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Are you sure you're ready?' Finer said. 'Everything's balanced. We're getting close.'

'I have been ready to take the place that I will exist for,' Josh said. 'I have been waiting to take the place of everything. I am the next. I am the only'

Finer glanced at him and frowned. 'Is there a problem, Josh? Now's not a good time to lose your grip.'

'It will be, I will be, one will be, nothing.'

'Stay with him Josh,' Finer urged. 'Concentrate. We have to know what happens to him at the moment he hits that break-through zone.'

'Too late,' Josh said. 'His being is gone. He's lost. Not gone before but lost.'

Finer looked back at the monitor. The Doctor was gone. He looked at the power readings. They were almost off the scale and the rate of increase was building. Unbelievably, the systems were running out of control.

Peripheral links flashed out, popping and showering electric sparks, spitting tiny short-out arcs of blue lightning.

'I listened to the Time Lord.' Josh opened his eyes. 'He was right. The Time Lord knew what he was thinking about.'

Who was right? What Time Lord? What are you talking about?' Finer tried to trip the system dampers.

The Time Lord is no more and I am Lord of Time,' Josh said.

The dampers were not tripping. Finer tried again. The overload was already too great and they would not kick in. 'Give me a hand with this. I'm losing it.'

Closing down sale,' Josh chortled. 'Everything must go.'

Finer tried to cut the power. With the gauges gone there was no way to tell if this was having any effect. If the power was dropping the dampers should work. He tried to trip them one last time. They still would not kick in.

Nothing seemed to be having any effect.

'I am the universe!'Josh exulted. 'I tell them to die and they die. Joan Cox die. Chloe Pennick die. There is only me! There shall be only me!'

Finer went for the last resort: his nuclear option. He tried to flip the machine's polarity and reverse the energy flow. When that failed he was left with no choice. He had to destroy the machine before it destroyed the university and possibly most of southern England. As it was, it was going to leave a big hole where the department had been.

'I'm sorry Josh!' Finer yelled. "There's no way out! I have to use the autodestruct!'

'Too late, too late and still too late,' Josh chanted.

The Doctor and the pulse tunnel moved together through the hoops which folded back into one hoop. In the time which was no time the Doctor saw the multidimensional void mark reality with a contagion spot which spread and sucked the possibilities out of the time lines.

'I'm sorry Josh,' Finer repeated. 'It's my fault. I've killed you too.' But then he found he could not remember where the control for the autodestruct was. But then he found he could not remember where the remote control was. But then he found he could not remember what it was he could not remember. An icy, black wind rushed through him.

The door had been solid and unmoving. Leela was about to look for some other entrance to the shaman's stronghold when, for no reason she could see, the whole doorway started to revolve. She stood watching it slowly spinning. It was not a normal doorway. She did not trust it. Normal doorways did not spin. It looked like a teaser trap: the sort of trap prey entered out of curiosity. Did this shaman think she was a fool? Chloe had told her of the doorway. She had said it would work only for those it recognised. How was it that it seemed to recognise her suddenly? Was the shaman tempting her?

She approached warily. If she stepped into the moving hole and it stopped moving and became a box she would be caught. It would take time to force her way out of it again. If the Doctor was a captive in this stronghold there might not be time to waste in such a way. She took her knife out and tapped the glass as it passed. It did not spring the trap. The passing glass sheet did not even change speed.

She made up her mind. There was no real choice, and this was wasting