"You two really are having too much fun with this."

This dry statement was the voice of Terry ringing in Sarah's ears. He was probably listening in on their conversation whether he wanted to or not. After a short pause, however, he decided to say something useful. "Watch out now, you're entering the bit where the Sagitari had their accident.", the navigator warned them.

"Thanks very much, Terry.", Sarah replied, in a sarcastic sort of way and checked the map again. Another checkpoint had appeared in the list and not too far in front of them there was a crossing of two bridge roads. As the co-pilot looked up to examine the spot in the distance with her own eyes, she found the intersection to be made of a different material than the rest of the road. Some darker kind of stone, which as she assumed, had to be a reinforced material capable of taking the extra weight of two roads.

"Take a turn left here.", the co-pilot pointed out.

In order to make that turn, the Doctor slowed down a little just as they entered the part of the road that was made out of the greyish material. But from there on, things stopped going according to plan. The map screen in front of Sarah suddenly began to flicker and she knocked on the surrounding panels in a hope to get it working properly again. But her action just had the opposite effect; The screen turned dark for good. "What's going on?", she worried aloud. Within just another second, the lights of the brightly lit buttons, labels and switches all stopped working, too.

"An electromagnetic disturbance!", the Doctor gasped suddenly. He was still steering the vehicle around the bend, but they were slowly losing height. "The secondary engine is giving out!" In an attempt to still save something, he tried pressing a few buttons, but Sarah could not see what good that would do them now. Especially because they were still moving too fast and drifting off course. At this rate, they were going to end up just like the Sagitari.

"Slow us down, Doctor!", Sarah shouted.

"What else do you think I'm trying?" He pushed down the steering wheel and put more of the remaining power of the secondary drive to the air cushion in an attempt to use it for braking.

Their vehicle was still moving along the bend, continuing to drift ever more outwards, but finally slowing down now. As Sarah looked out of the windscreen, she fearfully watched the edge of the road approaching. She had seen how deep that drop was and what had happened to the other two pilots. There really was no need for a first hand experience, if it only could be avoided somehow.

A metallic clanging was heard when the vehicle's body touched the stone and began to slide across the road with the hellish noise of scraping metal. That was it; No more power from the secondary drive to maintain the air cushion or to manoeuvre. From here on, the rest of the rough ride, both speed and direction, was left to luck. "Come on..! Stop!", the Doctor pressed the words out of gritted teeth. He was still holding the steering wheel in a position he probably hoped would help, but by the commanding tone of his voice Sarah could guess that even he was not so sure what was going to happen next.

Slower… Slower… The terrible screeching noise of the metal faded. But the edge with the palm tree forest underneath was still getting closer. Sarah's eyes were wide with fear. She would not have looked but she could not turn her head away.

Finally, after all of this painful, helpless waiting, the vehicle came to a standstill. In front of Sarah was no road any more, just the forest way below. But they were not falling and that told her that the back of their hovercraft must be keeping them on the bridge road. Realizing that it was a balance act, she didn't dare to move. Except to gasp for a lungful of air she really needed right now. Out of the corner of her eyes, she noticed the Doctor slowing lifting his gloved hands from the steering wheel and heard him breathe out slowly, carefully.

"Good grief! Are you two all right?"

It was the voice of the navigator booming into Sarah's ear and she would have almost jumped.

"Y-Yes, we're fine… still.", stammered the co-pilot.

"I can't read any of your dials. Everything seems dead except for your primary boost and the crash shield", said Terry.

"What happened?"

The Doctor turned his head to exchange a few worried looks with Sarah. "Something in our secondary drive control reacted with the intersection material and caused an electromagnetic field.", he eventually explained and reached for a big button next to the steering wheel. His hand hovered over it for a while, but then he made a decision and pressed it. Whatever he had expected, it did not happen. A few of the dashboard lights lit up, but only faint and briefly. Nothing turned back on. "Maybe, if I could get out… I could reroute the drive control...", mused the Doctor.

"Oh no you don't!" Sarah almost interrupted him. What if his counterweight was all what kept them from falling off the ledge?

Surprisingly, she was backed up by Terry. "Stay right where you are! Out on the track, the vehicle's shield cannot protect you.", the navigator explained quickly. "And the Ibrimaxian ATRV is about to cross the intersection in a couple of seconds."

The young woman gasped. "The Master!"

If he found them sitting here, almost helpless, he would ruthlessly exploit the situation, no doubt about it.

