Time and Time Again

"Not the same exact ship, Jean-Luc, just different types. The Rani's TARDIS has the ability to change its shape. This particular shape, though, is rather large; she must be using an amazing amount of energy to keep it together."

"Can that information help us?" Kirk asked.

"I don't know, Jim. It might mean that she's not quite as defensively sound as my TARDIS..." The Doctor trailed off, lost in thought. Suddenly, a voice could be heard.

"Doctor! You have come at last! And with a new body, to boot!"

"Well, the old one was getting rather old. Haven't seen you since Lakertya, I believe."

"Right, Doctor; I'm a firm supporter of the BLE. I've got your companion; come on in and get her."

Picard looked at the Doctor. "BLE?"

"Blinovitch Limitation Effect. One of the major theorems that govern time travel. In this instance, she's referring to the fact that Time Lords can't meet each other out of temporal sequence."

The Doctor tensed. "I should have known that you would resort to something like all of this," he spread his arms wide, "to get my attention, Rani. It's just the broad-minded spectacle you and the Master used to dream up at the Academy."

"Reminiscing won't help you now, Doctor. Or your companion... she is rather young, isn't she? About the age of Mel, or Peri, I would think. Hmmm... I wonder what happened to them?"

The Doctor clenched his fists. "I am so tired of everybody trying to use my past against me! Try living in the present for once, Rani; you might find that it really isn't so bad."

The group could hear laughter from the air. "Come and get young Melissa, Doctor, or I swear on the name of Rassilon, I will kill her in cold blood."

"You would do just that, and get a rise out of it, you fiend. All right, I'm coming. I presume I have to be alone?"

"Oh, no, Doctor. This time, I'm so confident of winning, you can bring as many friends to the party as you like."

The voice again laughed, and as the echoes died away, the Doctor turned to his friends. "Okay, we've got to move, and move fast. The Rani is liable to do anything; she's quite mad. Jim, Jean-Luc, Ace, Data, come with me."

"Hey, what about me?" Harriman wasn't too happy to be left behind.

"I'm going to need the rest of you to watch our backs, in case the Devidians awake." Harriman sulked as Kahless nodded sagely, ready to fight.

The Doctor looked Spock and spoke in Vulcan,

Spock nodded his understanding, as the Doctor looked at his group. "Are all of you ready? I make no guarantees as to your safety in the Rani's TARDIS."

Ace smiled. "Always ready, Professor. Let's get this sleazebag."

The Doctor smiled grimly. "Trust you to put just the right spin on things, Ace. I miss that attitude, you know." Ace nodded, as the Doctor moved to the force-field and depressed a contact on his sonic screwdriver. At once, the veil was lifted with a parting of shimmering light, and everyone stepped through.

"No turning back now, everyone. The Rani could just as easily dematerialize now and throw us all to the mercy of the Time Vortex than face us."

"And you don't think she will?"

"The Rani, throughout all the years I've known her, has never once not met a challenge. Except, that is, for my destruction. It has been her guiding force for centuries; if she thinks she has it in her grasp this time, she won't throw it away. She'll milk it for all it's worth."

As the group moved through the doors and into the interior of the Rani's TARDIS, Ace moved closer to the Doctor and whispered, "You know, I like this version of you better than the old one in one major respect."

"Let me guess; I'm more forthcoming with personal information."

"Right." Ace smiled. "You remember Lady Peinforte, right?"

"How could I forget? Oh... you want to know what she meant when she said that I was 'more than a Time Lord'."

"Well?"

The Doctor smiled. "I can't give away all my secrets, Ace. What kind of mysterious force for justice would I be then, hmmm?"

They presently reached a large room, with many doors leading out of it. The Doctor looked around, and grimaced. "This is just like the Rani, to use her own TARDIS as an impossible maze."

"How would she do that?"

"The TARDISes have the ability to change their room configurations. They can put any room anywhere it wants. Right, Doctor?"

"Very good memory, Ace. Any of these doors could lead to the Rani, or to another corridor, or to our dooms. There's no way of knowing."

"So, what do we do? Split up? We'd have a better chance of finding the right door that way."

"And take the chance of losing one or more of you, either to the TARDIS's corridors or to one of the Rani's nasty surprises? No chance."

The Doctor yelled into the air, "Come on, Rani! Make it more interesting than this... give us something to go on."

The voice returned; the group could almost sense the sneer in the Rani's voice.

"All right, Doctor; the door to your salvation is in your name."

"What kind of clue is that?" Ace yelled. "We all know his name is Doctor."

"Not necessarily, Ace. I have had many names throughout my lives; the trick is finding out which she's referring to."

"Well, start off, then. Maybe one of the doors will respond."

"All right... The Daleks called me the Ka Faraq Gatri. Roughly translated, it means 'The Bringer of Darkness'..."

Just then, the gloom that had pervaded the antechamber the group was in began to deepen. The Doctor scratched his chin thoughtfully. "Hmmm... this TARDIS is keyed by the Rani to respond to my suggestions."

