It was peaceful. So peaceful in fact, that Nyssa did not immediately appreciate it, as she walked down the rows of the garden. She was wearing her Trakenian dress, not the more practical shirt and pants ensemble she usually wore when with the Doctor. As she looked around, she sought to have a clearer idea of her surroundings. The garden was exposed to the night sky, and the sky was full of stars. It was not warm, it was not cold, it was not an ordinary temperature. There was a strange music in the air, and as Nyssa wondered where it came from, she noticed birds flying above her. They were slightly larger than geese, perhaps like eagles. But unlike eagles there was nothing of the predator or indeed the carnivore about them. As she looked more closely at them, Nyssa realized they were not from Earth.
"Where am I?" she wondered out loud. There was no sense of alarm in her voice, quite the contrary. Everything around her encouraged the belief that she was at peace. As she pondered this, she moved into another section of the garden. She was surrounded by flowers, in fact by elegantly, exquisitely cultivated bushes, with roses redder than anything on earth. A thought occurred to her. If the bushes were trimmed, there must be a trimmer. But everything around her resisted such an obvious suggestion. She looked up in the air and noticed the birds, and the music again.
As she moved out of the bushes a thought occurred to her. She remembered Tegan speaking. "It was the first time I ever saw the sea. My mother told me that when people wondered whether the earth was flat or not, people could tell the earth was round because they could see ships coming over the horizon. And I was so excited as a little girl to see ships do that." As Nyssa emerged from the bushes she saw the curvature of where she was. But it was much more abrupt than Earth, or any other planet she had ever been on.
The TARDIS
What happened? Has she been somewhere? No, she was precisely where she should be, in the control room of the TARDIS, right after their recent tragedy….
The Doctor, the fifth to be known by that name, was at the console. Unlike his predecessors, he was quite young looking, at around thirty or so, with his coat and shirt giving him a vaguely Edwardian appearance. "Crew of the freighter safely returned to their own time."
Nyssa replied, as if nothing had happened, "Cyber fleet dispersed."
The third person in the room was much less composed. The young Australian woman, Tegan Jovanka, was understandably upset. "Oh, great. You make it sound like a shopping list, ticking off things as you go. Aren't you forgetting something rather important? Adric is dead."
"Tegan, please." Nyssa replied.
"We feel his loss as well," the Doctor added.
Tegan was not impressed. "Well, you could do more than grieve. You could go back."
"Could you?" Nyssa wondered.
"No." the Doctor replied firmly.
"But surely the Tardis is quite capable of…"
"We can change what happened if we materialize before Adric was killed." Tegan added.
"And change your own history?" the Doctor objected.
"Look, the freighter could still crash into Earth. That doesn't have to be changed. Only Adric doesn't have to be on board."
Despite all three having been in a number of death-defying adventures, the Doctor's youthful face expressed an unusual gravity. "Now listen to me, both of you. There are some rules that cannot be broken even with the TARDIS. Don't ever ask me to do anything like that again. You must accept that Adric is dead. His life wasn't wasted. He died trying to save others, just like his brother, Varsh. You know, Adric had a choice. This is the way he wanted it."
Tegan was not happy, but accepted this. "We used to fight a lot. I'll miss him."
"So will I." Nyssa added.
"And me," agreed the Doctor. "But he wouldn't want us to mourn unnecessarily. Anyway, let's go somewhere special. Just to cheer us up. 1851 Earth, London."
"What's so special about that, Doctor?" Nyssa asked.
"Hyde Park, the Crystal Palace?"
Tegan recognized the allusion: "1851. The Great Exhibition?"
"All the wonders of Victorian science and technology."
"Well, the Tardis should feel at home."
"How about opening day? Pass the time of day with the foreign royals. We could even drop in at Lords, see a few overs from Wisden and Pilch. I wonder if the Lion will be bowling?"
Just then Nyssa detected something odd on the console. "Doctor, why is there a purple light flashing?"
"I don't believe there should be one there." The Doctor moved closer to look. "Oh, I remember. It's a warning about temporal anomalies."
"In the Victorian era?' Tegan wondered.
