BUFFY the VAMPIRE SLAYER
and the
Alien Tripods from Outer Space
The Deadly Chronophase / 003
"An artificial gravity-restricted black hole singularity drive. Mmm," the Doctor squinted enthusiastically at the wall screens of the Tripod's command centre. "That's how they're able to time travel. I was tracking a temporal infraction in the TARDIS when I arrived here…" He looked at the closest person for a reaction. It was Willow.
She stared back vacantly. What had he said? Something about black holes and temporal contractions? He was still looking.
"…Cool," she said finally.
"So what's this?" Buffy called from across the room.
They gathered around a small glass box that was built into an alcove in the wall. Pipes and wiring connected out through the wall and into the box where they seemed to be plumbed into… a greeny-brown blob of goop.
It looked like a wobbly jelly.
The Doctor put his stethoscope to the glass and gave it a listen.
Buffy eyed the medical implement and wondered why on earth he'd had it in his jacket. What else was he carrying in that blue suit?
"It's a lifeform." He looked at them all in shock. "These are the Nomads. And these cables and tubes going in… this creature's piloting the Tripod!"
Buffy blinked and looked again at the Jell-O lump. "These are the aliens from outer space?"
"It's a blob," said Xander.
"Looks like Play-Doh," said Will.
Xander reconsidered. "Nah, it's the snotty stuff you throw at the wall. Y'know; it sticks n' then dribbles down to the floor. What was that stuff?"
Buffy prodded at the glass with Mr Pointy. "Earth's being invaded by Flubber."
"You can't stake jelly," the Doctor told her. "At least …I don't think so." He began examining the control centre with all the pipes and wires patched in. It was a slap-dash set-up. "That alien globule there's tied into all the major systems taking on the function of the main computer core," he concluded.
"And what does that mean?" asked the Slayer.
"It means… that's the brain and the Tripod is the body." He looked the room over more rigorously. "But this isn't their technology. Look – seats and cup holders. This Tripod was designed for a Humanoid crew. Mmm…" He wiped debris away from a control screen at a seated work area in the centre of the room. "If the Nomad's hooked into the controls like a brain… then maybe…" He sat down and ran his sonic twinkler across the controls. "Yes!"
Buffy peered over his shoulder. "What are you doing?"
"Reading its mind."
The screen filled up suddenly with alien symbols and writing. Buffy couldn't make sense of it.
"Well, I was half right," he explained. "More than half, actually. They have no home world. It was…ravaged…by the Chronophase virus! …And died billions of years before its time. …Oh, my." He read on quietly, then continued; "These are the last survivors, and up there in orbit, wandering the universe through time and space feeding off other worlds. They really are nomads."
"What's a Chronophase virus?" Willow asked.
"Time, basically," the Doctor sat back in his chair and tucked his screwdriver away. "The great temporal sickness my people came to master. The Doctor and the sickness," he mused.
"I'm still not gettin' the entire gist," said Xander.
"Why do you think life on Earth became mortal?" the Doctor asked like a patronising schoolteacher. "Nearly every galaxy in the universe has the first generation of the Chronophase virus. It's the thing that ages you, and the world, and the sun. But these aliens, they had to go messing around with it, splicing it and cross-breeding it with other viral strains." He pointed to the computer screen. "It got loose and mutated into a super-ageing strain – the second generation. Destroyed almost all of their kind. The ones that remained are carriers, desperately seeking a cure so they can finally settle a new homeworld." He noticed new information appearing on the screen. "Their attempts to alter the virus – to reverse its effect by creating an anti-virus in fact created its opposite – third generation reverse-evolutionary Chronophase!" He pushed his hair back and let out a whistle.
Xander tried to shake off the confusion. "Uh?"
"They found a way to reverse it."
"That's good, then," noted Buffy.
"No, I mean reverse it. Ageing. Backwards."
"Anti-ageing?" sighed an amazed Willow.
Buffy smiled. "Do they do a cream?"
"Believe me, you don't want any of this." The Doctor went back to the computer. "Their species can't reproduce anymore. Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of their offspring would die immediately from it and the remaining point-one percent will be carriers."
Buffy went back to the glass box and bent down for a second look. "So who are these Nomads?"
"They have no name. Not even a language in any conventional sense. They didn't even travel space before the virus. A visiting race landed on their dead world and these carriers escaped. The virus killed the visitor aliens off."
He shot up and walked around, examining a small medical bay. "They stole these Tripods from the cold dead hands of another species." Among the medical equipment he found a collection of syringes and test tubes filled with liquid.
"So," Willow considered, "we're in a Tripod that belonged to a race of aliens who died because of a virus?"
"Basically, yeah."
"And we're not going to die from the virus because…?"
"Oh," he waved his screwdriver about. "These rooms and corridors were flushed clean a long time ago. It's the Nomad who's infected and he's locked away in his box over there." His hand came down and the sonic wave from his screwdriver reacted with one of the glass syringes. It shattered and sent its contents splashing into the Doctor's face.
