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"Very commendable." He smiled and shook his empty hand. The smile was weary, but it brimmed with genuine affection. A smile for a true friend, presumed long-lost, who suddenly turned up out of the blue-grey, ready for a good argument as if she had never been away.

"And am I all right?" he asked.

"Oh, yeah," she said sheepishly. "You're always all right."

She pulled out the slightly battered scroll and passed it to him.

"Thank you." He took it almost reverently, weighing it in his hands like some newly discovered treasure. Then he lifted it to his eye and squinted down the tube of rolled document. "The TARDIS greyprints," he said and his voice was full of a solemn wonder. "These are the multi-dimensional plans of the ship." The ribbon slipped itself undone and the document unrolled in his hands.

He looked at her sharply. "Where did you get them?"

"They popped out of the console at me. Just before the ship blew up.

"Ah. You were entrusted with them."

"I was?"

"Ace, you're the first person to see these since the TARDIS was in neural construction dock on Gallifrey."

Shonnzi leaned forward, intent on every implication.

Ace exclaimed, "But I thought you built . . ."

"Not exactly." The Doctor began to pore over the chart. "I always knew there must be something like this. There were references to it in the TARDIS manual."

"Before the manual got eaten," Ace said.

"Eaten?" He looked up suspiciously at the apparition. "Did it now. But perhaps I never needed the plans before. They're sometimes known as the Banshee Circuits."

"Banshee Circuits?" said Shonnzi, his curiosity finally getting the better of his fear.

The Doctor's face clouded. "It's the last resort. When all other systems fail, the TARDIS falls back on one last chance. In an effort to survive, it uses whatever resources are available. People, places . . ."

"Dreams?" said Shonnzi, suddenly angry.

"Anything," the Doctor said sharply. "Including my memories."

The young man turned away and looked out over the hateful City. "I was used," he said, his voice sharp with pain.

Ace glared up at the baleful apparition. It still stood over them, its robe billowing out like a dark sail, a focus of rage and darkness. "Then who's the Ghost of Christmas Pudding?" she said. "I thought it was you. I thought you were . . ."

The Doctor shushed her into silence. He put his head down, drew the others into a huddle and whispered, "That is the Banshee."

"But it looks like you," Ace said.

"Pooh! Much too tall and cadaverous," he objected. "It's an embodiment of the instinct to survive, that's all. And I think it entirely misses my more endearing qualities. The TARDIS and I have a certain symbiotic affinity. Though I'm the imaginative one, and it's supposed to be me that's in control."

Shonnzi pulled away and returned to his scrutiny of the City. He looked deeply hurt. The silver frame still hung empty in the sky. The Doctor shrugged and said loudly, "Well done, Ace and Shonnzi. We knew we could trust you. If these had got into the wrong hands, we'd have been in real trouble."

Ace glanced at Shonnzi. He was staring with deep concern at something in the City below. "Don't tell me," she said, "we just imagined this lot."

The Doctor had a pained expression. "No. It's all too real." He was already busy trying to flatten out the greyprints across the rubble. "Now I wonder how this thing works."

"Not much good without a TARDIS, is it?" said Ace scornfully. "There's nothing on it anyway."

"Why do you think the Banshee's here?" snapped the Doctor and didn't wait for another botched answer. "It's here because my ship is lost and dying. The Banshee is the ghost of my TARDIS."

He took in their bewildered stares. Behind him, the dark spirit moved uneasily. "If we don't find the ship soon, there'll be no way out of this place for any of us ever again."

"Then why don't you do something?" Shonnzi shouted. "You should've stayed in your attic. At least in the dreams you knew what you were doing. The Processes'll finish us all off soon. They're up to something down there