A space warp draws the TARDIS to the library world Catalog, where the librarians have recently modernised the storage systems, converting their data to energy patterns and storing them in the past, present and future. An FHD team has been called to the library to clear out an infestation of quantum bookworms which have been consuming the information, but when they try to draw one out of the systems to destroy it their weapons only cause it to grow larger. The Doctor reverses the trap, draining energy out of the creature and killing it, and then uses the TARDIS to analyse the damage to the library. He discovers that the "bookworms" are in fact elemental forces of chaos, drawn back from the edges of Time by the chronal field generated by the library's new filing system. To prevent the bugs from destabilising the structure of Time, the Doctor and the FHD team retranslate the surviving data back into hard copies, and close down the new filing system.
Reprinted in Doctor Who Magazine #157-158
|
