"I don't believe it. We've gone someplace where you actually fit in wearing that coat," Peri said.

The Doctor raised a supercilious eyebrow and stared down at her colorful shirt and skirt, "You're not exactly standing out either."

She wrinkled her nose at him and turned to survey the spaceport around her. They were in orbit of the planet Luka, according to the Doctor. But from all appearances they had landed in a mall that was having a french clown revival.

All the local fashions were brightly colored, with garishly clashing patterns. Yet the cut of the clothes and the people themselves seemed normal enough.

"So, is this like a future Earth colony or what?" she asked impertinently, as she was jostled aside by a man wearing a coat cut similarly to the Doctor's but even more hideous in puce and pea green.

"Or what?" the Doctor repeated in a despairing tone, rolling his eyes once again at her accent. He was standing in his own little island of tranquility as the crowd instinctively flowed around him. "The Lukan are another humanoid race, but they developed separately from humans. Although they do do a lot of trade with the Earth colonies. Look over there."

Peri followed his pointing finger to the arrival tunnel where a crowd of rough looking space tramps were spilling into the concourse with raucous catcalls and rude gestures. Unlike the colorful locals, they were all dressed in grays and blacks and dun colors, their shipsuits looking ragged and much worn.

"I don't think I'll go say hello if it's all the same to you," Peri said.

"Suit yourself." The Doctor turned back to surveying the scene. The wide concourse formed a circular ring on the outer edge of the station. Shops lined the inner edge, and vast windows made up the outer sweep of the hull, showing a panorama of stars, the curve of the planet below, and the sparkle and dart of maneuvering spacecraft.

"So why are we here?" Peri asked.

"Travel, Peri! To experience new cultures, new times, to broaden the mind!" He waved his hands expansively at the colorful cavalcade of life all around them.

"Yeah. But really, why are we here? You picked up that transmission in the Tardis, then it was suddenly, 'You have to see the planet Luka, Peri!'" she said, mimicking his accent in a husky voice. "So we didn't come here by accident. What did the message say?"

"Well, if you must know," he said, dropping his expansive pose. "It was from an old friend of mine. The Grand Vizier of Luka. Apparently there've been some shady goings on in the palace recently and he's worried something is up. The Royal Family is supposed to be having a procession here today. He wanted someone on hand to help him keep an eye on things. Someone who wasn't associated with the palace."

"So you're expecting trouble?"

"Not necessarily. It could be nothing more than the usual palace politics. But it can't hurt to do a favor for an old friend. Besides," he suddenly perked up and stretched taller, scanning over the heads of the bustling crowd, "there's a shop here that makes the most fantastic rainbow sherbet!"

He surged off into the crowd. Rolling her eyes, Peri hustled to follow in his wake.

Half an hour later Peri had to admit that the Doctor was right. This ice cream shop really did make the best sherbet. The restaurant decor was all glittering chrome and spindly chairs with walls so gleaming white they hurt her eyes. And the music was loud enough to make her ears bleed. But the sherbet was good. And it was sherbet in the American style, she pointed out slyly. He just huffed at her.

Unfortunately, the rowdy space crew the Doctor had pointed out earlier had also decided to try the sherbet. Half of the small shop was filled with milling humans, acting badly. Really, she was a traveler too, but she didn't go around acting like she was about to break the furniture. They acted more like pirates than sailors. And they were even scruffier up close, and smelly.

Peri watched as the local Olfactory Officer attempted to write them a citation for "violation of the public air." The neat little man in his pastel blue coat with orange polka dots was grabbed and literally punted out of the shop.

The Doctor watched the show dispassionately, casually eating his sherbet. Peri was surprised he didn't interfere, but she noticed the man wasn't hurt, only his dignity was bruised.

Suddenly a fanfare blared over the intercom, loud enough to drown out the music. Peri winced and pressed her hand over her ear, still holding her spoon. Her sherbet plopped onto the table.

"What's that?" she yelled over the tumult, barely able to hear her own voice.

The Doctor beamed and bounced up. "Parade!"

