The Doctor side-stepped Brian's first rush and caught his arm as he went by.  He
twisted, turning the larger man's momentum against him--
   -and Brian suddenly found himself sitting down hard with an oof! on the 
leaf-littered park grass.  He looked up, blinking, to see the other man looking 
down at him.
   "Sorry," the stranger said.  "Are you rational now?"
   Brian glared daggers.  "Son of a-"  He tried to scramble to his feet.
   "Guess not," the oddly-dressed man concluded, sighing.  Stepping quickly 
back, the Doctor reached into a pocket and quickly rummaged for a moment.  
Removing a small shiny object, he held it up for his antagonist to see.
   "Look," he exclaimed.  "See?"
   Brian stared.  "It's a watch," he grunted, finally getting his feet under him and 
standing up.  "That's not going to help you, you-"
   "Yes, but look at it - look at how shiny it is," the stranger said soothingly, 
swinging the pocket-watch gently to-and-fro.
   Brian frowned.  "What the hell are you-"  He paused.  It was shiny.  Very 
pretty.  He stood still, watching the soothing rhythmic movement.
   The Doctor cautiously approached the mesmerized man.  The fact that he had 
gone under so quickly was a sure sign that his mind had already been tampered 
with.  The Time Lord supressed another sigh.  This definitely had the Master 
written all over it.
   "Now, Brian," he said quietly, "I want you to tell me why you were going to 
see Grace at two in the morning."
   Brian spoke hesitantly, his eyes never leaving the continuously-swinging watch.  
"Have to.  Have to see her."
   "Yes, but why?"
   Brian frowned.  "Man told me.  Told me she was waiting to see me."
   The Doctor considered for a few moments.  It would be safest if Brian waited 
in the TARDIS until he could find out exactly what was going on.  "Brian, listen 
to me, very carefully.  She is waiting for you, but she doesn't want to see you 
at her place.  She's over here..."
   The Doctor cautiously steered Brian toward the TARDIS standing in the moonlight 
several hundred meters away.  Upon reaching the worn blue time capsule, the Doctor 
quickly unlocked it and ushered the dazed man inside.
   So muddled was Brian Dempster's mind that he didn't even seem to notice the 
vast difference between the inside and outside dimensions of the Doctor's 
transdimensional traveling vehicle.
   The Doctor sat him in an armchair, and stood, regarding him critically.  Had his 
interference so far been enough to turn Grace's life back to its normal course?
   Even as he mused, he felt a ripple of distortion run through his mind, and 
shivered.  There it was - a localized time ripple, signifying the change.
   But this wasn't over yet - if the Master were actually here, Grace could still 
be in terrible danger.  He stood momentarily, hesitating.  Then, his decision 
reached, he strode to the console and programmed in a short hop into Grace's 
condo.


The Doctor gingerly stepped into Grace's living room, and stood momentarily 
still, every sense at full alert.
   He felt nothing.
   He was just about to go check to see if Grace were in her bedroom (quite an 
explanation that would require, if she suddenly awoke and caught him peeking 
into her room, he thought with a quick smile), when he saw the note.
   With a feeling of dread, he advanced upon it.  As he read the words scrawled 
upon it in a script alien to Earth, his hearts sank, his worst fears confirmed.
   Stuffing the note into a pocket, he turned and strode back into his TARDIS-
   -and was almost decked by a panicky Brian as the man lashed out, startled, 
at the stranger entering the vast gothic room.  The Doctor thanked his reflexes 
as he ducked away.
   "Who are you?" Brian shouted wildly.  "Where am I?!"
   The Doctor paused.  "I am the Doctor.  You're in my TARDIS."
   "Well, how did I get here?!  The last thing I remember, I was at my place, 
watching TV!  How the hell did I get here?!"
   The man was close to panic, but the earlier hypnotic programming seemed to 
have worn off.  "Excellent!" the Doctor proclaimed.  "What do you remember?"
   Brian stared at the bizarre, beaming person in front of him.  "I was watching 
TV, and...I thought I heard someone else in the room, but when I turned to 
look..."  He paused, his face twisted.  "I don't remember.  And now I'm 
here - where am I?!"
   "I told you.  In my TARDIS."
   "What the hell is that?"
   "Time and relative dimensions in space.  You, Mister Dempster, are in my time 
ship," he said, pointing at the anxious man in front of him, as he hurried on by, 
toward the console, "and I'm afraid I don't have the time to answer all your 
questions right now.  I've another TARDIS to track."
   Brian gaped at the Doctor.  "I'm dreaming," he decided aloud.  "I'm having 
one whopper of a nightmare."
   The Doctor looked up momentarily from his manic perambulations around 
the wooden console, and laughed in indignation.
   "What, this a nightmare?"  Above their heads the skyview flickered on, 
showing a majestic view of the local space-time continuum.  A faint light trail 
could be seen spiralling through it.  "A plain trail," the Doctor muttered 
suspiciously, staring at it.  He reached forward and activated the 
dematerialization sequence.
   Brian shook his head a little.  His dreams usually didn't talk back to him.  
Maybe he was having one of those, what were they called, 'lucid' dreams.  
Yeah, that was it...
   He looked around him at the magnificent Gothic edifice, then at the 
archaic-looking person rushing around the noisy central console, and 
wondered what unresolved issues all this stood for.
   Besides the break-up between him and Grace, that is.
   "Well, if it's a lucid dream, I'm supposed to be able to wake up.  I read that 
somewhere," he muttered, to himself.
   "Yes, but which is the reality, and which the dream?"
   Brian looked up.  The 'Doctor' character had ceased his mad frenzy of activity 
and was leaning, arms folded, against one of the flanking beam supports that 
surrounded the console.
   "You go away," Brian told the figure sternly, pointing at it.  "This is *my* 
dream."  He turned and marched resolutely towards the doors by which the 
'Doctor' had entered the room.  "Now I'm leaving this dream.  I'm waking 
up, now!" he shouted up at the beamed ceiling.
   He reached for the doors and found them immovable.  Gritting his teeth, he 
pulled as hard as he could, but they refused to budge.
   "I'm sorry," said a voice behind him, "but as long as we're in flight, the 
doors will not open."
   Brian whirled.  "You're still here?" he exclaimed.  "Damn, I really am in 
a nightmare!  What're you going to do now, turn into a monster?" he asked, 
fearing that the reply would consist of an evil cackle and a transmogrification 
into something horrible.
   The Doctor regarded the frightened man before him with something akin to 
pity, and sighed.  "Mr. Dempster," he began, stepping down from the edge 
of the console flooring, "no one here is going to hurt you.  Not me, not the 
TARDIS.  In fact, she quite likes humans."
   "Uh-hunh," Brian replied cautiously, staring.
   The Doctor gazed at him.  So sad, the fear born of such limited imaginations.  
They became progressively shackled under the immense weight of mental chains 
of habit as the years pased...
   "Well," Brian asked, plaintively, "when do I get to wake up?"



