The Doctor was pacing again. It was the best way for him to think and plan without letting his fear for his friends catch up to him. It also had the added benefit of keeping anyone from asking him questions. He knew he had no answers to give, and it was making him cranky.

Very little had been said since they had made it to the police station, besides when they had briefly contacted the Daleks to let them know they'd begun their search for a ship for them. Even Lewart seemed to be keeping quiet, for once. He was sitting with Fi on the couch in the lobby, while Ki was in Tara's office, sitting in her wheely chair, occasionally giving it an aimless spin. Violet Dowess was the only one standing besides the Doctor. She was leaning against the wall by the door, watching the Doctor's pacing with a tight expression. The Doctor couldn't tell what he was thinking, and he didn't spare if much thought. His priority right now was to figure out how to help his friends, stop the Daleks, and save this moon from being blown to pieces.

Unfortunately, at the moment, he had very few ideas about how to do so. There were only five Daleks at the moment, but at full power, five Daleks would be enough to roast the planet alive and come back for seconds. He didn't want to kill them if he didn't have to. But he knew the Daleks. If he gave them a ship, they'd leave Swametel all right - only after decimating it for its trouble. As far as he knew, there was almost no safe way to imprison a Dalek. There was no Void to throw them into, no bomb to detonate, no self-destruct button. He was stumped.

Apparently, his lack of ideas wasn't just apparent to himself. Lewart rose from the couch, glaring at the Time Lord. "For someone who's 'in charge' of this situation," he pointed out sharply, "you don't appear to be doing much about it."

The Doctor bit back an irritated reply, settling for grumbling, "I'm thinking." Lewart really did have a point. For the one who had promised to save them all, he was doing a whole lot of saving and not a lot of saving. But he was hardly going to admit that to the human.

Lewart snorted. "Thinking! Whole lot of good that's going to do us." He shook his head. "Sod it. I'm not leaving the fate of my museum in the hands of a lunatic. I'm leaving."

The museum owner started to head for the door. The Doctor just stared after him, with little interest or patience. If Lewart wanted to go home, he had no reason to stop him. Violet Dowess, however, seemed to be thinking along different lines. As Lewart started to pass her, she asked dryly, "And where exactly do you plan to go?"

Lewart glared at her, but paused to answer. "Home. And then I'm going to call someone who can actually help."

Fi gave a low grunt from the couch. "Like who? You saw what those Dalek things did to Twi." There was a tremor in his voice as he spoke. The Doctor felt a rush of sympathy - he had to be worried about his friend.

"They're lunatic aliens with guns," Lewart said stiffly. "That doesn't make them indestructible, whatever the Doctor says. The military should be able to handle this, or at least make sure my museum doesn't get burned to the ground while we a sit back and do nothing. They have battleships and plasma guns and such, they can handle a couple of gliding salt shakers."

Now the Doctor's attention was caught. "What? No, Lewart, you can't involve the military in this." He abandoned his pacing and approached the museum owner and the donor.

Lewart glared at the Doctor. "And why not?" he demanded.

"Because none of their ships or guns or bombs will even leave a dent in one Dalek," the Doctor told him seriously. Lewart's eyes widened, but he didn't say anything in reply. "The Dalek's metal casing is extremely durable. There's a external shield that will melt pretty much any bullet sent its way. Daleks have designed themselves to be the perfect killing machines. It would take heavily designed weaponry to even scratch the surface."

"Excuse me, sir, but the only proof we have of these creature's indestructibility thus far is your word, and that's not enough for me," Lewart said sharply.

He moved to try and leave, but to the Doctor's surprise, Violet Dowess moved to stand in his way. Her expression was tight and forbidding as she said coldly, "Mr. Lewart, I don't know the Doctor very well. I don't know whether we should trust our lives to him. But I saw what the Daleks did to Twi. They were going to kill my husband; it was only luck that they missed. And they didn't care that they'd hit the wrong man. All they cared was that they'd hurt someone. Those are the kind of people who are holding the people we care about prisoner. If we go against the Dalek's orders, they will not hesitate to kill all of them. I will not allow us to do anything that will endanger them, not until we know more."

Lewart had backed up a step from Violet Dowess, but after his initial surprise, his face grew red, and he drew himself up to his full height. "And doing nothing is so much better? We can't give them a ship, and we can't go back and help them. So tell me, what exactly can we do from here?"

