The Doctor was moving forward to lean over the body, and no one stopped him.

The name-plaque, which could still be read, identified the man as Crewman Cal Pagett. The Doctor peered through the haze of the electronic shroud. The man's face was deeply lined, the eyes staring sightlessly from paper-thin flesh. At the chin, the skin was ripped like cloth, and yellowed bone showed through the gash. The man's uniform, almost in tatters, hung limply on a wizened body, and two cracked hands had been laid across what remained of his chest.

The Doctor did not move. He had seen death in many forms, and it always angered him, but this time he was trembling. He felt Ballantyne's breath on the back of his neck.

'Pagett was twenty-six,' murmured the supervisor.

The Doctor, calling on his hundreds of years of experience, somehow gathered his resolve and turned to face Ballantyne.

'It's started,' he said. 'Do you doubt me now?'

Ballantyne's jaw stayed clenched, and a nerve had begun to twitch in his cheek. He was not meeting the Doctor's eye.

Vaiq had stepped forward. 'You knew this was going to happen, Doctor?'

'Yes,' whispered the Doctor, and his voice was hollow.

'This is the attack which you spoke of?'

'This?' The Doctor rounded on her. 'All this this proves is that the Time barriers are being breached. Very slowly, maybe, and in limited spatial relation, but still breached.' He raised his voice so that everyone on the platform could hear him. 'This is...' He waved a hand as if to dismiss them all. 'This is a mere calling card.' He turned his back on them, and nobody stopped him when he went to the edge of the platform and sat there, his legs swinging over the edge. proves is that the Time barriers are being breached. Very slowly, maybe, and in limited spatial relation, but still breached.' He raised his voice so that everyone on the platform could hear him. 'This is...' He waved a hand as if to dismiss them all. 'This is a mere calling card.' He turned his back on them, and nobody stopped him when he went to the edge of the platform and sat there, his legs swinging over the edge.

He might have been angry or deep in thought, but without seeing his face, Helina Vaiq could not tell. She looked anxiously at the supervisor.

Ballantyne did not alter the determined set of his jaw. 'He knows more than he's telling.' He glanced over at Terrin. 'And this one... his DNA sample says he's Romulus Terrin. But how easy is that to fake? Pretty simple for a professional, I'd have thought.'

Terrin met the hostile stare with dignity. And all the time his fingers were gently rubbing the edge of the twisted identity-plaque in his pocket.

Helina Vaiq had joined the Doctor, just out of earshot. 'Doctor?'

He did not answer.

'Doctor, you're the only person here who seems to have any idea how Cal was killed, and I want to know.' The Doctor was still silent. 'I'm human too,' she went on, and anger was creeping into her voice. 'I'm the one who has to tell his wife and his three-year-old son. And it would make it easier if I knew. It would make it better if you didn't have to to treat us as if...' She broke off, for the exact words that she needed failed her now.

The Doctor turned suddenly, and his face bore a sad smile. Standing up, he touched Helina's elbow, awkwardly.

'I'm sorry, Miss Vaiq. I don't mean to. It's just that I wonder... if there will ever be an end to it, one of these days.'

'An end to death? I hardly think so, Doctor.' Her voice held the bitterness of suffering.

The Doctor sighed. 'This isn't my job. I don't get paid for it. I don't get any kind of reward.' His eyes were deep, hypnotic, but his voice was cracking like old wood. Helina found herself wondering, for the first time, how old he could possibly be. 'I've never asked for any. Sometimes there are some. The smile of the baby child. The first sunset on a soft and new-born world. The taste of the purest spring water, untouched by any pollution of Man's making... But it's not enough. I'm tired, Miss Vaiq. Do you understand me? No, of course you don't. A child of less than forty Earth summers. How could you possibly understand?'

Helina could have said that she had once thought that she would never see another summer. That she had imagined her existence as leading up to a meeting with a fireball that would lash her skin, flaying it to the bone. Just like her sister's life. But she chose not to. Instead she asked: 'You're some sort of detective, aren't you?'

The Doctor smiled. 'In a way. Although I sometimes wish I could be more of a teacher. It's all very well to give a hungry man a fish...'

