Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

by Metal Dog

Mice in the wiring cause the TARDIS to drift into the distant future... meanwhile, an astronaut orbiting Io receives a nasty surprise.

"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"

by Matthew Schoaff

-=chapter=one=-

He was running, running, always running. Running for his life, more often than not. Like right now, for example. He scuttled around a corner of the corridor and heard the thing chasing him lose its footing on the slick floor. He put on a burst of speed, hoping to lose it for just one second. Just one second, that's all he needed.

Directly behind him, he could hear the clacking of motors. The smell of electricity was all around him, as the metal beast closed in for the kill. He ran as fast as he could, but he felt like his legs were on fire. Directly ahead of him, he could see a small hole in the wall; it wasn't much, but he could probably squeeze into it. The machine chasing him could not. It was his only chance for escape. Desperately, he dove for the gap...

...and froze in mid-air. Red light surrounded him, and his view of the world was blocked by shiny metal. It had caught him, and now he suspected it would make a meal of him. He was wrong.

"Gotcha!" the Doctor yelled, smiling broadly. He reached down and picked up the tiny spherical robot. It was about the same size as a cricket ball, perhaps a bit larger, when it pulled its legs in. "That's a good boy," he said, as though speaking to a pet. He resisted the urge to scratch it behind the ears; it didn't have any, after all. "Well, you're no K-9, but you're a better mouser, that's for certain. Maybe I should call you Fee-Line. You know, with the greek letter Phi? What do you think of that?"

The tiny robot blinked its red eye at the Doctor. It had a very simple electronic brain, and only understood commands. It did not get the joke. It only knew that its job was to catch the small rodent without harming it. It accessed its memory for a definition of the word feline, and pulled up an image of a furry humanoid in a nun's habit. It projected this image as a hologram. because it had no idea what else to do with the image.

The Doctor looked at the hologram, and frowned. "Oh, I forgot, where you come from, the felines are people. Well, then... Kitten! I'll use a Kit and an N... or whatever. Do you even need a name? And why am I even talking to you? You don't talk back."

The spherical robot purred, and the Doctor laughed. "Kit-N it is, then! Now, let's have that mouse, hmmm?" The bot extended its legs and stood on the Doctor's hand, then turned itself upside down and spit out the mouse into his other hand. The Doctor quickly wrapped its tail around his fingers, and held it up in the air to examine it. He dropped the little robot absent-mindedly, and it scuttered off down the corridor. Its sensors indicated the presence of at least one more rodent within the TARDIS, and it couldn't rest until the hunt was complete.

"Now, then, let's have a look at you, shall we?" The Doctor held the mouse up in front of his face. He looked into its beady little eyes and it looked back, terrified, at him. "Apodemus Gurkha; also known as the Himalayan field mouse. Why, you're an endangered species, my little friend! Found only in Nepal... Nepal... when was I last in Nepal? 400 B.C.? Somewhen around then; I met the Buddha." He shrugged. "I certainly hope you haven't been gnawing on anything important while you've been in here. The TARDIS is a very delicate machine, not a mouse house." The mouse wiggled its nose at him. He wished he could read its memories, like he could with most intelligent beings, but its brain was too simple. Just making contact with a Time Lord brain would probably cause it to explode, and he had no interest in killing the tiny creature.

"Well, I can't just chuck you out the door. We're not in Nepal any more." He remembered now, where the mouse must have gotten in. The monastery, where his old friend and fellow Time Lord had once lived. The TARDIS door had been open for a while, there, while he was making repairs to the navigation system. He had hoped to find Kan-Po's old TARDIS, and maybe salvage some of its components, but there was nothing left of it but a pile of dust and a few sparks of artron energy. It had made the Doctor sad, to think of it. After he was gone, after his last regeneration... his TARDIS would die, as well. A TARDIS can't live without a Time Lord, and some Time Lords felt the same way about their TARDISes. The Doctor stroked the wall of the corridor and sauntered back towards the control room.

Along the way, he popped into a storeroom and grabbed a small cage for the mouse. It needs a name, he thought to himself, but then another part of his mind reminded him that he shouldn't get attached to the little mouse because he was just going to take it back to Nepal and drop it off in its natural habitat. And when's that going to happen, eh? another part of his mind asked him. He reminded himself that the navigation systems were fully repaired and that he could pilot the TARDIS anywhere, any time, with perfect accuracy. I've heard that before, yet another part chimed in.

"Quiet, quiet, QUIET!" he yelled, out loud. The mouse looked up at him from the cage. "You don't think I'm crazy, do you, little mouse?" The mouse gave him a look that seemed to say, "Yes, Doctor, you are completely insane. They should lock you up in a padded TARDIS and throw away the key. Nice jacket; do the sleeves tie in back?" The Doctor stared back at the mouse. "You're no help," he said, and continued on his way back to the main room of the TARDIS.

"Right, then," he said, as he put the cage down on the console and started entering coordinates. "Nepal, 400 B.C.E., give or take a hundred years because it doesn't really matter... and go!" He pulled down on the large handle and nothing happened. He raised the lever again. "...and go!" he said again, as he pulled the lever again. Nothing happened, again. He picked up the cage and stared angrily at the little mouse. "What did you do to my TARDIS?" Just then, he heard a scurrying noise beneath the console.

The Doctor put the mouse cage down on the metal grates that served as a floor, and peered down through the slats at the underside of the console. Many of the most sensitive components of the TARDIS were located down there. "Fee-Line? I mean, Kit-N? I mean, silly little robot that looks like a shiny metal ball that walks like a spider? Is that you down there? Don't tell me you've found more mice!" He listened for a reply, then said, "Oh, yes, that's right; no voice module. I guess you won't tell me, either way." He heard a tapping on the grate beneath his feet, and he jumped back. The little round robot was there, looking up at him with its one red eye. He pulled up on the grate and let it out. It quickly scrambled over to the mouse cage and opened the top, then spat two more mice into it.

The Doctor laid down on the floor and looked into the cage at the three mice. "Three blind mice, three blind mice, see how we run, see how we run," he sang, as he closed the top of the cage. He reached into a jacket pocket and pulled out a large magnifying glass. "What have you been eating, my little friends?" He examined the mice closely through the lens, and spoke quietly to them. "Bits of insulation, a few metal shavings... You're building a nest out of my wires, aren't you? The assembled hordes of Ghengis Khan couldn't get through the door. The Dalek Empire couldn't destroy her. She's survived atomic bombs and antimatter collisions and the very creation of the Universe itself. But mice in the wiring... you're worse than gremlins."

The mice looked back at him, innocently. It really wasn't their fault, after all. They couldn't tell a TARDIS from a hole in the wall.

"Right, then!" The Doctor said, loudly, as he jumped to his feet, startling the mice. "I suppose it doesn't matter where we are, whether it's Nepal or Naples, you lot have got to go." He picked up the cage and headed towards the outer door of the time machine. "Time to give you three the old heave-ho! Ta-ta, do write, bon voyage, don't let the TARDIS door hit you where the... Good Lord!"

The Doctor had opened the door, and was about to step through it, but he was so busy talking to the rodents that he didn't look out the door until he already had one foot through it, and the second foot almost followed. He grabbed onto the edge of the door with both hands, gripping the cage handle with his teeth. He had fully expected to find Naples outside his door. Instead, he was very much surprised to find himself stepping out into the vacuum of space.

The Doctor pulled himself back into the TARDIS and lay on the floor, breathing heavily. The mice in their cage were beside his head, and he turned to look at them. "What did you do to my TARDIS?" he panted.

The mice looked back at him and wiggled their noses unapologetically.

"...hear me, Lucy?" The voice on the radio was thin and scratchy, but it sounded like that in real life, too.

"Yeah, I can hear ya, Ralph. Over." Her voice boomed inside the helmet of her suit, even at a whisper. With only vacuum beyond its thin shell, there was no place else for the sound to go.

"Radio... Jupiter... lately." His voice was interrupted by loud bursts of static.

"I didn't get all of that, but I copy. Jupey's extra noisy these days. Ya think that's why these power sats keep goin' down?"

"Well, I'm not certain, but I do have a theory about that. Perhaps it is our interference with Jupiter's magnetosphere that is causing interference with it, and the extra static we're encountering may be a by-product of our power generation. It certainly does seem to be stronger in the vicinity of Io, where we have the most harvesters." That time, his entire transmission went through without a single bit of static.

"But Professor Sobieski, there's nothing in our textbooks about that," she said, in a deliberately childish voice.

"Don't try my patience, Lucy, or I'll recall your shuttle and make you swim back." The old man still had some spark left in him, she thought to herself.

"Ya don't wanna to do that, Ralph. I got a date tonight, and he'll be pretty pissed if I don't show up."

"Oh? Paying customer this time? Or another freebie?" He chuckled over the radio at her, "Oh, Lucy, when will you ever find a nice young man to settle down with? You can't be a prostitute forever, you know. When will you ever see that you're too good for that life?"

"Why not? It was good enough for Mom. The only things she ever gave me were these tits and this ass, and I'm gonna do whatever I want with them. Now shut up and tell me what the hell I'm doing here. I almost got the hatch open." She finished turning the last locking screw, and the hatch cover floated gently away from the side of the huge diamond-shaped satellite . She snagged it with a magnetic clamp that was tethered to her suit, then pointed her helmet camera into the open hatch.

"Okay, okay, but we simply must have a talk when you get back. Your mother sent you to me..."

"Ralph, I mean it. Stop being an Uncle and be an engineer for a few minutes, okay? I need ya to tell me what I'm doing before I cut the wrong wires and shock myself or something."

"Don't cut anything, Lucy! Let me just take a look at the monitors... well, now, that doesn't look right, at all, does it? Shine your light in there, will you? And stop shaking the camera so much?"

"I'll shake your camera."

"Not, now, Lucy. What's that black box, there? That doesn't look like it belongs in there."

"Huh? What black box? Everything looks orange, here."

"That rectangular one, there, to the left. With the lights on it."

Lucy reached into the side of the house-sized electromagnetic harvester and grabbed the small box with her padded glove. It slipped out of her hand, and she realized that it wasn't attached to the satellite at all. "Hey, Ralph, it's just some piece of junk. It's a work light or something. Somebody left it in there, I guess." It was a simple black box, with a lot of little LED lights on the side. Only four of the lights were lit, and as she watched, two of them went out.

"Lucy... not junk..." His transmission was interrupted by static, again, but he sounded excited for some reason.

"Ralph, come back. Jupey's howlin' again."

"I said get out of there! It's a bomb!"

The last two lights on the little box went dark, and then all she could see was light.