"Is that good?"

"I don't know... Let's try again. The Draconians called me 'The Oncoming Storm'..."

In response to his words, a mild breeze began to blow along the antechamber. Without warning, the wind picked up to a gale. The group was pressed back along the walls by the force of the wind. Ace yelled, "Okay, you've done enough! My turn..."

Then, through the gloom, Ace thought she saw something on the doors. She moved closer to one of them, pushing through the fierce wind. She looked at it, and saw that embossed into the door was a strange symbol. She recognized it instantly.

"It's Greek, Doctor! The doors are inset with Greek letters!"

Each of the group moved to a door, and finding a symbol inscribed, they began to call out the letters.

"Beta... Omicron... Sigma... Mu..."

The Doctor stood in the middle of the storm and darkness, and finally, he spoke. As he did, it seemed to Ace that his eyes shone in the gloom, like some ephereal cat.

"Theta Sigma."

At his words, the door emblazoned with the Greek letter Sigma, the mathematical symbol of summation, opened. The gloom receded and the wind stopped. The group looked at the Time Lord, who smiled wanly.

"Remember Terra Alpha, Ace?"

Ace grimaced. "How could I forget? Helen A... the Candyman... the Happiness Patrol. Not my idea of a holiday at all, Professor."

As they went through the door, which led into another corridor, the Doctor prompted, "And what did I call myself on that world?"

"Theta Sigma... Right, I get it. It was really one of your names?"

"Yes, it was... A nickname the Rani used to call me when we were schooling together on Gallifrey at the Prydonian Academy."

'Wait a second, you two went to school together? Were you friends?"

The Doctor frowned. "No, certainly not, Ace. I was too much of a renegade, even then... I didn't have many friends during my formative years."

Ace grinned. "Yeah, I can imagine you as the class clown, Professor. So, where to?"

"How about here, young Ace?"

The voice carried through the corridor; as the group watched, another door opened. "Come in, if you dare."

"Is Melissa in there, Rani?"

"She is, Doctor; but I can't vouch for her condition..."

"If you've harmed her in any way, I'll make you regret it. You know what I'm capable of, perhaps more than anyone here. I will make good on my threat."

"Of course, Doctor. She is alive. Come in, and let the endgame begin."

The group went through the passageway, and found themselves in a cavernous room. Machines were hooked up to what appeared to be a large hexagonal pedestal in the center of the room.

"The console room." Ace breathed. Picard whispered, "It's much more... developed than yours, Doctor."

"That's because the Rani likes to keep the subjects of her experiments close by. Right?"

"That's right, Doctor. Don't tell me you've figured out my plan already?" The Rani, tall and lithe with strawberry-blond hair, stepped out of the shadows and locked onto her fellow renegade Time Lord with a feral stare.

"Not all of it, but a great deal. After you were defeated on Lakertya by my earlier self and Mel, you searched for a way to continue your temporal experiments."

"That strange matter would have been ideal for my work, Doctor. If you had just left well enough alone..."

"You know I couldn't do that. Traveling through time and space, you somehow stumbled upon this... random timezone, and Vanishing Point."

"It was purely accidental. A brief disruption in space-time, a subspace infarction, much like you experienced when you arrived here. I found the Devidians here, struggling to survive. Their stores of neural energy were almost depleted; they didn't want to go out into the timestream for fear of being discovered by someone who could stop them for good. The Enterprise-D had already done so once", the Rani looked at Picard then, "and they were shaken by the experience."

"I had no choice... they would have altered human history with their continued disruptions. The future I know would have never come to pass. I tried to help them... but they were unrelenting." Picard looked at the Rani, who scowled.

"One simple planet wouldn't have mattered... plus, they had heard of the Time Lords, from other, more ancient texts on distant worlds. They didn't want to tangle with them at all, Doctor; you know as well as I what they would have done to them."

"The High Council isn't the same as it was then, Rani. I have to admit, I shook them up a bit when I became President. They still haven't recovered... but they wouldn't kill a sentient species just for using time-travel as a means of gathering sustenance. I refuse to believe it."

"Maybe the High Council wouldn't... but there are those who don't act on the whims of the Council, eh, Doctor?"

The Doctor remembered suddenly the actions taken against him and his friends by Ferain and the Celestial Intervention Agency, dating back to the very beginnings of his travels through time and space. His first trial had been a farce, his second a complete sham designed to lure him to his doom... not to mention more recent events, like the kidnapping of Dorothee in order to find out his deepest secrets. The Doctor realized that the Rani was right, but he couldn't afford to think about that right now. There were more important things to do...

Suddenly, a voice was heard. "Mistress, I have brought the young companion." Lyta came into the room, carrying Melissa over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes. She laid her down on the floor of the console room, and the Doctor hurried over to her.

"Melissa, can you hear me?"

Melissa began to stir, and opened her eyes slowly. As she focused in on the Time Lord, she smiled. "You're a sight for sore eyes, Doctor."

