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Chapter Twelve - Chapter Twelve

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The Official End of It All

Stokes dreamt.

A voice, deep and granite-hard, was ordering him to wake up. The deal was not yet done.

Stokes resisted. The appreciation he'd received on Metralubit had been a sham. Why should he listen to the voice again?

The voice reminded him what the screen had shown. He would be appreciated on Dellah. Would he like to go there?

Stokes pondered. Was that possible?

The voice assured him it was. All he needed to do was set the correct space-time coordinates on the TARDIS's navigation panel.

Stokes laughed at this. The workings of the TARDIS were quite outside his understanding.

The voice told him it could lend a guiding hand.

And so Stokes woke up, and found his hands wandering over the navigation panels as if he'd been piloting the TARDIS for years.

The data-bank screen now read:

DEPARTURE -BARCLOW Humanian Era

DESTINATION - DELLAH AD 2593

Romana was perturbed. The Doctor was pounding back to the TARDIS, hands thrust deep in his pockets, head down, hat pulled over his face, leaving her and K9 to struggle to catch up. The rain was falling again, whipping her cape out behind her and knocking K9 off his bearings from time to time.

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'Do we have to go quite so fast?' she protested to the Doctor's back. It was the first time they'd spoken since leaving the survivors of this affair in the valley.

'Why break the habit of several lifetimes?' the Doctor grumbled. 'I must have spent the greatest share of my time since leaving Gallifrey running up and down with barely time to stop and think.'

Romana recognized the signs of impending moodiness and felt reassured. She could cope with these occasional bouts of brooding. 'I do hope you're not going to start feeling sorry for yourself.'

He stopped and turned to her. 'That would be predictable, wouldn't it?'

His tone was almost aggressive, and for the first time ever in his company Romana felt threatened. 'Please don't shout at me.'

He looked between her and K9 and managed a tight smile. 'Do forgive me. It's just that I'm worried, you see.'

'About what?'

He stepped closer and his grave expression returned. 'When you can predict a person's actions it's very easy to lay snares for them.'

K9 whirred impatiently. 'Query these deliberations, Master. We should return to the TARDIS and continue our travels.'

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The Doctor looked down at him. He was silent for a moment and then he burst into one of his sudden crazes. 'Yes,' he shouted, 'planet saved, crisis averted, evil menace vanquished. All the questions answered, everything wrapped up.' The sky rumbled as if in reply and another gust of freezing rain swept over them.

'Situation has been resolved, Master,' said K9. 'The people of Metralubit and the Chelonians can exist together. The Hive has been banished.'

Romana laid a comforting arm on the Doctor's shoulder. 'K9's right, Doctor. I don't see what there is to fret about.'

He walked a short distance away and stared out into nothingness. 'From the moment we arrived here I've felt a powerful unease.'

'That's not surprising,' said Romana. 'I felt the same. We shouldn't be here, after all, strictly speaking.'

'No, we shouldn't,' he said emphatically. 'We were blown here by a strange, unpredictable accident. The erosion of the TARDIS systems circuitry combined with an impulse from the Randomizer sent us cartwheeling wildly off course. We should have left right away. But we didn't.'

'We had to pop out "just so we could say we'd been",' Romana reminded him.

He snapped his fingers. 'Exactly. A chance to cock a minor snook at the Time Lords. Just what would I have done. Walked out, got myself involved, started to tinker. began the logical, forseeable chain of decisions that have brought me to this point.' He raised a finger and pointed through the mist ahead. 'There.'

Romana squinted. The tall blue shape of the TARDIS was just visible on the horizon. 'You're taking a very egocentric view. Plenty of other people made decisions along the way. Me and K9 for a start. Galatea, Harmock, Jafrid, St-'

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The Doctor cut her off: 'Yes, they did, didn't they? All of them people who shouldn't be here.'

Romana was getting exasperated. 'What do you mean?'

