CHAPTER 27
TAKING TIME OFF
The Doctor led the way to the TARDIS, allowing his friends to enter first. As they stepped into the console room, he asked Mel to close the doors. The moment she did so Jason practically collapsed, having to grab the upright bar on the cart in order to stay on his feet. Having anticipated this, the Doctor was already beside him and caught him by the arm.
"Mel, water please," the Time Lord ordered.
Needing no further prompting, his companion dashed through the interior door.
"I don't think I could've hung on much longer," Jason confessed, a hand going to his spinning head.
"How's the little miracle holding up?" the Doctor asked as he helped his friend to a chair.
"Fine. It's me that's taking a beating," Jason said as he slowly sat down. "It was designed for low level energy restoration, not the high volume demands I've been putting on it."
The Doctor got down in front of him, looking him straight in the eye. "Jason, you are going to be alright, aren't you? I want the truth this time, not an evasion."
Considering the all the veiled accusations he had been getting, Jason found the Time Lord's sudden show of concern surprising. "I'll be fine. I need to stop the constant drain on my system and stabilize my energy reserves before I completely exhaust myself. Direct enough?"
"Satisfactory, as K-9 would say. I believe an accurate translation would be, you need some time off."
"Yes. And speaking of time…" The Alterran pulled a small box from his pocket, handing it over. "That should have more than enough information for you. When we have time—no, pun intended—you're going to have to tell me more about that temporal manipulator and how it works. It puts out an incredible temporal field and some very serious energy."
"Really?" The Doctor was now more than a little intrigued. A sudden thought struck him and he gave his friend a steady look. "Did you leave yourself completely open to that temporal aura?"
Jason gave him a small smile. "Um, not completely…no."
"Jason, I wanted you to help me trace the source, not put yourself into a coma again," the Time Lord said disapprovingly as he took the box to the console and slotted it into a panel.
"Well, they didn't find your transmitter." K'ell'k observed, leaning back in his chair. "What now? Wait until they come out"
l'X'el heaved an exasperated sigh, uncertain what to do at this point. He did not reply, his fingers playing over the computer. He set the system on a slow forward scan in search of the Alterran's mental energies, hoping to pick him up the moment he emerged from the TARDIS.
When Mel returned to the control room she found the Doctor working diligently at the console, having apparently abandoned the debilitated Alterran who sat across the room silently watching him through half closed eyes. She threw an angry scowl in the Time Lord's direction before giving Jason the water. He drank it gratefully, finding her anger amusing.
"It's okay, Mel. There's no way they can monitor us in here." Jason leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes wearily. "Now maybe I can finally get my system stabilized."
"Good idea," the Doctor agreed from his place across the room. "It'll take a bit to get all this data analyzed. Why don't you go to the Zero room and rest while I do that?"
Jason frowned, the Time Lord's light tone setting off an alarm in his head. "Why are you in such a hurry to get rid of me all of a suddenly?"
The Doctor looked up sharply. "What?"
"And don't give me that innocent routine, either. I know you. You've been watching me like a hawk all morning and now you're ready to just pack me off to the Zero room." Jason tried to keep an accusing tone from creeping into his voice as he went on to say, "You know something, don't you? Something you don't want to tell me. Are you afraid I might snap again if I hear it?"
The Doctor drew a deep breath and straightened. He met his friend's accusing gaze steadily, shaking his head. "No, actually, I'm afraid I might influence history," he stated seriously.
"History?" Jason's eyes narrowed. "It's that El'Li'Ono accord business, isn't it?"
The Time Lord cleared his throat. "Yes. You were supposed to forget about that."
"Fat chance."
"And then there's the SILVER TRIUMPH," the Doctor went on tantalizingly, causing his friend to scowl further. "Which vanished on its way to Earth in the year—"
"I know what year it was!" the Alterran exclaimed, the accusing edge finding its way into his voice at last. "And we both know why it vanished, don't we?"
The Doctor remained silent, his gaze unwavering. Suddenly the implications of what he had said sank in and Jason's mouth dropped open. "Wait a minute. You said it vanished. As in, never seen again. That's what you're saying, isn't it? I should be dead."
After a long unnerving silence, the Time Lord replied, "I don't know what I'm saying. I know the ship was lost. And I know the outcome of your summit. I do not, however, know the complete details of the events surrounding it."
Jason put his head in his hands, closing his eyes. He sat motionless for several minutes, his mind racing through all the facts as he knew them. The summit, the attack, the wormhole that wasn't a wormhole, crashing in the past, Mel, the Doctor, the temporal manipulator…
Jason's eyes snapped open and he looked up sharply, seeing an expectant look on the Time Lord's face. The Doctor had already seen his future so he had to know he was meant to survive the crash. He simply wanted his friend to figure it out for himself.