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine... that stun-disc she used on me hurt like hell, though. But I'll live." She stood, groggily, as Lyta took her place next to the Rani. Melissa managed a weak sneer as she caught sight of the Time Lady. "So, you're the Mistress. Can't say I'm that impressed, what with the second-rate help you've got... I could tell she was a phony straight off."

The Rani decided not to respond, as the Doctor continued. "There's one thing I still don't understand... what does Lyta have to do with all of this?"

"She is the instrument of my revenge, Doctor. The Devidians killed her close friend, and in her own anger, she led you right to me."

"You mean, she doesn't know?"

"What is he talking about, Mistress?"

The Doctor began to grin, as his mind sped ahead to the next move. "Lyta, the Rani, to use an Earth term, has been playing you like a violin. The Devidians are the ones who have been keeping Ace and the others here... but on the orders of the Rani, known to you as the Mistress."

"Good try, Doctor, but she won't believe you. She's mine; I own her utterly." The Rani looked at Lyta, and was surprised to see a look of bewilderment on the young time-travelller's face.

"You mean that you're really not held here against your will? You're not being kept here by the Devidians because you were travelling through time without their knowledge?" "She doesn't look too cooped up in here, does she?" The Doctor supplied helpfully.

"I was, erm, able to free myself when you and the Doctor arrived. I'm about to exact my vengeance on my captors and their friends!"

"I'm confused... the Devidians kidnapped them and held them against their will. Why should they be destroyed?"

"Yes, why, Rani? We've done nothing except act as bait to lure the Doctor here, right?" Ace questioned.

"Yes, and the Devidians should be punished for their crimes! But you won't do it; you'll allow them to live."

"Yes, we will. They are a sentient race; the harm they have done is only as a result of their need to survive. If we kill them just because they're trying to survive, what makes us different than, say, you?" Kirk interjected. "You want to kill the Doctor, simply because he interferes with your plans, and from what I've heard, he should continue to do so. What gives you the right to destroy life with impunity?"

"My position as a Time Lord gives me the right to hold dominion over those lesser species I encounter!" The Rani countered.

The Doctor spoke softly, "You were excommunicated from Gallifrey for your experiments, much as I was when I fled centuries ago. They will have nothing to do with you. Your so-called 'position' as a Time Lord doesn't exist, except in your twisted mind. Give this charade up, Rani, and tell the truth."

The Doctor turned to Lyta. "The short version is that the Rani has been using us, all of us, even the Devidians, in order to kill us wholesale, leaving nothing to stand between her and total domination of time."

Kirk continued. "She told us she found the Devidians, alone and dying, and offered them sustenance in return for doing her bidding."

"It wasn't that hard to do; the ability to replicate human neural energy has been a Time Lord capability for millenia. She ordered them to kill Gary Seven on the Enterprise-A and kidnap Captain Spock, bringing you into the plan. From there, it was a simple enough matter to enter your anger-clouded mind and convince you that all of us were against you, but you had to play along to lure us here."

"She then had the Devidians kidnap Data, bringing the Enterprise-D into the mix... Why did you do that, anyway? Bring the Enterprises in, and Kahless besides?"

"I thought I could destroy the Federation and the Klingon Empire by killing their greatest figures. After your deaths, I would have travelled back in time and shown myself to the races of the galaxy as a god. They would have been my unwilling slaves!"

"You are sick, girl. Very sick." Ace retorted. "Humanity would have resisted, as would all the other sentient species. You wouldn't have had a chance."

"You forget I am a time-traveller. If it didn't work, I would have gone back farther and tried again. I would have succeeded in time, especially with my greatest foe out of the way."

Throughout this discourse, Lyta was becoming more and more confused, until finally, a light dawned. She thought, *I don't understand... You had the Devidians kill Gary Seven and used me to lure the Doctor and your friends here, where you could destroy them?*

The voice of the Rani echoed in her head. *Ah, the light comes on at last. Yes, you were a pawn, as was Gary Seven and everyone else here. All pawns to be swept off the board in one move, as I win the game!*

Suddenly, Lyta whirled on the Rani. "No! No more killing or subservience; this ends now!" She pulled the Tissue Compression Eliminator out of her suit and grabbed the Rani in a chokehold, pressing the weapon to the Time Lady's head.

"Lyta, no! This isn't the way!" The Doctor shouted, as he moved toward the young human and her hostage.

"Wrong, Doctor! It's the only way to make sure this madness ends!" She held the Rani tighter as she tried to wriggle free of Lyta's grip.

Suddenly, the Doctor saw a figure go past him, moving themselves between the Time Lord and the frightened Lyta. At first, the Doctor thought it was Ace, or Data. When he realized who the person was, he moved to stop him.

"Jim, get out of the way!"

"No, Doctor. You see, I know exactly how she feels." Kirk turned to Lyta, who still had the Rani held tight and the TCE aimed at the Time Lady's head.

