No Tricks!

At the sight of his partner a captive in the cage, Jim surrendered and allowed himself to be locked into the cell as well. A minion presented Jim's gun belt to Loveless, who laughed heartily as he laid it on one of the counters. "Thank you, my good men!" he said gleefully. "That will be all for now." The minions filed out, and Loveless and Antoinette were left in the lab alone with the two prisoners.

"Well, Mr West, it does seem that the safety of Mr Gordon is ever your Achilles' heel, does it not?"

West answered him not a word.

Loveless giggled and tsked at him. "Oh, cat got your tongue? Perhaps this will open your mouth." And to the big man in mauve the little scientist gave the order, "Mr Gordon, stand up!"

Wearily the prisoner stirred, then got shakily to his feet. Horror gripped Jim's heart as he saw the fresh dark stain in the center of the man's abdomen and the red pool on the floor where he had been sitting. Jim leapt forward and caught the man as he swayed and collapsed again.

"Artie!"

Loveless was laughing again. "Apparently one of my men is a very good shot. Or a very bad one, depending upon one's perspective."

"Get us out of here!" Jim demanded. "He needs a doctor right away!"

"And as the only doctor available here is myself…!" Loveless giggled some more, then shifted abruptly to cold fury. "If you want me to aid your great good friend, then you must do something for me!"

"All right," said Jim. "What do you want?"

"I want my great good friend! What have you done with Voltaire?"

"Voltaire! He's…" An image of the giant fighting him within the TARDIS flashed across Jim's mind's eye, along with the memory of Artie as he had last seen him before spotting him in this cage: Artie in his shirt sleeves, draping his fringe-shouldered jacket over a nearby chair, then grimacing as he sorted through the débris of the time rotor. Jim gently lowered the injured man to the floor, then came to his feet. "Voltaire isn't far away. I'll take you to him."

"Excellent. But no tricks!"

"No tricks, says the trickster," Jim replied. He kept his hands where Loveless could see them as Antoinette unlocked the cage. But when Jim bent to carry the unconscious man from the cell, Loveless said, "Oh no. After I have Voltaire back, then we'll see about him. Now move!"

Jim moved. He led the malevolent pair out the lab door to the row of storage cabinets and pointed at one at the end of the line. "He's in there."

Loveless shot him a skeptical look. "Really, Mr West, you must not care if Mr Gordon lives or dies! You cannot expect me to believe that Voltaire is inside a cabinet of that size. He'd never fit!" Nevertheless, the doctor tried the door. "It's locked. Why is it locked? I never lock these!"

"I can unlock it," said Jim, reaching inside his jacket.

"Miguelito…"

"Yes, Antoinette?"

"Why are there thirteen cabinets? I thought there were only a dozen here."

"Hmm?" The doctor turned away from West to count the cabinets, then turned back, saying, "What are you pulling here, Mr West?"

"This." West now had an item in either hand, and neither was his lock pick. In one hand was a small glass orb, and in the other, a small gas mask. Before the doctor or his lady could react, Jim pressed the mask to his face and threw the orb.

A beautiful cloud of magenta gas roiled out, enveloping the three of them. Loveless tried to gasp in some clean air before the gas could get to him, but he was too late. He began to choke, then collapsed. A moment later, Antoinette followed him to the floor.

Jim kept the gas mask firmly against his face as he waved at the gas to disperse it. When at last he could breathe the air safely again, he tucked away the gas mask, produced his key to the TARDIS, unlocked the door, then stuck his head inside and said, "Hey, Artie! Come and give me a hand."

A muffled voice from under the console called out, "Sure, Jim. Just give me a second… to… there!" A man was lying on his back on the floor, reaching up into the underside of the console. At first only his legs in brown pants were visible, but as Jim came over to give him a hand up, he saw the yellow shirt the man was wearing, and then his broad, good-natured face as well. Jim took his hand and hauled him upright.

"Thanks, Jim," said Artie, brushing off his clothes.

"My pleasure," Jim replied with an especially wide smile.

"What do you need help with?" Artie asked as they crossed to the TARDIS door.

"This."

Artie looked down at the untidy heap of Loveless and Antoinette, and gave a whistle. "Ah! You caught her as well." As Jim lifted the woman into his arms, Artie took up the little doctor. "Hey," Artie added as they set out to carry the pair deep into the interior of the TARDIS, "What do you think, Jim? Do you suppose the Ghex would want Voltaire and Antoinette as well?"

"I don't know, Artie, but I suppose we could ask them."

Shortly, after ensconcing their two new guests into rooms adjacent to the rolling cell Voltaire was in, the agents headed back to the console room. "How are the repairs going?" Jim asked.

Artie shrugged. "I've got the time rotor rebuilt to a certain extent. I was anchoring the bottom of it into the console and wiring it up when you came in. But it's still going to take a lot of work to get the ol' girl flying again."

Jim pulled something out of his vest and tossed it to his partner. "Do you suppose this little item might help?"

