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Ahead of her Ace caught a glimpse of something moving. Casting a second glance at the floor, she stepped towards the movement and headed for the console room.

The tolling of the bell stopped, but it had already been banished from her mind.

She found the Doctor slumped in his wicker armchair. Maybe it was just her current preoccupation, or had the barely mumbled word before she entered been 'Lynx'?

'What's that?' she asked. She looked closely, examined him. The Time Lord looked drained, almost old. It was as though the trials that the TARDIS had been through were taking their toll on him. He was over seven hundred years old and at the moment looked like he was bearing every moment of those years upon his shoulders. This was not to be expected, for the Doctor belonged to a race who had the ability to regenerate their physical bodies when they became too damaged. And besides, he had a stronger constitution than many small countries.

'What's up, Doc?' she asked, trying to inject some cheer into her voice. She squatted down in front of him and looked up at his lined face and deep, dark eyes.

'Oh, nothing.' He ruffled her hair and managed to smile, but the lines in his forehead remained in place. 'Universal ennui, perhaps.'

'Professor, I saw the cat again.'

The cat. When the TARDIS had sustained its present damage, inflicted upon it by a mysterious alien Process, it had manifested itself in the disturbed dimensional turmoil as a silver cat. Whilst the TARDIS

had hung in limbo, Ace had seen the cat, in brief glimpses, wandering the corridors. It seemed, she thought, to be growing bolder, as if it was moving towards making contact. She wondered how its silver fur would feel, rubbing and rippling against her legs.

'I heard the cloister bell ringing,' the Doctor told her.

Ace stood and went round to the other side of the console. She toyed with a switch. 'I've just come from there,' she said.

'And. now you're here: ' The Doctor nodded as if confirming something in his own mind. 'And the cloister bell has stopped ringing.'

'Where?' he asked suddenly.

Ace's distracted fumbling was interrupted.. 'Where what?'

'Where did you see the cat?' the Doctor asked.

'In the cloister room.'

'A call to man the battle stations,' the Doctor murmured to himself. 'I think the time for action has come, Ace. I have reached an impasse in repairing the TARDIS. There is nothing more I can do.'

'Why not?'

'Spare parts are required.'

'For what?'

The Doctor rose from his chair and looked around confusedly. 'Block transfer computation,' he told her as if this made the point clear. He wasn't prepared to tell her of the damage to the link with the Eye of Harmony. Links were important to the Doctor. He had connections - some more fundamental than others. The thought that the energy of the TARDIS might be lost completely worried the Doctor intensely. He could no more reveal his fear than a warlock could reveal his true name. That knowledge could give others a power over him - if they knew how to use it. He couldn't risk anyone having that power. Once before he had done so - never again.

He looked under the chair.

'Professor! What's block transfer computation?'

'The method by which the outer plasmic hull of the TARDIS, the interior configuration and a host of other details are derived. Have you noticed any signs of the disfunction? Slight deficiencies in the corridor subroutines? The fractal constructions? Block transfer mathematics, you see, was discovered by the Logopolitans. They were on the verge of a breakthrough, setting up entropy-reducing programs to run on computers, when the Master turned his attention to them. No one else has their mathematical skill and so TARDISes require morphologically unstable living organic matter for their block transfer function.'

'Morpho ... ?'

'Hmmm. ' The Doctor furrowed his brow and ran his fingers through his dark-brown hair. 'The calculations change reality and ordinarily computers wouldn't be