"We have to get away from here!", she figured and turned back to the Doctor for help and advise, making the first suggestion that would hopefully get his brilliant mind to work something out. "Can't we just – I don't know – fly down? This thing can fly after all, can't it?"

"Well, yes, but not from standstill without the air cushion.", her friend argued. He dismissed the idea although he seemed to be at a loss for a better suggestion. Meanwhile, they were running out of time. In the distance – or maybe only so faint because of the almost sound proof passenger cabin – there was the sound of another hovercraft igniting its boost. The Doctor turned his head to peek sideways out of his part of the windscreen, where a portion of the intersection was still visible to him.

"What about other security features, then?", Sarah kept trying, reaching for every useful thought that entered her mind. Her eyes scanned the dashboard for any control that could help in their current situation, but everything was turned off! "What if we would have had that engine failure during flight?" Something should be there that would have kept them from crash landing! A cushion – air or otherwise, for example – anything!

She had just found a button with a symbol on it she thought she recognized as a parachute, when the Doctor suddenly yelled in her ear:

"Get down!"

He did not leave her the time to react or even to say something and immediately reached over to her to wrap one arm around his companion's shoulders and press his other onto her head. It could have been only a second or less before something bumped into their vehicle, not forcefully, but the repulsion of the shield was enough to push the two pilots and their vehicle off the ledge.

Their ATRV turned over, nose pointing down to the palm tree forest and the ground was getting closer now very, very fast. They fell.

Because of the Doctor's protective measures Sarah could not see much of what was going on, but felt the downwards pull of gravitation clearly. Her body was frozen stiff with the fearful expectation of the impending impact. But as they were falling, she suddenly felt lights shining into her face and there was the noise of the secondary drive being revved up again. Within the second, her mind just understood. Once they had left the intersection, the field blocking their drive was gone. And as she dared to tear open her eyes, she was looking straight at an orange button with the symbol of a parachute on it – the one she had found just a second before their fall. Now that the power was back, it was highlighted and blinking! It was probably the first, and maybe the only time she would ever do that, but Sarah freed an arm from the Doctor's attempt to save her from injuries and reached for the button.

She hit it! There was a noise and a fraction of a second later, a shock, as their fall was abruptly slowed down.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Doctor startled by the shock which he must have mistaken for the impact on the ground. "Are we there yet?", he jerked up his head with eyes wide, before realizing what really had happened. His hold on Sarah eased slowly and she pushed his arms out of the way to be able to look for herself.

The pull of gravity was still strong and they were also still looking down at the forest, but their descent had become much gentler now. More… manageable, as the Doctor, too, was about to discover. "Aha! Of course! The power is back!", he happily exclaimed and completely gave up on Sarah's protection to fiddle with the vehicle's controls again. It did not take long for him to balance the ATRV during its fall and change their direction of descent so that they headed for the crash site of the Sagitari hovercraft.

Sarah sighed in great relief when she heard the noise of the landing stilts extending and saw the palm trees rising slowly left and right of the passenger cabin. They had escaped the Master again. But for some reason, she was not so confident any more that they were still able to keep the villain from winning the race.

Just moments before their touchdown, the Doctor fired the air cushion back up and they settled down carefully on the sandy forest ground. The ATRV ended up sitting unevenly between the palm trees the Sagitari hovercraft had torn down during their crash.

"Phew! That was so close.", exclaimed Terry over radio communication. Judging by his voice, he seemed seriously concerned, if not a little angry, after having witnessed from every single one of his cameras what had happened. "I ought to get you out of there, that Ibrimaxian pilot went straight for you! I think he's insane!"

"That's just the reason why he needs to be stopped!" The Doctor replied harshly and so quick that he might have intended to cut Terry off mid-sentence.

"You mean, you want to continue? Then what about your damages, injuries?"

"None to report." Was the short reply that followed although the replacement pilot glanced over to Sarah once as if to double-check that he was right. "Don't you dare pull us out of the race just yet!", he then demanded of the navigator. The Doctor knocked a lever hastily over and while the door on his side of the passenger cabin opened, he removed his helmet. Running a hand twice through his hair, he casually re-established his mob of curls before stepping out.

Sarah watched him as he left, puzzled. There was the voice of their navigator still projected through her helmet into her ear, but not into the Doctor's, since he had so rudely abandoned the conversation. "Listen, you've just had a crash. Even if you get right back on track, do have any idea how much time that cost you?", Terry asked the Time Lord, but it seemed he could not see on his monitors that the pilot was out of reach. When there was no reply, Terry called out for them, impatiently. "Doctor? Hello, Sarah?"

