'You're right there,' said the Doctor. 'You should never have had anything to do with the machine. Where has it got you?'

'Well,' Chiltern stood up, 'now that I have you, we'll see. Come along.'

He led the Doctor, trailed by O'Keagh, along the hall to the kitchen, then, after finding a candle, down a flight of stone steps into an extensive cellar. Once O'Keagh lit a hanging oil lamp, the Doctor could see that most of the area they were in had at one time been given over to wine. A space beneath the steps, barred with an iron gate, had obviously been reserved for special vintages. Of these one-time vinous treasures, no bottle remained. The place had the same empty, disused air as everything else he had seen.

'This way,' said Chiltern, and the Doctor followed the wavering candlelight down a passage, past a series of locked storerooms with ancient oak doors. Chiltern stopped in front of one of these and unlocked it with a large, old-fashioned iron key. He stepped inside, fumbled for a minute. The Doctor heard the hum of a generator, then the room was bright with harsh unshaded electric light.

'Oh dear,' said the Doctor. He stood with his hands on his hips, lower lip between his teeth, eyeing the gleaming, elegant construction in the centre of the room. Clearly this was where Chiltern's time and energy had gone, for the metal and mirrors shone. The Doctor moved forward even before O'Keagh could push him and stepped into the machine.

It was open to its farthest extension, so that the mirrors were arrayed almost in a straight line, forming a wall rather than a many sided box. Pulled shut, they would make a chamber not unlike the interior of Scale's camera obscura, but with mirrored walls. The Doctor saw immediately why Chiltern hadn't realised a mirror might be missing. The frame was jointed at roughly twenty-centimetre intervals, so that it could be adjusted to hold mirrors of differing widths and number. Currently it held seven. When these were drawn together to form a seven-sided room, they would enclose a smaller, cylindrical chamber with transparent walls and a hinged segment that could be used as a door.

The Doctor stooped to examine the floor. It was a dull, polished metal he'd never seen, cool to the touch in the usual way. Standing, he peered up at a clear dome formed of dozens of individual squares of glass, above which were carefully mounted seven lenses. It was odd to see these focused on the thick cellar walls, but of course time, unlike light, was no respecter of physical boundaries.

'You sometimes see other times in the mirrors even when the machine is off, don't you?' he asked.

'Yes. There's no pattern, and the scenes don't last very long.'

'Mm hm.' The Doctor counted the lenses again. One for each mirror. Well, there was the difficulty right there. Scale must have the eighth lens as well as the missing eighth mirror. No doubt, the machine could be set up with various numbers of mirrors and lenses, but a seven-mirror configuration would need a different set of lenses to an octagonal one, its own unique set. They weren't interchangeable. The machine was lensed for eight mirrors and would never work correctly with fewer.

On the other hand and this was his problem it all too clearly worked incorrectly.

'How did you ever figure out how to put this together?'

'It came with instructions,' said Chiltern drily. 'Look again at the floor.'

The Doctor knelt and took a magnifying glass from his pocket. With this he could see a neatly organised set of engraved diagrams. He followed them with fascination, delighting in their sophistication and clarity. This was quite wonderful. His knowledge must be incomplete. Such easily understood, culturally transcendent instructions had to have been developed in order to make the device adaptable to numerous civilisations. In spite of what he thought he remembered, at one time such a machine must have worked. Or perhaps a grimmer idea struck him the technique was being tried again, in this new era when time travel was unregulated. The wheel was being reinvented. Did the inventors know the danger if it accidentally bumped off the road?

He sat back on his heels. 'Remarkable. And where are the controls?'

Chiltern showed him a simple console made of the same metal, a rounded-edge cube with no joins and a control panel consisting of raised symbols. At a glance, the Doctor could see that these were keyed to a base-12 number system. When he examined the sides, he saw diagrams illustrating the use of the console. The simplicity was breathtaking. Of course, the machine had been designed to be user-friendly. The technological complexity was all concealed inside the apparently impenetrable box.

He went around to the other side. Well, wasn't this nice? Instructions for spatial plane interfacing. The Doctor ran his finger lightly over the raised glyphs. That certainly would make the unwieldy device no problem to transport. He wondered whether Chiltern had understood the instructions. Better not to draw attention to them by asking.

Chiltern had been watching him impatiently. 'Can you repair it?'

'I'm not sure. But in any case, it mustn't be used again.'

'Not used?'

'Never,' said the Doctor, still somewhat distracted by the beauty of the machine's design. 'I suspected as much before I came here, to be frank, but now that I've seen it, it's obvious that using the machine when it's not working properly is hideously damaging to Time. Even running tests in order to adjust it to the correct settings wouldn't be safe.'

