'You are their prisoner,' the Veltrochni hissed. 'Do not presume everyone on this ship is as primitive as these Ogrons.'

'Er, look,' Glitz began, 'maybe we can make a deal...' Every cell in his body was screaming at him to run, but he couldn't while his feet weren't even touching the floor.

'No deals. You will stay where we put you.' The Veltrochni opened the cabin door with his free hand, allowing the Ogrons out. Then he shoved Glitz inside. 'Do not interfere with our mission, and you may live to tell this tale.'

Chapter Fourteen.

The Thor asteroid was now moving gently over arctic tundra.

Monty supposed that Frobisher might have felt quite at home here.

'Now,' the Doctor asked from the shuttle's co-pilot seat beside him, 'is everybody absolutely sure of where they have to be and what they have to do?'

'We have done this sort of thing before, Doc,' Jack said drily.

'Don't worry,' Dibber said over the communications relay.

'I've got it all straight.'

'Good.'

Getting aboard the asteroid wasn't difficult. The security staff recognised the Doctor as Professor Hoffman, and had been expecting him to return. They hadn't expected him to return with Mandell, however.

'These are some of the Professor's assistants,' Mandell told the Director of the facility. He indicated Monty and Chat.

'They'll be helping him service the time dams.'

'Right, sir,' the Director agreed readily. This was unusual, but he wasn't going to question the director of SID, or pass up the chance to have his equipment checked over by a real expert in the field.

Mandell turned to the Doctor. 'You know the way, I believe?'

'I do indeed. With your permission, Director?'

'Go ahead, please.'

Mandell hesitated. 'Actually, this might be interesting... I don't believe I've seen the workings of a time dam before, I'll accompany you.' The Director's smile froze. Like most people on the facility, he had his own extracurricular hobbies which he'd rather his boss didn't find out about. True, it was nothing as bad as what Cronan had been doing, but all the same.

'Then I'll be getting back to work,' the Director said. 'II you'll excuse me?'

'Don't let me detain you,' Mandell agreed. The Doctor and Mandell led the two new assistants out of the docking bay.

'Nicely done,' Monty said admiringly. Even in a career as long as his, he rarely saw this type of sheer bravado.

'Thanks,' Liang said from inside the holographic image of Mandell. To be honest, Monty was surprised the holosuit still worked after all this time, especially after the tweaking it needed to keep the energy emissions low enough to not trigger the facility's alarms.

Jack hated paperwork. Whether it was the Cafe's accounts - and there was work of fiction second to none - or working out positions on a chart, like now. 'Dammit,' he muttered, 'this is ridiculous.'

'But we are in the right place, yeah?' Dibber asked worriedly. Dibber was flying the Nosferatu, Nosferatu, while Jack did the fiddly calculations. Even though most of the actual work had been done by the Doctor the previous night, it was still a difficult set of numbers for Jack to wrap his head around. He was a man of action - a smuggler and rogue - not a bloody cartographer. while Jack did the fiddly calculations. Even though most of the actual work had been done by the Doctor the previous night, it was still a difficult set of numbers for Jack to wrap his head around. He was a man of action - a smuggler and rogue - not a bloody cartographer.

'Absolutely,' he said, with no real idea at all. As far as his calculations showed, the ship was indeed in the right place.

He just didn't believe for a minute that those calculations were right. He just wasn't enough of a nerd to be good with numbers.

They were out in space some distance from Vandor Prime.

Halfway to the middle moon, in fact, and Jack couldn't see why. 'What does he expect us to do out here?'

'Collect the loot,' Dibber said simply. 'That's what he said.'

'He also said he's nine hundred years old and that didn't look too true either.'

'He could be. He is a Time Lord.'

'And that's supposed to make me feel better? Knowing that he's a sneaky bastard by breeding?' No wonder Glitz so despaired of training Dibber up properly. 'I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't just send us here out of the way so he could do a runner with the loot himself.'

Dibber shook his head. 'The Doctor isn't that sort of guy. I mean, he's honest, like, but apart from that, he didn't let us down when things got tough.'

'I'll withhold judgement on that one. It's my religion: I'm a devout cynic.' He looked at the ship's chronometer. 'I just hope this Time Lord of yours can tell time.'

The time dams were undeniably impressive, Chat thought, glancing at her watch. They had exactly ten minutes, which the Doctor had said was more than enough for what they had to do. That made Chat just as uncomfortable as wondering what Glitz was going through; even if they were ready early, they had to wait the rest of the ten minutes. As a professional thief, Chat knew that waiting around a crime scene was the worst thing one could do.

