Chapter 6 – The Time Crusader –

Rose just simply could not believe it. To her it was beyond comprehension, not quite beauty, not quite reality, not quite fantasy. The only way to describe it was that after 60 or so years of science fiction, none of the great Sci-Fi novelists nor directors had gotten it right. This was a whole different ship, just not even a bit of "Mr Spock" would do it this time.

The room, or was it? It seemed too large to be called a room, was simply enormous in scale, stretching for miles in both directions. The whole room was almost like a dome, with a giant beam of blue light and a smaller dome in the middle. The whole room was an almost shiny black plastic, almost like acyclic feel to it, the walls, the floor, you name it. However, what was most strange about this black material was that it wasn't dark, so to speak. It was almost like it emitted light itself, so nothing ever looked dark, even in a room of black. Around the rims of the doors and several other key structures were lines of blue light, similar to the beam coming in from the roof in the centre. The other amazing thing was, the blue light emitted no light, so nothing appeared blue from these lights. It made everything just look like it was all a computer program, because it just looked so unreal, and so simple, it could not be technology or anything man made for that matter, but neither did it look natural, it just appeared to be…. Well, there, so to speak, it was beyond comprehension.

The Doctor wasn't entirely faring much better. Like Rose, he found this ship beyond comprehension, but not for its form. It was its function that really threw him off guard, for he had just theoretically parked his TARDIS inside another one. Now the thing that really doesn't work about this is that a TARDIS is basically just a room inside another dimension. The whole travelling part of it just requires it to move it's door to somewhere in time, as part of an object. In the case of the Doctor, that object was an ancient Police Phone Box., It had almost become synonymous with his name really with Time Lords anyway. The real problem in this was that they all ran on the same frequency, or to put it more observantly, they all used the same dimension. For his to be inside another would either require a dimension paradox, which was insanely dangerous, or for it to somehow have looped the ship round, by setting up a temporary dimension vortex, but to be honest, he really wasn't sure which way it was. For one of the first times in his entire life, he was confused and his head actually felt dizzy from thinking about something. This really irritated him, for though he never he never appeared to have a large ego, he was normally used to being the smartest person in the present company, and seeing as he now felt dumbstruck by Kymern's ship, he for one of the rare times in his life felt primitive. This stuck an unusually seen chord in him.

Kymern noticed the Doctor's concerned look on his face and laughed. Who had once seemed to be a grumpy old man had turned out to be just as eccentric and weird as the Doctor, Rose noted quietly to herself. He walked out from the door, shutting it behind him, but instead of the door being the TARDIS's police box doors, it was simply just a door, exactly like all of the other ones being used, except for a different number on it, and a blue circle around the door number lit up, which indicated that the door was currently linked. He looked around, taking in the rooms otherworldly gloriousness, and turned to the Doctor and Rose. "Welcome" he announced loudly, his voice travelling off into the distances of the room, but not getting an echo, so great were these distances. "This is the Time Crusader" he exclaimed proudly "my very own TARDIS. This is its docking bay" he always did this, just to throw his visitors off. People were always amazed at how large this was, but when announced it was only a docking bay, it threw their sense of perception completely off balance. However, the Doctor suddenly understood the whole concept of this room. Kymern's ship was a transport ship, meant for carrying TARDIS's. Such a purpose would have been immensely useful during the Time War, but now? It was pretty useless. That would have meant that the whole ship must have been set to a different frequency, so that it could dock Time Lord's ships into it, without tearing apart subspace in the process. It also explained how his ship had been able to dock with it now, given the right frequencies. He completely forgot about all that nonsense about his intelligence before, for now he was impressed. No wait, more than impressed, he was more or less blown of his feet. He knew the Time Lord's had had some pretty good technicians before, but this piece of technology was just beyond amazing. He grinned as he looked around, uttering "fantastic" over and over again, just looking around.

"So, I take it you like it?" Kymern asked Rose.

"It's……" gasped Rose. "just.. so large…."

Kymern had to laugh at this, "Well, I wouldn't have put it so blatantly myself, but you are only human after all"

"Just… how big is it" She managed to put out "You know… in distance?" she added, making sure he understood fully what she was trying put across to him.

"Oh, that's the funny thing, it can be as large or small as I want it to be, as long as I change the settings correctly, but this is how it normally looks." He looked around, looking in thought, then leaned in closer to her "Between you and me" he whispered "I'd say it's about 100,000 times bigger than the one your friend here has. But I wouldn't brag about it, Time Lords get a little worked up about who has the biggest toys." He joked. Rose sniggered, but the Doctor was still looking around, grinning childishly, and thus failed to noticed the entire interaction between Kymern and his companion completely.

Kymern then turned to face the Doctor, who to his dismay was now touching the walls, and the door to his TARDIS. "Please refrain from doing that ever again" he pointed out to him blandly, to which the Doctor promptly did, although he didn't look too happy about it. "Anyway, how about we go look at the rest of my ship now? What do you say"

"Great!" The Doctor smiled, his enthusiasm now actually starting to bug Rose, who had now begun to wonder how long it would be before they left and got back on their adventures across time again.

Kymern swiftly turned around and trotted off to the small semi-dome in the centre of the room. Rose sighed, realising from what she had it was going to take quite some while to actually walk even there.

She couldn't have been closer to the truth, even if she had tried harder. Or of course, Kymern had told her.