The Doctor got to the mining shuttle first.
He frowned, as he entered. The whole shuttle was full of complex temporal machinery, lights flickering and computer humming… but the shuttle, itself, was devoid of human life.
In fact… devoid of any life.
And, from the look of things, there hadn't been anyone inside this shuttle for quite some time, now.
"But if the mining shuttle's deserted, then what's really going on, here?" the Doctor asked, leaning in closer to the machinery. "Is it the ship doing this, all by itself?"
He squinted, analyzing it all more closely.
The temporal components were definitely human in design. But the Doctor couldn't see anything about them that'd cause the time distortion he'd witnessed, in the city.
Most of this equipment seemed to be simply monitoring a series of temporal energy emissions coming from inside the mine shaft.
"Terribly interesting energy emissions, too," the Doctor said, altering settings on the shipboard computer, to bring up a spectrographic analysis. "Decays organic tissue, but nothing else. That can't be normal for mining operations. It'd serve no purpose."
Perhaps the humans had unearthed something they hadn't expected, buried in the ground, and it was the source of the problems?
Whatever the Doctor had done to the ship's computer, however, triggered something deep inside its programming.
A narrow steel cage dropped down, from the ceiling, trapping the Doctor.
Lights began to flash, the outer doors began to seal, and the shipboard displays showed the message, "SELF DESTRUCT IN 20 SECONDS."
Before Seo arrived at the mining shuttle, she stopped by the mine shaft.
Examined it, closely. Frowned.
Deep in thought.
The clang of an alarm from the nearby mining shuttle startled her out of her thoughts. She spun around, then raced towards it, as she saw the outer hatch attempting to close and seal shut.
The Doctor. It had to be.
He was locking her out. Concealing the evidence.
"Oh, no, you don't!" Seo shouted, sprinting forwards. She used the Doctor's sonic screwdriver to delay the hatch's closing, and only just managed to leap in, before the hatch sealed.
The Doctor was inside, just as she'd guessed he would be. But he wasn't exactly calm and in control. In fact, he was trapped inside a tiny cage, trying to reach through the bars and reprogram the shipboard computer.
"Ten seconds to self-destruct," the Doctor told her. He spied the sonic screwdriver, in her hands. "Oh! Perfect! Give it, here!"
Five seconds left.
Seo, not seeing she had many options, raced forwards to give back the sonic screwdriver.
As she did so, a camera in the corner whirred. As if in response, the alarms went silent. The self-destruct protocols shut down. The countdown stopped.
"You disabled the self destruct?" Seo asked the Doctor. "From in there?"
The Doctor frowned. "I did nothing." He looked up. Noticed the camera. "You came into camera range. And the moment you did, someone shut down the self-destruct."
Seo also looked up at the camera.
"Back in the marketplace, those policemen went mad with rage, when they looked at me," the Doctor continued. "Whereas, with you, they just fired a few warning shots. And although the mob swarmed me, they didn't even notice you."
"What are you implying?" Seo gestured around herself, angrily. "You think I set this whole thing up, just to kill you?!"
"No! Not at all," the Doctor insisted. "I just think that, whoever did — wants to keep you alive."
Seo didn't look surprised by this.
The Doctor thought that was intriguing.
"And… they want you dead," Seo muttered, stepping over to the computer and activating a subroutine, inside. "Why?"
At Seo's virtual command, the cage surrounding the Doctor slid back up into the ceiling. Releasing him.
"Well, I doubt it's personal," the Doctor dismissed. "Probably just—"
"Trust me — it's personal," Seo cut in. "'I want you to kill the Doctor,' he told me. Not 'the Time Lord' or 'that guy you were hanging out with'. He called you by name." She stared at him, for a few long seconds, looking him up and down. "Just who are you, exactly?"
"Sorry?" The Doctor blinked. "Seo, did you just say someone asked you to kill me?"
Seo said nothing. But the look on her face told him more than enough.
"Who?" the Doctor asked. "When?"
Seo ignored those questions. "He talked like you were this really powerful, dangerous guy. Which — no offense — sounded absurd. At first." She hesitated. "But then I remembered… Narvin called you the Daleks' number one enemy. And if even the Daleks are afraid of you…"
"Daleks? Did they ask you to kill me?" the Doctor asked — but that didn't make sense. She'd have known better than to trust Daleks.
"So who are you, Doctor?" Seo pressed. "What are your plans for Gallifrey? And why do you have so many enemies?"
"My plans for Gallifrey?" The Doctor actually started to laugh.
"Just answer the question," Seo demanded.
"You're serious?" The Doctor wondered what she expected him to do to the planet. He didn't usually give Gallifrey much thought. "All right, then. I'm just a traveler. That's all. I have no ambition, no revenge schemes, no desire for wealth or power back home — so no plans for Gallifrey. And — before you even ask — no, I don't want to hurt Narvin. In fact, once I've saved Romana, I promise to do anything in my power to help you exonerate him."
Some of the tension fell away from Seo's face.
"And as for enemies," the Doctor continued, "yes, from time to time, I foil the odd alien invasion or rumble the odd Dalek or Sontaran or Cyberman plot. Basically, if I land somewhere where terrible people are doing rubbish things, I stop them. That seems to create a lot of enemies."
