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Chapter 4 - My Door!
"Ponds!" The Doctor greeted his companions loudly as they trudged back from their tour. His voice fell to match their apparent mood. "That bad?"
"It's sand. Weird coloured sand." Amy summarised, quite clearly unimpressed with their less than grandiose surroundings.
The Doctor sighed, always a little disappointed when any companion failed to see the universe the way he did. He knew it was impossible for any human to see things through a Time-Lord's eye but he always expected an element of awe when introducing newcomers to an unknown land full of potential and mystery, populated by unfamiliar people and perfect for learning all sorts of fun new stuff. "Well didn't you ask any questions? Look inside any burrows? They're genius. Oh, did you see the one with the singing butterflies?"
Rory blinked and folded his arms, "Of course… I loved that song." He obviously lied, Amy's smile confirmed the lie. "We also saw a secret cave by the way, that we weren't allowed in. I think they were trying to hide it." Rory always sounded so casual. It never failed to make the Doctor smile.
Amy's brow furrowed. "It was just a sandy cave!" She turned her attention to the Doctor with a childish boredom. "Did you find whatever it was you needed? Can we go?"
The Doctor ignored her at first, Rory's words had raised more suspicions. First the aversion to the perception filter, now this. If he didn't know this moon he wouldn't have batted an eyelid. But he did know. He knew it well and things weren't right. Races like the Tellexians and the Ood were all too easy to take advantage of, somebody had to be there to stand up for them. He couldn't leave until this, whatever this was, had been straightened out. He wouldn't be the Doctor if he didn't notice clues, however innocuous they may outwardly seem. Clues were brilliant, clues were tasty and tempting and lead great big stories. Most of the time. Sometimes clues lead to nothing but being named a nosey-rosie, but they were still brilliant.
"Certainly not, something's wrong. The Tellexians are acting strange. They never have anything to hide, that's not who they are. I think it's time we took the tour into our hands don't you?" He pointed to the huge sand bank. "Show me your secret cave Roranicus."
Rory frowned "Erm…"
"No, no… no Rory, never ever show me your secret cave…" The Doctor awkwardly averted his gaze. "That's not what I…" he trailed off.
Rory too averted his gaze and found himself staring at a blank landscape where the TARDIS should have been. "Doctor! The TARDIS! We definitely, definitely parked the TARDIS right over there, where there is no TARDIS!" Rory sputtered through his shock, and ended up just pointing.
The Doctor turned slowly and squeaked. "My TARDIS!" Rory was right, it was gone. He ran over to what was now just a square indentation in the sand. "No. How?" The Doctor paced angrily, muttering. He analysed the sand and checked the results with his screwdriver over and over. Amy and Rory watched, not knowing how to help or what to say, or whether they should start worrying. Sometimes the danger didn't seem so dangerous when the Doctor was around. He had a welcome habit of answering questions, which always made the unknown a little less scary. The trouble was neither Amy nor Rory knew when he would come up with these answers so there were odd periods of limbo where they genuinely felt threatened.
"Things don't just disappear! The TARDIS does not just disappear!" The Doctor spoke to nobody in particular. He was angry and frustrated. Angry that somebody would have the nerve to steal his beloved blue box and frustrated that he was scrabbling around in the sand – quite literally – for answers, floating around getting nothing done. He tossed the sonic from one hand to the other while he paced. All he had wanted to do when he came here was to quietly test the perception filter for her, was she really worth whatever trouble he'd blindly walked into. He chided himself for that thought, that was his anger speaking. Of course she was worth it. All life was precious, all people deserving. Her fate was his mistake, he had to at least give her the chance he failed to give last time. He grumbled audibly and put brooding thoughts to one side. Tantrum over, he stood up straight and pocketed the screwdriver. "Right. To the cave. Let's go Ponds."
The trio stood on the inside of the sheet, the side they weren't permitted to be on. The Doctor had really perked up now that they were somewhere they ought not to be. The atmosphere hit him straight away. "That warmth, that smell. There's a space ship through here!" He did an excited foot shuffle before leading Amy and Rory further.
"You can tell that from the smell?" Amy asked, incredulously.
"Of course, machinery, technology, a whirring warm. You can't smell it? It's nothing like the TARDIS, my old girl has class, sophistication. This is raw and untamed. Exciting!"
"Doctor, stop, please stop. It's disturbing." Amy waved away anything else the Doctor was about to say.
"What I'm trying to say is there's a space ship back here, which is odd. Yes? It must have crashed, Tellexians don't do travel, they're hosts." He paused, irritated again. "It's not an answer though, it's another question."
Quietly, they passed through the outer air lock and found three short corridors. "I'm not sure what we'll find in here, stay close and keep quiet. There's every possibility whoever crashed into this moon is threatening to Tellexians for some reason."
Rory ran a hand along the wall of the ship. "Isn't a bit strange though?"
"Isn't what a bit strange Rory?" The Doctor began. "Haven't you been paying attention, this is all a bit strange, that's why we're poking around."
"I know, I just mean," he paused for a second to find the right words, "you said this was the only colony or whatever on this whole planet. I just thought it was a bit weird that whoever was flying this managed to crash right into it."
The Doctor spun on his heels to face the clever, clever nurse. Every now and again dear Rory would have a spark of brilliance. "Yes Rory! Yes it is, I didn't think about that. What are the chances they would accidentally crash in this exact location? A few metres further and they would have wiped out at least three burrows. A perfect crash landing." The oxymoron made sense to the Doctor. He no longer thought of this as a crash site, perhaps it was under construction, perhaps the real crash was elsewhere and couldn't be patched up. He inhaled unhappily realising that didn't exactly bode well for the TARDIS. "Not. My. TARDIS. If I'm right in my new theory, and this is still being built, then somebody, some sneaky little body must have stolen the TARDIS for scraps. That was a mistake. I won't see her scarred. Amy, Rory, we have to find her, we have to rescue her!" He couldn't help but humanise her, it was far too personal. His bond with the TARDIS was real and constantly evolving, she had been with him through everything right from the beginning. She knew him like nobody else, all his secrets, all his private moments, private emotions. She was his home and his constant.
The Doctor picked corridors at random, using the sonic screwdriver to disable the keypad locks to each door. The trio pushed on quietly, remaining undetected and hearing the odd clang every now and again. There would have been a stillness among them whether it was required or not, it was always that way when the Doctor showed his feelings. He wasn't happy and that never bred conversation. They approached a cross-road in the course of corridors, hearing footsteps they hastily shuffled back behind the door. The Doctor peered through a crack to see who was heading their way. In his silence he had been wracking his brain trying to figure out who this could belong to, as of yet he had no conclusion. There were no clear signs, each door and corridor felt different, no doubt having been pieced together from the interiors of other crafts bearing unsuspecting visitors. Whatever became of them was another mystery ahead of him.
In all his thinking he certainly wasn't expecting to see what passed across the corridor. Coming from right to left, what must have been a very small figure was completely hidden behind a bright blue TARDIS door. The Doctor watched in disbelief as the door floated across the corridor.
"OI!" he stood up and scurried after it. "That's my door!"