Helina frowned. 'I'm sorry?'

'Oh, an old analogy.' The Doctor gazed at the distant floating crates. 'One I picked up on Earth some time ago. There's a hungry man whose crops have failed, although he lives by a river. In one day he's visited by two missionaries. The first brings a basket of fish and tells him he can eat as much as he likes. The second, though, gets a pole, a thread and a piece of wire, and teaches the man how to fish. Who has performed the more useful service?' The Doctor clasped his hands behind his back and began to walk away from Helina Vaiq, no longer looking at her. 'Sometimes,' he said, 'I'm just expected to have an endless supply of fish.'

Ballantyne and the guards were blocking his way.

'And now where do you think you're going?' asked the supervisor coldly.

For a moment the Doctor, dwarfed by the tall, thin supervisor, looked as if he did not have an answer. Then he smiled.

'Well, Supervisor. Do you want my help, or not?'

Ballantyne did not answer.

'I'll take that as a yes. If you want to keep an eye on me, I suggest you come with me, and bring your philosophical friends along too.' The Doctor nodded to the impassive guards. 'Miss Vaiq, I need to send an important communication.' He gestured to Terrin. 'You too, Romulus. Come along.'

As the station guards resumed their position by the body of Crewman Pagett, they did not notice the slight shift in the shape of the electronic shroud.

A twist of red and green light crackled to itself, spurting above the man's body like St Elmo's Fire. For a moment, a gas-masked head reared up, its eyes burning bright, and sleekly muscled arms began to form in the shimmering air above Pagett.

The figure hovered for a second, trying to stabilize, then snapped out of existence like a deactivated hologram.

Quincy, the central computer of Q4, squatted like a queen bee at the heart of the station's communications complex. Its network of fibreoptics, inlaid into the station's infrastructure, told it everything it needed to know. Other computers, in the past, had embraced their host stations. Quincy held Q4 together. Deep within Quincy beat the equivalent of ventricles and aureoles, sending the cells of data along the uncountable capillaries.

At 16.30, Central European Time, one major artery of Quincy was monitoring an emergency transmission, and a tiny fragment of one of its brain cells was storing it. For the operator of the terminal on this occasion he identified himself as 'Theta Sigma', but the transmission was backed by Co-Ordinator Vaiq's priority override had requested that the message, although of primary importance, had to be recorded, and beamed on all frequencies in precisely one hundred and sixty Earth hours. Moreover, during its week of storage, the message was to be kept in a protected cell, preferably encased in a concentrated force-field.

Quincy performed without question. Had its artificial intelligence included curiosity, it might have wondered how Theta Sigma could know that a call on such an important distress frequency would be required in one week's time.

'And there it is,' said the Doctor. He flicked off the holorecorder, and emerged from the communications booth which he had been assigned in the Control Centre. Now let's play it back, shall we?'

Ballantyne's 3D starmaps twisted and split, became instead a blue-tinted hologram of the Doctor's lined face.

'Attention, Earth vessels. This is a recorded message, on a priority channel, intended for the crew of the Starship Icarus Icarus, currently patrolling the fifty-fourth sector of explored space.' The Doctor was seen to pause, look aside. 'The identifying tag is codeworded "Daedalus".' The image jumped slightly, indicating the pause the Doctor had made here. He was in greater close-up now, his eyes as large as beach-balls and full of dark warning.

'Lieutenant-Commander Quallem, this message is for you. This is the Doctor. You must trust me, and do as I say. Captain Terrin is with me, and he has given me the relevant code-word. This, as I understand it, is his personal signal to you that no compulsion has been exercised, and that he is not being forced to misinform you under duress. Your ship must not, I repeat must not not be allowed to come into contact with alien forces between Q4 and Lightbase. If my theory is correct, you are running into a trap set by one of the deadliest powers ever to inhabit the dimensions of Space and Time. You must change course to avoid this grave threat I repeat, avert your current path and advise Earth of your situation. You must believe me me, and your captain, who is still very much alive. Someone is causing disruptions the most serious timebreak. We have very little time ourselves. Listen to my warning. It's the only way, Lieutenant-Commander, to prevent the terrible catastrophe which you saw on the space-station an anomaly that was never meant to happen. Please do as I say for the sake of Humanity.' be allowed to come into contact with alien forces between Q4 and Lightbase. If my theory is correct, you are running into a trap set by one of the deadliest powers ever to inhabit the dimensions of Space and Time. You must change course to avoid this grave threat I repeat, avert your current path and advise Earth of your situation. You must believe me me, and your captain, who is still very much alive. Someone is causing disruptions the most serious timebreak. We have very little time ourselves. Listen to my warning. It's the only way, Lieutenant-Commander, to prevent the terrible catastrophe which you saw on the space-station an anomaly that was never meant to happen. Please do as I say for the sake of Humanity.'

