The Doctor sighed as he climbed a few steps higher on the spiral staircase which bisected the TARDIS's cavernous wardrobe, and reached out to spin another clothes rack around.
Coat hangers squeaked as carnival dresses and striped pyjamas swayed back and forth on the suspended rail, but no spacesuits were forthcoming. The Doctor wondered if the TARDIS was being deliberately obstinate to express her disapproval of their newest passenger.
"I know you're not happy," muttered the Doctor, looking up at the shadowy walls. Several worried-looking Doctors stared back at him from circular mirrors, and he sighed. "What do I do, old girl? If I save the Master, I destroy a creature that's just starting out in the universe. I can't make that decision. I need to think of another way."
The TARDIS hummed in sympathy, but she had no answers to offer him.
After another few minutes of searching, the Doctor glimpsed a flash of colour behind a row of velvet smoking jackets. He leaned over the railing and pushed the jackets aside to reveal three orange spacesuits, complete with helmets, hanging from hooks on the wall.
He smiled, now remembering that he had positioned them out of sight because their slightly creepy corpse-like appearance had reminded him of his recent encounter with the Vashta Nerada.
He unhooked the spacesuits and hoisted them down, then began a wobbly descent of the spiral staircase, the suits piled up in his arms. He was almost at floor level when he caught sight of the Master standing by the door, looking up at him with folded arms.
"It'll be messy."
The Doctor slung the suits across the railing and leaned over. "What?"
"Brain surgery. Open up Lord's skull, pull the parasite out and transfer it to a chunk of basic synthetic nervous tissue, something without any telepathic capabilities. We'll have to build it an artificial body so it can interact with the world around it. I'll design something."
The Doctor blinked, taken aback by this sudden matter-of-fact offer of assistance. "Umm, okay."
"Doesn't need to be complex. How about a sphere?"
The Doctor made a face. "Sounds a bit Toclafane."
The Master shrugged. "I'll leave the knives out."
With raised eyebrows, the Doctor pulled the spacesuits back into his arms and descended the staircase, depositing them carefully on the floor when he reached the bottom. The bright yellow helmets rolled sideways, their visors gleaming in the soft light. It was now the Master's turn to look unimpressed.
"Ugly."
"Practical," corrected the Doctor. "Unless you want to be crushed by the vacuum of space. Come on, grab one."
The Master lifted a spacesuit up by the sleeves, holding it out in front of him like a dissatisfied fashion designer. He glanced at the Doctor, who had slung the other two suits over his shoulders.
"Why have you got three? We're not bringing Martha, are we?"
"I don't think she'll give us a choice," smirked the Doctor, turning and making for the door.
The Master followed him.
"You're right. She's ever so brave, that one."
"Yes. Yes, she is."
"Temper like a supernova, mind you."
The Doctor chuckled. "And didn't I always tell you not to go poking supernovas?"
"I wasn't trying to upset her!" The Master ducked under the low doorframe and out into the corridor. "Okay, maybe I was."
They walked in silence for a few moments until the Master spoke again.
"What if it doesn't work, Doctor? Your plan to merge me with Lord. What if we both just… regenerate into two new bodies? Or die?"
"You won't die," said the Doctor with more confidence than he felt, skirting around a puddle of water and making a mental note to drain the swimming pool later. He glanced back at the Master, who looked unconvinced. "If I've learned anything from the past 900 years, it's that you're incredibly resilient."
The Master's mouth twitched in a smile. "That's true, but I'm not myself right now. I'm weak. Lord got all the superior traits. What if he regenerates, and I… don't?"
The Doctor stopped fully and turned. The Master was avoiding his gaze, staring at the floor. It shook the Doctor a little to realise that his friend was actually scared.
"You're not weak," said the Doctor sincerely.
"I feel it. I feel… out of control. Like my emotions are running me. I can't focus."
The Doctor took a step forward until they were face to face.
"Listen to me. Lord said they poured everything bad into you - the madness, the pain. But you need those things to stay alive. That's why it hurts. Lord is a deadly war machine, but I don't think he feels anything at all." He paused, and then reached out and put his hand on the Master's shoulder. "I promise you are coming out of this alive. I am not letting you die on me again, Master."
The Master looked at him searchingly, and then slowly a grin found its way onto his face.
"If I die, I'm going to quote you on that."
The moon was utterly silent, its mountainous landscape stark, grey and unforgiving.
Martha squinted up into the sky, her vision confined by the narrow window of the helmet's visor. She could see the earth floating up there in the vast blackness of space. It looked unnervingly far away.
Despite all this, she felt dizzy with excitement as she took a step out of the TARDIS onto the powdery ground, and suddenly it was like a heavy blanket had just been thrown off her chest.
The Doctor had once taken her to a planet of similar gravity to the moon to play mini-golf, where she had discovered that the most efficient way to move around was an odd kind of hopping. Martha pushed off with her boot and sailed through the air, landing with a gentle bounce about six feet away from the TARDIS. The feeling of weightlessness made her giddy and for a moment she forgot about everything else and just laughed with pure delight.
