"Ah, Christina!" the Monk said into his Tardis's console phone. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"

"Can it, Monk. You left me behind," she responded angrily. "And when you stole the whole case like that, it set off every alarm in the place. Luckily I managed to elude the Doctor and his companion while I made my escape. Now come get me."

"Yes, about that. I'm just not sure things are working out between us, dear lady. The truth is, I think your history with the Doctor may be clouding your judgement on this. I know how persuasive he can be, and I really think I can finish this job just fine in your absence."

"Oh, Is that what you think? Well, here's what I think. I think if you go pulling off any more stunts like last night, your activities are sure to get noticed by the Time Lords. I also think you don't know me so well if you think I get personally involved with anyone. Plus, I know what happens to this planet tomorrow, and I don't intend to be here to see it. And one other thing that I'm sure will get your attention, I've still got Saint George's signet ring."

Lady Christina waited to hear what the Monk had to say about all that, but before he said another word, she heard the wheezing, grinding noise of the Tardis landing behind her. She smiled wickedly and hung up the phone. "That's what I thought," she said to herself. She shouldered her bag and turned to see a street-side rubbish bin that hadn't been there a moment ago.

A pair of doors opened on the front of the rubbish bin, and Lady Christina ducked through the entry to the Tardis, the doors closing automatically behind her. The Monk stood at the console, holding the phone in one hand and the door lever in the other. He smiled and shook his head when he saw her. "How could I have ever doubted you? I do apologize," he said, hanging up the phone.

"Yes, well I'll start with a hot shower and a decent meal, then we can discuss it," Christina said, hanging a loop of her back pack on the coat rack.

"Yes, of course. How did you spend the night?" the Monk inquired.

"Dreadfully. In a hostel in Whitechapel with five hitchhiking Norwegians."

"So sorry to hear it. Well, you get situated and we'll set the Tardis to tonight for one last set of collections before the big one hits. But now that you mention it, I am feeling a mite esurient myself and could do with a bit of a repast. Why don't I set up a banquet in the dining room, and you come join me when you feel refreshed."

Christina gave him a brief forced smile and made to leave the console room. "Oh, and the signet ring..." the Monk called out idly, flipping a few switches on the console, "is it there?" He indicated her back pack.

She unzipped her jacket and pulled her necklace out of her shirt. From it, hung a simple gold cross, a key and three rings. One looked like a class ring, another had a large ruby at its apex and diamonds all around, but the last was gold and of a man's width with the pattern of a crest inlaid. "On me, where it stays," she said.

The Monk smiled graciously.


"Don't trust me," the Doctor had said. "See for yourself. Underneath his console there are several panels. Go anti-clockwise, from the lever that opens the door, two places. Remove the panel. Now, you won't understand anything there, but that's okay. There will be one piece that clearly doesn't belong, like the Cup of Athelstan didn't belong on a steering wheel.

"If it's there, you've got your proof. The only reason he'd have a mass accumulator is to pull a large body out of its orbit. I need you to bring that back to me if I'm going to save the UK."

He turned to address Pandora and Christina both. "I'm also going to need my Tardis, so I want you to meet me in Hyde Park. There's an old blue police box. I'll be there at noon tomorrow. If you are there, there's a chance we can stop this asteroid."


Christina ran the water and waited a few minutes, then sneaked out of the shower. She moved silently through the corridors of the Monk's Tardis toward the dining room. As she approached, she heard the Monk humming to himself. She hugged one side of the open doorway and took a quick glance inside. The Monk was laying out silverware from his Louis XIV collection. He must be feeling truly conciliatory, she thought. She slipped noiselessly to the other side of the doorway, then continued on to the console room.

She moved around to the far side of the console and touched the door control mechanism as a way of orienting herself. She stepped to the left, then left again and knelt down. There were handles near the top of both left and right sides of the panel, and she reached out with both hands to grab them. "I can't believe I'm doing this," she said to herself. "Okay, I'm just going to pull this off, look inside, replace it and take my shower. No big deal."

She tugged on the handles and the panel pulled off easily. Behind it was a lattice of crystals with clear wires connecting them. Red and yellow indicators blinked seemingly at random. However hanging off the front of it was a metal, baseball sized cube with protrusions in all cardinal directions, connected to the lattice via alligator clips. It had a dial on one side currently pointing at one, but going up to ten thousand. "Damn," she said under her breath.

