"If you need anything, I'll be in here," the Doctor explained to Vorlene. "Just press this button and I'll come."

Vorlene put her finger against the part of the wall the Doctor had indicated and pushed. She heard a chime in the next room.

"When you're settled in the plastic say, 'Lights out,' and it will get dark in the control room." The TARDIS obeyed the command in the middle of the sentence and the control room darkened as he finished it. "Lights on," he commanded to reverse the event.

Vorlene nodded. She had started to understand life with this oddly-dressed stranger. She padded across the control room, slithered into the Couch of Indolence, and called out, "Lights out." She closed her eyes against the ensuing darkness and drifted into blissful slumber.

Cordar stopped in the room with the strange plaid cloth and picked up a cot. He carried it with him through a shortcut he'd found to the TARDIS' second control room. He spent a few minutes entering commands in the computer before stretching out on the cot, calling "Lights out," and falling asleep.

Romana stirred again. Then she opened her eyes. She squeezed them shut again trying to remember where she was. She sat up, and fell right back down when her foot reminded her of it's predicament. "Cordar, you better have a great explanation for this." She sat back up, more carefully this time, and felt along the floor. It didn't feel like a floor. In fact, it felt very like the ground around 'her' hole. Her brain toyed momentarily with the idea that her confrontation with Cordar had been a bad dream. But the freedom of her right foot and the absence of a boot to cover it provided evidence otherwise.

There wasn't any moonlight but a number of cosmically close stars provided just enough illumination for Romana to make out her surroundings. She wondered if Cordar had dragged her here, but her knowledge of his personality suggested he wouldn't go to so much physical exertion. And since he had transmat gear already operating she guessed he'd sent her away with that. A few quick mental calculations told her that the contraption in the TARDIS had enough range to send her anywhere on the planet, but not beyond it. Still, a planet is a large place to search for one person. Romana hoped the Doctor would find a way to get more cooperation out of Cordar than she had.

Having reached all these conclusions Romana lay back and soon fell asleep.

Vorlene stirred, roused by an inner clock. The darkness around her confused her and she rolled over to push herself up. This brought her shoulder against the unexpected arm of the Couch of Indolence. A moment's pause allowed her to recall her location and exit the recliner more gracefully.

The Doctor hadn't told her how to make the lights come on again, and she couldn't remember what he'd said to accomplish the task. "Not important," she decided as she lifted her arms to depart.

The Doctor awoke to a shriek of mixed fright and sorrow. He remembered Vorlene and dashed out of his room to see what had frightened her. He arrived in the dark control room and called out "Lights on." The resulting brightness revealed Vorlene crumpled on the floor crying. She saw him approach, but did not move toward him or away from him. He crouched beside her.

"What happened?" he asked in the most comforting tone he could generate. He winced at its inadequacy.

"Nothing," Vorlene sobbed meaningfully.

"What frightened you?" The Doctor didn't catch the meaning.

"I..." Vorlene began. "I can't travel any more." Saying this made it more real to her, and she slipped into even heavier sobbing.

The Doctor looked around trying to puzzle out her words. "Of course not," he blurted. "The TARDIS is built of material that blocks the flow of space time." He operated the door control. "Step outside and you'll be able to travel where- and whenever you wish."

Vorlene pushed herself up a little and looked at him hopefully.

"This is a machine that travels in space time," the Doctor explained. "In order to take us along it has to carry the space time we inhabit with it. It's like a box. When you're outside you can go where you like. Inside you go only where the box goes."

During this explanation, Vorlene stood up. She didn't answer, but she walked timidly outside. The Doctor quickly closed the door behind her, turned on the scanner so he could watch, and prepared to follow her.

Once again Vorlene lifted her arms. This time she vanished. Just afterward the TARDIS dematerialized.

The sound of dematerialization awakened Cordar. He glanced up at the scanner monitor and read the numbers his computer program superimposed on the image. Since the TARDIS was currently in flight the scanner displayed a blank picture. But the numbers told Cordar this flight was through a small amount of space and almost no time.

He watched eagerly as the numbers ceased flickering and rested at zero. The image of the young woman walking briskly toward a large tree appeared on the screen. Cordar sat up and watched with interest.