"Lyta, I once had a son, a very bright and intelligent young man. He was helping his mother on a very important project when the Klingons attacked. He tried to protect his project, and two of my crew, and for his bravery, he was killed in cold blood."

Everyone looked on, shocked, as Kirk continued.

"In my rage, I took revenge for his death and killed the Klingon who had murdered David. It made me feel better, for a while. The anger, forced by years and years of war with the Klingons, had clouded my judgement and changed my life. Later, when the Klingons were on the verge of extinction, I didn't want to help them. Spock told me that they would die unless help was given; in my anger, I told him that I didn't care."

"When I met the Klingon leader, I realized that their way of life and views toward such things as peace and diplomacy weren't really that much different after all. When Gorkon died, I was arrested for his murder, and was tried, convicted, and sentenced to certain death by Klingons who had known of my hatred of them over the death of my son."

"When the conspiracy was discovered, and I escaped and stopped it from tearing apart a budding Klingon-Federation alliance, I realized that things had to change. I found that I could stop feeling revenge, and start trying to forgive. It hasn't been easy, but I think I've been doing a pretty good job."

"What I'm trying to say, Lyta, is to stop this now, with no more bloodshed. Gary Seven has died trying to save us; let his death mean something, for he was always a man of peace. If you kill the Rani now, it will create a vaccum of hate and revenge that may never be filled. Don't do this to yourself, please."

Kirk finished his impassioned plea, as Lyta looked into his eyes, and saw the hurt and the desperation in them mirrored in her own. *He doesn't want me to do this... After all I've done, the way I've treated everyone, they understand, and they don't want me to throw away my life.*

She lowered the Tissue Compression Eliminator, and the Rani suddenly tried to grab the weapon. The Doctor cried, "No, don't!", as the two struggled with the dangerous weapon. The TCE moved toward the right, then to the left, then pointed right at the Doctor. Then, with a burst of strength, Lyta pulled the TCE away from the Time Lord and over toward the console of the Rani's TARDIS. Suddenly, a flash of light was seen, and one of the console surfaces exploded.

The Rani and Lyta fell to the floor, unconscious, as the Doctor moved rapidly over to the console. He looked at the sparking and smoking console, and as he looked at the damage, the others noticed that the machines and equipment scattered around the room were sparking and exploding as well.

"Oh, no! This is bad, very bad..."

"What is it, Doctor?" Kirk stood with the others away from the still smoking and sparking console.

"The blast from the TCE seems to have severed the artron energy conduit from the Eye of Harmony to the console."

Picard cut in then: "You mean the Eye of Harmony that powers the TARDIS?"

"The same... it appears that the artron energy is going back the way it came... into the Eye!"

"English please, Professor!" Ace was looking around, worried, and yelped as another bank of electronic equipment exploded next to her.

"It means, Ace, that we have about a minute before this TARDIS goes up!"

"'Goes up' as in 'Kablooie!" Ace supplied helpfully.

The Doctor threw up his hands. "'Kablooie!'"

"Then what are we waiting for?"

Ace began to lead everyone out of the console room. The Doctor followed right behind, and as they reached the intersection of rooms they had been trapped in, Ace suddenly turned around to face the Time Lord.

"Wait! Lyta and the Rani..."

The Doctor shook his head sadly. "There's no time."

"I could go back in... We have to know..."

"Ace, listen to me; there is no time! I will not let you sacrifice your life for the Rani. Now, go!!"

Ace nodded silently, and she and the Doctor ran hell-for-leather for the mammoth front entrance to the Rani's TARDIS. They had barely gotten out when the familiar dematerialization sound was heard, but with a different pitch; Ace distractedly thought it sounded like a car failing to turn over. With a final shriek, the entire fortress-like compound vanished into thin air. Ace looked at the Doctor.

"Do you think..."

"It's not likely, Ace. The artron energy feedback would have eaten away the TARDIS from the inside."

"But I heard what sounded like the TARDIS dematerializing..."

"I managed to rig the Rani's TARDIS itself to dematerialize into the Time Vortex. If it had continued to die away here, the resulting explosion would have destroyed this entire planetoid."

At Ace's horrified look, the Doctor whispered, "I couldn't risk you... I couldn't. The Rani got what she deserved in the end, for all of the death and suffering she has caused."

"And Lyta?"

The Doctor thought for a moment, then he spoke with quiet determination. " Her only fault, like so many of us have, is that she trusted too much. But, her last acts were to face what she had done, and try to correct it. I admire her very much for that, and I regret that I couldn't save her." The Doctor sighed, and faced the group of wayward time-travellers before him.

"Now then, why don't we see about getting all of you home safe and sound, eh?"

