For my sister, the family Whovian.

The dust had yet to settle when Zakharov arrived at the scene, bewildered and on the verge of tears. Only fifteen minutes ago all systems in the new Cosmograd complex had suddenly failed. Moments later a series of explosions had reduced it to rubble. He started hurrying towards the ruins, but his bodyguard grabbed him. "What makes you think it's over?" she snapped.

Zakharov stopped. "You're right," he said as she started to apologise. It was strange being important enough that people felt the need to ask forgiveness for preventing him from doing something stupid. He would prefer dying not to be on his agenda. There was still so much to discover. He also supposed the University needed him, although that had never been empirically tested. As much as he had detested it at the time, he felt relieved that he'd been held up and allowed himself to be lectured about the importance of PR by the insufferable Petrov rather than hurrying to see the alien artefact unveiled. If he had, he would most certainly be among the casualties.

But he didn't like musing on his own demise. The real losses were bad enough. Calling up the people in the area whose microchips reported that signs of life had ceased or stopped sending data altogether within the last half hour returned a list with fifty-two entries. He would read it later. Many would have been highly trained scientists and therefore extremely hard to replace. Some were almost certainly personal friends.

And then there was the artefact. Every one uncovered so far had been a scientific treasure, but they were quite fragile. It was certain to have been lost. The cost of the destroyed facilities was almost trivial in comparison.

Well, it couldn't be much worse than what he'd seen in Blagoveshchensk, except that he cared about the victims. The last ten minutes had been completely quiet, so Zakharov decided that the immediate danger had passed. Steeling himself for the worst, he walked towards the rubble, his bodyguard following nervously. As far as he could see, it didn't look like there was much left, but maybe they could help anyway.

What he saw at first was pretty much what he expected. Twisted metal, melted plastic, shattered concrete, exposed electronics. He reported the location of a few small fires but otherwise took a wide berth of them, as some of them might be feeding off highly flammable or even explosive material. Still, he wasn't worried about them spreading to the main complex. Chiron's oxygen-poor atmosphere was not conductive to infernos. People with the right equipment and training would have the time they needed to handle the fires that didn't quickly burn out on their own.

He only spotted one thing that he could confidently classify as a body. He marked its location as well, although that would be redundant if its microchip was still working. If it wasn't, DNA analysis would make it possible to assign an identity. Perhaps their family and friends would like to see the body before it went to the tanks. He glanced at the corpse again. On second thoughts, perhaps they wouldn't.

Then he saw something move, about forty degrees to his left, although the dust and rubble made it impossible to tell what it was from a distance. Zakharov headed towards it. Perhaps it was someone wounded or a first response team.

He found himself staring at a man wearing the kind of formal suit that was popular on Earth. The man's choice of clothing was not the strangest thing about him though. He apparently wasn't wearing any breathing aid but didn't seem to be suffering from oxygen deprivation.

Suddenly, Zakharov felt certain that the disaster was somehow all this man's fault, although he couldn't explain why and knew that the impulse was deeply irrational. He decided that he didn't care. Standing amid the devastation, the man looked far happier than he had any right to be. Besides, he wanted answers and for now I-Don't-Need-Oxygen seemed best placed to supply them. "Tell me your name, rank and faction!"

"I'm the Doctor. I'm afraid that makes your other questions rather irrelevant," the man said, "I'm above your factional disputes and have no official rank. Not on this planet anyway."

Zakharov clenched his fists. People who claimed to be above the factions were insufferably smug and terribly clueless at the same time. He always thought that people who held that opinion should go pray with the Believers for a while and then ask themselves if the differences were really so trivial. "Is that so? Will you then at least tell me what you claim to be a doctor in?"

"That makes a change from the usual question." The Doctor pulled one of his hands out of his trouser pockets and tapped his chin. "Everything, I suppose."

Zakharov was not normally bothered by people being idiotic, but there was only so much he was willing to put up with in a day. "No one is a doctor in 'everything', even if we'd all like to be. I however am Academician Prokhor Zakharov, Provost of the University of Planet, and I demand an explanation!" By the time he reached the end, he was on the brink of yelling.

"So you are Provost Zakharov! That's really cool! I thought as much when I saw the glasses. I've heard you have an abysmal sense of ethics, though compared to other mad scientists I've met, you barely register. And you're a brilliant scientist too, so it's a pleasure to meet you!" He walked right up to Zakharov and held out his hand.

