The woman examined the TARDIS. "Is this a tool?" she asked aloud. She placed her hand along the corner. It felt smooth, but not as hard as she imagined a smooth rock might feel. She pressed a fingernail against the surface. This left a dent in the police box paint. "Not that hard then. Animal skin maybe?" She stepped back in the surprise of this thought. But the surface didn't look like the skins on that man's feet. She looked eastward. The light of the sun careened off his belt buckle and struck her in the eye.

"He'll be a while getting here." She turned her attention to the TARDIS once more. She moved right up to it until her eyes were only three or four centimeters from the surface. "This looks almost like the inside of a tree. I wonder. If they have tools that can break the hair off an animal without hurting the animal, maybe they have tools that can break a tree so the inside is this smooth." She rubbed her cheek against the TARDIS. Then she turned around, rubbing one shoulder, her back, and the other shoulder against the TARDIS until she stood facing it again. Then she leaned her left shoulder and left hip against the TARDIS and walked around it, nudging the ridges with the side of her head.

The side she had come to first had a plate of a different color with strange marks on it. She touched the marks and discovered they had been cut into the surface, probably with some sort of tool, she decided. She ran a finger along some of these marks, but that didn't help her decipher them. She lay her ear against the TARDIS' door. She heard the hum and whine of its machines and sensors. This also startled her and she stepped back, looking intently at this strange, sharp-cornered tree.

"Mavor," she called. "Mavor?" She sprinted lightly to the edge of the forest and peered in. "Mavor, are you there?" She waited a few moments. A few of the small brown animals dropped out of the trees and ran up to her. She bent down with her arms spread. Three of them jumped onto her arms and ran up them to her shoulders. Here they hopped around from shoulder to shoulder, clinging to her hair or to her fur garment. One could guess that other members of this species had lost their skins to make the garment the woman wore.

Gently she lifted the animals back to the ground, called for her pet once more, and walked back up toward the TARDIS. When she arrived she found the Doctor still two hills away and breathing heavily. She leaned against the TARDIS and sighed lightly as she slid into a sitting position.

"What is going on here, Cordar?" Romana asked, carefully holding as still as she could.

"I didn't think you'd be out in the woods like that," her young captor explained.

"If you were trying to save me you were too late. If that blue ... bear or whatever had wanted to kill me I'd have been dead long before you got around to moving me."

"You were at the edge of the scanner. I couldn't see you clearly."

"What were you doing following me around like that anyway? And can you please put that gun down?"

"So where is she?" Cordar turned toward his computer and began to fiddle with the keyboard. Romana hopped up next to him.

Suddenly he remembered her. When he turned, the shock of finding her so close to him intensified his already cantankerous mood. He shoved her violently back, shouting, "I told you not to move! Stay away!"

Romana stumbled and fell to the floor to save her aching foot. "What are you up to?" she asked again.

"Get back between the panels. I'll have to send you back."

Romana received this news with considerable relief, and started shuffling toward the makeshift transmat unit.

"I can't do that, you'll tell the Doctor." Cordar looked back toward his workstation as if it would help him.

"Tell the Doctor what?" Romana realized Cordar hadn't looked directly at her since she had first appeared.

"But when he misses you he's going to get suspicious."

"Misses me?" Romana began to doubt Cordar's sanity and to seriously fear for her safety.

"I've been so stupid!" he exclaimed, finally looking Romana in the eyes. "You can operate the TARDIS."

"Yes," Romana nodded dubiously.

"So you could take us someplace where I could work without interruption."

"Once the Doctor returned, if I had a good reason."

"Without the Doctor. He mustn't know what I'm doing yet."

Although pleased that Cordar's answers had become sensible considering her half of the conversation, Romana didn't like the main point to which his remarks led. "You're playing some sort of game, Cordar, and I don't like the sound of things. I don't see what any of this can have to do with the purpose for our journey."

Just then Cordar noticed the fur-clad woman again, standing just outside the TARDIS. "There she is!" He turned his back on Romana and started setting his equipment to transfer the woman inside the lab. Romana saw what he was doing and reached over from where she lay on the floor and disconnected one of the cables.

"Damn you!" Cordar screamed, as he kicked at her and missed.

Romana raised her good left leg defensively. "Teleporting someone against their will violates several Gallifreyan rules all at once!" she spat back. "I won't let you do it!" She added a question. "Who is that?"

"She's a native of this planet," Cordar answered. Instantly he realized that his answer had given him away. He also realized that further confrontation with Romana could get violent. He decided on a different strategy.

"So, you know more about our investigation than you've been letting on." Romana framed her question in the form of a sentence.

"Yes," Cordar replied.

"Well?"

"You don't expect me to tell you? I don't think I can trust you."

"I still don't see why you don't just tell the Doctor everything you know." Romana began to wish Cordar would quit talking so she could get treatment for her foot. "He's no longer Lord President and he never was one to get carried away with bureaucratic complexities." She unzipped her boot and pulled it gingerly off.

Cordar watched with preoccupied fascination, introducing a moment of silence into the previously hurried interchange.

"That's all I'm taking off," Romana snapped. "I told you 'No,' fifty-three years ago and that's still my answer."

The interest fell from Cordar's face, but it still indicated his thought processes in sorting out a very complicated problem.

"You should know this is my first regeneration. I'm considering skipping a family altogether. I find Gallifrey rather restrictive."

"What did you find?" Cordar finally found his voice, apparently hoping more information from Romana might help him sort out his troubles.

"I said, 'I find Gallifrey rather restrictive.'"

"No. What did you find in the woods?"

"What's it to you? I found some animals that like to scare the wits out of a person and then rub up against them."

"We need to know more about this planet."

"Then leave the TARDIS and see for yourself. I expect we'll be staying here quite a while."

"I'm busy in here. I agreed to come and help on this project, not do all of it myself."

"By my figures you haven't even helped," Romana accused. "I suppose you know more about the cube than you've told anyone yet. I'll bet you even generated the thing. No," she concluded after a moment's thought, "you wouldn't be that smart."

Cordar ignored the insult with great difficulty. "Maybe, given the current circumstances," Cordar pointed at Romana's foot, "you'd be willing to work in here -- assuming you'd keep it a secret from the Doctor."

"I can't agree to help you if you won't tell me what's going on." Romana shook her head as she spoke. "And I've got to have some help for my foot."

Finally, Cordar turned away from Romana, putting the gun down well out of her reach. He opened a cupboard in the lab and took out some medical supplies. "I'll take care of that."

"You flunked your medical courses. Stay away from my foot." Romana pulled the aching appendage toward her protectively.

"I've had more since then," he lied transparently. He grabbed an extra lab coat, rolled it up, and put it under Romana's head for a pillow. In the process he passed a cotton swab soaked in a highl