'Old age.' Yrcanos shrugged.

'Wait...' Tuza pushed between them and knelt alongside the dead man. 'Linna. Is it Linna?'

'You knew him?' Yrcanos asked.

Tuza did not reply but stared down at the wizened face in disbelief.

'He was a spice trader back home on Thoros-Alpha. I can't believe what I see.'

Yrcanos could not understand the fuss.

'Death comes to us all. He has lived a long life.'

'Linna was no older than I am. Twenty years old, not a hundred. How has he turned into an old man?'

'Maybe through this...' Peri pointed at a patch of blood on the base of the dead man's skull. A small dart protruded from the wrinkled skin of the deceased.

'Don't touch,' Peri warned Tuza. 'That could be responsible for his rapid ageing!'

'This is the work of the Mentors!'

Tuza clenched his fists in helpless rage.

'What was the dead warrior's function?'

'He was one of the guardians of our weapons store.'

'I smell trickery, betrayal!' Yrcanos scowled fiercely and glared in the direction from which Linna had appeared.

'I'll scout ahead,' Tuza said and started to move away, Yrcanos grabbed the leader of the Alphans. 'We'll all scout ahead.'

'No. There could be much danger.'

'Good. Then we will advance on it together!'

The small group began to advance towards whatever was waiting ahead. Peri, marching along with them, could not keep from her mind the thought that they were involved in a futile mission against forces who possessed an a.r.s.enal of frightening weapons. Peri held out her hand. It was brown, shapely and young. She imagined it wrinkled, spotted, old.

A fur-covered paw appeared and stroked her hand comfortingly 'Thanks,' said Peri grateful for the touch and the Lukoser's presence beside her. He was a walking testament to the Mentor's ruthless regime. Peri decided that she had no choice but to support Yrcanos in his ambition to overthrow the evil rulers of Thoros-Beta.

'Why has Lord Kiv not yet returned to life?'

'It takes time,' the Doctor said.

'You are allowing the Lord Kiv to die!'

Alerted by the shrill panic of Sil the guards moved in, phasers ready to liquify Crozier and his helpers.

'Wait.' Crozier held up a hand. 'Doctor, the severin drip.'

The Doctor knew this was Crozier's last throw. The dial showed five. The Doctor adjusted the flow of the adrenalin-based stimulant 'A movement!' the Matrona called from beside Kiv.

'A reaction here,' the Doctor confirmed a strengthening neural wave on the Personascan.

Crozier saw Kiv's eyelids flutter open then dose. 'It's going to work!' he said exultantly.

Sil bounced up and down on his carrying frame. 'Lift me, lift me! My face must be the first civilised thing he sees!'

The bearers obeyed their master and raised Sil so that he could look down on Kiv.

The eyes of the patient opened. He saw a world of distorted images, blurred colours. Yellow, red, blue. Then a slow focus began that became first a large blob of green, then Kiv's eyes saw a leering face, his ears heard a grating voice. 'My Lord,' it said. 'Welcome back.'

Kiv screamed. 'Have I died and gone into the belly of Sanscrupa?'

'Magnificence, it's me Sil.'

Kiv began to weep.

'Why do you cry, my Lord?'

'I dreamed I was lost in the Sea of Longing.'

Crozier intervened. 'Dreams were to be expected. Side effects of the sedation. Nothing to worry about.'

'I feel only a little different. An ache in my... I suppose I can say my skull.'

Crozier smiled, elated with the success of his coup.

'That will be your skull until we can find one that will be a permanent home for your intellect.'

'The Great Morgo be praised...' Sil began to intone.

Kiv shut him off by attempting to rise. 'I must to work.

There is a future commodity deadline for the Sondlex crop on Wilson One.'

'It will be attended to,' Sil smirked. 'The Doctor and I have struck up a profitable partnership.'

'Oh?' The yellow eyes looked with suspicion from one to the other. 'Nothing... not speculation, I trust.'

The Doctor bowed to the new body that now contained the brain and spirit of the financial genius. 'Merely conserving resources until you return to your rightful place as Supreme Master of us all.'

Crossing a small cavern Yrcanos, Peri and Tuza approached a rockfall that seemed to block the tunnel completely. Yrcanos noted the crevices and alcoves that ran in both directions from either side of the obstacle.

'My other men have yet to arrive,' Tuza said.

'No matter. Where are the weapons?' Yrcanos asked.

'Behind there.'

'Where?'

'Someone has blocked the entrance with a fall of rocks.'

'Or an accident,' Peri said.

Tuza shook his head. 'If so, it's a very convenient rock slip. It covers the only entrance to our weapons store.'

The Lukoser and the Alphans arrived.