The Doctor's TARDIS materialized in an open forest. Vorlene had already started up a vine into a nearby tree. The door opened and the Doctor stepped out, looking for her. She called to him as she reached a limb, "Here."

The Doctor looked up. "Breakfast," she said, tossing down a couple of purple spheres about ten centimeters across. He caught them and set one down beside him. They had a leathery surface pocked with little holes placed randomly about half a centimeter apart. He fumbled in only two pockets this time before he found the Swiss Army knife. He pulled out a blade and cut into the skin. The opening revealed a light tan crisp substance much like coconut meat. The Doctor made another cut and peeled some of the skin away. He remembered the coconut of earth and held the opening up as he cut out a plug of the meat. A clear, sticky liquid fountained out.

"Drink it," Vorlene said from beside him.

Startled, the Doctor spilled more of the fluid on his hands. He licked a hand to taste it. "Very good," he commented.

Vorlene stuffed the sphere she had already picked up into her leather bag. "We don't use tools like that," she commented just before she lifted her hands and disappeared. Quickly the doctor gulped down more of the liquid and dashed back into the TARDIS.

Vorlene materialized on the rainy hillside where she had slept a day earlier. She stepped carefully down the hill toward the pond and patted on the surface of the water. A few moments later a reptilian head appeared from the water near the middle of the pond. Vorlene made a strange chirring sound deep in her throat. The head cut V-shaped ripples into the water as it moved toward her. It paused when the sound of the materializing TARDIS broke on the still air. Vorlene ignored the sound, however, so the animal resumed its swim toward her.

The Doctor stepped out, chewing on the plug of meat he had cut from the sphere in his hand, as the creature waddled out of the water to Vorlene's feet. She pulled her purple sphere from her pouch and held it out to the reptile. It bit carefully into the top of the fruit, exhaling forcefully to clear its nostrils when the liquid inside sprayed out. It began chewing the skin and meat it had bitten out as it backed into the pond and rinsed itself off. Vorlene drank the liquid slowly, savoring its taste. As she did so, the lizard-like animal rose back out of the pond and waited at her feet.

The Doctor joined her in drinking the sweet liquid. When he had finished he cut out another piece of the meat and began to eat it. Vorlene set her sphere on the ground in front of the animal and stood up quickly to watch him. "Is it good?" she asked.

"It's O. K."

"We always let the wiffle eat it," she explained, pointing to the sharp-toothed animal which had already devoured almost half the treat Vorlene had left for it.

"Are there more of these?" the Doctor asked, pointing toward the creature.

"There's one in just about every pond here," Vorlene replied. She took the doctor by the hand. "Come," she invited.

He bent down to set his sphere by the wiffle. Then he followed her into the shrubs.

Rays of sunrise tickled Romana's eyelids until they succeeded in opening them. The added light gave her considerably more information about her surroundings. Seeing the water helped her ears interpret the noise that had accompanied her sleep. She used her hands and her good leg to scoot herself closer to the stream. Only a little vegetation grew beside it, but she took this as an indication the water had no poisons. She dipped a cupped hand into the water and lifted some of it to her mouth. She gasped a little at its coolness. After she had tasted the water she bent awkwardly to drink more. Then she turned carefully and lowered her injured foot into the cool stream. She was about to lay back and relax when the sound of a materializing TARDIS demanded her attention.

She watched as an oversize boulder appeared beside her. Cracks appeared in the surface of the rock and part of it slid out like a drawer. From the side of this opening stepped a rather dignified old lady. She wore a simple yellow robe draped in folds across each shoulder. Her appearance pleaded with Romana to trust her, but Romana pulled her feet up underneath herself and raised her arms in front of her chest as if to keep the woman at bay.

The new arrival stopped. "Still holding my son against me?" Her voice resonated with assurance, but Romana held her guard up. The woman held her arms out with palms toward Romana in a gesture of openeness and defenselessness.

Romana dropped her arms to the ground and used them to help her stand on her good foot. "No," she stated, hoarsely.

"Wait here a moment," the woman stated as she slipped back inside the rock. She reappeared a moment later with a pair of crutches. Romana accepted them and placed them under her arms.