"Hold on. No, it's closer to your time. Actually it's exactly your time. I think we should dematerialize and take a closer look." The TARDIS did so, and on the view screen outside was open sunlit sky. They were actually hovering miles above the ground. Then a strange plane appeared in the distance, but rapidly came closer.
"A Concorde!" Tegan grasped.
"What is it?" Nyssa asked.
"It's the height of eighties aerodynamic innovation!"
"Is it? Oh."
"And are we doing something to it, Doctor?"
"What? No, of course not." The Doctor had a second thought. "Nyssa, you haven't touched the dimensional stabilizers."
"Of course not. All systems functioning normally."
"It could be the relative drift compensator."
"No."
"Feedback from the solar comparator? No. Which means something else is definitely going to happen to it."
On the flight deck of that very Concorde, the pilot began to speak. "This is Captain Urquhart again. We're still travelling supersonic, ladies and gentlemen, fifty-seven thousand feet. Just to let you know that we'll be reaching our deceleration point in a few minutes. And beginning our descent into London Heathrow." Captain Urquhart changed channels. "Good afternoon, London. Speedbird Concorde one nine two."
On the ground air traffic controller Horton replied. "Speedbird Concorde one nine two. You are cleared to descend to flight level three seven zero."
"Roger. Clear to three seven zero."
Back on the TARDIS, the Doctor was watching them. "They're sixty miles to the subsonic point."
Meanwhile on board the Plane, an attractive young woman of Bengali descent was picking up the trays. Madhabi Tagore was extremely intelligent, excellent at first aid, capable of dealing with a dozen flight emergencies and immensely calm and capable in a crisis. But it was her fine English accent, better than Tegan's, that got her a job as a stewardess. Which didn't stop her employers from thinking they were doing her a favor. She kept that to herself. "Can I take your glass?"
Back on the ground, Traffic Controller Horton was tracking the flight. "Speedbird Concorde one nine two, you are cleared to continue descent to two eight zero. Speedbird Concorde one nine two, will you acknowledge, please?" Captain Urquhart replied confidently "Speedbird Concorde one nine two. Speedbird Concorde one nine two."
"Oh Dear," the Doctor noted in the TARDIS.
Horton called again. "Speedbird Concorde one nine two, will you acknowledge? I don't believe it. She's approaching London but the trace is becoming intermittent."
Nyssa looked at the Concorde. "That looks a bit odd."
Tegan was nonplussed. "I don't understand. I don't see anything wrong."
Neither did anyone on the Concorde. Ms. Tagore was speaking to the passengers "Ladies and gentlemen. In a few minutes we shall be arriving at London Ter…" when the Concorde quietly vanished.
"Oh, it disappeared." Nyssa noticed. "I didn't know that Earth planes could do that."
"They can't!" Tegan shouted. Meanwhile on the ground. Horton picked up the red telephone. "Emergency. We have lost contact with Concorde Golf Victor Foxtrot."
"Doctor, what happened? It's like something out of the Bermuda Triangle."
"Don't be silly Tegan. The Triangle is just pseudo-scientific nonsense." The Doctor realized that was too curt, especially given Adric's death. "I'm sorry Tegan. But actually there are good books that show that 'the Bermuda Triangle,' is actually a fabrication encouraged by hucksters and sloppy journalists. I'm sure that if you read them you would see that clearly. Also, we're near Heathrow, so Bermuda can't have anything to do with the Concorde vanishing. Let's land first."
The Garden
As Nyssa strode out of the grove of blood red roses, and noticed the sharp curvature of the planet she was on, there was only the faintest sensation that there was something wrong. But in an instant she was more concerned about what where she was. "Judging from the angle of the curvature, this planet can't be more than a kilometer wide. Which means that its surface area would be, oh, a little more than three square kilometers."
Nyssa looked up at the night sky. "None of the stars are large enough to be the sun. And I'm not sure the size of the planet would block the actual sun from my view. Curiouser and Curiouser."
Nyssa strode into another part of the garden. On both sides of the path were a series of small trees, like Bonzai trees. Mixed with them were a series of purple flowers, like orchids. "Perhaps this is an artificial satellite. Maybe it's a spaceship." She sought to hear a tell-tale electrical hum. But what she heard was the music, strange, distinctly different in tone and timbre from most earth music. And above her was one of the strange unearthly birds. As she looked closer to it and heard the music more carefully, she realized something.