The Doctor held the pocket torch in his mouth as he worked with both hands beneath the TARDIS console. He had to search out and rewire every bit of damage that the rodents had done. He'd found their nest - made up of bits of wire and one of his missing socks - directly beneath the drift compensator. It was no wonder the TARDIS had slipped its brake. He was just thankful that he had been in it when it happened. He remembered a cautionary tale that one of his old teachers had told him, about a Time Lord who had to wait seven hundred years to catch up with his TARDIS because he had forgotten to set the compensators correctly.

The TARDIS groaned as he connected a wire into the wrong socket. "Sowwy, owd giwl," he said, around the torch, and reconnected the wire correctly. He needed to be careful, now... the wrong wire in the wrong place and he might find himself in the Middle Ages with half a TARDIS. He wondered which half he'd get, the tar or the dis. Probably the dis, knowing his luck.

The TARDIS let out another groan, and he quickly disconnected the offending wire. He spat out the torch into his free hand and held it closer to the circuit he was trying to connect. "What was wrong with that one? Oh, I see. This one goes there." He connected the wire, and was rewarded with a green glow from the circuit. "There, we are. That should feel better, eh? No more drifting? Now, let's see what we can do about the scanner." It was bad enough that he had been drifting aimlessly through time and space, but when he'd discovered that he couldn't even look outside without opening the door he had been tempted to let the mice learn to spacewalk.

He quickly reconnected the circuitry that controlled the scanner, and crawled out from beneath the console. "Right, now, let's see where we are, shall we?" He touched a switch on the console, but nothing happened. He carefully selected a spot on the console, and banged it with the side of his fist. The huge flat-screen television trundled down from the ceiling on its wires, the screen lighting up as it descended.

The Doctor considered the scene that emerged upon the screen. A dazzlingly brilliant planet met his eyes. Swirling clouds of different colors raced through its atmosphere at different speeds, at different elevations, and in different directions. It was almost mesmerizing. "Jupiter!" he gasped, as he recognized the huge, red spot near the edge of his screen. "Boy, am I glad I got Hi-Def! And now..." he put on a pair of 3-D glasses and touched a control on the side of the television. "Whoa." He flung off the glasses, sent the television back up to the rafters, and headed for the door. "Hi-Def, 3-D... whatever... nothing's as good as the real thing with your own two eyes!" He pulled the doors open and stuck his head out.

Jupiter was on the other side of the TARDIS, he surmised. He tried to look around the corner, but almost stuck his head into vacuum. He could feel his hair interacting with the outer edge of the TARDIS's force field. He pulled himself back in and leaned on the handrail by the door. "Oh, well, Io's nice, too. All orangey and sparkly and... and... and who am I talking to, anyways? I doubt the mice are listening, and I put the little spiderball robot back in the recharger, and the roomba committed suicide last month... Oh, well, I don't really need to talk to anybody, do I? In fact, I can stop talking, right now, because there's nobody here to talk to."

The Doctor stood at the door of his TARDIS, gazing silently at the moon Io, admiring the way it seemed to glitter in the reflected light of Jupiter. It almost seemed to have a halo of sparkles.

"Because, you see, if I don't have anybody to talk to, then I really don't need to say anything, do I? Oh, did I say that out loud? I think I did. And I just said that out loud, as well. Blimey! I can't stop talking, can I? Yes, I can! Of course I can! I'm going to stop talking, right now, right this instant, until I have somebody to talk to!"

The Doctor put his finger on his lips and stared intently into space. He started to say something, but stopped himself. He put his hand in his pocket and turned away from the door, then suddenly spun back and started to speak, again. Once again, he stopped himself, and turned away from the door, but then slowly turned back to the scene outside his time machine. "What I'm really wondering, is this: why is Io so sparkly?" He pulled an antique pair of opera glasses from his jacket pocket and peered at the volcanic moon. "Ah, I see... thousands of satellites in low orbit... harvesting energy from Jupiter's magnetosphere, no doubt. Absolutely beautiful, and quite ingenious. Definitely human design. Well, at least that gives me a clue as to when I am. Humans didn't build anything like this before the mid-31st Century, I believe." He didn't seem to care that he was talking to himself again. "Well, now that I know where I am, and approximately when I am, I should be able to get back to where and when I want to be. So long as there are no more surprises..."

He was about to close the door when a gloved hand reached in and grabbed him by the collar.

-=chapter=two=-

"Just answer the question, Mister Sobieski. How did you know the object was a bomb?"

"For Clarke's sake, what does it matter? Just please let me go look for her body!" Ralph wrung his bandanna between his fingers, like he was trying to squeeze blood out of it. As soon as he had reported the incident, Lionel's "girls" had grabbed him and dragged him off to a dark storeroom. Now Lionel had him sitting in a chair, in the center of the room, with a single spotlight shining down on him.

Lionel adjusted his thick, protective goggles and peered through them at the bearded old man. "For Clarke's sake, indeed," he said, in his crisp British accent. "That it precisely why it matters. It is a well-known fact that you are a practicing member of the cult known as Clarkeism..."

"Cult, my hairy ass!" The old man fumed, "it's no more of a cult than that random bundle of superstitions you call a religion!"

"Ralph," came a soft, female voice from the shadows, "please, just humor Mister Lionel. For me."

"Okay, Freddie, since it's you asking." He sneered up at Lionel's smirk, "Yes, Mister Lionel, I am a practicing member of the Clarkeist religion. Yes, Mister Lionel, it is true that thirty years ago, ten of my students committed a terrorist attack on Europa Base Alpha. Yes, Mister Lionel, I remember that you were seriously injured on that day. You don't have to keep reminding me; the mere fact that only half of you is in that chair is reminder enough. Yes, Mister Lionel, it is true that I was falsely accused then of conspiring with terrorists, just as I am being falsely accused now. And, finally, Yes, Mister Lionel, the bombs that my students used in that terrorist attack were identical to the bomb that killed my Lucy! Now are you done being a total asshole or should I plan on sitting here for another hour?"

"He's done, Ralph. Grab a shuttle and find her." Ralph got up, shot a glare at Lionel, and left the room.

"But... Madame Governor!" Lionel dropped his smile and turned his powered wheelchair towards the woman in the shadows. "I'm not finished questioning him! You know damned well that he's guilty!"

"He's not your prisoner, Lionel, and he's not guilty of anything. Tell your girls to give him an escort out to Io, make sure nothing happens to him while he's out there. Help him find her body."

"But Madame Governor," he hissed, "you know as well as I do that he's responsible for this whole thing. This is just like Europa, all over again!"

"I know no such thing, Lionel. Of course, you are entitled to your opinion, but if you allow your personal prejudices against my Chief Engineer to interfere with your investigation, I'll replace you with a Security Officer who can perform his duties with impartiality." She emerged from the shadows, the light from the spotlight dramatically highlighting the white streaks in her otherwise black hair. "You still harbor resentment against the Clarkeists for what happened to you, and I can't really blame you for that, but it was a very long time ago... maybe you should..."

"Never! You were going to say that maybe I should just move on, let bygones be bygones, forgive and forget, right? Well, I would if I could, but I seem to be having a bit of trouble taking the first step." Lionel wheeled himself out the door, in a huff.

Governor Frederick Marshall III, known to her friends as Freddie, sat down in the chair formerly occupied by the old Engineer, and let out a deep sigh. She knew that her son would most likely inherit Lionel from her when she retired. She had been hoping to find a new Security Officer before that happened, but she felt weaker every day. She knew it was merely a matter of time before she would have to hand over the reins to Frederick IV, and he simply wasn't ready to govern 133 colonies, 72 space stations, two prisons, and the power project... and every man, woman and child in Jupiter's Sky.

"Freddie?" came a voice from the doorway. She turned halfway in the chair and saw Ralph standing at the door, dressed in his spacesuit and holding his helmet. "I'd just like to apologize..."

"Oh, no, Ralph, if anything it should be me who owes you an apology." She stood up and walked over to the door, taking Ralph's hands in hers. "I never should have let Lionel question you like this... I tried to tell him, but you know how he is..."

"He never gives up, does he? I suppose I can't blame him..." Ralph squeezed her hands and let them drop. "I truly am sorry for what happened to him on Europa."

"Is that what you wanted to apologize for?"

"No, no... I wanted to apologize to you, for waking you up in the middle of the night."

"Oh, Ralph," she said, placing her hand gently on the side of his wrinkled face. "There's no need to apologize for that. I may not... I may not have shown it, but I always..." she choked back the tears, "... I always considered Lucy to be a friend. Callisto won't be the same without her. Hell, Jupiter won't be the same without her. She's touched a lot of lives here."

Ralph smiled at the double-entendre. "Indeed, she has. I should go now; my shuttle should be ready. When I find her... if I find enough of her to bury... well, you know what arrangements I need to make." She nodded; she remembered the last time Ralph had needed to bury one of his parishioners. The blueprints for the obelisk-shaped coffin should still be in the factory computers, so at least that part shouldn't take long. She gave the old man a peck on the cheek that made him blush, then watched him shamble down the corridor in his bulky suit.

She was suddenly struck by the realization that Ralph no longer had an apprentice, now that Lucy was dead... and the old man wasn't getting any younger. He had already been old when he first came to Callisto, and her father had named him Chief Engineer. He had already been old when that wild little girl dressed in rags had been dropped in his lap to raise as his own... and now, he was on his way to bury that little girl. You're the Governor; never let them see you cry, she thought to herself, but she didn't care. The floodgates opened, and tears streamed down her cheeks.

When Lucy awoke, she was laying, naked, on some kind of couch. She looked up at the domed ceiling and wondered where she was. She knew every colony on every moon, and this wasn't one of them. Was this Heaven? No, it couldn't be, she told herself. She wouldn't qualify for Heaven... and besides, her Uncle had made her convert to his religion, and she wasn't sure exactly what their Heaven was supposed to look like. "It's a hotel suite," he had told her, but she didn't know what a hotel looked like. "You live out the rest of your days in an instant, and then you're reborn as a Starchild," he had said. She wasn't sure what a Starchild was, either. She simply wasn't very good at religion.

She sat up and looked around. If this is what a "hotel" looked like, she thought to herself, why would anyone call it "sweet"? The couch she was sitting on looked like it was thousands of years old. She felt the unfamiliar material, but its origins remained a mystery to her. It didn't feel like any plastic she had ever encountered before. The floor beneath her bare feet was a cold, metal grate that vibrated slightly; she could hear a humming sound coming from below it. In the center of the room was a large, glowing pillar, with some kind of control console wrapped around it. She watched the various blinking lights for a few seconds before she came to the conclusion that she was on board some kind of spaceship.

She got up from the couch and took a few steps towards the control console. From where she was, she couldn't make out any of the symbols that were streaming across the little screen. She didn't really expect to be able to, though; she had already decided that this ship was alien in origin... and not from any of the alien races she was familiar with.