"I don't suppose you want to rejoin the Doctor?" the older woman asked.

Romana shrugged. "Cordar may have done me a favor. I need some time by myself to think."

"I can take you to a more hospitable and comfortable location. And let me do something about that foot."

"You seem to know an awful lot about what happend yesterday," Romana countered.

"I've been making it my business to know what's been happening."

"The Cardinal's spy, I suppose, sent to make sure the Doctor isn't plotting a grand disruption to ensure his reelection? No, to be sure I return to life at the Citadel." Romana thrust her nose upward with this last statement.

"I have had no contact with Cardinal Borusa since you saw me day before yesterday. But I have no wish to make you nervous. You may go with me, or you may stay behind, knowing that at least someone knows where you are." With these words the lady turned her back on Romana and stepped back into the rock.

Romana watched as the opening in the rock closed and the rock itself vanished. She used the woman's gift to propel herself around her 'prison.' She found some rocks not far from the stream, lay the crutches beside them, and sat down.

The TARDIS materialized on a beach of a dead planet. On approach the scanner revealed an expanse of lifeless rock and sand. The many odd-shaped rock formations betrayed the decay of the planet's very foundations.

When the Doctor opened the door Vorlene had already strode well out into the brine. He stepped down to the water's edge, stooped, and dipped his fingers into the strong saline. He lifted his hand, rubbing his fingers with his thumb, testing the fluid's viscosity. He sniffed cautiously, and scrunched up his nose at the strange odor.

"Don't drink it," Vorlene warned unnecessarily.

"O. K.," the Doctor agreed in gruff courtesy.

When the young woman returned to shore the Doctor delayed her. "Why do you swim in such salty water?"

"It's my bath," Vorlene replied. "The chemicals in this ocean help to clean my skin, and there's something in the water that keeps the skins soft." She held out a portion of her skirt with this comment. "I'll go rinse in a fresh stream and return to a rock here to dry off."

The Doctor nodded dreamily.

"Only today I think I'd like to dry off on the plastic, if you don't mind."

"That's all right," the Doctor replied. "But we need to go back to the place where the gorral waits."

"What for?"

"So we'll be there if Romana should be able to make it back."

"Oh, yes." Vorlene's eyes opened wide. "Follow me," she said, as she lifted her arms and faded away.

Cordar couldn't believe the image on the monitor. The young woman he'd been trying to capture since yesterday afternoon had entered the TARDIS. "Now, to get the Doctor away from her. I think it's time I made an appearance."

When he arrived in the white control room he found the Doctor absorbed in reading a book that summarized many of the achievements of Rassilon. This didn't bother him much until he noticed a heading on the page, "Auxiliary uses of Time Manipulation." He had studied the section extensively himself, and some of the modifications to his MSGR had been designed after he had done some experiments suggested by Rassilon's data. Then he recalled the nature of his experiments and knew that the Doctor would not be able to replicate them without spending a lot of time and without him, Cordar, knowing about it.

Suddenly the Doctor noticed his presence. "I've been meaning to introduce you to someone," he stated. "But I fear we don't know where she is at the moment."

"She's right there, in the recliner."

Vorlene looked around.

"Well, not the one I intended to introduce to you," the Doctor continued. "But since you're both here I suppose I can introduce you also. Vorlene, This is Cordar. He's a young man from my own world who came along on this trip to help us with our mission. And this," he said, turning toward Cordar with a flourish, "is Vorlene, a resident of this planet with the natural ability to travel in time and space."

Cordar opened his mouth to respond, but decided not to reveal his snooping. "That's fascinating. Do you know how she does it?" The young man tried to hide his knowledge of Vorlene and her capabilities, and the Doctor's response made him think he'd succeeded.

"Vorlene wants to rest," the Doctor noted. "Come in here and we'll talk," he beconed to Cordar as he entered his private room. "I have a special task for you," he added when they had seated themselves. "There must be other members of Vorlene's race on this planet. But I can't go skittering around this planet's ages looking for them in my TARDIS, because the time trail of a big machine like this will wipe out any traces of a trail left by one individual like Vorlene. We only just barely found the trace of her trail when we first arrived."

