The Daleks chasing Devon, Danziger and Oleander burst into the room with their weapons blazing away, blasting at everything they could see. Their energy beams crisscrossed the room in a pattern of certain death, scorching everyone and everything caught in their paths.

Everything, that is, except for the blue police telephone box standing in the middle of the room.

Almost any other race in the cosmos would have been stunned to see such a strange object on board their craft. But the Daleks had extensive files on their enemies, and the traveling capsule of their most hated enemy of all was easily recognizable.

One of the Daleks turned to the others. "Inform the Supreme Dalek that the Doctor's TARDIS has materialized on board our space craft."

"I obey," it said, but even as it spoke the TARDIS's engines groaned into life and the police box faded away.

 

Danziger slowly ended his kiss with Devon, not really understanding why he was still alive. She leaned her head back and looked up at him in wonder. Oleander was looking around in amusement.

Devon and Danziger parted and looked around also, and it took them a moment to recognize the interior of the Doctor's TARDIS. The console room was as vast and as dimly lit as they remembered, filled with furniture, piles of junk and old half-forgotten scientific experiments. A bowl of goldfish rested on one table and a gray cat on another, blinking at them lazily. The Doctor, Romana and K9 Mark I were standing by the console. The Doctor was leaning on it with his left hand, his right fist was on his waist, and his left leg was crossed in front of the right, resting on the toe of his foot.

"Did I come at a bad time?" he asked.

"Doctor!" Devon said. "How...how..."

"I materialized around you," he said, waving away her questions and suddenly busying himself at the console again. "I actually made it into the TARDIS, and I just thought that as long as I was here, I'd dematerialize and have the old girl's telepathic circuits scan the Dalek ships for your brain patterns. And here we are."

Danziger helped Devon sit down in a comfy chair and Romana rushed to get a medical kit. "What about the others?" Devon asked. "Yale and Morgan and Denner were with us, but we got separated."

"I'm sorry Devon," the Doctor said, not even glancing up from the console. "But the telepathic circuits only found you. That doesn't mean the others are dead, of course. Telepathic traces are hard to pick up on, and you and Danziger have been inside the TARDIS before, whereas the other three have not. So please don't give up hope. Excuse me, who are you?"

"I am Oleander, sir, at your service."

"I'm the Doctor, how do you do, pleased to meet you, please keep out of my way, I've got a planet to save, thank you." The Doctor dropped to the floor and stuck his head beneath the console. A moment later one of the panels dropped away and they heard the trilling of the sonic screwdriver as he made an adjustment.

"By all means," Oleander replied. "Let me know if there's anything I can do."

"Can you make tea?" the Doctor called out. His voice sounded distorted as he now had half his head stuck inside the console.

"No, but I can learn quickly," Oleander replied and wandered off to make some. He gave Devon an encouraging pat on the shoulder as he went past, and she squeezed his hand.

"You know," the Doctor called absently from where he was working. "I can't help but feel I've met you before somewhere, Oleander." But Oleander had already left the room and the others weren't listening.

Romana knelt by Devon and began treating her right hand. The mirror had shattered and fused into her skin at the same time, with the result that her palm was now covered with a layer of broken glass embedded into the charred flesh. It would have been excruciating, except the nerves had been destroyed.

"I'm dying to know what caused this," Romana said. By the time Devon had finished telling her tale, Romana's eyes were wide.

"You are very fortunate to be alive!" Romana said. "The energy beams which these Daleks fire contain a special, modulated form of Beyerson energy, carried and concentrated by a laser beam. Reflecting the laser is not necessarily the same thing as reflecting the Beyerson particles. If you had asked me before now if the trick you pulled would have worked, I would have wagered everything that it would not."

Romana treated Devon's arm and leg with ointment and bandages and Danziger treated his own wounds. "We have medical facilities on board the TARDIS, but we don't really have time to treat you thoroughly," Romana said.

Danziger just nodded that he understood. "I thought the TARDIS was locked inside a force field," he said.

"It was," Romana replied. "And the Doctor almost didn't get us through it in time. He had some kind of trouble, but then he didn't. I must confess, I have no idea what he was talking about."

She looked up at the Doctor while still treating Devon. The Doctor was back on his feet, peering intently at a readout. K9 had two leads hooked up to his ears, the wires trailing beneath the console. "Doctor, what was all that business about you making a mistake back in the palace?" she asked. "I almost killed you myself."

Without looking up, the Doctor replied, "Someone told me once – it may have been Konran himself – that Konran had no patience for bureaucracy and no love for what he considered to be pointless security measures. Apparently, he used the name of his ancestral house for every password he ever used, even the one for his top secret files. And force fields, of course."

Romana's eyebrows shot up again. "And we spent all that time heading for the TARDIS based on that piece of information, lodged in that shaky memory of yours?" she asked. "What an outrageous gamble! Even by your standards!"

