The Doctor finally abandoned the last of his iron self-control as the doors of the elderly TARDIS squeaked shut behind them, and as his friend looked on in frank astonishment, he danced around the dingy grey console, running his hands over the instrument panels as if to be sure they were real.
"Oh, you're beautiful, aren't you?" he murmured, tracing his fingers across the spatial overlap switches. "You're the most beautiful thing I've ever known."
"I'm sharing a TARDIS with a madman," said the Master, beneath his breath, but he needn't have bothered lowering his voice; the Doctor's mind was very much otherwise engaged. He stood in the middle of the floor and spread his arms wide.
"Have you ever seen anything like this?" he said, covered in joy.
The Master, meanwhile, had been studying the room through far more cynical eyes. He'd said that the thing belonged in a museum, but now, confronted with the shabby interior, filthy console and dented wall panels, he mentally amended his initial observation and concluded that it belonged on a junk-heap instead.
"It's poky," he said at last, wrinkling his nose in displeasure. "Really, I'll be amazed if this hideous contraption still works. I thought these models had been decommissioned decades ago. Do you suppose the Academy keeps them around specifically to punish tardy students?" he asked, with the merest ghost of a wry smile. "Meanwhile, we need to hear Borusa's instructions, in case you'd forgotten why we're here?"
"Sorry, yes," said the Doctor, looking suddenly contrite although no less impish, and his eyes were still alight with excitement. Turning, he saw a white-painted hat stand just inside the door, which caused him a moment's puzzlement, since it hadn't been there ten seconds before. Then he merely shrugged, unhooked his cloak and hung it up neatly. The Master, meanwhile, sighed wearily and slapped at a switch on the console, activating the external viewscreen.
The screen brightened at once and then displayed the image of Borusa's face, his expression still set in the faintest disdain as he spoke to his students in their respective TARDISes. The Master turned and listened attentively, while the Doctor laid his hands on the console and tried his best to concentrate on their tutor's words in spite of the myriad temptations at his fingertips.
"Your task today is perfectly simple," said Borusa. "You will each make a linear non-spatial jump two minutes into the future. Two minutes precisely. You are my students, and as such I do not expect you to miss this mark by so much as one half-second."
The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Could he possibly be any more dramatic?" he asked the air. The Master shushed him irritably as Borusa went on speaking.
"I have done my best to educate you on the risks involved in travel through the Time Vortex, and if you have been paying the slightest attention to me, then you will not be careless and no problems should arise. However," he added, his expression hardening even further, "in the event of your going astray, your TARDIS will be brought back immediately. Please attend to the console. I shall now conduct a test of your crafts' recall circuits."
"The what?" asked the Doctor, frowning, hunting around on the panel in front of him and then raising an eyebrow at his friend. "I'd appreciate a little help. Do you know what the recall circuit looks like?"
"Not in a Type 40, no," said the Master, absently, conducting his own helpless search of the panels on the far side of the console.
"All right," said the Doctor, through a deep sigh. "I'll watch this side, and you watch that one. Let me know if anything flashes, or beeps, or explodes." The Master jerked his head up in horror, and the Doctor smirked. "I'm joking! Goodness. Anything happening?"
"Nothing," said the Master, grimly. "Perhaps we should ask?"
"And look like idiots in front of the class?" said the Doctor. "No, thank you. We've already been humiliated once. It's too late, anyway," he added, nodding at the screen as Borusa raised his hand to signal that they should begin the test. "Are you ready?"
"With you at the helm? Oh, yes, I'm swimming in confidence," said the Master, his lip curled, but then Borusa waved them off with a dismissive flick of his wrist. The Doctor – who had been poised at the console like a concert pianist wreathed in breathless hush – tossed his head, dropped his hands to the dematerialisation controls and flipped back the switches one by one with a series of decisive clicks. As the central column began to rise and fall and the old machine's engines set up a slightly disconcerting wheeze and groan, he poked at the adjacent keyboard, entering the temporal coordinates as he hummed a happy, random little tune of his own devising.
"Are you sure you have the right settings?" asked the Master nervously, circling the console to stand behind his shoulder, trying to peer at the screen.
"Quite sure, thank you," said the Doctor evenly, without raising his gaze from his task. "Do you want to do this instead?"
"I'm supposed to be assisting," said his friend, meaningfully, "but if you feel you have everything under control, I shall leave you to it. That way I can deny all responsibility to Borusa when it goes wrong and we land upside-down halfway up the side of Mount Perdition."
"You're very amusing."
"I try my best."