She shivered, and looked around for something to cover herself with. She spotted a gray piece of cloth hanging over a steel support beam, and tiptoed over to it. It turned out to be some sort of old-fashioned jacket. The material felt organic, just like the couch. Where the elbows would go, there were patches of something that felt like skin. She dropped the jacket, choking back her impulse to vomit. What kind of aliens had abducted her? What did they want with her? Why was she naked?

Nightmare scenarios played out in her mind. Aliens who eat human flesh and wear their skin on their elbows. Aliens who needed human females to reproduce... or, perhaps, the gender didn't matter so much. Aliens who wanted to experiment on humans, in preparation for an invasion. Aliens who wanted human organs to replace their own. She checked her flesh for fresh scars, but didn't see any. Of course, if they're aliens, she reasoned, they might be able to just reach in and grab whatever they want without leaving any scars. She checked her pulse and listened to her own breathing; both seemed faster than usual. What had they done to her?

She took a closer look at the console. The symbols were completely unintelligible, but some of the actual dials and levers were marked in English. One lever was clearly set to "Dark Roast," and another dial was turned to "Hot." Was it possible that the entire thing was just a huge coffee maker? She glanced at some of the other controls... there was a keyboard, in the ancient QWERTY style, but which only had about half of the Sol Standard letters and symbols on it. There was also an array of sliding controls that were marked with arabic numerals. Whatever kind of aliens owned this ship, they had been to the Sol system before, she reasoned. Maybe they just wanted a new coffee maker.

As she stood, contemplating the console, she heard a noise coming from behind her. It sounded like somebody whistling, but she didn't recognize the tune. She listened more closely, and discerned the sound of approaching footsteps as the whistling got louder. She ran back to the couch and laid down, pretending to still be asleep.

Through a barely-opened eye, she saw a young man enter the room through a door that she hadn't noticed before. As it closed, it seemed to vanish again, but she thought she could still make out the outline of it. At least now she knew that there was more to the ship than just this one room.

Strangely, the man looked completely normal, except for the ancient clothes he was wearing. A pink shirt with a strange collar, black pants that looked to be too tight, and some extra bits of cloth, the function of which remained a mystery to her. He was still whistling as he approached the couch, holding a large piece of blue cloth in his hands. He held it up in front of his eyes, turned it sideways, turned it the other way, and stopped whistling. "No, this won't do at all," he muttered, in a british accent. "Maybe something a bit more modern... or more classical, perhaps? She'd look lovely in a toga, but it really should be something she's comfortable with. Judging by her skin color and hairstyle, I'm half tempted to go with leather..."

The Doctor was taken completely by surprise when the naked, unconscious woman laying on his Ikea Klippan leapt at him with a sudden burst of movement. Before he knew what was happening, she was kneeling on his shoulders and had wrapped the blue silk dress around his neck.

"You won't be turning me into leather!" she yelled, as he struggled to breathe. He tried to get his hands up onto her shoulders to push her off him, but the pressure from her knees made it almost impossible to raise his arms. He put his hands where he could and pushed as hard as he could. She dug her knees harder into his shoulders, and he started to wonder if she was actually going to be able to kill him.

He looked down at his hands and was momentarily embarrassed to find that they were on her bare breasts. This is no time to be shy, he told himself. He grabbed her nipples with his fingertips and gave them each a sharp twist.

She screamed and fell backwards off of him, landing on her back with her legs spread. As he unwrapped the dress from his neck, she realized the position she was in and covered herself with her hands. She rolled away from him and spun onto her feet, taking a fighting stance. He remained seated on the floor, gently smoothing the creases out of the silk dress.

"You shouldn't have done that," he said, as he waggled his finger at her. She circled him, waiting for him to make a move towards her.

"I do whatever I want, alien," she said, defiantly. "Whatcha gonna do about it?"

"Well, for one thing, I'm going to have to find you another dress. This one is torn, now. Pity. It was such a beautiful dress, too. Marco Polo gave it to my grand-daughter as a gift."

"Marco who?" She didn't let his rambling distract her. She knew that, at any moment, some kind of alien monster was going to burst out of his head and attack her. "What the hell are ya, anyways? You look human, but..."

"How do you know I'm not human?"

"Well..." She almost let her guard down, but then realized that he was still trying to distract her. "Shut up! I'll ask the questions, alien. Whatcha doin' here?"

The Doctor stood up, and she jumped backwards. Her foot touched the edge of the raised metal platform, and she realized that she had nowhere to retreat. "Well, at the moment, I'm trying to find you something to wear. I was quite surprised to discover that you didn't have anything on under your spacesuit. Do you often go floating around space without any underwear? By the way, I had to cut your suit off you; the fasteners were all fused shut. Sorry about that."

"Huh? Whaddya mean, they were fused shut? Hey! You cut my suit? You cut it? You fucking bastard! That was my suit!"

"I'll get you another one," he said, waving dismissively as he started walking towards the barely-visible door. "Can I get you anything else, besides clothing? Tea? Coffee? Cheese danish?"

"Where the fuck do ya think you're going? Get back here!"

"I'll take that as a 'No,' then." He spoke to her over his shoulder as he walked away. "By the way, if you see any mice running around, please let me know."

"What's a mice?" she yelled at his back as he vanished through the door.

In a darkened room, a pair of bright blue eyes stared at a scanner screen. The square object was still there, impossibly immobile in the depths of space. Something about it raised a red flag in his memory. Something he had read about in the archives, no doubt. He smiled to himself; any excuse to peruse the archives made him happy. He loved reading about the early days, when men were really men and every alien was a threat. Now, it was all muddled with interstellar politics, and aliens could come and go as they pleased.

It was a simpler time, he told himself. A better time. And, if all went according to plan, those times were coming back.

-=chapter=three=-

Ralph listened to the nearly-silent hum of his mini-shuttle as he and the "girls" approached Io. When he first got in the shuttle, the music player had been cranked up to an almost ear-splitting level... he had almost gotten mad, but then realized that it had probably been Lucy who had turned it up. He reflected on how, not so long ago, it would have been impossible to hear anything except the roar of engines, and traveling between the moons took days instead of hours. His Diamonds, with the free, unlimited energy that they supplied, had greatly improved life for everybody who lived in Jupiter's Sky, and more were moving out there every day. The population of Jupiter had more than doubled in the past three years.

Lucy had been there through most of the early days, he remembered. When she had first come to him she had been just a skinny little twig in a ragged dress. Big Fred's grandson was the same age, and they had joked about how someday, maybe, Lucy and Frederick IV would get married and have kids of their own. Twenty years later, Lucy was dead and Freddy IV cared more about his plants than anything else. Ralph sighed. Life never quite gives you what you hope for, does it?

He looked over at the closest shuttle that had accompanied him. The twin ARCHes on the top made the elongated teardrop shape of the shuttles look like space mice. Of course, he didn't know of anybody else who was old enough to remember what mice were. Through the clear plastic of the cabin, he could see the outline of its pilot, and he could almost imagine that the girl-shaped android was Lucy, out there with him one last time. A single tear floated in front of his eye; damnit! No crying in zero-gee! he nagged himself, but that reminded him too much of the past... spending weeks at a time alone in the old shuttle with Lucy, when he was building the first ARCHes... her play-toys had been his tools, her playpen was space. He remembered her first space-walk... her first suit leak... her first crush on a boy.

And then he remembered all the time he'd spent, working late into the night, trying to perfect the machines that eventually became the Diamonds... while she ran around with this boy or that girl or both at the same time. It was his own fault, he reckoned. His work had been more important to him than raising her correctly. That was probably why he had been so eager to push religion on her; it was his own guilt, really, more than any need to proselytize the faith. There were more than enough Clarkeists out here, without converting her, too. He knew now that he never should have done it.

He cried more as he remembered that night, thirteen years past... he had shamed her, berated her, screamed scripture at her, held her down as he shaved her hair into the traditional mohawk. And she had fought him, tooth and nail... but in the end, she had thanked him. He still didn't know why. At the time he had fooled himself into thinking that he had somehow won the fight, that he had somehow won her over to the true faith, but now he was old enough to see through his own self-delusions. She had kept the mohawk and read the Space Odyssey with him every Thursday like a good Clarkeist should, but every time he turned his back... and he had turned his back, far too often.

As soon as she turned sixteen, she got her own room at the other end of CBA, down with the workers. The next thing he knew, she had a high-end suite just off the mezzanine, and the rumors started. Lucy was taking money for sex, just like her tramp mother. Thursday came, and she didn't come for observances. Another week went by, and she hadn't come again... and he went to her suite. He banged on her door with the Odyssey. The book was huge and heavy, bound in steel and laser-printed on pages of titanium, and it fell on the door like a sledgehammer. Some naked guy answered the door, said something rude, and slammed it in his face. He remembered kicking in the door. He remembered beating that poor young man over the head with the holy book until blood soaked the floor. He remembered Lucy screaming.

He looked, through the kaleidoscope of coalescing teardrops inside his helmet, at the fiery moon in front of him. He looked at the thousands of sparkling lights surrounding the orb... each one was a Sobieksi Diamond, the apex of his genius. Each one of those huge gem-shaped machines was capable of converting Jupiter's plentiful electromagnetic radiation into enough usable power to supply an entire colony dome... or a third of a large dome like the CBA. And that energy was beamed out, free of charge, to any vehicle or dome or device equipped with an ARCH. Free, unlimited energy, for millions of colonists. It was his greatest achievement. Men of science considered him a genius. Engineers considered him a magician, or worse. But he could never be proud of himself. He had failed her.

Maybe it would be better, he thought, if he really was a terrorist, like Lionel thought. At least, then, everyone would know what kind of monster he really was.

He engaged the autopilot and removed his helmet. He searched around the spherical cabin for an absorbent cloth, then found one in a pocket on the side of the seat. As he wiped his teardrops from the inside of his visor, he remembered the night she had come back. After two long years, she had finally come back. A quiet knock on the door, and he had let her in, no questions asked. Freddie hadn't asked any questions, either, when he'd told her that Lucy was his apprentice again. That was seven years ago.

I should have retired then, he told himself. I should have retired then and then Lucy would have been Chief Engineer and somebody else would have been out here when that damned bomb went off. And she'd be alive and somebody else's father would be searching for their child's remains.

And there they were, the tears again. He placed the cloth over his eyes to absorb the moisture, so that it wouldn't float all over the cabin. I should invent something for the inside of space helmets, he thought, for emotional old men and crybabies. He idly started designing a teardrop absorption system in his mind as he stared into the inside of his helmet. As such, he was completely distracted when the mouse-shaped mini-shuttle next to him exploded.

"Three blind mice, three blind mice, see how we run, see how we run..."

"Excuse me, sir?" The young technician looked at his commander like he'd gone crazy. "Mister Butterby?"

"Yes, what do you want?" Butterby turned his bright blue eyes towards the young man like a pair of freeze-ray guns.

