"What did you touch?" demanded the Doctor, as he frantically grabbed the fire extinguisher and pointed it at one of the numerous outbreaks which threatened to engulf the console. Both Time Lords had been somewhat surprised when, immediately after take-off, the TARDIS console had shuddered and creaked, as if under some tremendous strain. Then the fires had started, first on the navigation panel, then spreading to the others, as one after the other of the ship's vital systems began to fail. They worked well together, even after all these years, the Master had to admit. Although the pace of repair was frenetic and desperate, they still found time to argue. The Master beat out his smoldering beard before finding the time to reply.

 "All I did was the standard dematerialisation sequence. It's this clapped out old thing. You should have traded it in centuries ago!" He kicked the console, which responded by showering him in sparks, as yet another panel began to blister under the heat. "What was that?"

 The Master glanced over at the latest fire. "That was the Fault Locator," he responded. "I think it was having trouble keeping up." The console room suddenly tilted at a forty-five degree angle. The Master found himself holding onto the console for support, a task not made easy by the fact that it was melting under his fingers. He looked up, to see the Doctor flat against the other side of the console, still attempting to get the wildly bucking machine under control. The lights were flickering on and off. The Master looked at the cracked screen in front of him.

 'Warning,' it read. 'Dimensional disruption imminent. Proceed with emergency safety override?' He hesitated before pressing 'yes'. The floor righted itself.

 "Well," said the Master, "if you want something doing properly..." His smug grin lasted for two seconds, and he trailed off as he glanced at the new message on the screen. 'Real world interface activating in 3...2...1...'

 He was about to shout a warning, when the doors opened, and the raging gale of the vortex knocked the breath out of him. He watched with interest as the Doctor was sucked towards the open doors. 

 "No Ma'am," replied the technician. "As you know, they are caught in the transduction barrier."

 "Well turn them off!" She bawled at him. "Bugger planetary security, just get them out of there!"

 "We've already explored that possibility, Madam Chancellor." The technician was trying to remain calm, patiently explaining the situation to his superior, as per his Academy training. Unfortunately, academy training hadn't taken into account either the current situation, or the Wrath Of Rodan.

 "And?" she snapped.

 "Um... we er, sort of, can't," he finished, lamely.

 "So we're trapped too? Right. I see. Anything else I should know while I'm here?"

 She had to ask, thought the hapless technician. "Yes. The transduction barriers are fed directly from the Eye Of Harmony, the power source of which is virtually inexhaustible..." he trailed off as he looked into her eyes.

 "Get to the point," she said, quietly.

 "We can't turn them off. And because of the power surge caused by the emergence of Zalaxal, we can't control their levels of thickness either."

 "Go on."

 The technician remembered that in some medieval societies around the galaxy, it was often traditional to kill the bearer of bad news. He prayed Rodan wouldn't try and revive the tradition. He cleared his throat. "The barriers are increasing in strength and thickness. They will continue to do so until either the Eye is exhausted, about fifty billion years from now in case you're wondering, or until we can regain some measure of control over them."

 "So they will block out everything? Including sunlight?" Rodan's face drained of all colour as she considered the consequences.

 "I'm afraid so, Ma'am. Present predictions are that, if left unchecked, the transduction barriers will render Gallifrey uninhabitable within approximately two days. "

 Her face remained calm, her voice only wavering slightly. "How long until we can shut them off?" she asked. The technician called up the emergency repair schedule. "Working at best possible practice, around the clock, the most optimistic prediction is for..." he looked up.

 "How long?" she whispered.

 "About two days," he said.

 "Come on, we're going," bustled the eighth Doctor. He grabbed Ace's hand, and suddenly she found herself half-running, half being dragged, towards the exit. She reflected briefly on how the rotund figure of the Doctor could move so quickly, with such little effort. Time for reflection would have to wait, however; the assembled hordes in the tent began to move.

 "That's right, Doctor. Run! Run!" Somewhere, the voices of children could suddenly be heard, their ghostly song of 'Run Rabbit, run Rabbit...' counterpointing the laughter of the Ringmaster.

 "Hey, Professor! Mind the threads!" she said as soon as they were outside.