He grabbed her hand and virtually pulled her arm out of the socket as he barreled out of the ice cream shop. He hauled her right to the railing overlooking the lower level of the concourse. A parade was indeed in procession.

A wide aisle had formed in the crowd below and the Royal Court was promenading along the curved concourse to the fanfare of trumpets and cymbals and a weird type of warbling horn that sounded like cranes being strangled.

And if she'd thought the commoner's clothing was outrageous she's seen nothing yet. The Royal Family, borne along on an open palanquin wore huge elaborate headdresses, wide flourishing collars and ruffs that would put even Queen Elizabeth to shame. They were so decked out in multicolored robes and ropes of coral and pearl beads, and heavy sparkly decoration that it was a wonder they could move.

"Is that the Vizier?" Peri asked, pointing at a man walking in front of the palanquin wearing an unbelievably tall pointy hat and almost as heavy robes as the royals wore.

"Yes, that's Pahtchi," the Doctor said, watching his friend scanning the crowds. "He's certainly nervous about something."

Peri looked back at the alert, heavily garbed vizier and had the impression that the slender, eight foot tall staff that he carried was more than a decoration.

Crowds lined the railing at the upper deck around them, everyone was yelling and cheering and throwing streamers and popping fireworks of confetti over the procession.

Which may have been why she almost didn't notice when three of the crowd of sailors fired grappling hooks into the ceiling, until she saw them swing down, arc directly across the line of the procession, and snatch the heavily decorated princess right out of her carriage.

The crowd screamed. The sailors arced over the crowd on the far side, dropped and sprinted for the entrance tunnel, bearing their struggling, glittery burden.

"That's our cue," the Doctor said as he chased after the rest of the pirate crew as they rampaged down the ramp to the lower levels, shoving people off and causing a commotion as they formed a diversion and a rear guard action for their kidnapping cohorts.

The Doctor followed the wake of destruction, Peri right on his heels, and ducked down the access tunnel just before security overrode it and slammed it shut.

Peri yelped and rubbed her ankle where the barrier doors clipped her, but hobbled on at the Doctor's annoyed, "Come on, Peri!" as he sprinted down the corridor after the fiends in that deceptively long legged lope of his.

She caught up with him at a bulkhead door, he was using a sonic lance to cut open the panel to get at the circuitry inside. Before he could trip the door open, there was a whoosh and a jolt like a mule kicking a barrel.

Peri rushed forward and looked out the view hole in the bulkhead. The enemy's ship had boosted away from the station. As she watched, the mottled gray, pickle-shaped craft fired up its engines, and shot away from the station. Disappearing.

With the princess on board.

"Back to the Tardis, Peri!" They turned and ran. And skidded to a halt as the security sealed bulkheads screamed open, pouring in a troop of combat guards, the Grand Vizier stalked through them in his tall hat and staff looking like some sort of vengeful wizard.

Half the guards streamed around the Doctor and Peri, running for the docking slip. The other half surrounded them with huge, aggressively un-colorful guns pointing their way.

Peri automatically raised her hands. The Doctor shoved his hands in his pockets and slouched.

"Pahtchi! Good to see you. Your instincts were right, as always. Now if you'd just assign us some of your attendants as crowd control, we'll return to the Tardis and follow them."

The Vizier stood there with a grim look on his face. Peri got a bad feeling about this.

"Doctor, by order of his Majesty Lukan the Ninth I hereby arrest you for conspiracy to kidnap the Princess of Luka." He waved his staff and the guards closed in around them.

"What?" Peri squeaked, her hands still in the air.

The Doctor frowned. "What is this, Pahtchi? You ask for my help then have me arrested? That's gratitude for you," he said in an aside to Peri. She nodded nervously, eyeing the very large barrels of the guns all leveled at her.

The Vizier listened stonily to the report from the trooper who had returned from the airlock. He looked back at the Doctor with a singular lack of expression. "I will escort you to his Majesty myself."

