In the dark alley behind a pub, the Doctor and Pandora suddenly popped into existence.

The vortex manipulator sparked on the Doctor's arm. "Ah!" he cried and blew on it several times until it stopped sparking.

"Looks like it had just the one trip left in it," he said, holding it up to his ear.

Pandora felt violently ill and fell to all fours.

"Yeah, first time can be rough. Given a few more moments I'd have warned you, but you know. Guns and all that," the Doctor waved his hands vaguely. "Just sick it up, it'll soon pass." He patted her shoulder and wandered off, pulling out his sonic screwdriver and waving it around.

Pandora found she had nothing to sick up. She breathed deeply several times and the feeling did in fact pass. "Are we really," she said between ragged breaths, "in 1987?" She stood up and found that she was fine.

"Oh yes," the Doctor said with a huge smile. "The world's population has reached an incredible five billion, and all of them are currently walking like Egyptians. Crowded House knows the dream is far from over, and Duran Duran is downright notorious while Peter Gabriel is making it big time. Ronald Reagan is handing over the reigns across the pond, closer to home, the interest rate is 4.2%, Margaret Thatcher is starting her third term, folks are still rebuilding after the Great Southern Storm, and the recent King's Cross Fire will lead to increased Tube safety legislation." He jumped up and down a few times. "Yes, this is 1987. You can hear it," he cupped a hand to his ear, "you can see it," he pointed to some gig posters pasted to the cinderblock walls, "and you can smell it." He breathed in deeply and enthusiastically.

"Hello, what's this?" the Doctor said.

"What is it?" she asked.

The Doctor stowed his sonic in his inside hoodie pocket and squatted underneath a bare lightbulb near the scattered bins. Pandora came to stand by him. She could see a trail of green slime leading off into the darkness of the alley.

"Do you smell that?" the Doctor asked rhetorically. He leaned in closer and took another deep sniff. He got on all fours and crawled a little further along the trail and sniffed even closer. Finally he got all the way down to it and licked the alley surface.

Pandora found she did have something to sick up after all. She turned and retched. She'd never been more disgusted.

"Staser fire," the Doctor said, sticking his tongue out. "Bleh." He stood up. "A Time Lord weapon was used here." He pulled out his sonic and switched it over to ultraviolet. He pointed it at the trail, and it glowed. "Rutan blood, leading that way." He pointed with the sonic down the alley toward the street. A glowing trail led all the way out, and turned right.

"Well, let's go then," Pandora said.

"Not so fast," the Doctor said. He twisted the top of the sonic until the beam shone white. He pointed it in the other direction and illuminated the sign behind them. 'The Lamb and Hart' it read.

"That's the pub she was in! Wait, is in? This time travel thing is confusing. If it happened today, do we know if she's sent it yet? If she hasn't sent it yet, and we interrupt her, will she never send it? Then we won't go back in time, so we won't interrupt her… Maybe I'd better sit down, my brain hurts."

The Doctor chuckled kindly and stowed his sonic. "Now would I do that to you? We're here half an hour after the time capsule was buried."

"Oh," she said. That made things simpler. "But then, what's the point of going in there if she's already gone?"

"We ask around. Find out if anyone knows where she's gone. You never know. If it turns up nothing, we follow the trail."

"Lead the way," Pandora said.

The Doctor went in through the back of the pub and straight up to the bar. There was one rumpled patron at a barstool at the far end. He was eating handfuls of nuts from a small wooden bowl while the ash accumulated on the end of his cigarette, and watching a match on a tiny little television hanging over the bar. He glanced over when the Doctor came in, and his eyes lingered on Pandora for a few moments, then the game regained his attention.

The Doctor slapped the bar twice quickly. "Barkeep. We're looking for a friend of ours, a woman, was in here earlier. Big bush of blonde hair. You couldn't have missed her if you tried."

The bartender was cleaning a glass with an old rag and watching the game. He looked over at the Doctor, then shared a look with the rumpled man before setting down the glass and throwing the rag over his shoulder. "Yeah. She was here. Stiffed me on her drinks."

"Ah. That was so wrong of her. Did she mention where she was going?" the Doctor asked.

"You know," the bartender said, leaning on the bar, "that's exactly the sort of question I'd answer for the man what paid her tab."

