Chapter Five

Another Intruder

The Alterran's shout echoed down the corridors, causing Ace and Turlough to exchange a horrified look. "The Doctor must've left the door open!" Turlough hissed.

The voice called again and Ace got to her feet. "Right. Let's go see who it is, then."

Turlough threw a concerned look in his Doctor's direction before following after her. "I just hope it isn't another one of him," he said darkly. "I don't think I could handle them all at once again."

Ace gave him a puzzled look. "Again?"

"Never mind," the young man muttered, waving a hand in the air. He had been trying to trans late what Ace's Doctor had told her, but even he was having difficulty grasping all of it. While they both understood the concept of moving forward and backward in time, the current situation was complicated by the fact that time seemed to be overlapping itself. Had Ace gone back in time, or had Turlough gone forward? The voice of the intruder seemed a blessing in disguise. They both knew what to do about him.

Ace glanced out the door, motioning Turlough to go one way while she went the other, the plan obviously being for them to meet where the corridors joined further on ahead thus taking the newcomer by surprise. What they did not know was their intruder knew the TARDIS even better than they did and had gone in an entirely different direction.

While the Doctor's companions were looking for him, Jason was looking for them, or at least someone, and had gone through one door after another to avoid several lengthy and redundant corridors. Within minutes he was standing in the doorway of the room in which the Doctor had been left very much alone. For a moment he could not quite believe what he was seeing and stared in shock at the pale figure upon the bed. "Asta, what do you really know about all this?" he muttered.

The Doctor's body went out of synch again, bringing Jason out of his trance and to his side instantly. The Alterran sat down on the bed and examined the Time Lord with the care of the trained Healer he had been before his rise to the throne.

Ace appeared at the door and was appalled to see the dark-haired stranger at the bedside. "Hey! What do you think you're doing? Who are you? How did you get in here?"

Jason did not even look up. "To answer your questions in order," he said calmly, "I'm examining the Doctor. I'm the King of Tel-Shye. And I came in through the door."

Ace blinked, momentarily at a loss for words. "Now look, King Whoever You Are—"

"Jason," the Alterran said with a grin as he looked up and turned. The smile vanished from his face and his mouth dropped open when he saw Ace. He was expecting to see Peri, since she had been the one with the Doctor the last time he had seen him. He was therefore unprepared for the sight of the dark-haired teenager in a leather jacket who was presently menacing him with a baseball bat. He looked her up and down and shook his head. "Oh, Doctor," he under his breath, "where do you find them?"

Throwing a quick glance down at the bed, the King asked in a firm voice, "How long has he been like this?"

This was not the reaction Ace expected and she took a step back to consider the situation. She ended up bumping into Turlough as he appeared at the door behind her. He looked into the room, his mouth dropping open in amazement.

"Oh, no," he moaned, "not you, too."

Ace turned to see a look that was a combination of recognition and resignation on Turlough's face. "He's not another one, is he?" she asked.

"No, thank goodness, he's just a friend," the young man sighed relievedly before entering the room. "Jason, Ace. Ace, Jason," he said quickly before asking, "Now, how on earth did you get here?"

Jason gave Turlough an amused look before explaining, "My ship hit a massive temporal distortion and had to make a forced landing about a mile away."

"Did the Doctor bring you back?"

Jason blinked, looking at his friend as though he had just lost his mind. "Turlough, the Doctor's hardly in any condition—"

"No, no, no, you don't understand," Turlough interrupted, raising his hands. "We've crossed the Doctor's time stream. Somehow the TARDIS materialized inside itself. I'm here with this Doctor, and Ace is here with another."

The Alterran's mouth dropped open, the implications of the situation not as lost on him as they were on Ace. "Oh, great," he moaned as he digested this unwelcome piece of news. "Is the other a past or future version?"

Turlough threw Ace an inquiring look, receiving a shrug in reply. "For me, future, if that helps," he said at last.

King Jason nodded. "Well, that explains a great deal," he replied thoughtfully, turning back to the inert form on the bed.

"Not to me," Ace injected fiercely. "Turlough, is this guy really a King?"

"King?" Turlough gasped in disbelief. "King! You were only Crown Prince when we left Tel-Shye two months ago."

"Tel-Shye? Turlough, I wasn't on Tel-Shye, I was on—" Jason broke off, his eyes growing wide as a terrible realization struck him. "Good Lord, Turlough, you haven't just crossed time streams. You've been pulled too far forward in the Doctor's timeline."

"Now, how do you know that?"

"Because of what you just said," Jason replied unhelpfully. "And because my eldest son is with me. The Doctor—this Doctor—met him only a year ago." Pausing, he looked pointedly at Turlough, adding, "And you weren't with him."

"What? That's impossible," Turlough gasped, trying to take this all in. "That would mean…"

"Someone is trying to interfere with the Doctor's personal history," Jason stated flatly.

After a stunned silence, Turlough asked in a hushed voice, "The Time Lords?"

"Hardly. Devious as they are, they're not nearly so crude," Jason said acidly. "No, whoever's behind this has a great deal of power and precious little knowledge—or finesse. That's why the Doctor's reacting the way he is. He's been thrown out of phase with himself."

Seeing two baffled faces looking back at him, the Alterran gave a bittersweet smile. "They're very delicate creatures when it comes to time, these Time Lords. I'm always amazed myself."

"We—he—passed through a time corridor recently," Turlough informed almost hesitantly. "Could that've caused this? He said he hasn't felt right since."

"It's possible…" Jason muttered thoughtfully. He looked pointedly at Ace. "Does your Doctor recall any of this?"

"He said he didn't," she replied nervously, taking a small step back. The Alterran's striking sapphire blue eyes had an unsettling affect on her and, in spite of the fact that Turlough obviously considered him a friend, she found herself wishing the Doctor—her Doctor—would hurry up and come back.