Horus' western sky was black with smoke. Struggling to keep up with the Doctor as his multi-colored scarf flapped in the breeze, Mila paused to nurse a sore foot.

"Do you have to go so fast?" she complained. "Your phone booth isn't likely to go anyplace all by itself, after all."

"TARDIS," he corrected, a little testily. "And it may not be anywhere at all if one of those particle bombs manages to hit it. Will you please hurry?"

Mila struggled up and followed after him over the rocky terrain, panting from the exertion and wishing she were someplace where the temperature and humidity weren't both a solid 94 degrees Fahrenheit. The whine of a missile passing overhead sent both of them to the ground seconds before a thunderclap explosion shook the ground under them and sent a miniature avalanche of dislodged rocks and soil cascading down the nearby hillsides.

When the tremors had died away, the Doctor sat up again, dusting debris from his brown coat and hat. "They may be trying to hit it," he lamented. "They know I'm here, after all."

He helped her up and they hurried on. "I thought TARDIS' were indestructible," she said between breaths.

"That would be nice, but no one's perfected the technology for it as yet. And unfortunately, the Sontarans are aware of that fact. There!" He stopped briefly, then rushed on with Mila close behind. The TARDIS had been spotted just below in a small, rocky valley. Untouched.

"I told you it would be all right," Mila said, but she was talking to herself. The Doctor was too far ahead to hear. He'd nearly reached the blue call box when Mila noticed that everything wasn't quite as it should be. There was a strange silver box, nearly as large as the TARDIS, standing a few yards away from it. And a stooped little man in a high-collared tunic had just emerged from inside the Doctor's call box, coming to greet the Doctor with open arms.

"Ah, there you are!" he chirped, with a voice that sounded like a rubber squeaky toy. "I've been waiting ever so long to finally meet you."

The doctor glanced nervously at the sky overhead. "Yes, well I can't say the same, I'm afraid. Excuse me, but I'm rather in a hurry."

"Naturally. But wouldn't you rather be in a hurry with a TARDIS that was functioning properly?"

The doctor stared at him. "What did you say?"

The little man pumped his hand enthusiastically. "My name is Arnik. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

The Doctor seemed for the first time to notice the big silver box and to recognize it for what it was. "Arnik the Time Lord?" he asked wonderingly. "The one they called the Tinkerer?"

"Well they used to call me that. I never liked it very much. So undignified, you know. I wanted to be called The Genius, but they disallowed that. Never really understood why."

"Yes yes," said the Doctor impatiently, not really listening. "I'd love to stay and chat with you, dear fellow, but the Sontarans are launching a rather nasty set of particle bombs in this direction at the moment. I'd suggest you take your TARDIS out of here immediately."

"Oh but I can't." Arnik followed the Doctor into the call box and Mila came after them, shutting the door. "That is," Arnik sputtered, "Well I mean _you_ can't. I can fix it though, really I can. I'll only take a moment."

The Doctor gasped, and Mila saw in the next moment that the TARDIS' control panel was a dismantled jumble of circuitry and loose wire. "You bumbling idiot!" the Doctor seethed. "What have you done to it?!"

Arnik began hastily stuffing wires back into the various yawning cavities on the panel. "The cosmographic steering mechanism and the chameleon protection circuit are both broken," he squeaked. "I've been trying to find you for eons, just so I could fix them. I mean, you never know where you may end up gallivanting all over the universe with a broken TARDIS."

The Doctor was making futile efforts to restore some of the circuitry himself, but his despair was written all over him. "It didn't need fixing," he said through clenched teeth. "It was getting along just splendidly without your assistance!"

"On the contrary. Without proper steering capability--"

Another explosion rocked the TARDIS from not far away, and the Doctor closed his eyes tightly, making fists of both his hands. "I ought to vaporize you," he breathed. "Or have you shot. Or hand you over to the Sontarans for--"

"Oh now see here." Arnik continued to reconnect wires as he talked. "There's hardly any need to be unpleasant. It happens I do know a thing or two about TARDIS guidance systems."

"Including how to put them back together, I hope," Mila interjected softly.

"To be sure, to be sure! Half a minute." He twisted two red wires together, pressed a control and waited. Nothing happened.

The Doctor sighed. "Save me from crackpot renegade Time Lords," he muttered, and went back to fussing over the panel.

"I'll get it," Arnik insisted. "I know about this model. In fact, I was one of the technicians working on this particular unit when you stole--"

"Borrowed," the Doctor corrected him.

"What? Oh, yes of course. Borrowed. When you borrowed it..."

