Chris Campbell sat on the hill above the Pyramid Valley in the cool of a balmy SangC’lune night, looking up at the twin moons. His Gothic TARDIS was parked nearby, disguised as a small stone folly. He had walked up here after Daygone. He had taken part in that lovely ceremony dressed in gold and scarlet regalia as the visiting Lord of Time. He had given his blessing to three prospective marriages and two newborn babies. Being a Living God to the gentle people of this planet was a pleasant duty on nights like this. He enjoyed it. But now he was enjoying being there in the quiet peace of the evening, waiting for his brother to join him, wondering if he ought to have told him more about the reason he asked him to come.

The Chinese TARDIS materialised next to the Gothic one and disguised itself as a matching folly. Davie stepped out and ran to hug his brother fondly.

“Did you drop Jack off at fifty-first century Boeshane Colony, ok?” Chris asked him.

“Yes. He was looking forward to spending the weekend with his mother. He’s a happy man lately. Hellina is getting well, and he’s been reunited with his mum. I’m glad for him.”

“Me, too,” Chris said. “Come on, sit down and have some food. I’ve brought cheese, bread and fruit, and some SangC’lune wine. A picnic under the blood moon, just me and you and the stars above us.”

“Terrific.” Davie sat and for a while they ate and talked of trivial matters. Then Davie became aware that Chris was looking at him very steadily and seriously.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “There’s something about you. Something strange. I should have noticed it before. But we’ve both been too busy to sit quietly together like this for so long.”

“We both have such full lives, these days,” Davie said. “But you know I’ve always got time for you, Chris.”

“I know you do. But only because you’re living outside your natural timeline, living two days for every one – or more.”

“You do that, too,” Davie pointed out. “So does granddad and Rose. They very often go off for an afternoon that’s actually more like a long weekend. It’s the only way to get Rose to leave the children and spend time with him.”

“Yes, but you do it more often than any of us,” Chris pointed out. “Look…” He reached out and touched his brother on the shoulder. Davie moved closer as he closed his hands around his face and gently probed his mind. Davie knew what he was looking for. He knew the questions he was going to ask him.

“Davie,” Chris said gently. “Your body clock is nearly two years ahead of mine now. We were born four minutes apart. It’s almost as if we’re not twins any more.”

“Nothing can stop us being that,” Davie answered. “We’ll always be two halves of the same soul.”

“Yes, but what have you been doing to use up so much extra time?”

“Nothing to worry about,” he assured his brother. “It’s sort of a secret.”

“We never used to have secrets,” Chris told him. “Davie, is this to do with Spenser? Are you spending time with him?”

“Yes,” he answered, “But not the way you’re thinking. Not the way everyone thinks I spend time with him.”

“I’m not thinking anything. I just don’t want you to get hurt. If you carry on like this, you’re going to put your relationship with Brenda at risk.”

“Chris!” Davie protested. “It’s nothing like that. I’m learning to race cars.”

“Cars?” Chris laughed. “Well, that figures. My brother, the petrolhead! But how does that…”

“Spenser and me… we’ve been spending time in the early twenty-first century… when my car was made. We go off in the TARDIS for a couple of hours in the evening in real time, but we’re doing a two or three week intensive course in track racing at Brands Hatch or taking part in rallies and race meetings. I’m trying to get known as an independent amateur, clock up hours on the track, and train a pit crew so that I can enter races in my own car.”

“And what does Spenser have to do with that?”

“He’s my co-driver. He’s brilliant, just like he is piloting my TARDIS. We’re thinking of going in for some endurance races as a team. That’s what’s used up so much extra time. Plus, for every evening I spend with Spenser, I have to spend the same time with Brenda.”

Chris looked at his brother carefully. He smiled widely and hugged him.

“Two years of extra days, just so you can fast track yourself into an incredibly expensive hobby. That’s the maddest thing you’ve ever done. And why couldn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to tell anyone until I was ready, until I was good.”

“Are you good?” Chris asked him.

“I will be in a few weeks. Then you can come and watch me race. I know it’s not got a lot to do with meditation and peace and all that stuff, but I’d love to have you there when I race.”

“You’re my brother,” Chris told him. “My OLDER brother. Of course I’ll come and see you race. I’d love to. In the meantime, do you want to come somewhere special with me?”

“Where?”

