A smaller frisbee winged its way into the pod, and the Doctor rummaged in his pockets, finally coming up with an assortment of metal bars, coins, and a small pyramidal piece of metal. He peered at them intently for a moment, then put two of the bars on the frisbee, which flew off.

"Did you leave a tip?" Sarah asked.

The Doctor shrugged and raised his eyebrows. "I hope so. You know me and money."

They left the restaurant and slidewalked back to the TARDIS. They climbed the ramp and Sarah sat cross-legged on the bench seat while the Doctor fired up his ship. Martha leaned against the railing, watching him.

The TARDIS juddered, wheezed and groaned. When she settled into smooth interstellar flight, they resumed their lunch conversation. Martha was in the middle of an animated telling of the story of a scientist whose experiment had backfired on him and turned him into a giant scorpion-like creature when a small new noise distracted Sarah. She glanced over at the Doctor, who was frowning down at the console.

"What's that?" she asked.

He turned dark eyes up to her, then looked back down. "Oh. Nothing. Just a....distress signal," he said, almost mumbling the last two words.

Sarah rose from the seat and stepped over to stand by him and look at the screen where the signal appeared. She looked up at Martha, then back at the Doctor. "Well, we'd better answer it, hadn't we?"

He sighed, blew out a breath. "Oh." He sounded very reluctant. "It's very faint. Probably nothing. Maybe just an echo that's been bouncing around space for ages."

Sarah frowned at him. "Well, we'd better find out, hadn't we?" she said. He gave her a look whose darkness baffled her. She looked over at Martha again, frowned and pointed questioningly at the Doctor.

Martha just shrugged. "Last time we answered a distress call, it got pretty rough," she volunteered.

The Doctor looked up at her. "Yeah. It did." He looked back down at Sarah. "Harry would kill me if I got you involved in something like that."

Sarah felt her jaw drop as she looked at him. She took in a deep breath. "Oh. You did not just say that."

One corner of his mouth turned down and he rubbed his cheek ruefully. "Bad enough getting slapped by mothers. Last thing I need to do is upset a boyfriend." His eyes searched her face. "Or put you in danger," he added softly.

She had been ready to sail into him, but saw in his eyes that fear for her safety, not fear of Harry, was really the thing that was keeping him from answering the distress call.

"Fine," she said, going back to sit on the bench. "I'll stay in the TARDIS. Now...you go ahead...answer the distress call."

He looked at her and then laughed in spite of his worry. "Sure you will." He peered at her intently. "Who are you and what have you done with my Sarah Jane?"

She widened her eyes, relaxed her face, and gave him a vacant stare. "I'm possessed," she said in a robotic voice.

He laughed again, and her heart lifted as she saw the worry recede from his eyes. "Sure you are." He shook his head at her, then turned to the console and started punching keys and turning dials. Sarah and Martha both leaned forward, waiting for his verdict. "It's from an inhabited moon in the Quesanti system. And it's aimed at the planet it's orbiting, which is why it's so faint out here. But it's definitely current." He looked up at them. "Very current."

"Then what are we waiting for?" Sarah asked.

With one last look at the two of them, he set his jaw and started working the console. Moments later, the central column slowed and they landed with a soft plop.

"That didn't feel right," Sarah said with a frown.

The Doctor just threw her a sidelong glance as he shrugged into his long coat and strode down the ramp. Martha and Sarah followed on his heels.

He threw open the doors on a scene of utter chaos. What had obviously once been houses were now shattered shells. Sarah saw a group of muddy humanoid creatures digging frantically in the ruins of one, saw a single creature carrying another, smaller one, away, saw two of them supporting a third as it limped along between them, all of them slipping and sliding in a slurry of mud. It looked like the aftermath of an earthquake or a tsunami or a mudslide or maybe all three combined.

The Doctor plunged out the doors and immediately was up to the tops of his trainers in mud. Martha was about to follow him when Sarah caught her arm.

"Martha. Come with me," she said, nodding up the ramp.

Martha threw her a shocked and appalled look. "No. I'm going to help the Doctor."

Sarah nodded quickly. "So am I. But just come with me first. Trust me. Voice of experience here." She let go of the girl's arm and ran up the ramp. She thought for a second that Martha had ignored her, but then she heard running steps start up behind her.