'Wh... what's happened?' the Lukoser asked.

Yrcanos pointed. 'Our enemies may have brought the rocks down. A woman's way of fighting.'

'Thanks a lot,' Peri said.

'If there Mentors were anything but cowards they would show their banners and fight in the open!'

'Let's get away from here,' Peri suggested. 'Wait for the other Alphan guys to turn up.'

'She has a point,' Tuza said.

Yrcanos pounded his breastplate. 'I am Yrcanos, King of...'

'We've heard all that!' Peri yelled with sudden exasperation. 'Whereas it terrifies me, I'm not certain it will have the same effect on whoever caused that fall of rock.'

The Lukoser began to speak. 'There is vic... victory to be had, great King but let it be in pru... prudence this day.'

'You are a great dog of war... I mean...' Yrcanos corrected himself. 'A great soldier whose advice I trust and value. So, for today, prudence will be our watchword.

Tomorrow, however, I shall soak the land in blood.'

Peri relaxed. 'I'm glad we've got that sorted out.'

Yrcanos smiled condescendingly down upon her. His hand reached and touched under her chin. 'Let us withdraw, my lady. You and I will find a pleasing way to spend the time before the rest of Tuza's warriors arrive.'

'It would please me if you weren't so patronising...' A shift in the jumble of rock interrupted Peri. 'What's happening...?'

'Look!' Tuza pointed to where an arm had appeared between two boulders.

Quickly Tuza darted to the rockfall and began heaving and scrabbling at the tumble of boulders, trying to free the body whose arm had appeared. Yrcanos and the Alphans also ran to a.s.sist in the clearance.

Peri was about to join them when the Lukoser caught her arm. 'Wait, there could be da... da... danger.'

Cautiously they looked about them, the Lukoser sniffing the air. Nothing seemed amiss. If they were being watched, their enemies were well hidden. Peri and the man-wolf joined the group at the rocks in time to see an ancient lined face revealed.

'Ger, it is Ger!' Sure enough, when they all looked closely the young Alphan sent to a.s.semble the supporting rebels was now a husk of an old man crushed beneath the weight of the rocks.

'No!' Tuza tried to pull his friend from the burial pile.

'Leave him!' Yrcanos reached to restrain Tuza.

'Do not move, anyone!' a sharp voice ordered from behind the group. Frax appeared on a ledge above them.

Below his guards appeared, armed with phaser weapons.

'Stand still and you live. Resist...'

The threat did not need to be completed. The Alphan group was surrounded completely.

'That isn't my fault!' In the courtroom of Galifrey the Doctor could stand no more of what the Matrix was inexorably showing of his time on Thoros-Beta.

'You can't blame me for that...' his finger jabbed towards the screen that was frozen into stillness with the Alphans, Yrcanos, Peri and the Lukoser at the mercy of Frax and his heavily armed guards. 'I wasn't even at the weapons store!'

'All that has taken place you are indirectly responsible for,' the Valeyard said, firmly.

'No! Please, my lady...' the Doctor pleaded to the Inquisitor. 'The death of Ger and the other freedom fighters wasn't my fault!'

'Your presence on that planet did influence events.

There isn't any way that can be denied.'

The Doctor sat down. He put his head in his hands.

'Doctor,' the Valeyard's mocking voice drifted lazily across the courtroom. 'Look at the screen, Doctor, don't miss the tragic results of your folly!'

The screen activated with the Mentor guards dispossessing the Alphans of their weapons and tossing them into a pile in the centre of the cavem. Yrcanos glowered at Frax, fixing him with an unnerving stare. 'You are nothing more than trash from the sewers of Skulnesh...' Yrcanos began.

'Shut up!' Frax said nervously.

Yrcanos took a step nearer to the officer. 'You bring to the field of battle that which robs great warriors of their youth and virility. That is a crime against honour!'

Frax fingered the panel on his phaser. 'It was an experiment conceived in the plague halls of Mogdana! And only a snivelling excuse like you would dare to use it as a weapon of disgrace against ali that is n.o.ble... Vroomnik!'

Yrcanos flung himself at Frax but the officer was too quick and the phaser spat a charge of energy that stopped Yrcanos in his rush. Silently the great warrior became transfixed, then crumpled into a lifeless heap. Seeing Yrcanos charge, Tuza had attempted to reach the arms pile, but then he, too, was gunned down.

Peri and the Lukoser tried to run but the weapons of the guards cut them down without mercy. They lay together, the girl and the Wolfman, a s.h.a.ggy arm thrown across her in a futile last effort of protection.

'Are they dead?' the Doctor cried out across the courtroom.

'What does it look like?' the Valeyard said, his voice filled with cruel satisfaction.