Artie caught it and examined it briefly. His first thought was that this was some variety of sonic screwdriver, but then his face lit up with recognition. "A maguffin! Where did you find this?" Immediately he waved the question away. "Never mind. We're in Loveless' lair. If there's anywhere you'd expect to find a maguffin, it's here." As they hit the door into the console room, he grinned and set to work again, this time with the aid of the device Jim had just given him. "I'll have this baby zipping through the Time Vortex in no time now!"

"Great," said Jim. "I'll be right back."

Locking the TARDIS behind himself, Jim returned to the lab, to the cage in the corner. As he had expected, it was too late now. There was nothing more he could do for the man in the mauve suit. Jim retrieved his gun belt and put it on, then gently took up the poor fellow's earthly remains and returned to the TARDIS, laying him out on the console room floor.

Artie, wiping off his hands on a rag, came over and took a look. "Great Scott!" he exclaimed. "Where did he come from?"

"That's what I wanted to ask you," said Jim. He knelt by the man and laid a hand over the poor fellow's eyes, closing them forever. "I'm assuming Loveless was trying to pull another Janus on us, but this time by making a copy of you."

"Janus?" Artie frowned as he too knelt by the dead man and began to examine him. "I hardly think he would do that again. You know how Loveless is. If one of his plans fails, no matter how good the plan was and no matter whether its failure came about from us just having a little run of plain ol' dumb luck, he always abandons it. I don't recall him ever revisiting an old scheme. He always has to come up with something entirely new - although I will say his schemes often do include explosives."

"All right," said Jim. "Then if this man isn't someone who's been surgically altered to look like you, who or what is he?"

Artie had his sonic screwdriver out now and ran a scan over the man in mauve. "By the way," he asked, "how did you run into him?"

Briefly Jim explained about the cage, the stomach wound, and Loveless' demand to exchange the dying man for Voltaire.

Artie's jaw dropped and he turned to stare at his partner. "But… but when you stuck your head in the door and called to me, you sure sounded like you knew I was in here!"

Jim grinned. "I did."

"Yeah? How?"

"Well, look at him!" said Jim. "The last I'd seen of you in here, you were rolling up your sleeves to repair the console. So why would you have…?"

Artie was nodding. "Yeah, why would I have changed my clothes? Especially, why would I have changed into one of my best suits when I was going to be crawling around the floor and getting grease on my hands? Good thinking, Jim!"

Jim smiled and shrugged modestly.

Artie read the results of the scan off the sonic device, whistled, then turned it so that Jim could see. "What do you know about that?"

Jim studied the readout. "What am I looking at?"

"There, the genetic makeup."

Jim paused. "It's human," he said.

"Yeah, it sure is human! And very familiar too!"

Jim looked at him. "As in?"

"Well, it's mine!"

"Yours? But, Artie," said Jim, "you aren't human."

"Yeah, not anymore, not since I opened that watch and was reversed back into the Gallifreyan I was born as. But do you see what Loveless has done? At some point in the past, who knows when, Loveless managed to collect a genetic sample from me - perhaps some hair, perhaps some blood - and he's used it to make a replicant of me. A clone!"

Jim sat back on his heels. "The Ghex told us they were capable of making replicants, but Loveless as well?"

"Oh yes, Loveless as well. Let me tell you about Voltaire." And he did.

"Hmm," said Jim when Artie was done. "That is one dangerous little man. I sure hope the Ghex have somewhere they can keep him that he can never escape from."

"Yeah, me too." Artie came to his feet and stared down at the man in the mauve suit a little longer, then shivered. "Ugh, but it gives me the willies to look at him! My face on a dead man!"

Jim stood as well and clapped his partner on the shoulder. "You go on back and work on the console. I'll, uh, I'll do something about him."

"Ok, Jim. But, ah, what are you going to do?"

Jim gave it a bit of thought, then asked, "Well, as I can't exactly bury him, would it bother you tremendously if I just open the door and roll him outside to leave him in the hall?"

"For the minions to find?" Artie consider that for a few seconds, then said slowly, "Well, all right. I don't know what else to do with him. I certainly don't want to take him back to the Wanderer with us and risk Lily seeing him!"

"Me neither," said Jim. And while Artie finished up with the repair job, Jim got rid of the body.

"All right, that's done," said Jim. "How's the TARDIS look?"

"Right as rain, the best I can tell. I'm having Ro… ah, the TARDIS run a diagnostic right now. We should have the results short… Oh, here we go." Artie looked over the information scrolling rapidly across the monitor screen. "Ok, unless there's something so wrong with the TARDIS that she can't even find it herself, it looks like we're good to go."

"Fine," said Jim.

"Now… Let's see… I take it we should aim to show up right at the end of the eight hours the Ghex gave us. Does that sound right?" And at Jim's nod of approval, Artie set the dials and switches and so forth, then pulled the lever. He grinned as the time rotor began rising and falling as usual, even though it didn't yet have a new glass column within which to do so. "Here we go!"

End of Part One