'The artificiality of it all,' the Doctor replied, 'that I mentioned to you earlier.'

'These discrepancies were connected to the Femdroids' deception of the Hive, Master,' K9 said patiently.

The Doctor shook his head. 'I think the Femdroids were part of an even bigger game.' He turned to Romana. 'The level of coincidence is too high. Our arrival. The Chelonians just wandering into this system at the very moment Galatea needed to start a war to fox the Hive. The similarity in technology between K9 and the Femdroids.'

'That wasn't a coincidence,' said Romana.

The Doctor stared blankly at her. 'What?'

'The Femdroids' creators used K9 as a blueprint using information from Stokes's mind,' she explained.

The Doctor put a hand to his temple. 'Who? Stokes? Not that artist fellow?'

'Yes, I forgot to tell you, in all the rush,' Romana admitted.

'But how did he get here?' The Doctor's face now took on a haunted expression. As Romana opened her mouth to reply he held up a hand to silence her. 'No, never mind that. Where is he now?'

'He sloped off somewhere,' said Romana. 'Actually, I thought he'd be waiting for us at the TARDIS, if he managed to find it.'

K9 nodded his agreement. 'That is his most likely course of action.'

The Doctor stared at the TARDIS and then broke into a frantic run, without a word of explanation. Romana followed on, baffled, with K9 in her arms.

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Galatea stared out at the empty city. Soon the fountains would flow again, the tramways would be filled with their silent, pollutant-free traffic, and the citizens would work and play in total harmony. Her vision had been accomplished.

One of the dome workers had helped her to rig up a communicator using materials from the smashed computer room. A picture relayed from one of the orbital satellites showed a rough ring of the survivors on Barclow, including General Jafrid, Harmock and that man Fritchoff she'd had sent away a few years ago. He and a few others in the dome were strong-willed enough to break through the conditioning. Before they could she'd implanted a suitable fantasy in their minds and expelled them. Now, she thought with a smile, everyone could come home. Metralubit was coming home.

'Now, you've been a very naughty girl, all told, keeping things from us,' Harmock was saying. 'There'll be no need for any of this nastiness and secrecy in future, will there?'

'Absolutely not,' said Galatea with a glad heart. 'I shall be pleased to serve my organic masters in a more direct way.'

'Still,' Harmock went on, 'I have to say I admire your nerve. Doing this all on your own. Well done.'

Galatea nodded. 'Thank you, Premier. I like to think I've always done my best.'

Just for a second she heard a voice, deep and granite hard, somewhere deep inside her head. The bargain is over, it told her, our business is done.

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Galatea thanked the voice. It had given her exactly what it had promised: the total destruction of the Hive and the safety of her people, thanks to the provision of Stokes's great knowledge. And she, of course, had fulfilled her side of the bargain. She had invented the concept of constitutional privilege, conditioned the humans to believe it, and encouraged Romana and K9 to come to Metralubit. It had been easy enough.

But she was happy she would never hear the voice again.

General Jafrid slunk away from the screen, feeling a bit left out from all this joy and excitement. One of the young humans - Cadinot, wasn't it? - came across and asked kindly, 'Are you all right there, General?'

Jafrid winked at him, remembering his old friend Admiral Dolne. 'I'm fine,' he said. 'Just fine'

And then, just for a second, he heard the voice again for the first time in over a hundred years. The deal is done, the voice said, and our business is over.

Jafrid thanked it inwardly. The voice had delivered what it had promised: a lengthy, untroubled early retirement, thanks to a convenient time storm that had whipped him and his men here from their rightful place thousands of years before, liberating them from the warrior lifestyle. And his side of the bargain could not have been easier. All the voice had asked him to do was sit put on Barclow for a hundred and twenty-five years, and pretend to really want it.

Now the voice was gone, and he could spend the rest of his retirement in luxury down on Metralubit, with its plentiful green spaces and large arable areas. It would be a pleasure indeed to graze there.

