The voice crackled in her ear as it had done on the dress rehearsal. Or maybe that had been the real thing, and this was the dress rehearsal. It didn't much matter to Amanda. The effect was to be much the same. Only this time the commanding voice was ghostly, inhuman. It was the voice of the creature of Time, the anomaly from the Matrix and the intruder in the Time Vortex, the dark angel of pure energy that called itself the Garvond.

The Last Call light was flashing there, as it should have been. She saw it. Now she was at the security gate. She tightened her grip on the reflective briefcase.

The data rush identified the target. Visual confirmed it. The face under the thinning grey hair was the right one. He was reaching for his boarding pass. She threw the case vertically into the air and the target swivelled round to face her as he became aware of the movement. The case landed on her outstretched palms and Amanda looked along the sleek nozzle of the laser blaster.

Before she fired she looked at him for the last time. The face of a man who delighted in his several lives, the face of a connoisseur of wine, a purchaser of expensive suits and an incorrigible bore. The face of Epsilon Delta, former assistant to Gold Usher alias Dr Styles, President of St Matthew's College, Oxford alias the Home Office Minister of Great Britain.

He was slammed up against the barrier with three red circles staining his jacket.

Someone screamed. People hit the floor of Terminal Two in panic.

Excellent, said the voice of the Garvond. said the voice of the Garvond.

And now Amanda knew her work was done.

'I enjoyed that,' she said to the world in general. 'One would think I'm almost becoming human.'

The deactivator was located in her head, so it was her face that blew out in smithereens, leaving a gaping gash of metal. Then the briefcase smacked to the floor, blasting the SwissAir counter with a couple of rogue shots. Amanda disintegrated. The fractures began from the neck down, the metal of her body crumbling like parched earth, and the cracks grew wider and wider as they spread to her limbs and torso. Cracks and holes linked, bursting open gashes in her metallic body. In a matter of seconds the torso had caved in, and with a crash, the remains of the android collapsed in a shower of fine dust on the floor of Terminal Two.

One by one, people were starting to pick themselves up off the floor.

Three seconds later, the target achieved critical blood loss and died.

Four pools of dust, tinged blue and silver, were also rippling in the wind in the front quad of St Matthew's College, Oxford.

Bernice, Tom, Terrin and Rafferty had turned as one when they felt the androids' grip relaxing. The disintegration had been spectacular, but Bernice somehow knew it didn't indicate a victory. For one thing, the Time Soldiers were still very much present, and for another the Doctor's expression had not changed. She was angry now. He had not told her what was really going on.

'You knew that would happen,' said Bernice. 'Didn't you?'

The Doctor shrugged. 'They were instruments. When the Garvond no longer needed them, it disposed of them.' He looked meaningfully at the shimmering Time Soldiers. 'The real enemy doesn't make deals.'

Enter the TARDIS.

'Very well.' The Doctor surveyed the quadrangle one last time. 'This should give the American tourists something to talk about. Benny, Tom, you're needed, I believe.'

'Me?' said Tom Cheynor, who had been wondering when he could go for a strong pint in the Turf and pretend it had all been a very misguided Rag Week stunt. 'Why the hell me?'

'You are the link with the past and the future.' The Doctor glanced at the Time Soldiers. 'Isn't that right? The Time Focus. A door, so to speak.'

The soldiers were silent. The Doctor gave them a knowing smile and stood back to allow Bernice and Tom past.

Benny stopped and looked deep into the eyes of the man who so often had put her life in danger. And who then saved her, only to throw her into yet another life-and-death struggle. It had always been challenging, up until now. It had even sometimes been fun. Living the past was even better than digging it up. But quite what the Doctor had dug up now she didn't care to speculate. Especially after last time.

'I've just got this awful feeling that people are going to die again,' she said quietly. 'And you know it.'

'If I could stop people dying,' said the Doctor sadly, 'I'd not be here now.'

'Ace understands you even less than I do, you know.'

'I know.'

'Where is Ace, by the way?'

'Safe.'

The Time Soldier crackled threateningly. Bernice glowered at it, then gave one last, meaningful look at the Doctor before she entered the TARDIS.

Tom was looking at Rafferty. 'Professor, tell the Doctor I can't go. Tell him we've got a tutorial together on Wednesday. Anything. Please!'

'Tom.' The Doctor's voice was quietly commanding. 'You're no longer safe in Oxford.'