She set the panel cover down and stood up, looking back toward the dining room. If she confronted him with it, he'd just lie again. She knelt back down. She had no idea what order to remove the clips in, so she finally just grasped the thing by the cube and yanked it quickly out. She paused for a moment to see if anything obviously changed, but the Tardis continued to silently vibrate.

She stood up, leaving the panel on the floor, and grabbed her back pack. She moved back to the console and reached for the door control, then stopped. She turned around toward the room they'd been storing the treasures in. She quickly made up her mind, unzipped her pack and shoved the device in, then set it down and removed her jacket. She opened the door to the treasure room and quickly found King Harold's sword. She wrapped it up in her jacket, then picked up as much treasure as she could carry and went back into the console room. She threw what she could into her pack and put it over her shoulder. She paused and listened with one hand on the door control.

"Oh Christina," she heard the Monk saying, then a knocking. "Are you still in there?" Christina threw the lever. The doors opened and she quickly left the Tardis, closing them back up from the outside.


"So this is your Tardis, hey?" Pandora asked, running one hand along the blue box as she examined it.

The Doctor was waving his sonic around in the field behind the police box. "Yes, ma'am, that's her," he said over his shoulder.

"Is it like the Monk's? All huge inside?"

The Doctor smacked his sonic, muttering something under his breath before turning around. "Bigger than you can imagine. I always love that part, when I throw open her doors and somebody sees her for the first time... But I suppose you won't be so impressed, having seen the Monk's already."

"And it changes what it looks like?"

The Doctor looked embarrassed. "Well, it would. A Tardis performs a 12 dimensional scan of the location and all its inhabitants in the moment before it materializes, then it determines the perfect appearance that would be completely innocuous, but at the same time stand out enough that you can find it again. My Tardis does that bit just fine."

"But...?"

"But then it always picks a 1960's era police box." He turned around and started waving his sonic around some more, then said, "Come help me find the key. I, um, dropped it over here somewhere."

"What's it look like?" Pandora left the Tardis to come join the Doctor.

"Well, it's round on the part you hold - I don't know, would you call that a handle? And it's got the bumpy bits on one side. It looks brass, and it says 'Yale' on it. It should be giving off some artron energy, which is what I'm scanning for." He shook the sonic again and pressed the button several times until it finally made the right sound and he started waving it over the grass some more.

"What's the matter? Is that broken too?"

"Well it's not like I can get the parts down the street. There's no eleculum on Earth, so I had to solder the components using flux, which liquefies at certain frequencies and at relatively low temperatures. I'm afraid it's a bit dodgy."

Pandora nodded and started moving clumps of grass aside with the toe of one foot. "What if someone picked it up?" she asked, brushing her hair aside and scanning the grass.

"I've been trying not to think of that," the Doctor muttered.

"Well, you were right, Doctor," called a voice from behind them. They both turned to see Lady Christina approaching. She was carrying the sword in one hand, wrapped in her leather jacket, with her other hand on her back pack, which she swung off her shoulder and threw to the Doctor. "Careful with that, there are some Fabergé eggs in there."

The Doctor lunged to catch it, a look of fright and then relief on his face as he managed to grab it before it hit the ground. He gave Christina a stern look, but said nothing.

"Is this it?" Pandora asked. She was pointing to a spot in the grass, but she was looking at Christina with disapproval.

The Doctor activated his sonic and pointed it at the spot Pandora indicated. "Yes! Oh, thank Cleese!"

"I thought you'd stopped doing that."

"Alright, fine. I suppose it wasn't working. Bring it over here, and I'll show you how a real Tardis looks inside."

Pandora bent and retrieved the key. "Come on, both of you!" the Doctor said, running excitedly to the front doors of his Tardis.

Pandora got to the box first and handed him his key. The Doctor looked at it somewhat reverently in his palm for a few moments, then grasped it tightly and smiled broadly. He inserted it into the lock and waited for Christina to join them.

When she did, his smile broadened even more. He twisted the key quickly and pushed hard on both doors.

The key didn't turn, and the doors didn't open. The Doctor looked confused and pulled the key out just slightly and jiggled it. It still didn't turn. He shouldered the back pack, removed the key and pointed his sonic at it. "This is definitely the right key..." he said, then it dawned on him. "She's not letting me in..."

"What do you mean?" Lady Christina asked. "She's a machine. You insert the right key, and the lock works. That's how its done."

"Yes, but she's also alive," he said, then louder and pointedly, "and over-afflicted with personality!"

He stowed his sonic inside his hoodie and took a second to calm himself. He placed the open palms of both hands lightly against the doors, and spoke quietly. "This isn't the time to be stubborn. I can't say I'm sorry I threw the key, and you wouldn't believe me if I did."

