There was a chime from the Radar screen, and with a glance toward it and away from his work, Professor Yana confirmed his suspicions. "Movement on the surface," he said, pointing, "Another 'Human Hunt'. Gods help him."
Rising from her seat, expression as worried as ever, Chantho spoke, her mandibles twitching, "Chan – Shall I alert the guards? – Tho." Yana shook his head, walking over to the coffee machine in his sparse living area – small table and two worn leather armchairs.
"No, no," he said, "We can't spare them. Poor beggar's on his own." He located the coffee machine – had it moved? Or was he just getting old, his mind playing those tricks on him? "One more lost soul… dreaming of Utopia."
"Chan – You mustn't talk as though you've given up – Tho," Chantho replied, walking over to join him.
"Oh, no, no, indeed," Yana lied, hoping to reassure her. He raised his mug. "Here's to it; Utopia." Chantho smiled, her mandibles settling down a bit. With blotchy blue skin, an enlarged cranium and that mouth ornamentation, she was the most 'alien' alien the Professor had ever seen. Still, she was dutiful, and kind, and quite sharp. The coffee did not inspire such feelings in him, though. "Where it is to be hoped the coffee is a little less sour, hmm?" he said. He motioned to the battered machine. "Will you join me?"
"Uh… Chan – I am happy drinking my own internal milk – Tho," replied the alien, smiling at the suggestion that she would drink such an odd beverage. Her brow furrowed in worry once again – she'd had this particular exchange with the Professor twice today already, and he seemed to have forgotten them.
"Yes, well," the human replied, taken aback, "That's quite enough information, thank you," he quipped, setting down the foul drink himself.
"Professor Yana?" boomed the voice of Lieutenant Atillo over the comm system. The Professor started, and looked up at the speaker. "Don't want to rush you, but how are we doing?"
"Uh, yes," Yana replied, "Uh, yes… uh… working. Yes. Almost there," he improvised.
"How's it looking on the footprint?"
Yana looked at Chantho, his eyes filled with worry of his own. "It's good," he lied, nodding to himself, though the gesture was lost over audio, "Yes, fine. Excellent." He sighed silently, blinking back a tear of frustration, then looked over at Chantho, urging her to participate in the fiction.
"Chan – There's no problem… as such. We've accelerated the Calculation Matrix, but it's going to take time to harmonise – Tho. Chan – We're trying a new reversal process… we'll have a definite result in approximately two hours – Tho."
She looked away from the speaker, hoping for some praise or encouragement from the Professor, only to see he was leaning against one of the control stations, head bobbing slowly, skin pale. He closed his eyes, breathing heavily. They were getting louder. Louder and louder.
"Chan – Professor! – Tho," Chantho shouted, and he realised she'd been asking after him for quite some time.
"Yes! Uh… yes! Yes! Yes, working…" he said, trying to cover his confusion with bluster.
"Chan – It's the surface scanner, Professor," said Chantho, indicating the Radar. Yana turned to look himself. "It seems to be detecting a different signal – Tho."
"But that's not a standard reading," Yana said, with bemusement, "Can't make it out." It looked almost like a box. But that was impossible. How could a box just appear on the planet? "It would seem something… new has arrived."
With a final jolt, the TARDIS had a long last landed. The lights were still dim from the power the journey had taken, the central column providing most of the illumination. The Doctor looked over at Martha, checking she was still in one piece, and then looked up at the scanners. "Well," he muttered, "we've landed."
"So what's out there?" asked Martha.
"I dunno," the Doctor told her, chewing over a phrase he had never had much use for. Martha let out a little cry of surprise.
"Say that again, that's rare."
"Not even the Time Lords came this far. We should leave. We should go. We should really, really… go." His eyes darted over to look at her again, his face a mask of terror. His face split into a grin, and he bounded over to the door. Martha smiled and joined him, running after him as he dashed out, pausing to grab his coat. As he'd told her, time and again, it was a good coat.
They'd landed on a very rocky, barren world, the only distinguishing features being a bit of scrub or a particularly large boulder. It was also very cold, so cold that even the Doctor gathered his coat up around himself to keep in some warmth. He looked over to the left, wondering if there was a way out of the crater they'd ended up in.
