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"Little brat, where are you?"

A sickening empty darkness in his head.

It stunned him. He crawled slowly to the corner on his knees, hardly daring to look. The ground was soft and cool with fresh growth.

A shape lay in the film of green seedlings that covered the next street. Over it crouched the Guard Captain. The creature was forcing an insect-helmet over Shonnzi's head.

Vael flattened himself against the wall, unable to move.

But what did it matter now? There was no escape. Nowhere to go. The Future was coming.

"It'll get you!"

He put back his head and let fly a scream of thought pain. Who cared who heard? A yell of defiance against their tormentor, cutting across the City's seasons of past and possible.

"Is that you, Vael?" said a new voice in his head. A new intruder. He choked with fright.

"Yes, I thought so," the Doctor continued. "I should keep your thoughts to yourself if I were you. Come and find me if you want to talk about it. But hurry. From the look of this place, we don't have long."

"It's not going to hold, Professor!"

The Doctor totted irritably as Ace wrenched at his arm. Behind him, the attic wall shuddered under the Process's relentless attack. Fragments of grey cladding were starting to fall away revealing the rafters underneath.

"He always leaves things to the last minute," she complained to the waiting Phazels, and desperation was starting to show in her voice. The two women had said nothing since Shonnzi had gone. No one had. But they all thought the worst. Chesperl watched the attic wall, Amnoni stared along the street, both waiting to see which impending disaster would engulf them first.

The Doctor had been holding the plumbline up against the tilt of the City. "Worrying," he said as he wound up the string.

He took off his shoe and prised open the heel. There was a compass inside, marked with various astronomical gradings and directional symbols. The needle was turning slowly like the second-hand on a clock, unable to settle on one reading. He tapped it irritably and it finally stopped. A small blue readout announced "SPRING TIDE". "Impossible," he said, showing the instrument to Ace. "Who ever heard of a tide without a moon?"

He scrutinized the sky just in case.

A crack splintered down the attic wall. It was ready to burst open.

"It's getting out!" yelled Ace and threw her weight against the heaving surface. To her apparent surprise, Amnoni and Chesperl joined her.

The Doctor put on his shoe. There were things to worry about. His rediscovered memories and their implications were almost swamping his practical activities. In the City, the Laws of Time were being broken on a thorough and systematic basis. Timelines were being crossed and people were meeting themselves. The resultant explosive catastrophe, Blinivictual's theory made flesh, was somehow being contained by the TARDIS. Somehow his ship was holding together under an overwhelming assault, but where was it drawing power from?

Shonnzi would have known. Shonnzi had been augmented with the ship's failing knowledge. Now he was gone and the Doctor hardly knew where to start.

"Doctor! Do something!"

He caught Ace's glare of desperation from the wall. He frowned, took off his shoe again and emptied out a couple of stones. The imprisoned Process was howling with rage.

No Time Lord was allowed to encounter the past of his world. Yet he was here, talking to Gallifreyans from an almost prehistoric time, before any of the world he knew existed. He was in severe danger of influencing their future and the planet's development. Another Law of Time to break. Most fascinatingly of all, Chesperl was carrying a child, but no child had been born on Gallifrey since that terrible moment when Rassilon came to power.

There was a fuzz of green on the streets where new shoots, burgeoned by the rain storm, where forcing their way up. All around, the grey City world glowered down at him. Many of its buildings, ridiculous parodies, were reminiscent of the ancient pre-Rassilite architecture shown in books of Gallifreyan archaeology. The