"You threw the key?" Pandora accused.

The Doctor turned his head toward her. "Now don't you start in on me too." He pulled up his hood and turned back to the Tardis, laying his palms against it again. "Tomorrow, England is going to be turned to magma, including the spot you are standing on. Millions will die, but you and I can stop it. Even if it won't be like old times, that's got to be worth something, doesn't it?"

He stood back and looked at the Tardis for a moment. It sat silently. He held the key up in front of his face meaningfully. He stepped forward and inserted the key slowly. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then turned the key.

It still wouldn't budge. "Oh, come on now!" he yelled, kicking the door.

"Talk about stubborn, Doctor," Christina said. "Why won't you apologize?"

"Because I was making a point! I'm the one who decides where I want to go, and she keeps dropping me where I'm needed instead! Well, I'm needed up there, right now!" he yelled at the Tardis, pointing skyward.

"Well, maybe you need to stop being stubborn then," Pandora said. The Doctor turned toward her, taken aback. "If an apology saves the world, isn't that more important than your ego?"

He pulled his hood back down, but his face hardened. "Why don't you tell her that?" Then he brightened. "In fact, that's a good idea. If recent events are any indication, I think she likes you better. Here." He placed the key in the palm of her hand and stepped back.

"But I've never even seen her before."

"That doesn't matter, she's seen you in the future. Remember the translation matrix."

Pandora looked down at the key and took a few moments to think of what she wanted to say. Finally she stepped up to the doors and, looking at the Doctor for confirmation, she placed her palms against it.

"You don't actually have to do that, she can hear you," he said, somewhat abashed.

She pulled a face and dropped her hands. She shifted her balance from one foot to another and shook her arms, looking up at the windows on top of the Tardis. "Hi, Tardis," she started tentatively. "Um, my name is Pandora." She thought better about saying anything that might not be true and corrected herself. "Well, it's not, but that's what I call myself. Anyway, we've got this gravity doohickey-"

"A mass accumulator," the Doctor corrected.

"-this mass accumulator. We can use it to tug the asteroid out of its current path, a path it shouldn't be in, but if we try that from here, it will just hit the Earth harder. You can see our predicament. We need to be in space and pull it away. We need you to get us there. If you don't open for us, people are going to die." She looked over at the Doctor and he nodded encouragingly. She was building up confidence and continued more firmly. "People who wouldn't have died except another Time Lord and another Tardis made it happen. So, please, let's fix this."

The Doctor smiled. Pandora slid the key into the lock and tried turning it. She jiggled it back and forth to no avail, then sighed and pulled the key back out. "No luck, Doctor," she said and handed the key back to him.

"No matter," the Doctor said. He put the key back in a pocket of his pants and smiled. "You tried, and you did fine as far as I'm concerned. And you reminded me: My Tardis isn't the only way off this planet. Christina, where is the Monk parked?"


"Do you have any real reason to believe your key will work any better on this one?" Pandora asked as the Doctor knelt in front of the rubbish bin that was the Monk's Tardis.

"I traded out my Tardis key ages ago back on Gallifrey for a Castellan's universal key. It's meant to override the lock and gain entry to any Tardis. So long as it isn't actively fighting me, I should be able to get in." The Doctor turned the key in the lock and pushed the doors open easily. He turned and gestured like a magician completing a magic trick. "I'll go first in case the Monk is in the console room."

He ducked inside and the ladies followed. Once they were in, the Doctor threw the lever to close the doors.

"No sign of the Monk?" Pandora asked nervously, looking around. There was a hallway and a door exiting the console room, plus the double doors they'd entered through.

"No sign of him," the Doctor confirmed, dancing around the console, pressing buttons and flipping switches. "But that doesn't mean he's not around. There'll be thousands of rooms off that way, and a rather large cupboard through there," he said, nodding toward the door.

"That's his treasure room," Christina said.

"Of course," the Doctor said, squatting beneath the console and grabbing one of the panels. "His Treasure Room," he said with disdain. He pulled off the panel and set it aside, then unzipped Christina's back pack and pulled out the mass accumulator.

"Is it okay if I take a look around?" Pandora asked.

"Best not to," the Doctor said, hooking the accumulator up to the crystal lattice of the console. "It'll be a maze back there. You could get lost, even if you don't run into the Monk. And that's all we need at this point, give him a hostage."

"What have you got in that box?" Christina asked.

Pandora put a protective arm over it. "It's mine," she said simply.

