Voyager (comic story)

Summary
A kraken, one of several leviathan sea monster, follow a death ship in the ocean. A craggy faced man in a high collared robe lashed the Doctor to the wheel in storm haunted waters moving toward rocks at the end of the world. The man calls himself a lord of life and the ship, a phantom in the Doctor's dream, goes over a waterfall, waking the Doctor up from his bed in the TARDIS.

A wind and snow come into the TARDIS, one door left open. In his night clothes and robe, the Doctor goes outside to see a snowy world -- the North Pole maybe. He sees his clothes on a snowman. Dressing he goes out into the snow and says good morning to Frobisher -- the whifferdill so named now. Frobisher has decided to go native today... he is in the shape of a Penguin.

The Doctor deduces they are at the South Pole but they are not sure. The pair find an iced over sea going ship -- the one from the Doctor's dream. Frobisher finds pieces of eight from the Barbary Coast, West Indies, Old Jamaica, but they also see a frozen pirate at the wheel of the ship. An open door blowing in the wind leads them to the captain's cabin. The Doctor looks over charts... star charts with constellations like nothing he's ever seen before.

Before Frobisher can get a look at them, an old man shows up with an old flintlock and skis, "You can just hand those charts over to me, m'boy... and take it slow... or I'll scatter your gizzards all over this God forsaken ship!".....

The old man ties the Doctor up in a chair but the Doctor sends Frobisher up to find out which way the man is leaving. Using a trick he learned from Harry Houdini, the Doctor gets free of the ropes. The man has taken off in a Da Vinci original, a flying car with pedals and strange whirling wings.

Frobisher falls off a hill and cascades into the Doctor and they both crash into the snowman. Frobisher wants to stay a Penguin for awhile, for personal reasons. He tells the Doctor he once spent 14 years as a till at a checkout counter in a supermarket in Walthamstow for love, "But she thought I was only in it for the money..."

The Doctor scans for the birdman and makes the TARDIS vanish. A lighthouse beams a light on the man's machine. He rambles about being keeper of the flame and defender of the faith. The Doctor appears and detects an impulse from the lighthouse as well as power equal to that of a factory. Despite the Doctor telling Frobisher not to go outside, the Penguin does.

The Doctor follows and sees a strange light in the water. To his surprise, Frobisher comes out of the water and asks, "What's up, Doc?" From stone steps leading up to the lighthouse, the Doctor hears a noise. He moves to investigate with Frobisher and they see a mechanical muscled 9 foot robot moving at them. As Frobisher lets the Doctor know that there is a spacecraft underwater, the machine moves at them...

In an outback dimension somewhere between mythology and madness, the Doctor seeks truth and beauty at the edge of the world, guided only by the beam from a lighthouse. The Doctor deduces the machine coming at them is not a robot but an automation, a mechanical body inhabited by a living soul. It goes past them into the water.

The Doctor orders Frobisher to go back to the TARDIS and stay there and not to touch the food machines -- the last time he left Frobisher alone he filled the control room with Mars Bars.

The Doctor uses some kind of mini telescope to see through a key hole into the room with books and charts where the old man is reading the star charts. The telescope is a vibrator piklok and allows the Doctor inside. He picks up the gun. The Old Man calls him Professor Moriarty and has a huge target on his chest now, telling the Doctor to shoot him. From his own coat, the old man pulls a small pistol and fires at the Doctor... hitting him with a rubber dart on the forehead.

The old man runs out, having an appointment with Marco Polo in far Cathay and locks the Doctor in. The Doctor tries to shoot the large gun but it merely fires a flag that reads BANG. The Doctor breaks out but falls off a precipice down to a fall toward rocks below the lighthouse and over the sea. As he clings onto the side, the old man reappears and asks him to pick a card with his mouth. The Doctor calls him mad. The Old Man uses Punch and Judy dolls to whack the Doctor. The Old Man suddenly becomes serious and says, "You are in mortal peril, Time Lord, Voyager has seen you and your soul..."

The Doctor is suddenly back in the bookroom. The Old Man tells him the world has ends and that logic is a new toy. The Old Man prepares a drink for the Doctor, who asks who the old man is. "I am Astrolabus... the star taker, the sandman, the jester, the conjurer and the clown, I am the fool, I am el diablo, Zorro, Robin Hood! I am a willow wand in the diviner's hand... I am the last man, the flame keeper, the light at the edge of the world. I am Santa Claus. I have charted the secret places of the Earth. I have journeyed to the stars... I am the fairy at the bottom of your garden. I am the spring in the well... the story teller... the star spanner... I am the goblin, the imp and the Ace of Wands... I am Magic, I am myth, I AM LEGEND..." with this, his eyes fixate the Doctor...

Astrolabus tells the Doctor that at Alexandria in King Ptolemy's time a lighthouse was built and bade him to set a light that would last a thousand years. Obeying, Astrolabus took fire from the sun and stars and put it in the lighthouse. It seemed the age of darkness ended as ships were guided. The Court Astrologer predicted dire peril and sky ships with travellers came from beyond the stars. The City had become a crossroads in time, past and future conjoined -- sorcery and science walking hand in hand.

The space visitors needed charts in the keeping of Astrolabus to find the power of the Earth contained within it. Adepts in sorcerery called upon the Chthonic winds and took the charts and fled into the abyss of time and tide.. into frozen hell. Dwellers the depths rose and took the remains of the fallen city as the conjunction of planets Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn came about. From the realms of time, Voyager came..Death. Astrolabus's name is legend on a dozen worlds. "Do you still not know me, Time Lord?"

In the visitor's sky ship, Astrolabus and the aliens followed the paths of time that opened in Voyager's wake. But the electro magnetic storms crashed the ship into the sea. Astrolabus's soul burns in the lighthouse's lamp. The Doctor knows Astrolabus is the Thief of Time... he recalls it now. He stole the book of Old Time from Gallfrey before the Doctor was born. Astrolabus argues that he is a real Time Lord who pioneered the meridans of time. But he stole Rassilon's sacred work and the book of old time, the Doctor insists. The deserted beacon, the lighthouse, is Astrolabus's TARDIS! He stole things from planets' past ages. The Doctor runs down through the lighthouse followed by a creeping octo-squid shadow. "there is only madness here! It's one big trap...I've got to..." he plunges out an exit way and off the lighthouse which is now set on an asteroid in the depths of outer space. The Doctor falls through space now, "Get freeeee!...."

He lands into a freefall and falls into an ocean of night and sea monsters. Seeing the Doctor on the TARDIS screen, Frobisher, obeying his conscience, rushes out to help the Doctor, deciding not to use a nose and glasses mask disguise to be free of the Doctor's wrath. Frobisher rescues the Doctor as the lighthouse, a space-time rocket takes off. It blows up into a ball of fire.

Voyager appears on the surface. The water around the Doctor was solid space. The ship moves to a waterfall, as the Life being with craggy face tells the Time Lord Doctor that the universe ends here. It seems to be an illusion of it all as Frobisher pulls the Doctor away from a hill over water.

Voyager is gone now. But a huge figure of the Life calls, telling him that he will be with the Doctor always unless the Doctor returns the charts stolen from him by the Time Lords. The Doctor thinks Astrolabus was banished by the Time Lords, not one of them. It was Astrolabus who stole the charts and now he may be dead. "Return them to me, or you may find that your universe has come to an end." The TARDIS leaves and the automation with a soul watches, a beacon from its head standing on the steps that no longer lead to a lighthouse... the Doctor is glad to get far away from here...

Characters

 * The Doctor
 * Frobisher
 * Peri

Continuity
to be added