Ace grinned and went to her room. A second later, everyone heard, "All right! Everything's still here!" and we looked on, astonished, as Ace came back out in a leather jacket, T-shirt, black leggings, and Doc Martens. She looked at everyone, smiling like some giddy schoolgirl, and twirled around, modeling her outfit. "Still fits perfectly, too. I can't believe it..." The Doctor looked ready to cry himself as he replied, "You think I just deleted your room when you left? No way. Haven't done that since..." He made a show of thinking as he continued, "Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever deleted one of my companion's rooms. Maybe because one or another of you always seems to come back into my life at just the wrong time." He smiled again at Ace, who went, whistling, out of the console room. "Going to the gym, Professor. Be back soon.", she called back, laughing.

The others went to their rooms, and just like that, we were alone, the Doctor and I. He moved over to the console, checking gauges and flipping switches as the TARDIS sped along... "Wait a minute." I had just realized something. "Can we get back to normal time, or are we going to be stuck in this out-of-time zone forever?"

The Doctor smiled in that infuriating boyish way of his; you know, when he's got it all figured out and he can't wait to tell you about it. "Well, Melissa, we're certainly not going to be stuck anywhere. See for yourself." He flipped a switch on one of the console surfaces, and the air above the Time Rotor shimmered, to reveal a picture of the Time Vortex. I had to smile; I was starting to think I'd never see that swirling batch of light again.

"How...?"

"Very simple, Melissa. While we were off having our fun, the TARDIS analyzed what went wrong with the initial entry into the 'out-of-time zone', as you call it, and automatically focused the HADS to the correct frequency for the return trip. No muss, no fuss. Not bad, huh?"

"Yeah, good work, Doctor. I'm very impressed. Now, for the most important part..."

"Yes?" The Doctor smiled, as he moved back over to the couch and sat down.

"We have seven people from four different time periods spanning thousands of years. How are we going to get them home without ending up in every written record in the history of the Universe?"

"Ah, yes... putting them back in their rightful places and times with no memory of the incidents befallen them is going to be quite difficult. I'll just have to think of a plan."

"You mean, you don't have one? Big surprise there." Ace entered the room then, and smiled. "So, until then, what are we going to do, sit here and vacation?"

"After what you've been through, I think that a vacation would be a good idea." The Doctor looked at Ace. "That is, unless you want to go back to Dalek clean-up duty..."

Ace just laughed at the Doctor then. "Not a chance." She turned to me. "Come on; I want to show you how to make Nitro-Nine. I have a feeling you're going to need it with this one." She jerked a thumb at the Doctor, as she led me out of the console room. As I left, I faintly heard the Doctor call, "Oh, no, not another one..."

The Doctor had nodded at this, muttering, "You know, that might work", and he and Data spent the entire night working on the plan. The next morning, they discussed the plan with the rest of the group. They would return the groups from the Enterprises A, B and D to their ships, and then the TARDIS would use its artron energy stores to create a miniature, stable wormhole. The ships would pass through it, and their memories would be erased. They would wake up with no knowledge of the past several days.

The Doctor also decided that he would make some short hops into 23rd and 24th Century Earth and fake some Starfleet records to make sure that no mention of the unexplained occurrences that befell the crew remained. Ace smiled at this, and muttered, "Still putting the pawns into play, I see...", to which the Doctor gave her a sharp look. The operation on the Enterprises took another couple of days, and Ace put the time to good use, chaperoning Melissa around the little-known areas of the TARDIS and regaling her with stories of her adventures with the Doctor. Melissa felt by this time that she was getting a good idea of who the Doctor was and why he did the things he did.

It was clear, though, that Ace still hadn't come all the way back in terms of trusting the Doctor; Melissa cornered her in the arboretum during one of the tours and asked her why she still acted so distrusting around the Doctor.

"Well, Melissa, I still get the feeling that he's hiding something, something he doesn't want to tell me about. For all I know, it could be something important, something I need to know."

Melissa realized that the Doctor had been hedging around about Ace's future; all her questions on the subject had been quietly ignored by the Time Lord. He couldn't tell her that she would be reunited with her 'Professor' in only a year's time; it could shape her entire future.

"I'm sure it's nothing, Ace. You've seen that this Doctor is nothing like the Doctor you knew."

Ace sighed. "Yeah... for one thing, he's much more outright. And sensitive; I don't remember the Professor ever hugging me so much. And of course, he's got much better fashion sense, even though now he looks like he stepped out of a Jane Austen novel instead of looking like a disheveled... professor." Ace smiled. "And he is much cuter, too." She giggled at that, then grew more serious, as she looked at Melissa.

"But remember this; somehow, someway, you're going to find yourself being used, being put right into the middle of the action, whether you want to or not. Being his companion isn't just a joyride through the Universe, despite the sales pitch. It's difficult, it's dangerous... but it is the most worthwhile thing you're ever going to do in your life, ever. Keep that in mind when you get captured by the Daleks, or tortured by some power-mad future dictator; you're helping to preserve the history of the Universe, preserve it for all races, for all times. You're battling evil, injustice, and all the other horrible things out there. It's the greatest rush ever... but it can also be the death of you."

Melissa nodded at the advice. "So you're telling me to enjoy it while it lasts?"

