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Chapter Thirty - Chapter Thirty

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The Abysm

Three two one, three two one,
A wreath of roses lay.
Rassilon's dead and Omega's lost,
The other one's gone away.
Three to wonder and bide their time,
They'll all come back one day.

Transcribed from hieroglyphics in the Domdaniel Caverns on Strava.

Romana brought two fists down on the Doctor's chest, but his inert body absorbed the blows without reacting.

'Still no sign of regeneration,' she said as if she was being deliberately insulted.

The House was rumbling a commentary of its own.

The new woman called Innocet repeatedly waved a green bottle under his nose. He gave not so much as a twitch.

She shook her head. 'It's as if he's cut himself free.'

Leela picked at an amulet on her necklace.

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Doroth\xE9e half smiled. 'When I asked him about the ballet in Paris, he said he might be there. I knew he'd do that.' She shivered. 'Stupid. I don't think I'll go now.'

The lamps flickered and dimmed. There was a groan from the corner.

Innocet turned. 'Chris? Is that you?'

Another groan.

She touched her palm against the Doctor's head. 'His consciousness is closed. But what about his subconscious?'

They all turned to look at Chris.

'Bring him into the circle,' said Innocet quickly.

Chris put up no resistance as they lifted him across and laid him beside the Doctor.

They linked hands again. As Innocet concentrated, Doroth\xE9e felt a dizzying energy pulsing round them. She couldn't have pulled her hands away if she'd tried.

A pale glow like a candle flame appeared hovering over the centre of the circle. There were shadows moving in the flame. It expanded slowly, absorbed them all into the heart of its aura. Around them, the shadows coalesced into solid thoughts or memories.

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Back. Back...

'Doctor?' 'Doctor?' 'Doctor?' called by so many different voices.

He is lying in the TARDIS, outraged that he could do such a thing to himself.

He is lying in the TARDIS. Nausea overcomes him. The Queen bat was ancient and almost dry...

He is lying under a tower of steel. It feels as if his neck is broken, but such moments are prepared for.

He is lying on a laboratory floor. The TARDIS brought him home. Home? Do you call this home?

He is spinning in the darkness. But it's not a death sentence, oh no. The Time Lords are just confiscating one of his lives.

He is lying in the TARDIS. All that work has left him a bit worn out. Never mind, we'll see where this leads, hmm? Come along, come along.

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'Seven lives,' whispered Innocet. 'This is his seventh life.'

They hovered like ghosts, their hands linked in a circle.

The sun was setting, slashing the sky with blood. A towering wall of ancient stones was caught in the gory light. Seen from above, the fortification stretched as far as you could imagine. Birds wheeled in the air below them.

'Wait for me,' called Chris, and grabbed Doroth\xE9e's hand, breaking into the circle.

'Are you OK?' she shouted through the rushing air.

'Suppose. There just wasn't enough room for both of us in my head.'

They flew downward. The wall was so massively fixed in space and time that the world was sliding out from under it.

'It's him,' shouted Leela.

A tiny figure was standing before a great doorway, dwarfed by the blackened gates.

As they came closer, they saw that the Doctor was wearing only his hat and a vest, which he kept tugging down for decency's sake.

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He was pushing at the gates, but they would not give. An old vulture with an eyepatch flapped lazily down and landed beside him. There were jewels among her ragged feathers.

'Is that you, Sybil?' he said.

'The Gate of the Future is shut,' she croaked.

'Permanently? Or is it just early-closing day?'

She stood on one leg, scratching her head with her other jewelled claw. 'I used to be able to see the Future,' she said. 'But it was denied to me. Now I only see the Past.

Doroth\xE9e had seen her sort before. The type who comes up to you at a bus stop and tells you their entire life story.

'Once I ruled a whole empire,' said the old harpy. 'I foresaw and controlled events and was unassailable. Now all I see is the aftermath and feed on its carrion.'

'No more than you deserve,' said the Doctor.

She craned her scraggy neck towards him. 'I know you. Daily I feed on the death you cause. Once you denied me entry through the Gate.You tried to escape your past, but now you cannot reach the future either. One day I shall feed on you too.'

'Is that another of your predictions, most sagacious Pythia? As I recall, they were never very reliable.'

The vulture spread her feather-bare wings. 'I was the world!' she shrieked.

