"I love this Victorian gear. It's been a while since we did period costumes." Rose smiled as she saw The Doctor in his own finery and turned to get his approval of her dress.

"Absolutely fantastic," he said of her cream satin and silk dress with its thoroughly daring off the shoulder style that he adored and her hair piled up on her head and adorned with feathers and pearls.

"Thought we might crash a party like we used to do," he grinned. "The Lord du Temps and the Lady Rose - and the Honourable Miss Blodwyn Grant Jones of Caerdyd. Two dazzling ladies on my arm. I'll be the envy of all."

Rose thought they might be the ones who were envied, with him beside them. He was wearing an elegant suit of the mid 19th century, tightly tailored trousers that had drawn her attention right away and a waistcoat embroidered all over with gold thread. A gold buttoned silk lined frock coat over it and a silk hat finished the look. The Lord du Temps did a fair bit of dazzling himself.

But the Honourable Miss Blodwyn Grant-Jones emerged from the dressing screen looking less than dazzling. Rose and The Doctor both tried not to look TOO dismayed, but she just didn't seem to suit the dress at all. It was TOO frilly and flouncy and made her look even more short and dumpy than usual.

"It doesn't work, does it?" She looked at Rose and sighed. "You look totally WOW. Like, do you HAVE a waist or are you in two pieces?"

"The test used to be whether a man could span his hands around a lady's waist," The Doctor said and did so easily.

"But you've got big hands," Rose told him. And he wasn't making Wyn feel any better that way. She glanced around the wardrobe and saw what she needed. "You push off out of here," she told The Doctor. "This is a girl thing."

"It's all about corsetry," Rose told Wyn when they were alone. "You don't have to go with the authentic Victorian ones. They're absolute hell. Believe me, I tried. But the modern ones do the job quite well."

"I'm too short and too fat," she complained. But she let Rose help her squeeze into a modern body flattering all in one corset and then the dress she had picked for her. It dispensed with all the frills. The skirt had to be a wide one; that was mandatory for 1851. Women were meant to look like tea-cosies. But Wyn at least was a dark red satin tea-cosy with fitted sleeves that made her arms look slimmer than she had thought they could and a tight fitting bodice with hundreds of little buttons fastening from the throat to the waist. The high neckline made it less daring than Rose's dress, but Wyn WAS still only just 17. It was appropriate to her.

"I HAVE a waist!" Wyn said with a wide, appreciative grin. "I LOOK like a girl."

"You look like a young woman," Rose told her. "The hats of this period were stupid, by the way. We're going to fudge that." She fixed a hair extension to Wyn's short hairstyle to make it look as if she was wearing long hair fastened up in ringlets, and then decorated it with a simple piece of matching satin and some long pins with artificial pearls on the ends.

"Did you ever wonder why The Doctor keeps so many women's clothes in the TARDIS?" Wyn laughed as she looked at the final result. "Do you think he has a secret you don't know?"

"What? That he used to be a woman in one of his past lives, or he has a fetish for frills?" She laughed. "The TARDIS is in charge of the wardrobe. And she's female. She's on our side."

The Doctor smiled when they emerged at last. He complimented Wyn and tested her waist by his rule of thumb. She hadn't quite got the required hourglass shape but she was pleased all the same.

"The young men will be impressed," he told her.

"I'm not into young men," she told him.

"The old men will be impressed too," he answered, deliberately misinterpreting her meaning. "This old man thinks you look great. Come on then, let's crash this party."

They neither of them guessed just how BIG a party they were crashing until they stepped out of the TARDIS. Although it was stuck in its disguise as a 1950s police box The Doctor had managed to land it in a quiet corner of Hyde Park under enough foliage to conceal it from interested eyes. They stepped out onto the path nonchalantly and slipped into step with the crowds that were heading towards the party venue.

"Oh my….!" Wyn stared up at a building she had seen in pictures in her history book, but had never seen, because it didn't exist in her lifetime. "That's…."