"Yeah, and that the Doctor's not always going to be there for you, in spite of what he says. You're going to have to save the Universe on your own once in a while, so be ready for anything. I thought I was..."

"Until he left you?" Melissa volunteered.

Ace nodded silently. "I didn't think it'd still hurt so much, after the couple of years I've been away. But it does, it really hurts that he left me to a future where I was a total misfit, an outcast, struggling to survive. If I hadn't found Spacefleet, I'd be dead."

"And?"

Ace gritted her teeth, trying to stop the tears forming on the sides of her eyes. "And I would leave it in a second if he'd only ask me back. Because even after all he's done for me and to me, I still can't imagine life without him."

They sat there for a moment, among the peace and the tranquility of the flowers and plants, not saying a word, each caught in their own private thoughts. Then Ace got up and left, leaving Melissa alone. She looked up into the bright blue sky of the TARDIS arboretum and thought, *Doctor... How could you do this to her? Just take her with you, with the promise of adventure, take her away from her home, her life, and then use her and discard her like a spare wardrobe, something that suddenly didn't fit anymore?*

Then another thought entered, a more distressing thought than the one before...

*What about me? I've got to know...*

She left the arboretum, and in seconds, found herself in the console room, where she found the Doctor fiddling with the console. He ducked around the moving Time Rotor and smiled at his companion.

"Hello, Melissa; I just dropped Kahless off on early-era Quo'Nos, the Klingon homeworld. I'm sorry you missed it... he did get the karg, by the way." He stopped smiling as he saw the determination and sadness in her eyes. "What is it? Oh, you've been talking to Ace."

"Yes, I have. And I want to know why you did it."

"Did what?"

"Don't be so damned innocent with me, Doctor! I want to know why, and I want to know if it's going to happen to me!"

The Doctor still looked at her uncomprehendingly for a moment, then his face seemed to deepen, as if cast by some internal shadow. He numbly walked over to the couch and sat down.

"Melissa, I have really no idea how to answer that. When we were on Heaven..."

"No, before that, Doctor. Start from the beginning. Start with Iceworld, and then Fenric."

"She's told you everything..."

"Everything that matters, especially the part where despite all that you've done, she would still travel with you, drop everything to be with you again."

"Oh." The Doctor sighed and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "I want to say that I had no idea that all that was going to happen..."

"Come off it, Doctor! From what I've been hearing, you were manipulating her, pushing her buttons from the beginning! I want to know why!"

"Because it was the only way!!" The Doctor's shout surprised even him; he quieted down before he spoke again. "I knew from the beginning that she was a wolf of Fenric; I'd been looking for the signs ever since I met him in Constantinople. I knew that he'd be coming back eventually, and I wanted to be prepared."

"I caught the evidence of the incoming timestorm when I first met Mel in 1986. After my regeneration, I became keenly aware of his impending reemergence in normal time. After the timestorm occurred, I tracked it to Iceworld."

"So you knew that Ace was going to be there."

"I knew that someone had been taken there by Fenric for some reason. It was easy to figure out who and why. I was trying to protect her!"

"By delivering her into the arms of the enemy? By risking her life?"

"By making sure he could never harm her or anyone else again."

"What if she had died, Doctor? What then?"

The Doctor whispered then, so soft that Melissa had to strain to catch it. "I don't know."

"And what of me? What happens when I lose my usefulness, huh? You're going to drop me off thousands of light-years and millions of years away from home?"

"No. I'm going to send you home, back to your family, to your safe life. You won't ever have to see me ever again."

"I know that's not how it works. As the saying goes, 'Once a companion, always a companion.' I'm not sure I want to go through with it."

"What are you saying? You want to go home?"

"I'm saying I don't know if you're going to hug me one second and then feed me to the Daleks the next. And the scariest thing is, I see right now that you don't know either. So I guess we've both got a lot to think about."

Melissa left the room, leaving the Doctor to his console room, his memories, and his self-recriminations.

The next morning, Melissa got up and went to the console room. She found the Doctor bustling around the console, trying to look normal. Melissa sat on the couch, pretending to be engrossed in the Doctor's ministrations. Finally, she spoke.

"So, what's up for today?"

"We take Ace back."

"Back? You mean to the 26th Century, back to Daleks and Spacefleet and not belonging because you're 600 years out of date? You can't mean that."

"I do. There's no choice, and this decision isn't up for a vote."

"That's not fair, Doctor!"

"I know it's not fair, Melissa, but I've already told you what's supposed to happen to Ace."

"Yeah, yeah. In another year, she reunites with you-that is, the other you- and Benny on Arcadia."

"There's more. She stays on until a group of aliens known as Ants invade the timestream. They invade several timezones, including the 26th Century and ancient Egypt. After we dispel the menace, I end up giving Ace some time-travel technology, and she leaves to find her own way. She ends up travelling in a limited time-sphere from the middle of the 18th Century to the beginning of the 21st. She becomes a valued ally, and one of the last to see me before my last regeneration."