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'Oh, go away,' he said. 'Go back to the charnel house. I'm not stale enough to be on your menu yet.' He turned his back on the blood-red sun and pushed at the gates again, slowly forcing them open on the future.

Behind him it was always setting. Beyond the gates, the sun was white and rising through peach-coloured mist.

The watchers drifted through after the Doctor. There was a scent of roses in the air. A homely woman dressed in brown was waiting, carrying a long robe.

'It's the rose woman,' said Innocet. 'I saw her in the orchard, the day that he was Loomed.'

'You Eternals get everywhere,' said the Doctor.

'Indeed,' the woman said, fastening the many-coloured robe around his neck. 'Most of us regard being worshipped as a responsibility. We try to live up to expectations. But there are some Gods I could mention who are not nearly so considerate.'

She stood back from him. 'There. What do you think? The robe is woven from all your deeds and experiences. The patterns drove three of the web-weavers insane.'

'I don't have a mirror,' he said, fidgeting inside the garment.

She smiled. 'Not as clever as you think, are you? If you were really everywhere at once, you'd see for yourself.'

'I'll rely on your better judgement,' he said.

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'It could be magnificent,' she said with a shrug. 'Or it could be ghastly.'

'That's life.'

'Exactly. Now off you go. The future awaits.'

He walked to the edge of the pavement. The world was sliding in to meet him. Sliding under the wall into the past.

As he stepped off, the rose pink mist began to clear, laying out the future for him. He moved forward eagerly.

But something pulled him back. The heavy robe was snagged. He tugged at it. Patterns and memories moved on its surface. Blood seeped from its weave.

The garment was caught under the pavement. The future's inexorable passage into the past was dragging him along with it.

He struggled in vain to tear free. He pulled at the fastenings, but could not undo them. The robe was choking him.

From the gate came the mocking laughter of the old vulture.

The Doctor toppled to the ground. He gave a strangled cry of despair and was dragged head first under the wall into the inescapable past.

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The watching ghosts clung together in the sudden darkness. The past was an empty void. Then a wind blew up and they were travelling, drawn down after the Doctor. They could see the wind. It tore against them in silver streamers.

Innocet faced into it. 'Air,' she choked through her tears. 'Clean air. I'd forgotten how to breathe!'

Ahead, they could see the figure of the Doctor rising and dipping on his course into the dark.

A fiery glow appeared in the distance. It grew steadily until half a city was lit beneath them in the hellish glare.

A huge edifice was burning like a torch against the night. A great hall or temple. Stone was cracking in the heat and the air was filled with a grey blizzard of ash.

Adjacent buildings had caught alight and a swarm of air cars were tackling the blazes with vacuum hoses. They ignored the main conflagration. Around it ran a ring of guards, not deployed to keep the crowds away, but to cordon in the people fleeing the building. Fights were breaking out. There was the fizz of gunfire. No one was escaping.

A constant whispered commentary underpinned the air. A distant muttering of thousands of voices. But Doroth\xE9e could not work out if it was inside or outside her head.

The Doctor swooped away over other districts of the city and, drawn by him, the watchers followed.

On a square, high among the domes, stood a monument in the form of an Ω.

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'It's the Omega Memorial at the Capitol,' said Leela.

'It's true,' said Innocet. 'But this is the old city over which the Citadel of the Time Lords was built. He must have fled here when he stole the TARDIS, back thousands of years into the past where he knew he couldn't be followed. Almost to the Old Time itself.'

The Doctor was hovering close to the tall monument. On its crest sat a solitary figure wrapped in a dark cloak. His thin legs dangled over the side as he contemplated a black box floating in the air just below him.

'I know what that is,' said Doroth\xE9e. 'That's the Hand of Omega.'

'So who is he?' said Romana.

'He's not the Doctor,' said Innocet emphatically.

They caught angry thoughts from the figure, but whether these were relayed through the Doctor or directly from the man himself, they could not tell.

'I warned him. I warned Rassilon that if force was used against the dissenters, if their sanctuary in the Pythia's temple was violated, then I would leave his accursed planet to its own devices!'

He pulled off his shoe and threw it, but the missile shot straight through the box as if it did not exist.

'But if I go, there will be no way back. Rassilon will be left with absolute control. No checks, no balances. Gods, how I long to be free. Free of schemes, ambitions, and free of my dark, brooding self.'