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The Doctor burst into the TARDIS to find the console room empty. He peered beneath the console and in all the comers; he even looked behind the hatstand and among the items he had been sorting out before they had entered the Time Spiral.

Romana almost fell through the doors, exhausted by the run and from carrying K9. She was glad of the warmth and comparative comfort of the TARDIS, and immediately reached for the lever that closed the big double doors. Barclow's low moaning wind and biting cold were finally shut out. She set K9 down and turned with a despairing sigh to the Doctor, who was scattering objects from his useful pile all over the floor. 'I hardly think you're going to find Stokes in there,' she said, still unable to fathom the reasons for his distress. 'Besides, he can't just have walked in.'

'Doors are an irrelevance to some people,' the Doctor snapped back. He peered through the inner door and grunted; a set of muddy bootprints trailed away down the corridor. 'Just as I thought. He's probably gone to find a bed.'

For the first time Romana caught a little of his anxiety. 'But how did he pass through our security?' She shivered. Theoretically, the TARDIS was impenetrable.

The Doctor hunched over the console. 'We can worry about that later. First, let's minimize the risks and get out of here.' He started to fiddle with the controls of the dematerialization sequence.

K9 trundled over urgently. 'Master, the Hive.'

'Yes, I know, K9. Don't tell your grandmother how to suck eggs,' the Doctor snapped back.

For once K9, who was perhaps learning about Earth idioms, and perhaps sensing the seriousness of the situation, refrained from comment.

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Romana leant over the Doctor's shoulder. He was calibrating a set of dials at the base of the dematerialization circuit array. 'There,' he said. A steady pinging note filled the console room. 'There's the Hive's energy signature. I've locked it on to our own engines. We'll pull it along behind us like a caravan and dump it somewhere apposite. I know a couple of good black holes in the Cosplodge system.'

'The linkage is secure, I hope,' said Romana.

'Of course it is. Even a vintage model like the TARDIS has a good strong secondary attachment.' He looked up ruefully as he started the dematerialization sequence. 'We'll just slip into the vortex for the time being. I want to get away from here as soon as possible and take stock.'

Romana stood back as he threw the last few switches. The central column began its steady rise and fall.

The blue beacon on the rooftop of the TARDIS started to flash. A few seconds later, to the accompaniment of an unearthly trumpeting noise, its police-box shell faded away completely from the rocky terrain of Barclow.

There was a thunderclap and a peal of mocking laughter.

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The TARDIS tipped, throwing the Doctor, Romana and K9 across the console room and back again. The central column glowed incredibly brightly, turning fiery red and crackling with electric sparkles.

'The Time Spiral again,' Romana shouted, trying desperately to find the edge of the console and lever herself up.

'Negative, Mistress,' called K9.

The Doctor, who was a dab hand at being thrown around the console room, used the momentum of a vicious spin to gain the support of the console's navigation panel. When he saw the display on the screen he uttered a very old and seldom-used word in Old High Gallifreyan. 'Somebody's already put in a course,' he cried. 'There's a lock in the coordinates.'

Romana was appalled. Only a skilled operator could input coordinates, and to lock them in - to wire in an extra code so that travel to that destination, no matter how far distant, took very little relative time at all and could not be altered - took an expert with a lot of patience. 'Who?'

'Stokes!' the Doctor called back.

'That's impossible!' Romana called. At last she man- aged to grab hold of the console.

'Unless he was helped,' the Doctor said. Then he leant over and started to throw switches on the panel manically.

An observer watched the insane pitch and yaw of the TARDIS as it sped through the howling maelstrom of the space-time vortex.

Now the Doctor would cancel the coordinates program by using the coordinate override.

And the choice could be made.

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Stokes was woken when his large bald head was smacked against one of the softly humming walls of the TARDIS corridor. He had no memory of anything after he'd looked himself up in the data bank. Perhaps he'd walked here in his sleep.