"Even amongst your own people?" Seo asked.
The Doctor frowned. "What do you mean?"
"The temporal emissions from the mine shaft," said Seo, pointing in its direction, "are Gallifreyan. That close to the source, I could practically taste it."
"Taste?"
"You know, like how you can practically taste a wine, just by smelling it," Seo said. She licked her lips, hungrily. "Those emissions… had the taste of Time Lords. Rich, bold and thick. An amazing vintage, aged for eons and eons, every sip bursting with juicy artron."
Right.
That was… disturbing.
Seo, suddenly embarrassed, backed away. "Not that I'd ever actually eat a Time Lord, or anything."
"You just happen to know how we taste," the Doctor pointed out.
"No! It's just… I can smell the time on you. It's really, really strong." She raised up her hands. "I swear to God, Doctor — I have never killed a Time Lord, and I never would. In fact, when that guy asked me to kill you, a few minutes ago, I told him to go to Hell!"
Oh, so she had said no?
That was vaguely comforting.
"And 'that guy' would be… one of my own people?" the Doctor asked.
Seo hesitated. "No, he was… a…" She paused. Then shrugged it off. "Never mind. It's not important."
"Considering he wants to kill me," the Doctor said, "I beg to differ."
Seo didn't answer the Doctor. She went back to the ship's control panel, accessed the computer, and began to program in a flight path.
"The Time Lords are clearly trying to cover their tracks and make it look like this whole disaster is being caused by humans and Earth technology," Seo said. She gestured around them. "Observe: Earth blasting crates, Earth temporal tech, not a Gallifreyan gizmo in sight. Not to mention the mind control on the citizens, convincing them that they've seen human miners floating around." She darted over to one of the blasting crates. "But the deception gives us an advantage. I know Earth temporal systems. I know how to manipulate them."
Seo grabbed up a few temporal components from the machinery around them, and began to fix them to the top of the sonic screwdriver.
Then turned it back on.
Instead of emitting a sonic burst, the screwdriver emitted a weak laser beam. Too weak to cause any real damage, but strong enough to be visible.
"Sono-luminescence," the Doctor recognized. "The art of turning sound into light."
Seo turned it off, and tucked it away. "At full strength, it'll drain the battery in just a few minutes," she said. "But a few minutes are all I need. Now, if I can just find that Time Vector Stabilizer…"
She froze.
As she realized it wasn't in her pockets.
The Doctor brought it out. "This, you mean?"
"How did you get that?" Seo demanded, plucking it out of his hands. "You can't have taken it off me. I'd know!"
"You were quite distressed over Narvin, at the time," the Doctor replied. "I can only assume that you had bigger things on your mind."
He could see her getting distracted, again, just thinking about Narvin.
"Seo, he will be all right," the Doctor told her. "Romana said…"
"She may trust him," Seo whispered. "But she's dying, Doctor. When she's gone… can you guarantee the next President of Gallifrey will be as forgiving?"
Ah.
The Doctor was starting to see why Seo was so worried.
Seo blinked. Then shook away her worried expression. "But… no," she decided. "He'll be fine. I know he will. He's good at getting himself out of trouble."
But there was still worry, deep down inside her eyes.
The Doctor could see it.
"The trick is to get all these crates of explosives to blow at exactly the same time," Seo explained to the Doctor, turning back to them, "right as we drive this ship into the mine shaft. I assume you know something about the temporal applications of shockwave physics?"
"Temporal applications of shockwave physics?" Now, that was something the Doctor hadn't come across in a long time. "I know the theory, yes. The moment before a substance explodes, its physical properties change. Chronons are no exception."
"And if you loop that moment across a temporal probability network," Seo continued, "the intense pressure and temporal friction can force a chronon to change, four dimensionally, allowing you to travel through time." She finished her alterations to the temporal equipment on the blasting crates. "Or… if you square the third Z variable in the equation, instead of cubing it… allowing you to travel across temporal dimensions."
"Ah!" The Doctor's eyes lit up. "Which would allow you to break into a space that's dimensionally transcendental. Now, that's clever."
Seo shrugged. "Math doesn't lie."
The Doctor got to work, himself, helping her to reset the systems across the blasting crates. "What frequency are you using?"
"Eleven seventeen by five nine," Seo said. "Standard Time Lord dimensions. Even TARDISes use it."
"No, no… try seventeen by eight twenty," the Doctor corrected, making the adjustment.
"Why? That'd place us perpetually one second in the future from normal space-time."
"Yep; old Time Lord trick," the Doctor said. "This is, of course, assuming you're right about those energy emissions being Gallifreyan. If you're wrong… we'll be stuck in the middle of nowhere."
Seo hesitated. "I'm… mostly sure?"
That didn't sound good.
"Seo, was the person who asked you to kill me actually a Time Lord?" the Doctor asked.
Seo didn't answer, as she finished the adjustments. She installed the Time Vector Stabilizer in the middle of the setup control panel.
"Too late to back down, now," Seo said, and turned on the engines, to launch the ship down into the mine shaft.