"What's this, Doctor?"
The Time Lord leaned forward to look, brushing back his ruffled sleeves and pressing his mighty nose close to the glass. "Fascinating. Don't see very much of that around. That's validium, as a matter of fact."
"Validium," Ted Knight repeated, leaning closer to the display case. "Some kind of metal?"
"Living metal, my dear fellow. My own people invented it. A real devil to work with, but once forged, it can be incredibly dangerous in the wrong hands. Can't imagine how it ended up here."
"Or the right ones," Ted murmured. He glanced up and around, ensuring no other museum patrons were in range. "Do we really think the Archive needs it?"
The Doctor's lips twitched. "Not particularly."
"I counted seventeen guards between here and the TARDIS."
"Nine different alarm systems," the Doctor agreed, slipping a hand into his pocket to withdraw the sonic screwdriver.
"Ready?"
"Ready."
The Doctor found his companion, as he had suspected, hunched over a table in the TARDIS workshop. Most of the time, the former playboy and amateur scientist was either in the observatory or the laboratory, but over the last few days, Ted Knight had spent almost every waking moment hunched over his newest project.
As he entered, Ted turned around and smiled, wiping a grimy hand over an equally grimy face and lifting his goggles.
"Finished?"
"Yeah, thanks." Ted rose, rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck. He reached for the reforged object, brushing aside a cloth cover.
"I forged an alloy of validium and the Nth metal we picked up on Thanagar," he explained. "Then shaped it into..."
He lifted the object into the air.
A golden spear, gleaming with reflected light from the room's lamps and its own internal power. Power saturated the air, raising the hairs on the Doctor's neck. Ted smiled.
"I call it the Cosmic Staff."