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For a second, Doroth\xE9e thought he was going to throw himself down from the monument. He nearly stepped out, but instead he pulled back and slid down the curve of the edifice. He dropped the last twenty feet and landed like a cat.

Figures moved out of the shadows around him. A knife flashed, but the box was suddenly among them, flinging bolts of energy at the helpless assassins.

'So Rassilon seals his own fate.' The figure's thoughts were weary and saddened. 'But there will be much to prepare for my departure and one impossible farewell to make.'

He laid a silky grey rose at the foot of the monument. Then, throwing away his other shoe, he loped off into the city.

The Doctor followed.

'Are these really his memories?' complained Doroth\xE9e. 'What's this got to do with the Doctor?'

Romana and Innocet exchanged glances, but said nothing. They were moving deep into the slums of the lower city, down ill-lit streets and alleys peopled with ragged shadows.

A group of guards were standing at one corner, drinking. The figure paused for a moment against a doorway. He wrapped his cloak tightly round himself and the gloom swallowed him.

The Doctor moved on without pausing.

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'Where did he go?' said Chris as they hovered past the empty doorway.

Doroth\xE9e turned to Innocet. 'If these are the Doctor's memories, surely we'd only see things through his eyes?'

Innocet nodded. 'But these are more than memories.'

The guards burst into drunken laughter.

The Doctor was already passing above them.

'There he is,' said Leela. The cloaked figure had slipped out of the shadows ahead of the Doctor, and was hurrying away.

The first shades of grey were leaking into the night sky when he finally reached a shuttered house, wedged between a seedy tavern and the dingy shop of a memory broker. He let himself in and padded up the wooden stairs.

The old alien woman, sewing in the little room stacked with books, hardly acknowledged him when he entered. Her Punchinello face huddled near her chin, overshadowed by her wispy domed head.

'Where's my granddaughter?' he said.

She put away her needle. 'Sleeping, Meyopapa. Half the night she spent on the roof watching the fire.'

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'I told you not to let her up there,' he growled. 'Not where she can be seen.'

The old woman scratched her teeth. 'No use arguing with that one.'

He fished a jingling purse out of his cloak. 'You have to leave, Mamlaurea. It's no longer safe here.'

'Go home?' she said. 'Back to Tersurus?'

He nodded grimly. 'And take Susan with you. Take the first Astrafoil you can get places on. Carry as little as possible. You mustn't look as if you're fleeing.'

The old woman was staring at him. 'Meyopapa, you not coming too?'

'Some time, perhaps.' He bent to look out of the little window. The window in through which Doroth\xE9e and the others were staring.

He looked directly through them. His black hair was swept back, but even in the early light, his face was deep in shadow.

The Doctor was inside the room, but Doroth\xE9e could not see his face at all. She only saw his head give a twitch of shock as a young girl walked into the room.

'Grandfather!' She hurled herself at the man, burying herself in his cloak. 'Oh, Grandfather, I thought you'd never come. It's been days. Where have you been? Did you see the fire? What happened to your shoes?'

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'Yes, I saw it, child. Deplorable.'

Her hair was cropped short and her eyes were huge and brown, set in an elfin face. She was laughing. 'Oh, I've missed you. I was reading Pelatov and then I suddenly knew you were here.'

He looked directly at her. 'And you've seen no one else?'

'No. I don't go out. I know it's dangerous out there.'

'And how do you know that?'

'Well, you told me.'

'Hmm?'

She was only half daring to meet his eye. 'And there are strangers in the street below. I've seen them from the window.'

He glared at the old woman. She shrugged and bustled out. 'I cannot turn my eyes every way all at once.'

'I'm sorry, Grandfather,' said the girl and hugged him again.

'No, no, Susan. It's I who should be sorry. This is no way to bring up a child, not locked away with a fussy old nanya and a crotchety grandfather who's never here.'

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'You have your work,' she said. 'It's a great secret. That's why you protect me.'

'What's that? What do you mean?'

She lowered her eyes. 'I never saw my mother. But I know that she died when I was born, at the very same moment as the Pythia cursed the world.'

'What's that old woman been telling you?'

'Not Mamlaurea. My mother told me. I still hear her thoughts in my mind. And father too. Ever since he died in battle.'

'On one of Rassilon's filthy bow-ships.'

Susan was smiling gently. 'Mother told me that I'm the last of the real children of Gallifrey.'