She led the way to the wardrobe, where she rummaged quickly in the racks of clothes. "Oh, how could he get this place in such a mess again already," she muttered, then remembered it had been more than three weeks for him. Spotting what she'd come for, she took a pair of luminescent orange overalls off the rack, held it up to herself, then tossed it to Martha. "Here. See if this fits." She then took its mate off the rack and quickly put it on over her clothes. As Martha was getting into her overalls, Sarah rummaged some more. "What size shoe do you wear?" she asked.

"Four."

Sarah blew out a breath, then tossed her a pair of wellies. "These are going to be a bit too big for you, but they'll be better than your shoes." She took off her own shoes and slipped into a pair of boots, then stood up and looked at Martha. "Ready?"

Martha gave her a big toothy grin. "Ready!"

They ran back down the ramp and out the TARDIS doors, then came to a slipping and sliding halt in the mud, scanning the scene for the Doctor. He was nowhere in sight, but work that needed to be done was everywhere, so they just plunged in, lending a hand wherever they could. They got some very odd looks at first, but as it quickly became obvious that they were there to help, they were wordlessly accepted.

Sarah couldn't tell exactly what the people looked like as they all were so covered in mud that almost any sort of alien creature could have been hiding under the muck. They were definitely humanoid in shape, though, with a comforting lack of extra limbs or tentacles. But they came in a wider variety of sizes than humans. Well, she corrected herself as she dug in the mud next to a creature half her height, humans do come in the same variety of sizes, but not nearly as commonly. These creatures also had the most extravagant noses, she thought with a sidelong glance at the one beside her. Almost more like beaks, actually.

Her ruminations were interrupted when she felt her digging tool break through into an open space. She set it aside and got down on her hands and knees, pushing mud aside with her hands, feeling something soft, something organic, something.... She grasped it as carefully as she could and pulled it out from under the mud and wreckage.

A piercing scream came from over her shoulder. She looked back and saw one of the creatures holding its head in its hands and wailing in anguish, its huge eyes fixed on the limp little bundle in Sarah's hands.

She looked back down and saw that it was a very small creature. "Must be a baby," she thought, her heart in her throat, as she tried to clean the mud off its face and check for vital signs. Before she could tell anything, the little thing was snatched from her by the screaming creature, who pressed it against her chest and let out another heart-rending cry.

"No. Please. Let me," Sarah said, as gently and urgently as she could, as she held her arms out to the distressed--mother? she had to assume. It looked at her with wide eyes, and Sarah nodded, putting as much reassurance into her own eyes as possible. She took the little one back, held its chest to her ear, and heard nothing. She quickly opened its mouth--beak?--whatever, and found it packed with mud. Using one finger, she cleaned it out as best she could, all the while desperately searching her memory for the techniques of infant CPR that she'd learned long ago in a UNIT class on emergency medical procedures.

Its little beak was still quite soft, so she could wrap her mouth around it and give a gentle puff, feeling its tiny chest rise. She pushed ever so gently on its chest, over where she sincerely hoped its heart was, if it had one. The chest was so small that she figured she would be stimulating every organ in there anyway, and just hoped that these alien bodies worked enough like human bodies for her efforts to do some good. She repeated the breaths and the compressions several times, then paused.

A tiny cough, so small she wouldn't have been sure she heard it if she hadn't seen the movement that went with it, brought quick tears of joy to her eyes. The little one opened its eyes, blinking dazedly, and the mother snatched it up, staring at it with rapture and amazement, then clutching it to her and staring at Sarah Jane with the most naked gratitude she'd ever seen in anyone, or anything's, eyes.

Sarah smiled, and only then realized that these beings couldn't smile. Their beak-like noses came all the way down to their mouths and were too rigid to express emotion. All of their feelings were in their eyes, which were at least twice the size of even the largest human eyes. Sarah stopped smiling, not sure what sort of message they would get from her curled lips, and just tried to express her feelings through her eyes as well.

One infant rescued didn't put an end to the work that needed doing, though, so she turned back to help. They had landed in this moon's dusk and it had quickly slipped into night, although the glow of the planet overhead kept it bright enough to at least see what they were doing without having to resort to torches. Sarah realized at one point that she'd lost track of Martha, and after that occasionally made a point of glancing up from whatever task she was doing to scan the people around her, looking for Martha's luminescent orange overalls. Of course, she thought as she glanced down at herself, there may not be much orange left showing. There certainly wasn't on her. Even her hair was plastered to her head with mud. She tried not to think about it, and just kept on.

