• "Alex!" a man's voice called from within a compartment beneath the main control console of the TARDIS, "Where'd you put the neutron flux spanner?"

    18-year-old Alexandria Jones put the music on her I-pod in pause, "It's with the rest of the tools." she called back.

    A middle aged, brown haired, hazel eyed man popped out of the compartment and rummaged through the nearby tool kit. A few seconds later, he removed an odd-looking, ridiculously huge device. "Ah! Here it is!" he said with a smile on his face, "Thanks. Shouldn't be too long before the TARDIS is back in buisiness."

    "I sure hope so." Alex said, brushing her brownish-blonde hair from her eyes, " Not having any excitement for awile can certainly take a toll on someone."

    "Yep." the Doctor agreed as he resumed his repair work, "It's like a car without an engine."

    Alex grinned and unpaused her music. A couple minutes later, the Doctor's head popped up again. "Just out of curiosity: how many songs can that thing hold?" he asked, gesturing towards the I-pod.

    "Just about four hundred." Alex answered, "A friend of mine back on Earth made it out of spare I-pod and MP3-player parts."

    "Not bad." the Doctor said, "It seems like only yesterday that humans were listening to music off of record players. So much information in such a teeny tiny space."

    Alex laughed, "You're one to talk. The TARDIS can just as easily fall into that category."

    The Doctor chuckled, "You've got a point there."

    There was a sudden flash of sparks from beneath the control console and the TARDIS came back to life. " There we are!" the Doctor exclaimed happily as he hopped out of the compartment, "Good as new!"

    "So where are we off to now, Doctor?" Alex asked.

    The Doctor glanced over the console readouts, flipping switches and turning knobs every so often. "The Avsdrolani System, if I'm not mistaken." he replied.

    "The Avsdrolani System?" Alex questioned, turning off her I-pod and shoving it into her jeans pocket, "Have we been there before?"

    "I don't think so." the Doctor answered thoughtfully, "I don't believe anyone has."

    "So we're going to a system where no one has gone before." Alex said, "That's fantastic!"

    "Now, where have I heard that word before?" the Doctor wondered jokingly.

    Alex laughed again, "I don't know."

    The Doctor pulled a lever on the far side of the console and the TARDIS uttered a wheezing, groaning sound as it dematerialized. Suddenly, a violent tremor rocked the TARDIS, knocking both the Doctor and Alex off their feet. The control console sparked several times and, for a few moments, appeared as if it was going to fail. Alex grabbed a railing in order to maintain her balance. "What's going on, Doctor?" she yelled.

    The Doctor scrambled to his feet and sprinted to the console, not once losing his balance. "We're caught in a gravitational field radiating from a nearby gas giant!" he answered as he studied the readouts on the monitor before him, "It's so powerful, even the TARDIS can't get out of it!"

    "But that's impossible, right?"

    "It should be. I'll need to make some major modifications to the TARDIS's systems. Even then, I doubt that it'll work."

    The Doctor hurried over to a control panel, removed the cover, and was just getting started on the interior mechanisms when the tremors suddenly ceased. Alex breathed a sigh of relief, "The Doctor saves our skins yet again."

    "I didn't do anything." the Doctor stated, "Something's got us." He strode over to the monitor, "If I'm reading this right, which I really hope I am, the TARDIS is sitting in the cargo hold of a ship."

    "How could someone do that so quickly?" Alex wondered, "I mean, wouldn't they need to open their cargo doors and scoop us in or something?"

    "Here we go!" The Doctor said triumphantly, "Radiation particles. The kind you'll typically find in the wake of a transport beam." He turned to Alex and grinned, "Let's look around for a bit, shall we?"