Wil shook his head. "I think it might be a good idea for one of us to go and find the Doctor."

 Jadi looked at the flashing console. It had been relatively quiet since he'd given up trying to lock Angela in her room, but then when he'd come in here the console had started making odd noises and flashing.

 "Does that light mean anything dangerous?"

 "Of course it does," sighed Wil. "It always does."

 Jadi stared at it again. "Do you know what it means?"

 Wil just shrugged. "It means that something dangerous is happening."

 Sighing, the large bounty hunter went to search for the Doctor.

 She turned, getting a look from a few different angles, then snarled at herself. This was pointless. She knew that Morok would never fall for this, so why was she wasting her time? Apart, of course, from the obvious reason that she had nothing else to do.

 She went through the wardrobe for what must have been the tenth time, this time with more of a mind to a practical outfit. Dark grey was always a good choice - drew less attention than black, but also blended in in the dark.

 At various stages, she discovered some pretty strange costumes --one that looked like something that would dress a giant children's doll, a leather suit that looked highly improbable, let alone impractical, and something that seemed to be a futuristic Adjudicator's uniform.

 The last she searched carefully. Adjudicators made boyscouts look lazy, so she was unsurprised but gratified when she found a small pistol hidden in one of the pockets these suits weren't supposed to have.

 Angela slipped it up her sleeve. She doubted she'd have a chance to use it, but...

 She saluted the mirror. "Be prepared."

 The Doctor was staring blankly at a sword that had, at some time, been driven into a large marble block in the centre of the room. Jadi coughed quietly a couple of times before tapping him on the shoulder.

 The book thudded to the floor as the Doctor sprang to his feet and rounded on the surprised bounty hunter, grabbing his shirt. They stood there for a second, Jadi hardly daring to breath as the other man stared into his eyes fiercely. He was hardly one to frighten easily, but Jadi saw something in the Doctor's eyes that he didn't like at all.

 Just as suddenly, the Doctor let Jadi go. "Oh, dear. I - I'm sorry, Mr. Morok, my mind was miles away." He ran his fingers through his hair and bent to pick up the book.

 Jadi straightened himself and smiled thinly. "No harm done, Doctor. You were obviously miles away." Light years, he thought. "What's the sword there for?"

 "It's Excalibur, or will have been going to be. I think. Something to be fixed up at a later date." He grinned at Jadi and they walked out of the room. "Until then, it stays where it is. Out of m- harm's way."

 Jadi pretended he hadn't heard the slip.

 "Just wandering," answered the Doctor quickly. "What's the problem?"

 Wil pointed over at the console. "We appear to have arrived."

 The bounty hunter frowned. "I didn't know we were going anywhere, Doctor."

 "We weren't." The Doctor tossed his book onto a chair, reached over to the console and pulled the lever that opened the sky and watched the universe form over their heads.

 Or not. A stream of matter and light streamed into the blackness above them. "Wow," said Wil. "That looks dangerous."

 Igon sighed. "I've done that, sir. Five times. I had it checked by Jac Puller and Foad Neysi, and they all came up with the same figures."

 Dullet waved his hands. "But that would mean that Arcis was failing! How in the God's name can a black hole fail? It's a logical absurdity, m'girl!" He picked up and leafed through the sheets, looking for any error to insert a plank of reason. "It's impossible," he finished lamely.

 Igon sighed. This was getting nowhere. "Listen, *sir*. Arcis is failing. The black hole will collapse within 2000 years, but long before that the Time Dams will fail and we will fall into the hole and DIE." With that, she stormed out of the room, leaving Dullet gaping like a stunned fish.

 "I don't believe a word of it," he tried to tell himself. He picked up her papers, thought for a second and started reading through them. Igon was young, and the young often made foolish mistakes. She was just - wrong, that was all.

 "That's good, isn't it?" asked Wil. "The size, that is. I mean..."

 The Doctor shook his head. "The smaller the black hole, the more powerful it is. I'd explain the mathematics of it if you had a spare year or two, except I never really got the hang of them. Right, let's try -"

 He turned a dial which moved the viewpoint closer to an odd sight - a huge space station, somehow remaining perfectly (well, relatively) still while the destructive chaos of the black hole raged around it.

 "Hmm." The Doctor looked closely at it before flicking a few switches. "I don't know about you two, but I'm certainly interested in getting a closer look at that thing."

 Jadi looked at him darkly. "I thought you were going to do something about me and Ferris." The Doctor had only reluctantly taken the bounty hunter and his 'captive' aboard the TARDIS, but it had been a tad necessary at the time. At least, it had from Jadi's point of view.

 "I'm still thinking." The Doctor stared up at the station. "Meanwhile, I don't believe you'll need to worry about her escaping from that space station. And from what you've told me, I don't think she'd be too interested in hiding out on the station."

 Decisively, he pressed a series of switches which set the central column moving. "I need to find out more about that station. That has no business being there."

 "As the actress said to the archimandrite," Said Wil automatically. The other two glared at him. "What, what?"

 Wil stepped out first, whistling lightly as he absentmindedly threw a few balls into the air and caught them. Angela and Jadi followed, she having been "summoned" to the console room. The Doctor locked the TARDIS door behind him.

 "So what now, do we just pretend to be innocent travellers or start bringing about revolution straight away?" Wil asked.

 "Let's just look around for a little bit first, eh? Maybe revolution isn't on the cards this time." The Doctor looked around the courtyard. "Jadi, please take the restraints off Angela."

 Jadi smiled pleasantly at his captive. "Promise to play nice?" Angela just raised her eyebrow at him before nodding. He shrugged and unlocked the band that linked their wrists together.

 "Let's try and stay together for a change," said the Doctor. "That way when - er, if - we get caught, we'll all end up in the same cell."

 Jadi nodded absentmindedly, still rubbing his hand. Around the centre, people were doing the normal things people did in a shopping centre - looking in windows, picking up and comforting or smacking young children, carrying huge loads of goods and struggling to keep up with someone else, staggering around blind drunk and claiming that the world was about to end...

 He frowned. Something about that last statement hadn't really made sense, but then the whole world was mad anyway. So that must have been all right.

 Dullet stumbled over to the people who'd just appeared out of thin air. He usually had to be drunker than this to halucinate, so he assumed that these must be real people.

 "Hey, you jusst appeared outa nowhere. Neat trick. Know anyway I can get disappeared real quick? The world's about to end." He waved some sheets of paper at them, then wondered why the ground looked so big.

 The Doctor bent over the fallen man, turning him on his side for safety's sake, then looked at the papers.

 "What's it say, Doctor?" Wil tried looking over the Doctor's shoulder, but all he saw was mathematics. "Well, what does it add up to?"

 The Doctor tried not to sigh too loudly and kept reading. "Oh dear." He read a bit further, then skipped on to the last page. "Oh dear oh dear oh dear."

 "Doctor, what does it say?" Jadi asked, getting more than a little annoyed.

 The Doctor looked around. "It says that this station is going to be sucked into that black hole within about a day."

 "Then let's get out of here, okay?"

 The Doctor shook his head. "It also means that unless we get all these people of this station within 30 hours, they're all going to die." He looked around. "I think we're going to get a bit crowded."

 To be continued...