Sarah had passed from tired to numb with only a token nod to exhausted along the way when she finally found Martha. The young doctor was sitting on a mud bank outside an emergency triage area where she had obviously been putting her medical training to use. Sarah helped the injured creature who was leaning on her shoulders into the hands of the emergency workers on duty, then dragged her weary self over and squished down next to Martha.

"Sarah Jane? Is that you?" Martha said, peering into her muddy face with an exaggerated show of puzzlement.

Sarah laughed. "I'm not sure." She rolled her head around, first one way, then back the other, and rubbed her neck. "I feel like the mud monster from outer space." She moaned and blew out a puff of breath. "Whatever I am, I'm knackered."

"Me too," Martha agreed. "Been on my feet for hours." She sighed and scratched the back of her head. "I don't know how you do it. You're..." She abruptly closed her mouth and looked at Sarah with wide embarrassed eyes.

"Twice your age?" Sarah finished her sentence for her.

"Oh, never," Martha said, disbelieving.

"At least." Sarah grinned, letting her off the hook. "Don't you know that birds get tougher with age? Any cook could tell you that."

Martha laughed, and gave her a grateful look. "Thanks for the overalls. And wellies." She shook her head. "He never would have thought of something that practical."

Sarah chuckled. "No, he's not like that," she agreed. Then she sighed. Deeply. "His new suit will be a total loss."

"New?" Martha looked at her as if she'd lost her mind. "It's all he's worn since I've known him."

Sarah gave her a wry smile. "I just bought it for him. Three weeks ago."

"But..." Martha stopped and Sarah could see the timey-wimey confusion in her eyes.

"Don't think about it too hard," Sarah said, laughing. "You'll just hurt yourself.

Martha laughed too, taking her advice, and they sat in an exhausted, companionable silence for a bit.

"You bought him his suit?" Martha finally said in a tentative, wondering voice. Sarah nodded. "Who are you? To him?"

Sarah smiled and thought about that for a minute. "An old friend," she finally said. She moaned, stretched, reached behind her and rubbed the small of her back. "A very old friend judging by how I feel at the moment." She relaxed back into the bank, shifting her position a bit and repressing an 'ew' as she felt the mud squelch under her. "Any idea where he is?"

Martha shook her head. "Last I saw, he was over that way." She nodded off to the left.

"Probably running the whole operation by now," Sarah said wearily.

Martha laughed. "Quite right," she agreed, then laughed again.

Sarah joined in, and before they knew it, they were both laughing, that laughter that comes over you at a point where your resources have been stretched as far as they can stretch and you can only laugh or cry. Thinking of the Doctor, their wonderful Doctor, they laughed.

And suddenly, as if their laughter had conjured him up out of the mud, he was there.

"Oi! What's so funny?" he asked, squishing himself down in the mud between them and wrapping an arm around each of them.

"You," Sarah Jane said with a smile.

"How do you know it's me? I don't even recognize myself." He looked down at himself and made a token effort at knocking the top layer of mud off.

"Can't miss you," Sarah said. "You're the tallest ambulatory pile of mud around."

"And no tail feathers," Martha added.

"Quite a distinctive beak, too," Sarah said, looking up at him with a grin.

"Oi!" he said again.

She reached up and gave him a quick apologetic kiss on the cheek, then immediately started spitting out mud and wiping her lips. He looked at her with eyebrows furrowed. "You are filthy!" she laughed between sputters. He raised his eyebrows, ran a thumb over her cheek and showed it to her. "Okay, I am too," she agreed, rubbing her cheeks with her hands in a futile effort to get down to clean skin.

"Good thing you put on those orange overalls. Only way I could keep track of you." He looked at Martha with a twinkle in his eye. "Well, that, and no tail feathers."

Sarah's eyebrows furrowed. "Is that what they have on their..."

Martha laughed. "You didn't notice?"

"Well, everyone's so muddy, it's hard to tell. Thought it could have been part of their clothing. Like a bustle." She lowered her voice. "And I didn't like to stare."

"Definitely feathers," the Doctor said with more enthusiasm than anyone should be able to muster after doing yoeman duty in a disaster area for hours. "Evolution seems to have favored avians over mammals here."

They all sat in silence for a moment. Then Martha giggled.

