Chapter 3

In the Inter Minor Space Port, the Doctor removed a melted transistor from the Miniscope, a machine that keeps miniaturised groups of creatures in miniaturised versions of their natural environments. The Time Lords had banned such machines but apparently one escaped, and now Jo was trapped inside it, along with the passengers and crew of the SS Bernice.

"Vorg?" The Doctor said to the travelling showman.

"Doctor, I shouldn't stay too near the Scope. The Drashigs, you know," Vorg warned him, his handle bar moustache twitching nervously.

The Drashigs were massive snake-like creatures that were also trapped inside the Miniscope. They had six eyes on stalks, fanged mouths and segmented bodies with greenish brown skin. They were very strong and could burst through metal structures.

The Doctor ignored the showman's trepidation. "Listen, Vorg, I shall need your help. I've got to get back inside this machine."

Vorg looked at him in disbelief over his round, rimless glasses. "What?"

"Well, it's the only way I can get Jo out of there in time and save the rest of your livestock. But I shall need you to trigger the settings for me."

"Settings?" Vorg said, looking puzzled.

"Look, this is your machine, isn't it?" The Doctor asked.

"Well, of course it is. Why?"

"Then I presume you know how it works."

It was at this point that Vorg's assistant, Shirna enlightened the Doctor. "He won it, Doctor."

"He what?"

"It was during the Great Wallarian Exhibition," Vorg started to explain.

"You know what gamblers the Wallarians are. Well, Vorg had the magum pod concession," Shirna finished.

Vorg could see that the Doctor didn't understand. "Surely you've seen it? I have three magum pods and a yorrow seed. You know, the quickness of the hand deceives the eye. You put the yorrow seed under the middle pod…"

"Yes, yes, I have seen something similar. You say you won this machine? And you haven't the faintest idea how it works?" He asked. Unbelievable. "I see. Well, look, this Wallarian that you got it from, did he by any chance give you a green or a blue disc. A thing about this big?" The Doctor indicated the size with his hands.

"Oh, he gave me a lot of odds and ends. They're in my bag. I think there is something like that," Vorg said, with no intention of doing anything about it.

"Well go and have a look, will you? It's very important," the Doctor said as though he were a headmaster talking to dim student.

While Vorg rummaged in his bag, Shirna enquired as to what the Doctor was planning. "What's the idea, Doctor?"

"Well, it's simple, really. You see, the Scope's, er, omega circuit is broken. Now if I can link it to the TARDIS and use that as the master, I can re-programme the Scope."

"And what will that do?" She asked.

"Well, two things I hope. It'll enable me to get Jo out of here in time, and get her out of this wretched contraption, and it will return all the other life forms to their original space time coordinates."

"So they'll all get back to where they came from."

"I sincerely hope so, yes."

Vorg lifted a disk in the air. "Is this it? A bit mucky, I'm afraid."

"Yes, that's it. Thank heavens you kept it. Look, come with me and I'll tell you what I want you to do. Er, would you mind just waiting there for a moment?" The Doctor went into the TARDIS, and brought out a tangle of equipment and cables, which he attached to the Scope.

"Will it work, Doctor?" Vorg asked.

The Doctor looked at him as though he had just insulted him. "Yes, of course it'll work."

"Well, it's not very well insulated," Vorg observed, never having seen one of the Doctor's cobbled together inventions before.

"Then don't touch any bare metal. Right, now listen to me. This is the phase one switch here. And this is the phase two. Now, don't touch the phase two until the last possible moment. Do you understand?" He said, lecturing the dim student again.

Vorg nodded. "I've got that. Phase one, phase two. Yes."

"Good."

Pletrac, the Inter Minorian Immigration officer, wasn't happy at how things were progressing. He was worried that this illegal immigrant in his green velvet jacket and frilly shirt, was trying to escape. "What are you doing?"

"The Doctor's going back into the Scope," Shirna said helpfully.

The grey skinned official tried to look authoritative. After all, it was he who was in charge here. "You will remain here. You came here illegally. Regulations demand that you be sent to the ICCA."

"What's the ICCA?" The Doctor asked.

Vorg explained. "The Inner Constellation Corrective Authority... You won't like it, Doctor."