"Ups." He rubbed the watery substance from his cheek.
Buffy stepped toward him.
"Stay back!" He changed the setting of his driver and scanned the syringes. "Oh, that's not good."
"What isn't?"
"It looks like, before the Visitors died out, they tried to create a cure themselves."
"Did it work?" asked Will.
"No… no. They tried. It didn't work for them. But some of these syringes contain the virus. Chronophase. Third generation." He scanned himself. "My God, I've been inflicted."
Buffy frowned. "Inflicted?"
"You mean infected," said Will.
"I'm in the stirst fage."
Xander looked at his bemused friends but they didn't understand any more than him. "The what now?"
"The stirst fage of the virus."
"You mean the first stage?" offered Will.
The crazy Doctor scowled back at her. "That's what I shed. Stirst fage – loss of vocal control. Quick – pass me that hypodeemic nurdle."
The Slayer was lost.
He feigned stabbing himself in the arm with a needle and depressing a plunger.
The syringes! He was pointing to a green one.
He rolled up his sleeve.
Buffy threw him the loaded needle and he promptly injected himself in the arm.
He quickly calmed down and composed himself. After scanning himself again he relaxed. "That was close. The vaccine will inevitably work on some species – not many – but mine, for example. That was lucky. Good old Gallifreyan genetics!"
"Your species?" questioned Buffy. "You're an alien too?"
"Oh, yeah. Didn't I mention it? Let's prey I applied the antidote before I infected any of you. On a human the virus would be foetal in seconds."
"You mean fatal," corrected Willow.
"No, I mean foetal," he insisted. "It's a mutated reverse-evolutionary strain. It worked much slower on me because I'm an old man, I know I don't look it, but – AH!"
The girls turned.
Buffy gasped. "Xander's a baby!"
"AH!" screeched Willow.
Sure enough, where Xander had been sitting on the console, was now a year-old infant among a pile of clothes. It started to cry.
The Doctor had to think fast. "Quick! Grab the baby!" He ran for the door with his screwdriver primed.
Buffy piled Xander's clothes around him and picked up the screaming baby bundle, and Willow grabbed the cow.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer ran through the twisting corridors behind the Doctor with a shrinking wailing baby Xander in her arms. She had no idea what the hell was going on.
She called out ahead; "Where are we going?"
"Engine room!" came his reply.
They reached a junction in the passageway and the Dalek was there, rolling up the aisle toward them. It took aim as they appeared.
"Not that way!" The Doctor turned sharply and headed down a side corridor. "This way. This way."
Buffy followed on his heals and Willow ducked by as a ray beam zapped over her head.
The extermination ray vanished up the corridor harmlessly and the cow trotted by after them.
They ran on behind the mad alien stranger.
"Engine room?" repeated Buffy. "Xander needs a doctor not a mechanic!"
They arrived in a dirty little round room at the base of the dome.
"You're forgetting, …I am a doctor," he answered her. "Not just any doctor–"
"Yeah, I know, the Doctor." She bounced the crying baby in her arms as Willow checked on his condition.
Daisy arrived with a huff of exertion.
"Close the door," he said, tossing Willow his sonic screwdriver. "Lock it tight. Point and shoot." He turned his attention to the machinery of the engine room.
"How are you gonna save him?" appealed Buffy. It wasn't looking good. "He's getting smaller…and bluer."
"I'm going to use the engine's singularity drive to restart Xander's timescale! Simple!" He hoped.
"Wait…" she puzzled, "If the Visitors and the Nomads couldn't do it then how can you?"
He didn't answer. The truth of it was; he wasn't really sure about it himself. But the Doctor was a master of time! If anyone could do it...
"Screwdriver!"
Willow returned from the locked hatch and threw it back to him.
He passed its blue light over a set of controls and slapped a large round button.
Something whirred to life and a huge cylinder at the heart of the room raised up into the ceiling with a gust of air and revealed an astonishing sight.
In the centre of the engine room, drawing in air and dust and rust, was a ball-sized sphere of empty blackness. A dark void with a glowing halo where the light that was drawn in was compacted around the outer edge before being pulled into nothingness.
"An artificial black hole singularity," stated the Doctor.
Willow reflexively moved away from it. "A black hole? …Why aren't we being sucked in?"
"It's gravity-restricted," he answered flatly. "Give me the Xander-baby."
From the look of the squealing newborn there wasn't much time to argue and Buffy handed him over.
The Doctor held the wriggling bundle out and reached into the singularity.
"Whoa!" yelled Willow. "What the hell are you doing? Nothing can escape a black hole!"
He huffed impatiently. "What part of gravity-restricted don't you understand? His mass is too great to be pulled in. He'll just be fired around its event horizon at half a senton shy of the speed of light – right on the brink of infinity – where I can reverse the singularity's gravitational poles and invert his infected chronomatrix back to before the infection." He paused. "Okay?"
