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asked Rachel.
    ‘Of course.’ As he was turning to leave she ventured: ‘Doctor, I have questions I would like answered.’
    ‘So have I,’ said the Doctor. ‘I’ll return in the morning.’
    Ace ran up to him. ‘Doctor, where are you going?’
    ‘I have to bury the past.’
    ‘I’m coming with you.’
    He shook his head. ‘It’s not your past, Ace. You haven’t been born yet.’ He plucked the baseball bat from her rucksack. ‘I’ll take that.’ Settling it under his arm he left.
    Rachel took Ace’s hand and looked into her eyes. ‘What did he mean, haven’t been born yet?’
    Ace smiled but said nothing.
    The workshop was a vast globe one kilometre across, its walls studded with sensors. Cables as thick as corridors snaked uneasily around its vertical circumference. People worked amid this vast technology, insect-like in protective garments.
    In the exact centre hung a radiance like a tiny sun, pulsing unevenly to its own secret rhythms.
    The Triumvirate met in a gallery high in the upper hemisphere. Of these three Gallifreyans who would reshape their world, two were to become great legends; the other would vanish altogether from history.
    Omega turned away from the gallery window. He was a huge man with wide shoulders and muscular arms, a definite drift from the regenerative norm. Some Gallifreyans, however, said his present incarnation was a throwback, a genetic memory from the dark time. He opened his arms like some barbarian king and grinned at Rassilon.
    ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we have succeeded.’
    ‘In what, Omega,’ Rassilon said quietly, ‘have we succeeded?’
    ‘Why, the key to time,’ Omega said unconcernedly. ‘You as much as any of us have made this instrument possible.’
    He turned to the third person in the room. ‘Is this not true?’
    ‘It is,’ said the other.
    Disquiet was in Rassilon’s pale eyes. ‘And what shall we do with this power once we have it?’
    ‘Why, cousin, we shall become transtemporal, free of the tyranny of moment following moment.’ Omega thumped his chest. ‘We shall become the Lords of Time.’
    ‘Let us hope,’ Rassilon said evenly, ‘that we are worthy of such stewardship. Time imposes order on events; without order there is no balance, all is chaos.’
    ‘Then we shall impose order...’
    ‘I forbid it,’ the other said suddenly.
    ‘I was merely explaining...’
    ‘Remember the Minyans,’ said the other.
    ‘But we know so much more, we have learnt from our mistakes,’ protested Omega, but he met the other’s eyes and became silent.
     
    ‘We have obviously learnt nothing; we shall carry that stain forever.’ He moved to the balcony and stared out at the device that burned in the chamber beyond. ‘Whatever other chains we break.’
    Rassilon and Omega joined him at the window.
    ‘Is it not a magnificent achievement?’ said Omega.
    ‘Yes, it is that,’ conceded Rassilon, ‘a fantastic device.’
    ‘Or a terrible weapon,’ said the other.
     

4
    Saturday, 02:17
    The Doctor walked alone in the dark city down near the docks. How many times have I walked here, in this sprawling maze of streets and people? he thought.
    Do they have fogs in London in 1963? He couldn’t remember – there were so many details, so many worlds.
    Such a vast glittering universe, and yet it is always here.
    This planet.
    Its children will be flung out into the stars, to conquer, to fight and die on alien planets. Indomitable, fantastic, brilliant and yet so cruel, petty and selfish.
    And it is always here that the final choices are made.
    The Doctor watched awhile as a crane unloaded crates from a ship. A cold wind flicked scraps of paper along the street. He could see stars through a rent in the clouds.
    ‘Don’t you think you could get along without me,’ he said softly into the night, ‘just for a little while.’
    Only the wind answered.
    The Doctor smelt the tea on the breeze. He sighed once and walked upwind.
    ‘Can I help you?’ asked