Liang pointed to the console that was built into the largest of the time dams. 'That one, Doctor,' he instructed. Chat still wasn't sure why the Doctor had instructed Liang to tell him what to interfere with. It made no sense at all.

All the same, the Doctor seemed to know what he was doing. 'Right, Monty. When I tell you, place the connector just there.' He pointed with a finger. 'Then divert the control system power flow.'

'And that will do what, exactly?'

'Stop me from being fried when I pull out the main phase polarisers and put them back in the wrong order.'

'Right...' Monty agreed nervously. 'Now I remember why I retired. I've never seen technology like this.'

'I'd be very surprised if you had,' the Doctor said darkly.

'It's not exactly local. In fact it's more advanced than should be available to your people yet. Chat, keep an eye out for guards. The alarms may go off when this is done, but it should take them a few minutes to work out where the trouble is.' Chat nodded, stepping back a little to get a clearer view of the rotunda's doors.

'I still don't see why we don't just break into the vault,'

Monty whispered.

'Because we'd need a time bridge for that, and I don't have either the equipment or the power available,' the Doctor answered. 'Now concentrate on what you're doing; if you reroute the power supply incorrectly, we will be barbecued.'

'That reminds me, I didn't catch breakfast today...'

'Now! Now!' There was a sudden spark, and Monty quickly started realigning optronic paths and circuits. Meanwhile, the Doctor took a deep breath and snatched the silvered triangular polarisers out of the time dam one by one. He just pulled the last one free before a blue wreath of energy slithered across the gap in which his hand had been inserted.

'I said concentrate, Monty! This isn't a flier engine.'

'Sorry, Doctor,' Monty stammered, pale and sweating. 'It just took me by surprise, that's all.'

'Then remember to expect it this time. Switch the power off.

Now that we've bypassed the main supply, it shouldn't show on any security or diagnostic circuits.'

Chat listened especially alertly as Monty did so, but heard no alarms even from elsewhere in the facility. 'Good,' the Doctor muttered. 'Now...' He slotted the polarisers back into the time dam, but in a very different order from which he had removed them. He was left with a spare circuit in his hand.

After a moment's thought, he slipped it into a pocket. 'All right, switch the power back.'

Monty did as he was told, and it seemed to Chat that nothing had happened. 'What's happening now?'

'Nothing yet,' the Doctor told her. 'Except that I am about to do something very very clever,' he added proudly. He fitted the control panel back on top of the exposed workings. Liang stepped forward to help, pounding it down with his fist. The panel's fascia cracked slightly, and a few spots of blood smeared across it.

The Doctor operated the controls quickly. 'Time?'

'Fourteen twenty-nine and... forty-eight seconds.'

'Just right...' The Doctor counted down slowly, and stabbed at the 'enter' key.

Which was when the alarms went off.

The officer up in the Security centre did a swift double-take as the vault monitors went red. The facility's prize possession which had been kept under such tight guard just wasn't there any more.

At first he thought it must be a monitor malfunction, but then alarms started sounding from the time dams as well.

Something was very wrong.

'Should be... now.' Jack said. 'But I don't see -'

There was a thud from the cargo hold. Jack and Dibber exchanged looks, and nearly bumped heads as they tried to leave the flight deck at the same time. 'Watch it,' Dibber muttered.

They hurried through the crew room and along the short corridor to the cargo hold. There, lying on a pile of tarpaulins, was the cylinder that Jack remembered so well from ten years ago. Disbelievingly, he picked it up. He lifted it gently, half afraid that it would fade away like a dream. In fact, he told himself, he must be dreaming.

'Is that...?' Dibber asked.

'Yes. Somehow it is. Get the ship turned round, and head for the rendezvous.' Dibber took a last look at the cylinder, and headed back to the flight deck. Jack was still mesmerised. How had the Doctor managed this? Maybe he stole it on his scouting trip... But then why go back? It could be a fake, but it was exactly as Jack remembered: impervious and inscrutable.

'I bet this one wasn't done with mirrors.'

'What the hell?' Monty yelped as the alarms went off.

'That's good news, Monty,' the Doctor said. 'It means it worked. Come on.' He started back for the doors.

'Worked? What worked?'

'Cheer up,' the Doctor said encouragingly. 'We've just stolen the most securely guarded object on your planet. It's now in the Nosferatu. Nosferatu.

'How?'

'I reversed the effect of the time field in the vault, so that it would shift the phase there to real time. In conjunction with the time field around the asteroid, it's equivalent to sending the cylinder one hour into the past.'

'But you said it was brought into real time...'