"It's just... I mean... Sorry, sir. Nothing."

"You were wondering about that song, weren't you?"

"Y-Yes, sir. What is it?"

"It's an old nursery rhyme." Butterby smiled devilishly. "I found it in the archives. A very old case. It seems there was this ghost..."

"There's no such thing as ghosts!" the young man scoffed.

"As I was saying, it seemed that there was a ghost. But as Mister Young has so rudely pointed out, there are no such things as ghosts!" Butterby turned to face the entire group of technicians in the control room of the starship. "You, Mister Anderson! Off the top of your head, name five things that could be mistaken for a ghost. Go!"

"Um..." Anderson said, as he glanced back at his screen and tapped a few buttons to put whatever he was doing on hold. "Well, there's... ummm... oh! A temporally displaced person!"

"Good, what else?"

"Uh..."

"An alien!" Mister Young shouted, eagerly.

Butterby turned his eyes back to Young, who instantly shrunk two sizes.

"Uh... well... it could be an alien," Anderson started to say, but then paused when the Butterby stare caught him with full eye-contact. He steeled himself, then spoke up, "I mean, not just any alien, of course. It could be an alien, or a human," he paused and gestured pointedly to emphasize the fact that he had included a human as a possibilty, "with a, um... a cloaking device? Or, oh! There's a, um, psychic ability... I forget what it's called but it's like, you're not really invisible but nobody notices you? But sometimes people do notice you but it's like you're a ghost. You know?"

"Okay, Anderson, that's enough." Butterby sighed and looked at the floor, admiring the high shine on his combat boots. He noticed a bit of lint on his black fatigues and he brushed it away.

"Um, sir?" A woman spoke up from across the room, over at the navigation console.

"Yes, Alice?"

"If it wasn't a ghost, what was it?" She looked confused.

"What? Oh, yes, the story! Where was I?" Butterby strode around the round room, seeking the most dramatic place from which to orate. He decided to just sit in his Captain's chair, in the center of the room.

"There was a ghost!" Anderson said.

"But it wasn't a ghost," Young reminded him.

"Alright, that's it! Story time's over!" Butterby angrily punched some buttons on the arm of his chair, and the three mini-shuttles appeared on the big screen at the front of the room. They looked lke three little mice heading towards a gigantic ball of cheese, which was Io. "Mister Young! The little mouse in the middle has a prize inside. Bring it to me. Alive."

"Yes, sir!" Mister Young yelped, as he scurried towards a control console. "What about the other two shuttles?"

"Androids. Worthless. Destroy them both." Butterby got up from his chair and headed for the door.

"Yes, sir!" Young started pushing buttons and twisting knobs on the closest console he could reach.

"I'll be in Deep Scan, if you need me."

"Still haven't found the girl?" Anderson asked.

Butterby stopped halfway through the door and fixed his steely glare on Anderson. "When and if I find her body is none of your business, Mister Anderson." He shot an evil look around the room, spraying the crew with a hail of imaginary bullets. Then he left the control room, slamming the airtight door on his way out.

A few steps down the corridor he came to a door marked Deep Scan, and he went inside. He sat in the chair in the dark room and tapped a button on the console in front of him. A holographic image appeared in the air, and he rested his chin in his hand as he watched the object that was slowly turning in the void of space.

He didn't need a translator to decrypt the markings on this alien object, because they were in plain english. Police Public Call Box, it read. But he knew it was alien. He knew what it was. And he knew that it meant trouble.

"Well, you have to wear something!" the Doctor shouted, as he dodged the denim mini-skirt that was flying towards his head.

"I ain't gonna wear none of these clothes!" Lucy raged, as she picked up a cowboy boot and aimed. She threw it, and the Doctor caught it, easily. He smiled and said, "Ah, ha!" but the second boot caught him in the face.

"Now bring me some proper clothes or I swear I'll... I'll... I'll break something!"

"Yes, probably your neck," the Doctor said, rubbing the footprint on his cheek.

"Hey, it ain't my fault you know Kung Fu." She sat on the couch and pouted, covering her nakedness with her arms.

"Actually, it's Venusian Aikido." He straightened his bowtie and cleared his throat smugly.

"I don't care what you call it. It hurt." She pouted and rubbed a bruise on her arm, making sure that her nipple slipped out from behind the crook of her elbow as she did so. She blinked like she was about to cry, batting her eyelashes in just the right way...

"Oh! I'm sorry, I'm so sorry..." he reached out towards her, sympathetically.

She moved faster than he expected, and grabbed his hand, twisting his thumb around in a way it wasn't supposed to twist and twisting the arm with it.

"Ow! Ow! Ow! I'm NOT sorry! I'M NOT SORRY!" He grimaced in pain as she dislocated his shoulder. Then he moved in a way she didn't expect him to be able to move, and she suddenly found herself upside-down on the floor.

"I also know Judo," he said, apologetically, as he easily popped his shoulder back in place. "And yoga. Watch this!" He stood on one foot and put the other foot behind his head. "Not bad, eh?"

She spun around onto her knees and punched him in the crotch.

-=chapter=four=-

The Doctor sat on the floor beside the console, his feet tied together and his hands tied behind his back, with strips of cloth that used to be clothing. He had also been gagged with his own bow-tie. Lucy stood in front of him, wearing a black plastic garbage bag with a length of coaxial cable as a belt. She cursed as she flipped switches and cranked knobs on the console to no avail. She turned around to face him, straddling his legs. "Show me how to fly this fucking thing, damn you!"

"Mmmph mmph mmmph mmph mmmph mmph mph!" he said, through his tie.

She sighed angrily and pulled the bow from his mouth. "What?"

"I said, 'Mmmph mmph mmmph mmph mmmph mmph mph!'"

"Arrrgh!" She stuffed the tie back in his mouth, and he promptly spit it back out. "What I really said was, the controls are isomorphic and nobody can work those controls except me."

"That ain't what it sounded like you said," she glared at him accusingly.

"Well, I'm paraphrasing. If you want me to take you home, you'll have to let me do it myself."

"Why ya wanna do that? I thought you was gonna... you know."

"Know what?"

"You know... kill me and eat me or something. Or take over my mind so I can help you invade the Sol system. You know."

"Now where on Earth... ah, I get it. Too many horror movies?"

"Hey! I ain't never made no whore movies!"

"No, no, no... Hor-ror. Scary movies... monster movies... you understand?"

"Oh! Hor-ror." She bit her lip and crossed her legs as she leaned back on the console. "Okay, yeah, I guess so. But I'm still keeping my eye on you."

"So, you're going to untie me?" The Doctor asked, hopefully.

"I guess..."

"Good!" He jumped up from the floor. The rags fell off him as through they had never been tied. "I was getting a bit uncomfortable sitting there."

"How'd you... ?"

He stepped closer to her, and she scooched a bit further up the side of the console. A lever dug uncomfortably into her left buttock. "Ever heard of Harry Houdini? I taught him everything he knew."

"Harry who?"

"-dini."

"What?"

"Hey, you want to see a neat trick?" He turned away from her and started walking towards the door that led deeper into the TARDIS. As he walked, he flipped a length of coaxial cable over his shoulder, and started whistling innocently. Another whistling sound came from his pocket.

"Hey!" she said, as she realized that he had stolen her belt. She got off the console and started after him, but with the first step, her plastic bag split open at the seams and fell to the floor at her feet. She suddenly found herself naked, again.

"If it's plastic clothes you want, check the third cabinet from the left. I think there's a wetsuit in there," the Doctor said, as he reached the door. He turned back to look at her, and she stood defiantly with her hands on her hips. "But please do put something on, Miss Printup."

"Hey!" she yelled, again, and he paused mid-exit. "How'd you know my name?"

"It was on your space suit, silly. By the way, what does the 'L' stand for?"

"Lusitania... I mean, Lucy."

"Lucy it is, then. I'm the Doctor." He vanished through the door and left her alone, again.

Butterby lowered the lights in the control room, for added dramatic effect. Everybody's eyes were glued to the large viewscreen as he pressed the buttons to make the ancient video clip play.

"This was originally recorded on celluloid film, way back in the 1k's. There was a chemical process that reacted to light, and the film had to be fed through a machine from one reel to another while the light shone through a glass lens. It's all really quite fascinating," he said, as the screen sprung to life.

Anderson yawned loudly, and Butterby growled. He heard somebody scratching themselves, and somebody else clearing their throat. He turned up the volume before the sound had actually started, and when it did, it was too loud.

The scene was a simple room, with bars on the windows and a steel door with no handle on the inside. A man, dressed in black, sat in a large chair, looking at some sort of bound sheaf of papers. "What's that?" one of the women whispered. "It's a book," one of the men whispered back. "On paper?" she responded, incredulously. Butterby shushed her, loudly.

Soft classical music played on some sort of ancient recording device, with a spinning black disc under a plastic dome. As they watched, a little arm reached the center of the disc, and the music stopped. The man rose from his chair and approached the music machine.

"How many gigabytes you think that disc holds? Maybe one?" Young joked, failingly.

"SHHHHHHH!" Butterby exclaimed. Everybody was quiet from then on.

Before the man with the funny little beard could finish flipping the disc, there was a rap on his door. "Go away," he said, in what sounded like a British accent. "I'm busy."

"Torchwood!" said a voice from the door. The man in black suddenly stood straight up and faced the door. Holding the music disc between his hands, he spun it back and forth playfully.

"Torchwood? Now, you have my interest. That's the magic word!" He sat down in his chair with a flourish, and tossed the disc to the floor. "You may enter."

The door opened with a loud clang, and a tall man stepped through it. He had dark hair and wore a long coat. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything important," he said, in an American accent.

The man in black scowled at him. "You're an American? I thought Torchwood was strictly British?"

"Not at all," the tall man said, as he took a step further into the room. The door clanged shut behind him. "We, uh, accept all kinds."

As the door shut, the man in the chair stiffened, and his face showed fear. "Who are you? What are you?"

"Why don't you tell me?" the taller man said, as he sat in a wooden chair. "I don't know what I am. My name is Jack Harkness. Captain Jack, that's what they call me."

"And I..."

"You're the Master, I know."

"As I was going to say, I... am the Master. And you will obey me." He made a strange face, as though he was exerting himself without moving. After a few seconds, he let out the breath that he had been holding, and shook his head from side to side. "Bah! It's no use. There's nothing there! Nothing, at all! It's like you don't exist... you shouldn't exist, and yet you must exist... you're an abomination."

"Yeah, I coulda saved you the trouble. People with greater psychic powers than you can't crack my egg." Jack tapped his head with his fist to see if it made a hollow sound.

"Who did this to you? Who created you?"

"Like I said, I dunno. One minute I'm dead, the next I'm alive and the Daleks are dust..."