Christina rolled her eyes. "I hate the word 'mine'. It's so transitory. Of course it's yours, but nothing is yours forever, and besides that's not what I was asking. What's inside it?"

The Doctor poked his head out, curious as to where this would go.

"It doesn't matter. It's private and I don't want to discuss it." Pandora said defensively.

Christina laughed unkindly. "Well there are far more convenient ways to carry your private things around. Must be some reason to put it in a big old heavy box. Can I see it?"

"No!" Pandora said reflexively, taking a step back. Then more calmly, she said, "It's all I've got, and I don't like people touching it. Can we change the subject?"

Christina still looked intrigued, but she said, "Fine, whatever."

The Doctor stood up. "That's me finished. Remember the whole 'saving the Earth thing'? We're still on the clock. There's only a certain window during which we can do it or the Earth's gravity well will pull it in no matter what we do."

"Isn't that a bit dramatic? We're in a time machine. You can just go back to when it wasn't too late."

"Oh shut up," the Doctor grumbled. "That's not how it works. Alright! Let's find that asteroid." He flipped a switch and a panel on the wall slid up revealing a large monitor. The sidewalk outside showed up along with pedestrians passing by. The Doctor moved around to another section of the console and flipped several switches and pulled an entire bank of toggles down. The scene switched to show what looked like an enormous baked potato spinning slowly in the darkness of space. "There we go."

He moved around the entire console, turning a dial here, checking a reading there, pushing a series of buttons, and flipping a couple switches before standing by one lever, larger than all the others. He smiled broadly, then flipped it dramatically.

A glass chamber in the center of the console moved up and down, and crystalline machinery could be seen moving inside it, but there was no noise and no sense of movement. The Doctor looked confused. "Hang on," he said. He moved around to another station and turned a little dial several clicks clockwise. "That's not right..."

He reset the main lever, then grabbed the top edge of that wedge-like section of controls and pulled upward hard. The whole wedge hinged outward and came to rest. "Oh, no," the Doctor said, leaning in.

"This is not a directional gyro," he said matter-of-factly as he pulled out a red velvet jewelry gift box. He opened it at arm's length, but instead of a ring or an explosive device like he was expecting, it contained a folded piece of paper.

He removed the paper and threw the box over his shoulder. He unfolded the paper, then with a look of disgust, he handed it to Lady Christina. "We're done here," he said.

Christina read the handwritten note. "Dearest Christina, I regret to inform that your services are no longer required. It grieves me so because we could have been so good together. I had actually considered helping you move from 34th to the crown much higher in the list, but sadly, your actions have left me with no other choice. In case you also had decided to dissolve our partnership, I now carry the directional gyro on my person. There'll be no more exploration for you without me. Kindly hang your key on the coat rack on your way out."

"What do you mean, 'done here'?" Pandora asked.

"Just that," the Doctor said from underneath the console. He emerged with the mass accumulator. "This Tardis isn't going anywhere without the directional gyro. I could fix it with parts from my own Tardis, but she's not letting me in. We've done everything we can and it's time to go. Who's up for a last minute flight to Dubai, Calcutta or Perth?"

"What do you mean, 'done everything we can'? We can't just leave, knowing what's going to happen."

The Doctor picked up Christina's back pack and shoved it in her arms angrily. "Why does it have to be me? Why is it always me? Somebody else can do something about this one, I tried. I'm tired, and I'm done." He shoved the mass accumulator into one of his pants pockets, wires dangling out of the opening. "Come on, I'm buying."

"I'm not going anywhere until we talk about this!" Pandora said. She set down her box to emphasize the point.

"I am," Christina said. Both the Doctor and Pandora looked over at the interruption. "I actually bought a ticket to Wellington, New Zealand before coming to meet you earlier. I felt bad doing it, because it felt like a betrayal. It was like I didn't have faith in you. But now I'm glad I did. See you around, Doctor. Nice to meet you, Pandora." She walked to the console and flipped the lever to open the doors.

The Doctor looked ashamed, and he never made eye contact, but he said nothing to keep her there. Christina shook her head and left without another word.

Pandora stomped over to the console and closed the doors. "Okay then, who?"

"Who, what?" the Doctor said dejectedly.

"Who do we tell about this? Who can fix this now that you've given up?"

"I don't know. UNIT, maybe?"

"Can UNIT get into space in time to stop this?"

"No," the Doctor admitted.

"If I gave them the gravity doohickey, would they be able to do anything with it?"

"Probably not..."

"Then...?" she asked, unrelenting.