They nodded.
"Good." He set back to work. Then stopped. "Are you gonna ask me questions the whole way through?"
Will shook her head.
"Good." He released Xander into the halo of light and he vanished in a whoosh as he shot around the edge of the void faster than any of them could see.
Buffy and Will looked on in complete befuddlement as he hammered controls and waved his twinkler around.
With one last effort of miracle-working, the Time Lord tugged on the release lever and stepped back. A moment later came the flash. Then out fired Xander, the baby, right across the room and into his arms.
With a whirr and clunk, the cylinder shield came down and the black hole was hidden once more.
The girls ran to the Doctor and he pulled back Xander's shirt to reveal what was beneath. "There he is," the Time Lord cooed. "All kick-started and ready to age."
The baby was no longer crying. He was looking up in wonder at the Doc and reaching his uncontrollable little arms out.
"Who's a good little Xander, then?" He went on in daddy talk. "Who is? You are. Yes. Yes."
"He's not dying?" Will clarified.
The Time Lord smiled. "Actually he wasn't dying before. In fact he was this close to never being born. But that's all right, because now he's dying. Just like we all are. He'll grow up, get old, and die. Just like he's meant to. Ageing in the right direction once again." He gave Xander to Willow and approached the controls along the walls. "So, now I have to get you all home so I can deal with this Nomad invasion."
"I'm not going anywhere," stated Buffy. "Will – take Xander back to his place and keep him safe. I'm staying."
The Doctor looked at her severely. "It could be dangerous."
"I'm the Slayer. And I'm human. If it's anyone's job to defend the human race, it's mine."
"From aliens?"
"Well… from anything, I guess."
"Um…" Will waved her child-free hand their way. "How do I explain to Anya that her fiancé's a baby?" She gave little Xander a woeful glance. "Hey… I think he got bigger."
"It's the reverse effect of removing the virus," explained the Doctor. "He'll continue to grow up at an accelerated rate. But he'll stop ageing once he catches up with now," he assured her. "Probably."
She looked up. "Probably?"
"I have to find their particle scrambler and beam you back," he mumbled, searching around the engine room.
"Beam?" asked Buffy, following him. "Like in the show Star Trek?"
"As a matter of fact, funnily enough, Star Trek is real. Or it will be. Roddenberry was a Focused Prophet – a seer of one future aspect."
"Get out."
"No, it's true. He was pretty spot-on as well. Picard isn't bald, though. Here!" He found the controls that opened a narrow door to reveal a small dish on the floor. He guided Willow inside and onto the dish.
"Buffy," he said, turning. "Last chance to leave."
She folded her arms. "So, leave."
He grinned and threw a switch.
Will began to ask; "Why am I standing on a di–?" before she could finish, the dish exploded with orange light and zapped her away.
Buffy gasped.
"She's fine," he dismissed casually. "She's back in town… somewhere… around."
He ran to the door with his stethoscope.
"How's the coast?"
"Unclear," he said, shifting the diaphragm around against the hatch. "No, no…that's pretty clear. Clearly blocked." He gave up with the door. "Dalek's on guard." He turned around and almost tripped over the cow. "Lot of use you were, old lazy Daisy."
Buffy practically collapsed into a seat at one of the computers and tried to get her bearings, which, with everything, were pretty scattered. She looked at the dish in the cupboard. "Can we beam back up to the control room?"
He shook his head. "We can only beam outside the Tripod from here. If we try re-integrating somewhere else inside other than on the re-scrambler dish, the metal shell of the dome will create an interference wave and melt us both like candle wax before we're through."
"Oh." Buffy swivelled about in her seat. "So we're stuck in here."
The Doctor put his arm around Daisy's neck. "Don't have a cow. At least we've got fresh milk on tap."
Minutes passed in the scruffy old engine room and the Doctor was sat on the floor against the central cylinder. His great and boundless mind was busy working on plan formage as the sound of the grinding furnace went on above them. With every second that went by more of the Earth was being eaten up and pulverised.
"The first thing we need to do," he muttered to himself, "is get past that Dalek and stop the Nomad attack on Earth before they strip it bare. The atmosphere will be the last thing to go and then… it's curtains for the human race. Then we need to find a way to talk to them."
"The point of that being?" asked the Slayer.
"They're just trying to survive," he reasoned. "Maybe there's a way we can help them. They have a temporal disease and it is my field, after all."
"Can't you do the same thing you did for Xander?"
"Xander had the reverse strain. It was new to him, fresh. The Nomads carry the fast forward ageing strain and they've lived with it a long time. I kick-started Xander ageing in the right direction. But…the Nomads already are in the right direction."
Buffy Summers looked long and hard into his big brown eyes. So gentle, so fierce, so old and so youthful. And wise. Too wise. She wondered…
"What exactly are you a doctor of?"
He sighed and rolled his head back. "Oh, anything really."
"You said you were a Lord, too. Of what?"