'Dear child,' he said. 'That's why you're so precious.'

'But you'll always be with me too, Grandfather. I'll always know you.'

Doroth\xE9e finally caught sight of the Doctor's face. He had turned away from the scene. There was a look of bewildered fear in his eyes.

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Time froze as he saw the ghosts at the window.

'Oh, no. Not now!' He tugged at his vest. 'Whatever happened to privacy?'

'We came to fetch you back,' said Innocet.

'What for?'

'For your sake, Doctor,' said Romana.

He peered at Innocet. 'Do I know you?'

'Yes, Snail. It's me. You brought me back too.'

'Innocet?' he said gently and looked deep into her eyes. 'I thought I'd lost you.' And then his tone changed. 'Oh, very convenient. Any excuse to conduct a nice little fact-finding mission on what the Family embarrassment has been up to.'

'Doctor!' said Leela. 'Never speak to anyone like that again!'

'Chance would be a fine thing,' added Romana.

Chris moved in. 'We don't even know who these people are.'

'Good. Neither do I. So go away!'

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Doroth\xE9e despaired. 'Doctor, don't you trust us?'

'Trust you? I can't even trust myself.'

'We cannot go,' said Innocet.

'What?'

'Your mind has taken refuge in Chris's body. If we lose you, we shall lose him too. Do you want that?'

He surveyed them all. 'Interfering uppity companions.'

'More trouble than we're worth,' said Doroth\xE9e.

'Absolutely.'

'No peeking,' said Romana. 'Word of a Prydonian President.'

He nodded sullenly and turned back to the scene.

'No, Grandfather! I won't leave you!' The girl was clinging desperately to him. Her eyes were red with tears.

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'You cannot stay here, Susan. It's too dangerous on Gallifrey. Mamlaurea's family will take good care of you.'

'But I won't go. I want to be with you and help you.'

'Susan!' His voice was suddenly dark with authority. She covered her mouth in shock. 'You have to go. I may well be going away too. Perhaps on a long journey.'

'Where?' she whispered.

'I don't know. But I will always be with you. You said that yourself. And one day I will return. And you will remember me.'

He held her very tightly as the old woman came into the room with two bags and cloaks.

Susan was quiet as she was prepared for departure.

He picked several books from the stacks around the room and slid them into her bag. Then he hugged her again.

'Please take care of yourself, Grandfather.'

'And you, dear child.'

'I'll be waiting.' She pulled away quickly and her nurse hurried her from the room.

The old man - at least he seemed suddenly very old -stood at the window for a while. Turning back to the room, he walked the shelves, running his hand slowly along the spines of his books.

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'Always the same,' he said.

At length, he walked down the stairs and out into the street.

'I thought there were no parents on Gallifrey,' said Doroth\xE9e.

The Doctor turned towards her. 'Some people might find that a positive advantage,' he said icily, and moved off into the air.

'There were parents once,' said Innocet. 'It depends how far you go back.'

Again, they were drawn along after the Doctor.

'I assume we're talking the Pythia's curse here,' Doroth\xE9e concluded.

The distant fire had dwindled, but a pall of smoke still drifted over the city, choking the grey morning. Many new buildings were under construction. There was an optimism which was lost to the later Capitol that they knew. The upper city spanned the lower on vast arches. These were crowned by further arches and bridges, all of them carrying buildings and gardens, domes and belfries.

As they flew towards the centre of the city, the sun broke through the smoke. It was a pale, stifled sun with no warmth as yet, but Innocet wept openly again at its emergence.

'Leela?' called Chris. 'Are you OK?'

Her arms were linked between him and Romana, but she was pale and her eyes were shadowy. 'It's the flying,' she said. 'It will pass.'

There was a tower ahead, rising clear above the honeycomb of arches. The Doctor was moving towards its summit, which was crowned with lush green planting.

A man wearing a dark red robe stood among the pearl-grey roses that grew there. The man was not tall and his moustache was thick and spreading. He was studying a chessboard, its pieces set in mid-game. But it appeared that, within each square on the board, there was yet another game with its own pieces. A game to be won before the square could be part of the greater game.

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The Doctor moved closer to see, plainly fascinated and unable to resist.

Deep within those inner squares, there were more squares, pulling the eye down. The Doctor was either shrinking, or the boards within boards were growing around him. The others felt themselves being dragged in.

