Disclaimer: Ditto
.
Chapter 3
.
The ship shook ominously.
"What was that?" Harlan exclaimed.
"Thelma!" Goddard shouted.
"Yes, Commander?" Thelma replied from directly behind him. Goddard startled in spite of himself.
"What happened? Are we under attack?"
"No!" Thelma replied brightly. "We are not under attack."
"Well, that's a relief!" Rosie exclaimed.
"The ship has merely been caught in the gravity well of a cosmic string filament," Thelma continued reassuringly. "The ship is currently being drawn off course, bombarded by energy wave fragments and pulled into the singularity at the epicenter."
"You mean we're going to be crushed to death?" Bova cried. Beside him, Miss Davenport, who had been struggling her way upright, tumbled back down again.
"Oh, no, not at all!" Thelma replied brightly.
"Oh good, you had me worried," Harlan sighed.
"The ship will be torn to shreds by the gravimetric forces first. You will all be dead long before catastrophic compression begins," Thelma finished helpfully.
"Figures," Bova groused.
"This is just crackers!" the Doctor exclaimed happily, chafing his hands together in excitement. "Do you lot always have this much fun on a Tuesday?" He winked happily at Suzee, who gave him an incredulous stare in return.
"What do we do?" Rosie cried.
"Harlan, Bova, Thelma, with me to the Compost! Suzee, get down to the engine room and power up the hyperdrive, we may have to risk a jump. Rosie, stay here and keep an eye on things. Don't let him," Goddard jabbed a finger towards the Doctor, "out of your sight. Miss Davenport…" he grimaced down at her in exasperation. "Don't go anywhere. And you," he rounded fiercely on the Doctor. "Since you're here, you might as well see what help you can be to Radu."
Without another word, the crew leapt into action, but Suzee paused beside Radu, distressed to see little ice crystals forming along the delicate ridges of his spiral ears.
"That wasn't there a minute ago…" she whispered mostly to herself. "He's getting worse."
"Well, it's a distressing situation," the Doctor commented from over her shoulder. Suzee turned to look at him. He was waving his probe device over Radu again, his expression almost comically enigmatic. "Heart rates are spiking, respirations are increasing, fight or flight chemicals are being pumped into bloodstreams. That's all bound to magnify the fault in his body chemistry."
"But he's unconscious!" Suzee countered. "How could he react to the danger, when he doesn't even knowabout it?"
"How indeed…" the Doctor muttered. He was glancing curiously between herself and Radu, and Suzee couldn't suppress a blush at obvious, if erroneous connection he was drawing. The ship rocked dangerously again, and there was a crackling crash from somewhere far below. The Doctor shot Suzee a bright grin. "We'd better get down to the engine room!"
"Wait a minute, you can't go!" Rosie cried from where she was struggling to prop Miss Davenport more securely into the corner of the console. "I'm supposed to be watching you!"
"I'll be much more use in the engine room right now," the Doctor assured her. "I'm sure Dad will understand. Even better, what Dad doesn't know won't hurt us!"
"That nickname is going to stick, I can just feel it," Suzee groaned, trying not to grin in spite of everything.
"But what about Radu?" Rosie whined, her red face going redder as the stress of the situation threatened to overheat her. Miss Davenport's uniform began to smoke and blacken worryingly where Rosie was holding her.
"Hmm, alright, tell you what…" The Doctor adjusted the settings on his device, and the chirping hum dulled and deepened to a slow, sonorous thrum. "Lowest frequency I've ever tried," he confided. "Even lower than when I had to hypnotize the swarm mother of the Queen Beehive on Melissa Majoria – hey, righ, a planet called Melissa! We're batting a thousand today! – see, the swarm mother has these ultra molecularly dense sensory fibers growing right out of her…"
"Doctor!" Suzee cried as the ship rocked violently.
"Doctor!" Rosie cried as Radu began to shiver.
"Right!" the Doctor exclaimed, tossing the device to Rosie. "Apply heat to his chest, no more than 43 degrees centigrade, while moving that around his head, activating the sonic pulses in twenty second intervals. Don't drop it, don't lose it and for goodness sake, don't stick it inhis ear unless you want to be electrocuted. Don't get me wrong, you haven't lived until you've survived a lightning storm inside an Andromedan healing tower, but I think we've got enough on our docket for one day, don't you? Now, Suzee from Yensid, let's go play with the hyperdrive!"
Somehow, it didn't seriously occur to either girl to question his instructions. He was clearly in his element and there was a quality about him now that commanded attention and obedience and a giddiness just this side of fear, even as it disarmed and endeared; even for misfits like them, the failures among the failures, following his lead felt so natural that it didn't seriously occur to either girl that they could fail.