Reluctantly, Zakharov took it. Admittedly, he hadn't needed to specify that he was the Provost after giving his name. Except perhaps some drones in the Hive, every adult on Planet was certain to know who he was. However, mouthing back a commonly held description of him like an idiotic interstellar tourist was downright cheeky in these circumstances. "Given the situation, I'm afraid that I can't say the same."

The Doctor nodded. "I understand. I'm really sorry. You came off pretty lucky though."

Zakharov took a step back. He wasn't sure if that as just a general expression of condolence or an admission of guilt. Feeling nauseous, he gestured sweepingly at nothing in particular. The signs of death and devastation were everywhere. "You call this lucky?" He realised that he was shouting now. Trying hard to sound a little more in control, he continued, "Besides, that isn't an explanation."

"I suppose I could say I saved the rest of your base, your faction and the entire planet. You really need to be more cautious when investigating alien artefacts. That last one was a Dalek. Those are really bad news," the Doctor said, as if that explained everything. In reality, it didn't explain anything.

Zakharov took as deep a breath as his filter mask would allow. He realised that the Doctor almost certainly had no explanation, but was simply a shocked drone at the wrong place at the wrong time, babbling nonsense under stress. He probably required medical attention. First priority was that he needed a proper oxygen supply. Zakharov looked around. More people had arrived in the meantime, although it appeared that the destruction was so total that there wasn't much for the first response teams to save. "Anyone have a breather for this man?"

Someone in the crowd shouted that they did, but the Doctor motioned them to stop. "Thanks for the concern, but it really isn't necessary. I have to get going anyway."

Zakharov shook his head. "Only to the brig or the medical centre. I have not decided yet." Actually, they'd probably go to the research hospital first. It would be interesting to find out why he hadn't yet succumbed to nitrogen narcosis. If they could find a way to replicate the ability, the day at least wouldn't have been a total loss.

"I don't think so. Have as nice a day as possible given the circumstances." A certain harshness had crept into the Doctor's formerly friendly tone. He turned around and started walking off.

This was ridiculous. Where was he planning to go anyway? Perhaps he was spy from some other faction and was hoping to meet up with his handlers. Zakharov decided not to wait to find out. "Seize him!"

Nobody moved. Feeling angry, he glanced at his bodyguard, but like all of them she just stared at the Doctor as he made his way to a larger than average heap of rubble. Finding himself fixated as well, Zakharov wondered if he was perhaps a powerful empath. If so, he'd be having some potentially unpleasant conversations with Dr. Skye in the near future.

The Doctor opened the door of a half-buried blue box. Zakharov blinked. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but its interior seemed to be much more spacious than was possible. But before he could contemplate it for too long, the Doctor turned around to wave at them, then stepped inside and closed the door.

This was a catalyst. Zakharov as well as several others started to run after him, but before any of them had covered more than half the distance, the box started flickering in and out of existence and making alarming noises. Everyone stopped again to stare. Zakharov wondered if it might blow up. In which case, he realised that he should probably try to get cover, as being killed by an exploding blue box seemed a terrible way to finish the day. Then again, it looked interesting and he quite wanted to see what would happen if he walked up and touched it. Actually it was probably a holographic effect, so he likely wouldn't feel anything.

Before he could decide what to do, it vanished. The rubble it had been supporting collapsed onto itself, throwing more dust into the air. It felt rather anti-climatic, really. The Doctor was nowhere to be seen.

Zakharov stood there, swaying slightly, trying to make sense of what he had just seen. His heart was beating furiously, but for once his curiosity felt deadened. He knew it would return, probably very soon, but for now, despair overwhelmed him. Maybe close examination would give them answers, but it was quite possible that they would never find out the real reason. Probe teams, high explosives and holographics was probably a close enough approximation. Whatever it was, a brand new facility had been destroyed, an alien artefact lost and, while the death toll had not risen, fifty-two University citizens were killed. Most of them were valuable scientists too.

Zakharov was feeling dizzy, but he was the Provost, so he briefly wondered if he should try to be an example of resoluteness, but then decided that he didn't care. And perhaps an emotional outburst would actually not be a bad move PR-wise, although he hadn't really been paying attention to what Petrov was saying. He sat down among the ruins of the eastern tower of Cosmograd, buried his head in his hands and allowed himself to start crying.

THE END