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Dreams and ill omens. Rationalists and magicians. Out beyond the harbour, an accidental clockwork of secrets, a mechanism of plots and sub-plots, waiting to be wound; she could sense that much from here. The burning in her spine began again, the nerves tying themselves into ugly little bundles, and she felt like an animal waiting for a storm.

Thunderheads in the dark.

History waiting to happen.

Bang.

Roz Forrester didn’t feel the hand on her shoulder, pulling her off-balance as she squeezed the trigger. She barely noticed that her aim had been ruined, that the bullet had ripped open the sky above the balconies of the Lincoln house. Her senses only returned to her after she’d finished toppling over, back crunching against the ground.

There were shouts from along the street, alarmed residents and passers-by, but nobody seemed to know where the shot had come from or where it had been aimed. She thought she heard someone shouting ‘the redcoats are coming’, but she could have imagined it. In his drawing-room, Samuel Lincoln pulled himself to his feet and hurried over to the window, entirely unaware that – in some other world – he’d just been assassinated.

Roz saw the face hovering over her, and repressed the urge to salute.

‘Thought that’d get your attention,’ she said.

The Doctor scowled at her. His hand was still on her shoulder, restraining her, as if worried that she might still try to kill someone.

‘That was stupid,’ he said.

‘No. It was a safe bet.’ Roz hauled herself upright, flecks of frost sliding off the plastic-coated undersuit of her old Adjudicator’s uniform. ‘Time’s Champion. You said you had to protect history, no matter how it went. Those were the rules.

Remember?’

The Doctor took his hand off her shoulder, but said nothing.

‘Suppose Samuel Lincoln had died,’ Roz explained.

‘President Lincoln would never have been born. Serious damage to the time-stream, or whatever you call it. You couldn’t allow that. You’d notice the damage, you’d have to come and try to stop it. You had to come here. And you did.

This was the only way of letting you know where to find me.

Where’ve you been, anyway? And where’s Chris?’

Nearby, the man from the general store started shouting something about calling the police.

‘There’s just one little problem,’ said the Doctor.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yes.’ He got to his feet, his short frame seeming to stretch all the way to the moon. ‘Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin in Kentucky, not New York. And his father’s name was Thomas.’

There was a silence as big as the world.

‘It’s starting to rain,’ Roz said eventually. ‘We’d better get out of here.’

Staying in the TARDIS, thought Christopher Rodonanté Cwej, was like spending a week in an Argolin holiday complex; you knew there had to be a million interesting things to do there, but it wasn’t until you got really bored that you realized you couldn’t remember what any of them were.

Chris was no longer worried about Roz. Partly, this was because of the Doctor’s constant assurances – ‘She’s all right’;

‘She’ll be fine’; ‘She can look after herself – but mostly it was because the human brain can’t worry about something for weeks on end without just giving up and shrugging.

No, scratch that. The human brain can’t consciously worry about something for weeks on end without just giving up and shrugging. He’d never admit it to anyone, of course, but some nights... well, he’d fall asleep and find himself searching for Roz in an ancient monochrome city. He’d end up running through endless identical alleyways, finally reaching a throne-room painted in the dull grey of eternity, where he’d meet a white-bearded giant of a man who never answered a single question; and he’d wake up with Roz Forrester waiting behind his eyelids again, ready to show her face whenever he blinked.

But now – as long as he stayed awake, at least – he was no longer worried. He was just bored.

Once the Doctor had disappeared through the doors on another of his secret expeditions, Chris had started exploring the TARDIS interior, poking