"Yes," The Doctor grinned widely. Rose clung tightly to his arm. She had seen many impressive places with The Doctor, but this one was something else. Unlike Wyn or The Doctor, she WAS a Londoner, and the Crystal Palace was a London legend.

"So…the party we're going to…."

"It's May 1st, 1851," The Doctor said. "And it's the opening day of The Great Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations."

"Cool," Wyn said appreciatively.

"Show off," Rose told him. "And by the way, if any of your earlier incarnations have arrived already let's try NOT to bump into them."

"Nope, never came to opening day with anyone. I have been to the Crystal palace before, but not here. They moved it to Sydenham Hill after the Festival was over."

They joined the crowds at the entrance. There seemed to be two queues, one for the ordinary mortals and one for those with VIP invites. They joined the VIP section and were quickly admitted to the royal enclosure. And although there were such things as protocol and order of precedence, The Doctor smiled engagingly and his eyes seemed to glitter with mischief and suddenly they found themselves being introduced to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

Wyn would have fallen down in shock if The Doctor wasn't holding her arm, but Rose was used to it by now. She WAS personal friends with the Prime Minister in her own time, and a president of the USA. And the future Edward VII had once tried to seduce her.

It was a bit of a shock to her when she realised that the future Edward VII was only ten years old. He stood beside his sister, the Princess Victoria, his mother, the Queen, and father, the Prince Consort looking as uncomfortable and bored as any ten year old in an uncomfortable collar and his best clothes.

"My dear Doctor!" The Queen positively beamed at him. They appeared to be old friends. As he bowed graciously to her she positively gushed with reminiscences about the times they had met in the past.

"The Doctor is simply THE expert on the history and lineage of Our Royal House," she said. "And the stories he knows - one would think he had actually been present in the Court of Elizabeth!"

Rose and Wyn smiled. They knew he had been present in the Court of just about every king or queen England had ever had. But never interfering, even though a LOT of things needed interfering with in some of those Courts, merely observing and ingratiating himself with people who might prove useful to him.

"They were most interesting times," The Doctor said, referring to the Court of Elizabeth.

"Indeed," the Queen agreed. "Though I think we live in quite interesting times now. This exhibition is a proof of that."

"Absolutely so," The Doctor said. "A triumph of Human ingenuity and industry."

"BRITISH ingenuity and industry, Doctor!" the Queen corrected him. "Really, sometimes you sound as if you are not a servant of my Empire at all."

The Doctor smiled disarmingly and nobody seemed to notice that he never actually amended himself. In any case, the Queen had moved on from that subject. She seemed to want to keep The Doctor in conversation as long as possible.

Queen Victoria looked as if she fancied him, Wyn thought.

Queen Victoria can take a running jump, Rose thought. He's MINE.

Queen Victoria was out of luck. Having presented both his Lady Rose and the Honourable Blodwyn Grant-Jones to the Royal Party he took them both in hand to explore the exhibition. It was fascinating stuff in its own right. But with The Doctor it was every history, science and geography lesson either had ever had rolled into one and made a hundred times more interesting.

Although they both found his claims to have been personally involved in some of the great achievements of the industrial revolution a bit hard to swallow.

"Ok," Wyn protested as they explored an exhibit extolling the achievements of British industry. "That I do not believe. YOU did not invent the Davy lamp."

"Well no," Rose giggled. "Some guy called Davy did."

"Sir Humphrey Davy, in 1816," Wyn said. "I'm from a mining town, remember! And besides, it's written over there."

"Yes, but he got the idea from me," The Doctor said. "A gentle hint in the direction he needed to be going. Your man with the lightbulbs would have been a long time playing around with different ideas without a push from me, too."

"Oh, shut up!" Rose told him with a laugh.

"Seriously though," he said, pulling his sonic screwdriver from the breast pocket of his Victorian gentleman's suit. "If you see anything that shouldn't be here, shout out, would you. We're not just here for fun. There's a temporal anomaly going on around here."

