CHAPTER TEN: THE PERFECT CURE

With a flick of his hand, the Doctor poured a spoonful of sugar into his tea. He sighed heavily, and grabbed the porcelain cup with both of his hands; slender fingers interlacing around the handle. While he had waited for the kettle to boil, he had taken to wandering the halls of the TARDIS, with only the humming of the ship herself for company.

He just felt so helpless, cooped up inside his ship, knowing that there was a dangerous creature out there, and that Jack and Brittany were stuck outside with it. He just itched to run out there and help them, but he couldn't, not without putting himself at risk from the shadow.

Because that's what it wanted. Him. It had touched his mind, and he had reached out and saw its thoughts. It had one of the simplest motivations in the universe, but that didn't make it any less deadly. The shadow was out for revenge, firstly for when it had been beaten on Midnight, and denied passage to civilisation, and for the second time in Skylark City on Sydoriv, deep within the Crusader Caves.

He seemed to be rather very good at making enemies. There were so many of them now, so many people that wanted a piece of him. Luckily, no matter how hard they tried, he had beaten them all, and probably made himself some more enemies in the bargain. But still, he slept soundly, knowing that there were planets up there, in the sky, safe and sound, because of his enemy making abilities.

The Doctor closed the door to the console room with one of his red-sneakered feet, and balanced his cup of tea on the lone chair next to the console. He pulled his sonic screwdriver out of the pocket of his now blue suit, and pulled up one of the floor panels. When Jack had brought him into the TARDIS, he had been sopping wet, now, after a quick change of clothing and deft use of a hairdryer, he was completely dry, and that's how he preferred it to be. Water just made things messy, and you could catch colds from being wet. He didn't want to catch a cold.

Taking a sip from his hot tea, the Doctor inserted himself into the crawlspace under the console. "Right," he muttered to himself, buzzing his sonic screwdriver at bits of circuitry. "Which one of you is the command circuit?"

He prodded at a curvy circuit board, and was rewarded with an electrical shock than ran up his arm. Not that one. He fiddled around with some wires, and stuck them in other places where they probably weren't meant to go, and ignored the protesting groans from the TARDIS. He knew what he was doing; at least, he was assuring himself that he knew what he was doing. He actually didn't have a clue about which bits to touch first, so he just took a risk and dove in headfirst.

Whatever he did, it must have had some effect, because the TARDIS hummed loudly after he plugged what could have passed for a printer into something that could have quite possibly been an old toaster. He jumped in surprise as small lights flickered on inside the crawlspace, knocking his head on the floor above him.

With much muttering on his part, he slid backwards out of the crawlspace and, one hand pressed over the lump that was forming on the back of his head, checked the readout on the console's screen. It was showing the normal array of spinning Gallifreyan symbols, but there was something there that hadn't been before; a small status bar, creeping along one edge of the screen.

The Doctor tapped his finger against the status bar, and read the tiny letters next to it. The bar had reached five percent, and was slowly rising as the engines powered up. He grinned. All he had to do know was wait for the engines to fully charge up, and then he could fly the TARDIS off into time and space. After he had defeated the shadow and picked up Jack and Brittany.

He drank down the rest of his tea in one gulp, and stowed the cup in his pocket until he could be bothered to take it back to the kitchen. Then he picked up the DVD Jack had left him.

For some reason, the Doctor had always liked Mythbusters. It might have had something to do with the fact that they blew up quite a lot of things on that show, or it might have been the way they used science to solve their mysteries. The show was completely irrelevant to a time traveller; he could easily go back in time and find out whether the myths were true or not, but it was still enjoyable to watch.

He chose a disk at random, and slotted it into a DVD player on the console. He can't remember when he installed it; probably when he got annoyed with not being able to do repairs and watch movies at the same time. Using his feet to manoeuvre the screen around to face his chair, he pulled a large packet of popcorn out of his trouser pocket with his free hands.

On the screen, there was a menu that was prompting him to choose an episode. He frowned at it, and picked an option at random. He wasn't really paying attention to the show as it started playing on screen – he was busy trying to think of plans that he could use to defeat the shadow. All the ones he had so far involved either him leaving the TARDIS, keeping the creature occupied until dawn or an excessive amount of rubber bands.

If it had been daytime, the creature would have been much easier to contain, and get rid of. All that radiation that the sun poured out, all those X-rays, microwaves, gamma rays and UV rays, they could have killed the creature in a flash. But at night, the radiation still got through, but in smaller doses, amounts that the creature could survive. With cloud cover, the radiation was practically halved. Unless they could work a miracle, the Doctor couldn't think of anything to do.

He must have been paying attention to something the Mythbusters were saying, because he caught the word 'microwave' and suddenly concentrated on the screen. He continued to watch with increasing delight, as a plan formed in his mind. The Doctor didn't need a miracle; he just needed a DVD to tell him what he had to do.

And the best thing about this plan was that it was completely plausible.