"I think that's got it." The Doctor dropped a small module back into place and was about to test the controls when a new explosion -- very close this time -- knocked them all to the floor. Something clattered on the roof of the TARDIS.

"What's that?" Mila wondered. "Rocks?"

The Doctor shook his head. "Some sort of debris, according to the instruments."

Arnik went pale. "Oh no," he said. "No, it can't be."

He rushed to the door and yanked it open, racing back outside over the Doctor's protests. Where the uncloaked silver TARDIS had stood only moments before, a small crater yawned in the earth, sending up clouds of black smoke.

"No!" Arnik wailed. "They can't do this to me! It isn't fair!"

Mila grabbed him by one arm to keep him from running all the way into the crater. "We tried to tell you it was a dangerous place to park, didn't we? Now come on and lets get out of here before we're all blown up!"

"Agreed," said the Doctor, and took Arnik's other arm. Together, they half-carried him back to the blue call box. Tears were streaming down his cheeks in a very un-Time-Lordly display of temper.

"Filthy little Sontaran buggers," he gabbled. "I'll have their rotten heads for this. I'll-"

"Do be quiet, will you?" The Doctor had gone back to work at the controls while Mila tried in vain to calm Arnik. In a moment, the TARDIS' familiar hum began to rise around them though Mila thought it sounded somewhat off, and the walls and floor trembled slightly, this time, hopefully, from causes other than falling bombs.

"There now," the Doctor said with relief when the hum had died away again. "If you haven't totally destroyed the spacial guidance circuitry, let's hope we're at least away from Horus and the Sontarans."

Arnik, still grieving his own lost TARDIS, remained in his corner while Mila and the Doctor cautiously peered outside. They saw blazing sunlight, orange sky and sand dunes that stretched off into infinity.

"We are definitely not on Horus," the Doctor concluded.

"Wonderful," said Mila, unimpressed. "Where are we then?"

The Doctor scowled. "Well you can't expect me to know everything, can you? I set the controls for 30th century Zorgon."

"This isn't Zorgon either."

"Yes I can see that." He turned back into the control room and Mila heard him take a sudden sharp breath. "Oh, do get away from there!" he yelled at the insistently tinkering Arnik. "You've done quite enough damage already!"

Arnik reacted like a child whose hand had just been slapped. "Help me then," he pleaded. "I can correct the directional mechanism well enough to take us back to Horus."

"We just came from Horus, you lunkhead. And I for one have absolutely no desire to return!"

"But we have to, don't you see? Just for a few moments. And back in time just far enough to put me there before my TARDIS was destroyed."

The Doctor stared at him, dismayed. "That's very unsporting," he said. "Not to mention a bit sticky. Don't you realize what could happen?"

"I'm not concerned about that."

"Well you ought to be!"

"You've got to help me," Arnik pleaded. "You know how hard a TARDIS is to come by. If you lose one, they don't just say 'there now' and hand you another one, do they?" He paused, considering something for a moment. "Besides. If you don't help me, you may very well be stuck with me -- forever."

Never had Mila seen the Doctor persuaded quite so quickly. He handed Arnik his prized sonic screwdriver and said summarily, "Repair it then. But see that you don't damage anything else in the bargain!"

Mila took a brief stroll across the sand dunes while the Doctor and Arnik went to work on the faulty circuitry. Wherever they were, it was desolate enough to rival the most barren asteroid in the galaxy. There were no signs of life or vegetation for miles in any direction. Once, she thought she saw two figures far in the distance, one tall and man-shaped, glinting gold in the sun; the other short and vaguely round. But when she looked again, they were gone. Probably only a mirage...

When she returned to the dune where the blue police call box had stood, she was shocked to find a gigantic barrel cactus perched there instead. As she approached, the cactus reshaped itself into a trolley car, a boulder, a smokestack, a pup tent, a '59 Chevy and the statue of a Malagoran fertility god. Finally, it became its familiar blue box shape, and Mila marched inside to find both Time Lords huddled over the disemboweled control panel.

"I thought you were working on the time and space directional mechanisms."

"We are," the Doctor said without looking up. "Arnik just thought he would play about with the chameleon circuit along the way. Getting some results, was he?"

Mila laughed. "A few -- uh -- interesting ones, yes."

"Bloody thing is fixated on police call boxes," Arnik grumbled. "No matter what you turn it to, it always goes back to that. Stuck. Frozen. Locked up. I never saw anything like it."