The young woman could only guess, but by the way the Doctor just stood there and looked at the crash landed vehicle sitting in the distance, not a hundred yards away, he seemed to be getting lost in his thoughts again.

"Hold the line, Terry.", Sarah eventually replied back to the crew member, but then she, too, opened her door and took off the helmet so she would not have to talk to their navigator again. Naturally, she assumed her friend has had a good reason to cut off the communication. The companion jumped out of the resting hovercraft and landed with her feet between splintered wood and torn palm tree leaves, some of them scorched black.

Slowly, she walked up to the Time Lord. "Doctor..?", she carefully addressed him.

"I am getting tired of this!", he exclaimed and kicked away a mound of sand in front of him before abruptly turning on his heels, looking back at Sarah. "Aren't you getting tired of this? To be always under attack from the Master? Hm?", he promptly added. Even through the red tinted glasses, she saw him squinting his eyes and furrowing his eyebrows angrily.

"Of course I am, and quite so!", she self-confidently answered and nodded. The Doctor might have had several encounters with the Master already, but one was more than enough for Sarah to feel fed up about it!

"Yes…!" He stretched the word and continued to look about the place with a somewhat grumpy expression on his face. Seemingly he had already calmed down again, but Sarah noticed how his eyes rested on the Sagitari vehicle. Something about it must have given him an idea, or a thought at least. "You know, I think we should be doing some sabotaging ourselves for once.", he explained himself eventually and glanced over to his companion.

"You want to sabotage the Master? At this stage?", Sarah wondered aloud. Their adversary was far away now, moving across the racing terrain with an amazing speed. Was there anything they could do at all? Even before she had opened her mouth, the Doctor had already begun to walk further away from their ATRV and towards the Sagitari one. The damaged orange-yellow vehicle laid on one side after one of its landing stilts had broken off during the crash. With little other choice left to her, the young woman followed him over the fallen palm tree trunks.

"I don't know if we can really call it a sabotage, but – remember, Sarah – we're here to stop the Master, we don't necessarily have to win.", the Doctor explained and as they kept walking, Sarah saw how he casually pulled one end of the multi-coloured scarf out of the neck piece of his jump suit. Honestly, she had not thought him crazy enough to bring his favourite piece of neck wear with him. "Although I would have preferred to win. Then we could have kept the trophy to protect it ourselves. However, if we can just hinder the Master, he will be forced to steal it afterwards – which, at least, will give us more time to act." Once the Doctor had reached the orange-yellow ATRV he turned back around to face Sarah. "If only...", he said, paused and then began anew. "If only we could reveal his intentions to the racing committee, that would make things so much easier."

Sarah shook her head and sighed. "Don't expect him to confess in front of anyone else but his team mates or us, and he's only open to us because he knows no one really listens to you and me." She took her eyes off the tall man with the silly scarf to examine the crashed vehicle lying in front of them. It seemed intact for the most part, except for that broken off stilt and a series of deep scratches covering its body in the places where it had hit the trees. There was a faint, but highly unpleasant smell of burnt rubber in the air. Or at least that was what Sarah thought it smelled like. Of course, there were no tires on this hovercraft that could burn.

As the Doctor unlocked the cover of the engine, Sarah went to help him. It did not take a full minute for him to find and fish the thing out of the metal body's inside which had caused the crash in the first place. By the look of it, it seemed to be a small piece of metal with a cable wound around it.

"Is that our culprit?", the companion asked, because the Doctor had barely shown it to her before he tried to put it into his coat pocket. Of course, he did not have his coat with him, and so – evidence or not – he just threw the piece of technology away.

"You may bet the Brigadier's title it is.", came the reply and he immediately went on to put the engine cover back into its place. Sarah figured that he might have found the object so fast because, some hours earlier, he had taken apart an entire engine just like this one and knew the inner structure really well now. Crouching down to reach the underside of the vehicle, the Doctor tore off a small panel that was already bent and pulled out a set of wires.

Whatever he was doing, he was getting so concentrated again, that probably, he was not going to tell Sarah the point of it unless she asked. "So, what's the plan?", she tried and placed her hands on her hips. "What good will it do to repair this?"

"I'm not repairing it.", the Doctor corrected her. "I'm reversing the shield polarity."