"Daleks! You've seen Daleks?" The Master practically jumped out of his chair.

"Well, just that one time, and like I said... It was extermination city for old Captain Jack."

"But then you just... woke up."

"Yeah, and the Doctor was gone..."

"THE DOCTOR!" The Master slammed his fist down on his knee, ignorant of the pain.

"Yeah, that's kind of why I'm here. That, and, it's kind of my job for Torchwood to keep a census on all aliens living on the planet, so if you could fill out this form, I'd really appreciate it. I guess I'm the only one who can go around asking aliens to declare themselves without getting killed. Well, I still get killed, but..."

"The Doctor, yes... this is precisely the evil, underhanded trick he'd pull. Make a mortal immortal while I, his childhood friend, his classmate, his equal... I am on my last regeneration, and facing an uncertain future in this despicable jail on this backwards planet."

"Yeah, hey, I'm sorry about that, but, ummm... you're only in this prison because the Doctor captured you, right?"

"I'm only in this prison because I like it here. No jail can hold me if I do not wish it to." The Master sat back in his chair and folded his hands in front of him, pointing his index fingers together in the middle of his beard.

"Yeah, sure," Jack looked confidently over at the barred window. "Look, I just need to know... which Doctor?"

"Witch Doctor?"

"Yeah, which. I mean, I know there's been a bunch of them..."

"A bunch of them? Really? I only count three so far. Hmmph. All those centuries in his original body and then he gets himself caught by the Time Lords after only a few years. The fool."

The video ended abruptly. Everybody sat up and looked attentive as the lights were restored.

Butterby cleared his throat loudly to indicate that he was about to start speaking, and the entire crew tried their best to look even more attentive than they already were. Still, it wasn't good enough for him, so he started out by saying, "I hope you're all still awake!"

They were. "That short snippet of video is all the evidence that remains of the short but memorable incarceration of the Time Lord known as The Master," he continued, "Shortly thereafter, he escaped during what is now known as the First Sea Devil Affair. I'm sure you all know that the Second and Third Sea Devil Affairs were both Torchwood operations, and were met with total success."

"Sir?" Mister Young had raised his hand.

"Yes, Mister Young! You have a question?"

"Yes, sir. Isn't the Master the one who eventually became Prime Minister?"

"You are absolutely correct, Mister Young. I see you've been doing your homework." He beamed with pride at Young.

"So, the Time Lord you're telling us about... it's the Master?" Alice asked, looking confused.

"No, it's the Doctor."

"Then why'd you show us this video of the Master if it isn't the Master?"

Butterby slapped himself in the forehead. Why did they always send him the idiots? Maybe it was just that he was so much smarter than everybody else that they always seemed like idiots, but he was getting tired of having to explain everything three times. "Because, my dear, we don't have any video of the Doctor! Apparently, sometime during the past thousand years or so, it was all erased."

"Hey, uh, Butterby," Anderson said, "can you put his police box thingy back on the monitors? I've been running an image search and I think I've found a couple of pictures of it. In, you know, the archives."

Butterby pressed a couple of buttons on the console in front of him. A view of Jupiter filled half the screen, with empty space filling the other half.

"What the... where the hell did it go?"

"Madame Governor, this is not a trivial matter!" The fat man with the dark, sweaty skin pushed his glasses up his nose, but they immediately slid back down. "The economy of Jupiter's Sky is being severely impacted by the lack of a Chief Engineer. Think of it this way; we have a society here that is completely reliant upon technology for its everyday basic needs! Food, water, oxygen, clothing, the news... it all comes from machines!"

"But, Mister Colum, every dome has its own Engineer..."

"Not every dome! Some of the smaller residential domes have to get by on their own!"

"And they will continue to do so, whether or not we have a Chief Engineer. I assure you, we are reviewing the qualifications of every engineer in the Sky," she lied, "and we will be announcing our decision as soon as it has been made."

"Well, I certainly hope it will be soon," said the fat man, as he realized that his welcome in the Governor's office was at its end for the day. "I'm sure my viewers will be thrilled to hear whatever you decide, whenever you decide to decide it." He huffed and puffed his way out of the office, leaving a trail of sweat droplets behind him... and the lingering smell of curry.

"So, have you selected a new Chief Engineer, yet?" Lionel smiled at her from across the room. "I think it would have been nice if the old one had given you two weeks' notice before leaving, wouldn't it?"

"I know what you think, Lionel," Freddie leaned forward in her office chair to make eye contact with the cripple, but she could only barely see his eyes through his thick goggles. "When you heard that Ralph vanished, you practically jumped out of your chair to dance a jig."

"Not likely, Madame Governor," Lionel smiled smugly, "but you know what? I would if I could. I'm not one to say 'I told you so"..."

"Yes, you are," she interrupted.

"I am? Yes, I suppose I am. In fact, you must be getting tired of hearing about how right I am all the time."

"You couldn't imagine how tired I am," she said, as she rested her head in one hand, leaning on the desk. The desk had been her grandfather's, and it was real wood that had come all the way from Earth. Never mind the fact that it had originally been a shipping crate, it was still the only wooden desk in all of Jupiter's Sky, and that made it the fanciest. She idly wondered if, centuries later, historians would depict her sitting behind this desk, leaning her head on one hand and barely staying awake in the middle of the night. "Look," they'll say, "here's the indentation from her elbow, and these stains were probably drool..."

She suddenly realized that Lionel was still speaking. "... fake their deaths so nobody will suspect them when the big one hits us!" he concluded his tirade by banging his fist on his chair's arm-rest, and impatiently waited for the Governor's response.

"Lionel," she sighed, then yawned, then continued, "I've known Ralph since I was just a kid... and I've known Lucy since she was a kid. There isn't an ounce of terrorist between them. Did you get anybody to volunteer for the search party, like I asked you to?"

"Madame Governor, my 'girls' can handle the search, just fine."

"Your 'girls' are just machines, Mister Lionel. I told you I want human eyes out there."

"They may just be androids, but I assure you that they're just as reliable... No! more reliable than any human!" Lionel spun his chair over to the pair of "girls" that he had left standing by the doorway. "They don't take bribes, they don't take sick leave, they don't take holidays..."

"Yes, yes, I know. This is the same argument you tried to use to convince me to let you have android security officers in the first place. But you failed. Ralph is the one who convinced me that it was a good idea."

"Ralph? Ralph Sobieski? How did he convince you?"

"He showed me how to do this." Freddie touched a shape on the touch-screen in front of her, then tapped a few buttons on her keyboard. The two "girls" slumped their shoulders, leaned against the wall behind them, then slid to the floor with the squeal of plastic against plastic. Their heavy helmets dragged their heads forward, then, until their shiny face-plates touched the floor between their knees.

"Freddie! My God! What have you done?"

"It's just these two, of course. I'm not about to shut down our entire police force just to make a point. But I think my point is made, Mister Lionel. Investigate these disappearances just like any other, without making any assumptions about the guilt or innocence of the victims... or I will shut them all down, and replace you with somebody less prejudiced." She pressed a single button on her keyboard, and the androids sprang back to life. "Now get the hell out of here before I shut off the life support systems in your chair, too."

Lionel screeched his tires on his way out of her office, grumbling under his breath. The two "girls" quickly pulled themselves to their feet and hurried after him.

Freddie pulled herself up from her chair and staggered across the room to a small couch. The couch, too, was an heirloom from the first Callisto colony. In fact, the entire room was once the extent of the CBA, before the larger dome had been built around it. As she lay down and stared at the sloped ceiling, she wondered what it must have been like; eight adults and four children living in one small dome. She started to dream about it...

She was awakened from her unplanned nap by a loud screeching sound that seemed to come from the center of the room. She opened her eyes to look, and saw a large, blue box slowly materialize in the middle of her office. Wide awake now, she dove off the couch and ran for the door.

Ralph finished using the tiny lavatory in the back of the mini-shuttle and was in the middle of closing up his suit when the communicator beeped.

"I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience, but Chief Engineer Sobieski is not available at this time. Please leave a brief message after the beep. Beep."

"Mister Sobieski?" a deep voice rang from the speaker, "I know you're there. I can see you."

Ralph looked up a the gigantic spaceship that loomed over his little shuttle, and made a vulgar gesture.

"Mister Sobieski, please. Can I call you Ralph? Ralph, I would like to personally extend an invitation to you, to join us here aboard the Queen Victoria. We have luxury accommodations, all the latest amenities... would you like some chocolate? I understand that Jupiter's Sky hasn't had chocolate since the end of the Belt War. We have lots and lots of chocolate."

"Are you seriously trying to bribe me with chocolate?" Ralph sat in his control chair and punched the button to turn on the comm screen. A blond-haired man with piercing blue eyes stared back at him.

"Ah, there you are. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Butterby. Percival Butterby, at your service."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Ralph chuckled, "You must have had a terrible childhood, with a name like that."

"I'm sorry? No, actually, there were three other Percivals in my class. It's a very common name these days."

"I meant Butter-bee. Buzz buzz buzz." He smiled as he pressed the button to hang up the comm. They tried his airlock again, then, but he had hard-wired it to reject any entry requests. The comm beeped again.

"Mister Sobieski, please! You know, the way I see it, this is a rescue mission. We've rescued you. Now please just come aboard so that we can discuss the terms of your rescue like civilized men."

"The terms of my rescue?"

"Well, yes. There are... certain things we want from you. In exchange, we will bring you back to Earth with us."

Ralph exploded with laughter. "Earth? For Clarke's sake, why would I want to go to Earth?"

"Fine, then. We can make arrangements with the government of Mars, if you'd prefer to go back there. You were born on Mars, weren't you? Bowie Base Twelve, right?"

He was right, but Ralph didn't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that. "I'm not going anywhere except back to Callisto. Here's my terms: release me now, and I won't tell my buddies in the Belt to drop a rock on you." He was bluffing, of course. Nobody in the Belt would be willing to start another war with Earth any time soon. At least, he hoped not.

"Mister Sobieski, please!"

Ralph reached beneath the console and unplugged the power to the comm.

-=chapter=five=-

"All right, that's it! Get OUT!" Lucy bounced out the door of the TARDIS on the end of the Doctor's boot. He stuck his head out the door and watched her pick herself up from the floor. "I told you I'd give you a ride home. Well, here you are! Good bye, and good riddance!" He slammed the TARDIS door shut.

Lucy looked at the TARDIS, and where it had landed, and her jaw dropped. It was just a box, sitting right there in the middle of the Governor's Office. She walked back to it and touched the wooden doors... they even felt like wood! She tried to wrap her mind around the fact that the box had an entire spaceship inside of it... Ralph had tried to teach her some things about quantum physics and relative dimensions, but she had never quite grasped the concepts until this moment.

