Timevault (short story)

Timevault was the ninth story in the anthology Decalog 3: Consequences. It was written by Ben Jeapes. It featured the Fourth Doctor and K9 Mark II.

Summary
The TARDIS materialises on a Lorq vaultship, the home of a neutral species which keeps items and people in temporal stasis for as long as the owner wishes them to be stored. Disaster strikes when some of the passengers and crew contract the virulent, contagious Anlerrian rash. The Doctor discovers that the plague was caused by the drug Aesculac, a nanotechnological virus created at the Gwendoline Talwinning Memorial Institute, which tailors specific cures for whatever disease the patient is suffering; one batch used recently to cure a minor illness has malfunctioned, generating a worse disease instead of a cure. The Doctor fixes the problem, but the ship’s purser, Xo’ril, then takes his own son Ts’ril hostage and orders the Doctor to use Aesculac to manufacture another type of bacteria. The Doctor realises that Xo’ril has been possessed by a Crialan, an intelligent form of bacteria which was thought wiped out by the Time Lords long ago. The last two surviving Crialans sealed themselves in temporal stasis aboard the vaultship, and once the opportunity arose they infected its purser and have moved from purser to purser ever since, seeking an opportunity to restart their species by infecting others. The use of Aesculac to manufacture more of their kind enables the Crialans to take over the ship, but the Doctor remains immune, cures Ts’ril and escapes back to the TARDIS. With Ts’ril and K9’s help, the Doctor links the TARDIS to the vaultship’s stasis generators, and as the Crialans refuse to abandon their plans for Universal domination, he accelerates time backwards and forwards over the entire ship, confusing the bacteria long enough for their hosts’ immune systems to respond and wipe out the invaders. The Doctor leaves with Ts’ril as his new companion.

Characters

 * Fourth Doctor
 * K9 Mark II
 * Ts'ril
 * Xo'ril
 * The Crialan

Continuity

 * The Gwendoline Talwinning Memorial Institute is named after Dr Gwendoline Talwinning, daughter of Andrea Talwinning. (PROSE: Continuity Errors)
 * The Doctor says that he learned the hard way that he is incapable of xenocide (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)