Victoria stepped out into the dimly lit ship with great trepidation, Jamie close behind her. Instinctively she reached down and grasped his hand before moving away from the light and safety of the TARDIS doors.
"Doctor...?" she called, tremulously, not wanting to raise her voice too much in that gloomy, echoing space. Tugging gently on Jamie's hand, she moved out into an open area just ahead of their landing spot, which seemed to be formed of haphazardly stacked boxes at a little more than head height. The air was immobile and stale, and – she wrinkled her nose at the unmistakeable tang in the air – smelled faintly of ozone.
This brief overview of their surroundings, however, had not contained sight or sound of the Doctor, who had clearly found something of extreme interest and wandered off yet again, assuming his companions would manage to occupy themselves somehow. However, as she peered around the corner of the nearest aisle of crates, Victoria heard the Doctor's voice.
"Over here," he said, quietly.
She rounded the next aisle with Jamie to see the Doctor kneeling by a supine figure in a military grey tunic and trousers. Moving closer, and studying the body in the low light as best she could, she saw it was a slightly built, middle aged man, with close cropped brown hair and angular features, and a name tag – McEnery – pinned to his breast pocket. Victoria bit at her knuckle in sudden anxiety.
Jamie joined the Doctor at the man's side, looking him over with a serious knot in his brow. "Is he deid?" he asked.
"No, he's not," the Doctor murmured, and then busied himself with a few arcane examinations for a moment, checking the man's breathing, pulse and pupils, pinching the skin on the back of his hand and then, for some reason, gently opening his mouth to scrutinise his teeth as well. Finally he sighed deeply and straightened his spine, looking up at his companions. "But I think he's suffering from severe radiation sickness and I simply don't have the facilities on the TARDIS to treat it. We must find out if there's anyone else on this ship."
"This sickness...it isn't contagious, is it?" Victoria asked, her gaze tracking from his face to the unconscious man on the floor, and then back again. She watched the Doctor hesitate for a second, looking as if he were about to say something, and then he seemed to overrule himself and clambered to his feet, absent-mindedly fiddling with his bow tie as he did so. Victoria knew at once that he was keeping something from them, but lacked the courage to press him any further.
"Not at all," he said. His voice was strong and steady. "But someone should stay with him. Victoria, will you watch him, please? Jamie and I will fetch help."
"If there's any to fetch," said Jamie. The Doctor shot him a look, and then angled his head at the far end of the hold, where there stood a pair of sliding doors that presumably led to the forward decks. The Doctor at once turned his attention to the lock mechanism beside the door and began tinkering with it, his manner industrious if not efficient as he poked at the alphanumeric keypad. Jamie watched for a second, then turned to check they were out of Victoria's earshot before speaking up.
"What's wrong?"
The Doctor didn't even glance up from his task. "Nothing's wrong," he said, then clicked his tongue in mild annoyance as a red light flashed on the keypad.
"Whist, Doctor," muttered Jamie. "I ken ye well enough by now."
"Oh, you do, do you?" the Doctor replied. He remained just as engrossed in deciphering the locking mechanism, but an odd little smile creased the corner of his mouth for a second. Jamie wasn't entirely sure if this was at his expense, but by the time he started to respond, the Doctor had evidently mastered the intricacies of the keypad, and he chuckled in triumph as the light flashed to green instead and the doors slid apart with no more than a subtle hiss.
Beckoning Jamie to follow him, he stepped through the doors – and found himself staring down the barrel of a gun.
"Oh my giddy aunt..."
Victoria had tried to make her patient as comfortable as possible, but after a while she admitted to herself that there was little to be done for him. She pulled a clean handkerchief from her sleeve and mopped a light coat of sweat from his forehead, and then she checked the pulse in his wrist, more to assure herself that he was still alive than from any more exact medical expertise.
But for the most part, she simply sat by McEnery's side and watched his chest rise and fall, slowly and infinitesimally. She considered fetching a pillow from the TARDIS, but was reluctant to leave his side for even a few minutes. The Doctor had given her responsibility for this man's welfare and she took that very seriously.
The congealed silence was preying on Victoria, and through a fog of unease she resolved to do something about that much, at least. So she started to sing, telling herself it was for McEnery's comfort rather than her own. Her voice wavered at first, but the words of 'Abide With Me', one of her mother's favourite hymns, had been ingrained into her mind since she was a small child, and provided a measure of reassurance.
It was only as she drew breath for the third verse that she heard the tiniest of creaks; and the sound, though muted by distance, was familiar enough to constrict her throat with sudden fright. It was the low squeal of the TARDIS door.
Her brain racing frantically, Victoria fought to recall whether she and Jamie had closed the doors behind them after leaving in search of the Doctor. Surely they had? It was a carefully ingrained habit by now, wasn't it? At once, she became horribly aware that her mind was framing these as questions rather than certainties, and she was just about to rise to her feet and return to the TARDIS when a hand landed on her arm, clutching desperately at her wrist.