She banged on the doors. "Hey!" she shouted, then banged louder and shouted again, "Hey, you! Whatsyername!"

The door opened suddenly and he poked his head out again. "What? Go away, I told you! And for the last time, put some clothes on!" He slammed the door shut.

"Yeah, okay, but you gotta tell me how ya did that!" She walked around the TARDIS to the far wall of the office. Next to the couch was a small bank of machines... one dispensed food, another made somethng that vaguely resembled coffee, and another one dispensed black plastic coveralls. She selected her size, pressed the button, pulled an outfit out of the slot and stepped into it.

"How I did what?" he asked, puzzled to not find her standing in front of the TARDIS where he had last seen her. He circled around the TARDIS to the left, while she came back around it on the right. "Where'd you go?"

"Here!" She circled around the other way.

"Where?" He reversed his direction, as well, and they were still on opposite sides of the TARDIS. "Listen, wherever you are..."

"Right here!" she said, suddenly standing behind him.

He jumped, startled, and tripped over one of the steel-and-plastic chairs, landing on his backside with his legs over the chair. "Oh, there you are! And... well... nice outfit! Definitely a step up from the bin liner."

"I asked ya how ya did that," she said. "Ya know, the box thing."

"What box thing?"

She pointed at the TARDIS. "That box thing."

"Oh!" He wriggled over the chair and sat in it. "It's... very complicated," he said, somewhat sheepishly.

"Ha!" she said, as she straddled one of the other chairs. "You don't know, do ya?"

"No. I mean, yes! Well... no, not really. I slept through most of that class. Sorry."

"Ya slept through it?"

"Well, it was terribly boring. Everything was terribly boring. That's why I left, in the first place. My home planet was the most boring place in the entire Universe." He sighed, deeply, as he remembered what it was like to be bored. He almost missed it.

"Oh, yeah? I guess you ain't been to Jupiter's Sky before, have ya?"

"Exactly how long have you had a camera hidden in my office? You have no right to spy on me!" Freddie loomed over Lionel as he tapped away on his console.

"That's not important right now, Madame Governor..." He was busily trying to zoom in on the writing on the front of the big, blue box, while simultaneously capturing still shots of the Engineer's Apprentice and her strange, new friend.

"Not important! Not important! Mister Lionel, are you aware that I could have you shot for treason?"

"Madame Governor, surely you are over-reacting! The camera is there for precisely this reason, for your own safety. You can check the logs yourself... no human has ever accessed that video feed."

"Oh, like I would trust your logs. It's you or the camera, Mister Lionel. One of you has to be gone by tomorrow."

"Very well, Madame Governor. The camera goes." He smirked secretively as he congratulated himself for not revealing that he had planted more than one camera in her office.

"Where is that camera? On a shelf behind my desk?"

"It's in the statue of Zeus... at the very tip of his lightning bolt. Very hard to detect. We tried to put one just like it in the President's Office on Earth, but they must have found it. The one on Mars gives us nothing but static most of the time... when it's on the same side of the Sun as us, anyways."

"Hmmph." She stared at the video screen, watching Lucy and the strange man sit in her chairs and chat. "Don't you have an audio link, as well?"

"Since you mention it, yes, I do." He flipped a switch, and the man's voice crackled over the speakers.

She noticed immediately that he had a British accent... good. If he was from Earth, then he was probably friendly to their cause. Most of White Europe had already emigrated into space, leaving the darkies and the jews to fend for themselves. "Lionel? The audio link goes, too."

"Of course, Madame Governor."

"Do you have any idea what he's talking about? Sounds like they're discussing something scientific... damnit if only Ralph were here!"

"Indeed, if only he were." Lionel almost laughed at the thought. Here he had clear proof, one hundred percent irrefutable evidence that the Chief Engineer's Apprentice had not only faked her death, but had conspired with an alien to do so... and the Governor was wishing that the mastermind behind the whole scheme was there to help them? After he had destroyed two of the "girl" androids and vanished? It was ludicrous. He bit his tongue to keep his silence. Now was not the time to turn the Governor against the old man. Not yet, anyways. He almost had enough cards to win the hand, but he wouldn't settle for anything less than a royal flush.

There are seventeen different weapons that can be constructed from the non-vital subsystems in a mini-shuttle, and Ralph had assembled five of them before his communicator beeped again. He reached over and hit the button to answer.

"Mister Sobieski? Hello? I see you've disassembled your video link... to what ends, I have no idea. You don't need any weapons, Ralph. Can you still receive pictures? I'd like to show you something interesting."

"You don't have anything I'm interested in seeing, unless it's your hand pressing the button that releases the docking clamps." Ralph ripped the seat warmer out of his seat and started unscrewing the casing as he spoke. "You do realize that abducting me is an act of war, right? Assassinating Lucy, well... that's just plain murder... and I'm going to kill you for that. But if anything happens to me, Earth will pay. All of Earth. Are you ready for that kind of responsibility, Percival?" He was bluffing, for the most part, but Butterby didn't need to know that.

"Actually, I think you would be very interested in seeing this picture, then. It's a live feed from our spy camera in Governor Marshall's office."

Ralph's mind spun. "How long..."

"How long have we had a camera there?" Butterby chuckled over the comm. "Long enough."

"You bastard." Ralph bit his tongue, lest he say worse. "You've violated her privacy... her dignity..."

"Yes, yes, yes. And how many civil rights has she trampled on? How many dissidents has she sent to Saturn? How many have died in so-called 'accidents' in domes that failed to pay their taxes? And don't get me started on the racial segregation..."

Ralph turned red with anger. "And how many more have died because of the greed of Earth corporations? Save a few bucks here and there, who cares if the kids are born with four balls and no arms and everybody gets cancer, so long as the stockholders are happy! Here in the Sky, we take care of our people! Everybody has equal rights, regardless of color or creed, and everybody pays an equal share! Universal medical care. Can you say that, Mister Earthman? Plenty of food and water... clean food and water! And clean air, too. I know you can't say that, Mister Earthman. Free interweb, with all the best educational software. Half the kids on Earth don't get any education at all, did you know that? Here in the Sky, all of our kids finish the secondary school curriculum by the age of twelve, and more than half of them go on to advanced degrees."

"You make it sound like a utopia, Mister Sobieski, but we all know that it's just another dictatorship that will soon fall to the unrelenting march of Democracy."

Ralph chuckled. "Here's a joke for you: What's the difference between a dictatorship and a democracy?"

"Okay, what is it?"

"In a dictatorship, if your leader is an idiot, you shoot him. In a democracy, there's too many idiots to shoot them all."

"Unless you have a really big gun, eh?"

Ralph paused midway through converting the seat warmer into a flame thrower and turned off the comm again. A really big gun, eh? How much did Butterby know?

[FROM MERCURY STATION TO JUPITER'S SKY, THIS IS SOLARNET LIVE!]

[WITH YOUR HOSTS, ANITA PENN AND JACK WEISSARSE, JUNIOR]

The pretty-but-not-too-pretty woman in the translucent designer gown smiled into the camera when its light turned on. "Good evening, everybody... or whatever time of day it is wherever you are in the Solar system!" It was her catch line, and she delivered it flawlessly, as always. It wasn't even really evening, it was actually 6:00 A.M., but the show wouldn't be broadcast for several hours.

"Good evening, Anita!" her handsome co-host responded, right on cue. His suit was a very dark blue, and cut in the latest fashion. "And a beautiful evening, it is, amiright?" He winked into his camera with just the hint of lechery as the backlights silhouetted Anita.

The camera cut in to a closeup of Anita's face, then. "Our top story tonight comes from the People's Republic of Jupiter's Sky. Let's go now to our blogger-on-the-spot, Ali Colum."

The camera shut off. "Okay, what's next? The panda? That's a nice, feel-good story to follow up political intrigue, whaddaya say, amiright?" Jack flipped through various tabs on his computer screen. "And then we go to the Red Injun tribe that wants Manhattan back. That should be good for a laugh, amiright?"

"Manhattan?" She snorted loudly as she laughed. "They can have it! I don't think there's anything left there, anyways."

"Yeah, well, they're saying they can clean up the radiation. One of our sources tells us they've got a Sobieski Diamond... and if that's true, they might really be able to do it."

"We're not going to broadcast that, are we?" Anita turned pale at the thought.

"No, of course not, I'm not crazy. The official government line is that the Diamonds don't even work, anyways... but if anybody knew that one of those things was on Earth! We'd cause a panic, amiright?"

Anita looked around for a chair, but settled for leaning on her computer podium. "My Aunt lives about a hundred miles from there..."

"Hey, no, stop that. Even if they have a Diamond, those things are perfectly safe." He lied. He knew damn well that there was a reason they were designed to be used in space. "And hey, if it works, maybe we can clean up some of the other lost cities of Old America! Just think of how happy the archaeologists will be, amiright?"

She sighed. "Yeah, I guess you're right. You're always right, Jack."

He smiled at her. "Can I quote you on that? It'll make a great endorsement." He tapped a button on his console and turned on his camera. "Hi! I'm Jack Weissarse, Junior, and I'm running for President of Earth. Amiright?"

She leaned into the shot, exposing a bit of extra cleavage, "You're always right, Jack!"

He winked at the camera half a second before it shut off. "Perfect!"

"You're not really going to use that, are you?"

"Why not?"

"Because I don't want you to! We may be colleagues now, but I'm still going to be a journalist next year. You're running for President. I can't give you an endorsement like that and still be seen as objective!"

"You should have thought of that before you let me record it, amiright?"

She smacked him on the shoulder, hard. "Delete it! You heard me, delete it!"

"Why should I? What are you gonna do to stop me from using it?"

She put her hands on her hips and gave him a crooked smile. "What I always do to keep you from doing things I don't want you to do."

"Hmmmm... I dunno. This is kind of a big one. You might have to give me a little extra, if you know what I mean. Amiright?"

"Like what?"

He smiled hopefully. "French maid?"

-=chapter=six=-

The moment that she left Lionel's office, Freddie punched a code into her wrist comm to call her son. She snapped the comm shut as she entered the medbay; she was past due for her daily cannabis treatment. Sometimes, it seemed, it was the only thing that could still slow the cancer. She was relieved to see that the medbay was deserted. Her official press releases claimed that her cancer had been cured years ago, but she knew that there was no cure for this particular perversion of the cells. Now, there was nothing left to do but delay the inevitable for as long as possible. At the very least, she thought to herself, Frederick needs to finish the mission I gave him, and come home safe.

She crawled into her favorite medpod and sank into the cushions. Classical music gently drifted into her ears and a fine mist filled her lungs. Soon, she was drifting off towards sleep. She almost didn't hear her wrist comm beep.