Martha cried, "Oh my God!" and ran over to the right, crouching by the prostrate figure of a man. "Can't get a pulse." With trepidation, the Doctor leant over to get a clear look at the man's face. Yep…it was him, alright. "Hold on," Martha realised, dashing back into the TARDIS, "You've got that medical kit thing."
As soon as the door had closed, the Time Lord took a step closer to the dead Captain. "Hello again," he said, looking up and down his prone form. "Oh…" he sighed, "I'm sorry."
Martha ran back out, cradling the medical kit. "Here we go," she announced, crouching back down next to the dead man, after giving the Doctor a shove and an annoyed yell of "Get out the way!" She began to take out various medical instruments, laying them on the ground next to her. "It's a bit odd, though, not very 'hundred trillion'. That coat's more like World War 2."
"I think he came with us," the Doctor told her.
"How do you mean, from Earth?"
"Must have been clinging to the outside of the TARDIS. All the way through the Vortex." He cocked his head. "Well, that's very him."
"What, do you know him?" Martha said, disbelieving, removing the stethoscope she had donned. The Doctor nodded, once.
"Friend of mine. Used to travel with me. Back in the old days…"
"But he's…" Martha said, trying to get her voice under control, "I'm sorry," she continued, sympathetically, "there's no heartbeat. There's nothing. He's dead."
With a gasp like a newborn infant, the body of Captain Jack Harkness shuddered into motion, his arms grabbing Martha's as his eyes snapped open, the eyeballs themselves bulging alarmingly. Martha screamed in surprise as the man regained his breath, then regained her composure, turning to the Doctor, she said, "So much for me!" The Doctor didn't indulge the joke with a smile, however. He just looked down, unhappy with the whole situation.
"It's all right," Martha was telling the Captain, "Just breathe deep. I've got you."
The moment the Doctor had been expecting finally came. Life out of danger, breath sufficiently restored, Jack shifted gears from 'Survive' to 'Flirt'. "Cap'n Jack Harkness," he drawled in his familiar accent, raising a finger to stroke her chin tenderly, "and who are you?"
Martha thought for a moment. "Martha Jones," she offered, once she'd remembered.
"Nice to meet ya, Martha Jones," Jack said, grinning lecherously.
"Oh, don't start!" said the Doctor, rolling his eyes.
"I was only saying 'hello'!"
"I don't mind," said Martha, giddy as a schoolgirl. Shameful, the effect that man had on women. Shameful. Although, the fact that the Captain had literally risen from beyond the grave had probably thrown her off a bit, so the Doctor had to give her that.
Martha hoisted him up, and when she was sure he would be okay let the Captain stand unsupported. A few more deep breaths, and he was fine. After a trip that the Doctor knew was totally impossible.
Jack fixed his gaze on the Time Lord. "Doctor."
"Captain."
The other man nodded in recognition. "Good to see you."
"And you; same as ever. Although… have you had work done?"
"You can talk!"
The Doctor's eyebrows raised, not understanding at first, before he realised. "Oh yes!" he exclaimed, "The face. Regeneration. How did you know this was me?"
"The Police Box kind of gives it away. I've been following you for a long time. You abandoned me."
"Did I?" asked the Doctor. "Busy life. Moving on."
There was a moment of silence before Jack spoke again. "Just gotta ask," he said, "The Battle of Canary Wharf… I saw the list of the dead. It - it said Rose Tyler."
"Oh, no! Sorry! She's alive!" the Doctor told him, happily.
"You're kidding!"
"Parallel world, safe and sound. And Mickey, and her mother!" At this, Jack grinned, and with a cry of exultation grabbed the Doctor for a celebratory hug. They laughed with joy.
"Good old Rose," muttered Martha, who hadn't understood a word of the conversation.
Ambling down a barren path on the unknown planet, Captain Jack has been telling Martha about the battle on the Gamestation. Every twenty seconds, the Doctor would interject with an accusation of inaccuracy, meaning Martha didn't have a clue what had actually happened. "So there I was," Jack continued, after several minutes' argument, "Stranded in the year two hundred one hundred, ankle deep in Dalek dust," he looked over at the Doctor, "and he goes off without me."