"Oh, I should have known," Rose groaned. "You wouldn't just bring us along for the amusement value, would you?"

"Course I would," he said. "I hope you're having fun. Both of you. But just look around and tell me if something doesn't belong."

"One of these things is not like the others….." Wyn sang under her breath. The Doctor laughed.

"Yes, Wyn, Sesame Street today comes from the letters Theta and Sigma and the number 9. So when you find which of these things REALLY doesn't belong we're in business."

"A lot of things here don't belong," Rose said as she looked at the Egyptian section. "Like most of those statues and relics. The British Empire just used to think it had the right to take anything it wanted from the 'lesser races'."

"Yes, it did," The Doctor agreed. "Empires tend to get like that. But what I was thinking of was something totally anachronistic. Like a TV or a washing machine or something."

"Why?" Wyn asked, detecting something serious beneath the mad idea of a TV in 1851. "What's it all about?"

"A Time Meddler?" Rose guessed.

"No, nothing so deliberate as that," The Doctor assured her. "More a sort of hole in time. Like when you get a rip in your coat pocket and all the change ends up in the lining. Things from one part of time have got shifted to another."

"Dangerous?"

"Not in itself. But anachronisms are a hazard to the time continuum. What I said about Humphrey Davy before - The man WAS going to get there in the end. I just dropped a few hints in his ear. But if I'd given him a battery torch and told him to skip the process altogether that would have been a major paradox and I'd have been in big trouble for seriously messing with the Laws of Time."

"I don't see any battery torches," Wyn said. "But is that the kind of thing we're talking about? Small things?"

"Small or big. And…" He looked at a reading on the sonic screwdriver and whistled. "There are 200 of them in this building somewhere."

"That's a LOT of loose change in the coat lining," Rose observed.

"It is," The Doctor agreed. "Special extended edition of Sesame Street today, kiddies. Let's find all those things that don't belong."

It was actually rather fun, Wyn thought. She spotted the first half dozen of the anachronisms, including a digital watch among a display of Swiss clocks and a Queen Elizabeth II coronation mug in among the Staffordshire pottery. When they found them, The Doctor pointed the sonic screwdriver at them and they seemed to dissolve away.

"Sent back to their proper time and place," The Doctor explained. "I can't close the rip until we've found them all, though. So on we go."

It was a serious game, but it WAS a game, Rose thought as she spotted a mini-fridge complete with cans of lager in the Canadian exhibit. Funny they seemed to make a sort of logical sense; fridges for the frozen wastes of Canada, a modern prismatic compass in the British Navy section. Was there something that attracted like to like in some way? Like a sort of 'sameness' magnet. She turned around to ask The Doctor, hoping he wouldn't snigger too much at 'sameness magnet.'

He wasn't there. He and Wyn must have turned down a different aisle as she stopped to look at what she'd thought was an electrical flex coming out from behind a Victorian washstand. She didn't worry too much. They'd find each other sooner or later.

Meanwhile it was rather interesting to walk around without The Doctor giving out 'Hands off, she's mine' signals to every man who glanced her way. Not that she objected. She WAS his, body and soul. But it was nice to catch a glance from an unattached male and know that she still COULD turn heads.

Then she noticed one unattached male looking at her with an expression that WASN'T complimentary. He was staring hard. She looked back at him cautiously. She didn't like the look of him at all. He had short, spiky hair, hard eyes, and what they used to call designer stubble around a square jaw. She was reminded of the bad guy from Captain Scarlet. All the heroes of that show were clean-shaven but Captain Black, the traitor, had dark stubble.

Hardly conclusive evidence against somebody, she thought. But something about this man bothered her in just the same way.

"Hey," The Doctor put his hand on her shoulder and she turned to him. "We just dispatched a big one. Guess what - it really WAS a colour TV - in the Indian pavilion."

"Well done," she said. "I really don't like the way that bloke's looking at me."

"What bloke?" The Doctor asked, his hand tightening proprietarily on her shoulder.

She looked around. He had vanished into thin air.