'Where have you been?' demanded the man in red and the spell was broken.

Another man, the shadowy, cloaked man they had followed, faced him with a look of disdain. 'Avoiding your personal guards, Rassilon. Why were they trying to kill me?'

Doroth\xE9e felt Innocet's grip tighten on her hand at the mention of that name.

'I instructed them to find you. No more than that.'

'They were more demonstrative.'

The ruler of Gallifrey looked into the depths of the chessboard. 'I cannot afford to lose you.'

'Why? What do you need to confess now?'

'Nothing,' said Rassilon. 'You will know that I have taken the action I deemed necessary to allow my reforms to continue.'

The other walked away to the edge of the garden, where a balcony overlooked the city. 'I warned you. A purge is not a cure. If this blood letting continues, you will soon be drowning.'

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'But I have so little time!'

'Because you trust no one else to continue your work.'

'It is too precious. And now I cannot even trust my guards to bring me my friend.'

'A friend?' The other seemed amused. He clasped his hands to his chest like a priest.

'Yes,' insisted Rassilon. 'At least I can trust you to criticize me.'

'And those dissenters at the temple? Were they also your friends? Or was their martyrdom something else you left to the discretion of your guards?'

Rassilon followed him back through the roses.

'You mustn't go. Gallifrey needs your wise counsel.'

'A mistake,' said the other.

'No.' Rassilon was in earnest. 'We have time travel. Harmony. The Looms and the Houses. We have a future again. None of this was achievable without you. In the face of extinction, we have stability.'

'Too stable. Too much Harmony for ever and ever, slower and slower. Gallifrey without end. Gallifreya perpetua. Gallifrey ad nauseam. The children of the Looms of Rassilon will each have thirteen lives. While we, dear friend, the doomed relics of another age, have but one brief life a piece.' He sighed. 'Time to find something better to do.'

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'You cannot go,' said Rassilon.

The dark figure shook his head. 'I bequeath you my roses, Rassilon. They are plagued by scissor bugs. You may have to purge them too.'

As he walked away, there was a flash in the air. A web of electric blue flickered round and over the garden.

'You cannot leave,' Rassilon said.

The Doctor shot his companions a warning glance, before moving in beside the dark figure.

'Energy nets?' said the man. 'Are you so afraid of losing me? What do you really fear, Rassilon?'

Rassilon studied him coldly. 'After all this time, I still hardly know you.'

This seemed to please his prisoner. 'They do say, my Lord President, you have truck with unnatural powers.'

'And do I?'

'Don't you know?' He set off back to the balcony. Rassilon followed. 'That depends upon what our narrow perception defines as unnatural. I call them other powers.'

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'They are much overrated,' said the other.

Doroth\xE9e, watching with the companions, saw something move among the rose arbours. The shadow of a figure that she could not identify.

The other was studying the flickering barrier. 'And this from someone who professes to despise superstition.'

'I banished superstition,' insisted Rassilon. 'I shut the gate on the Time of Chaos.'

'And I can name you at least four provincial outer-worlds that have raised temples in Rassilon's name.'

'Against my express edict.'

The other loomed over him. 'Then have the statues torn down. Or strike them with a thunderbolt.'

'Now that's a power you never offered me,' said Rassilon with a wry smile.

Anger brewed in his prisoner's eyes. 'I won't be tied by a blood-bargain or a pact. I was merely sent on approval.'

'On my approval, or yours?'

The other gave a cold smile. 'Rassilon, the People's God. How very quaint.'

'A state of affairs for which you naturally take no responsibility.'

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'I advise. You don't have to listen.'

'But you're too valuable to dismiss!'

'I will not be chained!' With a snarl, the other smashed his fist against the energy nets.

Purple sparks showered among the roses.

Rassilon backed away from the figure. 'Who are you?' 'What do you want with us?'

The darkness of the figure grew in the smoky sunlight. 'I'm bored. Bored with wielding great power. Who wants to be a player, when he could be a pawn in the thick of the game?'

'You? Give up power and manipulation?' laughed Rassilon.

The other snapped his fingers. There was an explosion in the cold air. The energy web disintegrated. And the Hand of Omega was at his side.

Rassilon eyed the box. Steam drifted off its surface. It crackled to itself.

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'You'll never give it up,' he said. 'What about your Family? The ones you think you keep hidden? Will you take them too?'