"That's why I took it with only you and me, instead of dragging everyone along with us," he said. "The mistake I made was one of the most stupid I have ever made!" He grimaced. "I was all set to enter the name of Konran's ancestral home as the password for the force field when I suddenly realized that I had never actually heard him tell me what the name of his ancestral home was!" He faced Romana for a second. "Such an elementary piece of information missing from my plans. I was so concerned about getting the method right that I never thought about what the information was."

"So what did you do?"

"I guessed."

Romana slowly handed the bandages to Devon and stood up, and Danziger could have sworn the temperature in the TARDIS plummeted by a good ten degrees. "Please tell me you're joking."

"I'm afraid not," he said. "Konran was a Prydonian and a member of the Castellan's office, so the chances were highest he was from the House of Machdaliarn. And I suppose he was."

Romana just sighed and closed her eyes.

Oleander returned with a tray of five steaming mugs and a huge smile on his face.

 

Julia thumbed the switch on a tiny light she'd pulled from her belt pouch and the beam caught Alonzo in the face. He screwed his eyes up and she quickly turned it away. "Sorry," she coughed, and stumbled forward.

"What happened?" Baines asked.

"A building fell on us," Magus replied.

Baines angrily flailed his arms at her, obviously very afraid. "I know that! But what happened?"

They were all trapped in darkness with rubble and swirling dust choking them. A few other small lights came on throughout the space. K9 slowly edged forward, his eyelight fading in and out. "Evacuate this area immediately," he advised, and his voice was weakening. "Zero will not be able to hold the building for long."

"Zero?" Alonzo asked, then spun around until he found the robot.

Zero was standing nearby, his arms above him, and his feet were embedded a few centimeters into the street. His palms were flat against the roof of the space they were trapped in. "I estimate that I will not be able to hold it for longer than two more minutes," Zero said calmly. Even as he spoke there was a wrenching noise from somewhere nearby. Zero's feet sank another centimeter and blocks of concrete and furniture fell into the street.

Alonzo looked straight up and found himself staring into a window only half a meter away. "How is that possible?" he whispered.

"Buildings on Gallifrey are much more structurally sound than what you are probably accustomed to," K9 replied. "They do not break apart easily. Great force must be applied to a specific point to cause damage. Even so, Zero was only able to stop the building because its eastern edge fell onto the top of the smaller building next to us." There was another screech of metal from overhead and more debris began to fall. "You must leave," K9 said.

"How?" Mazatl asked. "There's nowhere for us to go!"

"Through there," Reilly said, stumbling towards them and pointing. He suddenly doubled over, grimacing in pain. He gritted his teeth and clenched his fists, as if he was fighting to regain control of his body. He shook his head and took some deep breaths. Julia looked at him, puzzled, but she didn't say anything.

"Like the robot said," Reilly continued, "the building next to us took the brunt of the fall but it wasn't demolished completely. All of its lower windows were blown out and just enough of its ground floor is intact so that we can get through, and possibly out its other side. But we have to hurry."

"All right," Julia said, and quickly took a roll call. "Devon-" she started, then stopped herself as she remembered, and tried again. "True!"

"Here!"

"Uly!"

"Here!"

She called out the rest of their names and only Cameron failed to answer. "Cameron?" They called, running their lights around. "Cameron?"

"We've got to go!" Reilly urged them.

"We're not leaving until we find him!" Alonzo argued hotly.

"Cameron!" Baines called again.

A piece of rubble shifted to one side and a hand stuck out, followed by an angry voice. "I'm here!" Cameron yelled back. "I've been here the whole damned time!"

They quickly dug him out and hurried to the building next to them. Just as Reilly had reported, its windows were smashed out and there was enough space to crawl through and get away. Barely.

"I don't know how I'm going to carry you through there, K9," Mazatl said.

"You cannot," K9 replied, his voice fading. "You must set me down and go on. It is your only chance to live."

Mazatl turned to argue, stopped, then looked back at Zero, still holding the building so they could get away. "Damn!" was all he said. "Find someplace safe. We'll be back."

"Mazatl, shake a leg!" Alonzo called. Mazatl crawled forward, the last one out. Behind him the building shook and the opening collapsed, followed by a tremendous crack as the building Zero had been supporting broke along its length and buried the two robots.

The Edenites crawled on.

 

"Stop it!" Denner screamed. "Can't you see what you're doing to him?" She started to rush forward, but Morgan quickly grabbed her by the arms and held her. He couldn't bring himself to look away, though. He stared, transfixed, as Yale fought the Dalek mind control.

"How is this possible?" the Dalek said. "This specimen isn't a Gallifreyan, it is merely a human. Humans do not have the capacity to resist the robotizer. Increase the power level to 150."

The cone's light increased yet again and Yale's body shook even more. "You...can't...robotize...me!" he ground out. "It's not possible!"

"The subject is still resisting," the roboman said calmly.

