==== ==== Harry: Riddle Me This ==== ====

SUMMARY: { Take Harry, a puzzle box, the Doctor's insatiable curiosity and see what happens. [Harry, Fourth Doctor, Sarah]}

It didn't happen very often that the TARDIS team had some time to spare, and, rarer yet, that they were forced to take it.

But this evening on the planet Siberius was one of them, thanks to the heavy rain and thunderstorm which had locked the whole crew of the time machine in a local government building. The weather was always this bad on this planet, the Doctor had told Harry and Sarah, and there really wasn't much they could do about it. Not from where they had gotten stuck, anyway. So, with little other choice left to them but to keep still, they settled in the building's library while heavy raindrops were prattling against the iron shutters outside.

Over tea and biscuits Sarah had just brought up the question of how they were going to pass the time, when Harry remembered having been given a curious little metal cube. Nothing more but a useless puzzle box, the merchant had explained to him briefly before he had pressed the object into the Navy officer's hands.

But even now, as Harry drew it out of his jacket's pocket, there was still something intriguing about it. Perhaps it was because of the curious geometrical markings on each of its sides, or because it was small enough to fit into one's palm. Then again, the thing which intrigued Harry the most about it was that the Doctor had never seen an object like this. Just imagine it! A riddle the likes of which still challenged the great Time Lord's intellect!

"I've solved a number of puzzle boxes already, but none of this design.", admitted the man with the funny scarf as he snatched the cube out of Harry's hand while passing by the armchair he was sitting in. The Doctor brought the curious object up to his eyes, examining it closely from every angle.

"Aha!" A brief look of epiphany crossed his face. "So these are no mere markings, this is where the pieces of the cube were joined together! So that means..."

"Doctor, could I-?" Harry's attempt to interrupt him before he had a chance to solve the puzzle himself remained disregarded while the Doctor tried to twist the halves of the cube against each other.

The wiser man looked appropriately dumbfounded and irritated to find that the solution was not all that simple. "Very well, so that's not it.", the Doctor said to himself, seemingly lost in thought again. "Perhaps it requires another kind of outside influence to be opened? Earth, water, fire, air? A discharge of Tetrillium energy? Or, I might just be able to take it apart using the sonic screwdriver…?"

"Yes, you might, but not just yet.", Harry's voice was suddenly able to cut through the silence which had arisen when the Doctor had reached for the screwdriver in his coat pocket. Now that a surprised gaze was directed at him, the medical officer hurried to add an explanation. "I'd like to solve it myself before you take it apart."

In response, the Doctor raised an eyebrow. He didn't criticise Harry for wanting to try, but as it appeared, he thought that solving the mystery exceeded his capability.

Yet, having seen his expression, the medical officer was twice as eager to prove him wrong. "I'm sure you'll have it open quickly, but once its mystery is revealed, there will be no point in trying again, will there? Let me have a go, and if I fail, I'll give it to you.", Harry suggested.

Once the moment of surprise had passed, a grin appeared on the Doctor's face. "Yes, you're quite right, Harry! I shouldn't do everything for you. Having me around should be no excuse for humans not to think for themselves, as I've been telling the Brigadier time and again." In agreement to Harry's suggestion, he held out the cube to him, but as his companion attempted to take it, he suddenly pulled his hand away again. "However, if you could just let me have it first, say, for about an hour, I could make sure there's nothing… dangerous inside?" His smile had turned slightly sheepish-looking, and perhaps he was aware that his true intentions were shimmering through his words too plainly.

"I'm quite confident I can handle whatever is inside of it.", replied Harry, though he was really thinking that some hours of restraint curiosity were not going to drive the Time Lord mad.

Seemingly having come to the same conclusion, the Doctor nodded in agreement, and finally let the medical officer have the puzzle box. "Yes. Yes, of course.", he said, almost as though he had never suggested something else.

With the cube back in his hands, Harry sat back down in the armchair. While he began to work on the puzzle, the Doctor and Sarah went looking for some interesting pieces of local literature to keep themselves occupied during the rest of the evening. They returned with a stack of books of all shapes and sizes, and some, so Harry noticed, were non-fiction ones about Verron culture. The Navy officer didn't notice immediately, but even after the Doctor had begun to read, every once in a while he was still glancing over to the cube which Harry was turning around again and again, looking for a way to move the components it was made of.
After two hours had passed, the only thing Harry had been able to do with the curious object was to twist one of its corners by 45 degree. Its secret, however, remained well-protected.

Strangely enough, Sarah, though she hadn't stirred much since she had begun reading, had noticed the Doctor's gazes as well. When Harry looked over to her, she was smiling, amused by the behaviour of her friends regarding such a curious little object. Needless to say, she was curious as well, but with the Doctor and Harry already on the case, there was no reason for her to get involved in it as well.

"You know, Harry, I could give you a few hints…?", the Doctor just started again, breaking all of their feigned concentration.

Harry lifted his gaze off the cube, but he didn't need to reply, because Sarah was faster to chime in. In a second she had folded the book shut and put it away. "Hey, Doctor! I think I saw a chess board on one of the shelves. Would you like to play?"

His latest train of thought interrupted, the Doctor cast a questioning look at her. "I thought you didn't know how to play?"

She grinned back at him. "Well, now's as good a time as any to learn it, isn't it?", she replied, and was off to fetch the board before he could have refused to teach her. Not that he would have. Harry knew it wasn't simple to deny a request from her, especially when she was in a good mood and looking eager to do something.