"This way," crackled the Doctor's voice in her helmet.
Martha turned with difficulty in the cumbersome spacesuit to see the Doctor beckoning her down a gentle slope. They had landed on the rim of a crater, and at the bottom of it was a badly damaged Dalek saucer ship, resting at a slight angle like a frisbee that had been lodged into the ground after a particularly violent throw, and then chewed in half by a dog. Debris littered the crater, and the whole scene was lit starkly by the eerie earth-light.
The Doctor and the Master were already making their way towards the ship, evidently well practised in the art of lunar movement. Martha hopped clumsily after them, slipping and sliding on the rocky ground.
"Remember the first time we met?" said the Doctor conversationally, falling into bounce-step beside Martha as they descended into the crater. She smiled at the memory.
"The hospital on the moon."
He nodded to their left. "About a hundred miles that way."
Martha grinned at him through the helmet. "You took your shoes off. I thought you were insane."
The Doctor looked hurt. "Do you not think that any more? I'll have to do better."
The crater walls loomed higher around them as they approached the ship on its damaged side. It was much larger at close quarters - a colossal circle of metal taller than several buildings.
"So what's the plan?" Martha asked. "Do we just knock at the front door?"
"We need to climb up to the control deck," replied the Doctor. "I'm sure Lord will be expecting us."
"Does the phrase, 'walking into a trap' mean anything to you, Doctor?" droned the Master's sarcastic voice over the helmet com.
"Don't worry," said the Doctor. "If he's anything like you, it will be a rubbish trap I can just talk my way out of."
The dark rim of the ship loomed over them, casting them into shadow as they moved under its belly. Huge chunks of its framework had been ripped away by the laser blast, leaving gaping holes all across the hull.
They kept walking until the Doctor found a suitable opening above their heads, which led directly into what looked like a wide corridor. He bent his knees and leaped into the air, soaring like a balloon before grabbing onto the edge of the hole and pulling himself inside the ship. Martha and the Master followed.
The corridor was empty, and a dim orange glow overhead criss-crossed the grated floor with shadows from metal support beams. The Doctor opened a nearby airlock door with a faint hiss, and they quickly moved through into the relatively undamaged inner rooms of the ship.
As soon as they were inside, Martha felt the blanket of artificial gravity settle back on her shoulders, and her feet stuck to the floor like magnets. Return to normality.
The Master pulled off his helmet and shook his head like a dog.
"Finally. Did we have to park so far away?"
"It was a precaution," murmured the Doctor, running the sonic screwdriver along the walls until he found an access hatch, which swung open with a clang. "I'm not giving Lord the option of stealing her again. Mind you, I doubt his transmat has enough power to abduct a chicken right now."
He peered up into the hatch, which was as smooth and vertical as a metal chimney floo.
"This is designed for Daleks," he muttered. "The question is, how do we get up there?"
The Master craned his neck. "Hack the artificial gravity, float up?"
"Or we could just climb this ladder?" suggested Martha.
Both Time Lords looked round in surprise. Martha was swinging off the bottom rung of a ladder made of tightly twisted and knotted cables, which snaked up the wall and disappeared into another access hatch in the ceiling.
The Doctor blinked, and then grinned and crossed to join her. "See, Martha, this is why we need you around."
"Yeah, canary in the coal mine," muttered the Master, bringing up the rear as they ascended the makeshift ladder. "Somebody has to die first."
Martha ignored him. "Why would Daleks need ladders?"
"Lord must have made it," murmured the Doctor. He examined the knotted cables as they climbed, his expression thoughtful. "I wonder how long he's been on this ship."
They passed a few other signs of habitation as they crawled upwards through the spacecraft. The ladder brought them to a narrow corridor where a human-sized doorway had been hacked through the wall into a storage bay, full of crudely repaired pipework and more cable-ladders. Scrap and rubble had been cleared away to create a path up through the wreckage of two more decks.
"Some battle was fought here," observed the Master, kicking aside a Dalek eyestalk as they reached a wide atrium scattered with more debris. The Doctor bent down and picked up a metal disc, carved with a symmetrical swirling pattern.
"The Seal of Rassilon," he murmured, holding it up to the light. "Gallifreyan armour. This ship came straight from the Time War."
He and the Master looked at each other in silence. Martha felt like she was intruding on a private moment, so she crossed to the nearest door, which was jammed ajar by a metal box, and peered through it. She immediately recognised softly glowing control panels, and turned back to the Doctor.
"The command deck is through here," she whispered.
"Right," said the Doctor, dropping the metal disc with a clink and straightening up. He glanced at the Master. "Let's go talk some sense into your stupid clone."
Illustration for chapter 28 on DeviantArt: atlantihero-kyoxei/art/Moonwalk-876234298