Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who. All rights go to Moffat and BBC. I am making no profit from this story.
Note: This story takes place in between seasons 5 and 6, and Amy and Rory have just got married. Please excuse any typos along the way! :)
"Barcelona!" the Doctor exclaimed, whirling around the console to face his two passengers. "The planet, not the city, mind you. They have dogs with no noses! Go on, then!" he grinned childishly, "Ask me how they smell."
Amy Pond and her husband, Rory, stood opposite him with folded arms. The ginger heaved an exasperated sigh. "Doctor," she said, "You said yourself that you want to go somewhere exciting. Barcelona may be all very well and good but if you want to go there then something bad is surely going to follow." She raised a stern hand as the timelord opened his mouth to interrupt her, "Rory and I just want to go somewhere peaceful for a change. Only this once," she added quickly as the Doctor's face fell. However it barely lasted, for, seconds later, he assumed a cheery expression again.
"Certainly," the Doctor beamed, rocking back on his heels, "Think of it as a wedding gift. And - oh!" His sentence was cut off as the screen beside him began flashing. Amy could almost tell what he was going to say as he glanced, slightly apologetically, at her. "Ermm..." he started, looking guilty, "Sorry Pond. Forget the wedding present for now. There is... an issue that I need to sort out. Distress signal. Unavoidable." he began to dance around the console, flicking switches and pulling levers in a frenzy. Rory spoke up from beside his wife.
"And where is this distress signal from?" he questioned, ignoring his wife's eye roll and watching the alien dance across the glass floor. The Doctor barely paused as he answered.
"The planet of Hictokir," he explained in a rush, "It was custom made by a race of aliens known as the Zorkos. Incredible people. Act hostile but are really quite friendly. Mostly. Generally. Anyway, their original home planet of Skakes was about to be destroyed by a solar flare from one of their suns, so they built this planet to contain the solar flare inside it's very core. Quite genius really. Only that the planet needed psychic energy to keep the force field holding the solar flare in check and none of the Zorkos were psychic. So they called upon the time lords to help. But only a few actually could withstand the psychic pressure. Most of them died. From mind... crush. It was only achieved in the end by a group of twenty of the strongest timelord minds, and they were executed afterwards for disobeying the code. " Here he paused for a moment, as though out of breath, yet both of his companions knew that he wasn't. Then he plunged on. "Those timelords discovered, and then recorded, that with a single burst of energy on a particular day every hundred years the psychic energy would not need to be constantly maintained. Instead, it could be renewed every hundred years by another group of timelords and then left for the next century." He skidded to a stop in front of his companions, smiling in his intrigued-and-not-willing-to-let-this-one-go-manne r. Amy smiled fondly at him.
"I'm forgetting the wedding present for now, Raggedy man, but after this I do expect somewhere nice. Like Space Florida." The Doctor clapped his hands together.
"Right! So, we're being called to the custom planet's one thousandth year on - ooh! Look at that! The very day that the ritual is going to be performed! The sky really is quite the spectacle at this time." He clapped a hand on Amy and Rory's shoulders, "Think of... an ice cream cone with lots and lots of stacked up scoops." He paused dramatically, "Now forget the ice cream because it's nothing like that at all. It's more like a massive eclipse with nine suns and eleven moons, only the suns are all different colours and the closer each sun and moon gets to the planet, the smaller it is, so it sort of comes closer is size order - biggest to smallest!" The Doctor whirled back to the console. "My guess is that the ritual is meant to be performed soon, and because there are no more... no more... psychic beings willing to help out, they sent out a signal to find all timelords. And guess who it came to?" He pulled a lever and the TARDIS began to shake as it sped towards its destination. The Doctor laughed as he answered his own question "Me!"
They were all thrown into the railing as they landed. The Doctor bounded upright, seemingly excited. Amy and Rory picked themselves up slowly and followed him to the door, where he flung it wide open and stepped aside to let them gape at the scene before them.
The planet glistened in silver, almost metallic looking, yet when Amy touched the ground below her she found it soft, almost like a cushion. Directly in front of them but a little way away stood a building, as silver as the rest of the planet but it rose from the ground like a shining pinnacle, reflecting the sky off its smooth, cylindrical surface. The sky itself was a myriad of colours, rays of light shining from the half-hidden suns, guided by the drifting moon. It was certainly like a very flamboyant, breathtaking eclipse, but neither of them, when asked to describe it afterwards, found this description to truly do it justice, yet it was the only way to describe it.
The Doctor pushed past them, smiling at the sky and heading towards the large building. "Come along, Ponds!" he called over his shoulder, "There is a whole lot more to see everywhere else, but first, I must find the source of this signal!" He turned around again, only to come face to face with a rather odd looking creature.