"Hi, Mom," the tinny little voice said, as soon as she tapped the button. "Good news and bad news. Bad news is, Ralph's still in one piece. They haven't touched him... can't even get near him. Good news is... apparently, he's built a superweapon of some kind... but Torchwood wants it for themselves. Maybe I can get Ralph to tell me where it is before they kill him."

"But he told me..." She put her head in her hand. Ralph wouldn't lie to her, would he? Had he? "What do you mean, Ralph built a superweapon? Where'd you hear this?"

"I'm just guessing, from what I've overheard." Frederick the Fourth, known to Torchwood as Frederick Young, peered at her intensely through the tiny video screen. "But I think we finally know what he's been doing behind our backs." He smiled evilly, "I wonder what kind of gun it is."

He looked just like her father had, when he was young, she thought, idly. Exactly like he had looked when he had taken over the Governorship.

"Okay... um... but... yeah, exactly! what kind of weapon? And where could he build it?" She rubbed her brow. It was clammy and cold with perspiration, but she felt hot. Her mind wandered through all of the weapons she could imagine that Torchwood would call a superweapon. Didn't they already have superweapons? Wasn't the peace that had held since the Belt War hung upon the promise of Mutually Assured Interplanetary Destruction? Ralph may have designed the tractor beam asteroid-slings that had won the war for the Belt, but he was never able to hit a target with one, so even if he had built a weapon, was there really anything to worry about? She doubted he could even hit Jupiter from a low orbit! She tried to suppress a laugh but it came out anyways.

"Mother! Are you stoned again? You're calling me from the medbay, aren't you? You know I can't talk to you when you're on your medication! And could you please shut off that horrible music? What are you listening to, anyways? It's that depressing classical stuff, isn't it?"

"Sorry. You know how I love my Metallica." She turned off the music and closed her eyes for a second, trying to concentrate, but her thoughts kept wandering. "Damn it! Okay, listen, where are you now? Still in zenostationary orbit?"

"You and your music..." he sighed, "We're orbiting Callisto, now. With this cloaking device they've got, I don't think you can see us at all, but we're up here. And they can see you, too. They've got cameras in your office and probably in the medbay, too."

"Crap. Lionel's got the office bugged, too. Did you know that? That shit-head's been watching everything for the last three years! Everything!"

"That fucker. You should find somebody new to replace him before I take over... which hopefully won't be for a very long time, Mom."

She paused, considering how to answer his quip, then decided to change the subject. "So... Ralph's still in the shuttle?"

"Yeah, he won't come out. I've tried calling his comm to talk to him but they're blocking his network connection. The only way to talk to him is through the shuttle's comm and Butterby would know if I tried to do that..." He looked away from the comm for a moment, then looked back into the comm. His eyes seemed to glow on the little screen. "In fact," he said, smiling fakely "I've got a new assignment, which will keep me off the bridge and out of the loop for a while. Which is good; I need time alone to work."

"Oh? What'd they tell you to do?"

"Butterby's got me going through the archives, trying to find out more stuff about this Doctor guy. Over a thousand years of records and this guy's either been featured or at least been mentioned in over a million case files." He sighed, "So what do you think? This alien... this... weird immortal time traveler... do you think he's been working with Ralph? You know Torchwood's theory: all of his inventions are just retro-engineered alien tech. Some of the stuff he's come up with? I can almost believe it. So maybe this Doctor is the guy who gave him all of this stuff."

"Um... I don't think so. If anything, it's Reptilian. Ralph wouldn't tell me anything the last time I asked him, but he dropped a hint. He said that he was working on something that was 'more cold-blooded than usual.'"

"He might have just been referring to the fact that he's building a weapon..." Frederick looked away from the screen for a second, listening to a sound that she couldn't hear. "Shit! I have to go..."

She started to say something, but her screen abruptly went blank. One thought stood clear and fresh in her mind: Whatever danger her son was in, it was her own doing. She had sent him to infiltrate Torchwood. She had her reasons. But now, it seems, it was the crazy, sexy, oh so incredibly talented inventor she loved who had drawn their attention. And maybe they were right about him.

She turned her attention back to her music player, and the words on the display gave her pause. It read, "Metallica - Kill 'Em All (1k983) - Am I Evil?"

Lionel chewed his lip as he stared at the screen, almost breaking the skin as he channeled his hatred and rage at the glowing images of Lucy and the alien. How dare she flirt with him like that? He could see how she sat with her legs spread, fiddling with the front of her jumpsuit. The way she leaned towards him to show him cleavage and pretended to listen as he babbled incoherently about pocket universes and black holes and boring crap like that. He tasted blood when he saw the alien leap from his chair and start waving a length of measuring tape across the blue box while saying something about chameleons getting stuck, then laughing hysterically. Whoever this alien was, he was definitely insane.

He punched a command into his console and slammed the Enter key so hard that the plastic cracked.

Ralph was thoughtfully chewing a food bar from the minishuttle's food dispenser when the comm buzzed again. He kicked the switch. "I'm sorry, but all of our operators are currently busy with other calls," he said, pleasantly. "Your call is important to us; please hold until one of our operators is available." He then started humming as he took another bite of the vaguely brownie-like meatloaf.

"Mister Sobieski? Mister Sobieski, I know you're there. You're mocking me, aren't you?" Butterby spoke calmly and clearly, "I can take a joke, you know. Tell you what, I'll go along with it, for the moment. Hum all you want; I'll wait. But I have something important to talk with you about."

Ralph stopped humming, and took a swig from his water bottle. "Naw, you took all the fun out of it. What do you want now? I'm busy." He reclined further in what was left of his pilot seat, and put his hands behind his head. "Got my hands full."

"I can see that. Would you mind turning on your video monitor, now? I have somebody I'd like you to meet."

Ralph reached over and connected a wire on his cannibalized control console, and the video screen hummed to life. Butterby's smiling face filled half of it, and Ralph reflexively sneered at him. "Okay, who is it? The Emir of Mars? Jesus of Nazareth? Arthur C. Clarke himself?"

Butterby pulled another person into the camera's view. "By any chance, do you recognize this young man?"

Ralph sat forward in his seat. "You bet I do."

Butterby put his arm around the other person and brought him in closer to the camera. "And do you have any idea what he's doing here?"

"Why don't you tell me?"

"He. Is. A. Spy," Butterby said, just as calmly and as clearly as possible.

"...and so, you see, the outer shell of the time capsule can be dematerialized at Point A, and then..." the Doctor ran across the room and pointed at a spot on the far wall, "... rematerialized at Point B, but the interior of the TARDIS, being in a separate, pocket universe, barely moves, except in relation to itself. Do you understand, Lucy?"

"Yeah, sorta, I guess. But what I don't get is how ya move the exterior shell around faster than light. I mean, that's impossible, right? It'd still take ya years to get anywhere..."

"Do you even know what dematerialize and rematerialize mean?" He ran his fingers through his hair twice, quickly, then growled in frustration. "I thought you were an engineer. Thirty-first Century, living in Jupiter's orbit... you can design a machine that automatically dispenses black plastic coveralls and cheese sandwiches, but you keep asking so many stupid questions! Why?"

"Why, indeed? Yeah, I gotcha, din't I? You're tellin' me you can travel anywhere in space," she snapped her fingers, "like, that! Here to Earth, snap! Mercury Station to Pluto Outpost, no matter what side of Sol they're on, snap! Just like that? So if you can go anywhere, why here?"

"I told you that. There were these mice, and they got in the wiring. I just sort of... drifted here."

"Yeah, right! And ya just happen to show up in orbit around Io at the same time I get knocked out by some kind of bomb... if it even was a bomb..."

"I have to admit, that was an extraordinary coincidence. The odds of being found by a passing spacecraft while floating helplessly in space with your spacesuit welded to a maintenance hatch are extremely high... and running into me is even rarer, still. But I assure you, If you hadn't run into the TARDIS, you would have died out there. I saved your life." He smiled proudly to himself, but she sneered at him dismissively.

"I don't believe a blasted thing you say, ya know that? How am I supposed to know you're telling me the truth, huh? So far all I've seen is the inside of a magic box and some pretty pictures of Jupiter... but you said it yourself, din't ya? Ya said the inside of the box don't really move nowhere. Well, I believe that. I think we been right here this whole time. I think that bitch Governor set me up on the bomb and yer so-called 'space-ship' is just a magic trick. I ain't got no idea what yer after, but I ain't playin' with you no more, mister!" She stood up from the chair and kicked it towards him, then circled around the Governor's desk. Before he could say anything, she slapped her hand down on a big, red button. A red light in the domed ceiling started to flash, and a loud, repetitive buzzing blared from hidden speakers.

"Oh, now you've done it," he shouted, over the alarm. "Let me tell you a secret. Let me tell you why I'm still here."

"Just shut the fuck up and wait for the 'girls' to come get you." She crossed her arms and scowled at him across the desk. "You fucked with the wrong Injun, Kemosabe."

"Actually, I think it's you who should be worried, not me." He sat back in his chair and put his hands behind his head, trying to look as patient and relaxed as possible. "Want to know why?"

She looked at him, then looked up at the flashing red light, then back at him, not so sure any more that hitting the alarm button was the right thing to do. She had expected him to panic and run back into his little box... but he didn't. He was just sitting there, waiting for the "girls" like he had no fear of them. She knew enough to fear them. One interrogation session with them had been enough to convince her to go back to engineering and give up prostitution... well, she gave up on doing it full-time, anyways.

"Yer full of shit. Those things don't scare me none. I'm the Apprentice to the Chief Engineer, you know. They can't do nothin' to me."

"Oh, really?" He put his hands in his lap and leaned forwards toward her. "Actually, I know precisely who you are. And that's the problem, you see? I didn't know who you were when I saved you. Why do you think I made you wait so long in the TARDIS before I took you home? I was trying to figure out what to do with you. You see, you were supposed to die."

"Huh? Whaddya mean?"

"Lusitania Seneca Printup, Apprentice to the Chief Engineer of the People's Republic of Jupiter's Sky. Took me a little while to remember why your name sounded so familiar. You were born in 2k/983, right? In the Asteroid Belt? According to the History books from your future, you're supposed to die in the year 3k/10, at age 27 and a half. Yesterday, to be precise. Generally considered to be the first casualty of the Second Solar System War. Most historians believe that the war never would have happened if it hadn't had been for the series of events that followed as a consequence of your murder. The problem is, you're still alive, and history hasn't changed. I saved you, when I shouldn't have, and nothing changed. Why?"

"Huh?"

"I told you. I'm a Time Lord. I can see everything that is and was and what should be and what should never, ever, be. And you, sitting in that chair, living and breathing, is a 'never, ever be'. I made a mistake; I should have let you die, but I didn't, I couldn't... and nothing's changed. We should be up to our necks in paradoxes but here we are, pleasant as punch. Do you know why, Lucy?"

"Why?"