The Master pushed Grace into the dim recess of his TARDIS.  As soon as they 
were inside and the doors had swung shut, he released her.  She stumbled but 
regained her footing, as he strode over to the central console and began to 
activate various controls.
   But Grace had no attention to spare for that -- she was too busy looking about 
her in awe.
   The interior of the Master's TARDIS was as different from the Doctor's as 
their two personalities apparently were, but was in its own way, starkly beautiful.  
Columns of black stone shot through with green surrounded the central console 
and rose, arching, towards a high ceiling.  Actually, everything in this circular 
room - walls, floor, and ceiling - was composed of this subdued, dark material.  
The effect was at once sinister and elegant, a combination of an Art-Deco and a 
Grecian look.
   She turned slowly, looking all around.
   Suddenly, she heard a sound she'd never thought she'd hear again, and looked 
over at the console.  The time machine was activating, with a muted version of 
the Doctor's TARDIS's grinding roar.
   Oh, right - she was being kidnapped by an evil, twisted Time Lord.  Right.
   Somehow, being in a TARDIS again and hearing that most peculiar noise was 
bringing it all back to her.  Her memories of New Year's Eve began to sharpen, 
losing some of their dream-like fuzziness.  She was, once again, stuck in the 
middle of an insane adventure not of her own choosing.
   Deal with it, something in the back of her mind said.  Suspend disbelief.  
Handle each event as it happens.
   Well, that had worked last time.
   Grace took a deep breath, steadying herself, and turned to see what this 'Master' 
character was up to.  She blinked in surprise.  He was gone - had he left the 
console room for other rooms, in a ship as sprawling as the Doctor's TARDIS 
had been?
   Well, far be it for her to just stand around and wonder.  She warily approached 
the central console, half-expecting someone or something to come leaping out at 
her.  Nothing happened, and she glanced quickly at the controls, trying to recall 
some detail of what was what, from her few lucid moments at the Doctor's console.
   She hesitated, dithering uncertainly.  Well, do something, before he comes 
back! her internal voice scolded her.  Sabotage the ship, mess up his plans, do 
something!
   Grace reached resolutely forward to move a lever--
    ! 
   The next instant she found herself sprawled on the floor several meters away.  
She shook her head, dazed, as someone nearby chuckled.
   "My, how intrepid," the Master commented.  "However, unlike the Doctor's 
TARDIS, mine doesn't like humans."
   Grace blinked, shaking off the after-effects of whatever it was that had zapped 
her, and reflected that she was really starting to hate this Master guy, with his 
perpetual smug arrogance-
   She yelped in protest as he came forward and casually hauled her up off the 
floor by her sore arm.
   Oh, yeah - she also hated how he kept man-handling her.
   "Yeah, well, the feeling is mutual," she informed him tersely, jerking instinctively 
back, then wincing as her sore shoulder protested.
   He smirked.  "Come along, Grace," he said, propelling her down a corridor of 
the same green-veined black marble as the console room.  "Got to keep you out 
of mischief."  He stopped at a door.  "This will do."
   The door opened, and he shoved her inside.  Even as she turned to glare, the 
door slid shut.
   It was just a little room, with no amenities.  Dim.  Depressing.  Cold, too.  She 
shivered a little and wrapped her arms around herself and her nightgown.
   Needless to say, the door didn't open when she approached it, searching vainly 
for any sign of a handle.  She considered kicking it, but after what had happened 
at the console, thought better of it.
   "Even the ship has it in for me," she muttered sullenly.
   Next, she walked the confines of her small prison, examining it closely for 
anything that might help her escape.
   Nothing.  The complete lack of anything other than four walls, a floor, and a 
ceiling meant, she hoped, that she wouldn't be in there very long.  Then again, 
this 'Master' was an alien, and who knew how they thought?  Maybe he just 
didn't care.
   Depressed, she slumped against a wall and slid down it to sit.  The way he'd 
looked at her, as if she were just some thing...
   She hadn't slept the night through, and she'd been confronted with several 
major shocks.  With nothing to do but wait, she eventually fell into an uneasy 
slumber.





To be continued...








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