No Control

Prologue: Alone and Silent

In every direction stretched the endless corridors. Each of them boasted tiny sepulchres every few metres along, each containing a hibernating silver figure. There seemed more of these tombs than the imagination could cope with, and all lost under thick layers of hard frost. The frozen atmosphere was cold and bleak, and perfectly fit the guardian's mood.

She had lived in this small gallery at the mouth of the labyrinth for several months, in almost total isolation, waiting patiently for the relief ship to arrive. She would be whisked back off to the heart of civilization and some other unfortunate desperate for the money would take over the pointless vigil, guarding the cold and lifeless hive on the off chance that, after 253 years, it would suddenly spontaneously revive.

If that hideously unlikely event occur, her task was simple. Activate the emergency beacon and climb into the escape pod at the end of her puny living quarters. Even now, centuries after the procedure was first devised, the armed forces of the civilized galaxy would be mobilized, and an emergency shuttle would be instantly sent to receive her. More than once she considered doing it, raising a false alarm, simply to break the monotony and get her home quicker. But she ultimately feared the reprisals for crying wolf more than the uniform boredom and getting frost in her eyebrows every few minutes.

For the upteenth time that day she loitered at the doorway to her quarters and peered through the metallic gloom, idly carving a random shape into the frost on the frozen wall outside. It was then she saw the two huge shapes in front of a sepulchre not too far away. She blinked, unconcerned. Such phantoms and illusions were common place here, as your mind began to play tricks from lack of stimulation.

But the black shapes remained there, tall and solid as they eased open the door to the tomb. She could just make out the strange inverted horns on their heads, continuing parallel until turning at right angles into some kind of boss-like device at their crowns.

The guardian still wasn't quite concerned, remembering a time she'd been convinced for several minutes that the tombs had been full of commuters at rush hour, all too busy to talk to her. She idly strode down the corridor towards the illusions, noting how bulky and tall the forms were. In fact, the closer they got, the realer they seemed. She began to feel uneasy.

Nevertheless confident she was addressing thin air, she reached out to tap the nearest figure on the shoulder. The creature turned, allowing her to see the slits where there should have been eyes or a mouth, the tubes along its neck, hear the rasping sound of its respirator...

Facing her, the creature let out an enormous, penetrating roar, like a huge monster in terminal distress. The terrifying bellow was the first noise that the guardian had heard beyond her own breathing and voice in over three months, and the sound seemed to knock her off her feet. She could quite clearly see the blank mask rushing towards her, with the small circle of frost forming between the circular holes for eyes. The frost reminded her of an intricate lace doily she remembered from somewhere...

Blackness.

There were no trees to break up the monotony of the landscape, and no birds that might have sung in their branches to break the silence. The only noise was the wind whipping through the long brown grass. Suddenly, a strange commotion broke out across the moors, disturbing the deathly silence. A harsh, wheezing groaning sound began to shriek louder and louder in time with a faint blinking blue light. The blue glow sharpened itself into a tall battered booth which faded, reappeared and was finally solid. The police telephone box was silhouetted against the sunset, looking like it had always been there.

Silence fell, while raucous rattle of noises echoed down the sloping passageway and into the interior of the planet. By the time the noise penetrated the frost-rimmed depths, it was barely a whisper and ignored by the two moving shapes who were there to hear it. As powdered ice crunched beneath their feet, they removed a third figure from the sepulchre they had been working at. The lifeless newcomer was carried down to the end of the corridor, towards the living quarters.

Moments later, the two silent figures marched back along the passage to the empty tomb. Without exchanging a word, one of the silver shapes clambered into the empty unit, lying backwards so its impassive mask stared out into the corridor. The remaining creature was not idle – a new membrane wall was rolled out to cover the entrance to the unit, and in moments was bolted in place. There was now only the lack of hoarfrost on the tomb to differentiate it from the others, and the cold air would soon fix that.

Satisfied all was in place, the last silver figure turned and marched off towards the living quarters, leaving no evidence that anyone had ever been there.

The police box in the reeds was not a police box at all, which was why it could contain an impossible large control room, a pristine white chamber around a hexagonal central control desk. Standing over the blinking, humming console stood a medium-sized man with long auburn hair in a shabby tuxedo that didn't quite fit him, with a red velvet cape draped around his shoulders.

The Doctor, that mysterious traveler in time and space, was studying the instrument displays as his TARDIS emerged from the space/time vortex to a random point in the universe. The Doctor hadn't programmed the TARDIS to go to a specific destination when he had left Dublin and the 1990s behind him. But now he was struck by a sudden feeling that something was missing.

Ah. Lucie Miller. She should have been beside him at the console, as usual grumbling about their unexpected arrival in a strange destination and comparing what sights they were about to see to her own culture of 21st Century Earth. But she was gone now, like Charley before her, and Samson and Gemma before her. No, the Doctor decided, it was time for a change of lifestyle. He was halfway through his second millennium, and old enough to look after himself without having to worry about his companions getting into trouble and needing rescuing. This was going to be a new start. Even if he was feeling a little lonely.

The Time Lord peered at the scanner screen, displaying reveal a windy, cold-looking patch of countryside, that could have been any number of planets at any number of times. The only way to narrow his new surroundings down was to investigate, so he strolled down the metal ramp to the battered police box doors, and through them out into the chilly air.

Yes, no pestering, weak-angled companions to hamper him could only be a good thing. He could cope quite well without them. Better probably, the Time Lord thought indignantly, totally unaware he was about to become involved in a catastrophe that would come very close to costing him his life...