"Yes… I thought it might be that sort of question. Um, Pandora, do you have any coin on you?" he asked, turning to Pandora.

Pandora leaned in close and whispered. "Homeless means something different to you, doesn't it? Why don't you just swipe your psychic paper?"

"It's 1987. They are a primitive and largely cash based society. And the paper money has changed a lot since then, but a pound is a pound the world round. If you've got any coin, he'll take it."

The bartender leaned in close and whispered conspiratorially. "We're surprisingly modern here. We'll take plastic too."

The Doctor straightened up and said brightly, "Horse of a different color, then!" He reached into a pants pocket and produced an American Express card with a flourish.

The bartender shook his head and snatched the card from the Doctor's hand. He looked over at the rumpled man, who chuckled and drank deeply from his beer, eyes quickly returning to the match.

The bartender licked his fingers and pulled a packet of carbon paper off a stack, laid it on a sort of carriage, placed the Doctor's card on top of it, then ran a shuttle over the whole thing. He dropped the packet of paper and the card back on the bar, pulling a pen from behind his ear and setting it on top. "Middle sheet's yours," he said and returned to cleaning glasses.

The Doctor dashed off a 'John Smith' and tipped the barman twice the cost of the drinks. "So, this woman…"

The bartender turned back to him and examined the paper before answering. "Melody, she said her name was. She went out back with Reverend Bishop. Never came back in." His eyes met the Doctor's. "Neither of them, if you know what I mean." He returned the pen to its home behind his ear and stuck the paper in a different stack.

Just then someone scored on television and the rumpled man let out a very creative string of curses. The bartender turned his back on the Doctor and Pandora, having forgotten them already.

The Doctor tapped Pandora's shoulder and hitched his thumb toward the back door.


The Doctor had switched his sonic back to ultraviolet mode and was following the illuminated green trail out into the street and down the way. His train of thought was interrupted when he heard Pandora giggling. The Doctor looked up in surprise, a slight smile creeping across his face.

Pandora looked up conspicuously when she noticed he'd stopped. Then with a look of embarrassment mixed into her happiness she said, "Oh, you know. You're probably used to all this time travel stuff, but I keep reaching into my bag for my tablet to check my feeds, but then I think, 'that's stupid, there's no wifi in 1987'. But just now I was thinking, 'We're walking down Brook Street, and I don't have to worry about any cameras!'"

The Doctor nodded and went back to the trail. "Yup, no automated surveillance anywhere."

"But it's not just that. Thinking about all the bands I love, some of them are still playing London clubs right now, getting their start! It's coming on Christmas, and it's actually cold! Frankly, when you find your wife and take care of this Rutan thing, you can just drop me here."

The Doctor grunted his disagreement. "I recognize that you weren't entirely serious, but I'm afraid there could be damage to the timeline if you did. What if one of those bands that'll go on to make it big never make it past the club scene because of something you do now? Something simple, like just buying a ticket to the show? Then they sell out just before the guy from 2 Tone Records shows up, and he decides to go to the next club over instead?"

"Yeah. I guess," Pandora said.

"Another dead end," the Doctor said, coming to a stop and stowing his sonic screwdriver. "Here we are at Grosvenor Square. The dying Rutan whose blood trail we were following is the one from the stasis pod they dug up in 2016. We know where his trail ends."

Pandora looked down to see the plaque on the ground under which she knew the time capsule had been recently buried. Strips of fresh sod were lain all around it. "What do we do now then?" she asked.

"Well," the Doctor said, looking around. His attention was caught by a pair of figures standing in the shadows of a nearby alley, looking straight at them. "Now… we go for a walk," he said cautiously, starting off down Brook Street.

"But where to? And how do you know?" Pandora asked, walking after him.

"Don't look now, but there's a pair of concerned onlookers who happen to be walking the same way as we are."

"What? You mean we're being followed? How do you know?" she asked, catching up to walk alongside him.

"I didn't say 'followed'. But coincidentally, those two were watching us back at the time capsule," the Doctor said.

Pandora chanced a look over her shoulder.

"Why is it when someone says, 'Don't look now,' you humans always look?" the Doctor asked.

"Doctor, there's five of them now," Pandora said, worried.

"What?" he said and looked around. "Let's see if we can lose them down this alley," he said. He put a hand around her upper arm, and as they passed the mouth of the alley, he darted suddenly to the right, pulling her with him.