"I don't know! Torchwood?" he yelled.

"There is no Torchwood anymore!" Pandora yelled back. "It's you! It has to be you, and do you know why? Because you can. And if you can, then you have to!"

The Doctor angrily pulled out the mass accumulator and held it out to Pandora. "How about you then? Huh? This is the only device that can save London now. Here you go! But be quick! In another couple hours, the asteroid will be too close to Earth and there won't be any way to reverse it!"

He stood there seething at Pandora, and Pandora seething right back at him.

Suddenly an odd look came over the Doctor's face. "Reverse it..." he said quietly, considering it. Slowly he lowered the device.

"What is it, Doctor?" Pandora asked, also calming.

He held it up in front of them both, regarding it thoughtfully. "What if I reversed it?"

"I can see the wheels turning, Doctor, but I can't see where you're going."

His head snapped up to look at her and he spoke excitedly. "The mass accumulator works by increasing the density of an object, causing its gravity to increase. The Monk increased his Tardis's density until it was sufficient to attract the asteroid and alter its path, bending it toward Earth, but what if I can reverse it?"

"Can you reverse it?" Pandora asked cautiously.

He started pacing. "Oh, my timing would have to be phenomenal! It would have to be moving fast enough to break orbit again... And there would be a veritable outbreak of heart attacks! But we could project a psychic barrier." He stopped pacing and faced her. "Pandora, how long do you think people could convince themselves that an asteroid screaming right for them was unimportant?"

"What are you talking about?" Pandora asked, desperately trying to catch up.

The Doctor shoved the device impatiently into his pocket and started digging through the many others until he came up with the garage door clicker. "The Psychic Barrier - only we'd need one a lot bigger - The field tells you whatever is inside isn't important, so you don't pay attention to it. If that thing is a cup of tea, you won't notice it even after you dash it to the floor, but if the thing is a knife wielding maniac, eventually you take notice - field or no field. Asteroids are big and scary." He started pacing again, and chewing on his thumbnail as well. "But then again, who ever looks up anymore...?"

"You mean you intend to let the asteroid hit the Earth, but make it so people won't notice?" she asked uncertainly.

He stopped pacing again and grabbed her by both arms. "Quickly Pandora, there is no time to lose!"

Pandora stood there, trying to let that image sink in, but the Doctor was frantic with activity. He shoved the clicker into his pocket, flipped the lever to open the doors and ran back for Pandora's box. He shoved it into her arms and ushered her toward the door. "On our way now," he said, but then thought of one more thing. He returned to the console and plucked another component from the open wedge of the console, stashed it in his hoodie pocket and closed the wedge back up. Pandora looked at him quizzically, and he said, "Well, in case this fails, I want the Monk to be around to see it. He won't be going anywhere without his dematerialization circuit."


Back in the Doctor's underground workshop, he was tearing through cardboard boxes of spare parts. He discarded an old printer head assembly, a carburetor and part of a saxophone, then set a projector lens assembly on his workbench. He set aside the one box and started digging into the next. He threw a lot of parts into the previous box, but pulled out a small generator and several Erlenmeyer flasks full of who knows what and finally an old speaker which he tore apart by hand, keeping only the magnet and the coil.

Pandora watched the flurry of activity, but had no idea where he was going with it, so she mainly stood back. "How can I help?"

The Doctor returned his attention to the lens assembly. He held it in one hand and buzzed the sonic at one end while examining the other. "Remember the telescope we left on the roof? I'm going to need it. Bring the whole thing. I'm going to need the mirror, lenses, motor assembly and tripod." He continued working through his explanation, never looking up at her while he overturned a cardboard box then started throwing in the items he'd collected as well as a set of jumper cables, some calipers and a collection of circuitry he'd put together on his workbench.

Pandora set her box down in a corner and headed to the lift to street level.

When she returned with the telescope, the Doctor's box of odds and ends was up in the alley, but the Doctor wasn't to be seen, so Pandora called the lift and went down to the access tunnels. The Doctor was smashing through the cinderblock wall with a sledge hammer. When he saw her, he stopped long enough to explain.

"Go ahead and set that down. We'll need it upstairs in a bit, but more importantly, I need higher voltage than comes out the wall socket. These cables behind here will do the trick." He set down the sledge and pulled his sonic from his inside hoodie pocket, tossing it to Pandora. "Twist the base two clicks, then the top one click anti-clockwise. Start collecting the cables supplying the lights down here. We need to get the power up to our machinery upstairs." With that he picked the sledge back up and returned to the work of pounding cinderblock into dust.

