5. The Snare.

"Now, I have a question for you, Crystelle," the Doctor says. "When I mentioned the words snare or trap earlier, you could hardly bear it. Why is that?"

Crystelle must face this difficulty head-on. Now or never.
"Doctor, it does give me a lot of pain every time I think about it. I could have died."
"Alright," the Doctor says calmly. "Are you going to tell me about it?"

"Okay, then," Crystelle says cautiously. "It relates to an incident when I was a child. I was wandering along a leaf-covered woodland path when I happened to look down and see a metallic glint from among the leaves on the path. I stopped and gently moved some leaves aside and found a man trap. Massive iron teeth in a circle with a trigger mechanism along an axis ready to spring it. I would have been killed or severely injured if I'd taken even only a few more incautious steps. I think it was a farmer trying to defend his land against some of the larger fauna."
"I thought it was just Humans on your home planet, Tinsel," the Doctor says.
"There's more than just Humans live on Tinsel," Crystelle says, "just as there are more than Humans living on Earth."

"What would the farmer have done if he'd caught you in the man trap?" the Doctor asks more gently.
Crystelle shudders violently. The Doctor puts his arm around her protectively. "What was that?"
Crystelle blurts "He would have killed me. I'd have been a statistic. A fatality. An unsolved murder, disappearance, or something. I'd have died, Doctor!" She starts sobbing.

"I'm horrified to hear that," the Doctor says. He keeps his arms around her protectively.

After a short while he resumes asking her about it. "Have your adventures recently helped you overcome this?"
"Somewhat," Crystelle says. "I used to run when the word snare was mentioned!" Then to change the subject, "What happened with the Silurians and the beavers? What was going on?"

"The Silurians were bioengineering the beavers," the Doctor says. "But that's not the only thing they were bioengineering. They were changing the very ground under their feet for some reason, and that had destabilised the locality to the Time Vortex and opened up the vortex entry. It's a bit like tunnelling and accidentally breaking through to another nearby tunnel. I was careful not to tell them exactly what they'd done in case they deliberately do it again."

The Silurian Alarms.

"What do we need to do to stop the Silurians?" Crystelle asks.
"Unfortunately, we can't do a lot," the Doctor says. "They have a legal right to do things on Earth just as much as Mankind. They were there first here, so-to-speak. I only try to curtail their excesses. And they were right about the pollution."

"We say that, but could we help against the pollution?" Crystelle asks.
"It will need the combined efforts of everyone on Earth to sort out the pollution," the Doctor says. He sighs.
"Surely not!" Crystelle retorts, but she feels a sadness. "How long have they got to sort it all out?"
"Progressively things will get worse, and more and more species will go extinct until..." the Doctor pauses.
"Until what?" Crystelle says urgently.
The Doctor sighs again. "If they don't sort out the pollution soon, the whole Human race will go extinct as the planet will no longer feed them, or any of the animals they feed on."

Crystelle feels a revulsion at the verdict. "Surely not!" she says again.
"They might sort things out to be more sustainable," the Doctor says, "but it will only take one large country to avoid following international rules and it will all fall over."

"What will the Silurians do?" Crystelle wants to know.
"Ah! They have alarms set when things start to get critical!" the Doctor says. "They will emerge and wipe out Humanity and put something else in its place! I will be very sad in that day."
"Does it have to happen that way?"
"No," the Doctor says. "On your planet, in your millennium, your history books can look back on these times on Earth. Their decisions now will re-write your history books! Too much of a nudge and Humans won't look to the stars to populate their planets. They won't be ready for the Andromeda Galaxy collision, and they won't become an inter-galactic species."

"Doctor," Crystelle starts saying cautiously, "why do you follow the history of Earth and Humans so closely?"
The Doctor taps his nose to say mind your own business.
"Go on, Doctor, tell me. I can keep a secret."
"The Time Continuum itself will depend on them! Don't tell anyone else!"

THE END

The previous episode in this series is called "Master Trap" (ref. 26).

The next episode in this series is called "Theia Coincidence."

I hope to add further episodes soon.

Sparse References.

Reference 9 Episode Gallifrey Exhumed in this series,
where Crystelle had access to the Gallifreyan Library.

Reference 12 Episode Crystelle Growth in this series,
where Crystellefinds a DNA biologist to develop regeneration for her.

Reference 26. Episode Master Trap, the previous episode in this series leads into the start of this episode, although it isn't necessary to know that.

Issues.

The Andromeda Galaxy collision will happen in 3 billion years' time. When two galaxies collide, each star will have different probabilities of what will happen to it. Being on a planet by the right star will take the occupants to become a part of the other galaxy and we would then become an inter-galactic species!

ANOTHER END