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By Root 605 0

as concerned about the spread of time‐travel technology as the twenty‐first century was about ABC weapons. So they’d send people back to stop proliferation. Once you accepted the possibility of time travel, the main objection became that there just weren’t enough time travellers. Surely they’d be all around – tourists, researchers, spies, military men, businessmen, all travelling back to do their jobs? Cosgrove was glad his instincts had been proved right, that there was an unearthly component to all this.

Cosgrove gave orders for the two newcomers to be captured, if at all possible. They had last been seen retreating back into the office block where they’d found the Doctor, but Cosgrove fully expected them to resurface.

* * *

Jaxa pressed a medi‐stim to Roja’s neck.

‘We should sterilise the area,’ Roja was saying, still wincing from the pain.

‘There may not have been a crime,’ Jaxa reminded him.

‘The woman stole my gun. They should all be eradicated.’

‘Then you have let future tech fall into primitive hands. The crime is yours. Would you like me to eradicate you?’

Roja was sitting up, now. ‘That’s not fair,’ he said, sounding like a spoilt brat.

Jaxa considered her options. The handgun would have to be retrieved, of course. The Doctor was a known rogue time element, and one her master was particularly interested in, but merely being present in a time zone that was not your native one wasn’t a crime. Particularly in the case of elementals, who didn’t have a native time.

They needed to find Baskerville. He was the key to this – if he was a rogue, he wasn’t known to them. His death would tie up loose ends here, and would represent something that could be presented as a positive result, without causing any awkward political ramifications. But killing Baskerville and letting the Doctor go, whatever the legalities of the situation, would not please Sabbath. She could hear him talking in that slightly sarcastic tone of his, telling her that she’d caught the small fish, but let the big one go, and that she had no sense of the larger picture.

‘Our priorities are clear,’ she said finally. ‘We must recover or destroy your handgun. We eliminate Baskerville. Then we capture the Doctor and return home with him. We deal with him there.’

‘But we’re not the only people after the Doctor.’

‘No we aren’t. But nothing else need concern us – if anyone tries to prevent us achieving our objectives, then we eradicate them.’

Jaxa handed Roja her gun.

‘But what will you use, Madame Jaxa?’

‘I will find something,’ she assured him.

She unclipped her timeporter from her belt and opened it up.

‘We will teleport over to that museum. The Doctor and his companion will be on one of the upper levels.’

Roja was looking out of the window. ‘There is a lot of human military activity.’

She replaced the timeporter. ‘They have simple projectile weapons, they needn’t concern us. She tapped her neck, and the cowl extruded over her head, covering it. Roja did the same.

She activated the timeporter.

* * *

The Doctor sat at the base of a large vase which, according to the sign, dated back to the time of Alexander the Great.

In the galleries, there was no evidence of the tidal wave. Malady had wondered if there would be any survivors huddled up here, but if anyone had been here when the wave struck, they’d since evacuated.

The Doctor was lost in thought, his eyes closed. ‘Have you ever had a bar of music in your head, one that you can’t place, and however hard you try you can’t hum the next bit?’ He asked. ‘It’s frustrating, isn’t it? Just imagine what it’s like to have nothing but that. Living a life like that.’

He didn’t elaborate. Malady wasn’t entirely sure he was talking to her.

‘Cosgrove’s men will be here in a minute,’ she told him gently.

‘Plenty of time to come up with something,’ he assured her.

Malady returned her attention to her new raygun. There were a variety of dials and switches on the top of the weapon. She decided not to play with them – the setting it was on was effective, and she didn’t want to accidentally put