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'Do you mind lending me a hand?' he asked apologetically. 'Only my legs aren't metal and I think I'd end up a little squashed.'

She moved forward, but the Doctor shook his head. 'Roll Nashaad away first, would you?' She did as she was told, then tried to help him back up over the ledge.

'What happened?' she asked, gritting her teeth as he pulled on her arm.

'I think it was one of the dam gates bursting open.' He rested his elbow on the lip of the precipice and it almost crumbled away under his weight. He held on more firmly to her arm and the plant root and tried again.

'Geological reformation. We were lucky our own time streams weren't caught up in the time-mass equation.'

'I'm sorry?'

With a final heave, he was up and by her side, dusting off his muddy palms.

'By some fluke, our patch of the planet has regressed countless centuries in time while we've stayed put.'

Anstaar could think of nothing to say. 'That's freaky.'

The Doctor grinned. 'One word for it, certainly. I had hoped that now I've isolated and incapacitated the faulty circuitry the temporal anomalies would stop. But perhaps the damage already inflicted is too severe.' He punched his fist into his palm. 'I've got to get this circuitry off the planet.'

'Is it having an effect on you?' asked Anstaar, suddenly concerned.

'Perhaps,' he nodded.'I hope not.'

'Hey, wait,' breathed Anstaar excitedly. 'We could be a little safer, now. The Kusks behind us might have been wiped out by all that!'

The Doctor looked a little crestfallen. 'Indeed. So you can throw away those guns, can't you?'

Anstaar stared at him as if he was mad, then looked at them lying by her side.

'Please,' he said simply, but she almost felt it was an order. She found herself throwing them into the chasm. No noise floated up to confirm their landing, and she shivered.

'There's something else I've just thought of.' The Doctor's voice was grave once more, and Anstaar looked at him with a familiar sinking feeling.'Go on.'

'If the landscape has rolled back, there's a good chance the transmitter platform has been blocked off, buried, or completely destroyed.'

Anstaar stared at him.'We could be trapped?'

He looked round at the unrecognisable landscape and nodded, sadly.'We could be trapped:

Another thought hit Anstaar. 'Always provided we find our way back there, of course.'

'Oh, well, now there we are lucky,' beamed the Doctor, climbing to his feet and checking on Nashaad, who was beginning to revive. 'I'm blessed with a wonderful sense of direction. Come on, it's this way.' He pointed ahead of him.

'But Doctor, I just came from round there. Surely it must be this way?'

The Doctor frowned. 'Ah, well, if you want to take the boring route...'

***

It took them a little time, but eventually they worked out their bearings. The pathway round the mountain had practically vanished, but the mountain itself remained. Nashaad had bounced them over particularly inaccessible passages, and Anstaar was doubly grateful to him for taking her further from the possibility of the Kusks catching them up. Of the arena where they had met the dying man and his torturer there was no sign, just a Yast wasteland of rock, sludge and boulders. They had walked, and walked, and walked.

'Hopefully, it should be around this bend,' said the Doctor, his eyes heavy and dark in the light of the captured sunset.

'Didn't you say that before?' queried Anstaar.

"That was then, this is now,' replied the Doctor, defensively. He beckoned Nashaad to follow, and peered cautiously round the edge of the crag in their path.

Anstaar joined him. 'That's it, I remember. That's the opening!'Automatically, she moved forward at a jog towards it.

'Wait, Anstaar!' hissed the Doctor, desperately,but it was too late.

A Kusk, buried up to its waist in the sludgy earth by the cave mouth, had seen her and was redoubling its efforts to get free. She screamed as it lashed out for her leg, stumbling backward as she tried to get out of reach.

With