“Somewhere absolutely incredible,” he said. “You won’t believe it until you see it. I’m not promising a walk in the park. They won’t have summoned us without good reason. But just wait a few minutes.”

“Wait for what? You complained about me keeping secrets from you…”

Chris just smiled enigmatically and stood, looking up at the red moon and its paler companion. Davie looked up, too. Chris gripped his hand tightly and he was aware of the pressure of his fingers entwined with his own. But he wasn’t sure about any other part of his body. He felt as if he was floating up towards that blood red moon, or it was coming towards him. And then the moon dissolved in front of his eyes and he was floating in space. Starfields were swirling around him. He tried to look at his brother, but he didn’t seem to have any control of his body. He couldn’t turn to see him by his side, still gripping his hand.

He couldn’t speak, either. His words froze on his lips.

Then he blinked. His feet were on solid ground again and he looked up at a night sky that would be called burnt umber in a paint catalogue. There were constellations in that sky that were hauntingly familiar to him even though he knew he had never looked up at them before in his life.

There was a big moon that shone a bright copper colour and that, too, was familiar, not to him, Davie Campbell De Lœngbærrow , but to the soul of his great-grandfather that had nestled within his own soul since he received it in the Rite of Mori. Davie experienced his bittersweet emotions as he looked up at the night sky of Gallifrey.

“Chris…. Am I dreaming?” he asked as he blinked again, this time to conquer tears that had come unbidden to his eyes. “We can’t really be here? It can’t be. We’re not allowed. The protocols…”

“We have special dispensation, from Lord Rassilon,” Chris told him. “We really are here, Davie. This really is Gallifrey. Just as we always dreamt of it.”

“Pazithi Gallifreya,” Davie said, looking up at the moon. “And that must be Arinia, Tao and Quintus, in that triangle to the North-East of her. Three of the stars of the Kasterborus constellation… and..”

“You have studied our astronomy well,” said an approving voice. Davie turned and looked at a man who seemed curiously familiar to him, though he was sure he had never seen him before in his life.

“You’re seeing yourself in me,” the man told him. “Our family characteristics.”

“Davie,” Chris said. “This is Davõreen De Lœngbærrow – our uncle many times removed - the brother of the first Chrístõ De Lœngbærrow .”

“Let us call each other cousins for sake of clarity,” Davõreen said as Davie bowed his head respectfully and he returned the gesture. “I am glad to meet you, cousin.”

“It is good to see you,” Davie answered. “But... This isn’t a social visit, surely? The power needed to transport us through time and space, across so many protocols…”

“You are quite right, Davie,” Davõreen answered. “There is need of your skills here on Gallifrey. But come, let us talk in more conducive surroundings.”

Chris and Davie followed Davõreen across the meadow they were standing in and through a copse of trees. They emerged onto a neatly cut lawn in front of a house that looked as if it was built in the late Tudor style, though they both knew that the architectural style was usually called pre-Arcalian on Gallifrey. There was a lamp above the big main door and lights in some of the windows even though it seemed to be dead of night.

“This is your house?” Chris asked his friend. “Your former home, that is? Mount Lœng House.”

“It is,” Davõreen answered. “Come, within. My brother will offer you hospitality.”

“I thought Mount Lœng House looked a bit like the one we know in London – Georgian style…” Davie commented.

“Post Cerulean, you mean,” Chris answered him, “We’re about five millennia before that house was built. This is the first Lœngbærrow Manor.”

“It is the second dwelling to be built on this site, in fact,” Davõreen told them. “The first was destroyed by a meteor in my great grandfather’s day - when Gallifrey’s unstable second moon broke apart.”

“That would have been a sight to see,” Davie commented. “Though perhaps not from such close quarters as this.”

They stepped into the entrance hall, a beautifully furnished and decorated room. There was a large double door opposite the outer door. Above it was a painting of a Time Lord in the uniform of a general in the Gallifreyan Galactic Army. The floor was marble, or something like marble, with the crest of the Lœngbærrow family – two silvertrees with their branches meeting in the middle – picked out actually in silver. Davõreen seemed overcome by the sight of it.

I have not stepped over this crest for nearly eight hundred years,” he said. “My duties for Lord Rassilon have taken me far from home.”

Neither Chris nor Davie could identify with that. The weeks of exile during the Dominator invasion were the longest time they had spent away from home. But Davie felt a slight twinge of empathy from the soul of his great-grandfather deep within his own being. The Doctor knew what it was to be an exile from this place only too well.