"You're a sentient creature!"
"I suppose I am," the bird replied.
Heathrow
The TARDIS had landed. The Doctor and Tegan did not notice the slight disorientation Nyssa had. Tegan was more concerned when the doors opened and they found themselves in one of Heathrow's terminals, right under a history of Aviation mural.
"Doctor, won't Heathrow notice us?" Tegan asked.
"Well, I certainly hope they do. It would be easier to find what happened to the Concorde if we're all on the same page."
Nyssa shook her head, "Since we're on earth, won't the TARDIS fit in?"
Tegan almost laughed at Nyssa's ignorance. "Not really. This is the eighties. Police boxes went out with flower power."
The Doctor left the TARDIS, followed by the two girls. "Oh, we're in luck," he said. This luck was not immediately clear, as a security officer, two of his colleagues and two policemen approached them.
The security officer talked to his superior on a walkie-talkie. "Mr. Sheard, I've just approached a police box in Terminal one."
Sheard was up in the air traffic control room with controller Horton. "There isn't a police box in Terminal One."
"Sir, there are three people in front of it. I'm speaking to them now. Are you responsible for this box, sir?"
"Well, I try to be…" the Doctor replied, looking at the officer's nametag, "…Andrews is it? Yes."
"Doctor, you've done it again." Nyssa replied.
"Nonsense. We'll be away from here in no time."
"Would you be so good as to open it up, sir?" Andrews asked.
"Oh, that seems unnecessarily confusing and time consuming. Especially with the Concorde having just vanished and all that."
"Excuse me? What are you talking about?"
"UNIT."
"Sir?"
"You'd do much better to check with UNIT, department C19. Sir John Sudbury is the man you want. "
"And who exactly are you, sir?"
"Oh, just tell him it's the Doctor. And do send my regards to Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart. Unless, of course, he's a General by now."
Andrews quickly used his walkie-talkie. Then he issued directions. "You two policeman, watch the Police box and make sure no one goes inside. You two security men politely escort the Doctor and these two ladies to that magazine kiosk two hundred feet away and make sure no one goes away. I'm talking to Sheard about this man's credentials."
A Memory
Nyssa, Tegan and Adric were in the National Gallery. They were looking at Velazquez's Rokeby's Venus. Nyssa and Adric has seen Earth paintings in books that the TARDIS possessed. But they had not seen them in person as it were, and looked at the painting with genuine curiosity and interest. Tegan, dressed in her stewardess' uniform that she had worn when she first stumbled into the TARDIS, was scowling angrily.
Nyssa noticed Tegan's anger. "Is something wrong?"
"Perhaps it's the subject of the painting," Adric suggested. "Apparently this is a pivotal moment in the history of gender relations on this planet."
"It's not that," Tegan muttered under slightly gritted teeth.
"Or perhaps it's the theological aspect. Although you wouldn't know just to look at it, apparently the woman in the painting is a deity of some sort, according to one of the planet's religions. And supposedly many of the other religions violently disagree with that idea."
"It's not the painting! I'm angry at the Doctor!"
"I don't understand," Nyssa said. "He brought you back to London so you could get to your job."
"He brought me back six months late. I can't go to my job now."
"Really?" Nyssa considered the problem. "That seems quite inconsiderate of them."
Heathrow
The three were at the Kiosk. The Doctor was looking at a newspaper. "I don't know what English cricket is coming to," he said sadly. Tegan looked at some music magazine covers, with pictures of Duran Duran on one, and Spandau Ballet on the other. Nyssa's attention was caught by a small wind-up toy on a top shelf, a clothed cat playing on a drum. How Curious she thought, when Andrews approached them.
"Mr. Sheard wishes to speak to you."
In the elevator, the Doctor apologized to Tegan. "Sorry about the delay. I imagine you would prefer to be at the Crystal Palace."
"Why do we have to help? Who else can find a missing Concorde as easily as Heathrow?"
"I very much doubt whether anyone on Earth can find it, without our assistance."