No, he hadn't. She spotted him again a little further away, half concealed by a huge pottery elephant, the significance of which totally escaped her.

"THAT bloke," Rose said, nodding towards him. The Doctor looked and then his face froze. He turned away and gently pushed the girls in front of him until they were out of sight of the stranger.

"What's going on?" Wyn asked. "Who is that guy? Do you know him?"

"Oh, yes! I know him all right. Rõgæn Koschei Oakdaene!" The Doctor pronounced all three words from the back of his throat as if they were a bad taste he was trying to remove.

"Who?" Rose asked.

"That was his birth name," he went on. "At the Prydonian Academy he was known as Epsilon. Which he said meant the Exalted one… or The Master."

"Oh," Rose said. "Ohhhh!" Her eyes widened. "He's…. oh!" She knew the Master only by reputation. The Doctor had once described him as the most Evil man in the universe, the word Evil seeming to having a capital "E" even when he pronounced the word in that context.

He also said the Master was dead.

"Doubly dead," The Doctor said. "He was exterminated by the Daleks. He was such a problem that even THEY worked with the Time Lords to bring him to justice. They killed him. But death by atomisation wasn't a barrier to him. He came back from the dead, tried to kill me and take my remaining lives for himself."

"Oh, I know about the Master," Wyn said. "You had loads of trouble with him when my mum was with you. He used to give me nightmares. Dad made mum stop telling me stories with him in them. I was always scared of men with beards when I was little because mum described him as having a goatee beard."

"But he IS dead now?" Rose insisted.

"He's dead in my personal time line. We ended up fighting hand to hand in the Cloister room and he fell into the Eye of Harmony. A million megatons of Artron energy would kill ANYTHING. The Master is GONE. But Rõgæn Koschei Oakdaene… This is an earlier version of him in the same way Chrístõ is an earlier version of me. Rõgæn was the bane of my life when I was Chrístõ. ALL my life. I hated him at school. I hated him when I was out there in the universe learning about its wonders. All my life he was there putting a spoke in the wheels."

"How come…" Wyn began then stopped. "I mean….."

"If he's dead in your time line…."

"I think some of the physical Laws that prevented certain things from happening have been nullified since Gallifrey ceased to exist. Most of them still hold. The universe wouldn't make any sense if it didn't." He saw Rose's half smile at that. "Yes, I know, it doesn't LOOK as if it makes sense anyway. But it does. Except that it seems as if I CAN bump into people I thought logic would prevent me from meeting."

"And we're going to do something about him?" Wyn asked.

"Much as I would like to, he isn't actually doing anything except taking in the sights of the Great Exhibition. He's really not my problem right now."

"You CAN'T do anything about him, can you?" Rose said. "That WOULD be a paradox. I guess you have to leave him up to Chrístõ."

"And Chrístõ isn't around here. Which makes me wonder why Rõgæn is. What else interests him on Earth apart from causing me trouble?" The Doctor sighed. "I really did just want a nice day out with my two favourite girls. He's the last person I want to tangle with."

"So we ignore him?"

"If he actually does anything verging on criminal whether by Earth law or galactic I'll sort him out. But meantime, let's keep our distance. I don't really want him recognising me."

"How could he?" Rose asked. "You've changed eight times since he knew you as Chrístõ."

"We're both Time Lords. We have a sort of biological 'switch' in our heads. When we meet another of our kind we can recognise each other's patterns. That's how Susan knew me when I came back to her after all those years. And how Chrístõ knows who I am. And of course Number Ten at New Year - I knew he was another version of me as soon as I saw him."

"Don't talk about him," Rose protested. "He scares me."

"He isn't anything to be afraid of. I don't like what he represents. I don't like the thought of being dead in his reality. I want to be alive in this body, loving you with these eyes. But he IS still me, all that I am. He would never harm you, Rose. He cares for you just as much as I do. He IS me, as disturbing as it seems."

