"We cannot let Urko destroy him!" said Zeera joining him.
"I know. He seems to show more intelligence than most humans. Perhaps he may escape! Come Zeera. We must leave."
The two apes left the room. Soon the laboratory was dark.
The apes had said he should escape. That much was plain to him. But how to escape? He rested his hands on the bars of the door. It seemed to be locked. Then, he began to shake the door. To his surprise the entire door came away in his hands.
The stranger stopped, and considered what had happened. He remembered waking as he was freed from a block of ice by the temperatures rising in the atmosphere as he plunged earthwards. He had been clad in some sort of ceremonial robes.
As he stood, the door once more opened and Cornelius and Zeera stood in the room.
"Quickly! Come with us!" urged Zeera.
As they left the lab the stranger saw a hay cart waiting outside. Soon he was concealed beneath the hay, on his way out of the city.
Once they were a safe distance away from the city the human emerged from beneath the hay.
"Thank you," he said.
"You must go!" urged Cornelius. "Once Urko knows you are gone he will come looking for you."
Silently the stranger turned and disappeared into the woods, unaware that he was being watched by two other humans and an ape.
Even allowing for an excellent library and no shortage of other ways to entertain themselves, the young Time Lord and the old Istarian found themselves doing nothing more than arguing about philosophy and science. On one occasion Drathro turned the conversation to the Istari.
"Tell me, Doctor. The rise of most races is well documented. I have read in your own library the origins of humanity, Klingons, Centauri, but none on the Maia."
"Part of your education must be to know when not to reveal something. I am about to tell you something which is known only to a very few. You will be one of a very few beings who knows how old I am!"
He seated himself behind his mahogany desk. Drathro seated himself in a nearby armchair.
"How old do you believe the universe to be, my boy?" asked Magus.
Drathro shrugged.
"I don't know. My own race is millions of years old."
"Would you believe me if I told you it was 15 billion years old?"
"I suppose so. That's what it's been estimated at."
"I can tell you that is correct. I know. I was there."
Drathro's jaw dropped.
"You are joking!"
"No, my boy. I did not exist in this form. I have only been in this shape for 30,000 years. My race existed outside of space and time, ruled over by one great being. The creation as you know it from the human Bible is a very simplified version of what has happened. The universe was not created in seven days. The humans who wrote the story could never have conceived of the sheer timescale."
"You have met God! You know what Heaven is like!"
Magus shook his head.
"Of the beings who existed before space and time, some chose to stay with the Supreme Being outside of the universe. Others of us, the Velar and Maiar, the gods of Olympus and Asgard, chose to enter the universe, to help life where we could. The price we paid was that we could never return to Paradise until the universe ends. We know it exists, but we cannot go there!"
As daylight broke above the planet the stranger moved continuously through the woods. Then he came upon a campsite in a clearing. Two humans, and a chimp, sat around a campfire.
"We've been expecting you," said one of the humans. "I'm Burke. This is Galen and Virdon."
The man introduced as Virdon looked up.
"Do you have a name?"
The stranger sat down.
"That's just it. I don't remember."
Galen, the chimp, seemed nervous.
"I don't think we should stay here. He was in Cornelius' lab. Cornelius is one of Zaius' foremost scientists. I'm sure Urko will be looking for him."
Smothering their campfire they moved off once more. They had not gone far when Galen bade them stop. He gazed up at the top of a hill where a flashing light could be seen.
"Urko and his gorillas are following," he said. "They know where we are."
High above the planet two Imperial Star Destroyers jumped out of hyperspace. The commander of one signalled his counterpart upon the other.
"This is the planet?"
"Our spies within the Free Federation have confirmed it as being so. Information from Phineas Magus' own computers confirms it as being so."
"So much for his famed omniscience! He didn't even know we'd tapped into his computer!"
They began to scan the planet for life signs.
"Anything?"
"Sparsely populated, class M. A few isolated pockets of human/simian settlements."
"Anything that corresponds to our target?"
"One possible."
"Okay then. Obliterate it!"
"Charging all energy weapons!"
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