"Because you're still going to die, Lucy. That's why. That's the only possible answer. You should have died yesterday but today's as good a day as any. Why put off until tomorrow, right? The wrong people will be blamed, and you will be avenged a billion times over, and the human race will bring itself back to the brink of extinction once more... and there's really nothing I can or should do to stop it. This is what most members of higher species would call a 'learning experience' for you less-advanced types."

He stood up and leaned across the desk, looking her straight in the eye. "But not me."

"But... what? What the hell you talkin' about?" Her head was spinning, and the deafening tone of the alarm wasn't helping much.

"I'm talking about the reason why I'm still here. I hate war. I hate death and destruction and I especially hate it when the wrong people get killed for the wrong reasons and then somebody else gets blamed for the whole mess, which just leads to more killing. And I really, really hate it when innocent people get caught in the crossfire. Which is why I'm going to save your life and the lives of a billion other people while I'm at it." He turned away from her and faced the door. "And do you know what else I hate?"

"What?"

"Androids." He gestured with his chin towards the door, through which a dozen "girls" were marching. They marched in single file around the edge of the round room, encircling Lucy and the Doctor. When they had all entered the office, they turned in unison and leveled their large, black guns at the pair.

The big, brown man bounced all over the screen, waving his hands at the various images and video clips that seemed to be floating around his head. "Okay, folks, here's the wrap-up, for those of you who didn't pay attention the first time." He pointed at a large number three superimposed on an image of Jupiter. "Jupiter has three branches of government with a total of three people. Three people, in this utilitarian state, who enjoy privileges above and beyond any that the worker caste can ever hope for, here in what we all know is the literal land of plenty. They do all of their governing with computers and, in the case of the Department of Jovian Security, an Army of emotionless androids. The Department of Technical Engineering also has an Army of Robots, but these robots carry tools, not weapons. Tools, like the Sobieski Tractor Beam the Belties used to hurl rocks at Earth during the Great War. Tools, like the Sobieski Force Field, which can either be used to seal a leaky airlock or as a shield against traditional kinetic weapons. Tools, like the Sobieski Sonic Screwdriver, which supposedly can tighten any nut or bolt without even touching them... or loosen them, to commit acts of sabotage from a safe distance! Harmless maintenance robots? I think not! And where were these handy-dandy robots when Chief Engineer Sobieski sent his young, sexy apprentice Lucy Printup, out into the inky, deadly black, supposedly to 'repair' a malfunctioning Diamond, these Diamonds that he claims are foolproof and completely safe, which then promptly exploded in her face! And then he immediately vanishes on a research sabbatical? What kind of bullshit are they trying to feed me here? A research sabbatical? Well, that's what the Governor told me. You can believe it if you want to."

The sweaty, fat man paused for breath as the images of killer robots danced off the screen behind him. "And that brings us to the Czar herself, or 'The Iron Lady' as some of her loyal and loving subjects call her. Nobody knows who or what actually works for the so-called 'Governor of the People's Republic,' but we know one thing for sure... the brains of the operation isn't the one sitting behind that old shipping crate in Callisto Base Alpha. At least, they'd better hope she's not the one doing the thinking, because if she is, then who knows what we can expect out of Jupiter in the coming days."

He paused again to let the less-than-flattering images of Governor Marshall finish bouncing around the screen and fade from view, so that he could change subjects. "Hey, let's go back to those robots... the ones with the tools... notice how all of those inventions have the same name attached to them? Apparently, this Sobieski guy is some sort of 'Mad Genius'. He's been the Chief Engineer of Jupiter's Sky for as long as I can remember, but let's take a closer look at the background of the man who some call, 'The Prophet of Jupiter'."

The fat man disappeared from the screen and images of Sobieski appeared. In most of them, he appeared to be very old, but a few very ancient images showed him with fewer wrinkles and his mohawk dyed in weird colors, instead of the pure white that most of the viewers would have only seen. The voiceover began, "The Mad Man of Mars, he was called. Not only does he have an amazing talent with nicknames, Ralfaela Wladymyr Sobieksi has always demonstrated an amazing talent with technology! Here in this clip from way back in 2k/959, he's demonstrating a robotic cat that can hunt down and kill rodents... just look at this thing!" Colum chuckled, "I'm sure it worked great in the Mars colonies. Do they even have rodents in space? I've lived on Mars for most of my life and never even seen a spider."

Anita punched the pause icon with her finger. You stupid fat fuck, she raged silently at the screen. Mars doesn't have rats any more because of Sobieski's Little Lions. She even loved the name he'd given them. It sounded regal, and noble, and just, and good. She'd only seen real lions on the video screens, of course. They'd been extinct for a long time. When she was a little girl she had begged her father for a Little Lion of her very own. He bought her another slave, instead. He said the slave was cheaper and easier to replace. She remembered that slave; a boy named Erasmus. He was her first lover. The first of many. Tender, kind, loving. Of course, eventually Father heard whispers and rumors, and he always believed whispers and rumors.

Father replaced him with another slave; a young girl. She didn't know what had happened to Erasmus. Maybe she didn't want to know.

She still wasn't sure why she fucked the girl, too. It might have been just to spite her father. Maybe she had really wanted to. She didn't know anymore. Maybe the answer could be found in the fact that she couldn't even remember the girl's name. But she would never forget Erasmus, her own Little Lion.

She felt a teardrop hit the back of her hand before she realized that she was crying. She brushed away the tears and resumed the video.

"Now, let's talk about Religion. I know, I know... nobody ever talks about Religion on the Solarnet. It's not just a corporate policy, though. It's the law! But in this case, the subject of religion is entirely within the context of the subject of this blog. It is a well-known fact that Ralph Sobieski is a Clarkeist, and that he was accused, and then acquitted, of helping the Clarkeist extremists who destroyed the Europa colony. His defense was that the bombs he invented were supposed to be a high-capacity battery, that just happened to explode sometimes... Personally, I think... well, I can't tell you what I think without being censored!" He was absolutely right about that. Anita removed the entire segment from the blog. Even so much as the mention of religion in a blog had cost too many of her colleagues their freedom, and she was in no hurry to join them. She finished the quick edit and resumed the video.

Colum's commentary continued, "Sure, the government of Jupiter's Sky, such as it is, claims to have no interest in interplanetary conquest... but if that's the case, why do they have a whole army of androids and robots? Why did they seize control of Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune immediately after the Great War, if they're 'not interested in conquest'? I'm with Jack Weissarse Junior on this one, folks: you just can't trust Jupiter. They proved that during the Great War, and they proved it again when they let Sobieski take over control of their machines and build his evil, mechanized army of fatal death! That's why I'm voting for Jack this Thursday, Insha'Allah! Don't forget, folks! It's a five hundred earthdollar fine if your vote isn't registered by midnight on Thursday, so make sure you surf over to the Earth Election site as early as possible this Thursday! Vote early and often!"

He smiled into the camera and delivered his sign-off, "For Solarnet Live, I'm Ali Colum. Maʿa as-salāmah! Khuda hafiz!"

She wasn't too surprised by Ali's closing statements. A growing percentage of Earth's population was starting to agree with hawks like Colum and Weissarse, and now that Jack was a candidate on Thursday's ballot, they would have a chance to elect a like-minded individual. She shivered at the thought. No matter what she had ever told Jack, there was no way in hell she would ever vote for him, or for anybody else who favored invading the other planets instead of seeking peaceful compromise. Besides that, she knew his secret, and it was a doozy.

If he wins this election, she decided, I'm going to destroy him.

-=chapter=seven=-

-=lionel enters room. lucy challenges his authority to arrest her. governor enters room. doctor gets her to reveal that she knows about torchwood and ralph and that frederick 4 is on the Queen Victoria. lionel challenges her authority to send spies, and expounds upon the structure of their triumvirate, acusing her of trying to undermine him. governor reveals that he is right and that frederick 4 will fill all three positions, starting with Chief Engineer. governor pulls gun and threatens lucy. Doctor dives in front of her and puts hand over barrel of gun. governor shoots through his hand but misses lucy. lionel has androids turn on governor but she is not afraid; she is dying anyways and her son shall become governor... no, not governor... Emperor! also reveals that fred4 is not a spy he is a conqueror. "the QV is in jupiter's sky and that makes it mine"=-

-=Anderson is actually Hhan D'sssan, a Silurian spy whose father is Ralph's scientist friend who has been helping him with his inventions. Ralph escapes from shuttle and disappears somewhere on the QV. Screens start going blank one by one, and Butterby becomes stressed. Mister Young, aka Fred4, slips butterby a mickey, pushing him over the edge as more systems on board go haywire, one by one. Butterby starts seeing things. hallucination sequence! :) Fred4 assumes command just as Ralph reaches the bridge.=-

-=Jack Weissarse Junior wins the online elction by a landslide. anita muses about the election process and starts to pack her bags, then decides that if it's so damn easy to get elected then maybe she should stick around and run for office herself. calls ali colum and assigns him to cover weissarse's presidency. sends him various pictures and videos of jack in comrpomising positions and unusual costumes and, most damning of all, the fact that jack is not as "normal" as his supporters would like - he has no navel and therefore must be a clone and clones can't be president!=-

(of course jack will have a response: his mother couldn't carry a baby to term so jack is a test-tube baby but he is not a clone. offers to take genetic test to compare him to his father but mysteriously there is no sample of jack weissars senior's dna and his grave is empty... but this is for later chapters... and his mother's dna isn't available because of the way his father murdered her...)

election process: online voting, mandatory for all citizens, slaves can't vote, women and darkies and red injuns get half a vote, lords get two votes. voting age is 12-64, term is one year, no term limits. lords serve for life and can be appointed by president, the number of lords determined by the population of each continent. north america has one lord, south america has two, africa has three, australia has two, asia has four, antarctica has four, and europe has none. the house of lords serves as both parliament and supreme court. not that they really do much... most of the earth is unpopulated irradiated wasteland thanks to both solar flares and atomic wars. Jack's first act is to appoint a Lord of Europe and to lower the population limit for appointment of Lords, enabling him to appoint two more Lords in the near future... another each for north and south america. His appointment as Lord of Europe: The Doctor.

-=chap8=-

-=governor starts to move towards her console. lionel knows she can shut down the androids and he tells them to keep her away. lucy pops up form under the desk and hits the console, acidentally deactivating the androids. lucy and the doc run out the door as the governor tries to blast lucy, but she shoots her own console by mistake. androids come back to life and lionel issues an impeachment order and tells the androids to gun her down.=-

-=doc and lucy hole up in engineering dome and wacth the solarnet broadcast. doc finds out that jack has appointed him as lord of europe. comm in the room rings - it's jack weissarse. doc tries to defuse war but jack explains his reasons for wanting to conquer jupiter and the belt. doc gets angry and hangs up on him. starts building stuff.=-