He picked himself up and regained his balance as the TARDIS steadied. He hadn't gone far into its innards; through the door at the end of the corridor be could hear the Doctor's rich, booming voice. Cautiously he crept closer, and turned his ear to catch the Doctor's words. 'Do you know what this is, Romana?'

'I've never seen anything like it,' came the girl's voice.

'Yes you have,' countered the Doctor.

Stokes poked his head around the door. The Doctor, who was looking very dishevelled, his wet, stained coat torn in several places, was holding something out to Romana. It was, Stokes realized with a jolt, his own crystal. It must have fallen from his pocket when he'd walked in.

He heard Romana's gasp as she took it from the Doctor. 'The Key to Time. The same substance.'

'Exactly,' said the Doctor. 'A material that exists in ways even old Rassilon could never have speculated. You might say it borders on magic.'

K9 trundled into view. 'Magic refuted, Master. Substance cannot be analysed as it exists, er, simultaneously at every point in time. This does not constitute magic, only a level of scientific conceptualism we cannot comprehend.'

The Doctor ignored him. 'Now,' he told Romana, 'with this, Stokes could get in here and set those coordinates quite easily. So how did it get into his possession? And how did he get himself shanghaied halfway across the universe and halfway across the span of time?'

'The White Guardian?' Romana suggested hopefully.

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'Or the other fellow,' said the Doctor. 'A web of choices. That's how the Guardians, both of them, operate. Jafrid, Galatea and Stokes were all pawns in the game, arranged for someone else's benefit.'

Romana leant in close. 'And who might this other person be?'

The Doctor leant even closer to her. 'I have this terrible suspicion it might be me.'

K9 piped up. 'Master, Mistress,' he called. 'Mr Stokes.'

Stokes put up his hands and tried to ignore the accusation in their gaze. 'Hello, Doctor,' he said feebly.

The Doctor stalked over. 'I want a word with you.'

The TARDIS hung in suspense in the space-time vortex. Its mighty time engines were held in stasis, their power held back by the Doctor's operation of the override switch. The indescribable maelstrom shrieked about it.

'It wasn't actually what you'd call a dirty deal,' said Stokes. He addressed Romana. 'Most of my, er, very long story was true, my dear. I only left out a teensy bit.'

'The teensy bit about the Black Guardian,' she replied bitterly.

'Is that what's he's called?' mused Stokes. 'I suppose it's apposite. No, the first thing I knew of him was just after my court case. I was landed with costs that wiped out my fortune, as I mentioned earlier, so I decided to go for a drink. I had several. In fact, I had a lot more than several. I think I bumped my head. And that's when I saw him, this fellow in black with a bird on his head.'

The Doctor nodded grimly to Romana. 'He can contact lower primates only when their minds are knocked into an altered state.'

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Stokes flushed. 'Who are you calling a lower primate?'

'You,' said the Doctor. 'Go on.'

'Well, it seemed like a dream afterwards,' Stokes continued. 'In a nutshell, he offered me the chance for some success. In exchange for which I had to provide a certain service.

'To betray and trap us,' accused Romana.

'No,' Stokes said finally. 'Honestly, no. I wouldn't have agreed to that, would I? And in fact the thing that made me think it really had been a dream was the ludicrous nature of the service I was asked to perform.'

'Which was?' the Doctor prompted.

Stokes pulled his hammer from his pocket. 'There would come a time, he said, when I had to smash something up. He didn't even say what, only that I'd know what it was when the time came, and that I should carry this wherever I went. And that it was something to do with you, Doctor, some sort of personal feud, and that I shouldn't mention him to you or Romana if ever we should meet. Of course I thought it was all subconscious rambling on my part.' He pointed to the crystal in Romana's hand. 'Until I found that in my pocket when I woke up. Occasionally it gave me directions. It pushed me towards the cryogenic process, for example, when I first considered it. Very odd.' He sighed. 'Otherwise, everything I told you was true. So I can hardly be painted as the villain of this piece.' Determined not to feel cowed, he stuck his chest out. 'In fact, we all seem to have come out of it all right. We're going to Dellah, now, I think you'll find, where you can drop me off. And then you can take your feud with this Guardian chap elsewhere.' He extended his hand. 'No harm done, eh?'