 "Sorry, my dear. I was more concerned about..." he looked around for the tent, but it was gone. "Illusions," he said, as if it explained everything. He looked around at the suddenly deserted fairground, and then looked down at his somewhat bedraggled clothes, as if noticing them for the first time. They were too baggy in some places and, the Doctor was painfully aware, rather too small in others. Especially the waistline, which now threatened to burst the seams on his check trousers any minute.

 "Ace, just have a scout around and see if you can find a wardrobe, would you, there's a dear?"

 Ace looked at him in incredulity. "We're in the middle of a cross between 'Nightmare on Elm Street' and 'The Magic Roundabout', and you want to get changed?" That, she thought, had to signal that this bloke was definitely a bit suss, Zalaxal or Doctor. She looked him over,realizing that regeneration must mean more than a new body, which was a big change in any case.

 Longish greying hair stood a top of a long face and beaky nose. The features could best be described as aquiline, were it not for the pudgy cheeks and florid complexion. His more than ample frame bulged out of the check trousers - he'd put on a ton, she thought. And yet Ace found she was having trouble keeping up with the frantic walking pace he'd set. He, on the other hand, didn't seem to be out of breath at all. He carried the weight as if it were nothing: A very Doctory thing to do. But she was suspicious. Her Doctor couldn't give a stuff about his dress sense, but this one seemed obsessed by his appearance, nervously running his fingers through his hair and complaining about the outfit.

 He beamed at her, apparently oblivious to the sarcasm in her voice. "You don't seriously expect me to defeat the villain and set the universe to rights dressed like this, do you?"

 "Doctor! We don't have time to waste."

 "Ah," he waggled a podgy finger in front of her and set off at a cracking pace towards a row of tents. "But time to change! And I always drezzz for the occasion." As soon as he'd said it, he stopped suddenly, causing Ace to barrel into the back of him. "Now why does that give me a terrible sensation of deja vu?"

 Ace shook her head in disbelief. "Booga, booga, booga booga," she said wearily, and started to follow him.

 "Language!" came the reprimand she'd half been expecting.

 He looked back to see the Master trying to shout something over the wind. The rush of air from the room had at least put out the worst of the flames, although the ones that remained spat and reached out alarmingly. He was pointing at the doors, mouthing the word "Disconnect", and then pointing at the panel to the left of the Doctor. The Master then began the slow business of easing himself around to the correct controls. Using the fallen hatstand as an anchor, he levered himself beneath the console and began unscrewing the panel. All the while, the Doctor remained caught between the pull of the vortex and the console. Idly, he passed the time by wondering whether his arm would be dislocated before the umbrella broke.

 "I say Cap'n, buy a flower orf a poor girl?" a woman carrying a basket of flowers suddenly materialized in front of them. Ace didn't think much of her accent: it was about as likely as the flowers she was carrying, which looked incredibly plastic.

 "Leave it out!" she shouted at the woman.

 "Yes, you're not much more believable than the clowns, are you? What's your name; Eliza Doolittle?" the Doctor enquired with gentle sarcasm. With a cry of 'Oaw!', she was gone.

 "Gone, and never called me Doctor," he mused.

 "Doctor!" Ace was getting exasperated.

 "Yes, Ace?"

 "What's going on, where the smeg are we, who was that girl and how do we get out of here?"

 He paused for a moment before he replied." We're fighting a powerful adversary, we're in a pocket dimension in which an evil from the dawn of time was trapped, that girl was the product of a mind severely lacking in imagination, as were the Daleks and Cybermen we saw, and we get out by opening this door." There was perfectly ordinary house door standing on its own, apparently attached to nothing. He opened it, and the world changed.

 At least he gives more or less straight answers now, thought Ace. She looked around the room she'd just entered and gaped in surprise. It had roundels in the wall, just like the TARDIS, except that it was black. The walls, that is. Completely black, as were the floor, ceiling and door she'd just walked through. Surprisingly, there was little difficulty in seeing, although Ace would have been unable to describe how it was possible for black walls to give off light. But they did. "This is a TARDIS, right?"