"I know," she said. "But…" She shook her head. "Never mind. HE isn't around here either. Let's not worry. Electric toaster on your right, by the way. And if I'm not mistaken, there's a CREDIT CARD in this display case."

This time Wyn had been swept away from The Doctor and Rose by the crowds around the exhibits. She didn't worry too much, either. There hadn't been many times recently when she wasn't with either The Doctor or Rose, or both of them. Not that she resented it. She loved being with them. Rose was like an older sister who looked out for her and helped her do stuff. Like the dress earlier. She would never have got that right on her own. And the Doctor - he was just like her dad, but with time for her that her dad never had. He noticed her.

But for once, doing her own thing for a little while was good.

"You!" She yelped as she felt her arm grasped and she was spun around. She looked up at the man The Doctor had called Rõgæn - the one who was going to be THE MASTER! She remembered some of her mother's stories and shuddered.

"You've travelled in the time vortex," he said accusingly. "You're with the other woman and that man. Who is he? Is he a Time Lord?"

"I'm telling you nothing," she answered and she kicked him in the shins. She didn't worry about the kind of precision fighting The Doctor had been teaching her. She just kicked hard, the Victorian button boots she wore proving very handy for the purpose. He loosened his hold on her and she ran for it, but the crowds slowed her down and she felt his arm on her shoulder again and this time his hand came around and she felt something stuffed over her face. She briefly smelt chloroform and had time to think that it wasn't fair. If there was anything as corny as that going on, then Rose was the kidnapped heroine type, not her.

How ridiculously easy it had been, Rõgæn thought, to pretend that she had fainted and that he was doing the hero thing and taking her outside for air. Humans were so pathetic they didn't even recognise a kidnapping when it went on in front of their eyes. There had been a few people glancing his way, and one old man offering to help, but he brushed them all off and carried the unconscious girl out into the park.

His TARDIS was nearby, neatly disguised as a large tree. The door opened to his voice command. It saved all the bother with keys. The kid had a TARDIS key on a thin chain around her neck, he noticed. It confirmed his suspicion. The man WAS a Time Lord and one that liked collecting Human specimens to hang about with.

And he thought his cousin Thete was the only one with that bad habit.

Who was he? He hadn't managed to get close enough to read his unique identification pattern. Nor had the other Time Lord been close enough to recognise HIS pattern, although he had a feeling he HAD recognised him all the same and steered the females away from him.

The Doctor looked around and realised Wyn wasn't with them.

"She'll be ok," Rose told him. "She's not a baby we have to keep on training reins."

"With Rõgæn about?" The Doctor said the name with a sort of growl and a look of extreme distaste on his face. "I wish I'd locked you both in the TARDIS and removed the locking device until I was sure he was gone."

"Doctor?" Rose looked at him with growing concern. "I know he's bad news for the universe generally. But would he hurt her? She's nothing to him."

"He is scum," The Doctor said. And Rose was surprised at such a harsh comment even about somebody like The Master - or the proto-Master who would grow up to BE the most Evil of all Time Lords. "He'd hurt her just because he can." He was walking swiftly through the crowds now, trying to find an exit from the Crystal Palace. "Wyn is a nice kid. She doesn't deserve the things he could do to her."

"Do you mean…" Rose looked at him in horror as she ran to keep up with his long strides now they were out in the open air. "Do you mean he would…."

"Yes," The Doctor said. "He would. And that's not the worst thing he can inflict on a human he decides to make his plaything for a while. And when he's done, he'll kill her."

It hardly needed saying. But she said it anyway.

"Then we've got to stop him."

"I'm on it already." They reached the TARDIS and he opened the door quickly. He strode across the floor and began working at the console before Rose even closed the door.

Wyn came around slowly, aware that she was lying on a hard surface. She looked up and realised at once that she was on board a TARDIS. But not HER TARDIS. Not The Doctor's TARDIS, she amended, then amended the thought back to the first one. It WAS her TARDIS as much as it was anyone's. It was home for as long as she travelled with The Doctor. It was a safe place - well, apart from when it was running out of air, of course. But usually it was safe.