With a wave of his tall staff the Vizier gathered up his troops and, with them in a tight circle around the Doctor and Peri, pushed back onto the concourse and through the crowds.

The crowds had grown ugly and the protective circle around the Doctor and Peri tightened and reduced, allowing the other guards to spread out and clear a path through the throng. Yells and insults were hurled at the prisoners, and other things. Peri felt something hit the back of her head as a confetti bomb exploded around her, showering her and the Doctor with sparkly bits of paper. One of the guards peeled away from their retinue to subdue the culprit.

They followed the curve of the concourse back along the outer hull. The Vizier walked stoically beside them, outside their protective ring. Completely ignoring the Doctor's irritating prattling. They were now walking along in a double ring of security, a wide outer ring made of most of the soldiers, who were controlling the crowds, while a smaller inner ring of four guards guarded her and the Doctor.

As the crowds thinned, Peri suddenly saw the reassuring blue shape of the Tardis tucked in its alcove up ahead. She turned hopefully toward the Doctor just in time to see the Vizier give him a tiny conspiratorial nod.

The Doctor ducked, weaved, and spun, grabbed the closest guard in an armlock and slipped his huge rifle out of his hands. He whirled the man away, adjusted a dial on the rifle, and yelled, "Jump, Peri!"

Instinctively, Peri jumped. The Doctor shot the floor. The energy beam splattered wide, washing over the crowd's shins. People yelped and fell. The guards around them teetered and sank, and even the Vizier fell to his knees, held up only by his grip on his staff.

Peri and the Doctor ran for the Tardis, Peri's legs had been spared and the Doctor was apparently unaffected, although he did seem to be running more flatfooted than usual.

They ran into the Tardis and Peri slammed down the red door lever, sealing the doors behind them, cutting off the Vizier's cry of, "Get them!"

"Some friend!" she sputtered.

"Yes, Pahtchi's the best." He quickly entered coordinates and the Time Rotor started pumping.

"What are we going to do now?" Peri asked.

"Go and save the princess of course."

"After what he tried to do?"

"He escorted us to the Tardis as I asked," the Doctor said, surprised. "He's a vizier, not a palace guard, Peri. It's his job description to be sneaky."

"So how are we going to find the princess? We don't even know where their ship went."

"Simple, we'll go back to before they left, then follow them." He moved to another panel and continued setting controls.

"Isn't that tampering with your own timeline?" she said disapprovingly.

"Of course not. We'll just wait until we're back in the Tardis before we materialize on their ship." Ding! The time rotor stopped. "There. We're here. Let's go."

Peri rolled her eyes, but followed him.

—

They emerged from the Tardis carefully, looking both ways. There were no pirates here. They were in a hold, nothing but jumbled boxes and huge liquid storage tanks to be seen.

"So where's the princess?" Peri whispered.

"Not sure." He slipped one of his colorful trackers out of his pocket. He adjusted the controls and held it out. It started pinging.

"It detects princesses now?" Peri asked.

"No. It detects, ramidium crystals. They're very rare and valuable, which is why they are used on the royal coronets."

"So we're not looking for the princess, we're looking for her crown?"

"No princess worth her salt would allow anyone to take her crown." He huffed at her disbelief. "Besides, they're woven into her gown too."

Peri refused to remark on that and followed him down the cramped zig zagging aisles between the boxes and tanks. Curiously she knocked her knuckles on one of the tanks, it gave a gurgling, "Gong!"

"Do you mind?" the Doctor glared at her. "We are supposed to be on a stealthy mission!"

"Sorry. What's in them anyway?"

"Alcohol probably, from the smell of things."

"Isn't that dangerous, on a spaceship I mean?"

"Not particularly. As long as their atmospheric seals are functioning properly."

"But what if it catches fire?"

"Then they can simply shut down the hold and pump out all the air. Look, are you done with questions? We are supposed to be rescuing a princess."

"Fine. So where is she?"

"Well, she's either two levels up in a small room near the airlock, or..."

"Or?"

"She's on the bridge."