 "Right."

 "But not yours?"

 "Right."

 "Whose?"

 "Guess."

 Ace thought for all of three seconds. "Not weasel features?" she asked.

 "'Fraid so. It must have been sucked into Zalaxal's prison when he came out on Gallifrey. Still," he patted Ace's arm in what he must of thought was a reassuring manner. "We know he's not home, don't we? I wonder where he keeps the wardrobes?" He opened the internal door and strode off.

 Patronizing git, thought Ace, following him. "Do you know they're sending up a rocket to photograph the other side of you?" she shouted. He stopped suddenly and turned around, peering at her over the top of a pair of round spectacles he'd apparently pulled out of thin air. "Are you insinuating that I'm portly?" he demanded.

 Christ, thought Ace, he's so pompous! Please let him be the copy, my street cred won't stand up to following this bloke around. "Professor, let's just say that if I wanted to get away from you, I'd have to build up escape velocity," she said lightly, and immediately regretted it. He looked at her oddly for a moment, eyes blinking rapidly behind his specs.

 "That," he said, "is the most hurtful thing anyone has ever said to me." He turned on his heel and walked off, even more rapidly than before. She didn't have the energy to go after him, and he was soon lost from view down the corridor.

 Typical, she thought. Just when I need him, he goes and has a sulk. She turned the thought over in her head. It was typical. Absolutely typical, in fact. Ace had always reckoned that the Doctors sulks were unique. Even in this overweight, blustering, pompous chauvinist, his sulking technique was unmistakable. That's him, she thought.

 "Doctor, wait!"

 But he'd already gone, leaving a trail of paisley and bad temper in his wake.

 "Just don't tell anyone," he snapped. "My credibility would be ruined." He disentangled himself from the console, smoothed his hair, brushed as much of the ash off his ruined suit as possible, stood up with slow dignity and then fell over.

 "Serves you right for getting up too quickly," said the Doctor, as he bent down to find his hat. "The Tardis systems are more or less alright, although I don't know where we've landed. Crashed, rather. Auto repairs in progress... hmm, should have full control back within the hour. Might have trouble with the lighting for a while afterwards, though. It's regarded as non essential, for some reason. How are you?"

 The Master got up more slowly this time. "More or less in one piece, except... oh no!"

 "What is it?" the Doctor asked.

 "The fire must have caught my coat. There's a hole in it, right on the front too. I'll never be able to invisibly mend it!" the Master looked down at his ruined outfit with an expression akin to mourning.

 "That's it? You're devastated over a jacket?" The Doctor couldn't believe it: the most evil contemporary he knew, and not only had he saved the Doctor's life, but he was upset over a burned tailcoat. "Cheer up, it could be worse!"

 "I don't see how; Saville Row is over 250 million light years away. Where's your wardrobe?" the Master was already on his way to the internal door.

 "Um... there's third on the left, second on the right, along the corridor, past the conservatory, third door on the right, along the corridor, up two flights of stair and second door on you right before you get to the zero room. It's next to the photocopier. You can't miss it. Wait a minute!" He called out. "You mean to say that we're in the middle of a crisis, and you're going to get changed?"

 The Master was already halfway down the corridor, when he called back: "I've disconnected the realworld interface altogether. We're cut off from reality completely, otherwise you'd be at the center of the vortex and I'd be burnt to a crisp. We're in no immediate danger. There's time to change."

 "Bah!" The Doctor watched him go before sinking into a somewhat singed Chesterfield sofa. No immediate danger, then. He might not have been so sure of the Master's words had he spotted the eyes watching him from the still open double doors.

 Why am I not free?

 My control, my freedom! Where is it? After all the ages, it is within my grasp.

 I will have my revenge on those who betrayed me, and I will make an unlimited rice pudding that will last a thousand years!

 All shall see the might of my jellybabies and despair, and there will be no mercy shown to those with overdue library books - all shall perish. The host should have delivered me my freedom. So simple, such a simple plan. Simple. Simple Simon met a pieman...pie, I could murder some lunch... It changed it changed how did it change, why can I not assert control?

 And why did she call me fat?

 And who am I?

