• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

So. Sam had made her decision, and the decision, by its very nature, necessitated her going back to Earth. Which was where the agreement had started.

She wouldn’t ask the Doctor to take her home. She wouldn’t ask him for anything. She’d just wait, until the TARDIS took them back to Earth in her own time, as it always seemed to in the end. If they materialised somewhere close to home – somewhere in the British Isles, maybe – then she’d say goodbye to the Doctor there, and take the train home. If they turned up in, say, Australia, she’d use the TARDIS one more time, a short planet‐hop back to her own country. Then she’d say goodbye.

These last few weeks, the TARDIS hadn’t gone anywhere near Earth, or even near Earth’s solar system. Sam had no idea whether the Doctor was doing it deliberately. It was going to be tough on him, it wasn’t hard to see that, especially now he had so many other things to think about. For one thing, the TARDIS had been acting up lately, messing around with its interior spaces and turning up in places that the Doctor had no interest in at all. Probably trying to tell him something, thought Sam, not that he wanted to acknowledge it. Also, the Doctor was still missing his shadow, and that must have been playing on his mind.

His shadow had vanished. After all the things Sam had seen, after all the laws of nature that had been violated for her amusement and education, that was still the oddest thing she’d had to deal with. It had started a couple of months earlier, when they’d run into Faction Paradox in twenty‐first‐century San Francisco. One minute the shadow had been there, the next… pop. Gone. No reason given, no technobabble from the Doctor to explain the science behind it.

You could always tell when he didn’t want to talk about something. Apart from anything else, he started humming a lot. So there’d been performances of entire hum‐operas in the Ship’s corridors over the last few weeks.

As things turned out, the TARDIS materialised at exactly the same moment that Sam joined the Doctor in the console room. She hadn’t bothered packing – there was no hurry. The Doctor was hunched over the controls, probably pretending to be doing some fine tuning. Fitz hadn’t crawled out of his room yet, Sam noted. Probably just avoiding the emotional trauma.

‘Didn’t take long,’ she said.

‘No.’ The Doctor stood up straight, but he kept pretend‐fiddling. ‘It never does. When you’re enjoying yourself.’

Sam just reached out and pressed the door control.

‘Last one back to their home world’s a lousy kisser,’ she said. Then she stepped out of the TARDIS for what was absolutely and positively going to be the second‐to‐last time.

She found herself in an office, which, all things considered, had to be called a disappointment. It was like any other open‐plan office on Earth, although the windows were conspicuous by their absence. More striking was the red telephone box parked in the corner opposite the TARDIS, and more striking still were the two uniformed men with guns who covered Sam the second she stepped out through the doors.

Standing behind them was a man in a grey suit. Military grey, civil‐service grey. He looked like he was in his late thirties, his face apparently crumpled up by the sheer weight of his eyebrows. One hand was stuffed nervously into his trouser pocket, while the other held a sheaf of papers, clumsily stapled together at one corner.

The man looked at Sam. Then he looked at his papers. Then he looked at the TARDIS. Then he looked at Sam again.

‘Oh, Christ,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell me you’re a woman this time.’

* * *

Now

Sam was the first one out of the lift. Technically, she should have waited. She should have stayed back, to see where Guest went, to make a note of his room number. But the journey to the third floor had felt like it’d taken up half her lifetime, and she’d jumped when the lift had juddered to a halt, thinking Guest and his friend were getting ready to pounce on