"Did you get a good look at them?" the Doctor asked.

"Yeah, they were under a streetlamp when I looked. They were all young — my age, maybe. Scraggly clothes, not suited to the weather. I'm thinking homeless, maybe a gang. Not armed though. But they all had this angry look in their eyes… no, more like contempt."

The alley took a left turn up ahead, and the Doctor and Pandora quickly got around it, then crouched down to peer out. The five figures that had been following them stepped into the alley, then turned slowly toward them and began walking. In the darkness of the alley, Pandora could see that their eyes were glowing a faint green.

"Doctor?" she said.

"I see it. Come on Pandora!" He stood up and turned, only to find that the alley ended in a brick wall just a few meters behind them. The Doctor ran to the wall. It wasn't too high, maybe three meters. He hunched down and weaved his fingers together into a sort of stirrup. "Climb!" he called to Pandora.

"I can't!" she said, holding up her box. "I'd never make it one handed!"

"Leave the box behind! What's more important? That box, or your life?" the Doctor urged. "You have to climb!"

Pandora stood there, torn. She looked up at the wall, then down at her box. She considered trying to heft it over, but wasn't sure that was safe. She looked back down the alley to see if the figures had gotten to the corner yet.

"Hurry!" the Doctor urged through gritted teeth.


"Hey!" a voice called. "Come here! Quick!"

Pandora looked around for the source of the voice. There were a pair of arms waving to her from a small opening in one of the buildings, right at street level.

"If they touch you, they'll kill you!" the voice called urgently. The arms withdrew, and Pandora could see a cellar window, just tall enough that she could squeeze her box through.

"Go! Quickly!" the Doctor whispered, pushing her toward it.

Pandora wasted no time and rushed to the window. She set her box down, then squeezed through the opening and pulled her box in after. The Doctor quickly followed her, practically diving through the open cellar window.

A young lady, no older than Pandora, quickly shoved a cardboard box through the window, then closed and locked it, quickly and quietly. "That was close," she said, then turned to them with a big smile and jumped down off the crate she was standing on.

Her hair was dyed red with black roots, and she was wearing mascara thickly around just one eye, like an Eye of Horus. She had heavy blush, just under both cheekbones, and wore an off-the-shoulder, baggy white shirt over black jeans that were heavily cut up, and a pair of saddle shoes.

"Are you guys okay? You're probably a little freaked out right now, what with the glowing green eyes and all."

"Actually we're rather more familiar with green-eyed monsters, and I don't mean jealousy. I'm the Doctor, and this is Pandora."

"Nice to meet you," she said. "I'm Phoenix, and this is Dan."

The Doctor turned to find a young man crouched nearby a furnace. He held up a hand in greeting, then returned to trying to light some crumpled up newspapers. He had curly brown hair and green eyes, and looked as though he were trying to grow facial hair. He was wearing a silk screened shirt with Nelson Mandela's face on it, and he had a flannel shirt tied around his waste. He was also wearing black jeans, but not quite as cut up as Phoenix's, and his shoes were checkerboard Vans. Once he had the fire going, he added some broken pieces of pallet board to it, then stood up and joined them.

"So what's your story then?" Dan asked.

"You first," the Doctor said. "How do you know about the green-eyed beasties outside?"

Dan didn't look inclined to answer, but Phoenix spoke up. "Because they used to be our mates. John and Dev were in Dan's band." She looked over at Dan and held out a hand.

Dan took her hand and continued the story. "We were gonna make it big, you know? 'The Run Ups'. We had a good sound. We just needed a break." He shrugged and looked down at his feet while he was talking. "But you know how it is when you don't have a following. You have to pay for your gigs, and if you draw enough of a crowd, they'll ask you back again for free. And if you do really well then… well, only then do they start talking about paying you."

"We spent all our money on fliers and paste, got us a club on a Friday no less. We hyped it up as best we could, bunch of street kids, but come Friday night and the Storm of the Decade hits. Rained like all hell. Everyone stayed home, and all our money wasted. John and Dev were hungry-"

"Well, we all were," Phoenix added, hugging Dan's arm.

Dan continued. "They were talking about quitting the band and goin' back home. I convinced them to spend a night at the Mission. They'd get fed and sleep warm, and all they'd have to do is put in a bit of work, and put up with a bunch of preachin'. They'd thing straighter in the morning."

