Pitch and Toss

The Never Ending Quest - Episode 10872

"What next?" asked Inquirer, who was really wishing that she'd happened to see this particular episode.

"Well," said Betty, "next was the 'easy as pi' thing. There was this sort of red-and-white chessboard thing..."

"Like that?" asked Tegan, pointing ahead of them.

"Uh, yeah," said Betty. For, indeed, there it was, blocking the corridor before them. "You have to step on the tiles in exactly the right pattern. Otherwise, it lets you get halfway across and then zaps you with lasers or something."

"Nice," said Sarah Jane, her very best "I am scared out of my wits but am going to try and pretend to be amused" look on her face.

"The pattern is based on the digits of pi," said Ragan. "Although, I must admit, I never did quite understand how. I would think that'd mean that you should step on the third tile, then the first, then the fourth, and so on, but I watched the Master doing it, and quite frankly, that didn't look like what he was doing."

Several of the Doctors made thoughtful noises, and, much to the amusement of the others, they all began fumbling through their pockets and pulling out coins at once. As it happened, the Second Doctor was closest to the deadly grid, and he began sort of elbowing the two next to him. "Excuse me! I'll need some room to work. Thank you." This last was uttered as the Third and Fifth Doctors moved aside, the Third with a look of annoyance, the Fifth with one of tolerant amusement.

The Second Doctor cleared his thoat and began chucking coins onto the grid. When he got to the middle row, they were treated to quite a light show as lasers shot out and turned all the coins into smoking lumps of molten metal. "Oh, dear," said the Second Doctor. "That wasn't right at all."

Several people began to speak at once. The Third Doctor and Doctor Who were both saying "Here, let me." Tegan was making some disparaging comment nobody could quite make out properly. And Sigin was saying "You know, we could just..."

The Second Doctor interrupted them all by yelling "Quiet!" at a volume they would not necessarily have expected him to be capable of. "I think I have it now," he continued in a soft, calm tone. He began pitching a rapid-fire series of coins onto the "chessboard," landing each one precisely in the center of a colored square, all the way to the final row.

They all waited for a moment, breaths held in anticipation. Nothing happened. "Right," sang out the Second Doctor cheerfully. "Follow me!" and he began skipping across the board in the pattern laid down by his coins. There was much shrugging of shoulders and many uncertain glances exchanged. Finally, B'elanna jumped onto the board after him, and seconds later, they had all formed a line and were hopscotching across the board, one after another, most of them trying not to contemplate how ridiculous they must look.

  1. Much to the surprise of several of them, they all made it across without being zapped by anything.

Add New Option

Go Back

View Forward Story Tree
View Back Story Tree


ragan (who really has seen "The Five Doctors" WAY too many times!)

7/3/2000 2:36:47 PM

Extending Enabled

The Never Ending Quest Home

Extend-A-Story Home

21391825 episodes viewed since 9/30/2002 1:22:06 PM.

Do not click me.