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The Doctor pressed a button on one of the machines and was clearly startled when the cassette was ejected into his hand. Barry put it back in.

'You haven't been fiddling with these buttons have you, Leela?' the Doctor asked, and turned to find that she had not followed them into the suite.

Leela was standing some distance away sharpening her knife once again.

'I have touched none of the controls,' she said. 'What happened in there was not my doing. It had nothing to do with me.'

'I think I know what happened,' Barry said, with the flourish of a detective revealing the murderer in a whodunit. 'I think there was a power surge, and that that is the key to the whole shebang.'

'Another technical term?' the Doctor suggested.

it blew the tank's systems and it set off the whole sequence of events. The gel, the fumes, the blanked tapes, the jammed ventilation system.'

The ventilation system was jammed as well?'

'Must have been,' Barry said, 'otherwise the fumes wouldn't have got to us.

That's how Leela averted a disaster. The ventilation system was jammed by the power surge and when she opened the door it kicked in again.'

'Why?'

'Temperature and pressure change.'

The Doctor smiled at Barry, i do believe you're a rational sceptic,' he said. 'I like that in a person.'

With the ventilation system going again,' Barry went on enthusiastically,

'the fumes cleared and we all returned to normal.'

it fits together very conveniently' the Doctor agreed, ‘it even accounts for the fact that Leela herself was briefly affected.'

'Exactly,' Barry said. 'But you don't buy it do you? I can see it in your face.'

"The gel is chemically inert. I don't think you'll find it will give off fumes in those circumstances. And the products of combustion, which didn't happen anyway, are unlikely to be hallucinogenic'

'Bugger,' Barry said. 'Are you sure?'

Fairly sure,' the Doctor said. 'I have some experience with inert materials.

It's to do with the machinery I use in my travels.'

'Right,' Barry said thoughtfully. 'That is a pity, because the fumes theory helped solve another small conundrum.'

'There's a time anomaly isn't there?' the Doctor said.

Barry nodded. 'How did you guess?'

'I was afraid that's what you were going to say.'

'As far as I can remember it didn't all happen in that nice logical sequence I described to you,' Barry said. 'But how reliable is memory at the best of times? I thought the fumes might have confused things. You know, they might have affected the order of recall?'

'No,' the Doctor said. 'It's more dangerous than that.' He left the suite and went to where Leela was standing working on her knife. ‘What was it that you saw in that control room?' he asked. 'What was it that frightened you so much that you won't set foot in there?'

'I have set foot in there,' Leela said, without emphasis and without looking at him. 'I have faced my fear.'

'I'm sure you have,' the Doctor said, 'but I'm not one of your warrior-trainers. I haven't got a religious devotion to facing fear.' Still she did not look at him. 'Leela, I don't doubt your courage,' he said. 'You are as brave as anyone I have ever met. What was it you saw?'

'I saw it in the wood too.'

'I'm sorry' the Doctor said. 'I should have listened to you. I should have let you tell me straight away. Describe what you saw.'

Leela looked directly at him for the first time. 'Is it possible,' she asked, 'to fall into the spaces between the worlds and then never to stop falling through the darkness?'

'Multidimensional voids?' the Doctor said.

Leela said, There was darkness upon darkness. It became more and I became less. It pulled me towards it and I felt I would be alone in it for ever'

'Here and in the wood.' The Doctor pulled the bag of jelly babies from his pocket and searched around in it for a green one. 'Are they separate focal points or is this the beginning of a major collapse I wonder?'

'The darkness in the wood was bigger. It swallowed the TARDIS but then it swallowed itself and the TARDIS