As he herded Suzee towards the jump chutes, she looked back to see Rosie already attempting to follow the Doctor's instructions, her hands glowing like firebrands with the heat radiating through her gloves. Something in her chest unwound as she saw that Radu had already stopped shivering so violently; the hoarfrost gathering on his ears was melting, little sparks of static electricity dancing along the water droplets, and over the crashing of the ship and the hum of the probe, she thought she heard a quiet peal of something oddly not-quite-like thunder. It wasn't curing him, but maybe it was stabilizing him. That would have to be enough for now.
"A ship with slides between decks!" the Doctor chuckled in delight as Suzee punched the wall panel and leapt into the chute. "Must be Christmas!"
.
Suzee was off and running, already in the process of initializing the hyperdrive relays by the time the Doctor came flying out of the jump chute with a shameless, "Wheeeee!" He was still laughing as he rushed to her side, agile despite the uncertain shaking of the deck and the way the bulkheads groaned and sparked, and seamlessly stepped in behind her, balancing the protomix feed through each relay in perfect preparation for the reinitialization sequence. The dichotomy of such obvious engineering competence beside his irreverent amusement at the fact that they were all about to die was many things to Suzee, but she settled on irksome.
"You're weird, you know that?" she told him testily as her hands flew over the command entries on the injector panel.
"Says the girl with gills," he shot back as the injectors clicked and whirred to life. "Go align the crystal while I finish this. Even with me here, there's no point in wasting resources."
"I thought you were a doctor," Suzee snapped, annoyed at being ordered around in her engine room. But she abandoned the relays and rushed over to the prism without argument.
"I am!" the Doctor said defensively. "I thought you were a school girl!"
"I am!" Suzee said, equally defensive. "I also happen to be an engineering genius!"
"Well, la-dee-dah," the Doctor retorted, then grinned manically at her. "A powerfully psychic engineering genius with gills. I really must visit Yensid one of these days!"
Suzee risked darting a glance at the Doctor around the glare of the prism. "How did you know I have psychic powers?"
"My sonic screwdriver is pretty handy little doodad. Scans for all sorts of things. Plus," he spared one hand to tap the side of his head, "I've got one or two mental powers myself. Enough to feel a telepathic field as strong as yours from this close, anyway."
"If you're a doctor, why do you know so much about engineering?"
"I never said I was a medical doctor," the Doctor muttered.
"What!" Suzee exclaimed, nearly shoving the prism completely out of alignment as she turned horrified eyes on him. "If you're not a doctor then how are you going to help Radu!"
"Hey, I'm not just a doctor, I'm theDoctor!" he replied, showing her wounded eyes. "And you're not the only genius around here, you know. I already have a theory, and as a matter of fact it is bearing out as we speak." The Doctor smirked at her knowingly. "You're awfullyconcerned about him," he said slyly.
The abrupt change of subject threw Suzee off her guard.
"What?" She paled, then shrugged, then shook her head almost frantically, then settled on a rather forced sounding laugh. "Oh, please, it's not like that!" she scoffed, but the undeniable blush tinting her cheeks gave the final lie to her denials. "He's not… I mean, I'm not…"
"I never said you were," the Doctor said, waggling his eyebrows at her mercilessly as her blush deepened. "But you just did."
"No, I didn't!" Suzee shrilled, abandoning the half-aligned prism in its unsecured casing to flee across the small room to the antimatter refractor. "We're just friends. Crewmates. That's all!"
"That's not what Catalina says," the Doctor said conversationally, keeping his eyes fixed nonchalantly on the deutronium diode gauges he was adjusting.
Suzee nearly concussed herself on one of the antimatter transistor coils as she swung around to stare at the Doctor in astonishment.
"Catalina!"
"That's the one!"
"How do you know Catalina!"
"She introduced herself four point eight seven minutes ago."
"You mean… she's here? And you can see her? How… how…" Suzee shook her head. "How!"
It was the Doctor's turn to scoff.
"Cat here is Saturnian, and I'm an expert in sonic technology. We were bound to run into each other eventually. More to the point," he tapped the side of his head again. "Mental powers. She entered my auditory and visual ranges when I was adjusting the frequency on the sonic screwdriver in the medlab. And let me tell you, she hasn't shut up since – No, sorry, of course, I'm very interested!" he assured the empty air two paces to the left (then glanced back at Suzee and gave her a furtive little shake of the head.)
"This is incredible!" Suzee exclaimed, ignoring his pleading look. "I haven't been able to communicate with Cat since just before we crash landed on that planet! I've missed her so much…"
It hadn't occurred to her just how true that was until she was surprised to feel tears pricking at her eyes. Suzee wasn't the sort to cry. She was too practical for that; the more emotional she became, the more she tended to hold her feelings in check and hide them. But Catalina had been her best friend all her life, and being mentally linked, they had always been there for each other; despite all of the irreplaceable friends she'd made since coming aboard the Christa, in a way she'd never felt more alone than she had these past few months.
"Well, she has been here with you all this time," the Doctor assured her with a small smile, which widened as he added, "And according to her, Mr. Dreamboat up in the medlab is much more than just another crewmate to you."
