Sarah woke retching, not even remembering that she had lost consciousness. In a way she was glad to retch, as it suggested that the past few days were no more than a fevered dream. She had probably picked up some kind of food poisoning from a roadside stall in Bangkok, and generated the week's events as an allegory for what her weakened body was going through. Then she opened her eyes.

She was lying on a ship's deck. A few dozen yards away, a submarine had surfaced, and two saucers like the one she had seen at the container terminal were hovering above it. Worst of all, she was looking into the eyes of something totally alien.

It superficially resembled the things she'd seen in Close Encounters and The X Files, only it was more horrifying. On the screen you knew the faces were masks over humans. Here, the underlying bone structure was utterly different. The black eyes seemed to be little bottle universes rather than orbs for seeing -complete voids which were uncomfortable to look at.

'Do not be afraid,' it said. 'You have not been permanently damaged.' She sat up and saw there were a few more of them around. They all wore some kind of uniform coverall and carried crystalline weapons.

'What ?' She could hardly get the words out, and pulled herself together. ?' She could hardly get the words out, and pulled herself together.

'What have you done?'

'It was necessary to render this vessel inoperative before UNIT'S Cortez Project members could harm themselves or others. The Time Lord will explain to you.'

"The Doctor?'

'Yes.' The alien indicated the submarine. 'I will take you to him.'

Tom kicked at the bulkhead door but it was steel and only hurt his foot. He, George, Tse Hung and the others had woken in captivity. He didn't know where Tsang and the rest of the UNIT team were. There was no sound of engines and he suspected they were at anchor, or adrift.

The aliens who had taken over the ship had dragged Sarah off. Tom didn't know why, but didn't imagine it was to do anything good. Torture and interrogation, probably. Maybe brainwashing, like what happened to Barry and the others. It was a damned shame as far as he was concerned.

His spirits weren't dampened, though. He had a damsel in distress to rescue, bad guys to dispose of and the world to save. Life just didn't get more fun than that, or so he proclaimed to anyone who'd listen to his stories.

Regardless of whether the situation was an action hero's dream or a working man's nightmare, Tom had no real idea how to do any of those things.

'If anyone has any ideas, now's the time.'

Tse Hung sat on a bunk. 'Undying love and unending hate& We should be powerful indeed.'

'What?'

'Do you drink, Mr Ryder?'

Tom wondered what that had to do with anything. 'Yeah, so?'

'I think I should like a drink.'

'Help yourself.' Someone had relieved Tom of his pistol while he was out cold, but he still had his hip flask and passed it to Tse Hung. 'Southern 'Southern Comfort Comfort -the rare stuff; 87 per cent for export only' -the rare stuff; 87 per cent for export only'

Tse Hung took a slug. 'Thank you.' Then he hopped from the bed and tipped the booze out next to the door.

'What the hell?' Tom snatched the flask back and threw a punch at Tse Hung. It would have floored a boxer under Marquis of Queensberry rules, but Tse Hung blocked it and sent Tom spinning into a corner with a twist of his arm.

'Our captors have left us only one way out - the door - but that also means they have only one way in.'

Tom picked himself up, angry, but getting his priorities right. 'I see what you're getting at.' It was a hell of a waste of good booze, but the sacrifice was in a good cause. Then he and the others started yelling. They brought the house down with screams and the sound of crashing furniture and, sure enough, the door opened. '

One of the little grey aliens raised his weapon but Tse Hung's match got there first. The booze ignited and the alien writhed in squealing pain. Tom snatched its weapon. He didn't know what it was, but it had a crystalline barrel, a curved handgrip and a trigger button. That was good enough for him.

A red haze - she had been through enough transmats to recognise the similarity - swept Sarah from the deck of the Westmoreland to that of the Zhukov. A hatch was open in front of her, leading down from the sail into the conn.

She stood at the hatch for a few moments. Partly, she wanted to catch her breath, but she also wanted to be sure about what she was doing. The golden rule of any story investigation was never to search unless you were sure you wanted to know the answer. In truth, if the Doctor was a criminal who had used her, she wouldn't like to know it for sure. The chance that he was still her friend was both a source of reassurance and a monkey on her back, driving her to possible pain.

