Deep underground, in one of the many dark tunnels, Tom Henry sat quietly. Hidden in shadows his eyes darted in every direction looking for the figure of the woman he knew would be meeting him. As Payload Specialists aboard the "Capricorn" he and Ruth Gamma had worked closely in the one year of training and the three months of the voyage. Together they had studied the stellar dynamics packages that had been on board and had been responsible for releasing unmanned probes from the small cargo bay of the ship. Together they had contacted and captured a supply probe that had been launched in advance of their ship and together they had launched it on a return flight to Earth. They were still working together but not to learn or study. They were working together to survive.

        Footsteps echoed through the tunnel. Ruth appeared and stopped two meters in front of him. She flattened her back to the wall and tapped her foot three times on the hard metal floor. Tom counted five seconds and then tapped his foot twice. With the contact code completed she approached slowly and sat next to him.

        "Did you find anything?" she asked, her voice tired.

        "Not the way Bauer got out, no. I think that they have had it sealed. I did find us something though, I managed to steal us some food from the botanical production section."

        He pulled a bag from behind him and handed it to her. The contents of the bag were not much but she knew it would be something worth eating. She reached in and took an apple from the bag. Ruth stopped herself short of gorging the fruit and forcefully slowed. She took careful and deliberate bites.

        "I barely made it on the last bag," she said after a time.

        "It isn't easy stealing anything from them but I'll try and find more. Did you get anything?" he asked, knowing the answer.

        Ruth swallowed an apple chunk hard. She let the remaining juice rest on her tongue before swallowing again. "No, but I have been seeing a lot of activity on one of those tunnels in the southern slope. We should check it out."

        "Okay, you take a look now and I'll check it out later. Have you found a new hiding place yet?"

        After they had escaped from the halls of the fortress to the tunnels below Tom had suggested that the split up and find separate hiding places. He had pointed out that they could cover more territory that way and possibly find a way out. Several other of his ideas that she had followed, and now regretted, had led them to nothing.

        "No," she lied.

        Neither of them glanced at their hidden enemy waiting a few yards away in the dark. After their conversation ended they separated. Ruth was followed and was not aware of it.

        David had never before heard of the existence of the Time Lords but, no matter how outrageous the Doctor's story was, he believed every word the Doctor said. Inside the TARDIS he had seen a level of technology far beyond anything that he had ever imagined possible. Simply to prove his story they had stepped outside the TARDIS and David had walked around the Police Box exterior to prove to himself that it was no illusion.

        Together, now with K9, they stood next to the remains of the command module of the "Capricorn." It lay at an odd angle with it's nose half buried into the mud. The crew cabin and the rest of the ship lay beyond them. All of the portholes and most of the superstructure of the ship had been shattered and torn. The rain and mist of the planet had dampened everything and some circuitry, torn from brackets, lay scattered across the deck. The stepped into the slanted deck of the crew cabin and sorted through some of the mess.

        "Not much good is it?" David asked himself.

        The Doctor pointed to the closed metal door at the back of the cabin. "What's behind that, Major?"

        "Service bay, secondary computer alcove, storage," David said.

        "Open the door, K9," the Doctor ordered.

        K9 moved to the sealed hatch and stopped a few feet in front of it. He wagged his electronic tail a few time.

        "There is no power and all the hydraulics are frozen in place," K9 reported.

        "Even the sonic screwdriver won't move that," the Doctor said.

        "I must destroy it, master."

        The Doctor looked at David expectantly.

        "What?" David asked.

        "He can't blow open the door without permission. That is destroying government property and we could get arrested," the Doctor smiled. He became suddenly serious and said, "After all, you are still in command of this ship."

        David nodded, he knew the Doctor's reasoning.

        "Go ahead."

        K9 aimed, fired, and rolled backwards as the door disintegrated into dust. The Doctor waited for the smoke to clear and then boldly walked through the remains of the door and into the corridor. K9 followed. David closed his eyes for a moment, gripped his hands tight to stop them from shaking, then followed them down the slanted hallway.