This place wasn't. She felt scared. She sat up and looked around. It was cleaner and neater looking than their TARDIS, with lots of white and the console gleaming with space-age panels and buttons. But she thought it looked a bit too clinical and cold. Their TARDIS was more homey, once you got used to the freakiness of it BEING a time and space machine that was bigger on the inside than the outside.

And The Doctor, even in his worse bad mood, even threatening to put her in the airlock, didn't scare her like the man who stood at the console of this TARDIS. She would trust The Doctor with her life. He had saved her life loads of times already.

This was The Master. This man had tried to kill her mother dozens of times. The Doctor said he had tried to kill HIM.

She was in big trouble.

"I didn't bother tying you up or anything so boring," Rõgæn said. "There's nowhere to run to." He came towards her. She backed away but he grabbed her shoulder in a hard, painful grasp. "So, who are you? And more importantly, who is HE?"

"Go to hell," Wyn said. "I'm telling you nothing."

"Oh, you will. If I had the time you WOULD tell me everything, EVENTUALLY. Just before I made it easy on you by snapping your neck. But I can't be bothered with that." He reached to put his hand on her forehead. Wyn fought against it, but she felt him forcing his way into her head. He did it cruelly, knowing he was violating her mentally, enjoying her feeling of horror at his power over her.

"Well!" he exclaimed. "So that's it! My perfect cousin Thete gets to grow up after all. I must have made a BIG mistake somewhere along the line. I was planning to kill him. He still has no taste though. Hanging around with ape-forms like you and the skinny blonde girl."

"Leave me alone," Wyn screamed, wrenching herself free from his grasp and knocking him down with a karate punch The Doctor had taught her a couple of days ago. She ran for the door, but he was right. It was locked. And of course he'd be the only one who could open it.

She ran around the console, putting it between her and him and got ready to fight him again. He came at her quickly, with a martial arts move way beyond anything she knew how to do, for all that she had learnt from The Doctor. He was a Master at THAT, too. She was able to deflect his attack, but only just. And she knew she couldn't keep it up for long.

"What are you doing?" Rose asked The Doctor as he adjusted settings on the TARDIS console. "Wyn could be in real danger."

"Wyn IS in real danger. But I can't help her until I know where she is." He pressed a final key and a ghost of a smile crossed his face. "Rõgæn is clever. But hiding his TARDIS with a signature cloak that I INVENTED was never going to help him for long. I know where he is. And I've initiated a field preventing him dematerialising unless I let him. Effectively, I've grounded his TARDIS.

"Well done. Now are we going to get Wyn?"

"I'm not tackling him unarmed," The Doctor said and stalked off to the dojo, returning with the Shaolin swords they used in practice. "I'm not going to kill him. That would cause all kinds of paradoxes. As evil as he is now, as evil as he will be later, he has to live. But I need to have the edge on him. And I want you to be able to defend yourself against him."

"How good is he?" Rose asked.

"Nearly as good as me," The Doctor told her. "He got kicked out of the Malvorian monastery for being a deceitful little toe-rag before completing his training in Sun Ko Du. But he knows enough about it to give me a fight of it."

Rose pressed her lips together and said nothing. She didn't like the sound of that at all. She followed The Doctor out of the TARDIS and across the park.

"Did he just grab her because he guessed you were around?" Rose asked. "Or IS he up to something after all and didn't want you wrecking his plans?"

"Good question. I'll ask him in a minute."

The Doctor stopped at what appeared to be a large oak tree. He pointed to something carved into the bark. A Greek letter of the alphabet - . Once Rose would not have known what that meant. But life with The Doctor had expanded her knowledge of many things. And the Greek alphabet was one of them.

"Epsilon?"

"Yes. Once a TARDIS is imprinted with its owner's mental signature, it always adopts some kind of symbol that identifies it. Helps you see the wood from the trees as it were."