She climbed down to where he was. He was wearing a sleeveless question-mark pullover, and the expression of a child caught in some less-than-serious naughtiness: outwardly slightly nervous, but with evident cheerfulness and delight underneath.

He reminded her of Granville from Open All Hours, but he was the Doctor all right.

She slapped him, in the face and he didn't flinch.

'Does that make you feel better?'

'No.' Unfortunately it didn't. She hadn't really expected it to, but one never knew until one tried.

'Good. Violence shouldn't make people feel better.' He smiled disarmingly.

'You're just in time for tea.' She saw that he had laid out a small tray on the chart table. 'Dim sum; he said. 'A most agreeable way of having lunch.

like life: enjoy what's good for you and share the rest with friends.'

'Have you still got any?' He hesitated as he served up the steaming dishes.

'I'm sorry,' she said. "That was maybe a little uncalled for.'

'Maybe.'

The truth was, Sarah had sought him out with the intention of saying& something. Only now that she had found him she couldn't think of a thing to say that wasn't aggressive, defensive, self-pitying or vengeful. 'It was you behind that newspaper article, wasn't it? Or some lackey in the company's PR department. Yue Hwa, I suppose.'

'I cannot tell a lie,' the Doctor said. "Well, I can, but what would be the point today? Yes, I arranged that.'

Sarah slumped, the scent of strong sweet tea and hot bread no longer attractive to her. Don't look if you don't want to find. She should have listened to herself. 'How could you? After all the time we've known each other, all the travelling and all the times we've worked on the same team?'

'I had to,' the Doctor insisted, his face contorted with what he probably hoped looked sufficiently like guilt. 'It was the only way to make sure you couldn't couldn't spill the beans.' He sighed. 'We had to stop you from talking, at least from talking effectively. The others intended to kill you so, to save your life, I had to make it impossible for you to successfully spread the information you had discovered. That was the only way I could think of doing that.' spill the beans.' He sighed. 'We had to stop you from talking, at least from talking effectively. The others intended to kill you so, to save your life, I had to make it impossible for you to successfully spread the information you had discovered. That was the only way I could think of doing that.'

Sarah stared blankly at him. It was a feeble and obvious excuse. It also had the ring of truth, but that didn't make it any easier to stomach. She shook her head. 'You're not the Doctor I knew.'

'Perhaps you never knew the Doctor,' he snapped back. 'How can a member of one species really know how a member of another species'

mind works, or how they think or feel? You've no frame of reference: you can only make assumptions and have beliefs. And without a common frame of reference, those are most likely to be utterly wrong.' He sighed.

'But not always.'

He sat opposite her, looking at her over the meal. 'I needed your help, but I couldn't let you know this because it would put you in danger. I hoped that if I put the Pimms Company on your itinerary, you'd work out for yourself that something was wrong.'

'I did. And when I did, you know what happened. Am I supposed to believe that it was for my own good?'

'Yes. I had a plan, but it's all starting to fall apart.' The Doctor grimaced as if in physical pain. 'There are just too many variables, even for me. I had to keep control of everything somehow, and that meant trying to achieve mutually exclusive goals: secrecy and exposition, help and distancing distancing'

Sarah began to cease hearing the words. Justification of something that couldn't really be justified - at least on a personal level -always felt the same, whatever the words used. The Doctor seemed to have turned to the dark side and become like the Master. He was obsessed with control and his own divine judgement about what was right and what should be allowed.

'I need your help.'

That shook Sarah out of her fugue.

'What?'

"That's why I arranged for you to visit me in the first place. But the time wasn't right, and too many things had to be sorted out first. I had three different groups to manage, all with mutually exclusive goals and intentions, and then UNIT and the local police interfering. Typical humans. But if any of those groups crossed each other, or if UNIT or the police unbalanced them, the result would be disastrous.'

In a way the threat of disaster was a relief. If things were as bad as usual, then maybe the Doctor could still be the Doctor. It wouldn't be the first time he had pretended to be cruel or heartless in order to motivate her,-or protect her.

It would be the first time she had known him to actually be cruel and heartless to motivate someone or protect them. Yet it made sense. Her business was rife with people who believed their own press and changed for the worse as a result.

'It was disastrous,' she pointed out. 'Unless you wanted a battle at your building. And it was because you drove me to UNIT and the others.'

'Yes.'