"Time. I'm a Time Lord."
"Really?" He looked serious. "Neat." Then she realised she'd lost track. "That reminds me," she said. "What time is it?"
The Doctor shrugged. "Forgot my watch."
Buffy scratched at her head. She couldn't figure this strange alien man out. So alien, yet so human. Wise, yet silly. A genius clown.
"What do you do?" she asked at last.
"I travel and stuff."
"Alone?"
"Yes. Well, no. Well, …mostly. These days."
"But not always?"
"No, not always," he replied with a tinge of sadness. "I've had companions. Friends."
"No one special?"
"Oh, they're all special. But one… yes… there was someone extra-specially special." He still looked sad when he smiled at the memory of her. "Rose Tyler… she was… Anyway…"
She thought of Dawn. Her precious, innocent sister. "You lost her."
From the look on his face she was right.
"I'll see her again," he said. "One last time."
"How can you know that?"
"I know because I've seen it happen from another angle. It's a Time Lord thing. Yeah, I'll see her again. I can take comfort in that…"
She didn't get it but it didn't seem right to ask for an explanation. Buffy decided to let the Rose thing lie.
"You think you'll be able to cure them? The Nomads?"
He mulled it over. "Honestly… I've no idea. We're not talking about any old virus here. We're talking about an infection of time. Something that's built into the very fabric of the physical universe."
Something suddenly just occurred to Buffy. "What about a vampire virus? Can you cure that?" she looked to him desperately; pleadingly. "It's Dawn, my sister, she–"
"You didn't cure her already?" he looked up, puzzled, then picked himself off the floor. He looked seriously uneasy.
This worried her. "No… she disappeared. I've heard she was taken by someone calling themselves 'Mister Blood', but I haven't been able to find out who that is."
The Doctor knew. "Buffy, when I said I never heard of our little adventure together I was worried I would alter your path… but it looks like it diverted before I even got here."
"What do you mean?"
He considered keeping his trap shut on the matter of the future but, with things already on the change, the little voice inside that had been his eighth incarnation won through. "After the 'You Only Die Twice' chapter of your chronicles, I read that you located Blade and with his help you put Dawn through a long and agonising viral detox."
"What?" She couldn't believe what she was hearing. "She was cured? I did it? I mean, it can be done?"
She sounded hopeful. It made it harder for him to tell her the facts. "Buffy, It took weeks. For your sister it was like she'd been raped by a monster then put through torture by you. She… she never recovered. It… she… It didn't end well."
Buffy looked frightened now. "What? Tell me what happened."
The Doctor was afraid he'd gone too far to be able to stop now. "She was scarred, Buffy. She couldn't reintegrate. She… hurt herself. It went on in the background of a number of your stories until…"
She waited but he didn't go on. Her eyes began to glaze over. "Until what?"
He knew he was saying too much. "Until…finally… she died, Buffy."
Her eyes welled up. "…How?"
"Suicide." There. He'd gone and done it. He tried to bring some light to the news; "If you haven't cured her as I read then, honestly, perhaps it's for the better. You went through hell with her, Buffy. You couldn't forgive yourself for putting her through the detox and driving her into a self-harming depression. The situation eventually lost you your position with the Watchers' Council. Your life ended with hers. At one point you even told Giles you wished you'd left her as a vampire and ended her life there and then. I know it's harsh now but, somehow, you may have been saved that torment. But if Dawn escaped and is now running free as a vampire… it means everything's changed. It means someone, not me and not these aliens, has altered the timeline."
She looked at him intensely, with sadness, shock and especially surprise. "Who?"
"I don't know." He really didn't, but… "Even if I did, I couldn't tell you. I've said far too much as it is. I'll say no more of it so don't ask." With that he immediately went tight-lipped.
There was so much more she wanted to know. "But-"
"Ah!"
Silence fell in the engine room. It managed to last almost 30 seconds before;
"I'm hungry," moaned the Slayer.
"Here." The Doctor reached into his jacket pocket and threw her something. "Have a banana."
"You just happen to have a banana in your pocket?" She peeled the skin back and tucked in.
"I've always got a banana in my pocket. It's my emergency banana."
Buffy shook her head. He was such a clown.
By the time she'd polished off the banana, the Doc was back running his stethoscope over the main hatch.
"How can time be an infection?" Buffy suddenly asked.
"Well…" he tried to find the best way of explaining. "Space and time are two separate quantifiable states, and then there's spacetime – that's the function of time in its relation to space. Through this, time infects all space. And like any good disease, time is fatal. It pushes everything – people, planets, stars, solar systems, entire galaxies – the universe itself… towards death. Because of time, there will be an end to all things." It dawned on him just how depressing that sounded. "But not for a good long while, so chin up, 'ay."
Buffy thought about that for a moment then had to ask what was, to her, the obvious question.