'So you won't even attempt the task?'

'There are dozens of things that could be wrong. The Earth's magnetic field, for example, might be different from that of the world on which this was constructed. There's also the gravitational field to be considered.' The Doctor thought of the eighteenth-century Earth clocks used to measure time at sea, subject to the environmental stresses of movement, moisture, temperature... Who made you? he wondered, lightly touching the glyphs. What were their dreams for you?

'There must be a way.'

'There isn't, can't you understand? The device hasn't even got all its parts. You'd distort Time so badly that whatever you want to accomplish would undoubtedly turn into something else. Not to mention the damage to the rest of the universe. We're talking about a cosmic problem here.'

'That can be avoided somehow!'

'No it cannot!' The Doctor turned on Chiltern. 'Get some perspective, man! Haven't you been listening? Even if it were complete, turning on the machine could easily start a time destabilisation that '

'Mr O'Keagh,' Chiltern said.

The Doctor exhaled angrily. As O'Keagh started for him, he turned and sprang up to grab the edge of the machine's roof. Ignoring Chiltern's angry shout, he hoisted himself on to the glass tiles and rapidly shoved the lenses out of alignment, actually managing to pull one loose and fling it to the floor before O'Keagh, after several jumps, succeeded in grabbing his ankle and jerking him down. He fell right into the big man's arms, one of which immediately whipped around his neck while the other pinioned his chest and upper arms. Livid, Chiltern rushed forward and hit him hard in the face.

'Hours of work!' he cried. 'Hours!'

'I weep for you,' the Doctor wheezed. 'I deeply sympathise.' Chiltern hit him again, this time in the stomach, and the Doctor didn't say anything else as he was hauled from the room and back to the old wine cellar. Chiltern dragged open the barred gate beneath the steps; it grated screechingly along the flagstones. 'Throw him in. Find a padlock.' O'Keagh shoved the Doctor into the recess and Chiltern threw his weight on to the gate to clang it shut. He leaned against the bars, smiling viciously. 'Maybe you can't be forced, my strange friend. But you can certainly be used.'

'For what?' The Doctor still hadn't quite got his breath back. 'What precisely precisely do you think I could possibly be used for?' do you think I could possibly be used for?'

'I'm not certain yet. But experiment will tell.'

'You're talking nonsense, Chiltern.'

O'Keagh had returned. Chiltern took the heavy padlock and snapped it in place. He stood up, brushing off his knees. 'Enjoy your new lodgings. A bit less comfortable than your old ones, but you'll get used to them in time. Or possibly not. You don't really like close quarters, do you?'

'How much time? How long do you imagine you can keep me here?'

'As long as it takes,' said Chiltern. Then O'Keagh extinguished the lamp and the two men went up the steps, shutting the kitchen door behind them and leaving the Doctor in darkness.

'Where's the Amontillado?' he yelled after them, but it didn't make him feel any better.

Chapter Seventeen.

The darkness was total. Not that there was anything to see. The recess was nothing but stones and mortar. Unfortunately, as the barred gate was much taller than the actual entrance, the padlock was fastened to it high on the outer wall. The Doctor stretched an arm through the bars and groped as far up as he could reach, but without success.

Abruptly, as if sluiced down a drain, his strength left him, and he fell on his side, his cheek smashed against the stone floor. His heart pounded shudderingly and he shivered so hard his teeth chattered. He could feel every healing wound on his body as if it were fresh, and the empty side of his chest ached and sucked as if It were a vacuum. A whimper slipped from his throat.

He squeezed his eyes shut, clenching his teeth in rage. He hated this weakness. Hated it. It was easy to blame Sabbath, but Sabbath had only stolen an already-broken part of his body. And whatever had broken it infected it, blackened it was something he had done. Something he would never remember but that would always remember him. Pursue him. Punish him. Perhaps he no longer deserved that heart. Perhaps he was unworthy of it.

Stop this!

He rolled on to his back, took slow deep breaths, tried to will his shivering to quiet. However much he might be unworthy of the heart, he reminded himself, Sabbath was hardly a deserving recipient. He snorted at the very idea. Speaking of which, he hoped Sabbath was quick off the mark tracking him. He didn't know how long it would take Chiltern to reset the lenses, and it was imperative the machine not be switched on.

The weakness broke over him again, soaking through to his bones. He pulled into a ball, his face in his cold hands. Nausea crawled through him. A good thing he hadn't eaten for a couple of days. He became uneasily aware of the closeness of the recess walls. Another cramped prison. He told himself it was better than a box, but he still felt a subrational discomfort growing in him. Underground. Buried. His heart sped up. Well, at least if he had a panic fit there was no one around to be embarrassed in front of.

Or was there?