The Elevator doors opened, and the Doctor quickly strode out to greet Sheard and Controller Horton. "Hello, I'm the Doctor. This is Nyssa and Tegan. I strongly suspect we have no time to waste. Now, there are no signs of the remnants of the Concorde failing from the sky."
"Correct," said Sheard.
"And its last appearance was somewhat intermittent before it vanished altogether."
"Yes, that's exactly what happ-," agreed Horton.
"Are we dealing with aliens? I know it sounds silly," Sheard inquired.
"It's quite possible," agreed the Doctor. "There are genuine aliens, while at the same time you're right to be skeptical, since most claims to see aliens are nonsense."
"So we're dealing with some sort of flying saucer?"
"I…doubt it. We didn't see one."
Nyssa spoke up. "It sounds as if the Concorde could be cross-tracing on the time-space axis."
"Yes exactly. Very good Nyssa. You see Mr. Sheard, I strongly suspect it's not so much a question of where the TARDIS is, but when."
Soon the TARDIS was on a forklift directed to another Concorde.
"But why does it have to be another Concorde?" Sheard wondered.
"We must follow the same route, same height, same speed, and with my equipment on board I can identify what I believe to be an exponential time contour."
"And you really believe that Victor Foxtrot flew into a time warp?"
"Exactly. And we can't have a navigational hazard like that hanging about the galaxy."
Soon the Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa met the flight crew of the second Concorde. The TARDIS itself was loaded still on its side, because Concorde was a skinny aircraft. A tall clean-shaven man looking a bit more youthful than his late forties, welcomed them.
"Morning, Doctor. I'm Captain Stapley. May I introduce my First Officer, Andrew Bilton? Our Flight Engineer, Roger Scobie."
"And this is Nyssa and Tegan."
The Doctor and his two companions quickly got into their seats and put on their seat belts. As they did so, a thought came to Nyssa.
"Doctor, is it possible for there to be life on asteroids?"
"Any asteroid? Oh, I suppose so. You can place space stations on them. There are viruses and bacteria that can survive in all sort of extreme situations."
"No, I mean complex intelligent multi-cellular life, outside of a station or spacecraft."
Just then Horton's voice came over the intercom: "Golf Alpha Charlie clear for takeoff." As its crew and passengers braced, the Concorde gracefully soared into the sky.
A few seconds later, the Doctor replied. "An asteroid would be too small to have an atmosphere. Without one, the asteroid would either be too hot or too cold for any water to be in a liquid state, which would make any life, let alone complex multi-cellular life, be too difficult to form. I'm surprised Nyssa that you didn't realize this."
"Yes, that is a bit odd."
"It's like The Little Prince." Tegan interjected.
"The Little what?"
"It's a children's book. A French pilot is stuck in the Sahara, and he encounters a boy, the prince of the title."
"What does this have to do with asteroids?" the Doctor wondered.
"Well apparently the Prince came from an asteroid. And before he came to earth, he visited other people living on little asteroids, each one no larger than a bedroom or so. They actually made a movie of it a few years ago. I was making money baby-sitting and I took a boy to see it. And the one thing he loved was the asteroids."
Just then Captain Stapley called the Doctor to the flight deck. "We're at fifty eight thousand feet, a hundred and fifty miles off the Cornish coast. We're going to turn back in four minutes. Do you seriously believe that Victor Foxtrot got caught in some sort of time slip?"
"It would seem to be the logical explanation."
"That's a pretty rum idea to me."
Flight Engineer Scobie interrupted. "Hang on a moment though, Doctor. If we follow Victor Foxtrot's course and end up somewhere over the rainbow, well, we're on a one-way ticket just like Captain Urquhart's lot."
"Ah, you're forgetting the Tardis." The Doctor left the cramped flight deck.
Back at Air Traffic Control, Sheard and Horton heard Captain Stapley: "Golf Alpha Charlie now at fifty north twenty west. Request clearance to return to London."
"Golf Alpha Charlie clear to turn to port. Route via us here on November fifteen west to London." Horton replied.
"Roger. Golf Alpha Charlie turning to port."
"They're now on the same configuration as one nine two."
Meanwhile in the Concorde hold, the Doctor approached the TARDIS, lying on its "back." "It's amazing."
"What?" Nyssa asked.