"Or the TARDIS from the trees," Rose observed. "Ours has TS on the keyhole." She looked closely. "I know it might seem like stating the obvious to you, but this tree has no keyhole."

"Rõgæn is clever, as I said. HIS TARDIS door works by voice pattern recognition."

"Oh."

"Not that clever though." The Doctor cleared his throat and then spoke. Rose was startled. Not only was he speaking in ancient High Gallifreyan, but his voice had changed. It was deeper, with an entirely different tone.

The Master's voice? The thought made her shiver.

"You can't run around the console forever!" Rõgæn told Wyn. "You're just a puny Human. You'll get tired long before I do. You're not even a fit Human. You're a fat, stupid little girl."

"Don't call me FAT!" Wyn screamed and lunged at him. The ferocity of her attack took him by surprise and he almost lost his footing. Almost but not quite and the blow he came back at her with knocked her across the floor.

There was a barely audible click and a piece of the bark became a door that swung open. The Doctor grinned and raised his finger to his lips as Rose formed the words 'show off' on hers. He stepped inside, she following closely.

Wyn raised herself from the floor dizzily, ready to defend herself again but he was on her already, his hands around her neck, fingers closing around her oesophagus. She closed her eyes to stop herself crying. He was going to kill her. And all she could think of was that she had let The Doctor down.

"Get your filthy hands off her!" She heard The Doctor's voice cry out angrily, and then suddenly he WAS off her. She heard the crunch as The Doctor's flying kick connected with Rõgæn's jaw and sent him sprawling on the ground. Rose went to help her up as The Doctor turned his sword on his mortal enemy. It looked as if it was all over.

"Doctor," Wyn said. "He knows who you are. He got into my mind and I couldn't help it."

"It's no secret who I am," The Doctor told her. "Don't worry about it, Wyn. So he knows that he has been bested by me - the rival he could never beat even when we were at school. The one who was never afraid of him. The one who saw him finally DEAD. Because that's your fate, Rõgæn. I'll be the one who sees YOU die."

"I'll see YOU die!" he growled, and he moved faster than anyone, not even The Doctor, expected. Rose blamed herself later. She was more concerned about comforting Wyn than keeping hold of her sword, and he pulled it from her grasp and turned in a single move. He lunged at The Doctor who stepped back out of his way and raised his own weapon to counter-attack.

He couldn't kill him. The Doctor knew he couldn't. If he did, he could unravel the fabric of time. Rõgæn had to go on to become The Master and meet him again on many other battle-grounds yet. The war between U.N.I.T. and The Master was one of the main reasons why Wyn's mum, Jo, became his assistant. The Master was the reason his seventh incarnation ended up making an emergency landing in San Francisco and regenerating into the one that met and briefly loved Grace, before The Master was finally, and irrevocably, defeated with a little help from the TARDIS. If none of those things happened, much as he could have done without the aggravation, there would be a serious paradox.

He had to defeat him, and ensure he was prevented from causing any further mischief, for a while at least, without killing him.

"Rose," he called. "Here…" He stepped back agilely and threw his sword. She caught it and immediately leapt into action against Rõgæn. He looked surprised at the change of opponent, but if he thought he was now up against somebody weaker he was soon proved wrong. With a sword Rose was as good as The Doctor. She had lightness and an agile body and muscles toned by regular practice. And she kept him busy while The Doctor went to the console and began working quickly.

"What are you doing?" Wyn asked him.

"First, I'm reversing the time disrupter that was causing the rip we've been dealing with. I was wrong. It wasn't a natural phenomenon. Rõgæn was doing it." He looked at Rose as she fought him around the room, the clash of metal on metal echoing in the rarefied air. "Rose, ask him what he was up to, would you?"

"The Doctor says, what were you up to?" she said to him as she parried his attack and came back at him with a speed that was starting to worry him. Unlike the fat kid, this one seemed to have as much energy as he did.

"Doctor?" he queried, risking a flicker of his eyes towards the older version of his enemy. "He calls himself DOCTOR? My cousin Thete?"

