Doctor Who Read Free

his lives and deeds, there in his eyes. There, in the warmth of his ancient smile.
    Even now, with the Doctor in his most outwardly youthful body, more than ever, there was something of the ancient about him. There was a weariness … Perhaps even a growing awareness of his place in all things, that made him concerned about the extent of the consequences of his wanderings.
    Travelling alone now, he was intending to keep a low profile in the tracks of eternity. Those were his avowed, good intentions.
    But the Doctor’s Achilles heel was his curiosity.
    Standing back from the console, exuding that pride in his own, latest adjustments, he caught sight of himselfin the glass column ascending from the centre of the hexagonal console. The unmistakable signs of his ship’s power were rising and falling encouragingly inside the glass. He beamed a broad smile at himself, tweaked his bow tie and smoothed down his tweed jacket.
    ‘Somewhere nice and quiet, I think,’ he said to his reflection. He twiddled his fingers, like a safe-cracker about to unlock a fortune. But before he could set a new course, something on one of the festooned hexagon’s opposite surfaces bleeped.
    A single, faint bleep. Then another. And another, until the bleeping became insistent, bordering on the downright irritating.
    The Doctor had already circled the console and was anxiously inspecting the source of the bleeping. A blinking amber light. He frowned and tapped it. The bleeping and blinking continued.
    ‘Are you sure, old girl?’ he whispered, moving his ancient, youthful face closer and closer to the amber light. This was not a light he had ever thought to see blinking again. Then, suddenly, it stopped. No blinking. No bleeping.
    ‘Oh,’ said the Doctor. He felt a sudden pang of sadness; but it was only momentary, because the silence was soon broken by a very distinct tapping on the outer side of the TARDIS’s wooden doors. Something was outside, in the surging Vortex, tapping on the TARDIS’s outer dimensions.
    Checking that the ship’s force field was in place, the Doctor dashed from the console, down the steps to the rather quaint wooden doors set into the other-worldlyarchitecture of the control room. He flung the doors open, and there, hovering before him was a small white, glowing cube.
    ‘Oh, you’re just a baby one, aren’t you?’ he said, beaming with his unique mix of surprise, delight and enthusiasm. In an instant, he had snatched the cube into his hands, thrown the doors shut and dashed back up the stairs to the controls. He held the cube in the light from the console, squinting, intrigued.
    In dire emergencies, his people had used these strange, telepathic cubes to send messages. He had used one himself, many lifetimes ago – and not so long ago, he had been lured into a trap by one. But this little ‘fellow’ was a slightly different kettle of fish, he thought.
    It was very small. About half the size of your standard Time Lord cube.
    ‘Looks like something I might have knocked up in a hurry,’ he said to himself. ‘Ah!’
    And the thought hit him.
    Or rather … the question. Was this one of those moments when something from his future had rocketed back into his past?
    Time travel was fraught with these difficulties. He had no way of telling when and where the cube had come from just by looking at it. Best to press ahead and find out what this little messenger had to say to him, he thought.
    Crouching down on the floor, with all the inelegance of a recently born gazelle, the Doctor placed the cube in front of him and began to concentrate his whole mind upon it. Would it work, he wondered? If it did, it wouldbe a sure sign that he had indeed sent the message to himself.
    At that precise moment, the cube unlocked itself and a fizz of sparkling, white energy rose from it. As the tiny walls fell gracefully apart and the cloud of particles dissipated, the Doctor’s mind was filled with the impression of