"This thing is smaller on the inside than it is on the outside." The Doctor unlocked the TARDIS door. "Wait here." He then slid down the floor and reached a switch on the console. The interior moved ninety degrees and Nyssa and Tegan walked in.
"I wish I'd known about that when we were on Castrovalva." Nyssa said sadly.
"So useful when you want to maintain a dignified attitude."
"Concorde should begin a descent deceleration procedure at any minute." Tegan noted. Indeed it was. "Golf Alpha Charlie request permission to descend to three seven zero." Captain Stapley declared.
"It's happening again." Horton noted back at air Traffic control.
First Officer Bilton was curious. "Did you feel something?"
"I'm not sure," Captain Stapley replied. "Golf Alpha Charlie, permission to descend to three seven zero. London, this is Golf Alpha Charlie, do you read?"
Back in the TARDIS Nyssa declared "Doctor, we're time travelling!"
"But the column isn't moving." Tegan correctly noted.
"The Concorde has just flown into the time contour," the Doctor replied. He returned to the flight deck.
"Captain, the radiation meter's on alert." Scobie noted.
"Must be a solar flare."
The Doctor shook his head. "Oh, I doubt it, Captain. It's simply reacting to millennia of galactic radiation through which we're passing."
"London, this is Golf Alpha Charlie. Do you read?"
"I'm afraid your radio is useless, Captain. By my estimation we're the spatial equivalent of four hundred billion miles from Air Traffic Control."
Bur rather unexpectedly, the radio replied. "Golf Alpha Charlie clear to descend to three seven zero."
Confidently, and only a touch smugly, Captain Stapley turned to the Doctor. "Fasten your seatbelt please. By my calculations we're twenty minutes from touchdown."
Back at Air Traffic Control, Horton was disconsolate. "We've lost them."
Another Memory
The Doctor was dealing with the extremely irritating but ultimately tractable Pelican monsters of Zoga-5. While they waited in the pleasant countryside, Tegan decided to introduce the concept of poker to Nyssa and Adric.
"All right, the first thing is that I deal each of you five cards. You look at them and then decide whether to ask for one card or two."
Adric looked at his hand. "Oh this looks interesting." He showed everyone two fours, two nines and an eight. "Two squares and a cube!"
"Adric, you don't show the others your…"
"What about this?' Nyssa asked. She showed a two, a three, a five, an eight and a King.
"A Fibonacci sequence!" Adric realized. "That's very clever. Let's see if you can complete it. He took the deck from Tegan's hands, and gave Nyssa two cards.
"A pair of aces! It fits!" And she showed everyone the complete sequence.
"Let me try." Adric reshuffled the cards, and dealt himself five cards face up. "A two, a seven, another ace, another two, another eight!"
"It's e, the base of the natural logarithm. That's wonderful Adric."
Tegan threw away her cards. "I don't know why I bother."
The Concorde
The Concorde had safely landed, and Captain Stapley ushered everyone outside. "We're back at Heathrow," he said.
"To be frank, this is not what I'd expected would happen," the Doctor replied
"What flying on a plane, turning around and coming back to exactly where we started?"
"It's not so much a matter of where…"
But then Nyssa interrupted. "I'm sorry. But there's nothing here."
"Why, what do you see Nyssa?"
"This is a wilderness of some sort."
"You're not seeing an airport?" asked Tegan.
"I'm not seeing anything human. There's no civilization at all. Not only no people, but none of the industrial nor transportation infrastructure, nor even agricultural. I'm not seeing any animals, but even the plant life is distinctly different from contemporary Britain."
"I see. Well I don't quite see, but will very shortly," the Doctor replied. "Everyone, or everyone except Nyssa, I need you to close your eyes and concentrate very hard. I think we're facing a form of perceptual induction."
"What?" asked Engineer Scobie.
"It's an illusion of some sort. Trying counting backwards by thirteen from a thousand."
"987, 974, 961, 948," Captain Stapley thought. "Oh!"
And they all opened their eyes and found that indeed Nyssa was right. They were in the middle of a rocky wilderness with little vegetation. The Doctor strode over back to the Concorde and looked at the landing gear. "Oh dear, that's not good."
"It's heavily damaged," First Officer Bilton noted.