Before the fight could grow any fiercer, the door behind them all began to open. The Doctor stiffened, almost fearing a Dalek would glide through, but neither of the forms who passed through the door were metal or Dalek-shaped. After a moment, he recognized them as Violet Dowess's husband and the injured Twi, who was carried on his back. Violet cried out her husband's name in surprise, and Fi and Ki called out to Twi.

Everyone immediately moved to help the two men. Dowess was panting from the long walk and carrying Twi; Violet let her husband lean against her while Lewart and the Doctor carried Twi to the sofa, laying him gently down. He was awake, which was a good sign. "How are you feeling?" the Doctor asked briskly, checking over the small alien for signs of injury.

Twi stretched out on the couch, flinching at the movement. "Painful," he answered honestly. The Doctor was surprised by how clear his tone was. "Pretty much everything hurts. But not like I'm going to pass out."

The Doctor hesitated. "Alright. Just rest, we'll get you some help." He sat back, resisting the urge to sigh. Now that he was sure Twi wasn't in any immediate danger of death, several questions were staring to come to mind. It was great that Twi was conscious and still alive, but by all logic, it should be impossible. Twi had been shot at point-blank range by a Dalek gun – he should be dead. The Doctor could not rationalize to himself how a Dalek's weapon could possibly be that weak, that it would leave a victim shot at such close range alive. He was utterly perplexed.

Through his confused thoughts, he managed to hear Dowess speaking to the others. "That sheriff and the other fellow helped us escape. I tried to get him to come with us, but he said he had to stay, something about helping his friend."

The Doctor snapped out of his thoughts. "That must be Castle!" He got back to his feet, leaving Ki and Fi to tend to their friend while he turned his attention to Dowess. "He and Tara were both alright when you saw them?"

"Yes. The last time I saw the sheriff, she was firing a gun at a Dalek as it was chasing her."

That was not a mental image the Doctor wanted to dwell on, so he moved onto his next question. "And the others? Were Felix and Beckett alive when you saw them?"

Dowess seemed a bit taken aback by the Doctor's urgent tone. "Um, well, yes, they were running from Daleks last I saw of them."

Tight fear twisted in the Doctor's hearts. At least he knew they had all been alive an hour or so ago, but they could still be in terrible danger. "Alright. Fi, please phone the hospital and ask them for transport for Twi. He should be fine until they get here." He wasn't sure how far the hospital was, but that did put something of a time limit on saving the museum. The hospital probably wouldn't ask too many questions while Twi was in immediate danger, but once he was being treated and the danger passed, the truth about the museum would get out, and the Doctor wouldn't be able to stop them from alerting someone who would try something foolish to stop the Daleks.

Before Fi could obey, there was a ringing from the phone in Tara's office. The Doctor dashed over to answer it, leaving Fi to seek out a phone elsewhere in the station. "Hello?" he answered, fearful and hopeful all at once.
"Doctor!" He felt an intense rush of relief at the sound of Beckett's voice.
He couldn't suppress a huge grin as he replied, "Nice to hear your voice again, Detective Beckett. Everyone alive on your end?"

"No casualties," Beckett assured him. "Apart from the Daleks, that is."

The Doctor blinked. "What?"

Beckett's voice held no triumph as she explained herself - the Doctor thought he even heard a note of regret. "I found a weapon in the museum. A heat transference gun, according to Tara. Apparently it's from some alien species that tried to invade Earth a long time ago. It seems to work pretty well against Daleks. The three that were chasing us are dead."

The Doctor was silent for a few moments as he tried to process this new information. He knew the type of gun Beckett was describing. It was a fairly powerful weapon, but not powerful enough to do much more than dent a Dalek's armor. That combined with the Dalek's shot not killing Twi, and how unhinged these Daleks seemed, had the Doctor completely baffled.

There was something that had been in the back of his mind all day, something ticking away in the back of his brain, but he'd been too distracted to spend much thought on it. But now the thought occurred to him again. "Hold on, one moment Beckett." He set the phone down and exited Tara's office, calling out to the donors, "The name. Swametel. I should've seen it before."

Violet, Dowess, and Lewart all exchanged baffled glances. "Seen what?" Dowess asked.

He ignored the question for now. His brain was in full brainstorming force. Ignoring the donors, he turned his attention to Lewart, the only actual resident of the little town. "You're the museum owner. What's the town's history? Any legends, myths, even a rumor? Come on, anything?"

Lewart still looked entirely perplexed by the Doctor's urgency, but he reluctantly answered, "There is one. Long ago, before anyone can remember, strange metal beasts landed on the planet. They attacked the town, laying it to waste. Only a few of the original species survived the massacre."

"How did they survive," the Doctor asked.