"He's your cousin?" Wyn looked at him.

"Only by marriage," The Doctor replied without looking up at him. "So what were you up to, Eps?"

"Just an experiment in temporal distortion. I can make a lot of money by selling future technology - especially weapons technology - on wealthy but primitive planets. But the universe is just too well policed to get bulk quantities any other way."

"Introducing superior technology to lesser races breaks at least four of the Laws of Time. You can get 1,000 years incarcerated on Shada for that."

"And who's going to be my jailor?" Rõgæn demanded as he side stepped Rose's next move. "You, cousin?"

"As it happens, yes. Rose, DUCK!"

Rose obeyed him immediately. She flattened herself on the ground as a beam emerged from the console and hit Rõgæn square in the chest. The sword fell from his hand as the stasis field surrounded him. Rose and Wyn both stared. He was alive. He had to be. But he was still, his eyes open but unblinking and his muscles frozen.

The Doctor left the console and stood in front of his enemy, his arms folded. Apparently there was still some brain activity. The Doctor seemed to be listening to him.

"How did I operate YOUR TARDIS console? I'm smarter than you, Eps. And your TARDIS knows that. Tell you what I can't have, though, and that's YOU knowing too much about the future. Although it would do you good to know that you're going to fail and I'm going to be left standing while you die ignominiously, you might use what you learnt about me from Wyn to make life troublesome for my younger self. And he has enough on his plate without that. So…." He took out his sonic screwdriver and adjusted it to a setting he rarely had cause to use. The memory eraser. "Let me see… a half hour, an hour? Tell you what, let's take you right back to breakfast this morning. Then you'll never know you bumped into me." He pointed the sonic screwdriver at Rõgæn's head and a blue glow enveloped him. He slippee into unconsciousness towards the end of it. "It automatically goes into sleepy-bye mode as well," he added.

He turned and went back to the console. The temporal disturbance field wa totally dispersed now. All the anachronistic items were back in their correct places, apart from two Time Lords and two twenty-first century Earth girls.

One Time Lord would be leaving very soon. The Doctor programmed his flight. Rõgæn Koschei Oakdaene already had a dozen warrants for his arrest for violating Time Lord codes, as well as any number of local laws. He himself had left several depositions about his cousin's activities. When he arrived on Shada, the prison planet of the Time Lords, the guards there would automatically act on those warrants and put him into a suspended animation cell. He wouldn't stay there for long. The Doctor remembered that Rõgæn HAD been incarcerated for a time but irregularities were found in his arrest and he was set free after a very few years. But the universe had those few years respite from him.

"Shada?" Rose questioned when they returned to their own TARDIS. The Doctor had to lift the force field before the automatic pilot could begin Rõgæn's trip for him. "If that belongs to the Time Lords, didn't it die with Gallifrey?"

"Yes, it did," The Doctor said. "But in Rõgæn's timeframe it still exists. HIS TARDIS had charts and co-ordinates for our home world as it was. Because the Time War hasn't yet happened for him."

"So you could have used his TARDIS to go home?" Wyn asked him. The Doctor looked as if that had never occurred to him. He shook his head.

"I'd have committed a worse crime than he has if I tried to interfere in my own timeline that way. And besides…" He stopped speaking. There were some things he just couldn't share, even with those he loved.

He turned and looked at Wyn. She had a bruise on her face from being knocked about by Rõgæn. He turned the sonic screwdriver to the tissue repair function and gently applied it to the bruise.

"Every time he and I have been in contact I find myself feeling I should apologise to some other race for his contempt for them. I am ashamed he is one of my species, let alone that there is a remote blood relationship between us. I am sorry he hurt you."

"It's not your fault," she said. "It was HIM. Just like when my mum was with you. Anyway, you got him. He's sorted now. So… can we go back to the Festival. There's loads of stuff going on still, and maybe we can just enjoy it this time, without worrying about weird stuff."

"Yeah," The Doctor agreed. "Let's do that. I could do with a weird stuff free afternoon."