5. Thought Control!
Chloe approaches the Console and presses the blue Voice Control button.
"Tardis, can you show me the Doctor, please?"
A view of a small-ish cell shows the Doctor sitting waiting for something to happen. The cell is clearly too small for the Doctor's Tardis to land. .
"Tardis, where are the keys to the cell?" Chloe asks.
The view changes to show a guard sitting, bored out of his mind. A bunch of keys hangs behind him.
"Tardis, how can I get the keys without alerting the guard?"
The Console screen goes red. Apparently she can't ... or can she? .
Chloe glances across the Console Room floor to where her own Tardis door awaits her. She crosses the floor and enters her own Tardis...
In her own Tardis she feels totally different. The decor resembles the inside of a jet airliner. She approaches the Console and presses the blue button to gain Voice Control.
Her Tardis zizzes. "But I haven't said anything yet!" .
Across the screen she reads, Your wish is my command! Is she dreaming? .
Then she recalls asking her ex-boyfriend, Simeon, to upgrade her Tardis to match new weapons the Daleks have invented. He must have added thought control!
She bends to read the blue button. She thought as much! It no longer says Voice Control! .
The screen now shows the back of the Doctor's head. .
She walks to her Tardis door, opens it, and taps the Doctor on the shoulder.
He jumps! .
"Want to be rescued?" .
The Doctor turns at the sound of Chloe's voice, embraces her and kisses her.
"It's not good form to absent yourself from captivity," he says pedantically. .
"Are you rule bending today?" Chloe asks, aware the Doctor has Gallifreyan standards to uphold. .
"Doh, okay," the Doctor appears to wrestle with his scruples at overcoming rules laid down in his early years.
"But under protest!" he says. "You might be kidnapping me?" he asks hopefully. .
"Alright, then!" Chloe says, "but not kidnap! I'll just borrow you from your cell!" .
Negotiations and terms of removal completed, the Doctor enters Chloe's Tardis and closes the door. .
"We have a few minutes," Chloe observes, and kisses the Doctor. "Things are always much more adventurous in mid-outings..." .
"Where shall we go?" Chloe eventually asks. .
"Did you find out anything?" the Doctor asks. .
"Yes. Space Warp using large magnetic fields from superconducting magnets ... perhaps held at a specific temperature controlled by the Pyroxium? It came to me while talking with the Master."
The Doctor looks at Chloe wide-eyed. "Then that's undoubtedly what it is!" . He knows the power of the Ring of Confidence that she's been wearing and had some tuition from him about its use.
"Doctor, how did I know all that?"
"That Ring of Confidence!"
"But I don't have it today!"
"All the better! You have the powers it brings! I told you how to use it recently, too!" .
"And the Master never twigged?"
"All the more amazing! But he wouldn't be expecting that from a non-Gallifreyan!" the Doctor confirms. .
"He might now! What can we do with the information?"
"Not a lot. We need to know where his processing plants are. Let's get you home and find where you left your wristwatch and ring!"
Watch out, Alyssa! .
"When shall we go back to?" the Doctor asks, hoping to challenge Chloe's deductive skills.
"To before I put my wristwatch down!" She doesn't want to risk missing anything.
"And where should we be?"
"Out of sight! Tardis, can we go to my bedroom, ten minutes before we departed earlier on, and be cloaked?"
Her Tardis zizzes.
Chloe sets herself the task of watching her own bedroom for just ten minutes. The Doctor knows he'll get bored and goes to service some circuits - any circuits! .
Chloe sees herself place her wristwatch and ring on her bed and proceed to the shower. A minute later, Alyssa enters. She sees the wristwatch, and after a moment's hesitation she puts it on, then sees the ring and puts that on, too. Her finger plays with the single button on the wristwatch. .
Chloe takes a quick breath in. Could Alyssa have possibly used her wristwatch transport? She's only ever been the one person to use it! .
Then Alyssa disappears. Chloe screams, aghast for the safety of her sister.
There's a crash and Doctor comes running. .
"Alyssa just used my wristwatch! She could be dying in the vacuum of space anywhere in the Universe!" .
"No, no!" the Doctor says, echoing her concern for a moment before calming himself fully. "Where are her thoughts all aimed these days?"
"Simeon?" Chloe guesses. .
"Yes, and where was he?"
"In the kitchen!" She has an idea. "Tardis, could you show me where Alyssa is, please?"
A picture of Alyssa sitting out in the garden with Simeon appears on the screen.
Relief courses through Chloe. .
"How are you going to get it back?" the Doctor asks. "You won't want to alarm her, and she could wear it all day! And you won't want to embarrass her in front of Simeon," the Doctor cautions.
"Did you ask the Master where his factories are by any chance?"
"I thought I'd done well just getting info about what he was doing. Where he was doing it seemed like a step too far." Besides which, she'd had to escape!
"For sure," the Doctor says. "Really, don't worry." He recognises that she's done her best!
"We could put a tracker in the quarried stone and see where it goes to."
"They might send quarried stone the long way," the Doctor replies. .
"Only if the factory's nearby," Chloe deduces. Any goods sent at sub-light speed would take ages to go anywhere else.
"Nearby? Did you notice a new factory on Nolland?"
"Only that new mansion," Chloe says.
"That mansion ... might it contain a factory?" the Doctor asks thoughtfully. "The Master usually disguises things well."
"Doctor, he shouldn't be mining there at all! Simeon bought it with the Box Wallet thingy you gave him." (Ref. 33.)
"True, but before we pull the plug on him that way, let's find out what we can about his industrial operation."
"Have you got a tracker box?" Chloe asks.
"Yes." The Doctor reaches into a pocket and retrieves a small box.
"Can't everyone track you, when you're carrying that?"
"Not until it's activated," the Doctor grins. He indicates a small button. "You lift the cover and press the button. Then you throw away the cover." .
Chloe takes the little box and looks at it. "Doctor, it's beautiful," she says.
"Yes, these boxes are often used as gifts to someone you want to track. Naturally I've never used one in that way!"
"I'll go and place it now," Chloe says, and she disappears...
A moment later she's back. "All done. Where do you track it from?"
"My Tardis is set up to trace that box. Where did you put it?"
"In one of the rock-carrying lorries. They seem to be being careful with their mining this time. Last time I encountered them mining on Nolland the hotel felt as if it was going to fall down!" . (Ref. 33.)
"A lorry, you say? That's got to be very local. Let's have a look at what new roads there are on Nolland!"
A few button presses later, the Tardis Console screen shows a new road from the quarry where Chloe had been to the Mansion house.
"Then there's no doubt," the Doctor says triumphantly.
"I'll check out the Mansion house," Chloe says.
Before the Doctor has time to tell her to be careful, she's gone...
The Mansion – House or Factory?
Chloe materialises near the back of the house where a twin tyre track shows there have been lorries entering through a large, now closed, entry door.
Chloe simply thinks of being inside the house behind that door and activates her transport...
Her eyes open wide. Vast factory machinery, currently at a standstill, occupies the space. She can easily identify where lorries deposit rock into a crusher. Large chemical vats appear to then add something toxic to the crushed rock. An array of centrifuges must separate out some mineral they're after. And there's a bagging area.
Chloe quickly returns to where and when she left the tracker, brings it back and places it in a bag that's waiting ready to be filled next.
Then she returns to the Doctor.
"I placed the tracker ready for its next journey. What an odd house. It's just a facade with a big factory in it," Chloe says.
"I suppose old Victorian factories must have seemed like that when they first started."
What should they do next?