'Rule wisely, Rassilon,' said the other. 'And be wary of your disciples, lest they worship the icons and not the man.'

He walked down from the tower unhindered, the box following.

'Guards!' shouted Rassilon. 'Seal the ports and time wharfs. No one must leave!'

The Doctor was moving away after the other.

'Wait,' called Doroth\xE9e, but they were already drawn in his wake. 'I saw someone. Someone else was watching.'

'Where?' said Chris.

As they rose away from the tower, another insubstantial shape moved out after them.

'Who is he?' asked Romana.

'The Cousin from Hell,' said Doroth\xE9e.

'Our Cousin Glospin.' Innocet had a chill in her voice. 'I should have known he'd come after us.'

Leela, her colour much restored, tried to pull away from the group. 'I shall deal with that craven-hearted snake.'

'Don't break the line,' warned Innocet. 'If you stop to challenge him, we might lose you and the Doctor altogether.'

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The Other stood on the steps before a new municipal building, gazing down across the city. The box was at his side.

Passing citizens ignored him. 'Go,' he said to the box, but it had gone already.

There was a flash in the sky followed by the echoing boom of an explosion. A ball of flame billowed up over the miniature gantries of the distant spacedrome.

He walked against the stream of people running from the building. The Doctor moved after him, followed by his own unwelcome entourage.

Gates and sealed doors opened as if they recognized the Other. He ignored the DANGER signs and marched unchallenged, straight through to the heart of the complex. An immense vault opened above and below, its oval shell veined with whispering instrumentation.

'Warning,' declared a synthetic voice. 'Protective attire must be worn in the progenitive chamber.'

The Doctor moved with the other, out along a walkway that spanned the chamber. Out through that calm air of expectancy peculiar and seminal to sacred places.

The watchers lingered at the entrance.

'What is this?' said Leela. 'I thought he was leaving Gallifrey.'

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The Doctor and the Other had halted just before the centre of the bridge.

Romana glanced at Innocet. 'You know, don't you?'

The Doctor's Cousin lowered her eyes. 'I think we should leave,' she said.

'Why?' said Doroth\xE9e. 'Surely the Doctor needs us.'

Chris shook his head. 'Not now. Innocet was right. I don't think we're meant to see.'

A drone of rising power began to surge through the chamber. Klaxons began to bellow.

Doroth\xE9e looked back as they pulled her away. The Doctor, tiny beside the massive cloaked shape of the other figure, had turned to watch them. For a moment, his eyes met hers across a widening gulf of time and lost hope.

His head suddenly moved up to stare at something.

'It's Glospin,' shouted Doroth\xE9e.

The dark ghost was watching from one of the upper walkways.

As the group turned in confusion, the energy surge peaked. A torrent of light fell in dazzling, twisting plumes from the upper pole of the chamber. It struck through an eye at the bridge's centre.

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The other stepped into the light. The raw energy, a fierce, primal, living stuff, painful to look at, consumed the man's shape utterly.

There was the sound of a great, whispered sigh.

The Doctor stood alone, staring into the depths of the light.

Glospin turned and vanished.

'Sorry,' said Doroth\xE9e.

They drifted away in defeated silence.

Moving through the deserted building, Innocet said, 'The legends were wrong. The Other never left Gallifrey. He died in the energy of the open progenitive cascades, just as the Pythia threw herself into the Crevasse of Memories.'

'Irrefutable proof, Cousin,' sneered another figure, cutting across their path. 'Or is your brain still soft from post regenerative trauma?'

'Go away, Glospin,' answered Innocet. 'These memories are private.'

'But he's right,' said Romana. 'That chamber was the original Loom. The Prime Distributor that fed the subsidiary Looms in the Houses.'

Glospin nodded to her. 'Good, whoever you are. The Other went into the system. The monster threw himself into the random genetic helices to re-emerge who knows where!'

'It proves nothing,' said Innocet.

'Not to us. But something else understood. Don't forget the Hand of Omega.'

He glanced around the group.

'It left Gallifrey,' said Romana. 'Legends say that the Other stole it. Or that it pursued him across the stars and was never seen again.'

Doroth\xE9e thought of things she would not say. She saw Glospin watching her as he fingered his scarred arm.

'There.' Leela pointed up as the Doctor's shape sailed into the sky.

She snatched at Glospin's heels as he moved off in pursuit.