"If they scamper around all over time they're bound to return here if we wait," Cordar suggested.

"That's quite likely," the Doctor admitted, "but we've been here with very few exceptions for over 24 hours and we haven't seen them. I've sensed from Vorlene's mind that she would be very uncomfortable talking about her race, so I haven't been able to learn anything about them directly from her. But what I have seen of her lifestyle suggests to me that they follow a very regular routine.

"My thought has been, however, that we increase our chances of finding them if we wait at several locations. Romana has been wanting some time to herself...."

Cordar seized the chance to deflect some of the Doctor's suspicion and interrupted, "Romana?"

"Yes. We talked about her when Fostil gave you his final instructions. Didn't I tell you she'd be with us then?" The Doctor reflected on his own question. "Of course not, when you agreed to come along I didn't know if she would come or not."

"How'd she end up with you?" Cordar started another tack, hoping to further cover the tracks of his interference. "Last I knew she'd been sent off on some weird mission with a renegade Time Lord."

"That's me." The Doctor held his arms out.

"They called the Lord President a renegade?"

"Appropriate, really, since the current Lord President was, in fact, a renegade," the Doctor admitted.

Cordar found the Doctor's candor about his status on Gallifrey a little disconcerting. "Is that why they deposed you?"

"Probably. Their excuse was a little trivial."

"Typical though, I suppose." As soon as he had said this, Cordar regretted it. He feared that if the Doctor knew of his discontent with those in power at the citadel things might go poorly for him.

"You haven't spent much time away from Gallifrey, have you?" the Doctor queried.

"This is my first trip off the planet." Cordar could tell the truth almost as transparently as he could lie.

"Then I can tell you that politics are the same all around the galaxy -- even the whole universe." The Doctor gestured broadly to emphasize his point. "But about our mission," he mused abruptly. "I'd really like you to spend a couple of days at another location on this planet."

"Can I take my equipment with me?"

"If it will keep you from being bored," the Doctor allowed. "Just don't get so wrapped up in playing with it that you fail to notice any visitors."

"Well, then, I'll set it up to help me search for them." Cordar made the social mistake of standing before his host had either stood himself or given him leave to do so. But the Doctor didn't seem to notice.

"I'll fly the TARDIS to a location I think, from having watched Vorlene, is a likely spot for them to visit." The Doctor got up and left the room behind Cordar.

Romana really was grateful for the crutches Loralar had given her. Her foot had swollen quite a bit overnight and was now so tender it could bear no weight. The cruches gave her some mobility in her surroundings. Drawing from her experiences with the Doctor she waited very still until she could watch some animals. She had learned that what she saw an animal eat she could, with some confidence, eat herself.

After over an hour watching from one spot she saw a small burrowing mammal dig around a plant, pull it up, and eat a small bulb found near the base of the plant. Shortly afterward she had dug several up for herself. It was awkward to wash them in the stream, and she found that the light blue meat of the tuber had a rather unpleasantly gritty flavor. But it was food, and it helped her while away her isolation.

Chancellor Hedin again called at Cardinal Borusa's office. He rushed through the customary formalities politely signalling his irritation with his host.

"If you're right about the Doctor's motives he is at once very sly and inordinately stupid about it," Hedin grumped.

"I don't recall assigning any motive to the Doctor's actions," Borusa corrected. "I've found it poses serious threat to one's reputation for interpersonal insight to attempt it."

"But you asked me to monitor the Doctor's actions lest they interfere with the election."

"So I did," Borusa agreed. "You'll recall that the concern was over what events not related to the election might have brought the Doctor here and how they might cause trouble at a critical time."

"Still," Hedin argued, "the Doctor has done much to make the task you gave me difficult if not impossible."

"How?"

"He and his companions are now more than a hundred light years away, making all but the most cursory surveillance impossible."

"How far away in time?" Borusa asked.

"As far as I can make out, only a few days. But I haven't told you the difficult part yet."

"Do you have any idea what he's doing and why he came to us with that cube?"

