‘No. An accident. A meaningless travel accident.’ Masst trod forlornly around the chamber. ‘When it happened, I was on patrol, destroying a Wraith weapons cache on an outer world, two hundred light years away. I was denied leave to return for my family’s burial.’

‘Rough.’ Ryan felt some actual sympathy. ‘Aquillon’s orders?’

‘We are pledged to defile, to destroy, to desecrate all trace of Wraith civilisation.’

‘We? The Astingir army, you mean?’

Masst didn’t answer at once. Just as he did open his mouth, the image of Nan broke up in smoke, and the pipes in all three walls began to throb with energy. The bubbling sound seemed to bring Masst round from his introspection.

‘The interrogation will commence,’ he said. ‘Ryan Sinclair, you claim you were abducted from your whole world. By the Doctor?’

‘No!’ Images of the Doctor fixing the signal device to his body formed from thick vapour. ‘Anywhere she goes, I go willingly.’ He paused. ‘I … went, willingly.’

‘Then what form did your abduction take?’

The image blurred and now showed the Ratts pressing in around him and Chantelle. He felt a deep pang of disquiet for where she might be now, and a rush of purple washed through the image.

Masst studied the dials and meters in the pipework. ‘You wish … that you were with that person.’

‘I wish we were all safe. That the Doctor was all right, and those Ratt things were gone.’ He looked at Masst again. ‘What are they, then? Got form have they, working for the Wraiths?’

‘We are not familiar with such an alliance,’ Masst admitted.

‘But you reckon the Doctor’s teamed up with them? You need to get your facts straight.’ Ryan looked at Masst. ‘She wouldn’t have been trying to help the Wraiths, she’d have been trying to stop them. What did she do that made her public enemy number one to you lot, anyway?’

‘She defiled a Site of Mass Contrition, a clear offence under Article 26 of the Pan-Conflict Termination—’

‘So she’s no good at following the rules!’

‘She attempted to breach the barriers that surround the Quantum Anvil, within which we have trapped the Wraiths. She encouraged the extermination of a Defence Herd while attempting to evade capture …’ Masst stopped talking, black eyes widening and he twisted one of the valves. With a roar of steam and a brighter glow from the brass lightshade, the holograph image plucked from Ryan’s mind froze. ‘With her.’

‘Huh? That’s Ace,’ said Ryan, baffled. ‘Dorothy’s all right. Old friend of the Doctor.’

‘Aquillon was right. Our mission has not yet run its course.’ Masst strode through the image and pushed his scowling face up close to Ryan’s. ‘You say you are innocent, that the Doctor was innocent. And yet this woman – the Doctor’s friend – was the one who acted for her, reached out to the Wraiths, killed our people.’