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The Doctor shot him a venomous look. 'Stokes, you've been very stupid, even for a lower primate.'

Romana's expression was as gloomy. 'You've been manipulated as part of a plan to bring the Doctor to this point. A string of small events, of small choices, calculated to reach this moment.'

Stokes frowned and looked at the central column, which was grinding ferociously, as if the energies trapped inside were straining desperately to escape. 'But we are going to Dellah, aren't we?'

'Yes, we're going to Dellah,' cried the Doctor, 'and we're dragging along with us a Hive of blood-crazed insects that given the right conditions could become one of the deadliest life forms in the cosmos.' He pointed to a particular lever on the console. 'We've both been fooled, Stokes. And even when I realized I was being manipulated I was being manipulated. The Black Guardian timed our movements precisely. You set the coordinates, I rushed in, picked up the Hive and dematerialized.'

'So?' demanded Stokes. 'I think I must be missing the point.'

'This is the trap,' Romana explained. 'The Doctor was rushed, made to panic. We were going to drop the Hive off into a black hole, right away.' She pointed to the materialization control. 'If we materialize here, it'll be released into populated space at a crucial point in history. It'll destroy millions and reproduce without restriction. The web of time will be fractured irreparably.' She shuddered. 'And we'll be responsible.'

'No,' said the Doctor. 'I shall be responsible.'

The TARDIS rocked as a great shadow fell across its doors.

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The shutters of the scanner screen slid open unbidden. The Doctor whipped round from his moment of introspection and blinked at the figure that was revealed. The imperturbable face could have been blasted out of solid rock; the ermine-lined robes were glossy and seemed to contain in their folds every dark thought the universe had ever contained; the headdress was mounted by a raven whose eyes were narrowed in pure, piercing hatred.

'Ah,' said the Doctor. 'We were just talking about you.'

'That's him, isn't it?' Stokes asked.

'If it isn't it's somebody wearing his hat,' said the Doctor.

The Black Guardian's voice was as stentorian as he remembered, a rumble that seemed to shake the very fabric of time. 'Doctor,' he said, 'the time has come for us to do business.'

'I don't think so.'

The Guardian gestured with one massive hand to the TARDIS console. 'The choice is clear. Press the lever and condemn the universe to chaos, or -' his eyes narrowed and his lips twisted '- remain suspended here in the vortex forever.'

The Doctor ambled over to the scanner and peered up at the face of his greatest enemy. 'You've been very clever, I must say. I know that to an elemental being like yourself the compliments of a mere mortal like myself must not count for much, but I'd like to congratulate you anyway. I should have seen your hand in it from the beginning.' He raised his voice. 'What better place than the end of the universe to set your trap? Your opposite number is at his weakest there and couldn't intervene.'

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'Precisely,' said the Black Guardian. 'You walked into the situation on Metralubit as you always do, Doctor. It was easy for me to predict your moves.' He indicated Stokes. 'Using this creature and others as my players.' A smile cracked his unearthly features. 'I have been tracing your path through all time and space, your past and your future, choosing my moment. I was at your side when you fought the wizard of Avalon, when you united the Rhumon and the Menoptera against the Animus, when you brought down Lady Ruath and her vampire hordes and when you fought the Timewyrm on the surface of the moon.'

'I'm not sure you should be telling me some of that,' said the Doctor. 'I haven't done it yet.' He wagged a reproving finger up at the screen. 'You're dabbling with the forces of continuity.'

'I care nothing for such abstract concepts,' snorted the Guardian.

'You've disrupted our timeline, broken the First Law,' accused Romana. 'The consequences could be catastrophic. Not to mention very confusing.'