"So if we don't take her back..."

"None of those things happen, and the future, both hers and mine, will be altered. And even though I've had to do and endure some very rough things in my past life, I've also grown quite fond of it. I'm not too happy with the prospect of changing it."

The Doctor continued his bustling around the console, as Melissa paused for a moment to digest all the information. "Okay, so how are we going to do this?"

"Very simple; we just land the TARDIS next to the mouth of the cave, lay Ace down there, and the Dresden will find her and take her back."

"How do you know it's going to work? Oh, wait, I just answered my own question; you looked it up, right?"

The Doctor smiled. "Exactly."

"But what about her memories? You are going to let her keep her memories of this, aren't you?" A pause, then: "Aren't you?"

The Doctor started as if to answer, then stopped as Ace walked into the console room, clad in her Spacefleet jumpsuit. She looked at the Doctor, and then at Melissa. She smiled wanly and said, "I knew it was going to be today, or never. And somehow, I knew forever wasn't an option."

The Doctor nodded, and flipped a few switches on the console. "We've landed in 2580, right inside the cave where you were taken. I've been monitoring transmissions from the Dresden, and it's been about eight hours since your jump. They're sending down another team in less than twenty minutes; they were able to isolate the signature from the pilots' beacon rather easily, since about five hours earlier, Melissa and I shut down the Daleks' EMP station." The Doctor smiled.

Ace nodded silently, as if saying anything would spoil the moment, and turned to leave. The Doctor called, "Wait, we'll go out with you." As he came around the console and passed the endtable next to the chair and ottoman in the middle of the room, he grabbed a box. When he and Melissa reached Ace, he held the box out to her. Ace took it; suddenly unsure, she looked at the Doctor. "What is it?"

"It's a gift, from me to you. Just think of it as a reminder of our little out-of-sequence meeting." The Doctor smiled, and opened the box. Inside was a necklace, made of finely polished silver. Looped in the middle, inside a setting of silver, was a small red stone. Ace took it out of the box, and put it around her neck. She smiled, and hugged the Doctor. "Is it a ruby?"

"Oh, no, nothing that common for you. It's a very precious stone from the planet Alzarius. I once visited the planet ages ago, and one of the Alzarians gave me it as a momento of a particularly interesting adventure."

"Very cool, Professor. Does it, you know, do anything special?"

The Doctor smiled again. "Don't all my gifts? You see it's glowing now, right?" Ace looked down and nodded. "Well, all you do is snap your fingers like this..." The Doctor snapped his fingers and suddenly, in a split-second, the glowing from the stone turned to a bright flash, and when it had subsided, Ace was stone-still, unblinking. The Doctor moved to catch her as she started to fall to the floor of the console room.

"Ace, I'm sorry... but I had to." The Doctor whispered, as he picked her up and began to carry her to the door, Melissa following right behind. Melissa whispered, "What is it, really?"

"Oh, it is really a precious stone from Alzar; Adric gave it to me when he came on board the TARDIS, as tribute. But when the stone is subjected to sound vibrations of a certain frequency..."

"Like the snapping of your fingers..." Melissa supplied helpfully.

"...the mindstone emits a light flash that reacts with the cerebral cortex of humanoids, effectively erasing their short-term memories. It also makes their subconscious mind extremely susceptible to suggestion." By this time, they had exited the TARDIS and entered the cave. The Doctor set the unconscious form of Ace down on the floor of the cave, and whispered into her ear, "If you remember anything, remember this; I will return." He kissed her softly on the forehead, and moved away from her sleeping body. He sighed, and Melissa put her hand on his shoulder.

"I said that to Susan, too, and I haven't returned yet. So much to do, so little time... Hey, I got that one right." The Doctor smiled. "Well, time to go."

"Now? Can't we wait until the rescue team arrives?"

The Doctor made a show of looking at the watch on his waistcoat, and then brushed the hair from his eyes. "Ten... nine... eight..." Suddenly, Melissa could hear a sound like the rolling of thunder from outside the cave.

"Seven... six... five..." The Doctor grabbed Melissa and pushed her into the TARDIS. He gave the sleeping body of Ace another cheery wave, and followed behind. A second later, the TARDIS dematerialized, and another second later, a trio of voices could be heard. "In here! We've found her..."

Data stared at the computer console in front of him. The words on the screen, blazing blue on the black surface, stared back at him. He blinked once, finally, and spoke.

"Computer, save in personal file, and power off console."

As the computer complied with the request, Data stood up, and in a very un-android moment, yawned. He smiled at another facet of his newly-emotional personality; since the destruction of the Enterprise-D at Veridian III, he hadn't had much time to fully catalog all the emotional states he had experienced, but he knew that the number was growing every day. And only recently, after the months of debriefings by Starfleet, had he been able to think about another equally important incident.

Thus, the reason for the computer console. He had decided to relate all he knew of his experiences with the Eighth Doctor to a single file, for posterity. He had used an inverse algorithmic code to encrypt the file; only another android could have decoded the file, and with the deactivation of Lore almost two years before, he was truly the only one of his kind left.