        The sound of new rain falling on the cabin roof echoed their footsteps.

        In the Dalek Supreme's headquarters the gold colored leader of the Dalek force faced the leader of their allies.

        "What have you to say, Dalek?" the leader asked.

        "What are you suggesting? You will not question the actions of the Daleks." It's eyestalk swiveled up and down. The Dalek's, even though they appeared in mechanical form, were not robots. Inside them the mutated form of the Kaled race survived.

        "The supplies in the third storage bay were clearly destined for our ships yet you issued their use for your patrol vehicles. That mistake will not be repeated."

        "It is important that we track the missing human," the Dalek Supreme spoke in it's own defence. "He can tell us more about the defenses of the Sol system then we have learned."

        "We have our own patrol vehicles fully operating. We will find the human."

        "We must find him no matter what the cost," the Dalek said as it's internal communications system signaled for help. "If he is discovered by one of your own patrols you must return him to us immediately. We can used the mind devices that we used on the other to extract information."

        "If your mind sifters were as good as you claim we would have the information we need." The leader knew that the Dalek devices were better than anything his team could produce but he could not let them be aware of that fact. "When the human is found he will be yours. You have one chance to prove yourself before we resort to our own devices," he paused, then added slowly, "take warning, Dalek."

        David had come across a large capsule implanted in a deep gash near the rear of a storage compartment.

        "Doctor, come and look at this."

        The Doctor asked him to hold for a moment the continued working with the sonic screwdriver. He was trying to reactivate and play the flight recorder but was meeting with only limited success. K9 had long ago wondered off to investigate the ship's giant, dead, thrusters.

        "Doctor, I do wish that you would hurry."

        David released a sigh of frustration. He had not run a tight, but well disciplined, ship and had gotten used to people following orders. It felt strange to ask someone to do something and be told to wait.

        He returned to studying the new found object. From the scorch marks on it's surface he knew it had been damaged during reentry. It was remarkable that the small object had been so well fortified that it had not burnt up in the process. It was also remarkable that it had sustained no visible damage from landing even though skid marks could still be seen across the muddy ground for several meters.

        David glanced up as K9 came back to join them.

        "K9, would you please scan this?" David called.

        K9 bleeped his electronic affirmative and found a clear passage to where the capsule lay. He scanned the device with his mechanical ears and reported. "Length, one point five meters. Weight, 777 pounds." Then K9's voice rang out in warning. "Emergency! Emergency! Object contains probable destructive materials. Emergency!"

        The Doctor popped his head up instantly and forgot his work on the flight recorder. "What did you just say?"

        K9 turned to face him and said in his normal monotone voice, "I reported," his voice suddenly leapt to the warning tone and he cried, "Emergency! Emergency! Object contains probable destructive materials. Emergency," and with that his voice dropped to normal, "master."

        "I was afraid you'd said that," the Doctor said as he came forward. "Destructive to whom?"

        "Insufficient evidence. Computer processors delivering contradicting information."

        "Can you deactivate it?" the Doctor asked David.

        "How would I know? It's not ours."

        "What do you mean it's not yours?"

        "It just isn't ours. What ever that is it is not a part of my ship."

        The Doctor examined the capsule more closely. He had not been aware of the Daleks using this configuration and he doubted that if they were they would not have left it here.

        Several miles away a glistening, armor plated, tank was rolling swiftly through the rough terrain. Trees, rocks, and shrubs slipped away beneath it's massive treads. It's protruding weapon, slightly tilted upward, held enough fire power to destroy any attacker. Near a flooded stream the vehicle ground to a halt as its occupants received new orders from their leader. With a roar the shook the area it set off in a new direction.

        A Dalek patrol vehicle stopped not far from the remains of Major Bauer's ship. It had stopped raining now and the patrol leader and his three subordinates glided down the elongated ramp onto the soggy surface.

        "Standard search pattern," the Dalek leader commanded.

        Without question or response the team divided into two separate groups. One searching towards the distant hills and the other in the direction of the wreck.