'Catastrophe and confusion is his job,' the Doctor remarked.

'Throughout I have studied you,' said the Black Guardian, 'until my knowledge of your personality and my capacity to predict your next move were absolute. And I can predict your next move, Doctor.'

Stokes decided he was being left out of things. 'Excuse me,' he said, stomping over to the screen. 'There is still the small matter of our bargain.'

The Black Guardian turned to look at him and cackled. 'Ah yes. Menlove Ereward Stokes.' The cackle became a full-voiced, deep-throated, very fruity laugh. 'Who would do anything to be remembered to posterity.'

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Stokes rearranged his coat in an attempt to appear more dignified and sniffed. 'Some of us are quite content with our small lives, you know. And besides, I'd certainly never heard of you until I met you. For a deity of all that is evil you're not actually very famous, are you? I haven't seen you on the front covers of any magazines, have I?'

'Famous,' chortled the Black Guardian. 'Magazines.' His deeply lined face creased with further mirth.

Romana sidled close to the Doctor. 'What are we going to do?' she whispered.

'We could always just sit and watch these two out-ham each other for all eternity,' he whispered back.

K9 joined in the hushed conversation. 'Options limited, Master,' he said.

Further debate was forestalled by the Black Guardian's next statement. 'Stokes,' he said, 'your petty concerns amuse me.' He waved his fingers in a dismissive motion, as if flicking them dry. 'Go to Dellah, take up your place, find your acclaim.'

Stokes felt himself drifting away from the console room. He saw the Doctor, Romana and K9 slide slowly away from him, and when he looked down he saw he was becoming transparent. 'It seems like I must -be going,' he said. He waved goodbye. 'I'm sorry if I've caused you any inconvenience, and that if we meet again it'll be under more pleasant circumstances. You can drop in on Dellah whenever you want -'

His words were swallowed up, and suddenly he was somewhere else.

He was in a high, draughty corridor. Through a window he saw a set of bee-hive-like buildings made of baked red mud, arranged to form a quadrangle. Small groups of people, mostly young humanoids, were walking between the buildings. At the centre of the quad was an abstract sculpture that depicted a vicious, two-headed reptilian creature, gore dripping from its jaws. 'Good God,' he said. 'That's one of mine.'

He turned and found himself at a door. On its frosted-glass front was embossed PROFESSOR M. E. STOKES.

He pushed open the door. Inside was a large desk stacked with unattended paperwork and several battered filing cabinets. He walked in slowly, still amazed by the sudden transition.

On the desk was an unaddressed black envelope. He unsealed it and found a black card. Inside, written in sparkling gold and in an excessively stylized hand, were the words 'Mr Stokes. Hoping you find the rewards you seek. B.G.'

Stokes sat down at his desk and thought for a very long time. The events of the last few - days? months? years? millennia? - rallied around his head like images left from a fading dream. He had been humiliated, scorned and made to look a fool. Here was his chance for a fresh start. He decided on certain things.

He would forget the Black Guardian. He would forget Metralubit. And he would, most definitely, never so much as think about the Doctor and company ever again.

After Stokes had faded the Black Guardian gave another of his grotesque smiles. 'Mr Stokes has arrived safely on Dellah, you'll be pleased to hear.' He gestured to the console. 'Why not materialize and join him there?'

K9 motored forward angrily and snarled up at the scanner. 'Do not mock my master.'

The Guardian cackled. 'Ah, the metal dog. Did you enjoy your moment of elevation on Metralubit? It amused me to bring out the superiority that has always bubbled beneath that servile shell.' He turned to Romana. 'It amused me also to encourage your righteousness, so typical of the Time Lord race.'

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Romana tried to think of a suitably haughty reply but failed. Her eyes turned to the Doctor, who was circling the console and examining the varied systems displays. He stopped by the crackling, pinging navigation panel and the small flashing unit that represented the Hive's energy signature. Could some extraordinary solution present itself? Could that incredible, eight-hundred-year-old mind pull the rabbit out of the hat? 'I have to admit,' he said to the Guardian, 'that you've sewn this up very well.' He looked up at the scanner. 'You said you could predict my next move. Go on then.'