"So… if time's like a disease and it infects physical space …then why can't you change space? Boost its immune system or something. Like regular doctors do with patients using medication. Like you did upstairs. You know – so it can fight those bad strains of time like the one the Nomads have. Or something."
"To manipulate space…?" The Doctor stepped away from the door in thought, shaking his head. "I mean, its very nature…? I'm a Time Lord, not a Space Lord."
Buffy saw the obvious point again. "So who is a Space Lord?"
The Doctor stared right at her with his brow furrowed heavily. Then his eyebrows shot up. "Oh." He flapped about the room. "Oh. Now, there's a thought…" Then he stopped with his hands out to her. "Brilliant. Buffy Summers, you're flippin' brilliant."
"I am? I mean; sure I am."
He shot around the room, picking things up, shaking them at his ear, putting them down. "We need to stop this attack now."
She went after him. "Why are the Nomads even here? Why Earth? Why now?"
"Because Earth in this century is weak. Easy prey." He found a rusty old tin cup.
Buffy stopped dead. "Earth's weak?"
"That's right."
She moved away from him slowly, lost in thought.
The Doctor looked up from his new cup to see her drag her mobile phone out. "A cell phone?" he said indignantly. Then realised; "A cell phone!" Then realised; "What're you gonna do with that?"
She dialled. "Call back-up. When you need to talk to the earth… you ask a witch." She put the phone to her ear and waited. "A Wiccan's power comes from nature. I figure… If we have to answer when nature calls… maybe it's time for nature to pick up."
"RAAAAAaaaaar!"
Willow struggled to piece together the shards of Anya's vase, even with a second identical one over on one of the end tables to use as a guide, because of the toddler that was tearing around the apartment screaming, hollering and bashing into everything in sight.
Anya was purple-faced and on the verge of clawing out her own hair. "Please make him stop! He won't listen to me!" she beseeched.
Will thought she'd matched two edges and picked up the Krazy Glue. "Try finding something to entertain him. He needs a distraction. What usually gets his attention?"
"VRUUUuuuum!"
Little Xander bashed into her as he raced around with his baseball mitt. "I think he's a little young for that," considered Anya.
Will stopped and screwed her face up.
"I'd probably get arrested," she went on. She wondered how long it would be before he reached the age of consent. "How long did that crazy surgeon say this ageing would take?"
"I don't know. He–"
Xander suddenly hit the end table as he flew by and the other vase toppled.
Anya made a noise only dogs could hear.
Willow dropped the glue, put up her hand and held the ornament suspended in mid-fall.
Anya held her head together in relief.
Will let out a sigh herself. That had been close.
Then Xander's baseball landed against her ear and the vase smashed into the carpet.
Willow gripped her ringing, pounding ear hole while Anya screamed and chased the little tyrant.
The witch couldn't help herself. When Xander came running to get his ball, she gave him a pint-sized blast of energy that knocked him three feet back and into the floor.
As soon as she did it, she cringed with regret. She hoped the CPS didn't hear about it.
"Right!" Anya yelled down at him with a wagging finger. "You are being very naughty, Alexander LaVelle Harris. Now go sit in the corner and stop destroying our home!"
"No!" he snapped back from the carpet.
"Do as you're told, little man!" She reached for him.
"No!" He slapped her hand away and scrambled up, running for the bedroom.
Anya went after him. She'd gone way over the boiling point.
"Hey," called Will. "Go easy on him a little. It's not his fault he–" Her phone rang. Willow answered the call. It was Buffy.
"You made it back safely?" said Buffy. "Thank God. Xander…?"
The witch rolled her eyes. "Don't' ask. He's a terror. I'm just glad I didn't know him when he was like this."
"How old is he now?"
"I'd guess…about three. …Is Daisy okay?"
Buffy paused. "Yes, Will, the cow's fine."
Will listened as the Slayer put it to her. She was asking for some earth-shattering witchy magic. Wanted to know if she could use her Wiccan link with nature to put the aliens off Earth's natural resources. "The Doctor says the Earth's weak," Buffy explained. "We need her to fight back."
Willow circled the room; suddenly feeling quite pressured. "I don't know, Buffy. Sounds… big bananas. I've been focusing on the cold magicks. Kinda neglected the natural elements…"
"We're in your hands."
Will didn't like the sound of that. Her hands were burned and wrapped in dirty socks. Yet, she found herself saying; "I'll see what I can do."
A minute later, Willow left Anya babysitting her young demon fiancé, who was now holding onto Anya's leg and kicking her in the shin, and left for her apartment. As she looked back at the sight of them on the steps – Anya looking terrified and Xander with his mop of dark hair – she couldn't help but think of The Omen.
"What's she got planned?" asked the Doctor, still rummaging through the room.
"Hopefully, something."
"Good. Good. Something's good." He found a pair of three-fingered gloves.
"And now what are you doing?"
"Going back to the command centre. There's work to be done."
"But that big salt n' pepper shaker's still out there, isn't it?"