"Not a clue," Hedin admitted. "And now they've split up. Romana was sent, apparently by transmat, to some isolated and semi-arid place on the planet they've finally landed at. The Doctor didn't appear to have provided her with food or water. Just minutes ago he let Cordar off at some other spot nearly opposite the planet from what seems to be the Doctor's base of operation. He took Cordar in his old TARDIS and let him carry out quite a bit of equipment."

"Have they contacted anyone else?" Borusa interrupted.

"A couple of times I've seen a young female with them. By her dress she would appear to be a primitive native of the planet. Oh!" Hedin remembered an important discovery. "Loralar visited Romana during the night and returned immediately to Gallifrey. I almost missed her."

"She didn't go to see Cordar?"

"I doubt it," Hedin asserted. "I'd been watching the Doctor's TARDIS for him to return from a jaunt in the wood with the girl I'm assuming is native."

"Given his background, it would be best not to know what he was doing with her in the woods," Borusa surmised.

"I quickly checked Romana's location and found Loralar already there in a borrowed TARDIS. I stayed with her until she returned to Gallifrey -- two or three minutes at the most." Hedin leaned back with a weary look on his face. "Do you think you could spare me some assistants so I can monitor all the companions?"

"It would be difficult with the election so near," Borusa mused. "But I think it's important enough. I'll have two technicians at your lab within the hour," he promised, standing. "It's too bad you haven't any more information about what's happening. But I'm sure you're doing your best. Keep me posted," he added as he ushered Hedin out.

Cordar quickly had a remote visualizer set up and working. It had been difficult to pursuade the Doctor to let him keep the panels he had converted into a transmat device, especially since he had to lie about their purpose. Not really lie, because his next task was to connect them to his portable computer and program it to use them both as time vortex antennae and as transmat particle projectors. He took a small block of wood out of his box, set it on the ground about 50 feet away from his station and tested his transmat device by moving it to the standard position between the panels.

"Now," he said to himself, "I only need to wait for Vorlene to be away from the Doctor and in this time and I'll snatch her away. Maybe," he mused even more quietly, "I can get what I need from her."

The Doctor glanced back at his scanner immediately after he landed the TARDIS on the hill beside the woods. Vorlene had grown so used to the noises of the machine that she hardly stirred. But the Doctor's exclamation, brought on by something he'd seen on the scanner brought her straight up out of the Couch of Indolence.

"That tree wasn't there before, was it?" He turned to the girl for confirmation.

"Where?" She looked up at the scanner image. "No," she said slowly. "How can a full-grown tree show up like that?"

"I think I know," the Doctor hinted with narrowed eyes. "My machine," he explained, "has a broken part. We time lords," the title sounded awfully pompous when used in the presence of a person who could naturally travel in time, "sometimes like to be inconspicuous when we go places. So our machines are designed to adopt an appearance that would not be out of place in the location at which they land."

"Somebody else has a machine like yours out there?" Vorlene guessed correctly.

"Probably. I think a meeting is in order. Wait here." The Doctor opened the door to his TARDIS and walked down the hill to the extra tree. Just before he reached it, an opening appeared in the trunk and a voice beconed.

"Come in, Doctor."

The Doctor came in.

"Where's my son?" a yellow-robed woman demanded.

"It would help if I knew who your son was," the Doctor parried.

"I'm Loralar, my son is Cordar, Lord President."

"You should know better than any of us that I'm not Lord President now," the Doctor chided.

"A mere technicality," Loralar said. "Since nobody else has been chosen as Lord President you retain the title for most loyal Gallifreyans."

"Still, I'll be much more comfortable if you just call me Doctor."

"All right, Doctor. But it's more important to me to know where my son is!"

"I just left him at another location, and it's important that no time machines go there for a couple of days."

"That sounds like a lame excuse to me." Loralar rose from her seat at the controls.

"Just the same, it's true. I can't go into details because of the sensitive nature of our investigation."

"I should think," Loralar countered, "that since my son is part of the crew I deserve to know a little more than the average person."

"Maybe so," the Doctor allowed. "What do you want to know?"

"What is this investigation all about, and why is my son involved?"

"As I said, the object of our investigation is rather sensitive, particularly given the political situation on Gallifrey. Your son came with me because he volunteered to come."