"You have depressingly little faith in me," the Doctor chided, making a minor adjustment with a smug little twist in his expression. "What can possibly go wrong?"
It was only later that the Doctor would remember those words with painful, pinpoint clarity. For the time being, however, his attention was distracted by the sudden lurch that the TARDIS took. He cursed and clutched at the edge of the console as the machine swayed and rolled, pitching violently to one side. He heard the Master let out a curiously girlish yelp that would have been amusing under any other circumstances, but just as he was turning around to check on his friend's welfare, the TARDIS dropped again, this time raising a terrifying scream from the engines and rattling the Doctor's skull as he lost his balance and landed on the floor in an inelegant heap.
"Dratted thing," he said, finding that he was more annoyed than frightened, even as the TARDIS veered once more and sent him sliding across the floor on his back to fetch up against the wall. He took the brunt of the impact on the back of his neck, and as he rolled over and tried to blink his vision back into some semblance of focus, he saw the Master slumped against the door, his eyes closed and his face unsettlingly pale. The Doctor struggled up onto his hands and knees, crawled across the shaking, rolling floor to his unconscious friend and grabbed his shoulder, trying to rouse him.
As he did so, however, the console room was suddenly filled with a rhythmic, sonorous booming that set his teeth on edge and made his bones ache. The Cloister Bell, he assumed, although he'd never heard one before. This intrusive sound galvanized him, and as the TARDIS soared to the crest of another wave in the Vortex he took advantage of the momentary weightlessness, springing to his feet and making a headlong dive for the console. Grabbing for it with both hands, seizing the flight controls, he grinned triumphantly for a moment...and then froze.
"I don't know what to do," he whispered, his eyes darting over the instruments.
Short of any better-informed action, the Doctor steeled himself and flipped half a dozen levers and switches at random, as a result of which two things happened in rapid succession. First, the deafening peals of the Cloister Bell ceased at once, and he sighed with relief.
No sooner had he started to relax, however, than the lights in the console room failed, plunging the room into perfect darkness as the TARDIS turned on her roof and spun out of control.
The Doctor returned to consciousness a fraction at a time, and when he finally opened his eyes, the light was so bright that he shut them again at once with a plaintive whimper. It wasn't until he sat up that his already aching head came into sharp and abrupt contact with yet another hard surface, and he realised he was lying underneath the console.
He rubbed at the top of his head, his face screwed up in pain, and only then did he think to look around for the Master. He turned his head gingerly, wincing at every twinge in his sorely abused neck, and spotted him on the far side of the room, still out cold. The Doctor scooted across the floor and patted his friend's cool cheek gently but firmly.
"Come on, wake up," he said, forcing a note of joviality into his voice. "Your father's going to thrash me from here to Segonax as it is, so please don't die as well."
No response. Trying not to panic, he first laid his ear on the Master's chest, checking first one heartbeat and then the other; they were faint, but seemed steady enough, although the boy's breathing was uneven and rattled in his throat. Bereft of any further first aid ideas, the Doctor slumped into the corner and ran distracted fingers through his hair, exhaling harshly.
"Oh, Koschei. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."
"I told you not to call me that," mumbled the Master, and followed this with a protracted groan. The Doctor, twanging with sudden relief, assisted him in sitting up and then propped him carefully against the wall, where he blinked several times before glancing around at the room.
"What happened?" he asked, his voice still a little unsteady.
"I don't know," the Doctor admitted.
"How long was I unconscious?"
"I'm not sure."
"Where are we?"
"I have no idea."
"Well, thank you for that wonderfully illuminating conversation," said the Master, as he regained his normal cadence and, with it, his accustomed world-weary sarcasm. "Hadn't we better find out? Assuming, that is, that opening the door and looking out of it isn't beyond you at this point."
The Doctor considered remonstrating, but it was clear that his friend was confused, worried and in a not inconsiderable amount of pain, so he decided to be charitable and merely patted the Master's shoulder before clambering to his feet, swaying slightly. Once the disorientating head rush cleared and he regained his equilibrium, he tugged at a lever on the console and turned as the inner doors swung open.
He hesitated at the outer doors, however, and as he reached for the latch, his hand began to tremble. There could be anything out there. The vacuum of space. The heart of a neutron star. A planet covered in lava or boiling acid. Ravenous birds with three heads and claws of fire. He'd been born on Gallifrey and raised in the Citadel since he was a small boy, and they were all he'd ever known. It might have been a monotonous life, but it was also safe and predictable. Now, a malfunctioning TARDIS had torn him away from his roots and family and dumped him...where?
He drew a breath so deep it made his lungs ache, and then opened the door.
"Oh..."