Thanks to Sarah keeping the Doctor from trying to help him, Harry had some more time to try his luck with the puzzle box, but in truth, he had not gotten very far, and already run out of ideas. Within the following hour, trying to open the silly little cube turned into a frustrating task. But even then, he didn't want to give up just yet, because he was still hoping to see an impressed Time Lord's face if he was to solve the riddle before he could.

Slowly, the evening became night, and the storm was still raging on as Sarah was growing tired, and Harry's eyes were aching from focussing on the little cube for so long. It was the Doctor who decided that his companions should better call it a night after Sarah's turns at the chess board had begun to take long enough to prepare another kettle of tea in the meantime.
Though he wasn't saying it, Harry gladly gave up trying to solve the puzzle box for today. As he and Sarah left to look for the temporary quarters they had been so generously provided with by the government officials, he abandoned – more by chance than by decision – the puzzle box on the armrest of the chair he had been sitting in during the evening.

What he wasn't aware of at that time, was how the little cube would be teasing the Doctor, the last one left in the library, with its mere presence of unsolved mysteries…

The next morning arrived, and the first thing Harry noticed about it was that the heavy storm had ceased during the night, which meant that they would head back to the TARDIS and leave quite soon. Hopefully after breakfast, he thought to himself before he left his quarters to find Sarah and the Doctor.
A breakfast had, indeed, been arranged, for all those who had sought shelter in the sturdy old building, but even though it wasn't long until Sarah showed up, there was no sign of their Gallifreyan friend. At first, Harry didn't make much of it, knowing that the Time Lord needed the breakfast as much as he needed sleep – barely any at all – but Sarah had soon convinced him that their common friend would usually be around to keep their company, at least. It didn't took the two of them long to find the Doctor. As it turned out, he was still where they had parted ways the evening before: In the library.
However, the place was looking a bit different from yesterday… Various tools and open books laid haphazardly scattered on top of and next to the table, and in the centre of it all were tiny pieces of dark metal in geometric shapes, something which resembled circuitry, small crystal pieces and strangely-coloured dust spread all over them.

"What happened here?", Harry gasped. "Did the puzzle box go up in a bang?"

Having finally noticed his friends at the other side of the table, the Doctor lifted his head. In one hand he held a corner piece of what was once the cube, and the sonic screwdriver in the other. "Harry!", he exclaimed, not as cheerful as his greetings usually were. Quite the opposite, he appeared to be surprised to find his two companions awake already. "I'll give it back to you – promised – as soon as I've put it back together.", he said.

Sarah crossed her arms in front of her chest and cocked her head at him. "You've been trying to open it, haven't you?"

"My dear Sarah-Jane, I haven't been trying to open it.", the Doctor replied, putting a special pronunciation on the verb.

"Right.", she corrected herself. "You've succeeded."

"I had a lot of time to spare while you've been asleep.", the Time Lord explained further while he made a mediocre attempt to tidy his temporary workplace. "By the way, the storm's over. I saw it when I went back to the TARDIS three hours ago to get the tachyometer."

"We already know.", added Harry, and sighed, feeling deprived of his chance to be cleverer than the Doctor for once. "Well... now that the box's open, why don't you tell us what was inside of it?"

As he got up, the Doctor faced the expectant looks of his companions. He lifted a hand to gesture while he took in a breath to begin his explanation, but instead of speaking, he sighed and shrugged. "Nothing.", the Doctor eventually revealed to them, causing Harry to wonder whether he might be lying – but the disappointed expression on his face looked genuine. "It looks like a puzzle box, but it isn't one.", the Time Lord continued. "From what I can make of its components, it is calibrated to respond to a specific energy fluctuation in the time vortex, and will then create a small bubble inside of which time should remain unaffected by the fluctuation, thanks to a field stabilizer. I believe it's Verron in origin, but I didn't know they had such a good understanding of temporal theory..."

Harry exchanged a glance with Sarah to see whether anything the Doctor had just said made any sense to her. When she noticed his questioning look, she just shrugged in response. "So, it's not a puzzle box, it's a device that does… something?", the medical officer guessed.

"It protects a person from a specific kind of change in their time line.", repeated the Time Lord in simplified form. "But we won't know what kind of change that is until it happens to someone, I'm afraid. I saw the pattern of the fluctuation, but I don't know of anything which causes a disturbance like this. Not yet, anyway..."

"Too bad. I really would have liked to solve it.", said Harry, and saw a smile cross the Doctor's face.

"Well, it was activated before I opened it, so, in a sense, you did.", he explained. "In any case, it's probably a useful little thing, so you can keep it if you like."

Sarah was smiling as well. "After you've put it back together?", she repeated.

"Well, yes… I promised you, didn't I?" After a moment of hesitation, the Doctor began to collect the many pieces of the cube and stuff them into the pocket of his coat, where he already kept so many other curious little objects. "But let's get back to the TARDIS first. Have you had breakfast already?", he asked as he walked past his two companions towards the library exit. "We could stop on Senibos on the way back to Earth. Come on!"

He had rushed past them quicker than Harry could tell him he'd rather not stop again on their way back. "This has been the longest detour back to Earth yet...", he quietly said to Sarah as they turned around and followed him.

As though he had said something funny, she just chuckled.