"Prison?" he asked in amazement.

"You are, by your own admission, a vagabond," Pletrac said, almost challenging him to deny the fact.

Rather than denying it, the Doctor wholeheartedly agreed. "Oh yes, yes, very much so. Phase one," he said to Vorg as he put his hands on the modified Miniscope. Vorg pushed down the handle and the Doctor vanished.

'Hmm, this isn't right', he thought to himself as he fell through a swirling tunnel. 'The damage to the omega circuit must be causing a vortex'.

Ace was sitting on a slowly moving roundabout in the playground. The Doctor had brought her back to her hometown of Perivale in the suburbs of North West London to see her old friends. The problem was that most of them seemed to have gone away, left the area and disappeared. She noticed a black cat nearby as the roundabout gently moved her past it.

She went over and picked it up, sitting on one of the swings to cuddle and pet it. The cat had other ideas though, hissing and wriggling out of her arms. She felt the wind blowing on her back, and turned to see a Cheetah sitting on a rearing horse.

"Wow!"

Meanwhile, the Doctor was crouching behind a garden fence, trying to entice the same black cat out into the open with some cat food. He had seen the black cat earlier at the community centre, one of Ace's old haunts where they had gone to find her friends. However, they hadn't found her friends, only a self defence class run by a sergeant called Paterson.

What kind of self respecting dog eats cat food? He thought to himself. Well, a hungry one obviously, but that wasn't helping him to catch a cat. "Go on, go away! Go on! Shoo! Dog, go away!"

"Doctor!" He heard Ace shout, obviously in distress.

"Ace!" He ran out of the garden and down the avenue. towards the small park at the end of the street.

"Doctor!" He heard her shout again, as he entered the playground. There was no one around, only a roundabout, slowly grinding to a halt, and a single swing reciprocating, marking the passage of time like the pendulum on a grandfather clock.

"So, they've taken you away, taken you to their planet," he said to the sky. "But I'll find you. I'll bring you back. They're not going to stop me. Nothing's going to stop me."

He went back to the avenue, and saw the black cat sniffing at the bait. The Doctor sneaked up and was preparing to grab it by the scruff of the neck. "Got you!" He declared.

"Got you!" Paterson also declared, as he grabbed the Doctor's arm. "Now, what do you think you're up to?"

"Sergeant!" The cat ran away.

"I've had complaints," Patterson said.

"What's it got to do with you?"

"Neighbourhood watch." The woman who owned the fence that the Doctor had been crouching behind, had complained.

"I've no time for that. I've got to catch that cat!" He pointed down the avenue, in the direction of the escaping feline.

"You're a public nuisance."

"Will you leave me go?"

"Now, look, don't be stupid. Don't get yourself into real trouble."

The Doctor pushed his finger against Paterson's forehead and the man dropped like a stone. "One finger can be a deadly weapon," he quoted, remembering Patterson telling his self defence class the same thing.

The Doctor started crawling around the bins and black rubbish bags, where the black cat had taken the bait again. "Why don't you come out and we'll talk about this sensibly, hmm?"

The black cat ran away again, as Paterson arrived at the end of the alley on his bicycle, spotting the Doctor. "Hey, come back! Come back here!"

The Doctor climbed onto a wall to approach the black cat. He was nearly there when someone grabbed his ankle.

"Got you!" Patterson declared again.

"Get off!" The Doctor kicked his leg, trying to loosen Patterson's grip. The cat jumped off the wall and disappeared in a flash of white light. The Doctor and Paterson lost their balance and fell off the wall, also disappearing in a flash of light.

He wasn't certain where Patterson had gone. He couldn't feel him clinging onto his ankle anymore. All he knew, was that he was falling through a swirling tunnel of time and space, towards an orangey - brown floor.

A silver haired man fell out of the portal head first, executed a perfect Aikido roll, and sprung to his feet with hands held in a fighting pose. He looked left and right quickly, and then lowered his hands, brushing the dust and straw off his green, velvet jacket with his hands. The Doctor immediately recognised his third incarnation.

"This isn't the inside of the Miniscope," the third Doctor told himself, and then spotted the ninth Doctor. "Ah, you there my good fellow. Don't be afraid, it won't harm you," he said, nodding up at the swirling Time Fissure. "Is the owner of the farm about?"