Davõreen stepped over the crest and pushed open the great double doors beneath the portrait of the general. Chris and Davie followed him into a room that seemed part study and part conference room with a wide polished table and velvet covered chairs. A man sat at the head of the table. He rose as they entered and they recognised him from the portrait. He was General Chrístõ De Lœngbærrow , the youngest Gallifreyan to ever hold such a rank.

Chris and Davie stood back as Davõreen and his twin greeted each other. Eight hundred years was a long time for two brothers to be parted. Davie glanced at Chris and wondered how he would feel if the two of them had been so long apart.

“I think we’d be a bit more demonstrative about it,” Chris whispered as he watched the brothers bow to each other very formally. Davõreen in his plain robe with the seal of Rassilon on the front and Chrístõ De Lœngbærrow dressed in an elaborate gold and black gown and robe didn’t even touch each other as they completed their formal acknowledgements.

“They are pure blood Gallifreyans,” Davie noted. “I suppose we must seem incredibly emotional to them.”

“Come forward,” Chrístõ De Lœngbærrow said to them. It was a request, an invitation, but there was something in his voice that made it feel like a command. He had earned his military rank in two bitter interplanetary wars. And now he was patriarch of one of the Twelve Ancient Houses. No wonder he had such command about him.

In any case, both obeyed just as they would obey the commands of their great grandfather, The Doctor. This was, after all, his and their first ancestor in their direct line. Chris had his name in his full Gallifreyan form.

“Do not fear, either of you,” De Lœngbærrow said. “We are all friends, here. More than friends. We are kin.” He indicated to them to sit at the table. He and Davõreen also sat. Without any kind of signal, a servant appeared through a side door and brought a pitcher of wine and a platter with cuts of meat and cheese and slices of fruit with barley bread. “Please eat and drink. You have travelled a long way. Your bodies will need replenishing.”

Neither had thought about food, but they did feel hungry, in fact. They ate with their two ancestors. They drank only a little of the wine. De Lœngbærrow thought that amusing.

“We don’t usually drink alcohol at all,” Chris explained. “I don’t have it within my Sanctuary and Davie rarely drinks because he spends so much time around fast cars.”

“Fast cars?” De Lœngbærrow was puzzled. Davie tried to explain his leisure activity of racing a ground-based engine around a stretch of tarmac but his ancestor seemed to have trouble understanding the concept.

“When I was a young soldier in the Gallifreyan Guard, we had contests of strength – wrestling matches, hand to hand fighting, swordsmanship….”

“Same principle, really,” Davie said. “But it’s about getting the best out of a machine, gears, steering, horsepower and torque, using my feel for the car to gain an advantage over the driver beside me….”

Chris laughed at the puzzled faces of his ancestors.

“I don’t understand him when he talks like that, either,” he said. “But I didn’t think you called us here because of Davie’s skills with combustible engines, anyway. There is something more here, isn’t there? You need us… the two of us…”

De Lœngbærrow sat back in his chair very upright. He seemed to be studying his two guests carefully.

“Gallifrey is in a sad state when she must call upon two children to fight for her honour,” he said. “It was my brother’s idea to bring you here. I was opposed to the plan.”

“I am not a child,” Davie replied in a bristling tone. “I’ve fought and bled as hard as any man in a war as dirty as you could imagine.”

“I don’t have to imagine war,” De Lœngbærrow told him in a cool tone.

“Neither do I,” Davie insisted. “And I haven’t had the luxury of spending two hundred years with nothing to worry about except getting my homework done. I had to grow up fast. I am not a child. I am a man, and a Time Lord. I am equal to any on this planet right now.”

“Remember,” Davõreen said to his brother. “These grew up on Sol Three. There manhood comes much sooner than it does here. And despite their youth, they have achieved much even by their own world’s standards.”

“I know that,” De Lœngbærrow answered. “And I concede that there is wisdom in using agents who are not known to our quarry or his followers. And yet, it still disturbs me to involve either of them.”

“Lord Rassilon approved of the idea.”

“Then I must accept the wisdom of our Creator. But I don’t have to like it. And neither do they. They are not even of Gallifrey. It is wrong to involve them.”

