'Calling Station One.'

The radio hissed.  Bragg adjusted the dial.  'Calling Station One.'

Nothing.  Bragg switched the radio off and rubbed his eyes.  The AT storm had cut them off.  There was no way of knowing how close the defaulters were.  One mile away or ten.

A map took up the wall above the radio, depicting the wilderness as a looping fingerprint of contours.  To the north lay the sections occupied by the defaulters.  According to reports three days old.

Bragg lifted himself out of his chair and heaved himself over to his locker and the waiting gin bottle.  He collected a mug and poured.  Raised to his lips, he could smell the liquid's fire.  He drank and his body numbed with warmth.

Bragg studied his reflection in the locker mirror.  He didn't recognise the man who stared back.  He still half-expected to see the man he had once been.  But that young man had grown old and tired and scared.

He had never been handsome, of course.  Even when he was young the sight of his reflection had filled him with contempt.  He was repulsed by the feelings the sight created in him.  But in his uniform, he became anonymous.  Bragg remembered his fellow soldiers at the beginning of duty.  Young and ruddy-faced, with clean-pressed uniforms.  They had been the handsome ones.

That was all too long ago.  Since then, he had dedicated himself to trying to forget who he was.  He had become the Empire's machine.

A cough came from the doorway.  Bragg turned to see Shaw, his portable chronometer clutched in one hand.  Shaw entered.  'Still no comms?

'Nothing.'  Bragg poured himself another drink 'There's been no let up in the storm.'

'According to our instruments, it will get worse over the next two days, sir,' said Shaw.  'The whole sector will be AT'  He scrutinised the wall-clock.  'No one will be able to get in or out.'

'And with no comms, we can't even call for help.'  Bragg watched the liquid swill in his mug.  'We're on our own.  Just you and me, Shaw'


The Doctor peered through the window into the quarantine area.  'Anachrophobia?'

Lane retrieved a cigarette tin from her pocket.  Anachronism phobia.  The fear of temporal displacement.'

'Of being in the right place at the wrong time?' said the Doctor.  'I know the feeling.'

'I doubt it,' said Lane.  She tapped the end of a cigarette and lit it.  'Anachrophobia is a mental condition but with a systemic response.  It's a reaction against, well, against temporal travel.  The brain can't handle the transition.'

'A form of post-traumatic stress?'

'A bit more than stress.  Take a look at them.'  She nodded into the isolation area.  Inside the dark chamber, there were three figures.  Norton sat hunched in his shirtsleeves, Ash lay outstretched on the other bed.  The third figure, Hammond, was enclosed in a TR suit.  He moved cautiously, like a diver through water, his breath rasping through the radio link.  He unpacked a blood-pressure gauge and wound it on to Norton's arm before inflating it.

Norton shivered, sweat beading off his skin and into his shirt.  His mouth hung open, his lips a pale blue.  He breathed as though gripped by some fever.  As Hammond took his reading, Norton doubled up retching and coughing.

The Doctor watched. 'No, I agree.  Those men are suffering something much worse.'

'The brain can't readjust to the new temp zone.  End result, extreme neurological disturbance.'

'It reminds me of... decompression sickness?'