"Yes, and we didn't notice it at all. It's like having a teeth pulled out under hypnosis."
"But where are we?" Captain Stapley wondered.
"Precisely where you thought you were. Heathrow Airport…140 million years ago. We're in the Jurassic period."
"The Jurassic period?" Tegan cried out. "Does that mean we can expect to see a Tyrannosaurus racing by planning to eat us for lunch?"
"Don't be silly, Tegan. We won't see them for another sixty million years or so. And I believe they're on a different continent. Of course, there are other powerful predators running around. And just because you haven't any fossils of them doesn't mean there aren't smaller predators that could be very nasty indeed."
"Terrific."
"So Victor Foxtrot and its passengers must be somewhere nearby." Stapley realized.
"I believe so," agreed the Doctor. "But who did this to us? Time corridors aren't natural. And if we just underwent an illusion, there must be an illusionist."
"Are you sure that follows Doctor?" Nyssa queried.
"Reasonably sure. Whoever did this must have known there were people more than 100 million years in the future."
"Another time traveler?" Tegan asked.
"That's not unreasonable to assume. But let's not jump to conclusions. Let's see. It would be a good idea to guard the TARDIS, while making sure we did not get lost on general principle. On the other hand we need to find the Victor Foxtrot people. Who are probably under the illusion that they're in Heathrow and need to be talked out of it. Captain Stapley, which of your crew know the other Concorde's crew best?'
"First Officer Bilton."
"Very good. Tegan, I think you should come along with me as well, while the three of you wonder how to repair the landing gear."
"Into the wild grey and surprisingly uninteresting yonder," Tegan muttered. She looked at Nyssa. "Nyssa is something wrong?"
The garden
Nyssa stared at the bird. "Everything about this planet shows that it can't exist."
"I agree. But it does exist."
"This must be some kind of space station, but I Know it isn't. Logically then it must be some sort of illusion. But I know that isn't true as well."
"And you are correct on both points."
"You must be responsible for this situation. Somehow you have created this world."
"Responsible yes. Created, not quite."
"I don't know what's going on. But the uncounted millennial instinct of innumerable species tells me to fear you. But I know your purpose is benign." Nyssa paused. "Logically you could be using something to compel my acceptance. But I know that you're not. I know this more than almost anything I've ever faced."
"And yet you are concerned, and rightly so."
"There is something wrong, very wrong indeed. But if you know the answer, why don't you tell me it?"
"Do you remember when your father taught you to read?"
"My father is dead."
"I know. But do you remember…"
Nyssa thought back. "I remember the first thing he ever taught me, was that I had to learn things on my own. That I couldn't have him answer all my questions."
"There is so much to teach you. There is the old enemy, and the older enemy. There is an ending, and the dead men and the living women. There is a trial, and there is a masterplan. And there is a war. And there is much more. There are enemies that never die, there are enemies older than fear, and faster than a blink. There are things out of sequence, and there are evils prevented only to create more powerful ones in the future. And there is one enemy only this Doctor can defeat."
The music that surrounded Nyssa moved to a certain emotional pitch, while Nyssa was struck by the birds' feminine voice. The bird resumed. "Allow me to help you with your current predicament. Walk through those groves. After a few hundred yards you will see a rotunda with eight Tuscan columns."
The Concorde
"I feel fine," Nyssa replied. As Tegan, First Officer Bilton and the Doctor left, Nyssa wondered to herself "Do I really?" Meanwhile Captain Stapley and Flight Engineer Scobie looked at the damaged landing gear.
"Well, assuming that Victor Foxtrot is in one piece, it would be hypothetically possible to repair the gear with materials from it." Stapley said.
"I'm not sure we understand what's going on." Nyssa said.
Meanwhile the Doctor and the other two had noticed over a small hill a large black cube the size of a several story building. "That can't be real!" Bilton shouted.
"Actually, since there is no reason to expect such an object in the Jurassic, it's the most likely thing to be real," the Doctor replied.
"So we're just going to walk up to this cube, presumably the lair of this very powerful enemy? That seems a bit rash."
"Well, if the people from Victor Foxtrot are there, then it won't be too odd if someone is calling for them." As the three approached the cube, they saw that it was in fact a building with some sort of doors. They saw someone who looked very much like a Concorde passenger wandering near a far corner.