Loralar launched into an irritated monologue. "So I was led to believe by his boss, Fostil. Then I find out Romana decided to stay with you after all. I remember that Romana told me during your short stay on Gallifrey that it hadn't been Cordar's decision that they didn't marry and that she left with you partly to get away from him. I have a hard time believing this, so I decide to keep watch on what's happening. Imagine my surprise when I find Romana trundled off to some remote part of this planet, in an injured condition, and blaming it all on my son. Now I discover that you've sent my son off to some other remote location that you won't disclose and I begin to wonder, 'Did my Cordar do this to Romana, or did someone else do it and make it look like Cordar did it?' Do you think I have reasonable grounds to be concerned?"

The Doctor stood motionless for a moment before he finally slid his hands into the pockets of his oversize coat, bowed his head and began to speak. "I'm sure you do have grounds to be concerned, just as I, after your revelations, have a reason to be concerned. I sent Romana into the forest here thinking shewould find the people we were searching for. I later found signs thatshe had hurt herself by falling into an animal's burrow. But I couldn't find her."

"Just to show I bear you no ill will over your intransigence," Loralar said haughtily, "I'll tell you where Romana is. Maybe you'll find her as unwilling to leave with you as she was with me."

"That will be her choice," the Doctor allowed. "And I thank you. As for your son, I would not have left him there alone if I felt there was any danger to him. But the very nature of our work here requires that he not be interrupted. I will let you see him as soon as our two days are up."

"I must return to Gallifrey," Loralar warned. "The owner of this TARDIS will only let me have it for an hour or less at a time."

"Until next time then," the Doctor cooed, doffing his hat. He turned, left the tree and reentered his own TARDIS.

"Schwirr, schwirr." The sound announced the arrival of the Doctor's type 40. Romana heard it from her place on the hillside. Great relief fanned across her face as the familiar form of the police box appeared before her. She lifted herself up and walked to the door.

"Is this Romana?" Vorlene called to the Doctor, who had busied himself setting the TARDIS for its return trip.

"Where?" he answered.

"On the scanner. I think she's just outside the door."

The Doctor lifted his head, looked at the scanner, and nodded. "That's her alright," he said as he opened the door. "What happened?"

"Who's she?" the two time lords spoke at once.

The Doctor looked quite concerned over Romana's swollen ankle. Romana's face revealed concern of a very different sort as she eyed the voluptuous woman in the Couch of Indolence.

"Excuse me," the Doctor said. "Vorlene," he looked at his guest, "this is Romana. Romana, this is Vorlene, the woman you were looking for." He inhaled smugly at having completed this polite chore.

"YOU found her instead, and you already have her running errands for you," Romana accused.

"Oh, no," the Doctor defended himself. "Our guest has found the Couch of Indolence extremely delightful, so I have allowed her to sleep in it. We've spent a delightful day roaming the planet, marred only by your absense."

"You could keep better track of your assistants," Romana continued her accusations. She had seen enough of the young woman and refused to look at her.

"I'm sorry," the Doctor offered. His calmness failed to penetrate Romana's defenses. "When I ran into Vorlene I forgot you were in the woods. When we searched for you last night you were already gone."

"I didn't mean me," Romana snapped. "This other helper you've been promising to introduce me to."

"Ah, well, I'm afraid that won't be possible," the Doctor smiled, "for a couple of days anyway."

"It's no longer necessary." Romana's sarcasm chilled the air.

"You've met Cordar then?" Then the Doctor, as was his irritating habit, answered his own question. "Of course. He wanted you, you told him to take a hike, he didn't, so you did; and came with me."

"Turned clairvoyant have you?"

"Actually, I met Loralar. She had lots of interesting information for me. I fear I was unable to return the favor at the moment." The Doctor turned back to the TARDIS and set it going on the return voyage to the clearing. "Anyway, that's how I knew where to find you."

Romana held her tongue in deference to their guest, deciding instead to explain her absence. "I was abducted."

"How?" the Doctor asked.

"By matter transference."

"Who?"

"Cordar."

"And that's how he got you all the way to where I found you?"

"I guess so," Romana admitted.