"Me and Dan went down the Tube instead, hungry or not. He played and sang, and I danced. When the morning came we had near on forty pounds, you know, something to start back up on, but John and Dev never showed."

"We waited around for them until night," Dan said, "then we went out looking. We saw them down an alley, but their eyes were glowing all green. They had a couple kids-"

"Kids we'd seen around, but we didn't know them," Phoenix added.

"They had these kids, and they just touched them, and they died. There was this green flash, and they was dead. John and Dev started draggin' the bodies off," Dan concluded.

"We got scared, and we ran," Phoenix concluded.

Dan walked over to the fire he had started in the old furnace and started rubbing his hands together in front of it. "Next day, we saw John and Dev again, only these kids was with 'em," Dan said, "Live and well, but they didn't… feel right. They didn't walk like kids walk, they didn't move… right.

"The next night there were more, and the fourth night, still more. They're walking around like a gang of some sort. We followed them near dawn one night, and they all went to the Mission."

"What's this 'Mission'? You've mentioned it twice now," the Doctor asked.

"The Savior Mission Workhouse? You haven't heard of it? Reverend Bishop runs it. He's all over the news. Says it's his mission to get kids off the street," Phoenix said.

"Hmm," the Doctor replied. "Well I'm not sure I agree with his methods. So, why do you think you're safe here?"

"We only go out during the day, they only come out at night," Phoenix said.

"Few days after this started, we tried to confront John and Dev. They wasn't much into talkin' though. They just reached out for us with their hands. Their fingers crackled with lightnin'. They was gonna do to us what they done to the others. But this lady saved us."

"Melody Malone," Phoenix said. "She brought us here. Told us we'd be safe. She comes back every morning with a bit of food."

"She was with Reverend Bishop earlier tonight. I'm afraid she must have shot him. I must do something about that woman and her love of guns," the Doctor mused.

"And just what do you propose to do to me, Pockets?" a voice called from the other end of the room.

"River!" the Doctor said.

The woman stepped into the light. "Hello, Sweetie," she said. She had a mass of curly blonde hair, bright red lipstick, a trench coat and black high healed shoes. She was carrying a brown paper bag in one arm. As she stepped forward, she removed the coat to reveal a slinky black evening gown, deep cut and with a sparkly silver clasp at one hip to match her dangly earrings. She let the coat fall to the floor. "But call me Melody. It's best to keep one's aliases consistent, don't you think?"

She walked up to Dan and pushed the bag into his arms. "Do be a dear and warm something up for us?" she said, then turned on her heel to face the others. "Thank you," she called over her shoulder.

"Well, Doctor, you still owe me a vortex manipulator," she said.

"You can have this one right here." He removed the vortex manipulator from his arm and tossed it to her. "It's busted anyway."

River strapped the leather band to her wrist and tried a few buttons. She scowled.

The Doctor dug into one of his pockets. "Diaries out, now," he demanded.

River chuckled breathily. "Sweetie, where do you think I'm keeping my diary in this?" She spun round for effect, then she stepped forward, leaning close to the Doctor. The Doctor backed up until he pressed against the wall. River put her hands on the wall on either side of him and spoke with her lips nearly brushing his. "Besides, in this incarnation, I'm pretty sure I know where I stand with you."

"Jim the Fish?" the Doctor managed to squeak.

"Sweetie, we are way past Jim the Fish." River kissed the Doctor fully, and the Doctor's eyes fluttered shut. He returned her kiss, and the two of them stayed with their lips locked together, long enough to make Pandora uncomfortable watching.

Pandora left to find something else to do, but Phoenix and Dan were working on dinner, and she didn't want to disturb them. She walked around the room, looking at what Dan and Phoenix had managed to collect down there. There was his guitar, an Epiphany Limited in fiesta red. Certainly a beautiful instrument and worth a few pounds if he ever became so desperate. She looked back at the couple, then strummed it once. It sounded lovely.

They had a sleeping bag, which was good as gold for a homeless kid, but just the one between them. There were a couple changes of clothes too, and a couple warm coats. Next to all this was a record collection in a cardboard box.

