Table Of Content

DEDICATION For Mandy – always And for Lucy – my little star CONTENTS COVER TITLE PAGE DEDICATION PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION INTRODUCTION THE SHINING WORLD OF THE SEVEN SYSTEMS CHAPTER ONE THE DARK TIMES CHAPTER TWO GALACTIC TICKET INSPECTORS CHAPTER THREE A STATE OF DECAY CHAPTER FOUR NOVICES OF THE UNTEMPERED SCHISM CHAPTER FIVE GALLIFREY FALLS . . . CHAPTER SIX . . . NO MORE CHAPTER SEVEN GALLIFREY RISES ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS CREDITS COPYRIGHT ABOUT THE PUBLISHER PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION G ALLIFREY LIES in the constellation of Kasterborous, within a parsec or two of the centre of the galaxy, its binary location from Galactic Zero Centre being 10-0-11-00 : 02. The planet, its moons and its major settlements are shielded by a transduction barrier, and nothing can get past it. Well, that’s not true for a start. GALLIFREY LIES in the constellation of Kasterborous, within a parsec or two of the centre of the galaxy, its binary location from Galactic Zero Centre being 10-0-11-00 : 02. The planet, its moons and its major settlements are shielded by hundreds of Sky Trenches, and nothing can get past them. And that’s not true either. GALLIFREY LIES time-locked at the moment of its destruction on the final day of the Last Great Time War. It’s dead. It burned. It’s just rocks and dust. And neither is any of that. GALLIFREY LIES in the Sol system of Mutter’s Spiral at galactic coordinates 58-0-44-68-48-84, occupying a portion of space formerly reserved for a planet called Earth. Or perhaps that didn’t quite come off. GALLIFREY LIES frozen in a parallel pocket universe, having been saved from annihilation by the combined forces of thirteen Doctors. Or it did, at some point. Probably. GALLIFREY LIES in the constellation of Kasterborous, within a parsec or two of the centre of the galaxy, its binary location from galactic zero centre being 10- 0-11-00 : 02. It is hidden at the extreme end of the time continuum, for its own protection. We’re at the end of the universe, give or take a star system. Hmm . . . Maybe there is only one thing we can say with any degree of certainty: GALLIFREY LIES. THEY THAT WALK IN THE SHADOWS S ome would say that’s unfair, that it’s the Time Lords who lie. Don’t blame Gallifrey; blame Rassilon. Out there in the cosmos, a belief that history is written by the victors is widely understood to be the mark of a Level Five civilisation. We Time Lords, of course, transcended such simplistic concepts when the universe was less than one-fifth of its present size. History, we understand, is rewritten by its future. Or possibly – as I found once that I will have written in the Preface to the Seventh Edition – history is hogwash. The official hogwash is almost entirely fabricated, and only the myths and legends are true (partially, at least). No wonder the great and good of Gallifrey – the High Council, the Inner Council, the Cardinals of the Academy, the old men in the funny hats – are all so determined that you should never read this book. The pages are slightly time-sensitive: anything I recall writing probably isn’t here; what is here, I have already forgotten ever having been about to write it tomorrow. But if you’re holding it now, in your hands, absorbing the words, learning and unlearning the heresies, then you know that this, at least, is one truth. INTRODUCTION THE SHINING WORLD OF THE SEVEN SYSTEMS T here’s an awful lot of planet out there. The Time Lords out-sit eternity inside a couple of protective bubbles, quivering at the mention of outside, never really seeing what’s under our noses: Gallifrey is huge, and hugely beautiful. What do we see, when we peer out of our little glass domes? Barren Drylands, bleak and cold. Ancient, twisted trees. Weeds sprouting among the bare grey rocks. Pathetic little patches of sludgy snow covering those ranges of forbidding, inhospitable mountains. The Drylands