"Donna!"

The Doctor ran down the Tardis corridor, he slid to a halt on his converse and scrambled backward a few steps. He stuck his head in a room.

"There you are!"

"Why have you got so many clocks?" Donna asked, waving around in disbelief at the jumble of the room.

The Doctor looked around, ignoring the cuckoo clocks, grandfather clocks, sundials and end timers. "It's a time machine," he said. "Come on, I've got something to show you!"

He grabbed her by the wrist and started hauling her out of the room.

She resisted, "But why do you even have them at all?" she complained. "It's not like you're ever even on time." She waved behind her, "There's a whole Christmas tree back there covered in wristwatches."

"Donna!" Exasperated. "Now is not the time!"

"Ironically enough," she muttered sarcastically. "Where are you dragging me to?" she demanded as he pulled her down the corridor.

"I've got something to show you," he grinned back at her, all cockerel hair and excited expression.

She rolled her eyes. "Let me guess, Buddy Holly's on tour and you just can't miss it."

He turned and frowned at her. "No, but that's not a bad idea." He chewed on his cheek as if he was contemplating it.

"Never mind." They popped out into the console room. He clattered up to the console, metal grate ringing, and slapped a red knobbed control, the outer doors started to open up, ponderously.

Curiously, she raised an eyebrow but didn't approach. She'd seen enough of his "surprises" by now.

"Come on," he beckoned impatiently.

She huffed out a breath.

She tiptoed over and craned her neck. Stars gleamed outside the doors, colorful streamers of gas nebula floated past, below them, laid out on a heliopause, was a collection of thirteen stars, one in the middle and twelve arrayed around it in a perfect circle. Two planets, one red, and one blue, orbited slowly inside it, at different rates.

"What am I looking at?" she asked.

He grinned and twisted on his heels. "That, is the stellar equivalent of Stonehenge." He bounced on his heels. "A completely unique solar system made up of twelve stars in a mutually stable orbit around a center supergiant, with two nickel/cadmium planets being passed from gravity well to gravity well with pinpoint precision.

The whole thing ought to rip apart and collapse into a black hole, but it doesn't. It's so perfectly balanced you can use it to map the location of any star in the galaxy at any point in time. It's one of the 7000 Wonders of the Galaxy."

She turned and stared at him in disbelief, her red hair hanging in her face. "You are so kidding me," she said. "You're obsessed."

"What?" he stared at her in bafflement.

"It's a clock."


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