Cordar pulled more blocks out of his box and inserted them, one at a time, into his portable computer. Behind him leads from his MSGR snaked across the room where they terminated in vertical panels. The panels were set up at right angles to each other, forming three sides of a closet-sized room.

Cordar's monitor showed the scene outside the TARDIS. Superimposed on the image, a red curve extended from near the edge of the forest into the sky where it faded.

"Clearly a time trail, and not our own," Cordar commented. "So I must not have gotten all of them. From here I can transmat one without using time loop matter transferrence." He turned and checked settings on his messenger and double checked the connections to the panels. "Good," he said with a satisfied grin.

Just then an alarm note sounded from the computer. The picture changed to show a hillside not far from the TARDIS. Already the image of a young woman dressed in an adequate but not ample brown garment appeared on a hillside.

"A girl," Cordar muttered suggestively. "This could be interesting."

The Doctor stood at the top of a hill, scanning the horizon. He could just make out the shape of the TARDIS against the.... "Let's see. The sun's been moving that way," the doctor's arm arced over his head following the remembered motion of the sun, "so that," he pointed directly toward the TARDIS, "is the western horizon." He grinned primly. He turned back to face north. Two hills over he could make out the form of a woman stooped down so her hands could reach the ground. She seemed to be pulling a plant up by the roots. "Why didn't I see her there before?" he asked himself.

He jogged lightly down the hill and heavily up the next. He saw the woman again. This time she walked down the hill toward a small creek, working at something in her hands. He doubted if he had ever seen such soft, full, flowing hair before. He scrambled sideways down the hill to intercept her at the creek bank. She had crouched with her feet in the creek before she heard him. She stood immediately, examined him closely, and drooped with disappointement toward the water.

"Hi," she said as her hands dipped into the water. She didn't look at him at all, even as his boots slid to a stop less than a meter away. The Doctor could see she was rubbing whatever she had in her hands as she held it under the water, upstream of her feet. Unexpectedly she stood and faced him. She tipped the things she held in her hands into her left hand and held one up with her right. "Would you like one?"

The Doctor took it tentatively, watching her to see what he should do with it. She took another one from her left hand, lifted it to her lips, and bit it in two, revealing the light blue heart of the tuber. The Doctor popped his into his mouth, chewed, swallowed, and made a funny face at the peculiar taste. "An interestingly dull taste," he remarked, still catching his breath.

"You liked it?" The tone of the woman's voice communicated sensitivity and insecurity -- a strong desire for approval.

"It would keep you alive, I guess," the Doctor said. Then, noting disappointment in her face, "You know the plant life here very well, and you've done a good job preparing it."

The woman smiled slightly and looked up at the Doctor's face, perceiving it for the first time. The smile jumped into a look of shock almost immediately. She dropped the tubers remaining in her left hand, reached out with her right and grasped the Doctor's scarf. "How many animals did you kill to make that?"

The question so surprised the Doctor he couldn't find an answer. People who had never seen someone from another planet usually had lots of questions. "Who are you?" and "Where did you come from?" usually topped the list. This woman had taken his presence for granted. Now she asks about his scarf. Even as he thought, he saw the woman looking his whole body over closely.

"Has your tribe no mercy? Only your face and hands aren't covered! And parts of you are covered twice, maybe three times." The woman bent over lightly as she retrieved the only tuber that hadn't already bobbled downstream. "And the animals in your world must come in many different colors." She pulled the end of the scarf toward her face and she examined it again.

"Actually," the doctor finally answered, "we didn't kill any animals for that." He paused to watch her puzzled reaction. "We raise these animals on farms. Every year, when the warm season arrives, we cut off all their extra hair. They're glad to be rid of it. We take it, clean it, color it, twist it into long strings, and weave it into this." The Doctor held up the other end of his scarf.

"Cut?"

"Uh...yes. Snip it right off." He could see she still didn't understand. "We take a tool that breaks the hair off right near the skin. It doesn't hurt the animal at all."

"Tool?"

The Doctor considered his next reply carefully. "We make it from a special kind of rock. We work it until it's the shape we need and very smooth. Then we make the inside edges sharp so they'll cut easily. We make many other kinds of tools."

"Sort of like the bones we use for cutting skins and stitching them together."

"Something like that."

"And you do this for all your clothes? You don't kill any animals?"