And Tom Cheynor realized that this was the first thing the Doctor had said which made sense. He looked the police box up and down, shaking his head, and then walked inside.

The Time Soldiers, moving faster than Rafferty or Terrin could see, closed like a sea of energy around the TARDIS and the Doctor. Their hissing voices clearly indicated who was supposed to remain behind.

The Doctor looked from one to the other. 'Professor,' he said. 'Captain. You still have a part to play. Remember the river bank.'

The wall of green light around the TARDIS was thickening. The Doctor was vanishing into the fog like a phantom, and like some kind of fluid, the blur of the Time Soldiers swept after him Rafferty and Term in stood back, watching open-mouthed. The light began to fade, taking the outline of the TARDIS with it. There was a loud, trumpeting noise in the quadrangle, echoing from the walls of the Hall and the Chapel. It lingered long after the TARDIS had gone, whispering away into nothingness.

Rafferty and Term in turned at the sound of running footsteps from behind them.

The astonished face of Harry, the porter, was gazing at the lawn where the TARDIS had been. Slowly he turned to look at Professor Rafferty.

'I suppose it's a Faculty thing, Professor?' he asked, with a strangely glazed expression. 'If it's a Faculty thing, I won't be asking, like.'

Harry had seen a lot of odd things in these past few days. It seemed almost normal that Rafferty should be accompanied by a tall man in what looked like some kind of futuristic military uniform, who had adopted a posture owing not a little to the martial arts.

'Is he on your side, Professor?' asked Terrin.

'What? oh, yes, calm down, old fellow.' Rafferty patted Terrin on the shoulder as the latter straightened up, relaxing. 'I must apologize for my friend, Harry,' said Rafferty in a conspiratorial voice. 'He's from the twenty-fourth century.'

'Ah,' said Harry, who was wondering whether he ought to be relieved about this. 'I'll, er, leave you to get on, then.' He nodded to the Professor and the Captain, and plodded back in the direction of the Porter's Lodge, where the Dean of Decrees was looking for his mail and a congealing tea was waiting to be eaten.

'All right, Professor Rafferty,' said Terrin levelly. 'I suppose I have to accept that I am where you say I am. Now what are we going to do?'

The human capacity to focus on the relevant can sometimes be amazing. Two time-displacements in one day the second considerably greater than the first might have been enough to send a lesser man scurrying for the safety of a corner where he could gibber in peace. Romulus Terrin, whose mind truly did try to be broad despite the occasional high-banked channel of prejudice, had assessed the situation and decided not to let it worry him. His immediate thoughts, as before, were with the inhabitants of Q4 and the crew of his own ship despite the fact that they were all four hundred years in the future. It was a concept he was happy enough not to try envisaging. He settled for thinking of them as merely distant, and now the need for action was manifesting itself in every cell of his body.

'You heard the Doctor,' said Rafferty with quiet satisfaction. 'That machine we arrived in is still parked on the banks of the Cherwell.'

Terrin took a large gulp of air. He wondered if all Earth air tasted of fossil fuel or if it was just this city. 'All right, Professor,' he said. 'Let's go.'

They ran to the porter's lodge, and turned sharp left. As they dashed along the busy pavement, Terrin was impressed with Rafferty's pace and control of breath. Maybe twentieth-century man has something going for him after all, he thought.

Rafferty knew where he was going. They kept an even pace along the traffic-clogged Broad Street, till they jogged into Turl Street beside the Paperback Shop. Groups of students were gossiping beside their bicycles at the entrances to Exeter and Jesus Rafferty hoped very much that they were none of his. Except for exams and formal Hall, he rarely wore his full academic subfusc, and did not usually make a habit of dashing about the streets in it.

He suddenly noticed he had lost Terrin, and looked wildly around for him in panic. In a city like this, you could get lost for ever.

He was there, gazing raptly in at the window of the bookshop behind them. Rafferty raised his eyes in a helpless and unaccustomed appeal to the heavens, and jogged back to the Captain.

Terrin was pointing. 'An original A.S. Byatt,' he was saying in wonderment, 'on paper paper. And the Larkin letters. Have you any idea how much these would fetch in my century?'

Rafferty was rather heartened, but something was yelling in his mind, telling him to get a move on. 'Literature has a time and a place,' he said. 'Come on.'

And he almost had to drag Terrin away. The Captain had a kind of wistful melancholy about him, James had decided, almost as if he were obsessed with recapturing the past, but right now they had no time to stop and think.