“We ARE of Gallifrey,” Chris argued in a cool, calm voice. “Gallifrey is in our blood, through our ancestors. Through our mother who was born in this very place. This wasn't her house. The one she knew won’t be built for generations, yet. But I can feel it. I feel her connection to the very soil of this demesne. We ARE of Gallifrey. We are of the House of Lœngbærrow. We acknowledge you as Patriarch of that House, and are therefore at your command. But I will hear no more talk of ‘children’ and no more doubting our loyalty to your cause and Gallifrey’s cause. We are both Time Lords, oath-bound to defend her, to protect the Ancient laws and all that Gallifrey stands for.”

Chrístõ De Lœngbærrow looked at his descendent and smiled a half smile.

“Perhaps my brother’s idea is not so foolish after all. There is a fire in both of you.”

“So there should be,” Davie replied. “We are the product of a proud Gallifreyan House and a fighting Scots clan. So what is it that you need our help with and what’s the plan?”

“Do you know anything about the Cult of Dvore?” De Lœngbærrow asked them.

“I know of the House of Dvore,” Davie answered, “It was one of the Oldblood Houses… though not one of the twelve Ancient Houses. It was expunged in my great-great grandfather’s time when the last of that line was executed as a criminal threat to Gallifrey and to civilised people throughout the galaxy.”

“I think I should probably not know that,” De Lœngbærrow said. “It is in the future… the far future. Though it would seem that the rot set in long before our descendant’s time.”

“The current patriarch of Dvore is an ambitious man,” Davõreen continued. “He seems to want to challenge Rassilon for mastery over the Time Lord race. He has gathered his followers at his demesne on the northern edge of the Red Desert. More are joining him all the time. He recruits from among the young and impressionable, particularly younger brothers of newbloods and the less wealthy oldblood families.”

“I didn’t think there was such a thing,” Davie commented. “I thought all oldbloods were rich.”

“The older brothers do all right,” Davõreen answered with a glance at his own brother. “Even the younger sons of Ancient Houses can struggle. The Right of Primogeniture is absolute, as I am sure you understand.”

“That is one of the more legitimate complaints of the followers of Dvore. It is how they are luring young men into their cult. But we have good reason to believe that much more than social reform is going on there.”

“Very good reason,” Davõreen commented. Again, he glanced at his brother and Chris and Davie both wondered if there was a bone of contention here between the two men.

“I sent a man in seven weeks ago. A spy… you might call him,.”

There was a catch in his voice when he said that. Davie saw a look in the face of the general that he thought he knew. The look of a man who has taken the ultimate responsibility for something terrible.

“You sent a man in to spy for you…” Davie said. “And you still need us…”

“What happened to him?” Chris asked, pointedly. “Is he dead?”

De Lœngbærrow shook his head.

“It would be better for him if he were. When he was found….”

“You’d better tell us the whole story,” Chris said.

Davõreen waved his hand and a hologram appeared in the air above the polished table. It was a disturbing sight. The man lying on the bed was almost unrecognisable as a man. His face was burnt, his eye sockets empty. One arm and a leg was missing. They looked as if they had been hacked off.

“What happened to him?” Davie asked. “What did they do?”

“He was discovered. They tortured him for at least a week.”

“Dvore and his people?”

“Yes.”

“I’m liking the way you’re sugaring the pill here,” Davie said with more than a hint of sarcasm in his tone. “You’re really filling me with confidence. I mean, I’m assuming your idea was that we, Chris and I, should take this man’s place?”

“We’re not scared, you understand,” Chris added. “But we need to know why they went to such lengths, why they did THAT to him.”

Davõreen waved his hands again. Sound was added to the hologram picture. They heard the badly injured man speaking deliriously.

“They have the Hand,” he murmured, “They have it. The Hand….”

“The… Hand?” Chris and Davie looked at each other. “What does that mean? He’s not talking about his own missing arm?”

“No,” De Lœngbærrow answered tersely.

“Oh no,” Chris murmured. “I… think… he means the Hand of Omega.”

“What!” Davie shuddered visibly. “No! How… How did they…”

“We were betrayed,” De Lœngbærrow answered. “Dvore has the Hand of Omega, the most deadly weapon in the known galaxies. The star killer.”

“I know what it is!” Davie commented. “I’ve seen what it can do. What it will do in the future.”

“Then you know we have to get it back from Dvore.”

“That’s our mission?” Chris asked. “It’s not to free misguided young men from the influence of an extremist. It’s to get a terrible weapon back from an extremist.”