"I think we're heading in the right direction," the Doctor declared as they entered the building. And for an instant it appeared they were back in Heathrow. But it was only for an instant and the next moment there was a group of people who thought they were In Heathrow Airport. The interior itself was spartan, large, and lit, but not lit in such a way that one could easily detect the source of the lighting. Its atmosphere was clearly unhuman. There were passengers standing around what they thought was the baggage carousel but which was just a pile of rocks. Others were at newsstands and thought they were reading magazines while others were trying to drink imaginary drinks.
Tegan noticed several passengers picking up their imaginary "baggage," and then departing and walking further into the building. "Doctor, look!"
"Clearly whoever is casting this illusion wants the passengers to go there. Bilton, do you see any of the crew?"
"Captain Urquhart? Captain Urquhart?" Bilton called out in a assertive, but not alarming voice. But before he could find him, Tegan pointed to someone else. "Doctor I know this woman!"
Tegan rushed to a corner where Stewardess Tagore was trying to concentrate and not be noticed. Looking up she almost gasped. "Tegan?"
"Doctor, this is a friend of mine! Meet Madhabi Tagore. She's a stewardess like me."
"Miss Tagore, do you know where you are?" the Doctor asked.
"I'm not in Heathrow! But everyone thinks they're in Heathrow."
"You are understandably very confused. But you're correct. Does anybody else realize the truth?"
"It's so hard for me to resist it. But there may be one other person. Another stewardess."
Nearby a young woman of West Indies descent was sitting very awkwardly on the ground. "This is the worst service ever. I've been waiting for my drink for more than an hour."
Tagore led the others to her. "Everyone, this is June McQueen." She abruptly yanked McQueen by the hand up to her feet. Then she quickly pinched her.
"Ow! That hurt, you Indian…oh bloody hell," McQueen gasped as the illusion wore off. "Oh great. I'm in hell, and I'm stuck with Tegan Jovanka."
"Oh, do you know this woman as well?" the Doctor asked.
"Yeah," Tegan said sheepishly. "The last time we met we had this big argument."
"You're an idiot for thinking AC/DC is anything other than garbage."
"And apparently she is picking up exactly from where she left off."
The Doctor interrupted. "First off, we're not in hell. Second, hello my name is the Doctor, and this is First Officer Bilton. Third, the important thing is that I can get you back to the real Heathrow, but in all honesty I should point out that you are all facing incredible danger. We need to find some way of gathering everybody from Victor Foxtrot. I think they are wandering into a trap." But suddenly man-sized agglomerations of opaque bubbles appeared and engulfed the Doctor.
Meanwhile back at the Concorde, Flight Engineer Scobie raced over to Captain Stapley, who had found some high ground to look for the Concorde. "Well I've done an inventory of the things we need."
"Good man. And I think I've found Victor Foxtrot." Stapley pointed at it, several hundred meters away.
"Look!" said Nyssa. A dozen passengers from Victor Fotrot were approaching Golf Alpha Charlie Concorde.
"Over here!" Scobie shouted. But the dazed passengers did not see him at all.
"Good grief! They're taking the TARDIS," Stapley realized.
"How odd," Nyssa replied. "I though it would be too heavy for humans to lift." But just then the strange opaque bubbles that had surrounded the Doctor now surrounded Stapley and Scobie.
The garden
As she exited the grove she had entered on the Bird's direction, Nyssa saw two strange smaller birds, circling around her overhead, whistling an odd, unearthly tune in the night sky. She saw the rotunda with the Tuscan columns nearby.
As the music approached, not a climax, but a new register, a new level of sensation, Nyssa neared the steps. Up ahead she saw on a table under the rotunda a strange toy like object that she recognized as a crude abacus. Near it was a teenage boy, a couple of years younger than Nyssa. He had dark hair shorn in an unimaginative bowl cut. He wore a dull-coloured shirt beneath a yellow tunic and a pair of muddy-coloured trousers tucked into boots. Nyssa noticed an orange breast pocket, but she could not see it clearly from the distance she was at.
As she walked up the steps the boy smiled at her. "Hello, Nyssa," said Adric.