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The other two figures, Reogus and Chesperl, still clung nervously to each other, watching Ace without a word.

Pekkary sighed. "We knew this would happen. You warned us that you would return."

"What? I've never seen you before in my life," exploded Ace. "I just want to find the Doctor."

Shonnzi touched her arm gently. "Did you listen to the story, or what?"

"How should I know what it means?"

He looked angry. "You must know. You said it wasn't true."

She grasped at what he meant. "That's right. The Doctor wouldn't attack you. You got it wrong."

"Yes?" Only Shonnzi encouraged her. The rest of the audience viewed her with cold impassivity.

"I saw you. I remember. Just as the TARDIS exploded, I saw you. It was your ship. Sliding through the walls like ghosts. And you saw us too, you must have done. The ships must have crashed."

"You see," exclaimed Shonnzi, "Ace has the answers. She can help us break out of this."

Pekkary and Amnoni exchanged glances.

"It wasn't deliberate," Ace added.

"Tell us where the Doctor hid the Future," said Amnoni.

Ace wondered why she wasn't fazed by this question, but then anything was possible with the Doctor. He was capable of losing things often enough. His keys, his memory and his temper. Why shouldn't he hide things as well? Even impossible things like the Future. "Why should I tell you?" she said.

Reogus suddenly lurched out of his position towards her. His every gesture seemed to burst with energy. Ace thought he would crush her in his bare hands. "Because the Process has driven us without mercy to find it! All this time, working like slaves, because of you!"

"Reogus Teleem!" asserted Pekkary. For a moment, the hair fell away from his face. Ace saw the red weal on his cheek and an eye like a blank white marble in its socket.

Reogus drew grudgingly back. "I'll make her tell us," he said.

Ace couldn't help laughing. "Tell you how to find the Future? You're all flutters. You're crazy," she scorned. "And whatever you say about the Doctor, it isn't true. All I care about is finding him. Even if it's ten years since you saw him, he can't have gone far. He must still be on this stupid planet. He can't leave without the TARDIS."

"None of us can leave," said Amnoni.

Ace turned to Shonnzi. "Where do I start looking? You'd better tell me about this Process thing. Do I go and talk to that?"

"Going out there alone is stupid," he said. "Too dangerous. And we need you here. There are so many questions to answer."

"What's the point when they don't believe me anyway?"

"I do. And they will. Trust me, Ace. Just one question."

Ace sighed. "If it means that much to you."

"Yes, it does."

If nothing else, he was persistent. But she wasn't going to let him have it all his own way. "Only if I get another of those biscuit things," she said.

The group glanced at each other. "Hospitality," said Pekkary and nodded.

"Thanks," said Ace and managed to palm two. Shonnzi looked at her with an intensity that said: get this right Ace, or we've both had it. She almost felt she liked him, apart from his stupid hat.

"Go on then," she said.

"In the story he told, the Captain said we came from another world before we were wrecked on this one."

"Yeah?" She guessed what was coming. She glanced at the others and saw how they stared at Shonnzi with an affection that was almost parental. Somehow everything they were depended on this one question.

There was a hint of irritation in his voice. "They cannot remember what that world is called."

She took it as calmly as she could and tried to think it through. "You're time travellers, yeah?"

Shonnzi nodded. "They think we might have been."

Ace thumbed through her brain trying to avoid the obvious answer. Don't ask me, she thought. I'm just boring old Dorothy from Perivale. What do I know about it?

Their eyes were grilling her alive.

No, you're not. You're Ace. And you know the answer.

The only other solution she could think of was impossible — Daleks didn't and never, ever had eaten crunchy brown finger biscuits.