Prologue:

Jenny left the kitchen and walked into the laboratory where Roland was standing by the IRCM. "Quite a nice setup we have here," she said. "You did a fine job." She looked at the module's screen and noticed that Roland had been in the middle of setting coordinates.

Roland smiled. "Thanks. Now that it's done we should do a test run." He pointed at the screen with his thumb. "Where do you want to go?"

Jenny glanced down at her arm and saw that the numbers she had written two days before were still visible. She was curious about the disappearing man and wanted to go back and find him.

"There's an unsolved mystery waiting for us," she said. She held out her arm for Roland to see. "These are the coordinates."

"Twelve, twenty, two-thousand six, A..." Roland mumbled the coordinates as he entered them, checking Jenny's arm to be sure he got them right. He pressed the activation button on the module and turned to look at the time window. The purplish vortex appeared and spun with a dizzying velocity. "Might I ask what the mystery is?"

"A vanishing man," Jenny replied as she stepped into the shuttle. She sat down in the cockpit and waited until Roland was in the back seat before switching on the controls.

"It's a bit small in here," Roland commented. "Will it take long to get through the portal?"

"Only a few minutes at most." Jenny changed the settings on the control panel and put the shuttle in gear. "You may want to hang on to something. There aren't any seat belts," she warned.

The shuttle lifted slowly from the floor and eased its way through the time window. The shuttle wasn't much smaller than the frame so Jenny had to take it easy. Once she was inside the portal she picked up the speed. Somehow the vortex seemed to be spinning slower around them, and a bright light flashed through the shuttle.

"That didn't happen before," Jenny thought as she gritted her teeth. "Is it the shuttle that's causing it?"

Roland gave a shout behind her and she tried to look over her shoulder at him. She couldn't see him. Had he hurt himself? Perhaps he hit his head and fell to the floor.

"Roland, are you okay back there?" Jenny asked.

No reply.

The shuttle flew through the other end of the portal and landed on the roof of a nearby building. People on the streets below looked up at it, gasping. Jenny turned off the thrusters and looked behind her. Roland wasn't there.

"Where could he have gone?"

Chapter One:

Roland woke up to see an unfamiliar person leaning over him. It was a relatively young-looking man, probably in his early thirties at most, wearing an old-fashioned cricket jumper underneath a long coat with celery pinned on the lapel. The man had a concerned expression on his face and was clutching a panama hat in his hands.

"Are you all right?" he asked. He studied Roland's face for signs of trauma. "You seem to have come from out of nowhere."

"I'm- I think I'm fine... not entirely sure," Roland sat up slowly and rubbed the top of his head. "Where am I?"

"You're in a pasture somewhere outside of London. It's also the 16th of June, 1983, which I suspect is not the time you came from." The stranger put on his hat and helped Roland to his feet. "Not to worry, though," he continued. "I'm the Doctor and I can help you get home."

"That might not be necessary. Have you seen a space shuttle nearby? I was traveling through the vortex with a friend..." Roland trailed off as he observed his surroundings. Nothing could be seen for miles except grass and a blue box up on a hill. There was no space shuttle- not even wreckage.

"I'm sorry," the Doctor said. "The only spacecraft nearby is my Tardis. There must have been some time distortion in the vortex that separated you from your friend. Can I drop you off anywhere?"

Roland's heart sank. Jenny was alone- possibly in another dimension- and he couldn't be sure that she had a way of getting home. What if she had been separated from the shuttle, too?

He pulled himself together and looked the Doctor in the eyes. "Yes, there is," he replied. "It's called the Gatehouse. I memorized the coordinates before we left. Will that help?"

"Absolutely!" The Doctor's pitying frown transformed into a grin as he clapped Roland on the shoulder. "If you'll just follow me to the Tardis, my companion and I can take you there."

The Doctor approached the blue box that Roland had noticed before. It didn't look large enough to fit two people, let alone three.

"I hope his 'companion' is microbot," Roland thought. He stepped inside the box and froze. It was bigger on the inside.

"How...?" Roland stammered. He turned around to look at the door behind him. It was even a little larger than on the outside. The walls and the backside of the doors were made of a thick, white material with roundels.

He turned around again to scan the rest of the room. Just in front of him was a round console with all sorts of levers, lights, and mechanisms. The Doctor pulled one of the levers and the door shut behind them.

Just then Roland noticed another door on the other side of the room opening. A young woman with curly brown hair and an unusual burgundy outfit came in. Her eyes widened when she saw Roland, but she seemed to relax when she saw that the Doctor was smiling as he adjusted the controls.

"Who are you?" she asked Roland.

"Nyssa..." the Doctor muttered.

Evidently the girl had a habit of being accidentally rude. Roland showed a sliver of a smile to indicate that he didn't mind.

"I mean, 'How do you do?'" she corrected herself. "My name is Nyssa. What's yours?"

"Roland. It's nice to meet you," he replied. "Can you explain to me how you've obtained a dimensionally transcendental vessel in a time period with limited technology?"

"Oh dear," Nyssa sighed. "I can see why the Doctor has taken you under his wing so quickly."

"To put it simply, we're not from this time zone, and neither is this ship," The Doctor said, in answer to Roland's question. "This ship is a time machine, and that's how we're going to get you home." He flashed a grin and resumed his work at the console.

"It might take him a while to get everything ready, so go ahead and make yourself comfortable," Nyssa said.

Roland looked around the room, but there were no chairs or benches of any kind. The only furnishings aside from the console were a hat rack and a large built-in screen. He eventually found a place on the wall that he could lean against without a roundel sticking into his back.

"This'll be fun," he said facetiously.