The shriek died on her lips as she looked down at McEnery, who had stirred and woken from his faint and was now struggling to sit up. The exertion was plainly beyond him, however, and as Victoria watched, a thin stream of blood ran from his nostril. She moved at once, supporting his head on her knee and trying to calm his distress by laying her palm on his burning forehead and speaking as soothingly as she could.
"Hush now, you're safe," she said.
"I don't think so, pet," he replied, faintly, with a wan little smile. Victoria identified his accent as north-east England, and his voice was warm and friendly despite his clear exhaustion and pain.
"Why not?" she asked; wondering, as she did so, whether she really wished to know the answer.
"It's going to kill us all."
"What is?"
No answer. His eyes drooped, his breathing slowed and he passed out once more. Victoria bit at her lip, cradled his head in her lap and stared into the gloom around her, her eyes wandering to and fro. The noise she'd heard continued to nag at her, but now she wasn't so sure of herself. If her imagination was getting the better of her, she reasoned, would it be a great surprise given her surroundings?
She resigned herself to her present circumstances such as they were, and settled down in silence to wait for the return of Jamie and the Doctor.
Meanwhile, far out of her line of sight, something crept away from the wash of light around the half-open TARDIS door and secreted itself in shadow.
The doors slid shut behind them, and for long seconds silence reigned in the narrow corridor.
Argus lowered the plasma rifle slightly the better to address the stranger face to face, but – being nobody's fool – kept it trained on him nonetheless. She ran a brief appraising eye over his kilted companion, but her immediate instinct had told her that the older man was her primary concern. This conclusion, she decided, had something to do with the fact that he was still smiling pleasantly even at gunpoint.
"Who are you?" she demanded, tightening her grip on the weapon a little to keep her hands from shaking.
"Well, I'm the Doctor, and my capable Caledonian assistant here is James Robert McCrimmon, generally addressed as Jamie. There's really no need for this," he went on, nodding at the rifle, though he'd raised his hands in compliance. "I can assure you we mean you no harm. We picked up your distress signal, that's all."
"But you're not from the Company," said Argus.
"No, we just happened to be passing."
"How did you get aboard? The airlocks are sealed."
"Transmat beam, of course," said the Doctor, his tone implying that this ought to have been the obvious answer. He angled his head a little and tweaked his reassuring smile a notch or two higher. "You called for help. We're the help. And given your situation here, I'd say we're the only help you're going to get."
He pursed his lips a little in apparent thought, and then went on: "Your primary power source is completely exhausted, your battery back-up is failing too, your ship's sprung a lethal radiation leak somewhere and you've drifted, oh, I should think at least six thousand light years off the shipping lanes. Really, tell me," he finished, his eyes twinkling, "have I missed anything?"
Jamie had been keeping his counsel for the time being and watching the woman like a hawk. He had an instinctive reaction to being threatened – which was usually to draw his knife and charge his adversary with a challenging battle cry – but this was something he'd learned to suppress during his travels with the Doctor; having learned, as he had the hard way on occasion, that it wasn't always the wisest course of action.
Now he watched an internal struggle flower on Argus's face, and not without a degree of wry sympathy. The Doctor's friendly chatter and innocent charm, particularly when combined with his often immodestly expressed genius, had a way of throwing most aggressors off balance, and Jamie suspected that this was far from incidental. If it weren't for the fact that it occasionally backfired on him, as it had on Telos, it would have been a perfect tactic.
Argus opened her mouth, then closed it again. She furrowed her brow. Finally, and only after a hesitant few seconds, she lowered the rifle until it was pointing at the floor.
She sighed. The sound seemed to go on for a long time, and when she drew breath again she let out a short and entirely humourless laugh.
"You're broadly right," she said, "but we're not out here by accident. This is a search and rescue ship, not a freighter, and we're more or less where we're supposed to be."
"More or less?" asked the Doctor. He finally lowered his hands and arched an inquiring eyebrow instead.
"I was getting to that part," said Argus. "We've been dead in the water for almost eighteen hours now, and we're in a rapidly decaying orbit around the Black Widow binary system. Our shields are close to collapse, and when they go the entire ship will be irradiated. We're suffering partial breakthrough already. All the crew are showing varying degrees of radiation sickness. Some far worse than others..."
She stopped and wound down at that point, as if the conversation had sapped almost every ounce of her strength. The Doctor's expression was now tinged with concern, and he stepped forward and offered his arm. Argus recoiled with residual suspicion, but only briefly, and then accepted his support as she seemed to weaken considerably. Jamie stepped up and assisted, and together they steadied her a little better on her feet until her dizzy spell appeared to pass.
When it did, she straightened up and politely but pointedly extracted herself from their grasp before stowing the rifle behind her shoulder and composing herself with considerable effort. She favoured them both with a cursory nod of thanks and then focused a peculiarly intense stare upon the Doctor.
"You'd better come and speak to the Captain," she said.