Pandora didn't have a lot left of her father, but her mum had an old cardboard box at the back of her closet with all of his vinyls. She had absolutely freaked out one time when she saw Pandora going through them, and made her promise never to do it again. Of course, that only meant that Pandora made sure to put the records all back in order when she was done playing them. Pandora's musical tastes had been formed by these albums, a mix of reggae, rockabilly, ska and mod with a bit of punk thrown in.

By the look of these albums, they had much the same tastes as her father had. Bob Marley, the Who, the Clash, the Specials, the Beat, Madness, the Toasters, but there was one that Pandora had never heard of.

"Ever heard of Fishbone?" Phoenix asked, right over Pandora's shoulder causing her to jump. "Sorry," she said, laughing. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"That's okay," Pandora said. "I love your taste in music. No, I've never heard of Fishbone before. Are they any good?"

"Mmm," Phoenix confirmed. "I think they're rad. A little bit punk, a whole lotta ska with an American edge to them. They're something new, and I think they're going somewhere."

"American?" Pandora said, surprised. She turned it over and looked at the track listing.

"Oh, yeah. There's a lot of ska coming out of America these days. But it's hard to find. I have a mate at Hyde Park Records who managed to 'lose' this one for me. We should listen to it sometime. I think you'll like it."

Pandora was silent for a while, looking through the rest of the albums, then she finally spoke. "Phoenix, do you mind if I ask you a question?"

Phoenix rolled her eyes and smiled. "No, Phoenix is not my real name, and my parents weren't hippies. I just like it. I even got a tattoo!" She turned around and lifted up her shirt to show a majestic red bird covering the whole of her lower back. Its slender crimson body was rising upward, its long wings beating away from the orange and red flames at the base of her spine.

"That's really… rad," Pandora said, "but that's not what I was going to ask."

Phoenix turned to face Pandora, letting her shirt fall back into place.

"Why'd you leave home? I mean, why are you on the street?" Pandora asked cautiously.

"My parents. Well, my mum mostly. She doesn't like Danny. She thinks he's a layabout who'll never do a day's work and he'll never amount to anything. She always used to say, 'You could be so much more than just a musician's girlfriend.' But she doesn't know Danny, she's never seen how hard he works, and she doesn't know how good he makes me feel. She wants to control everything about me, and she doesn't understand I'm seventeen now! I can make my own decisions and run my own life." Phoenix smiled shyly. "I suppose it's a common story."

"I suppose," Pandora agreed with a smile. "She sounds a lot like my mum."

Phoenix giggled. "Oh, I actually came over here to tell you the stew's ready." Phoenix took the record back and carefully returned it to its place in the box. "Come on. You might have to eat out of a mug. We don't have a lot of clean bowls."


The spoon wasn't all too clean either, but Pandora had learned to overlook quite a bit and was actually quite thankful for a mug of lamb stew with frozen vegetables. The group sat and ate silently until the stew was gone.

The Doctor cleared his throat to get everyone's attention. "River and I-"

River shot him a look that could be felt from across the room.

"Melody and I have been comparing notes. First off, you need to understand that your friends John and Dev are dead. Those things walking around looking like them are aliens called Rutan. They're sort of blob-like green jellyfish creature in their native form, but they can copy the look of another creature. They have trouble keeping a bipedal shape though, and tend to revert to the jellyfish when they get too stressed. There isn't some part of your friend still inside them. They haven't taken over your friends' bodies, they have killed your friends outright, and they just look like them. I don't want to see anyone getting themselves killed because you think you can reason with them. Alright?" He looked around the room meaningfully, but nobody spoke.

"Good. Now, Melody has identified this Mission as their foothold on Earth. They're taking in kids and replacing them with Rutan. We can only assume that once they get a quorum, they'll launch their attack. Obviously, the two of us have to stop them before they do," the Doctor said.

"The three of us," Pandora corrected. The Doctor smiled and nodded graciously.

"The five of us," Phoenix further corrected, squeezing Dan's arm.

The Doctor's face fell. "No, no, no," he said, "This needs to be a small operation. Too many people and we're sure to be caught."

"Like hell," Dan said, indignant. "Our friends have been killed. We take care of our own on the streets. You aren't keeping us out of this."

The Doctor opened his mouth to say something else, but Melody put a hand on his knee to stop him.

"You know you aren't going to convince him. All you are going to manage is to leave him behind, where he'll promptly run off on his own and do something stupid," Melody said. "Besides. This place isn't safe anymore. They followed you two here, what makes you think they aren't coming back?"

