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'Back to the portal?'

' I suspect so. The Doctor began pacing up and down the bedchamber, his hands clasped behind his back. 'I should I have anticipated this would happen, but I thought he would need more time to recover from last night's episode.

Nyssa sat up, realising she had fallen asleep in her clothes. 'Should we have Sir Henry or the general institute a search tor James?'

The Doctor shook his head. 'We know where he's headed.

We must ensure we reach the portal before he does.

Fortunately for us, James has no money, nor any obvious means of transport. It's almost ironic - I had planned to visit the site anyway, taking James with us. His departure just makes that journey more urgent.'

Nyssa looked at the notes and calculations the Doctor had scribbled during the night. 'Did you find something among the data I recorded?'

`Yes. Come here and I'll show you.' The Doctor went to the table at the end of Nyssa's bed, where he had laid out his workings. 'This top row shows James's condition during the hypnotic regression.'

Nyssa studied the results carefully. They had remained normal for much of the session but accelerated far beyond normal tolerance levels in the final minutes. 'Doctor, there is no earthly way James should still be alive. The strain that episode placed on his body ought to have killed him outright'

`Precisely Now study the second row. These results are from the other equipment. They monitored ambient changes within this room during the session'

Nyssa pored over these, comparing them to the entries in her journal. There - a surge in artron energy! I knew there had been an unusual reading. But I thought artron energy was used to power the TARDIS. Why should it have been present here last night? Unless... When you regressed James backwards through his memories, might they have invoked a similar effect as the TARDIS does at the moment of dematerialisation?'

`That's what I've been wondering myself,' the Doctor replied. Time Lords possess a quantum of artron energy as part of their genetic make-up. This increases in tiny increments with each journey through time they undertake.

Since I time-travel so frequently, I have an unusually high level. It's like a benign form of radiation, like getting a suntan'

`But prolonged exposure to any form of radiation can cause problems...'

'Yes, eventually. When a Time Lord regenerates, the accumulation is reduced back to its base level' The Doctor pointed at the final row of notes, this one made up entirely of his own calculations. 'Now, look at these numbers. The first set of figures shows my levels of artron energy at the last reading before all the monitors exploded'

On Traken Nyssa had been among the brightest and most inquisitive minds of her generation, thanks to her father's promptings. She studied the Doctor's writings carefully, nodding as she concurred with his calculations. 'The levels are high but not dangerously so' Her eyes slid sideways to the accompanying set of numbers. 'But this second set of calculations - they are greater by a magnitude of more than a thousand-fold. Whose are...?' Her voice trailed off. `James?'

The Doctor nodded. 'I needed you to cross-check my figures. James has a thousand times the safe level of artron energy in his body - if he were a Time Lord. For a human being... he should be dead already.'

Nyssa's eyes widened a little as realisation struck her. The second source of artron energy - it wasn't coming from James. It was coming from the apparition, the ghost!'

'Of course!' The Doctor clapped a hand to his forehead.

'Well done, Nyssa! That explains the physiological readings too. When James goes into one of his trances, it is actually the apparition that speaks with the voices of the dead. James must just be its host.'

`So James is linked to that weakness in the space-time continuum,' she said. 'He isn't the cause of it, but he is a symptom. That's why the TARDIS brought here'

Èxactly. Whatever else happens, we must stop James from re-entering that portal. The results could be cataclysmic'

The Doctor began