She twisted the base of the sonic two clicks, the top back by one like the Doctor had said. She pressed the button to check it, and the tip glowed purple while it made a deep gurgling buzz. She shrugged and stepped out of the alcove to look both ways. Thick cables ran from light to light in both directions, around the corner to her left, and off into the darkness to her right. She wasn't sure where to start, or how much cable he would need, but she finally decided to start at the closest light to the corner, then go off to the right until there was some natural break, or it felt like plenty. She turned left and walked to the corner, peeking around just to see whether there was an end in sight, but the cables went on from light to light into the distance. She reached up on tip toe and found the place where the cable connected to the light. She aimed the sonic and almost as soon as she activated it, the cable came loose with a startling spark.

The lights all up and down the corridor winked out, but the light from the Doctor's alcove remained. It provided Pandora enough luminance to finish her work. Rather than end up with many lengths of cable, Pandora removed the lamp assemblies from the wall. She made quick work of it and returned when she had enough cable to run from the alcove up to the street and back.

She found the lift stuck halfway up to street level and climbed up onto it with one end of the cable. The Doctor was in the alley tightening some bolts on a very homemade looking device. He looked up when she approached and said, "Just in time." He held out a hand expectantly. Pandora laid the cable in it, but the Doctor set it down immediately and said, "My sonic."

"Oh, yeah, of course," Pandora responded and handed it to him. "What is this thing going to do?"

The Doctor finished up with the sonic, then sat back on his heels and turned toward Pandora. "Well, I spent last night writing an article under an assumed name in an American scientific journal that debunked the 14% Apophis crash scenario. I used formulae to prove it that were so complex it will take several weeks for the best astrophysicists to discover how wrong it was. Next I wrote one in German confirming the American findings. Then I asked a personal favor of Phil Plait at Slate Magazine to talk about the 2029 date. Finally, I introduced a virus into the imaging software of the Near Earth Object telescope array that filters out anything with a magnitude less than negative three. Let's hope no one was looking at Venus at the time..."

He stood up and walked over to Pandora. "But," he said and put an arm around her shoulder, leading her out into the sunlight, "eventually, someone is going to notice that." He pointed into the sky about twenty degrees south of overhead and five degrees east. There in the bright blue mid-morning sky was a bright dot, just large enough to tell it wasn't a perfect circle.

"Whoa!" she said, feeling suddenly weak in the knees. "How long do we have, Doctor?" It came out as a whisper.

"That little dot will grow over the next couple hours until it fills the entire sky from horizon to horizon, but even then, when there isn't an inch of sky to see, it will still be another twenty-two point eight seconds before it hits. But don't worry, no one directly in its path will be alive to get smashed. Its friction against the atmosphere will set the air on fire and roast everyone instantly long before that."

"Don't be so flippant, Doctor. Everyone I've ever known is in the path of that thing."

"Then you see how important it is that we move fast, yes? Now, I left the jumper cables in my workshop. Connect them to your cables first, then to the high voltage terminals I excavated. Do not touch any metal, right?"

"Yes Doctor." She went back to the stuck lift, but then turned and said, "Just tell me, this thing you're doing... It's going to work, right?"

"Yes. Absolutely," he said. "Well, high eighties percent-wise. Seventy-three at the least."

Pandora sighed and sat down on the edge, feet dangling above the lift. "Well, better than anything I've got planned." With that she dropped onto the lift and continued on below.


Once the machine was running, Pandora got even more anxious because she felt like they should be doing something, but the Doctor said they needed to wait. "Apophis needs to build up speed for this to work, and by my calculations, I have a window of two minutes and nineteen seconds between when it's going fast enough and when it sets the atmosphere on fire. Plenty of time. We still need to wait-" He looked at his watch. "One hour and thirty-seven minutes."

The two of them sat on the ground in the alley, eating cheese sandwiches and watching the dot grow in size. It was currently as large in the sky as the full moon, but rough, like a piece of volcanic rock painted white. Pandora found she couldn't take her eyes off it. "Since you and I can still see it, how do we know this thing's working?"

The Doctor set down his sandwich on a paper bag, dusted his hands off and cupped one ear toward the psychic field emitter he had cobbled together and hooked up to the city mains. "By that slight humming sound, and," he cupped his other ear toward the end of the alley, "by the lack of screams coming from everywhere else." He put his hand down and picked his sandwich back up. "If you'd like, I can smack you in the back of the head-"

"That won't be necessary," Pandora cut him off.