The Doctor looked like he was going to argue, but in the end he had to agree with the logic. "Alright. Now, you said they only come out at night, so the Mission will be heavily guarded during the day. Tonight won't be like other nights though. They're arriving home now to find that their leader has been killed. They'll be out tonight, and in force. As Melody points out, they're probably coming here, so we will be there instead.

"There have been no reports of meteors, or strange lights in the sky, so my bet is they got here via wormhole. They've done it before, on another planet, and it didn't end well for the natives, the Harrubtii. The Rutan genetically modified them into perfect little religious zealot warriors. The wormhole is certainly in the Mission, and probably a bio-engineering lab as well. We need to get in there, find out what we can, and destroy this end of the wormhole."


They had some time to kill before nightfall. Dan put out the few embers remaining in the furnace, and Phoenix collected the mugs and bowls from their meal, taking them to a rusty wash basin on the far end of the room. The Doctor suggested that everyone should get a bit of sleep, but everyone agreed that there was no way they could.

Pandora asked if Dan would play something for them, which seemed to brighten up his spirits a bit. He ran over and grabbed his guitar and mini-amp, but paused in his return, looking up when he heard the floor above him creaking.

"Wait!" the Doctor said suddenly. "Oh, I'm so thick! River — Melody, whatever! There was something you said earlier, something I should have caught. Something I didn't factor into our plan. When you met with Reverend Bishop at the pub, he said he was meeting someone. If that someone wasn't you, who was it?"

"I don't know… I didn't think about it," River said.

Then the two of them said together, "The Rutan have a second leader!"

Suddenly there was a loud banging on the metal door. Phoenix jumped up, and she and Dan ran to the alley window. They pulled it open and reached for the cardboard box that blocked the opening. A hand reached through, grasping for Phoenix, electricity coursing across its fingers. Phoenix screamed and backed away. The Doctor grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her back, then rushed forward and slammed the window shut.

The metal door to the warehouse basement continued to bang. Dust began to fall from the cracks around the doorframe. A few more hits later and they could see the door start bulging from the impacts.

The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and ran to the door. He ran it over the edges and returned to the group. "Tightened the molecular bonds. That should hold them a bit longer. Options?"

"They've got both exits covered," River said.

"Right," the Doctor said, clapping his hands and rubbing them together. He jumped up and down. "The floor's solid, no way out below." He pulled his sonic out again, twisted it quickly and ran it over the ceiling. "Just wood, a bit weak in a few places, maybe we could break through."

"But they're up there right now!" Dan pointed out.

"Good point. Anyone else? Ideas. Let's hear them," the Doctor said. He went over to stand next to River and activated his sonic, twisting it occasionally and pointing it in various directions.

Pandora ran to the furnace, now out of fuel. She banged on the pipe leading up. "What about this?" she asked. "Could we break this off and fit up there?"

"Maybe you could, and Phoenix as well, but Dan's got some shoulders on him and Melody… Well," he trailed off.

"Oh, stop pretending you don't know what has to happen!" River said. "You are only avoiding it because you wish it weren't the only option, but it is!" There were tears in her eyes. The Doctor held her by the arm with both hands, looking concerned.

"We both knew this day would come!" River continued. "From the first day I met you, but it was clear you had known me so well and for so long, I knew there had to come a time when I would die saving you! Today must be that day! I can kill the ones outside the window, then I'll buy you time to escape while I'm holding off the hoard coming through that door! It has to be me, you know it does! I'll never get them all, and if you don't make it out, I'll have died for nothing! All those times together you don't remember will never have happened, and it will be your fault! I'll shoot you myself if you don't leave now!"

"But River! There's something I know that you don't know!" the Doctor said, backing away from her.

"What is it? If you've figured a way out-"

The Doctor held up his sonic screwdriver and wiggled it back and forth. "I've fixed your vortex manipulator."

River looked down at her wrist, stunned. The number four was showing there in blue, quickly replaced by the number three. She grabbed hold of Phoenix and Dan, who were within arms reach, and pulled them close. She spoke through gritted teeth, "I hate you so much some-"

"Come find us," the Doctor interrupted, and River vanished with Dan and Phoenix in a cloud of sparks.

The door burst open, and the Rutan Host, in human form, poured through.