People went from playing devil's advocate to being devils themselves because they lost perspective. Why not the Doctor? He had always had the best of intentions, and Sarah knew what the road to hell was paved with. Or had he?

Every time she blinked, her life wasn't just turned upside down, it was outright cartwheeling. 'And you couldn't just have asked? You couldn't just have explained this and asked me to keep shram?'

'I wanted to. Believe me, I wanted to. But it's not just up to me. While I wanted to ask for your help, my erstwhile associates here wanted to kill you so that you couldn't expose their existence. I tried to find the best way to keep you alive.'

His answer was why she had come to see him in the first place, yet now she just wanted to let him burn. 'Why should I help the man who's just tried to kill my career?'

He winced, and she knew she'd stuck a nerve. At least he still had a conscience about these things, or pretended to have one.

'Because forgiveness is a virtue?' he asked. 'Or, if you want to look at it another way, you'd be helping millions of people across the globe. People of all kinds, all creeds Innocent people in danger.' Innocent people in danger.'

Same as always. 'Danger? What kind of danger? No, don't tell me: it's these aliens who've been abducting people.'

'Well, not these aliens, but the reinforcements whom are on their way in a flight of battleships, each one capable of devastating the Earth.'

'Are they intending to disrupt the handover to China? Or even invade China? That's what UNIT think.'

'And what do the Cortez Project think?'

'How did you know about them?'

'From the minds of the members of the UNIT team whom my associates captured.'

'I don't think the Cortez Project care what these aliens are up to. Just being alien and on Earth is enough to mark them for death as far as Tsang's concerned. She's crazy'

'If only that were true,' the Doctor opined. 'Unfortunately it's far too normal a human response.'

'Should I be insulted by that?'

'I've never made the mistake of tarring a whole species with the brush of a few individuals' actions. Or do you think you deserve tarring with the Cortez Project's brush?'

"They offered me a job.'

'I thought they might.'

'I think they've misjudged me.'

'I think so too. I also think that as soon as they realise that you'll be dead.'

"Then I should thank you and your& associates, for saving my life.'

They regarded each other for a few long moments.

'Pax?' the Doctor suggested.

'Detente, at least.'

'Good,' he grinned.

'I've missed you.'

'I know.' He looked at his shoes rather sadly. 'At least, I know you've missed a Doctor who's long dead.'

'I try not to think of any of you like that.'

'I wish I could see things that way. I envy you humans that, sometimes.'

'I guessed as much.'

The Doctor took a deep breath. 'Now, down to business. UNIT think only in military terms, of new and unusual threats to mankind, and that's exactly why I need to keep them out of it. Just trust me -believe me - when I say they've got things the wrong way round. They'll cause the threat, not end it.'

Sarah shook her head. 'Oh no, you don't. You're not palming me off with some vague promise of explaining in future. Now, the Triads never admit non-Chinese into their ranks, so either you've had an oriental-looking incarnation or your association isn't a real Triad. Which is it?'

'Why do you always insist on asking these complex questions when there's so little time to explai -'

Just answer the question!. It's only as complex as you want to make it, and if there's little time then make it simple.' The Doctor was taken aback, but he really ought to have known better.

'Originally it was a social help group. When our mutual acquaintances needed a cover organisation to hide from the military and scientists who wanted to exploit them, it seemed ideal.'

'What happened?'

'Humans happened,' the Doctor said, with not a little scorn. 'If I've learnt one thing in all my lives, it's that you can always rely on humans to take something good and beneficial and pervert it into something selfish for their own aggrandisement. Sometimes I wonder why I like them so much.'

Sarah ignored the insult, working it out in her head. 'In other words, it wasn't a criminal Triad, but some of the people who came to work in it turned it into one.'

'Yes,' he scowled. 'Leaving me to spend every waking moment trying to keep a lid on things and prevent their criminal intentions from harming anyone, or UNIT'S paranoia from starting trouble.'

"That can't be easy.'

"That's putting it mildly, Sarah. Your species has a capacity for hatred, back-stabbing and thoughtless selfishness that's among the greatest in the universe.'

Sarah was getting increasingly irritated with his attitude. 'Tar and brush, Doctor.' He looked suitably chastened. 'Well, that might explain your involvement with a Triad, but it still doesn't answer my question about how you came to run it.' Her eyes narrowed as another possibility struck her.