The image broke into shards and seemed to fall like rain to the floor of the centre, before re-forming into the standard tracking holograms.

Ballantyne had been watching, and now he strode down to meet the Doctor, Terrin and Vaiq. 'Very good, Doctor,' he said, and there was neither warmth nor trust in his voice. 'I hope, for your sake, that this little game turns out to have had some purpose.'

'I hope so too,' said the Doctor. 'For your your sake.' sake.'

Ballantyne appeared unperturbed. 'Miss Vaiq has now made herself entirely responsible for you. I've done all I can,' he said. 'I think you'll agree.'

'I trust the Doctor,' said Helina Vaiq.

She and the Doctor exchanged a smile.

Ballantyne looked from one to the other. 'If I'm wanted,' he said, 'I shall be in my office. I have a number of administrative tasks.' He left the centre.

'I met many like him,' said Terrin softly. 'I could have become one all too easily.' He shook his head as if shaking off memories. 'So, Doctor. What now?'

'We wait,' said the Doctor grimly. He was perched on the floor, oblivious to the bustle of the centre, consulting what appeared to be a small leather-bound book. 'Are you diary people?' he asked, 'Either of you? No, I doubt it. Wrong century. No one writes like Samuel Pepys these days. Observant fellow, I recall...' All the time, he was furrowing through the pages, as if trying to locate a particular reference. 'And then there was Francis Kilvert... I gave Arthur Young a couple of tips when I was in France, too. Aha! Here we are.'

'Don't tell me,' said Vaiq sardonically. 'You might just be going to explain something.'

The Doctor did not seem to have heard her. 'I was right, then. The ravaging of the fields of Time. Just as recorded in the Future Legends. And yet no one...' His eyes were looking inward now. Into the past. His own past. 'No one could have liberated such an immense power, unless... Yes, yes... And it would explain why you and I, Captain, were brought here unscathed. Brought back one week in time, rather than consumed, like those...' He seemed to remember suddenly where he was, to take in the fact that the centre was full of bank after bank of monitors and holo-consoles, and the young and concentrated faces of their operators. 'Like them,' he said, and to Vaiq it sounded as if he had tried to choke back the words. He got to his feet, and took one last look round at the room full of technology. 'I must be alone,' he said. 'I need time to think.'

'I'll come ' Vaiq began.

'No! You have no idea at all of what it all might mean. If I'm right, then... someone... is tampering on a scale that could never have been imagined. Leave me alone for an hour.' You have no idea at all of what it all might mean. If I'm right, then... someone... is tampering on a scale that could never have been imagined. Leave me alone for an hour.'

'I hope you know what you're doing, Doctor,' said Vaiq softly.

The Doctor rubbed his eyes. 'So do I, Helina.'

And he was gone.

Terrin, as if coming to a sudden decision, unclenched the hand that he had been keeping at his side for the past five minutes, and forced what he was holding into Helina Vaiq's damp palm. 'I've decided something important,' he said. 'Take this. You may understand. I hope, for all of us, that you never have to.'

He left without another word.

She looked at the I.D. plaque. The corporation logo, flaking and bent. The barely legible name.

She felt cold. Lost, and uncontrollably shaking, as she had done that time she had lain in the bunker, watching as her sister's flesh was burnt to ash by the giant flamethrowers, and carried to the heavens while the soldiers laughed among themselves. She felt the bile rise in her throat. The past. None of them could escape the past. And now, it looked as if their future had been decided too.

Chapter 15.