"Is this your way of helping me get my head on straight?" Jason asked, not sure if he should be angry or not.
The Doctor gave him innocent look. "You ready to put a few more pieces together?"
After several hours the Doctor had pieced together a considerable amount, and not just of the puzzle, but of a bizarre looking device he had cobbled together beside the console. He had tried to triangulate the position of the temporal manipulator using the device Jason had carried but had been unable to get an exact fix on its position. He concluded dejectedly that the time differential was very likely too great for the small device to handle.
Jason had added to the puzzle by telling the Doctor the results of his scan of the SILVER TRIUMPH. Like all the other debris collected from the crash site, the exterior of the ship was deteriorating exponentially, but the interior was completely unaffected by the ravages of the temporal distortion. As far as Jason could tell, he had been at the heart of a time bubble that had saved his life by actually increasing the strength of the reinforced plating.
"It may not have actually strengthened it so much as suspended it in time," the Doctor observed as he rigged up the monitor's memory core for playback
"Keeping me preserved until impact." Jason shuddered. "Whoever these kids are, they're not very good at covering their tracks."
"What do you mean?"
"It's something you said before," the Alterran replied, going down the considerable list of unlikely coincidences they had encountered since the episode began.
The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "Yes, there have been quite a lot, haven't there. Coincidences of that order are normally the result of temporal interference."
"Which is exactly what we're dealing with now."
"Precisely. I knew you'd get it in the end," came the smug retort.
Seeing Mel's stunned reaction to this seemingly patronizing remark, the Alterran leaned over, nodding in the Doctor's direction. "Don't mind him. He likes to act superior. Keeps us lesser mortals in awe of his brilliance."
Mel giggled at the loud harrumph this comment produced from the Doctor.
"Then perhaps you'd care to enlighten this higher mortal as to how you managed to follow that time aura back to its source," the Time Lord said frostily.
Jason considered a moment. "It was just a psychic projection, like in the Crystal Cavern."
"Jason, you were linked into the Cavern Matrix then," his friend pointed out. "Are you saying you were, or are, linked into this time aura, too?"
"I don't know. I haven't really thought about it. Once I had my sensors tuned into it, I just… got pulled in."
"And then decided to pull me along with you," the Doctor muttered thoughtfully.
"I just figured, since you're telepathic and time sensitive…" Jason's voice trailed off as the Time Lord's features darkened in disapproval. He gave a bright smile, adding in a placating tone, "And since you're so much better at this sort of thing than I am…"
"Ah! Now he tries to flatter me!" the Doctor blurted out, throwing his hands in the air. "Do you have any idea how dangerous that stunt was? Following the time trace once was bad enough. You could've killed yourself dragging me along—" He broke off turning sharply back to the temporal collector his friend had been carrying. Striking his forehead with his open palm, he exclaimed, "Of course! Why didn't I see it before?"
"I don't know. You lost me with the flattery," Jason said dryly, exchanging a confused look with Mel.
By this time the Doctor was charging around the console room, unable to contain himself. "Yes, but you didn't lose me," he said unhelpfully. "How ever you connected yourself into that time aura it allowed you to follow it to its source and take me with you."
"I know. I was there."
"Yes, but I wasn't a part of the energy field until you pulled me in," the Doctor said pointedly. "And manipulated it at the other end."
Jason blinked, his mouth dropping open.
"Are you saying you can use Jason to trace this time aura to its source?" Mel injected, hoping she was following the Doctor's train of thought correctly.
"That would be very foolhardy and extremely dangerous," the Doctor replied sharply.
"I'm willing if you are." Jason held up his hands to stop the protests he knew would be coming. "I know what to expect this time."
"Perhaps," the Doctor replied, "but I think we'd be better served if we routed you through the TARDIS's telepathy and navigation circuits."
"And use the trace as a homing beacon," the Jason concluded admiringly.
"Yes, but first…" The Doctor rubbed his hands together, moving over to the pile of junk he had wired the monitor's memory core into. "Let's have a look at this."
Jason leaned over to Mel again. "I give it two minutes before it blows up."
Mel giggled as another loud harrumph came from the Doctor before he announced, "I think you'll find this device will last at least five."
"You willing to put money on that?" the Alterran joked.
The Doctor snorted, turning his back on his now grinning companions. He punched a button and looked expectantly at the scanner screen.
Jason nervously followed his gaze, seeing a storm of static that was quickly followed by the image of what he had thought to be a wormhole and the nightmare ride to Earth. Mel had been standing beside him and turned to watch, her eyes widening as the Shuttle appeared and was sent spinning into the atmosphere in pieces. This was followed by the near miss of the MIR space station. Before the inevitable crash landing, there was a loud pop as the Doctor's device suddenly exploded into a shower of sparks, having lasted less than two minutes.