"I don't mind," the Doctor told him. "In fact, I rather like it that way. I've grown fond of it over the years. Shall we just concentrate on the steering problems now, and never mind about the chameleon circuit?"

"Ah yes," Arnik clucked, and started shoving wired panels back into their places. "I think it's good enough to get us to Horus. Now... One hour before the bombing would be about... there. You can drop me off and just be on your way."

"I'll look forward to it," the Doctor said honestly. "Though I still don't think it's a good idea There's a reason we usually avoid this sort of thing, you know."

"I can deal with the difficulties," Arnik said temperamentally.

"Good. Because I don't intend to be around for you to TARDIS-nap a second time."

Ignoring that, Arnik began adjusting controls and setting dials. "Horus," he recited. "One hour before the bombing." And with a few quick manipulations, the hum and vibration of time/space movement had filled the room, peaked and promptly faded.

Arnik rushed to open the door, but stopped dead when he was met with a bluish, swampy terrain instead of the rocky hills he had expected.

The Doctor peered over his shoulder and said, "You've bungled it again, Arnik old boy. That isn't Horus. It's Margra. And god only knows what century. Looks positively prehistoric."

"Margra," Arnik repeated, thinking hard. "I was on Margra, just two trips ago -- two times before I came to Horus looking for you. I wonder..."

He ventured out the door, searching through the grey haze that drifted up off the swamp's fetid surface. "There!" he said, and pointed. Mila squinted into the murk and saw nothing but a huge clump of slimy weeds.

"I don't see anything," she said.

"Yes you do," said the Doctor. "You just don't realize it."

"How's that again?"

Arnik was heading for the weed clump, a broad grin splitting his gnomish face. Mila started to follow him and found herself gently restrained.

"Let's not," the Doctor suggested.

"Not what? He's walking straight into a slime heap!"

"You forget, my dear. Arnik's TARDIS was functioning perfectly before the Sonarans blew it up. And its chameleon circuit worked as well."

"Oh. You mean that smelly pile of garbage is actually a TARDIS? Yeuch. What a revolting disguise."

"Well you have to admit, it keeps the curious onlookers away."

Arnik hadn't quite reached the refuse heap when two hands parted the weeds from the inside, and Mila was astonished to see a second Arnik step out to face the first one.

"What's the meaning of this?" the Arnik from inside the heap demanded peevishly. "Who the devil are you, and how dare you come here disguised as me?"

"Never mind all that now," said the other one. "We're going to have to cancel that planned trip to Horus. Unfriendly little buggers over there have got uncommonly good aim with particle bombs."

"With what? Just who do you think you are, waltzing in here to give orders?"

"I'm you, you blathering idiot. And unless you want to be in several thousand pieces rather than a mere two, you'll do as I say!"

"I will not! Hey now -- get away from there! You've no right tinkering with my machine. No right at all!"

"Oh, do be quiet."

The sounds of their argument continued from inside the weed-disguised TARDIS. Mila was surprised to see a satisfied smile crossing the Doctor's lean face.

"Should you be quite so please with yourself?" she chided. "Don't you think that was a bit mean?"

"Mean? Not in the slightest." He turned around and went back to the hub of the control center. "I warned him there could be complications, didn't I? Fulfilled my obligation. And I must say, I never saw anyone deserve a complication more. He couldn't ask for a better-suited traveling companion."

"Don't touch that!" wailed a voice from across the fog-shrouded swamp. "I haven't finished working on that yet!"

Fascinated, Mila watched the pile of weeds suddenly transform itself into a king-sized pipe organ, then a Kalarian tree, a guardhouse and a bathtub, all in rapid succession.

"I told you not to touch that!" the voice shrieked again. "Here. Let me!"

"Do close the door," the Doctor requested from the controls. "I think it's high time we took our leave of this place."

"You can't mean it. You're really going to leave him here -- with himself?"

"Well that's his problem, isn't it?"

Mila considered that for a moment, then closed the door on a high-pitched squeal of "Now look what you've done, you addle-pated ninny! The trans-cosmographic indicator belongs on the other side of the soni-lateral circuit!!"

Shrugging, Mila came back to the Doctor's side. "So where are we going?"

"Oh, I don't know. Somewhen-or-other. Does it really matter?"

"How about trying for 19th century Earth's Russia? I've always wanted to visit there."

"Really? I suppose it's worth a try. Of course, we've no guarantee of succeeding."

Mila laughed. "With you, Doctor, " she said, "there are never any guarantees."

The TARDIS shuddered in answer, and a high-pitched whine began to fill the room...
 

--THE END--
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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