Not that he didn't trust his own positronic matrix to carry the information; he just didn't know how long he was going to remain functioning. He wanted to make sure the information remained in somewhat public domain until the time came for it to be read. To that point, he had sent a personal communique to Starfleet, calling in a few favors from the scientific community. The file would be sent by encrypted subspace lines to the repository of scientific information within Starfleet, where it would remain for approximately 200 years.

He crossed the room and looked out onto the warm San Francisco night. He hoped it would happen soon; he had left instructions as to where and when he would be ready. He heard a buzzer sound outside the door of his room. He called out, "Enter."

The door slid open soundlessly, but Data could hear the breathing of the person that lay beyond. He turned toward the door and smiled, an honest display of emotion.

"Hello, Ace."

"It's Dorothee, now. I stopped being Ace almost five years ago. I'm thirty-one now."

"How did you get here?"

"Oh, I got some help from the President of the Time Lords. I helped her out of a little jam recently, and she felt she had to repay me for it. Before that, I'd been travelling through the 19th and 20th Centuries, looking for a place to hang my hat."

"I see. Have you seen the Doctor lately?"

"Which one?" Ace said, smiling.

"Either." Data smiled back, and Ace finally noticed. "Hey, there's something different about you, Yellow-Eyes. Fess up."

"I have recently installed an emotions chip inside my positronic matrix. It was a gift from my late father."

"Cool... You mean you're human, now?"

"Not entirely, but I'm still learning."

"The last time I saw the Doctor was about a month ago, on Gallifrey, his home planet. From what I've gathered, he regenerated into the form we met not soon after that."

Data nodded, and Ace smiled. "I wonder... is this the only reason you wanted to meet with me? To discuss old times? You know, I was having a really good time on Gallifrey..."

Data shook his head, slowly, and Ace whispered, "You know, you look just as good as you did back then. But then, it's only been what, a year?"

"Less. And you look even better than you did back then."

"Oooh, Data... Is that a little humanity I'm seeing there? Are you flirting with me?"

Ace entered the room, and as the door closed behind her, a voice could be heard.

"So, you want to keep talking...? Didn't think so."

First, the blurb... then a final word or two.

Time and Time Again

"Professor... help me..."

A psychic distress call from a past Ace sends the Eighth Doctor and new companion Melissa Chambers searching for answers to a mysterious rash of kidnappings across time. From the 23rd Century to the 24th Century to a region outside of time itself, the Doctor finds allies in the crews of the Enterprise-A and D and the return of an old enemy whose mission is total dominion over time... and the total destruction of the Doctor.

And now, for the final word or two... or maybe more. :)

I couldn't have done this without the help of some very special people, some of whom I know personally, some of whom helped in much more obtuse ways.

First, to the creators of both series, "Star Trek" and "Doctor Who" for giving us such great stories of past, present and future, and giving us something to hope for in this life, and to the writers of all the Doctor Who and Star Trek books, which I've read voraciously for so many years, and which shaped my foundations of science-fiction writing.

Next, I'd like to thank all those in #drwhochat (you know who you are) who put up with my incessant questioning about the story as it developed, hoping to get the most out of it in terms of continuity.

And thanks especially to Dan Hollifield and Laura Butler, who provided expert commentary on the novel's development as my proofreaders. Dan's long history writing science-fiction gave me a sounding board for plot and setting (something which admittedly I don't work very well with) and Laura's artistic sense gave me a great feel for the motivations and emotions of the characters, especially the Doctor, who is, as we've already seen, a much more sensitive and emotional persona than his predecessors. It has been, and will continue to be, a great joy to work with them to create my adventures.

For those of you who loved the story, great; I'd love to hear from you. My email addresses are: crlawrence@hotmail.com or lawrencr@muohio.edu. For those of you who didn't like it, I'd really like to hear from you, too. Your criticisms are what makes authors think about their work, and try to make it better.

And I promise that this will the first, and last crossover for a while. My next work is a story entitled "Picture of Guilt", and it's the prelude to "Time and Time Again" in that it's the first meeting between the Eighth Doctor and Melissa Chambers. It's another frolic throught time, from the present-day to the mid-21st Century, and it features all the staples of science-fiction: space stations, intergalactic terrorists, and lots and lots of money. I hope you stick around; my time with the Doctor is just beginning.

Sincerely,
Cris Lawrence

Cris Lawrence, alias Doc8 on Dalnet, is a 20-year-old sophomore Political Science student at Miami University of Ohio. In addition to this story, he is currently working on two other Eighth Doctor stories: "Picture of Guilt", featuring the first adventure of Melissa Chambers and the Doctor; and "The Play's the Thing", which, with some revision, will hopefully become his first published New Adventure sometime in 1998. Cris is also a fan of the DC Comics character The Flash, and you can see the culmination of his obsession on his Scarlet Speedster Web Page

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