        After several minutes of the Doctor's examination of the strange capsule the human, the Time Lord, and the robot all returned to the TARDIS in search of special equipment. They returned to the wreck with an old hospital gurney and David decided not to make an issue of the Doctor's definition of the word 'special'.

        As per the Doctor's instructions K9 waited outside as the Doctor and David went inside. With the capsule on the gurney they moved it away from the clearing and left K9 in place.

        "Seems like kind of a waste to me," David said as they moved. "It couldn't hurt the ship any more."

        "My friend," the Doctor replied," I think that poor ground has been through enough this week. Don't you?"

        It was the ship that was on David's mind and he did not reply. He wondered if it would have been better to have the ship completely destroyed than to see it lay there in pieces.

        They found a flat, high portion of ground that was almost completely dry. Together they huddled over the capsule as the Doctor worked feverishly. He had found the hairline marks of a hatch around the nose and was working to release it.

        "Anything, Doctor?"

        "I'm trying to find the right code. It's as simple as opening a safe if you know the right numbers." The Doctor adjusted his sonic screwdriver and tried another sound combination. There was the slight sound of movement inside. The Doctor smiled confidently and tried to pull the hatch open. It remained firmly closed. The Doctor said, "If at first you don't succeed..."

        "...give up and try something else," David finished.

        "Precisely. Help me stand it on end."

        A Dalek approached the TARDIS. The large blue box it had found had been the cause of some caution. There had been no landings of any kind approved on Botan and it was very doubtful, considering the radar grids, that anything unapproved could have made it unnoticed. Yet here was something new that had not been recorded by the last patrol. The Dalek signaled for it's companion and waited.

        After the second Dalek arrived the moved closer to the TARDIS. As they approached they found a second new device moving boldly out to meet them. In tandem the Daleks stopped and scanned the new target with what could almost be described as amusement. They could see no threat from the simple machine before them.

        K9 fired his laser at the closest Dalek and it's laser arm erupted. The Dalek reeled away as it's partial computer brain overloaded. It had never classified K9 as a threat and had not scanned for weaponry. It turned away from it's attacker and it's companion and moved off in an uncertain direction.

        K9 took advantage of the distraction and fired on the second Dalek. Again the aim was perfect and the laser of the second Dalek was also rendered useless.

        Even without a laser the Dalek could still be a threat. It's larger size could still work to it's advantage and it could crush the hostile object. K9 knew that even though he could destroy the laser his own weapon was not strong enough to pierce the Dalek's armor. He could not stop the Dalek from moving and he knew he could not withstand a ramming confrontation. He started off in a direction away from where the Doctor and David were working. The single remaining Dalek followed.

        No sooner had the exited the area in one direction when a massive tank rumbled into the sight from another. The still fuming first Dalek met its end crushed by the vehicle. The tank's operators were not Daleks and a report of the incident would never be made.

        The tank came to a halt directly between the TARDIS and the "Capricorn.

        "We have two life form readings."

        "Prepare to fire."

        Unaware of what had just happened at the crash sight the Doctor again finished his work and prepared to open the hatch. He believed he had successfully unlocked the nose cone but knew it would take exceptional strength to open it. He would use his Time Lord strength to pull the cone back and ordered David to examine what was inside.

        "Ready, Major?"

        "Yes."

        "Remember, when I pull it open look at everything, not just the interesting bits. Take in every detail you can."

        David nodded. He knew the Doctor could learn more by viewing the inside but was aware that he did not have the strength to lift the cone.

        "Let's go then," he said.

        The Doctor wrapped his long fingers around the moveable portion of the cone, centered his concentration, then pulled hard. Slowly the lid opened. When it was far enough David looked inside and was shocked to see nothing but a pool of liquid.

        The Doctor pulled the lid open as far as he could. "What do you see?" he asked as he gritted his teeth in agony.

        David searched the pool with his eyes. He was just about to reach in when a brown tentacle broke the surface. On the end of the tentacle an eye looked waveringly toward him.