“We’d like the misguided young men, too,” Davõreen said. “We’d like as little bloodshed as possible. We’d like…”

“You’d like two expendable people to get involved, people you can deny all connection with if it goes wrong.” Davie’s voice had a hard edge that surprised Chris, to say nothing of their hosts. “You brought us here to be cannon fodder…”

“Cannon fodder?” De Lœngbærrow queried. “I don’t understand the phrase…”

“Use your imagination,” Davie answered. “With all due respect, General, the answer is no. Neither I nor my brother will have anything to do with your problem. I thank you for your hospitality, but I think we should go back where we come from - where we belong.”

He stood up from the table and walked away. Chris hesitated a few seconds before following him. De Lœngbærrow and his brother watched them go without another word.

Davie strode across the hall and out through the front door of the house. He crossed the meadow without pausing. He was heading for the place where they arrived on the planet, though it occurred to him that he had no way of getting them back if Davõreen, the servant of Rassilon, didn’t permit it. He stopped and turned around when he reached the treeline. He saw Chris catching up with him.

“If you don’t agree with me you don’t have to come. Davõreen is your friend. I won’t be offended if you stick by him.”

“Don’t be daft,” Chris answered him. “I’m with you. Any time. Every time.”

Davie smiled as his brother took hold of his hand.

“Two halves of the same soul.”

“We’ve always been that. We always will be. I’m sorry. I didn’t expect anything quite as big as this. Davõreen told me there was a problem, and that we could help. I should have asked him what it was. I just thought you’d get a kick out of coming here, to Gallifrey.”

“I’m not sure what to think about being here.” Davie leaned against a tree and looked up at the sky. “Mum was born here. This was the sky she looked up at when she stood in this garden.”

“She left here when she was four. I don’t think she was out here at night very often.”

“That’s not really the point. The point is….” He shook his head. “The Hand of Omega is the most terrible weapon anyone ever built. It destroys worlds… whole worlds. And yet it is untouched by the destruction it causes.”

“Yeah. It’s a catalyst. We did it that in year one chemistry.”

“And it was built by the Time Lords. The people whose whole philosophy was based on peaceful non-interference, built a weapon that can destroy a world and then return to them untouched, ready to be used again. Did you ever wonder why they built such a thing?”

“As a deterrent,” Chris answered. “Like the Cold War on Earth in the twentieth century. Those who might have tried to mess with them because they were a peaceful people knew they didn’t dare - because the Time Lords could launch a terrible weapon against them.”

“You don’t believe that works, do you?”

“It isn’t a part of my own philosophy,” Chris answered. “If you build a big weapon, your enemies build a bigger one. Except I don’t know what would be bigger than the Hand of Omega other than something that cancels out the whole universe.”

“And nobody ever did. So it seemed to have worked…. more or less. You know, it was only ever used twice.”

“I know that,” Chris said.

“And you know…” Davie sighed deeply. “You know that the only Time Lord who used it… was….”

“Granddad.”

“He used it to destroy Skaro, the home world of the Daleks. It was uninhabited at the time. They had pretty much destroyed it already. But he sent the Hand of Omega to turn it into a cinder, to prevent Davros from using it as a base of operations for his civil war with the Dalek faction who were opposed to him.”

“Granddad taught us all about that. He also told us pretty frankly why he did it. We all know how dangerous the Daleks are.”

“The second time he used it…. He’s never told us about that. He’s never told anyone. But we know anyway. He used it against the Daleks a second time, and….”

“And it destroyed the Daleks as well as Gallifrey. It reduced all of this to matter falling into a black hole.”

Davie looked up into the sky again.

“Being here is incredible. That sky, the air. This is Gallifrey, our true home. But what they want us to do… I can’t do it.”

“Why not?” Chris asked. “I think I know. I can feel everything cramming into your mind. But let me hear it out loud, now. Say it, Davie.”

“They want us to recover the Hand of Omega from a man who would use it for his own terrible ends. So it could be held by the right people. But, Chris, I’m not sure the High Council of Time Lords are the right people. What if we got it back and destroyed it, or hid it, or something, so that they didn’t have it, either?”

“I think that might, possibly, be called treason, Davie. And even if it wasn’t, it would cause a paradox. Granddad DID use the hand to defeat Davros’s scheme. And he did use it to defeat the Dalek fleets that were about to destroy Gallifrey.”