"Yep, but I've realised something," he said, placing the cup on the floor under the cow. "That big old rusty can out there is just that – a big can. See, a Dalek shouldn't be here working security. And the thing about Daleks is… they never stop banging on. It's all 'exterminate this' and 'obey that' with them." He put on the gloves and knelt by a chilled-out Daisy. "What I suspect is… it's nothing more than a shell – just the armour – remotely operated by the Tripod's defence system. Just another bit of flotsam the Nomads picked up on their travels." The Doctor held the cup in one hand and grabbed a cow nipple in the other. "Now I'm going to test that theory and, I'm sorry Daisy cow, but you're probably not going to make it to market."
The door opened.
The Dalek entered.
Daisy chewed her grass passively.
The extermination ray went off and the cow turned skeletal for a moment, gave one last moo, and collapsed dead.
The Dalek's eyestalk began to rotate. Another ten degrees and it would find a human female lurking beside the entrance hatch. That is, if it wasn't for the banana skin that landed on it, blocking its vision. It was all the confirmation the Time Lord needed. It wasn't shielded. And any true Dalek in the universe would be screaming 'My vision is impaired' about now.
The Dalek tried to shake off Buffy's banana skin, but the Doctor appeared from the other side of the door with the cup and his screwdriver. As quick as a flash, he sonicked a panel free on the machine's domed head and poured a cupful of fresh milk down the hole.
The Dalek's head sparked.
Buffy saw the Doctor leap out of the way and she took a dive as the salt shaker's head exploded. The Dalek was dust.
"I was right," the Doc said, jumping up. "Just a shell. No real Dalek defences. We must have tripped the automated intruder alarm when we left the vacuum deck."
"You killed Will's cow."
He turned around in surprise. Buffy was standing over the ex-moo. "Nooo… the Dalek drone did that."
"With a little help from you."
"You're right, your right." He put his hands up. "I should have put you out there instead. Then the cow could have gone back to fulfill its destiny as burger meat instead of being Daisy – the brave cow that saved the Earth." He was grinning again.
Now she couldn't help but smile at the jolly mad alien. Though, she wasn't quite sure what she was going to tell Willow.
On the very edge of town, a single giant Tripod whirred and clanked and billowed great plumes of smoke as it chugged along, devouring the Earth; sucking up the woodlands into its grinding furnace and spitting out fumes of smoggy exhaust in its wake.
A hundred feet off its right flank, a white robed angel drifted through the trees.
Willow Rosenberg stepped barefoot through Miller's Woods, each footfall sinking into soil and leaves, connecting her with nature, each showing her respect for the Wiccan principles and the sacred elements of the natural world.
She stopped her foot half an inch over a broken bottle of beer. Willow sighed. Damn drunks. She side-stepped the shattered glass and headed towards the sound of destruction where the high bronze dome rolled ahead. The cape of her white hooded ritual cloak trailed along the forest floor. They were the ritual robes of Goddess worship, a further sign of respect for the originator of her power source. Her robe front bore the triple moon symbol of the Wiccan Mother Goddess – a full moon between opposing crescent moons, and her rippling cloak with large pentacle – the symbol of the five elements of Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Aether, or Spirit.
The Tripod was moving closer to town.
Willow cast her arms out and stepped forward. "Mother Goddess, conduct me through Gaia to Druantia's throne; the power over the forests of the Earth. With my wounds, gained in defending these lands, I give my blood to thee."
She knelt and reached her bare damaged hands under the soil. She hoped her burns wouldn't get infected.
"With my own Aether I call thee forth; the element of Earth. See as I have seen. See thy weakness at the hands of the destroyers… and turn their desires against them!"
She waited for it… Any second now…
Nothing happened.
She was positive she'd made the right request. There was one other thing she could try. "…Please…"
Still nothing.
Oh, come on, she thought. "Gimme a break, huh."
She jumped up suddenly as the ground rumbled beneath her. She raised her soiled hands to the skies.
"I call on the realm of the sky, land and sea;
The realm of the threefold rune.
The Maid, the Mother and the Crone;
Thy waxing, full, and waning moon."
The forest floor quaked and began to crack.
"I call on thee, Earth element of the five-point star.
Mother Goddess, great Gaia, Druantia!"
Willow bent her head to the soil and whispered to the Earth.
"Now hear this faithful Wicca's hymns…
…And withdraw thy forest's tethered limbs!"
Willow leapt back as the cracks opened up and spread toward the Tripod. The trees were swaying! Huge redwoods that were at first gently rocking then tugging viciously.
It was working! The young witch looked on in amazement. It was really working!
The Tripod stopped and seemed to analyse the woods as the trees danced around it. What it didn't see were the hundreds of deep-seated roots in the dirt beneath it. They were moving. Pulling away from under it until the soil caved in.
Willow dared to move closer in time to see the alien machine sinking into the earth. In seconds it was gone.