"I should have known that's what he was doing with those panels. We'll have to keep a close eye on each other," the Doctor asserted. "Did Cordar tell you anything about why he's with us, or what he's been doing on the TARDIS all this time?"

"Cordar never let me out of his lab. His conversation was very difficult to follow." Romana grinned wryly as she recalled his scatterbrained preoccupation.

"You say he considered you an old flame?" the Doctor asked.

"Yes," Romana answered, not understanding.

"And you say he knocked you out?"

"Yes," she replied again.

"Are you sure he didn't, er, take advantage of you?"

Romana's face displayed her shock at the idea. She felt herself over mentally, searching for evidence of such an imposition. "No," she concluded. "I got the impression his mind was deeply involved in something else."

"Did he say what he wanted?"

"He wanted me to take him someplace in the TARDIS where he could work away from you. He said you mustn't know what he was doing."

The Doctor rubbed his finger against his lower lip as he thought this over. "I've suspected all along that he knows more about this cube. I think he wants it. That's why I was moving it when you arrived."

"He was very obtuse about all my questions. He wanted me to help, but he wouldn't tell me what he was doing," Romana added.

"I've got him out of the way for a couple of days. But he will bear some close watching, considering the information you and his mother have given me this evening," the Doctor decided, nodding.

"Meanwhile, can you do something about my foot?" Romana said, sitting down on the arm of the recliner and remembering that she had left her right boot in Cordar's lab.

The Doctor bent over to look at the swollen appendage.

"Can I borrow your little sun?" Vorlene blurted.

The Doctor's confusion over this lasted only a few microseconds. "Sure," he said, lifting his torch from where he had left it on the control panel and handing it to her. She vanished out the front door.

Romana took advantage of her absence to confront the Doctor. "What have you been doing with that little...woman." She almost spat out the last word.

"Um..." he began, not catching on at all. "Just talking. You know, she's the time traveller we're looking for. I watched her streak a million years or more into the future."

"She looks rather primitive. And there's only one of her. What does she use?"

"Nothing. That's the beauty of it. She just lifts her arms and vanishes. Time travel is as natural for her as scratching an itch is for you and me."

"And you've explained how we got here, and why the Tardis is bigger inside than out?"

"No. But only because she hasn't asked."

"Hasn't asked?" Romana's skepticism grew.

"She's a natural time traveler. Her brain doesn't work like that of a normal humanoid. Such things apparently aren't inconsistencies to her."

A noise at the Tardis' door silenced them. Vorlene stepped in, carrying a pile of snow in a large, orange leaf.

"Where'd you get this?" Romana queried.

"The snow comes from our ice age, only a thousand years ago. The leaf is from a rain forest in this time, twenty-five degrees south of us. Because of some dangerous animals I had to go there at night." As she spoke, Vorlene expertly wrapped the leaf around Romana's swollen foot, tucking the leaf neatly under itself where it overlapped.

"And you got all this just now?" Romana asked again.

"Yes," Vorlene replied.

"See what I mean," the Doctor interjected.

"Oh! Your little sun." Vorlene dashed out the door, returning with the torch a moment later. "I left it in the snowbank," she confessed.

Loralar called on Cardinal Borusa the next morning. The two exchanged pleasantries for several minutes before she finally revealed her mission. "I had contact with the Doctor and his companion last night," she said.

"So Chancellor Hedin informs me," Borusa revealed.

"I think you should question Fostil about what Cordar's been doing the last few months. I don't like the things I saw and I'm afraid if measures aren't taken to prevent it someone will end up getting seriously hurt, or even killed." Loralar leaned forward and placed her hand on the edge of Borusa's desk as she finished this sentence.

The Cardinal tilted his head slightly. "We keep pretty tight surveillance on incidents like this," he said. "We share your concern, particularly given the Doctor's invovlement."

"Ah, he's just a bumbling idiot." Loralar dismissed. "He knows nothing about what's really going on."

"I have found it unwise to predict what the Doctor does and doesn't know," Borusa challenged. "But, you are right. I thank you for your assistance. Anything we can do here to prevent a scandal will be welcome to all of us."