Echoes The Doctor found himself free to wander at will among the officers and technicians in Q4's brightly-lit corridors. He even got friendly smiles from one or two of them, and raised his hat in return.

The lounge deck was adorned with hanging plants, thick carpets and chrome tables. The Doctor looked around the central bar as he strolled nonchalantly into it. Above him, the domed roof stretched up, beyond which the galaxy's spiral arm could be seen twisting away into infinity. In the bar one or two officers were slouched in chairs, and some overalled engineers were playing cards in the corner, but otherwise the atmosphere was calm and anticipatory.

The barmaid was a petite young woman in a high-collared tunic, with cropped claret-coloured hair and a single crescent-moon earring. Beneath an illuminated notice that read OFF-DUTY CREW ONLY, she was polishing glasses, her cherry-red mouth wearing a slightly wistful smile.

The Doctor perched on one of the bar-stools, placed his hat down in front of him, then rested his chin on his hands.

'Quiet in here,' he said.

She shrugged, threw him a coy glance. 'Okay for me,' she said. 'You gotta take time out to smell the roses, as someone said. What'll it be?'

'A glass of water, please,' replied the Doctor moodily.

She laughed as she siphoned it. 'Want lemon in it? Lime?'

'No, just water.'

'Sorted. You can't be drowning many sorrows.' She set the glass in front of him. She rested her own chin on her hands in a slightly mocking attempt to meet his eye. 'Right?'

'Wrong,' said the Doctor. 'Sorrow floats.'

'Well, that don't bother me,' she said, pouring from a bottle of cherry brandy. 'Rumour says there's something on.' She sipped. 'There's a buzz. Something in the air you can sense. Sweet, and it leaves a sour taste. Sour because it means half your mates are going to die soon.' Her mouth drooped at the corners. The Doctor studied it intently. 'Oh, I've had it before. Never been wrong. Why d'you think I'm here and not flying shuttles no more?'

'It's a hard life,' the Doctor murmured, 'but it goes on. Things change.' The Doctor met her eyes for the first time.

'Yeah. Slainte mhath Slainte mhath.' She took another gulp of brandy.

'Have you ever...' The Doctor hesitated, 'made a mistake?' he asked. 'One you weren't aware of until the consequences became clear?'

'You joking joking? I've lost count. I get holo-cables from my mistakes. I wake up next to them. I wear them. I drink them and throw them up again. Hell, it's not the end of the world.' She breathed deeply and gulped another mouthful. 'Why? What have you done?'

'I'm not sure.'

'All right.' The girl wasn't deterred. 'You're having an affair.'

'No, no.'

'Well, maybe you should. Maybe that's your problem.'

'I doubt it.'

'Okay. Touchy, ain't you? How old are you?'

The Doctor looked past her at the rows and rows of bottles on the chrome shelf.

'I honestly don't recall,' he said eventually. 'I used to be sure. Too old, that's the answer.'

She leaned forward a little further. 'Trust me. It'll work out. Things do.'

Somehow, there was more than just blind hope in her voice, more than glib comfort.

'I should spend more time thinking,' said the Doctor softly. 'And looking.' His face became a little brighter. 'I should come to these places more often. Village pubs, space station bars. The only way to learn what really really goes on in the wider institution.' goes on in the wider institution.'

'Too right. But I shouldn't be doing this, y'know? Drinking on the job. Shooting my mouth off.' She laughed. It was a brandy-washed laugh, deep and rich. 'Always do, with older men.'

'I see.' The Doctor, a little uncertainly, broke his gaze away from hers. 'My life,' he said, 'doesn't allow me to... stop, very often. Work things out.' He sighed, shrugged. 'I don't... make close friends all that easily. And sometimes when I do, I hurt them. Under pressure, usually.'

'Don't worry,' she said with a grin. 'You're all right. I wish they could all be as nice as you.'

When he looked back down at the bar, he saw that she had moved her glass so that its rim was touching his.

'I often wish I could be as nice as me,' he said. 'Thanks for the talk.' He flipped his hat back onto his head and jumped down from the stool.

'Any time.' It could have been weariness that made her voice listless, or disappointment. 'Sorry. I wasn't much use.'