She was still in awe of what she'd achieved when she realised there was no time to waste. There were two more of those things on the loose in town. One in the centre and one at the beach. She had to move fast. She began to scan the forest floor.
For the past few months she'd been trying to master levitation as a means of rapid travel, since the teleportation was proving too painful and dangerous. But she wasn't having much more luck with that either. Floating objects was no problem, so long as it wasn't too big. A TV was fine, but a car was too much. She could still make it rock, though. The real problem came when she tried to levitate herself. It just wasn't happening. The vending machine she and Tara had first moved together was something she could now move easily on her own. She could even levitate it while sat on it. Or levitate another person. But herself – there was just no joy.
But right now, she needed to get to the beach, and fast. She was looking for something – anything – she could use for a ride. If she couldn't levitate herself, then she'd hitch on something that was easy to shift. She'd learned from experience why early witches had used simple broomsticks as a training device – like stabilisers. Just something lightweight until they got a handle on self-flight. That was long before a witch on a broom became a clichéd stereotype. Trouble was, the best thing she could see nearby at that particular time was a long thick tree branch with a clump of leafy foliage at one end.
"No way." She wasn't about to ride anything that close to cliché.
So she tried desperately – standing with her arms out, rising up on her tiptoes – to take off…
Not a sausage. Nothing.
She looked again at the branch.
She could only imagine what Tara would have to say about it. "I'll never live this down."
All she needed now was a hairy wart and a pointy hat.
The ocean waved and rippled as the Tripod waded towards land, drinking up gallons of water and sea life with every second without fear, as nothing could stand in its way. The Earth military would soon send their missiles and aircraft… and the orbiting guard would easily shoot them down. Minimum energy wastage, maximum consumption. The planet would be stripped in days. It was inevitable. They never failed.
Willow came in fast, throwing the branch aside and landing barefoot in the sand. The beach began to part for her and the water too as she headed into the sea.
"Mother Goddess, conduct me through Oceanus to Aegaeon's throne, the power over the storm waters. With my wounds, gained in defending these seas, I give my blood to thee."
Will reached into the sea. At least the saltwater would clean her burns.
"With my own Aether I call thee forth; the element of Water. See as I see; the Demon machine that draws thy depths to their destruction… and defend thyself!"
Something bubbled far beneath the ocean.
"I call to the realm of the sky, land and sea;
The realm of the sacred rune.
Oh Goddess, in thy threefold form,
In the guise of the Triple Moon."
The waves began to rise and fall in the distance.
"Vast element of Water; to thee I call upon.
Mother Goddess, Oceanus, great Aegaeon!"
She bent with her palms against the surface film of the water and whispered to the ocean.
"Swell thy tides to shrink their size…
…And drink the beast to a swift demise!"
A massive tidal wave rose up behind the Tripod and pulled away from the shore, dragging the machine out to where the land fell away, wrapping it up in a fierce whirlpool and pulling it down to the depths.
Willow retreated back as the tide returned to the shore with a splash.
When the waters settled, there was no sign of the alien Tripod.
She took a moment to catch her breath, then turned toward town. She wasn't sure how to handle the Tripod there. Not without destroying homes or shops and stuff.
It soon became clear she wouldn't need to do anything.
The ocean bubbled and churned, then exploded as the alien wrecking machine lifted up like a space shuttle on a tower of flame.
From Miller's Woods, the first Tripod rocketed up from behind the tree line, shedding dirt behind it. Seconds later, the third rose up into the sky. The Tripods were retreating.
The Doctor and the Slayer arrived in the control room once again just as they felt a shudder rattle through the dome.
Buffy caught herself. "Whoa! What was that!"
"She's done it!" he spun around in amazement. "Ha! Good old Wonder Wiccan!"
"They're leaving?"
He looked into her eyes. "We're leaving."
The tails of fire that propelled the rocketing Tripods died out as they reached 34'000 feet. Their long jointed legs folded in half and drew up at right-angles to their central domes and began to rotate. Soon, they were spinning at such a rate the three legs blurred into the distinct shape of a flying saucer. The three saucers continued to rise through Earth's atmosphere.
"Feel that?" asked the Doc.
Buffy sensed some kind of motion beneath her feet but couldn't place it.
"We're spinning," he said. "Fast."
"Why?"
"The Tripod's creating a gravity field inside the dome."
"Because?"
He looked at her with wide-eyed excitement. "We're going into space."
An F-16 Fighting Falcon out of Hammer Field, Fresno, soured across the skies of Sunnydale like a lightening bolt. She was EAGLE-19 with the 144th Fighter Wing of the California Air National Guard. Her pilot banked the jet fighter around and aimed his nose toward the pillars of smoke rising out of the small town.
He took the warplane though the rising contrails and peered up through his bubble canopy. High above he saw them. The flying saucers.
"Fresno Base, this is Eagle One-Niner. I have a positive visual confirmation on three unidentified craft accelerating beyond maximum safe altitude. Fifty-thousand feet and climbing, over." Almost to himself he muttered; "Looks like they're retreating."