The Doctor reached down near the floor of the control room and pulled out a cot. "Why don't you sleep here." he suggested. "That will save you from having to walk back to your room and you can keep Vorlene company."

Romana said nothing, and offered no resistance as the other two helped her to the cot. The Doctor left the room.

"Do you like sleeping on the plastic?" Vorlene asked Romana.

Romana stared blankly.

Vorlene pointed. "Thitocdor called it plastic," she tried to explain. "I think he called it the Koshev in Doelenz last night."

"Not particularly. Use it," Romana waved sleepily.

"There's a rock I usually dry off on about a million years into the future. That's where I usually take my bath. It has a hole in it shaped a lot like the plastic here, but it's not nearly as smooth or soft." Vorlene interrupted her bright chatter to settle pleasureably into the recliner. "I tried to take Thitocdor there yesterday, but he had to use this machine to follow me. When we got here he discovered you were missing so we went out looking for you."

Romana hated people who could feel so cheery at the end of the day.

"We saw the hole you fell into and we saw Nana's tracks. Nana didn't frighten you did he?"

"Nana?" Romana yawned.

"The big blue animal with long claws."

"Yes, it frightened me very much."

"None of the animals in the forest will hurt you. At least, not intentionally. Did you see the animal that digs the holes?"

Romana shook her head.

"I didn't think so. They usually come out only at night. The men wear their skins."

"What skins do you wear?" Romana really didn't want to extend the conversation, but her curiosity trapped her.

"These come from the walliways. They're those little animals in the trees."

"How do you catch them? They ran up into the trees when I walked by."

Vorlene puzzled over this for a moment. "Oh. They weren't afraid of you. They ran away from Mavor."

"Mavor?"

"Yes, the gorral. It led us to the hole you fell in. That's how we knew you'd seen Nana. Thitocdor said Mavor had followed you. Mayvor will eat the walliways if it can catch one."

Romana lay back against the cot, her neural pathways flooded with Vorlene's gush of information. Suddenly, two of her words pushed all the alarm buttons. Romana sat up quickly. "Where are the others?"

"What others?"

"The other people, like you. You just mentioned the men."

"They abandoned me." Vorlene's voice reached a note of sadness more intense than Romana had ever heard.

"The men?"

"All of them, everybody."

"Why would they abandon you?"

"I'm a bad woman. I wouldn't do what they asked, so they threw me away."

"What wouldn't you do?"

"They asked me to marry a man I didn't like."

"They abandoned you over that?"

"I ran away for a day. When I got back they were gone. I couldn't pick up their trails. I've looked for them in all times and all the places we usually go. So far I've found nothing."

"Perhaps our friend should see the cube," the Doctor interrupted.

"How long have you been listening?" Romana challenged hotly.

"Long enough to be moved by her story," he replied. "Come," he added. He passed through the door he'd been standing in and started down the hallway.

Romana pulled herself up and grabbed the crutches. Vorlene hovered protectively near her as they walked down the hall toward the storeroom. When they stepped out onto the balcony the Doctor had already climbed down and was running his hands over the surface of the cube. Vorlene stopped at the doorway and pulled back.

"What's wrong?" Romana asked.

"I don't know," Vorlene replied, backing up another step. "I sense something very evil here." Fear built up like rows of bricks across her face. Suddenly she screamed, turned, and ran back to the control room. She didn't pause when she reached it, but hurtled through to the outside door. Once outside she raised her arms and vanished.

"See if you can follow her," the Doctor ordered.

Romana moved as quickly as her condition would allow while the Doctor secured the storeroom. At the control panel she quickly traced Vorlene's time trail and set the TARDIS to follow it.

The trip lasted only seconds. Romana checked quickly for another time trail, which she didn't find. She flicked at a few keys and looked up to the scanner, which now showed an infrared scan. "Doctor," she called. "I've followed her trail, but she's not here."

"What?" he replied, trudging wearily down the hall.

"You can still see her path, which ends just outside the door. But she isn't around anywhere."

"There must be another time trail."

Romana checked. "Just ours," she reported.

"Maybe you're right," the Doctor sighed. He dropped into the Couch of Indolence. "I don't seem to be able to keep track of my companions."