Their main impediment was one that only a flesh and blood man would have recognized: they had no heart, no emotions, no feelings. They lived by the inexorable laws of pure logic. Love, hate, anger, even fear, we're eliminated from their lives when the last flesh was replaced by plastic.

There are moments, thought Romana, when I positively loathe that man. How dare he look so cheerful when he's been trapped the far side of that shell with a huge ravening what-ever-it-is? How dare he appear looking as if he's just returned from a five-mile hike, when, by the rules that govern the Universe, he should have been torn limb from limb or squashed flatter than a crepe suzette by a million tons of green blob?

'I'm afraid I can't think in billions,' said Romana. 'I can only think of Adric - alone and a prisoner in this Tower. You go to the TARDIS, I'll join you as soon as I can.'

So it seemed that her apprenticeship was, indeed, finally over. The Doctor smiled; she would be better than good, she would be superb.

'Who is that man?', Pangol asked Romana.

'The Doctor'

'Is he a scientist?'

Romana nodded. Experience had taught her to keep explanation down to a minimum. In any case, how did you explain the Doctor? Even his fellow Time Lords preferred to keep him at arm's length.

The Doctor lifted his head from the book, staring into nowhere, allowing the bitter-sweet memories to wash over him. His days as a fugitive from the Time Lords were long behind him now. ‘I lost my fight, Romana. Remember that.’

Romana patted the TARDIS. 'Well done, we're very close.'

She caught the Doctor's eye and snatched back her hand. She was always reproving the Doctor for treating the TARDIS as a person. Obviously it was catching.

Tegan’s experience of travelling with the Doctor had convinced her that (a) he didn’t know what was going on most of the time, and (b) when he did get things right it was more by luck than judgement.

"Really?" muttered Romana uninterestedly. She knew very well that any future move was in the hands of the Doctor, amongst whose traits predictability was not numbered.

"You see, this thing-" she contemptuously thumped the box "-needs updating, and he won't link in the new ordnance. So, I tried to jack in the G129AT, some old wiring fused... and I ended up here. Now the door won't close, the Cloister Bell's ringing because the TARDIS thinks it's under attack from the Pus Creatures Of Rakos, and I just know he'll wake up any minute."

DOCTOR: Do you know any good scarf shops? Nothing too fancy. Only length is important.

No situation, however urgent, could override Romana's aristocratic politeness. She paused at the bottom of the steps looking at the oddlooking little man who had turned up to save her. "I really must thank -"

Her eyes widened. "Doctor?"

"Fake?" The Doctor dabbed at his wounds once more. "Tegan, I hate to tell you this, but if we don't get this sorted out soon, you may have to start locking your door at night. I wonder what it's like, being a vampire?"

“At last Doctor. I suppose you want me to open the park gates with my sonic screwdriver?"

“Romana, would you be so good as to open the park gates with my sonic screwdriver?” said the Doctor.

"The human mind," mused Romana as she followed the Doctor around the TARDIS console. "All in all, rather a rudimentary device for interfacing with reality."

"Yes," said the Doctor. "Fortunately, the mind of a Time Lord is a good sight tidier. My brain is a model." He pressed a yellow button.

“Of course it is, Doctor," said Romana, reaching forward quickly to press the yellow button again. "I mean, I'm not even slightly disorganized." He pulled a lever; Romana reversed its position. "One has to keep the brain clear, it's essential." Suddenly he looked up. "Romana!"

"What?"

He put a hand to his hair. "I've left my hat behind!"

Romana smiled, took the hat from her coat pocket, and popped it on his head.

‘It’s all right,’ Dorothée burped. ‘The hamsters are just aliens. I’m from the past, these two and Bernice are from the future, and Jason has just come back from outer space.’

Still, at least she wasn’t stupid enough to twist her ankle, she thought proudly. The Doctor clutched her shoulder with an agonized expression. ‘Romana, I think I’ve twisted my ankle.’ He sounded quite offended.

'The captain was a Cousin of Andred's,' said Leela.

'The Castellan?' grinned Dorothée. She had just stopped herself calling him Leela's toyboy. 'Are you married then?'

'Like Housekeepers to Houses? No. We are ... together.'

'All of it is yours, Kithriarch. And well deserved too! You fulfilled none of the potential that we expected. None of it. You are a failure and a disgrace to my name!'

The Cousins began to jeer.

'Just a minute,' butted in Romana. 'That is no way to address a former Lord President of the High Council of Gallifrey!"

'President? What President?' Quences raised his ghostly eyebrows. 'And who are you?'

'She's my successor,' said the Doctor, and Romana displayed her ring of office.

'The Doctor stood down with honour," she said.

'Well, not really,' said the Doctor, embarrassed. 'I'm no longer President because I couldn't be bothered with all that power political business.'

'President?' whispered Quences. He stared down at his coffin. 'You were President of Gallifrey?"

'More than that,' said Romana. 'Much, much more.'

Andred treated Leela with a proud devotion, while other Time Lords smirked behind his back. In return, she tried

hard to behave in the way that he said was proper and she thought was stupid. But in the secret dark, when they

lay together, they giggled at the affectations and manners of the Time Lord gentry and had secrets and made

plans that were theirs alone and could not be accessed on a catalogue port or consulted in an authority list.

'I'm so lucky,' he'd said amid their frequent bouts of giggles. 'They never taught us this at the Academy. I'd like to

see their faces. I don't think anyone's done this for... it must be thousands and thousands of years. All the others

do is watch the aliens at it and précis their notes afterwards.'

And then the giggling would stop.

Where her companion was bedraggled to a point that begged belief, she was somehow still elegant. Her clothes didn't even seem to be wet while his seemed to be more water than cloth at this point.