“What if he didn’t? What if the Hand of Omega disappeared here and now and wasn’t there to be their great deterrent?”

“You can’t do that, Davie,” Chris told him. “You can’t create a paradox like that.”

“That’s why I don’t want to do what they want me to do. Because if I had the chance, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. I would do it, Chris. I would take the Hand of Omega from them. I would change the future.”

“You can’t do that,” Chris said. “You really can’t. It’s not for you to decide. But I think we should help them. I think we’re the only people who can. Davie, these are honourable men. They’re our ancestors. We can trust them. And, they need us. Gallifrey needs us.”

“The call to arms?”

“Yes.”

“What if I don’t answer the call? I’ve done enough. I’ve fought my war. What if I just want to live in peace, and race fast cars?”

“Could you look granddad in the eye and say that? Or dad. He wanted to live in peace but the Daleks made that impossible. Could you live with yourself?”

“Maybe.”

“No, you don’t mean that. I know you don’t. You’re just wound up about the Hand of Omega and how you feel about what happened.”

“It was our fault, Chris,” Davie said as he blinked away unmanly tears. “We got in the way. We deflected the damn thing and it destroyed an entire solar system. THIS solar system, where we’re standing now. It was our fault, Chris.”

“I know that,” he answered. “And it burns in my soul. Don’t think it doesn’t. That’s why I’ve worked so hard to make my life about peace and love and life and everything other than war and death.”

“But there’s a way I could change it. And the only thing stopping me is…”

“Is your own conscience.” Chris told him. “Because you know you can’t. You know we all have to accept what has already happened in our lifetime and move on from it. But right here and now, there is something we can do which will save lives, and keep that terrible weapon from the hands of a man who would use it for crimes more terrible than the Daleks, the Sontarans, the Dominators, ever committed.”

“You want to do this?” Davie asked his brother. “Chris, you’re not a warrior. You spent so long building your Sanctuary, for peace, for good and light….”

“But I also swore allegiance to Gallifrey. I swore to defend her laws. Remember the first time we took the oath. We were eight years old. Granddad taught it to us.”

“I swear to protect…. the ancient law of Gallifrey… with all my might and main… and will to the end of my days… with justice and honour… tender my actions… and my thoughts.”

“We have to live up to that oath, Davie. We’ve been asked to do so by our own direct kin, and by the right hand man of Rassilon. We have to do it. We should do it. But we do it the right way. And without causing any paradoxes.”

“Chris!” Davie grasped his brother’s hand all the tighter.

“You’ll do the right thing. I know you will. But…” He turned and looked around. “Davie, the sun is coming up. It’s morning on Gallifrey.”

They stood together and watched as the western sky over the plain of the southern continent of Gallifrey turned from burnt umber to deep orange and the golden sun rose over the horizon. The two brothers, born millions of light years away from there, but raised with a deep love for the planet they never thought to set foot upon, watched the land turn to gold in its rays. They felt its warmth on their faces and they blinked in its light.

“Have you made peace with yourself?” Chris and Davie both looked around as Davõreen spoke. He stood a few yards away, calmly watching them.

“How long have you been there?” Chris asked, knowing that Davõreen was not an ordinary mortal even by Gallifreyan standards. “Were you listening to us? If so, there are things we spoke of that you can’t tell your brother. The things we know about Gallifrey’s destiny. He mustn’t know. For his own good.”

“I came to watch the sun come up. It’s a beautiful sight. Even I can appreciate it. It grieves me to know that a time will come when both sun and planet will be no more. But that time could be much sooner if a madman isn’t stopped. That’s why I called upon you both. Davie, I understand the phrase ‘cannon fodder’. I assure you that there is no such base intention. As Rassilon’s emissary, I brought you here to work his will.”

“I suppose there is no point in asking why Rassilon can’t just strike this Dvore down and be done with him?” Davie asked. “He’s a powerful being. He may not call himself a god, but he’s pretty close to one. He could deal with this himself.”

“And what sort of god would that make him? Should Time Lords live in fear of a vengeful deity who will crush them under his feet? He entrusted this task to my brother, a warrior of our race, and I promised him the help of two whose hearts were forged under a different sky, but whose loyalty is as deep and courage as strong as any Time Lord. So, will you come, now, and hear my brother’s plan?”

Davie sighed and looked at his brother. Then he slowly turned and nodded.

“All right. We’ll hear the plan. We’re not promising anything more than that, though.”