The Black Guardian smiled. 'You are both very long lived, for mortals. Almost ageless. You will wait here in the vortex for many years. You will explore every possible technological solution. You will vow never to press the lever and bring yourselves back out into the cosmos.' His tone darkened, and as it did the lighting in the console room dimmed and there was a rushing noise from outside. 'But eventually, Doctor, you will. I know you. You cannot stay in one place and in one time. It would drive you insane. It will drive you insane. And to save yourself you shall become my agent, of your own choosing. You will press the lever. You will release the Hive, and it shall feast on the universe and plunge all time and space into chaos.'

As he spoke Romana's imagination conjured up an image of the Doctor, many years older, his spirit shattered, hunched over the console, a feeble hand wrapped around the materialization control. She shuddered.

'I thought it would be something like that,' said the Doctor. Some of his good humour seemed to have returned, and it was as if he was goading a minor warlord rather than the protector of all the universe's evil. He pointed to the materialization lever. 'You want me to press this switch.'

'You are going to,' the Guardian said, his voice lowered to a horrible whisper. 'I have waited an eternity to see you do it. A few centuries more will not trouble me.' He indicated the frame of the screen. 'I shall always be here, Doctor, watching and waiting.'

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The Doctor nodded affably. 'It's nice to know I'm worthy of your special attention;' His voice hardened.

'But you've forgotten one thing.'

'I have forgotten nothing,' stormed the Guardian.

The Doctor carried on as if he hadn't spoken. 'You forget that there are plenty of other switches and levers on this console. You've forgotten one in particular.' He pointed to a small black box that was wired on to the side of the panel nearest the door. 'What about that, then?'

Romana was shocked. 'The emergency unit,' she exclaimed. 'You won't use that.'

The Doctor wheeled on her. 'Can't I? I've had enough of people telling me what I will or won't do.'

K9 came forward. 'The emergency unit is designed to remove the TARDIS from time and space, vis-a-vis reality as we understand it. Its usage is most inadvisable.'

'We could end up anywhere,' Romana protested.

The Doctor shook his head. 'No. Anywhere is just where we won't be going.'

The Guardian growled from the screen. 'Explain yourself.'

The Doctor tapped the black box. 'A nifty gadget for use in extreme emergencies. If I activate it we'll just drop out of everything, quite possibly forever, taking the Hive with us. We'll be outside your influence.'

'You would not dare, Doctor,' called the Guardian. 'You would rather die.'

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The Doctor hunched over the console and readied his finger above the box. 'Probably, in the normal run of things. But occasionally it does one good to surprise oneself. And I'd rather disappear than grovel to you.' He turned to Romana. 'I'm sorry.'

Romana swallowed and curled her fingers around his above the control. 'There's no alternative,' she said, trying to keep her voice even. 'Have you ever done this before?'

He smiled. 'Once. I ended up in the fictional realm. I suppose it wasn't such a bad place.'

Romana shuddered at the thought. 'Then we'd just be characters, not real people.'

'I can think of worse fates,' said the Doctor.

'No!' the Black Guardian thundered. 'You will not press that button, Doctor. You will not press that button!'

K9 extended his eyestalk and chirruped a signal. The shutters of the scanner slid closed, and there was a sudden silence. The lighting returned to normal. It could have been another ordinary day in the TARDIS, ready to begin another adventure.

'Goodbye, universe,' the Doctor said sadly. 'I'll be back again, one day. Try to look after yourself. Mind out for the Daleks, keep an eye out for the Cybermen, don't let the Sontarans boss you about. Good luck.'

The Doctor and Romana looked at each other.

The Doctor kissed Romana quickly on the cheek.

Together they pressed the button.

THE END

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