Chapter 1

Nita lay on the floor of the Control Room.

"Nita?" The Doctor gently shook Nita, who began to awaken.

"Doctor?" Nita looked around. She tried to stand. Still woozy, she staggered, and was caught by the Doctor.

"Careful, Nita. The stun-effect from the wormhole was relatively severe."

Nita rubbed her head. "Apparently so. How long were we unconscious?"

"Approximately thirty seconds. I have scanned you and detected no life-threatening injuries."

Nita moaned as she rubbed the shoulder she fell upon. She rubbed her right wrist. "Were you affected?"

"No. My Time Lord physiology was immune to the effect. This is the third unstable wormhole I have passed through during my time on the TARDIS."

Nita surveyed the Control Room. "Well, where the hell are we?"

The Doctor checked a readout on the console. "Point five-four parsecs from our previous position."

"Doctor, I should re-align the TARDIS clock with Starbase Four-ten's subspace signal to adjust for the time distortion."

"Proceed."

Nita rubbed her wrist again. She seemed slightly out of it.

"Nita? Are you alright?"

"Yes… I think so… Excuse me, Doctor, but I feel a bit… unfocussed…" She took a deep breath. "It will pass."

The Doctor satisfied himself that his wife was basically back to normal. "Not too bad, all things considered."

"We're lucky we didn't end up half-way across the galaxy and in the middle of next week."

"I don't believe that was ever a possibility. The wormhole's small size and extremely short period indicate a relatively local phenomenon."

"I didn't mean that literally, Doctor."

"There's still the anomalous M-Class planet we were going to investigate. Do we go back?"

"The unpredictability of the wormhole would make our investigation a dangerous one. A probe from our current position would be more advisable."

The Doctor weighed the consideration. Nodded to Nita. "Let's do it."

The TARDIS launched a probe, which sped across space.

Nita went to sickbay to get some cream to rub on her sore wrist. While there, she noticed the small glass containers she had been experimenting with earlier. Something stopped her dead in her tracks. Each of the incubation containers were fuzzy with a bright red, moss-like growth inside. Nita was very puzzled. She reached over and picked one up. She stared at it for a moment. "This is impossible." She wondered to herself what the hell was going on…

After applying the cream to her wrist, Nita returned to the Control Room. She looked at her instruments on the console. "Probe approaching the T-tauri system, Doctor."

"Readings, Nita?"

"Coming in now, Doctor. The probe has moved within visual range of the planet."

"On screen."

A big, green, gassy, Neptune-like planet was seen on the viewscreen. The Doctor studied his instruments for a couple of beats. "Sensors indicate a hydrogen-helium composition. With a frozen helium core."

"Wait a minute, didn't your readings indicate a Class M planet before we went through the wormhole, Doctor?"

"It's very possible that interference from the wormhole affected the sensors, Nita. This is clearly not a Class M planet."

Nita was still a bit doubtful.

"I'll run a full diagnostic to make sure the wormhole didn't cause any permanent damage to the sensors. Nita, set us back on a course for…" He noticed Nita's doubt. "Nita? A problem?"

"It's awfully strange that a malfunctioning sensor should give such a specific misreading of a planet. I would have thought that a space/time disturbance would cause a lot more confusion than that."

"It's conceivable that the sensors picked up the afterimage of an actual planet that lies on the other side of the wormhole. We could survey the nearby stars for such a planet. It would require approximately six weeks. But we don't have the time. We've encountered a minor mystery, one that has been solved to my satisfaction. Nita, unless there's a major objection, please set us a course for Evadne Four."

Nita good-humouredly backed down from playing devil's advocate. "No objection." Her fingers touched the controls in front of her.

The Doctor was sitting as his desk in his study as Nita entered, carrying a small, box-like carrier.

"You wanted to see me, Nita."

"I have something of a minor mystery on my hands."

"A 'minor mystery'? That seems to be a recurring phrase around her lately." He indicated the table. "Please."

She set down the box and opened it, taking out one of the incubation containers, now thriving with red moss.

The Doctor was surprised. "Diomedian scarlet moss. I didn't know you were an enthno-botanist."

"It's a hobby."

"You've got a good crop growing there. As I recall, it's not easy to cultivate."

"That's just it- I started the spores right before I was knocked unconscious by the wormhole. You said I was out for thirty seconds?"

"Correct."

"Then how come this shows a full day's growth?"

The Doctor stared at it for a moment, curious. "Perhaps you've got some sort of fast-growth strain."

She pulled out four more bottle-like containers, lining them up in front of him, each with a similarly luxuriant growth inside. "Each of these incubators were set with spores from completely different sources in the Diomedian system. I've got a dozen more back at the lab. Perhaps something extraordinary could have happened to one of them, but not all of them."

The Doctor continued to stare at the containers. "But that would mean you were unconscious for a full day. And yet everything else on board indicates that you were out for only thirty seconds. The TARDIS chronometer, the computer…" A beat as the implication sunk in. "Everything else… including me."