The Prologue

Nick entered the console room of the TARDIS and immediately tripped over. He looked up from where he fell and examined the hexagonal chamber. It was strewn with maps. Small white sheets with stars marked in black vied for space with multi-hued dimensional diagrams and blue astral navigation charts. Nick thought it looked like some giant child had used the time ship's control room as an oversize waste paper basket into which it had emptied a pocket-full of equally large sweet wrappers.

'Redecorating?' Nick asked, cocking his head on one side. The other last human in the universe, Alf, looked up from where she was sitting on the stairs that led from the floor of the console room to the main door, and smiled.

'Perfect timing!' the Doctor said, hefting himself to his feet with a little help from a wooden ionic column.

Nick noted he was in shirtsleeves and cast about to see what unusual hanging place he had found for his dark blue velvet coat and scarf. All he could see was Alf's leather jacket draped over the back of a wooden chair beside the scanner. Nick stood up and approached the font-like console, dusting down his black jeans.

'The TARDIS has detected something that may be of great importance.' The Doctor strode towards the console and up onto the dais, manoeuvring around the wooden control desk so he could see both his companions. 'I was running a long-range scan to see if I could detect anything that might lead us to Outpost Gallifrey when the TARDIS found this.' He pressed a button and the twin shutters of the scanner drew back to reveal the garish maelstrom of the time vortex.

'We can ditch the LSD now,' Alf said with a wink at Nick.

The Doctor shook his head vigorously. 'LSD?' He boomed. Nick couldn't help feeling a twinge of sympathy for the Doctor (Nick was slowly getting used to the rotund figure as being such). He knew Outpost Gallifrey meant a lot to this... new Doctor who had thought of little else since the funeral. 'This is a representation of the space-time intersection around the planet of Yahanis approximately 1400 BC. Just look at the dimensional anomaly centred there!'

Nick peered at the image, but the understanding of such things once afforded him by the Forum had seemingly long since deserted him. Alf looked equally nonplussed.

'Some of the readings bear a striking resemblance to those given off by a TARDIS,' the Doctor said.

'There's another TARDIS there?' asked Alf with a frown of disbelief.

'We shouldn't jump to conclusions,' the Doctor replied. 'But the prospects are promising!'

'So we're going there, then?' Nick asked.

'Already there, Nick!' grinned the Doctor. With that he threw the materialisation switch.

The TARDIS screeched in pain as its interior reality twisted violently. Nick was thrown over the brass rail and landed awkwardly, his legs crumpling under him. Even with the implants gone, it was seriously painful. He looked over at Alf, but she was slumped back on the stairs, out cold, blood trickling from a wound on her head.

'Ddooccttoorr,' Nick shouted above the unearthly noise. 'Wwhhaatt'ss hhaappppenniinngg?'

'I ddoonn'tt kknnooww!' The Doctor bellowed, his face contorted as if sharing his ship's pain. 'Mmuusstt ttrryy tthhee ccoo-oorrddiinnaattee oovveerriiddee.'

The Doctor moved in slow motion, flicking at the multi-coloured switches beneath their wooden coverings. Finally he reached for the materialisation switch once more.

The ship lurched back into its normal dimensions, the spinning mirror of the central column came to a sharp halt and the control room was plunged into near-darkness. The only light came from the few roundels containing stained glass, casting a glow of autumnal colour across the gloom.

Nick smiled weakly, despite the pain in his legs. Safe. But his smile faded as he saw the Doctor's face, swathed in shadow and staring blankly ahead like the proverbial rabbit caught in the headlights of a car. It was the last thing Nick saw before he lost consciousness.