—

They made their way up through the ship, using the maintenance ducts, they only had to dodge one pirate who was doing maintenance. They found the small room near the airlock. And the princesses jeweled gown.

"So, what?" she said, holding up the gown to get a good look at the ramidium crystals that were making the tracker go crazy. They were in a lumber room off the airlock. Spacesuits, space boots, and accumulated junk and outerwear were scattered around.

"So she's on the bridge. I told you she wouldn't give up her crown." The Doctor kicked at some of the mess, part petulant, part investigating.

"But why leave her gown here?" Peri asked in confusion, comparing the glittering gown with the gray, greasy shipsuits littering the floor. "It's worth a fortune! And why take her to the bridge to tie her up? I'd expect them to put her in the brig or something."

"They probably want her there when they broadcast their ransom demands. To show King Lukan. Whatever the case, we have to get her away from them."

Peri tossed the gown aside. "So how are we going to do that? Can that thing tell us how many pirates are on the bridge? Or how many between here and there?" She nodded at the scanner.

"No. We'll have to do a little reconnaissance."

"How? Dress up in these coveralls and pretend to be crew?" She wrinkled her nose at the smelly garments.

"No, the crew's too small, they'd spot us in an instant. Back to the maintenance tunnels."

"Why is it always tunnels with you?" Peri groused as she followed him.

—

"And if you don't pay the ransom," the head pirate snarled into the video pickup, "We will space the princess."

Peri leaned closer over the grill and wiggled around to get a better look at the bridge. The Doctor was lying on the other side of the grill in the cramped maintenance duct, his curly head close to hers. Below them, on the bridge, four pirates surrounded the princess who was tied into a visitors flight chair at the back of the bridge. Gagged, wearing only her elaborate crown and a greasy grey flight suit.

"If you harm the princess in any way Luka will never rest until you are captured and executed!" the king proclaimed from the large screen at the front of the room. "The entire Lukan spacefleet will hunt you to the end of time!" The princesses brother was a lean, angry man in almost ridiculously elaborate clothing wearing a crown that looked like a combination of a birdcage and the model of an atom. For all his glittery finery though he looked fierce and determined.

"You've heard our demands," the scruffy space mongrel replied. "Deposit the money with the Swasteroid banks and your sister will be returned to you. If not... that's your choice."

The pirate captain gave a slicing motion of his hand and one of his crewmen cut the com.

In the duct the Doctor looked at Peri and pointed silently down the tunnel at her end. She nodded and started scootching back.

When they emerged into the junction at the end of the tunnel Peri turned to look at the Doctor. "We can't just let them space her. There are four pirates in there with her, and the passageways we checked coming in were full of crewmen working. How are we going to get her out?"

"I think pirates is the appropriate appellation here." The Doctor straightened his coat. "We will simply have to use their greatest weakness against them. Come on."

Back in the hold, the Doctor walked into the Tardis unfurling a length of firehose. He handed the end, with its locking clamp to Peri and knelt down on the Tardis floor beside an invisible box. "Lock that on right there." He said, pointing at the nothing on the floor between them. He began to unroll another length of hose on the other side.

"Right where? I can't see anything, Doctor."

"What?" He looked up, distracted. "Oh, yes, human eyes." He took the end of the hose from her, leaned over and plugged it into the empty space in front of her, giving it a hearty twist to seat it. He leaned back and locked his own hose in opposite it. A four inch gap of blank space separated them.

He stood up and dusted off his hands with satisfaction. "Right! You know the plan?" he asked as he started working on the console.

"Yes."

"You've changed your shoes?"

She tilted up her foot to show the extra traction on the bottom of her shoe. "Yes."

"Right. Close the door."

"But, the hose is still running out, it'll leave a gap."

"Peri," he said in a longsuffering tone, "Just close the door."

She shrugged. "All right," she said doubtfully. She obediently pushed down the red plunger on the console and turned to watch the doors catch on the hose.

But they didn't, the doors closed seamlessly, the hose running right through the bottom of the door.

"And off we go." He hit a control and the Tardis dematerialized.