"Eagle One-Niner, Fresno Base. Confirm: bandits are departing."
There was no sign of more on land below and the three overhead were getting smaller by the second.
"Fresno Base, Eagle One-Niner. Bandits are withdrawing, repeat, the enemy is withdrawing, over."
"Copy, Eagle One-Niner. Continue dry for a second pass. Re-confirm and bugout."
"Wilco, Base. Stand by."
He arced the jet around in a wide U-turn and brought her back through the dispersing smoke trails. He looked up, searching for the saucers. They were so tiny. He figured they must be well into the mesosphere. At least 85 km from the earth.
"They're definitely heading into space," he noted to himself.
"Copy that," came the reply on his radio. "Fresno out."
That was that, he thought.
EAGLE-19 swung north-east and headed home.
"I'm not going into space!" the Slayer insisted.
"Yeah, look," The Doc pointed to a screen, "it says so right here."
The bleeps and lines and dots made no earthly sense to her. "No... I mean: I am not going into space." She sounded fairly adamant if a little afraid. "I-I-I…" She remembered the transporter dish with great relief. "Beam me back."
But the Doctor dashed her hopes. "Out of range."
She circled the room, struggling to breathe. "Out of range? What the hell? …How are we meant to get back to Earth? More to the point – how am I meant to get back to Earth?"
"Duh, Escape pod of course." He tapped a second screen showing an image of the Tripod exterior shell with a cylinder extension attached to the belly of the dome below the engine room.
She didn't like the look of the little escape can. If it was anything like the rest of this bucket, it hardly seemed space-worthy. "I'm not a space man… I mean…astronaut. I can't be going into space. I haven't even had any training. This can't be happening."
The Doctor's glasses were back on as he played around with the control centre. "Yes, well it is. Now, we need to get them away from Earth. Drive them as far away as possible… and cripple them until I can figure this out."
He worked the controls with nimble fingers. If he could bypass the Nomad's brain circuits and send them to the future and somehow lock out their singularity drive, or shut it down, preventing further time travel and steal their lifeboat to get back to Earth, the beach, and the TARDIS and follow after them and then, just for fun, save the day… that would be pretty brilliant.
"We're going to the escape pod now, right?" urged Buffy.
"God." The Doctor scrunched his face up as he eyed her through his specs. "Big old Slayer. Not afraid of a Demon nest but scared of a little space." He went back to work. "It's just space. Y'know; a bit of room. Frightened of a bit of room."
She didn't get the chance to answer back.
Just as the Doctor finished setting the artificial black hole singularity to implode after the next time-jump, and before he had chance to set a timer for the jump itself… the Tripod's power drained for a moment as the engine room ate up the juice.
The lights returned.
"Was that you?" asked Buffy. She really hoped so.
"It's the Nomads," he replied. "They're aggravating temporons."
"They're what?"
"Temporons. Nomads. They're aggravating them." He tried to counteract the commands to buy them time to get to the pod.
"Right now I think I'm the one being aggravated," said Buffy. "By you. What the hell are you talking about?"
"Time travel! My, you are brutally rude, aren't you?" He shot up and ran to a wall terminal. "By aggravating temporons they vibrate the very threads of time. Threads are shaken loose – become slack – allowing the Tripods to slip through the gaps between the threads."
"You're making this up," she told him. "You're opening the hole in your face and letting any old crap fly out."
"I am not. Well, …" His controls went dead. Every control and every screen on the command deck went dead. The Nomad had locked him out. It was just too hard-wired into the system to beat.
It was too late. They were moving and his wrench was already in the workings. The time engine was set to implode.
He grabbed Buffy by the hand. "We have to go."
They ran. Out the command centre, through the spiralling corridors to the engine room, down a hatch and metal ladders into a tight maintenance crawl space that led to a tiny compartment at the base of the dome. In this compartment they found the small round hatch where the lifeboat was docked.
The Doctor grabbed the turn-handle and saw through the porthole…
Buffy didn't like the look on his face.
"Um… ah," he said. "We may have a problem. It seems… there's no escape pod."
"What?" Her heart went cold in her chest. "You said there was an escape pod."
"Actually I said we'd use one… not that there actually was one."
"That's just great." She held her head and tried to move but there was nowhere to go. "Well done, Doctor Whoops." She knelt by the hatch and tried to stay calm and think straight. "And we definitely can't beam back down?"
"Not unless you plan on beaming into space."
"So what do we do now?"
The Doctor, for the first time, looked seriously concerned. Worried even. Scared. He just looked at her with blank eyes.
There came a deep rumble. Out the porthole a rainbow of energy exploded around the Tripod. The Doctor slammed his hands against the glass.
They were leaving the Earth behind – leaving the twenty-first century behind.
Leaving the TARDIS behind!
"The TARDIS!" he cried out as the fleet of saucers were sucked through time.
"NOooooo…!"