"No one's quite sure," Lewart told him. "The legends only say the rocks took the beasts down into the soil, burying them for a thousand season's sleep."

The Doctor nodded. "Swametel. A very, very rough translation into Northern Sotho. Best way to translate it is 'sleeping metal.'" It fit with the legend.

Violet stared incredulously at Lewart. "You knew all this, and you didn't think the metal creatures that were unearthed in this town were connected to it in any way?" she asked in disbelief.

He looked a little uncomfortable. "I thought about it," he defended himself. "But I didn't think it mattered. I thought it was more likely they were just weapons used by alien invaders, not actual sentient creatures. I wasn't even sure the legend was real, it's so old. And why does any of this matter?"

"You said the rocks took the beasts into the soil." The Doctor's mind was racing. "So a few thousand years ago, the Daleks land here, probably just these five, they do what Daleks do, killing anything in sight." He was pacing rapidly now, shooting out his thoughts as they came to him. "Now let's see, rocks taking the beasts. A rockfall, maybe? Or maybe an earthquake? Either way, the Daleks are all swallowed up. The Daleks probably spent a good few hundred years trying to shoot their way out of the ground before they ran out of juice. Ooo, they must have been stuck very deep underground."

"Wait a minute. You're saying these Daleks have been alive for thousands of years without any sort of food or anything?" Violet questioned.

He shrugged. "Dalek armor is set up to provide nutrients, it probably could have adapted to pull them from the soil around them." It all made sense now. "Their guns are weak because they've been firing them for years on end trying to break free. And their armor's probably pretty beat up from being stuck under rocks and such, and a few thousand years underground, well, it's enough to drive anyone mad."

"But if the Daleks had a ship where they got here, where is it now?" Lewart asked. "And why don't they just use that instead of asking us for a new one?"

"Probably either lost in the rockfall, or the survivors took it apart to use for their own uses. Either way, it's likely that the ship is either destroyed or missing. Once the Daleks were dug up out of the ground, they woke up again. It's been thousands of years, they're stranded on a planet they don't know with no way of contacting other Daleks and no way to leave, or attack. And lo and behold, their oldest enemy shows up." The Doctor couldn't hold back a small smile of triumph. "The Daleks are all but helpless. They need my help."

Violet and her husband exchanged a glance. "So what do we do?" she asked the Doctor.

That was the more important question, but suddenly it seemed a lot less difficult to answer. "I don't know. But I'll figure it out." He left the donors behind, returning briskly to Tara's office and picking up the phone once more. "Still there, Detective?"

"Yep. What's up?"

He relayed what Lewart had told him, and his own suspicions. "Have you seen any sign of the Daleks that were still outside?"

"Not a peep," Beckett assured him. "You think they know that we killed these three?"

"If they haven't come after you, probably not," the Doctor told her. "Either that, or they think guarding the TARDIS is more important. It doesn't matter. What matters is that they're a lot weaker than I thought. And now there's only two of them left."

There was a pause on the other end. "What do you want us to do?" Beckett asked calmly. "Kill them?" Her tone was completely cool, betraying no hesitation. It was clear that while she took no joy in the thought, that if she believed it was the only way to save this planet, she would kill the Daleks without reservation.

It would have been so easy to say yes. The Doctor knew how dangerous the Daleks were. He'd killed Daleks before, he didn't doubt that he'd do it again in the future. He hated them more than anything in the universe. But these Daleks were so weak, far weaker than he'd thought. There was a tiny, tiny chance that they could incapacitate them without killing them. And if there was even the slightest chance that this wouldn't have to end in death, he had to try.

"No. Not if you don't have to." A plan was starting to come to his mind. "Listen, stay on the line. I'm going to be communicating with the Daleks and letting them think we're finding a ship for them. In the meantime, I want you to start searching the museum. There might be something in there we can use to stop the Daleks."

"Alright. We'll keep you posted on what we find."

The Doctor felt a thrill of hope. Maybe, just maybe, they could get out of this without anyone dying at all.


Well, it's not quite three thousand words, but it's close. Ah well.

We're getting close to the end here. I've finalized my plans for the next few chapters, and I've actually got a solid idea of how many chapters there should be, finally. At the very least, there'll be ten total chapters, but I think I might be able to get to eleven chapters - just as many as A Murder Takes Manhattan.

Sorry if this chapter was boring at all - there should be more action in the next few chapters.

I also apologize if anything I said here with the Daleks was unrealistic according to Who canon - I planned the whole Daleks-trapped-by-a-rockfall-for-thousands-of-years thing two years ago.