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Ace was behind him, deliberately moving him on when he slowed down. She was large as life, and about 8.75 times as bossy. But how could he be sure that these memories were not just imagination?

He came to an abrupt halt and she collided with him. "This isn't a good idea. It's much too soon," he objected.

"No, it's not," she said firmly. "If this place really is the TARDIS, then you're playing on home ground. You'll wipe the floor with the Processes. You're the Doctor again, Professor."

He was doubtful. "Had it occurred to you that my memories were taken away for a good reason?"

Ace stared out of a thin window in the curving stone wall. The fog had closed in, obliterating any detail in the City outside. Reality had shut down for the night.

"Think, Ace. In the wrong fins, knowledge is a very dangerous thing." He sat down on the staircase. Unworn steps, never used in a crumbling tower. "That's why dictators have public book burnings. The library at Alexandria was used to fuel a palace's central heating system."

Ace snapped her fingers in triumph. "Your memories were deliberately hidden. Like when the door handle was taken off the TARDIS console. To protect us."

"To protect the TARDIS. That ship's behaving in a very mercenary way."

"But if the Processes caught you . . ."

"They feed on information energy . . . amongst other things. And they've got big and fat on my ship."

Ace kicked at the wall with her boot. "But they're stupid too."

The Doctor scowled and set off down the Stairs again. "Then they have lousy inwardly digestive systems."

It was a criminal waste. Like presenting the most delicate roulade of Sylvan aguatruffles, served with a piquant chamberry coulis and a garnish of sculpted moon lily fruit, to the biggest and ugliest, primordial Gug-trucker in the Bucket and Trough diner at the notorious Pleiax Space Service Station. Wot no grease! Palates like power-shovels. Taste buds like chainsaws.

"The TARDIS manual was just the hors d'oeuvre," he complained, "and it's useless without the dexterity of the pilot."

"Then you're all right," she said, pounding after him. "You're no good to them if you can't remember anything."

He stopped abruptly again. "But I can, Ace," he said without looking at her.

"How much?"

His mind was awash with data, thought strands, contributors, subjects. His memory was back with a vengeance. From every idea, a thousand tangents of information streamed off. Fragments of his various lives, friends, enemies, endless travels and startling encounters. Most of them infuriatingly detailed and irrelevant to the current state of play.

"Bits and pieces," he said. There were ways of clearing his mind - certain techniques he had learned in his youth from a local mystic. At present, they eluded him totally.

"Oh, Professor." She had slipped one arm round him and was hugging him. Resting her chin on his shoulder she said, "Ever get the feeling we've been set up?"

"And now I've challenged the Processes, when I should be steering clear of them."

"But we can beat them, no problem. I've already organized a trap. The other Phazels are setting it up."

"No, Ace. You've done enough already."

"Yeah, well, what is it Pekkary says? We're still a crew."

He smiled, but it was a lie. He wanted his ship back. He could feel it slipping away. Losing power. It was still in shock. It had called on him in desperation. But returning his memory might have been a fatal error.

"Where's Shonnzi?" he said.

"Gone down to help the others. We told you."

The Doctor stood up and took a deep and wearisome breath. "That's the most encouraging thing I've heard all day."

"It is?" she said.

"Definitely. It proves I don't remember everything. Come on."

He set off down the stairs at a fresh pace, leaving Ace behind, apparently confused by the workings of his brain.

"Let's go and see about this trap," he called and heard her feet clattering down behind him.

The fog had thickened into a Dickensian pea-souper. It cloyed the air, diffused with starlight into a dank, opaque wall. The detail of the City was reduced to