"What?" asked the Doctor. Martha just looked at Sarah and the giggles got worse.

"What? I know I'm filthy..." Sarah said, making another ineffectual swipe at her cheeks. Martha shook her head but the giggles had her right and proper by then and she couldn't speak.

Sarah and the Doctor looked at each other, shrugged, and looked back at Martha.

She finally managed to squeak out three words. "It's just lunch!"

Sarah grinned, then she started to giggle as well. "It's just lunch!" she repeated, laughing harder.

"Poor Harry!" Martha managed to croak out between giggles.

Sarah waved a hand dismissively in front of her face. "Harry knows. He's travelled with him too."

The Doctor was the only one not laughing. He looked at Sarah, head down, lips compressed, eyes contrite. "Sorry."

Sarah laughed again. "You plum. Don't be silly. I wouldn't have you any other way." She started to reach up to kiss his cheek again, then thought better of it and instead wrapped her arm around his waist and leaned over to give him an affectionate squeeze. She pulled a face, sat up and looked at her arm, then at him. "You know, I can take the exhaustion. I can take the devastation. I can take the suffering." She looked at the Doctor, then at Martha. "But I can't take this mud one more second. Can't we go back to the TARDIS and clean up?"

"I think we've earned that," the Doctor agreed.

Sarah would have had no idea how to find the TARDIS if she'd been on her own. She'd been through too much this night and had totally lost her bearings in the chaos and devastation. The Doctor strode off confidently, however, and she was happy to slip and slide along in the mud in his wake with Martha.

He came to a stop in front of a very large mud bank and looked up at it.

"Oh," he said. Not a good 'oh'. Not a good 'oh' at all.

"'Oh' what?" Sarah asked with trepidation.

"Oh this is where we left the TARDIS," he answered, his lips twisting in unhappy surprise.

There was no sign of the blue box. Just a lot of mud. An enormous amount of mud.

"Are you sure?" Sarah asked.

He nodded. "I can hear her."

"Ahem."

They all heard that--someone clearing his throat rather pointedly behind them. They whirled and saw one of the indigenous beings standing in front of them, legs planted firmly in the mud, hands on hips, feathered crest up. His face was nearly human, were it not for the size of his eyes and the fact that his nose and upper lip were merged into a beak. His fingernails were more claw-like than a human's, and his feet--well, as they were buried in the mud, it was impossible to tell. He wore a short kilt-like garment, as mud-soaked as their own clothes, which left his chest bare between two straps of fabric that went up and over his shoulders.

"Do you speak our language?" he asked the Doctor.

"Yes. Well...ah...we understand you."

"As I do you," he responded. "But I do not understand how for your faces do not appear to be creating the sounds of our language."

"Yeah, well, that's my TARDIS," the Doctor said, nodding over his shoulder at the mud bank. "My ship. She translates for me. For us. And translates us for you." He nodded over his shoulder again. "Did I mention she was back there? In the mud? Buried?" He brought himself up short, wide-eyed, and took a deep breath. "I'm babbling, aren't I. Hullo, I'm the Doctor," he said, extending a hand to the being.

He glanced at the Doctor's hand with a quick downward twitch of his head, then looked back up at him. "I am Rohstan. I wish to tell you that your help has not gone unnoticed. We are very grateful that strangers, not even of our species, would come in response to our distress call and offer help. Working with our injured." Here he gave Martha a sharp look. "Breathing life back into one of our chicks." His head bobbed toward Sarah.

The Doctor looked at Sarah with his eyebrows nearly meeting his hairline. "Did you do that?"

Sarah nodded diffidently. "Just basic infant CPR."

"Not so basic here," he said softly. "D'you think they could do CPR with those beaks?"

Rohstan ahemed again, then went on. "Your hens are very hard workers."

"His what?" Sarah's jaw dropped, and she saw her expression mirrored on Martha's face when she glanced her way.

"Sarah." The Doctor frowned at her. "You know that's not what he really said. It's just how the TARDIS translated it."

"But...hens? Is that the best the TARDIS can do?"

"The word he used obviously doesn't just mean females. It must connote a sense of proprietariness."

"Ownership?" Martha asked, her eyebrows now meeting her hairline.

"Well..." He glanced from one of his companions to the other. "Blimey." He held up both hands, one palm toward each woman, fending off their glares. "Don't blame me!"