To his extreme dismay, he realised he was no longer alone.

Something was coming through the cellar towards him.

The Doctor squinted frantically into the blackness, cursing his diminished senses. In the old days, he would simply have shifted his vision into areas of the spectrum invisible to human eyes. Unfortunately, for all intents and purposes he now had human eyes. Though maybe there wasn't yet anything to see. The sound seemed to issue from around the corner, down the passage that led to the time machine. What was it, anyway? A dragging, limping, rustling rustling sound. He'd never heard anything quite like it. Considering all the things he'd heard, that wasn't good at all. sound. He'd never heard anything quite like it. Considering all the things he'd heard, that wasn't good at all.

Did it know he was here? Or was it just out for a little walk? The Doctor was still curled on his side. He thought he'd stay that way. He shut his eyes, even though he already couldn't see. It might be able to see him, and he'd rather appear unconscious. The sound dragged nearer. Whatever it was, it was either crippled or not originally designed for walking. He heard ragged breathing. It was out of the passage now, coming towards him at its slow, tortuous pace. Keep still. Very still.

It stopped at the bars. Incredibly, the Doctor smelled roses.

What was was this thing? Was he hallucinating? Was this all some sort of weird fever-dream? He breathed quietly, inhaling the gentle, sweet scent, waiting. For several minutes, nothing happened. The Doctor began to relax. Maybe he was hallucinating. He really had no exact idea of how ill he was this thing? Was he hallucinating? Was this all some sort of weird fever-dream? He breathed quietly, inhaling the gentle, sweet scent, waiting. For several minutes, nothing happened. The Doctor began to relax. Maybe he was hallucinating. He really had no exact idea of how ill he was Something snaked through the bars and around his wrists.

The Doctor yelled in surprise. A hand grabbed his mouth, silencing him. A human right hand, as far as he could tell. The left hand ran over him curiously, as if trying to figure out whether he he were human. There was something wrong with its little finger. The odour of roses intensified. The Doctor thrashed, trying to free his mouth, to roll as far away from the thing as possible. It was a primal response. He knew he was in immediate, terrible danger, that whatever held him was misconceived, unnatural to the deepest degree, a wrong thing were human. There was something wrong with its little finger. The odour of roses intensified. The Doctor thrashed, trying to free his mouth, to roll as far away from the thing as possible. It was a primal response. He knew he was in immediate, terrible danger, that whatever held him was misconceived, unnatural to the deepest degree, a wrong thing 'Hmm,' it said.

The left hand withdrew. He heard an angry yank at the padlock, then a hiss of frustration. With one less hand on him, the Doctor managed to get his feet against the bars and shove backwards. His back hit the wall. His mouth was free, but the thing pulled on the cord around his wrists. Grimly, the Doctor braced his feet against the bars and pulled back. The cord cut into his wrists, and he gave forward for a moment so that he could grasp some of its length with his hands. It felt like it couldn't be! But it was. He was gripping appliance cord, the hard-rubber coated wire manufactured after the 1930s. What in the name of heaven was going on here?

He and the creature on the other side of the bars rocked back and forth, like children playing tug of war. The Doctor's palms burned, but at least he'd relieved some of the pressure on his wrists. He thought he could hang on. Anyway, it couldn't get him out. He wondered whether to call out. Probably no one would hear him, but maybe he'd panic the other into retreating. He took a deep breath and bellowed, 'Chiltern! Your monster's got me!'

The thing hissed. Great. He'd insulted it. 'Chiltern!' he roared again. Suddenly something touched his throat. Something very sharp and very thin. A needle? The Doctor froze. The creature dragged him to the bars. The needle went away and the hand returned, pressing against his chest for a minute, then moving up to his neck, running a thumb softly along the pulsing artery.

Then, abruptly, it released him. The Doctor fell back, bruising an elbow. He heard his unwelcome visitor turn away, its breathing harsh. The Doctor lay as he had fallen, listening to its laborious, dragging departure. The scent of roses faded. Silence returned.

The Doctor took a deep breath. He was trembling, and not from weakness. What had just happened? Was he caught in a drug-Induced dream? Was some force playing tricks with his mind? Either was preferable to the idea that the encounter had actually occurred. Unfortunately, each was also more unlikely.

Was it gone for good, or at least for a while? He thought so. Whatever it had wished to know about him, it seemed to have found out. And what was that? A dozen speculative answers ran through his mind. He dismissed them. It was foolish to try to understand the situation without more information. He curled up again, this time with his back to the gate and just to be on the safe side his hands and feet tucked as well out of reach as possible, and let himself sink at last, after days of needing to, into the deepest healing trance of which he was capable outside the TARDIS.

