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It was a chance encounter with the Book of the Old Time that had first nudged the Doctor's own thoughts back towards his world's archae-barbaric past. A suspicion had been born in his mind that before regeneration there had been reincarnation. Some memories might be more than racial inheritance. Nothing lasts that does not change.

But the answer was beyond reach. To visit Gallifrey's past was the one rule he had never broken. Until now, when the opportunity presented itself before temptation had even set in.

One word out of place to these Gallifreyans with whom he was trapped, one anachronistic slip and the whole of that past and civilization might be smashed. And he, the Doctor, might cease to exist, just as Reogus's own future self had been wiped away.

He must resist.

The tower shivered. Vael was standing beside him.

"Tell me about it," said the young man. He had a feverish look about him.

"This is no place to talk," replied the Doctor and prepared to descend.

The tower lurched. He stumbled to one side and found the narrow stairway blocked.

"Where are you going?"

"Let me through, Vael. The whole area's becoming dimensionally unstable."

He found his arm gripped again. Vael's hand was like a vice.

"Let go, Vael Voryunsti."

"You're going to help me get out of this place, Doctor."

"Impossible! No one can get out!"

"You can. You're the only one with a ship!"

Another tremor ran up the tower. The Doctor glanced down from the window. "I've no ship. It's all dying!" There were guards grouping on the glowing street below.

"Wilby!" croaked the Captain. "Escape, there is none! Come down!"

A crack ran up the walls. Vael's grip tightened.

The Doctor ignored it. He squinted out through the darkening sky. The glimmering lines of the streets clearly showed up the inner curve of the world sphere. To the South above them, there was a definite bulge in the cityscape. The ground was heaving upwards like the flank of a volcano when an eruption is imminent.

"No parley!" shouted the Doctor.

"Then the tower, it will bring you down." The Captain turned and its guards clustered around it.

"What do they mean?" said Vael.

The Doctor stepped angrily back from the window. He hated days like this. "Don't you know?" he said. He disliked the young man's cold stare. A Coppellian strabism. The wrong eyes in the wrong head. Whatever the final consequence, it was clear that no secrets could be kept from this young man. Vael had a power in him to manipulate and destroy. The Doctor sensed it seething just under the surface. It would undoubtedly lead to trouble. Vael was more dangerous, more potentially deadly, than anyone the Doctor had ever met.

"It means trouble," said Vael.

"Take a look at the City. The dimensions are already collapsing. Any more flux will speed up the compaction. The Processes won't have a world to usurp."

Vael's cold eyes narrowed. A dangerous excitement tremored in his voice. "This is your ship," he said slowly. "This whole city."

"Yes," growled the Doctor, and Vael shrank before his authority. "This is my ship. And its survival rests solely with me. Not with you, Vael. Nor with any other half-baked leech that gnaws and bleeds its systems."

The tower shuddered and creaked. The staircase lurched.

The Doctor stumbled and grabbed at the wall. It burned his hand. It was moving. The spiral stairway was starting to turn inside the tower's fixed shape.

He moved in beside Vael, keeping clear of the walls as they ground slowly upwards past them.

"They're taking us down!" Vael cried.

The stairway moved like the thread of an unwinding screw. The Doctor turned and ran up the spiral. He heard Vael pounding up behind him. "There's nowhere to go!"

"Isn't there?" he retorted and came to a stop as they reached the broken top. The rubble-strewn platform was slowly sinking down through the shaft of the tower like a drowning carousel. Dust plumed down from the hollow walls in which it turned.

"Where now?" demanded Vael.

The Doctor gazed up the dizzying length of the chimney.