Suzee's face closed down and became guarded as something in her chest warmed and tightened. Frustrated, she began opening the flux capacitor valves with more force than was strictly necessary. Why was she letting herself get distracted like this?
"It wouldn't work," she grudgingly assented. "We're from two different worlds – two different dimensions. And… he's got Elmira," she added, then bit her lip at the nasty edge of jealousy she could hear in her own voice. She shoved the emotion down and away. "Someday we're going to make it back to the Sol system and get off of this ship. He'll go back to Starcademy and I'll have to go home." Her hands stilled over the last valve, fingers wilting. Then she gripped it hard and gave it an almost vicious twist. "There's no point in anybody getting attached."
"Bit too late for that, I'm afraid…" the Doctor muttered sotto voce.
"What?" Suzee called, losing the Doctor's quiet words over the rising thrum of the engines.
"Nothing at all!" the Doctor called blithely back.
He finished aligning the baryon compression module as she moved back towards the prism, then turned suddenly to catch Suzee by the shoulder. Startled, she looked up and met those ageless eyes once more. And even though he was a complete stranger, it felt like he was like a big brother, and a best friend and a wise grandfather to her all at once.
"What…"
"You know," he said, "even if all of that is true, maybe that doesn't mean you should be avoiding him – or these feelings you keep trying to box up and pack away. Maybe having a time limit doesn't mean you shouldn't try. Maybe it means that you should make the most of the time you have. After all, on balance, you'll always regret the things you didn't do more than the things you did. And take it from me," a measure of hollow sadness entered his stare, "nothing haunts you like regret."
For a moment all Suzee could do was stare into the timeless expanse of his eyes, speechless, drawn like a moth to an open flame. The temptation to pitch herself into his consciousness and explore him was almost overwhelming. Yet she was somehow frightened of the terrible knowledge that had flickered in his gaze when he spoke of regret, and it stopped her in her psychic tracks.
"I saw your ship," she whispered. "I saw what was inside. It's beyond anything I've ever imagined. A technological miracle. And there's something about you… you're not just a normal traveler."
The Doctor was examining her with an almost equal curiosity.
"I don't think you would be either," the Doctor murmured. "I think you could have been amazing, with all of time and space at your fingertips…" his voice trailed off, and he sighed wistfully, turning away.
Suzee blinked several times, uncomprehending.
"Who are you?"
He looked back at her and his eyes gleamed. "I'm the Doctor."
"Doctor who?"
He winked at her. "Exactly!"
Then, in a burst of energy, he leapt forward, slapped her on the shoulder and whirled her around just in time for her to squawk in alarm and pull the protomix turbine lever back into position half a second before it shifted catastrophically into the red zone.
"You're only young once!" he called back, effectively lifting the heavy mood that had descended as he dashed back over to configure the proton-muon bombardment equalizer. "Well, usually – do as I say, not as I do, and all that – but the point is, take some risks! Seize the day! Have a little fun!"
"Yeah right," Suzee tried to laugh it all off, but her mind was whirling, tied up in the enthralling mystery of the Doctor, and the inescapable wisdom of what he had said. "That's the trouble, it isn't fun, it's confusing and overwhelming and scary. And Radu is the least scary guy you could imagine – he's sweet and thoughtful, and funny, but in a shy sort of way that's… and… and…" She huffed. "… and I don't know what I'm saying. I don't know why I'm telling you all of this."
"Because you've wanted to tell somebody for a long time. You're just telling the wrong person."
"You may be right. About a lot of things. But if I just wanted to have fun, I'd let Harlan…" Suddenly she gasped, horrified, and darted her eyes around the engine room. "Oh no, Harlan… Cat, if you can hear me, I swear I was just playing around, and so was he!"
"Yeeees… she's going to want a word with you about that in the near future. Well, more than one word, actually… well, a bit of a monologue, all told…" The Doctor cringed away from the empty air a few paces to his left and shot Suzee a worried look as he rubbed one ear against the pain of an inaudible racket. "I think a bit of abject groveling might be in order… or on second thought, you might just consider moving dimensions permanently…"
Suddenly the room rocked and swiveled under their feet.
"Compost to engineering!"came Commander Goddard's voice through the com. "Suzee, how's it coming?"
"Almost there!" she shouted, stumbling as the whole ship jerked and swerved against the gravimetric currents.
"We need that hyperdrive online, pronto!"
"You heard the Dad!" the Doctor exclaimed, leaping over the intake conduits and throwing both ignition levers with an energetic flare. "Ah, well, I'm sure it will all work out in the end!"
"You are?" Suzee said hopefully.
"Usually does, one way or another" the Doctor's shrug was not encouraging. "Except, of course, when it doesn't."
.
TBC
.
A/n: If you review, Radu promises to bring you a teddy bear he found floating in deep space – think of the biologically engineered space virus it's carrying as a bonus!