He left one ear awake, so to speak, in case a return visit sounded imminent. But nothing disturbed the silence, and he drifted away on a black sea, rocked by waves of sleep and something more than sleep. He lay absolutely still, not moving even a finger, and it must have been many hours before a noise penetrated his rest that called for attention. He woke up immediately. Someone was descending the steps. The Doctor sat up. He felt much better, as if he'd been drenched in some healing psychic rain. He wondered how long he'd been out. A pale circle of lamplight wavered on the stones in front of the gate, and O'Keagh appeared.

'Oh, it's you,' said the Doctor. 'What do you want?'

'Dr Chiltern says I'm to take your coat.'

'Well, hard cheese for him, O'Keagh, because I'm keeping it.'

O'Keagh blinked a couple of times, taking this in. 'He wants it.'

'We can't have everything we want. You know that. I'm sure he has lots of coats. What does he need mine for?'

'He wants to check the pockets, to be sure there's nothing in them you can use to...' Uncharacteristically, O'Keagh trailed off.

'Make away with myself? Rob him of his prize? So nice to be worried about.'

There was a pause.

'He wants the coat,' said O'Keagh finally.

'He can't have it,' said the Doctor. 'Your move.'

O'Keagh thought some more. 'Just empty the pockets for me, then.'

'Ha,' said the Doctor. 'You know not what you ask. I'm sorry, O'Keagh, it's not your fault, for you it would be the first time, but I'm not going through the endless emptying-thepockets routine with its plethora of whimsical surprises again. I'm just not. The first several dozen times are fine, but after that it gets old. I mean, finally, in the long run, I don't care care how many yo-yos I have. Do you see what I mean?' how many yo-yos I have. Do you see what I mean?'

O'Keagh didn't appear to. The Doctor leaned forward.

'Tell Chiltern that if he's really worried about my coining to harm, then he shouldn't have me locked up down here with his mysterious, shuffling, nosy, perfumed monster. You don't have to remember all of that. Just the monster part. I'll bet that interests him.'

What a burden always to be right, the Doctor thought a few minutes later when he heard Chiltern rushing down the steps, followed by the heavy tread of O'Keagh. Chiltern gripped the bars. 'What did you see?'

'Nothing,' said the Doctor. 'You left me in the pitch black, remember? I heard a number of things, however. And felt a few.'

'Are you... ?'

'It didn't hurt me, if that's what you're asking.'

Chiltern hurried to the head of the passageway and held up the lamp, peering into the blackness. The Doctor could see the muscles tense in his jaw. 'When do you think you saw something?'

'Heard,' corrected the Doctor. 'Felt. Also smelled. Did I tell you it was rose-scented? Nice touch. A few hours ago.'

Chiltern looked back at him. His face was ghastly, but perhaps that was because of the way the light fell on it. 'You're safe enough in there.'

'From what? And I disagree.'

Chiltern had turned again to the passage. He removed a revolver from his pocket. 'You're armed, I trust, Mr O'Keagh.'

'Yes sir.' O'Keagh joined him. The two men hesitated, staring into the dark.

'See anything?' said the Doctor. 'It's a terrible idea to leave me in here, by the way. Whatever it was tried to get the gate open.'

'But it didn't succeed,' said Chiltern, as if to a child.

'Not that time, no. What is is it, anyway? You can tell me. I can keep a secret. In fact, over the next hundred years I'll probably forget it altogether.' it, anyway? You can tell me. I can keep a secret. In fact, over the next hundred years I'll probably forget it altogether.'

Chiltern was speaking to O'Keagh in a low voice. The Doctor only caught a few words: '...how... got out... may not be...'

The Doctor kicked the iron gate so that it shuddered and clanged. 'Give me a hint!' he roared. 'Animal, vegetable or mineral?'

Chiltern wheeled on him. 'Shut up!' he rasped. 'Do you ever shut up?'

'Not when some fool's endangering my life.'

'Listen to me!' Chiltern was suddenly at the gate. 'You're as safe in there as you'd be anywhere in the house. Safer. I know.' The Doctor grabbed his shirt through the bars, yanking him close. 'What do you know, Chiltern? You made this thing, whatever it may be. Your Frankenstein's monster. Did it come through accidentally? How many has it killed? Where are the rest of your "brothers"?'

'Let me go!'

'Let me out out!'

Chiltern stuck the revolver in his throat. 'Let. Me. Go.'

The Doctor opened his hands. Chiltern stood up. 'You fool,' he said. 'You don't understand anything.'

'I understand this much,' said the Doctor. 'This is personal with you. You've done something you think is terrible probably it is terrible and you must undo it, and you don't care if you die trying. But you don't have to. We can all three of us leave now, regroup, work out a way to handle this.'