The Doctor smiled. He took two more bites, then shoved the rest of his sandwich in his mouth. He dusted his hands off again and stood up. "Well, I've work to do," he said around the mouthful. "I've got to turn a mass accumulator into a... What would you call it? A mass disperser, I suppose."

He jumped down onto the lift, but Pandora stopped him. "You still haven't told me what this is going to do. How are you planning to save us, 'cuz just making people not notice the bugger won't stop it from killing them."

"Oh, I thought sure I'd mentioned it at some point. I intend to let the asteroid pass harmlessly through the Earth," he said with a grin, then disappeared below ground.

"Oh," Pandora said to herself, nervously looking up at the enormous rock. "Is that all."

Ages passed with Pandora getting more and more anxious. At one point she walked to the end of the alley to get a sense of what the world outside was doing. Midtown traffic crawled along unaware of its impending destruction. A café across the way had some tables set out on the sidewalk, and the patrons were talking and laughing over their appetizers. A dog leashed to one of the chairs lay on the sidewalk with its head on the ground and its eyes rolling to watch the pedestrians pass by.

It seemed so wrong that nobody else felt the sense of panic she was doing her best to suppress. She looked back up despite the fact she was worried that others would notice and look too. Apophis was easily three times the size of the moon. She ducked back down the alley before anyone noticed her, or even worse, before she started yelling at everyone to look up, for god's sake LOOK UP!

She paced back and forth in front of the lift shaft willing herself not to check on him. Every time she thought of heading down there, she looked up instead and immediately regretted it. Apophis took up noticeably more space in the sky every time she did, and she was convinced that if she stared at it, she would see it move. That would have been too much for her though, so she looked away again.

Finally the Doctor climbed up onto the lift and handed the mass accumulator up to Pandora before climbing the rest of the way up. He had removed the dial from the device and the inner circuitry was exposed. There was a pair of locking pliers clamped to the centerpiece of the structure, and two of the alligator clips were stripped and braided together.

Pandora turned it over doubtfully and looked up at the Doctor.

He shrugged and took it back from her. "Sixty-eight, maybe."

The Doctor connected two of the clips to the power leads and the last one to a circuit board loosely connected to his telescope tube. He produced some duct tape from one of his pockets and attached the tube to the side of the psychic field projector, aligning it by eye. He stepped back and examined the result.

"Well?" Pandora said, "Turn it on!"

"Not yet. it's still way too soon," the Doctor said, biting his thumbnail.

"Are you nuts? The things enormous! If I climbed on the roof I think I could touch it!"

"Try not to think about it."

"Yeah, right."

"No, really. Don't think about it. You're standing next to a psychic field projector. Your thoughts are going to go into what it's projecting, and we don't want people thinking about that thing. Where does Arsenal sit in the ranking right now?"

"What? Oh, um, the season doesn't start until September."

"Really? Well, we'll have to go to a match then. How are they favored this year?"

"How do you know I even follow them?"

"There's a doodle of a cannon in nail polish on the back of your tablet. How are they favored this year?"

"I think we made some daft trades, and some of the players would do well to stay out of the headlines, but we've got a shot. In all honesty though, as long as we beat Chelsea, I'm happy."

The two lapsed into silence and Pandora found herself thinking of Apophis again. She tried to think of anything else to stop herself looking up, and said the first thing to pop into her head.

"Your tattoo - you must have had a chance to see it by now. What's it about?"

His left hand went reflexively to his right shoulder. "Right, you were guessing Celtic or Maori, but it's from a bit further off. It's circular Gallifreyan, the language of my people. A version of it anyway. It says, "Who are you?"

"Yeah? And what's your answer?"

The Doctor was quiet for a while. "I wish I bloody knew."

The sky suddenly grew dark overhead as the edge of the asteroid expanded across the sun. "Now that, they're bound to notice," Pandora said, squinting up until the sun fully disappeared behind Apophis.

"Fitting," the Doctor said with an ironic smile.

"What is?"

"Apophis was the greatest enemy of Ra in Egyptian mythology. Ra was the Sun god, and Apophis was a giant snake who would try to swallow the Sun each day. Today, he finally has."

"Funny. Are you going to zap it now?"

"Not yet, but soon. Just before it hits the atmosphere. It's moving pretty fast now." He walked to the device, gripping the pliers with one hand and steadying the barrel of the telescope with the other.

Apophis continued to grow larger in the sky. It was clearly coming at them at incredible speed, doubling in size every minute. The Doctor braced himself and adjusted his grip on the pliers. "Five, four, three, two, one!" He twisted the pliers hard clockwise. A mechanical whirring built up and grew higher in pitch.

