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The wings move air molecules, set up vibrations which spread around the globe until days, weeks, even months later, rain clouds gather over a distant country and a light drizzle begins to fall. Effect follows cause as inevitably as night follows day. Or does day follow night?

Or what if there is only night?

Everything is connected. Subtle links exist between everywhere and everywhen. Singularity unifies them. At singularity, everything is one - it is the quiet at the centre of a tornado, the Eye of Harmony.

On a planet far away from the tranquil pleasures of Central Park, a planet called Gallifrey whose history is tied up with the Earth's far more than its inhabitants appreciate, there dwell a people whose upper echelons are self-styled Lords of Time. These Time Lords, when important affairs of state require a display of pomp and ceremony, come together in a place called the Panopticon Hall. It is a place with great significance to them, for beneath it, entwined in bonds forged by the legendary first Time Lord, Rassilon, is the black hole which in Gallifreyan folklore has become known as the Eye of Harmony.

From this rich source springs forth the raw artron energy which powers every TARDIS from the simplest Time Scaphe (or at least those which did not rely, gods forbid, on the telepathic powers of their occupants) to the more recent and more sophisticated models which could travel beyond the accepted boundaries of this universe into the eternal nothingness and return. Even a battered Type 40 draws its vitality from this wellspring - if it can. But links are essential and the Doctor's TARDIS was losing its link.

Time and space are linked. They intersect at an angle determined by some alien, non-Euclidean geometry, and the place where they meet is the space-time vortex. Like a poorly enlarged photograph, the vortex is grainy, particulate. Sometimes the particles clump together at a nexus point.

The TARDIS hung in the vortex, straining to maintain her position against the streaming delta flows.

Like Scylla clinging to her rocky home against the demon pull of Charybdis, the TARDIS embraced a nexus point with tenuous mathematical equations. At any time the hold could snap and the TARDIS

would be swept uncontrollably along. In her present state of disrepair, this could prove fatal for her occupants.

***

Unaware of her imminent danger, Ace sighed heavily and marvelled at the illusion of openness created in this section of the time machine. It was as though there really was sky stretching away above her. The sound of birdsong drifted along the cloistered walkways and echoed between the pillars. There was the smell that damp earth gave off immediately after a rainstorm and the air was pure and clean. A twisted sapling cast a shadow across her brown eyes as she lay on the low stone bench looking upwards.

Under other circumstances she would have found the TARDIS's cloister room relaxing, but now it just fuelled her increasing frustration with its all invasive tranquillity. The Doctor had been at work for some time now repairing the TARDIS's damaged systems - every time she had ventured into the control room where the hexagonal console resided she had found him with his head concealed by a mass of wiring. She had given up trying to talk to him and had sought other entertainment in the myriad rooms of the TARDIS. Some hadn't been opened for centuries, their contents long resigned to suffocation under a thick layer of dust, and Ace wasn't the type to start spring-cleaning. She went on through the rooms until she found a workshop which had been occupied quite recently; she toyed idly with various tools, created a minor explosion, and left. Now she was seriously bored and wanted to do something.

Above her a bell started tolling. She tried to ignore it, but it went on and on, reverberating back and forth in her skull. When she could stand it no more she stood and strode along between the ivy-shrouded columns.

Looking down at the floor she saw footprints. This area was sheltered from above and something