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Now, this shook Benton up a bit, so he took another munch of his sandwich and washed it down with a swift gulp of cocoa. On the TV, Carl Burke was showing Patrick Heath a scale-model of Voyager X. What a bunch of cobblers, thought Benton. It looked like something they'd build on 'Blue Peter'. How could two grown men sit there and talk seriously about an old egg-box covered in tin-foil?
Next morning - just an hour or so before the Brigadier walked into the trap - the Doctor's fears were compounded when he received a visit from his former assistant / companion Liz Shaw. Before too long, the couple had taken off in the TARDIS, bound for the dark depths of the mysterious little world...
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 ithin his space-time vehicle, the Doctor was relating to Liz his previous experience with the gloomy world beyond the safety of the TARDIS doors. He told her of how his age-old enemy, the Master, had used a Time-Scoop to redirect a NASA space-probe into the past and enjoy it in establishing himself as deity amongst the humanoid life forms on this planet; and of how the Master had been thwarted in this by the dreaded Daleks whom he had, and the Doctor, finally destroyed with a torpedo originally bound for Earth. He remembered one particular conversation he had had at the time with his old foe:
'My, my - tut-tut. You have come down in the Universe, haven't you? Working for the Daleks...You ought to rename yourself "the Servant"!'
The Doctor's companion Jo Grant shook in her kinky-boots as the Master's blood vessels swelled with barely-controlled rage as he fixed the Doctor with a devilish glare and replied, through clenched teeth, 'And you should be "the Nurse"! Doctor, I cannot reveal the extent of the Daleks' involvement in my master-plan, but I beg you to consider joining with me. We could achieve such greatness united. After all, we were comrades...once.'
Comrades...yes, they had been good friends at one time, in the innocent days of youth, centuries ago; united they had been then in rebellious curiosity, and in their mutual desire to break the Laws of the Time Lords and roam the great galaxies of the Universe - but in motivation alone did they differ...
'Join forces, with you?' the Doctor replied in indignant amazement. 'Subjugate all intelligent life in the Cosmos to your tyranny. Never! Never!! Never!!!'
'Heh, heh, heh,' cackled the Master through his greying goat's beard.'The cosmic-policeman in his cosmic police-box. So be it, my dear Doctor. So be it!!'
The planet's name was Nivkel, and the Doctor was not glad to be back...
The Master was a somewhat smaller man the Doctor, so the wig, cape, frilly shirt and smoking jacket that now the villain doffed were clearly mere accessories of some potent hypnotism with which the Brig had been duped.
Our military hero now stood secured to one wall of the Master's TARDIS with a magnetic clamp around each limb. Rendered helpless, he watched as Earth's most persistent foe threw the switch that would send his TARDIS into flight. But whither were they bound?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
 n an underground cave on Nivkel, an oblong block of light was cast in the pitchy gloom as the doors of the Doctor's TARDIS opened and he and his companion - both wearing oxygen-helmets the likeness of goldfish-bowls, stepped forth. At once, the beam from the Doctor's torch discovered something tat resembled one of the Viking probes that had landed on Mars in the 1970's. However, this probe differed in that it could, when functional, move around on six hydraulic legs. This was what they had come to look for. Liz had sought the Doctor's help after her work with Carl Burke on the Voyager project had resulted in a rather puzzling discovery: about to leave the solar-system, Voyager X had detected some radiation, presumably from a laser-beam! Thus had NASA come across this new world - but what, they wondered, and sent the signal? The Doctor had at once deduced its source and whisked her off there and then, eager to show off his now fully-functioning TARDIS.
'What is it, Doctor?' asked Liz. She was still a little flabbergasted that the TARDIS did work after all - and now here she was inside another planet!
'This, my dear Liz, is the space-probe sent from Earth to Nivkel in 1997,' he explained.
'1997? Oh come on, Doctor, it's only 198_!'
'Correct, Miss Shaw. But as I said, the Master sent the thing back in time - remember? In fact, this probe had been here for 500 years now - a credit to the people who built it, don't y' think?'
A credit indeed, Doctor: powered by its own nuclear-reactor, this descendant of Voyager X had been attempting to contact Earth since the fifteenth century with an infra-red signal. The Doctor now attempted to switch the signal off with his sonic-screwdriver, least any undesirable space-aliens should pick it up too. However, he was already too late! Yes - a spaceship full of very desirable aliens had already arrived on Nivkel, and one of them was watching the couple at that very moment!!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
 
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