—

The Tardis materialized on the bridge with a triumphant roar, startling the pirates who jumped up from their control consoles and grabbed their guns.

The Doctor burst out of the Tardis doors, pastel coattails flying, a firehose nozzle clamped under one arm. "Avast me hearties!" he yelled exuberantly, and pulled the lever.

Brown liquid shot out of the hose at high pressure. The pirates yelled, aghast, as the Doctor swept the stream side to side, shoving them all back against their control panels.

The air saturated with a heavy, fruity smell, the decks were quickly awash. Peri sprinted out of the Tardis behind the Doctor and dashed to the princess. She cut her loose with a knife she'd taken from the Tardis kitchens, the ropes came away unexpectedly easily and Peri grabbed the princess and hauled her over the rum soaked deck and into the Tardis.

Seeing they'd gotten to safety the Doctor turned back to the waterlogged, sputtering pirates, who were struggling and slipping, pressed back against the control boards by the force of the spray he targeted them with, feet slipping on the wet decking, struggling to bring their guns to bear.

The Doctor dropped the hose and whirled into the Tardis, slamming the door behind him as they raised their rifles. The door popped back open and he stuck his head out.

"I wouldn't fire those," the Doctor said. "The drinks are on you!"

He slammed the door, and the Tardis disappeared with a whoop. Leaving the severed end of the firehose lying mockingly in the floor.

—

"What happens if they do fire those weapons?" Peri said worriedly. "Won't that start a fire with all that rum in there?"

"No, it's not high enough proof, it's got too much water in it. It might give them a flare and a scare but it would go out quickly enough. Now," he turned to the princess who was struggling to get her gag off. "We should get you..."

"YOU DUNDERHEAD!" the princess yelled as she threw the gag aside. "Do you have any idea how much I paid them to kidnap me?"

—

The Doctor and Peri backed out of the Tardis into the main reception hall on the Lukan space station, which was serving as temporary throne room.

The princess, splattered in rum, wearing a greasy grey shipsuit, runny mascara, and her coronet, came thundering out after them, berating them at the top of her voice.

"Thank heavens, Doctor, you found her!" Pahtchi, Grand Vizier of Lukan, waved down his alerted guards and stepped forward to shake the Doctor's hand.

"Uh, you might not want to congratulate me so quickly," the Doctor said, as the princess continued to extoll his non-virtues at the top of her voice.

"Addlepated, underdressed, sycophantic MORON!" she continued, spittle flying from her lips in her rage. "I had it all planned! A ship, a crew, enough money to..."

"YOU!" The King of Lukan, resplendent in orange plaid hose and green and black striped robes, strode into the throne room. He stared aghast at his sister. "I thought I'd got rid of you!"

"You would have if this microcephalic moron hadn't 'rescued' me!" she shrieked right back.

"YOU RESCUED HER?" the king bellowed in rage, glaring at the Doctor.

"Yes, but..." Peri put in, looking in confusion from the king to the princess. The Doctor's shoulder's abruptly relaxed from their defensive hunch to a satisfied lazy slouch. A small smile graced his lips.

"Do you have any idea how much I paid them to kidnap her?" the King yelled in rage.

"YOU paid them?" the princess turned on her brother with ire. "How much I paid them!"

Brother and sister squared off, yelling at each other in rage, decrying everything about each other from intelligence, to morals, to dress sense.

"Thank you, Doctor."

Peri turned to see the Grand Vizier shaking the Doctor's hand. Totally ignoring the childish bickering going on behind him. "I don't know what we would have done if they'd successfully kidnapped her. We would have had to send the royal fleet after them. Intruding on our neighbor's territory and leaving our planet defenseless. You may have helped prevent a war."

"Always pleased to help, Pahtchi." The Doctor shook his hand with a smile, ignoring the ear tearing screeching from behind him.

Peri looked between them, flabbergasted. "I don't understand. You knew they'd planned this?"

The Doctor turned to her. "I told you, Peri. It's his job to be sneaky."

—

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