"Increase power level to 200," the Dalek instructed.

"That may destroy the specimen's mind," the second Dalek said.

"He is only one subject," the first Dalek replied. "We have many more. Proceed."

The roboman slid the lever up further. Yale screamed again. Denner screamed. Morgan ground his teeth together, feeling rage.

"You...can't...robotize me!" Yale said. "Don't you understand? I'm a Yale series tutor! I had a chip implanted into my brain by the government of Earth. A chip that was stolen from the Daleks!"

"You are lying!" the Dalek said.

"I am not lying! You know I'm not lying! When the humans of Earth defeated you in 2167, the government of Earth took your technology as the spoils of war and began using it themselves. Don't you see? That's where the ZED and Yale technology came from! The Council adapted it from your robotizing process!"

"This cannot be happening. Increase the power. Increase the power!"

"You can't...robotize...me!" Yale grimaced. "I've already been robotized once, and I've beaten it. The chip no longer controls me! Do you understand? It no...longer...controls meeeeeee!"

"Turn up the power!"

The roboman turned slid up the lever one last time. The humming became an insane shriek, building in intensity, and the machine suddenly blew from its own feedback, sending an eruption of sparks and smoke across the room and knocking the roboman to the ground. The cone went dead.

And the magnetic clamps holding Yale were released.

The robomen blinked and staggered as life returned to their minds. When the Daleks saw what was happening, the leader pointed its weapon at Yale and screamed "Exterminate!"

Yale lashed out with his foot and knocked its gunstick sideways. The blast hit the first stage of the conveyor belt along the left wall, blowing it up in a white hot flash and sending more smoke billowing through the room, cutting vision to half a meter and making everyone gag. He rolled off the table just as the second Dalek fired, then rolled beneath the table, knowing the Daleks would expect him to run instantly, and started ripping the helmet off.

"Head for the storage area!" he shouted, and everyone scattered while the Daleks fired blindly through the smoke. Most people ignored Yale and made for the door, only to find it locked. Morgan and Denner found themselves on the floor, whether by accident or design Morgan would never know. From their low angle they could see a ceiling of smoke, the bottom halves of the two Daleks, running feet, and the occasional corpse hit the floor. One of them was Savil. His face still wore a look of confusion.

Morgan suddenly found himself moving. It was like he was in a dream, reacting with what his spirit was telling him to do. He quickly crawled around the Daleks until he was in a straight line with both of them, stood up and yelled, "Over here!" Then he hit the ground again.

Both Daleks turned and fired – and the one which was further away from him hit the nearer one, destroying it instantly.

"Reinforcements!" the remaining Dalek shouted. "Send reinforcements!" It continued firing blindly.

Denner quickly crawled across to join Morgan and she pointed to the far side of the room, where Yale had urged everyone to go. "In here!" Denner said. They leaped onto the end of the conveyor belt assembly, on the right side of the room, and stumbled along its length. Every few meters it tunneled through another machine, and by using these as cover they reached the opposite end of the room, leaped off the belt and ran back among the shelves. The smoke was less dense here and they quickly found Yale. He had an oddly-shaped object in his hand, like a short pipe attached to a small bowl, and was desperately searching through the stores for something else, his eyes wide and fanatic.

"What are you doing?" Morgan asked.

"Found it!" he cried. He picked up a small box, shoved it into the larger object and turned around. Morgan realized he was holding a Dalek gunstick. "Guns over there, power packs right here!" Yale snapped. "Get moving!" He leaped the conveyor belt, ran towards the remaining Dalek, knelt, aimed and fired. The blue energy beam lanced out and destroyed it.

In the sudden silence they could hear the hate-filled voices of more Daleks approaching. "Quickly, everyone! Arm yourselves!" Yale called. The other prisoners who had enough presence of mind to understand what was going on ran to join him. Denner was fumbling with one of the power packs, trying to figure out how it was supposed to go in, and Morgan was hefting a gunstick, wondering how the hell he was supposed to hold it. It was really made for insertion into a special slot in Dalek armor, not to be held by a humanoid's hands. Their fellow escapees were quickly putting together their own guns.

The Dalek reinforcements arrived and were quickly cut down as Yale and the others, overwhelmed with fury, easily picked them off as they came through the door. Charging forward with rage, they carried the fight through the door, blasting one Dalek after another. Such was their onslaught, and the Daleks' unpreparedness to fight prisoners whom they didn't know were armed, they quickly drove the Daleks back.

"Retreat!" they cried. "Withdraw! Retreat!" The Daleks backed away to the service lifts and the outer bulkheads, sealing themselves off from the prisoners' wrath.

The escapees let loose with a massive cheer when they realized they had beaten the monsters and that half the deck was theirs. Several of them clapped Yale on the back and congratulated him. "What's your name?" one of them asked excitedly.

"My name," he said, "is Braydon Croy."