat. More guards were leaving the Tower. He had no choice and no time. Find the Phazels before the guards do. Or there'd be a drastic drop in the population, starting with him.

He could guess where they had gone. He cut a path down the grey alleys and passages that led towards the banks of the mercury stream. That sector was quiet, often shrouded in the smoky fog that drifted across from the next City. He had long suspected that was where Shonnzi had hidden himself. He decided that he would not face the Process again until he had Shonnzi scrabbling like a cat in a net.

Halfway across a grey courtyard surrounded by thin curving pillars like grey crescent planets, he saw footprints in the dust. With no rain to wash them out and no wind to grind them down, they could have been laid an eternity ago. Vael had a memory of soft rain falling in the summer at somewhere he half remembered as a different home. He had hated it. But he still recalled the fresh green smell of the pasture fields after the rain. In the dead City, only the fall of fresh dust could smother the footprints away. He hated that more.

These footprints had a fresh silvered glint. They led off between two monolithic slabs of tilting stone that supported a massive dodecahedron on their summit like the cinder of a fallen star.

As Vael ducked under the arch, an armoured claw caught his arm and pinned him to the stone. He stared up at the quivering mass of red eyes on the guard's brutal head. The sharp mandibles like a beak marked it out as the Guard Captain itself.

A voice half croaked, half whispered with a parched guttural hatred. Like dust talking. It was the voice of the Process. The Captain was merely its instrument.

"No searching. The Phazels, why are they not searching?"

Vael choked with fright. He struggled to recover the fawning manner he reserved for dealing with his monstrous master. "Thank you for finding me. I was trying to warn you. There's something in that section of the City."

"Shonnzi Phazel."

"No, not this time."

The rough armoured claws were gripping under his arms, sliding him up the wall. His feet kicked out hopelessly for the ground.

"Searching, the Process orders it. Why no searching?"

Even at second hand an encounter with his master filled Vael with nausea. "Talk to the guards. They saw what happened. We need a massive sweep through that section. Take the whole area apart."

The voice gave a rasping grate of rage. The Captain raised Vael high and flung him into the dust.

"The City, disturbance in all Phases. Dangerous Time shifts. Why?"

Vael began to haul himself up. The Process's