The Captain rolled back his sleeve to reveal an innocuous looking device on a thick leather strap. "But," he said, "I had this. I used to be a Time Agent." Martha looked suitably impressed. The old 'Time Agent' line always got the fishes biting. "It's called a Vortex Manipulator." He tapped it, then pointed at the Doctor. "He's not the only one who can time travel."
"Oh, excuse me!" The Doctor said, stopping and turning to point at the Manipulator, "That is not time travel." He began walking again. "It's like… I've got a sports car, and you've got a space hopper."
Martha laughed. "Boys and their toys!" she quipped.
"Alright, so I bounced," Jack said, looking slightly annoyed, "I thought twenty first century; the best place to find the Doctor. Except, I got it a little wrong; arrived in 1869, this thing burned out, so it was useless."
The Doctor smirked. "Told you."
Jack bristled. "I had to live through the entire twentieth century waiting for a version of you that would coincide with me. You had some odd ones, didn't you? The one with the cape and the yellow car, what was that about?"
"Alright, that's enough."
Martha, still smiling at the friendly argument, turned to Jack. "But that makes you more than a hundred years old," she said, picking her way over a large boulder.
"And looking good, don't you think?" He laughed. "So, I went to the time rift, based myself there, 'cos I knew you'd come back to refuel. Until, finally, I get a signal on this," he pointed at his backpack, "Detecting you, and here we are."
"But the thing is," Martha started, "How come you left him behind, Doctor?"
"I was busy."
"Is that what happens, though?" Martha asked, "Seriously? Do you just get bored of us one day and disappear?"
"Not if you're blonde."
"Oh, she was blonde! Oh, what a surprise!"
"You two," said the Doctor, stopping and turning to face them both, "We're at the end of the Universe. Right at the edge of the knowledge itself, and you're busy…" he struggled to find the right word, "…blogging." They looked at him sullenly, like chided school children. "Come on."
After several minutes' walk, and cresting a hill, they stopped at the brink of a cliff that seemed to stretch down for miles below them. Far below, in the wide, deep canyon, there were bridges stretching the width of the great chasm, and great buildings scooped out of the rock itself, smooth steps leading up to bold arches.
"Is that a city?" asked Martha, amazed.
The Doctor was equally impressed. "City or a hive. Or a nest," he remarked, and searched for another adjective. He found one he liked. "Or a conglomeration." He liked that. Nice word. Conglomeration. "Looks like it was grown… but look, there." He pointed. "It's like pathways, roads? Must have had some sort of life." He inhaled sharply. "Long ago."
"What killed it?" asked Martha, softly.
"Time. Just time. Everything's dying now. All the great civilisations have gone…" he waved a hand at the black and empty sky. "This isn't just night. All the stars have burned out and faded away. Into nothing. The Universe is an old and dark place now, full of memories of past glories and devoid of anything fresh or new."
"They must have an atmospheric shell," said Jack, "We should be frozen to death."
"Well… Martha and I, maybe," the Doctor ruminated, searching the sky for any features. He looked back down at the Captain. "Not so sure about you, Jack." From the Time Lord's eyes, Jack could see that the Doctor knew.
Martha had been in a reverent silence, trying to comprehend the sheer scale of the nothingness they'd stumbled into. She finally spoke. "But… what about the people? Does no one survive?"
"I suppose…" guessed the Doctor, "We have to hope." He looked at her reassuringly, but she was just gazing at the dead city.
Jack noticed something, and his arm went up to point it out. "Well, he's not doing so bad," he said. They looked at where he had indicated to see a man, a human, unshaven and in rough clothes but definitely human. He was running.
Before they could call out to him, there was a harsh, guttural cry of "Human!" Behind the running man dozens of creatures carrying flaming torches ran in pursuit, growling fiercely like animals.
The Doctor's scowled. "Is it me," he said, "or does that look like a hunt? Come on!" He dashed away down the slope, searching for a way to the running man, Martha and Jack following him as fast as their legs could carry them.
Laughing with the sheer joy of some real excitement, his arms flailing and his legs burning, Jack could only cry out, "Oh, I missed this!"