 Who am I?

 WHO AM I?"

 Wearing the Ringmaster's costume and the face of the seventh Doctor, Zalaxal squirmed as yet another wave of artron energy washed over him. Unable to withstand the onslaught and think clearly, he hastily assembled a logic embolism to plan his next move. Splitting off parts of his consciousness was a trick he had mastered during his imprisonment - it had been his only opportunity for company. He isolated the logic centers of his mind and, like a child shielding a sandcastle from the tide, protected it from the raging psychic maelstrom.

 He had underestimated his host. The body was weak, more efficient than most carbon-based life forms, but weak. The mind was... there was only one word to describe the mind. Terrifying. Terrifying in its complexity. Terrifying in its current chaotic state (unless this was its natural state). Terrifying in that Zalaxal's original plan had to be abandoned for the sake of his own survival.

 The host's mind and body had been duplicated exactly. The persona of Zalaxal would, have re emerged in time, although admittedly it would have taken days, rather than the planned minutes: another miscalculation. The host had then been attacked, and some part of the host mind, knowing it had been invaded (know? How could it know?) triggered a process with which Zalaxal was completely unfamiliar. And unprepared.

 The battle between copy and creator had raged on a molecular level, as Zalaxal fought the body's attempts to remake itself. The battle was lost, and the infiltrator suddenly found itself in wholly unfamiliar territory. Now, the mental channel Zalaxal had kept with the host was flooding his mind with gibberish, attacking the core values, threatening to undermine the basic fundamentals of Zalaxal's personality. To ensure survival, there was only one option.

 Zalaxal screamed as he reached out and severed the mental umbilical cord between himself and the host. The fairground vanished, to be replaced by the familiar void. The storm abated immediately. He looked around, desperately hoping to see an opening somewhere in his prison.

 Then he saw it.

 It looked like a lab of some description. There were pieces of equipment piled high on one table. There was a smell of... fairground dodgems? One table in the far corner was taken up with a silver android, which had obviously been disassembled at some point in the past. Everything was covered in a thin layer of dust. She sauntered over to a spare workbench and pulled some deodorant cans out of her rucksack.

 "Eggs!" The electronic voice made her jump. She turned around and saw that what she had first thought was a pedal bin, was in fact some kind of robot. It trundled towards her and, comically fell over.

 "Where'd you spring from, toerag?" she breathed. "You scared the shit out of me." She went over and turned the little thing upright again. It wasn't very stable, she thought. It was also only three and a half feet tall. "The Master didn't leave you on guard, did he?"

 "Eggs!" it shouted, excitedly. It sounded, thought Ace, like an electronic Smurf.

 "Stir!" It seemed to jump up and down on the spot, like a second-rate R2D2. As she looked at it, she realized there was some kind of restraining device placed around and under it. Just like the Master, thought Ace grimly. Machine or not, it was cruelty to keep anything chained like an animal. "Soon get you out of that." she said. She found a spanner and began hitting the fastener. "What's your name, anyway?"

 "Stir!" It announced.

 "As in 'eggs', right?" the fastening bolt was nearly off.

 "Eggs! Stir!" the bolt flew off suddenly, and Ace fell to the ground.

 "Ace, don't!" the Doctor bounded in through the door, opera cloak billowing out behind him.

 The little 'robot' unfolded somehow, arachnid-like legs extending out from underneath it. The torso extended upwards, ending in a dome with one large, multifaceted eye glaring in malevolence. Two or the eight legs reared upwards, one of which ended in a razor-sharp blade, the other with some kind of gun. Dome -like protuberances were all over its body. It looked around for a moment, before focussing on Ace.

 It leaped, faster than she could see, two legs pinning her to the wall. It brought its weapon to bear.

 "No!" the Doctor called out, helplessly. Typical, she thought vaguely. He changes everything about himself, except his sulks and sense of timing. And I hate that cloak he's wearing. Everything seemed to be in slow motion, giving her time to take everything in.

 "EGGS-STIR...."

 Why does it keep saying that?

 "EXTERMINATE!"

 Oh, she thought. That's why.

 She closed her eyes.

 To be continued...