It was very tall, with long, muscular limbs and large, black, bug-like eyes. Its skin was white and faintly transparent, and its nose was nothing but two slits on the top of its bulbous head. It had no hair, and it wore a simple, grey tunic. No mouth was apparent on the rounded face, but after the Doctor spoke, what appeared to be a hole opened up where a nose would usually be.
"Ah," said the Doctor, "Hello there!"
The thing opened it's 'mouth', grabbing his arm as it did so. Then it hissed in his face;
"Youuu have psssssssychic poooooower?"
The Doctor nodded, unperturbed by the fact that he had a creature inches away from his face, not to mention preventing any chances of him escaping, as it had grabbed his other arm with its free hand. Amy hated to admit it, but the Doctor suddenly looked incredibly small and fragile.
"Youuuuu are a tiiiiiiime looooord?" The creature hissed again. The Doctor grinned.
"'Course," he said, and the creature released him, then turned to Amy and Rory, who shied away a little. However, the creature bowed low to them.
"Weeeeelcome..." it said in its drawling hiss, "To Hiiiictokir. Weeeee have aaaawaited yooour arrrrival for ssssome tiiime, Doctor." The Doctor smiled, evidently pleased. "Follow meeee..." the creature turned and began to walk towards the pinnacle in the distance. Amy and Rory ran up alongside the Doctor as they moved.
"Is that," Rory asked in hushed tones, "A Zork... A Zorkonk... A Zor-thing?"
The Doctor snorted. "A Zorkos? Don't be ridiculous, Rory! Zorkos look - and sound - completely different! No, this is a Zorkos robot." He grinned at their guide, "Zorkos look far more intimidating. They're bigger, for one thing, and their eyes stick out more, for another, and their heads are larger, so that the fangs don't stick off their chins -"
"Fangs!" Amy exclaimed, horrified.
"They're almost completely harmless," the Doctor assured her. "Just don't upset them and you'll be fine! At least they don't hiss like this thing," he gestured at the robot creature in front of them. It didn't acknowledge his statement and continued to lope forwards. The Doctor fell silent, gazing around at his surroundings with a content sort of air about him. Amy and Rory stayed close to him, still unable to trust the creature before them.
The closer they got to the tower, the less impressive it looked. It appeared completely untouched - every inch of it was unmarked and smooth, and it ran from the ground upwards in a perfectly vertical line. From where they were now, almost at the base of the massive cylinder, it looked more like a prison than a icon of worship.
The robot stopped when it came face to face with the shining wall, then it raised one of its arms and knocked four times. Then again. Then again. And then again. The Doctor felt a shiver run through him as the pattern struck a particular memory, but let it pass as the wall suddenly reached out and swallowed them whole. He heard Amy and Rory let out startled yells of surprise, then gasps as they were blinded by molten silver and they began to feel themselves yanked upwards, almost like puppets pulled by strings, still enveloped in the wall. Then they were spat out, in the most ungainly way possible, onto the cold floor.
For a moment all three of them lay there, panting, then the Doctor leapt to his feet, grinning again.
"Oh, that's just absolutely brilliant!" he exclaimed, "A lift, made from the walls of the tower! I suppose that they use channeled electrical impulses to send shockwaves up and down! I love the Vorkos! Always so inventive!"
On either side of him, Amy and Rory began to slowly and shakily pull themselves to their feet. Rory shook his head.
"Yeah," he muttered, "Brilliant. If you like being eaten by a wall."
The Doctor walked back over to the wall pulling his sonic screwdriver from his pocket as he went. "Oh Rory, Rory, Rory." he said as he scanned the sheer surface, "It didn't eat you! It pulled you inside the structure and into the lift. Ah!" He flicked his wrist and peered closely at the sonic. "As I thought! The walls, and everything else, are made from Hictikanium, a metal found only on the Zorkos home planet, hence the name." He turned to his companions, flourishing his arm at the surrounding alien corridor. "Hictikanium is a completely breathable metal, yet it's solid. We can only breathe it because it converts our body's need for oxygen into a need for this metal, then it converts our whole inner structure to accept it rather than the usual air we breathe. The moment it released us, our bodies re-programmed to accept oxygen again. Said that it was genius, didn't I?" He grinned again at his companions, and the whirled to face the rest of the corridor.
"Ah," he said finally, "We seem to have lost our robot."
And indeed they had.
Amy turned to Rory. "Is he telling us that we were just breathing metal?" she asked incredulously, and Rory shrugged. The Doctor appeared at her shoulder.
"That's precisely what I said, Pond!" he congratulated, "Now. I suppose that we had better go and do what we came to do and meet the Zorkos on the other side of that rather grand looking door over there?"
He spun on his heel and marched towards it, pausing only to look back at his companions and smile:
"They're actually not that bad. I made the whole fang thing up."
Then he disappeared, leaving Amy and Rory to hurry in behind him.