They ran the length of the street, and caught their breath at the corner.

Terrin was gasping. 'You know... Professor Rafferty...'

'James, old chap... Call me James.'

'James... I really... must get myself back on that fitness course... when I get back to the... ship. Some more... fencing with my... first officer.'

Rafferty straightened up. His heart was beating at a healthy rate, he noticed, and he was really quite enjoying himself. 'You're doing very well for someone not used to our atmosphere,' he said kindly. 'When all this is over, you and I are going to have a good chat. What makes it all the more fun is that you really shouldn't be here at all, of course.' He grinned disarmingly, like a man twenty years younger.

Terrin, breathing deeply and bent almost double, managed a smile. 'Don't worry. I'm not going to go treading on any butterflies.' A thought suddenly occurred to him. 'James are you going to know how to operate a Space-time capsule?'

It took Rafferty a second or two to realize that the question was meant in deadly earnest.

Chapter 21.

Control 'A wanderer is man from his birth.

He was born in a ship On the breast of the river of Time.'Matthew Arnold, The Future The Future

Shadows.

His mind intrigues me as I draw my strength through the telepathic link. So much of it is half-hidden, like a spiral staircase into a dark tower.

Where do these images come from?

Where do these thoughts come from?

I know things I once did not know. I feel things I once could never have felt. I am almost part of the real world again. With each death, with each bite into the substance of the Vortex, I grow in power and vision.

But do I gain more from these humans than I had at first realized...?

Soon, all of creation will be mine.

I have no time for such idle philosophy.

'I've got a headache,' muttered Ace.

Strakk, slumped with her against the navigation console, shot her a brief look of sympathy. 'Don't worry. Pretty soon it won't matter any more.'

Some of the crew had been overcome by exhaustion and were slumped in their chairs or across consoles. Time Soldiers hovered, restless, near every one of them. Cheynor was the only human still standing up. Ace was beginning to wonder if strain and tension were his bread of life. She didn't think she'd seen him let up even once so far, but she supposed it was his ship now, and that he felt responsible.

The Garvond throbbed with energy. Ace wondered what the creature was thinking.

Its tangible darkness seemed to have spread tendrils into every corner of the bridge now. Chattering and rustling swept through the circuits of the consoles, fizzed in the air like radioactivity. Its skull burned with anger.

'It's heading for something,' Strakk muttered. 'Building up its strength.' He sighed. 'Wish the Doctor's message had been clearer. I suppose the transmitter on Q4 was just totally fragged. Shame.'

Ace was stony-faced. 'It wouldn't have helped. He's going to get us all killed, whatever happens.'

Strakk grinned weakly. 'Sounds to me like you and the Doctor have a great working relationship.'

'We did have. Something went wrong. I'm still trying to understand it. I think that's what the Doctor wants. For me to understand him.'

'And how are you doing?'

'He doesn't realize I know him too well. And that it doesn't make things any better.' She shook her head, as if trying to clear it of such thoughts. 'Sorry.'

The ship juddered, bouncing them up and down. Larsen, shaken from sleep, stirred above them with a groan, and they heard the crackle as a Time Soldier moved to cover him.

'Ace,' Strakk muttered, looking over his shoulder. 'I think these guys are edgy.'

'I reckon you could be right.'

They exchanged a glance.

The ship thundered on through the Vortex.

Approaching it now, in the realm where Time and Space were meaningless, came a blue police box.

Within the TARDIS, the Doctor had his hands poised at the console, but appeared not to be doing anything. Bernice and Tom were seated in armchairs which had somehow appeared underneath the scanner screen. The time rotor rose and fell with a rhythmic breathing which was not that of the TARDIS, and the red glow which had earlier suffused Epsilon Delta's Type 102 cast devilish hues over everything. The Time Soldier guards were little more than smudges of light hovering above the console, but for the Doctor, Benny and Tom it was unsettling enough to know they were there.

Bernice cleared her throat, wondering if the Time Soldiers could hear her. 'I don't suppose you're actually in control any more, Doctor?' she asked, with her eyes wide and her chin poised on one finger.

'Control?' The Doctor looked up, his expression still bleak. 'It takes more than just observation of the moment to tell who's controlling whom.' He cast a wary glance at Tom Cheynor. 'Isn't that so, Tom?'

The young man appeared confused. 'I suppose so.'

They sensed the redness shimmering. Laughter, as if from a fissure into Hell, boomed in the console room. And then they heard the voice.