"Owner?" Nine said in confusion.

Ah, a bit of a simpleton, Three thought. "Yes, you know, your employer."

"Employer? You think I'm a farm labourer," Nine said, crossing his arms in annoyance.

"Well, aren't you? You're certainly dressed like one," Three said, pulling at the frilly cuffs on his shirt.

Nine looked down and pulled at his black jumper. "What's wrong with this jumper? Look for your information Beau Brummel, I'm..."

"Got you!" A voice declared in triumph from the portal.

"Get off!" A different voice shouted with a slight lisp.

"Aaaargh…" Nine grabbed Three's elbow and pulled him to one side as a man wearing a brown jacket, grey flannel trousers, a woollen jumper with question marks on it, and a white straw hat, landed on the floor of the barn in a cloud of orangey - brown dust. "Oof!"

"... The Doctor," Nine finished quietly, looking down at his seventh incarnation. "What is this, some sort of dysfunctional family reunion?"

"Who's this fellow then?" Three asked, waving his hand in front of him to clear the dust.

"It's you!" Seven said, propping himself up on his elbows and looking up at Three. "Long time no see. And who's the farm worker then?"

"Farm worker? Look, just 'cos I choose to dress like I don't need a social worker," Nine said, looking Three and Seven up and down. "Doesn't mean I'm a labourer.

Three and Seven looked at each other, up and down, and looked back at Nine. "Social worker?" They said together.

"Well, come on, you do look as though you need someone to help you get dressed in the mornings," Nine said with a cheeky smile.

"Excuse me, but just who are you?" Three asked Nine.

"Well, if I'm you," Seven ventured. "Then I'm guessing he's me."

Nine fished in his jacket pocket and pulled out his sonic screwdriver with a grin. "Give the man a medal"

"Oh my God, I become a navvy," Three said in despair.

"Never mind all that," Seven said irritably. "You're my third incarnation from my second regeneration. I'm in my seventh body, so which one are you?" He asked, looking enquiringly at Nine.

Nine hesitated as he looked at the brass inlaid clockwork box. That was one regeneration he didn't want to admit to. "Nine… I'm in my ninth body."

Three peered through the gaps in the wall slats. "We're on Gallifrey by the look of it. So how did we get here? I was trying to teleport into a Miniscope to rescue Jo."

"Oh, I remember that. It was the Spaceport on Inter Minor," Nine said.

"And I was trying to catch an alien disguised as a black cat…" Seven started to tell them.

"When I fell off the wall and ended up on the Cheetah planet," Nine remembered.

"And what about you, how did you get here?" Three asked Nine.

"I was in the TARDIS with Rose and Jack." He saw their questioning looks. "My friends that were travelling with me. We'd just left Kyoto, and were laughing about Jack's misdemeanour, when I was teleported away."

"So it would seem that someone intercepted the matter stream and brought us here," Seven said.

"Not someone," Nine said, looking over at the Moment. "Something."

Seven walked over and stooped down to inspect it. "What is it?"

"The Moment," Nine said.

"The Galaxy Eater? Surely not," Three said, joining Seven to look at it. "We remember this from the time before the fall of Pythia. It was the greatest and worst creation of Peylix."

"Yeah, Omega. The Moment was the natural progression of The Hand," Nine said.

"But what is it doing here? It should be in the Omega Arsenal in the Time Vaults," Three said. Both he and Seven saw the look on Nine's face. A look of self loathing, guilt and remorse.

"Oh my dear boy," Three said quietly. "Don't tell me you used it. What could be so terrible that would force you to use such a terrible weapon?"

Nine raised his eyebrows. "Trust me, you really don't want to know." He then thought about the question. "Anyway, you know better than to ask me about events in your future."

"Yes, but worth a try," Seven said light heartedly.

"And besides, I don't remember much of it. It must have been so terrible that it caused a regenerative fugue. I woke up in the TARDIS fifteen hours later with big ears and the knowledge that I had used the Moment, but no memory of how."

"Is that why we are here then, for you to get that memory back?" Three asked as they all looked apprehensively at the Moment.