The two questions in one put the doctor in a complicated semantic maze. He struggled with his answers. "Most of them. Most of my clothes that is. These are made of an animal's skin." The Doctor lifted a foot and pointed to his boot.

The woman bent to examine it. "This animal has no hair?" she asked.

"Yes, it does. But we treat its skin so all the hair falls out before we make it into things like this." The Doctor pointed down again.

"How many animals does it take to make one?"

"Actually, one animal has enough skin to make several pairs of these."

"These must be large animals."

"They are." Then, in an attempt to impress her, he said, "And to waste even less, we eat their flesh."

The comment impressed her, but not positively. "You EAT them?" Distate and disgust vied over the tone of her voice. The Doctor could see her trying to imagine this. "You eat the flesh?"

"We cook it first."

"Cook?" She had encountered yet another new idea. She bit into her last tuber and stepped out of the creek.

"Yes," the Doctor replied, falling into step beside her. "We treat it with heat. From a fire." He could see she still didn't understand. "A small piece of sun."

"You mean you can catch pieces of the sun when they fall to earth during the rain?"

"Not exactly, but you're getting the idea."

The two walked on in silence until they reached the top of a hill. "You come from a strange world," the woman finally murmured. After another pause she said, more firmly, "Follow me." She lifted her arms and faded away.

The Doctor fumbled in his pocket for one of his detectors. He pulled it out by a lead and stared at its reading. "Time travel, definitely time travel," he mumbled. He stared at the reading again. "She's gone at least a million years into the future," he commented.

He looked up with a start. "She asked me to follow her," he said needlessly. He started slowly back to the TARDIS. He'd almost reached the top of the next hill when he heard her call from behind him.

"I didn't think to ask. Did you lose my trail or can you not travel in time?"

"I didn't lose your trail, and I can travel in time. That's how I got here. But I have to be in my machine."

"Machine?" the woman asked.

The Doctor didn't bother to try explaining. "Come over here. Then I can follow you." He pointed toward the TARDIS. The woman raised her arm and travelled effortlessly to the hilltop beside the time machine. The Doctor labored over the crest of the hill and lumbered down.

"I've got to catch her while the Doctor's not looking," Cordar commented. "There won't be a time trail for him to follow, and he won't think of looking around inside the TARDIS."

He flipped a few switches on the messenger, adjusted one dial, and turned back to his computer. The young woman's image had vanished, a red time trail showing where she had left. Working a trackball-like control at the side of the computer he traced the trail. But he didn't finish the trace. "She's still in this time," he commented. "That's great. Now, where is she?"

Images began to flash across the computer monitor as Cordar searched for the young time traveller.

Romana waited, expecting claws to rip her back open, or strong sharp teeth to pierce her somewhere. She heard the large blue beast stop next to her, and she felt it sniff at her legs, her back and finally her neck. "Maybe I can surprise it and run away," she thought. The pain of her twisted leg reminded her she couldn't run, walk or even roll away. Still, she sat up. The large animal nuzzled her cheek and licked at her ear. Then, much like the striped animal, it rubbed against her shoulder.

"Are all animals here as friendly as you?" she asked. "Here, maybe you can pull me out," she suggested, reaching up around the blue beast's neck. But when she started to pull it only turned its head down so her arms slipped off. She tried twice more with the same results. She slapped the side of the beast in her frustration. It backed away in confusion, but did not leave.

The pictures continued to flash across the monitor. One landed on a white and blue striped animal huddling in a tree. In the corner of the picture, out of focus, one could see a female form laying on the ground near a large, blue, bear-like animal.

"I'd better act quickly," the voice stated. He adjusted some controls until some cross hairs on the screen centered on the fuzzy image. "And, energize."

A high-pitched squeal burrowed quickly through the room from the right. There, between the panels, Romana's prone form appeared. The right foot, freed from it's prison, snapped upright and Romana fell over on the floor away from it. Her eyes focused on familiar wall patterns. She swung her feet quickly toward the opening and stood up, favoring the right foot. Across the room she could see the back of a young man, a young Gallifreyan. He turned to see his captive.

Romana stopped, wavering precariously on her left foot. The young man gaped, a look that suggested fear twisting his face. "YOU!" they both shouted. The young man reached into the box still sitting on top of his messenger. His arm returned bearing a laser pistol. "Stay right there!" he warned.