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Past, present and possible run parallel. Now here, Now there and Now just across the stream. Here there is rubble, somewhere there is a building. Crumbled dust is also solid. But the ripple shifts Time into a new channel, making memories into imagination, and a mockery of plans. A blank page to start a fresh tale.

The great nebula slowly plumes and billows overhead like milk in water. First details change, then whole concepts. Only the stars are the same.

And there is still only Now — stretching back to the Beginning, when they were Chronauts, before they were Phazels.

The wheel jammed. The Doctor muttered a curse and fell off his bicycle into a ditch. The front tyre was flat.

Typical. He had never encountered a machine, from a TARDIS to a tin-opener, that was entirely reliable. Give them an inch and they'd argue for miles.

Which brought him back to Ace.

No sign of her yet. He could have lost both of them. His companion and his ship.

"Don't go wandering off, Ace," had become a habitual instruction. So he had left her and wandered off instead. Well, laws were there to be broken. How else did he gain his reputation as an innovator?

He still had his hat, but he had also lost his jacket, which was another blow. What was he going to do without his pockets? He stood in the ditch and surveyed his surroundings. The starfield overhead was both strange and oddly familiar. He normally had a fondness for paradoxes, but he was in a very bad mood. The constellations' extraordinarily vivid luminosity was akin to a viewing from space rather than through the hazy encumbrance of a planetary atmosphere. They were bright, so the air must be thin.

He considered the upsetting manner in which his TARDIS had broken up around him. The ship had already been exhibiting dimensional faults and he had meant to do something about them. With this sudden invasion, which he took as personally as an incursion of his own head, the TARDIS must have had little power left to resist. It had probably been trying to warn him for weeks, an annoying and parochial Earth term he had somehow picked up, but he took the ship too much for granted and now felt thoroughly ashamed. His formidable lack of knowledge of his own home and transport was emphasized by the shock he felt. He should have known better.

He had discovered further evidence of the invader in one of the corridors: a slimy trail of footsteps, bigger this time, that led from a broken roundel in the walls across the floor in the direction he had already come.

He had abandoned the bike and followed the trail on foot, supposing that he must have passed and missed the invader in the darkened passages. Then he heard its wild and bloodcurdling cry in the distance. It was a cry of hunger, he thought. And he also thought that was a nerve, because the invader, for whom he had no love, had already eaten rather well.

With a shudder, the whole dimensional environment had disintegrated around him. It had been like watching a dust storm from inside a bubble at the storm's heart. The corridor just dissolved right down through its fractals and reality fell to bits.

If any of his TARDIS had remained at all, he prayed it was the console room and that Ace had, for once, done as she was told. He had no idea as to its whereabouts. The possibilities were infinite.

Poor Ace. He was unready even to consider the consequences of his neglect. Whatever her fate, he wished her well and would try to find her again, very soon.

Whether the bubble was a freak effect or some sort of lifebelt that he had no knowledge of, he had been deposited in a narrow grey alley, heavens knew where, with two very heavy hearts.

The discovery of his bicycle, only a few yards away, suggested that the entire contents of his home might be scattered across this place. His worldly possessions distributed over people's roofs and gardens. And how much would it cost to buy them all back?

He supposed that might even include Ace but, worldly young lady that she was, she would object to being itemized as anyone's possession.

The alley emerged