There was a popping sound and the whirring slowed and stopped. "No, no, no, no!" the Doctor said and dug inside his hoodie for his sonic.

"What happened?" Pandora yelled, frantic.

"The flux melted!" the Doctor explained and pushed the tip of the sonic into the circuitry of the accumulator. The tip glowed blue and the device sparked. The Doctor put the sonic between his teeth and turned the pliers anti-clockwise. He then pulled the sonic back out of his mouth and twisted the top a click and touched it to the circuitry again.

Pandora watched Apophis grow closer. It nearly filled the entire sky. "Doctor!" she yelled.

"Not helping!" he yelled back without looking up.

He returned the sonic to his mouth, grabbed the pliers, braced himself and twisted again, hard. The device banged loudly and for a moment that looked like all it was going to do. Then the Doctor knelt down and blew on the circuitry. The whirring started back up and increased in speed.

A golden light shot out of the telescope tube and hit the asteroid. From the point where it hit, the golden light spread quickly across its surface, but the asteroid continued to accelerate toward them. It really did seem to be just over the buildings. Pandora covered her head and screamed, shutting her eyes.

There was no collision.

When she opened her eyes again, she couldn't see anything. She could still hear the device whirring. "Doctor!" she called out.

"It's working Pandora! We're inside the asteroid now!" his voice called out excitedly from nearby her.

Suddenly Pandora could see again. It was broad daylight and the Doctor was standing nearby, one hand on the telescope, and the other on the pliers. He slowly cranked the pliers to the left and the whirring sound grew slower and stopped.

Pandora looked around. There was a group of pedestrians standing at the mouth of the alley looking around, confused. Two of them shaded their eyes and looked into the sky, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Soon they dismissed the odd occurrence and continued on their way.

"Is that it? Are we done?"

The Doctor was disconnecting the power leads from the device. "We're done here," he said, "but I want to confront the Monk. If he's not back at his Tardis by now, he soon will be. He has to pay for what he almost did." The Doctor carried the cables to the lift and dropped them into the tunnel below then summoned the lift up to street level.

"I'll go with you," Pandora said. "I have a few choice words for him as well."


Five minutes and three seconds later, off the coast of Antipodes Island of New Zealand, the asteroid erupted from the ocean and rocketed into the late evening sky. The phenominon was witnessed by several individuals and even caught on cellphone video by a teen age girl partying on a friend's yacht. It will be played on newscasts around the world over the next several weeks with nobody able to explain what it shows, until the video is finally debunked as simply played in reverse.

The sightings prompted tsunami warnings up and down the East coast of the North and South islands, but the tsunami never came. No one knew it was because the asteroid never touched the waves, it passed through the sea without leaving a ripple in its wake.

Only one person understood what it meant, when her plane finally landed after more than thirty hours in the air. "He did it," she thought. "The Doctor actually did it."

People throughout the airport were fascinated by the story and were distractedly watching it on telly, making it easy for her to duck in through a baggage claim conveyor and bypass Customs with the stolen artifacts of English royalty.


The Doctor approached his Tardis when the park had cleared out that night. He stopped in front of her and looked up at the opaque windows. He managed a smile.

"I just wanted to let you know that I managed it anyway. Saved London, without your help. I can only imagine you knew I would. I can't really bring myself to believe you would endanger the people of this world to spite me. I think you love them as much as I do."

He lapsed into silence for some time, listening to the crickets chirping in the heat of the late spring night, and deep in his own thoughts.

"I think your still trying to teach me a lesson, and I'm wracking my brain trying to understand it. Is it that I can save people without you? Okay, turns out I can, but it was a close one. Maybe it's that I would still try to. Risking everything to save them, even after everything I've been through. And maybe that's true. I suppose I've been trying to deny it, but when push comes to shove, I do what has to be done. It's a part of me. I just wish the universe didn't shove me so often."

"Incidentally, when we went back looking for the Monk's Tardis, it was gone. I don't know whether that means he kept a spare dematerialization circuit around, or whether he just loaded it onto a lorry and drove it somewhere else. Either way, I'm sure I'll be seeing him around."

He stood trying to think of anything else he wanted to say, hands in his pockets, rubbing the Tardis key with one thumb. Finally he said, "Sorry I got so angry earlier and kicked you. I understand you locking me out. I suppose turn about is fair play, and besides, all's well that ends well."

With that, he turned and left.