The planet turns.

High above Kessas Aen, so high that cartographers would give their first born for the view of the entire planet's surface, there is a roaring, a hard rasping of engines as a blue box disperses the particles around it and solidifies itself as a fact, floating.

The blue box locks itself into geostationary orbit.

The Doctor cheered as the shaking of the console room ended with a final pull of the lever. He waved his hands in the air, possibly in celebration, possibly fixing his sleeves, possibly just because that's what his arms did. They came down to fix his bowtie as he skipped over to the doors passing Amy and Rory.

'Like I promised, wonders of the universe—all of time and space! No sexy fish vampires this time.'

The Doctor flung open the doors to reveal the planet. It was one great mass of rock surrounded by plentiful ocean.

Amy was already there with him looking out, while Rory took a moment to check with Amy to make sure it was safe. When he realised she had gone ahead, he joined them to reluctantly marvel.

'This is Kessas Aen, that continent is like Pangaea, except it doesn't contain every land mass, there's another one on the other side of the planet, smaller one—but just as lovely—they both break apart to form smaller land masses.'

'Doesn't that take millions of years?' asked Rory, staring out of the TARDIS doors, not sure that he wanted to challenge the Doctor by looking at him.

The Doctor nodded, 'Millions of millions, yes,' he said almost sombrely. 'But!' Amy and Rory jumped as he leapt back to the console, a mass of bronze and glass, 'You humans are busy with such small life spans. So!' At this he started pulling levers and pressing buttons, turning a crank. 'What I'm going to do is put us in an asynchronous time lock and shift the ol' girl out a few particles,' it seemed his flailing hands were designed for the manic operation of a TARDIS control panel, 'we'll watch it in real time in just a few minutes.'

'Like in nature shows when they speed up footage of a flower blooming?' asked Amy, making it sound more like a fact she understood.

'Exactly!' cheered the Doctor with a massive grin, during a pause from his calculations and workings, then he dived back in. 'Well not quite, but if it helps, yes.'

Amy looked at Rory and flashed her eyebrows as if to say 'See, it's easy after a while, and aren't you lucky to have me for a fiancé?'

The two humans turned back to the open doors and watched the planet spin slowly, they even got a view of the smaller supercontinent. The rotation began to speed up and soon they were watching the supercontinent crack open, smaller pieces drifted away and then froze. They watched for a full minute before thinking something might be wrong.

'Um, Doctor, it's not moving. Did something happen?' Amy asked. She looked back to see the Doctor frowning in confusion at the screen. He appeared not to have heard her, she called his name again. He looked up.

'What? Oh yes. Something's wrong. Very wrong. But I can't tell from here.'

Both Amy and Rory guessed this was a lie and he really just wanted to go investigate in person, but they said nothing, merely gave one another looks to confirm the other was thinking the same thing.

This wasn't entirely the case, as you see, if the TARDIS took them out of their time bubble to scan for what was causing the cessation in tectonic drift, it would then become a fixed point. Right now, it was just a possible future. So as long as the Doctor didn't do that and travelled to the planet's surface, then time would return to being in flow. In short: Timey-wimey.

This meant of course travelling through time and space while having locked oneself in a particular coordinate. Like jumping off a bus that only passes the entrance of the street you're planning to walk down while making sure not to touch any other street.

The ride, needless to say, was bumpy and caused a lot of falling about and holding on to railings for dear life.

But the TARDIS landed, and the atmosphere was breathable.

The soil was soft and damp but held Rory's tentative steps as he made his way out of the TARDIS. Amy, too, paused before stepping out to feel the alien ground beneath her feet. The Doctor followed and locked the door behind them.

Amy looked around; it was nothing but grass and the occasional mountain. On a distant hill the grass was long and a paler yellow than the one beneath their feet.

She was distracted by the buzzing coming from the Doctor's sonic screwdriver.

'Hm.'

'What?'

The Doctor looked up to her, 'Oh nothing, just that there's signs that that continent locking was natural. But it can't be. C'mon Pond—and Williams.'

The Doctor sauntered off.

Amy and Rory followed him through the deep forests until they came to a large mountain that fell out of the sky. It had crushed the trees around it, leaving scorch marks in odd patterns.

'Well, it didn't crash.'

'That's a ship?' asked Rory still trying to take in the immense size of the ship.

'Of course, it is! You think a mountain naturally falls out of the sky and look at those scorch marks. Can't you hear the engines?'

Amy and Rory tried to, but they couldn't.

'Hello! Anybody home! Put the kettle on, you have guests!' shouted the Doctor as he used the sonic screwdriver to open a cave mouth in the mountain. His voice echoed through the cave entrance, and he disappeared into the dark.

Amy ran after him, and Rory chased after her.

When inside and caught up to the Doctor handed them each a large torch, he pulled from a coat pocket.

'Where are the lights?' asked Amy. 'Do they not need them?'

'Good point, Pond, maybe.' He pressed his hand against the wall, then pressed his head. 'Mm, this is partly organic. We're very far in the future, but this technology is old for its time. Should be in a museum. Oh, and I can feel the time vibrations off it. This has been in the vortex recently... by accident perhaps—I don't sense any time-sensitive technology. Hm.'

'I can't see a ceiling,' said Rory.

. The Doctor looked up, 'Yes.'

'If the TARDIS is relative to space. Does that mean we're still human-size?' asked Rory.

'It can, and yes we're still our relative size—human sized? Ha!'

'So, whatever made this machine is gigantic, right Doctor?' asked Amy, who had had enough not seeing the ceiling and was trying to get her own clues by looking at the ground. It was smooth as the walls.

The Doctor kept walking forward. 'Yes, they are. I'm trying to whittle it down, but again, far out of my usual time-scale.'

'What year are we in?'

'In Earth years, about four-billion and a half. More commonly known as five-point three slash apple slash fourteen.'

Rory looked at Amy as if to ask, 'Is he making that up?' to which Amy answered with a shrug and continued to follow him.

They had begun to walk for what felt like an hour when the Doctor tutted, 'I'm getting bored now.' He raised the sonic and activated it. The shriek whistled through the cavernous mountain-sized ship for a full minute.

'Now what?' asked Amy.

'We wait. I signalled out position and that we were friendly as well as some bio-data. Hope you don't mind.'

'How did you get my bio-data?' asked Amy.

'A quick scan.'

'Maybe ask me first next time. Or give me a release form to sign.'

'But you hate those,' said Rory.

Amy crossed her arms, 'I don't care.'

To which the Doctor and Rory accepted.

They did not wait long, a few minutes later they were met by a large hover pod, about the size of a truck.

Two vaguely humanoid giants (the humans only coming to the waist) stepped out while the driver remained. Both had what appeared to be guns, but only one of them was aiming. They were big enough that the gun looked like it would rip a limb off, let alone fatally puncture.

Rory immediately put his hands up in surrender. Amy watched the Doctor to see if he would, she didn't want to embarrass herself, but her fear was too great, and she also raised her hands.

Both beings wore full body black latex suits that gave away no distinct anatomical features, but merely resembled a humanoid figure. The only details visible were the metal collar and line running down their abdomen.

'Identify,' said one of them, the voice more feminine coming from the translator.

'This is Amy and Rory, I'm the Doctor.'

'Put down your weapons,' said the one aiming, the voice coming from the translator was similar to the first, but it was an octave or two lower. Amy could already tell she was going to get them mixed up.

'They're torches. Light sources. We need them to see,' the Doctor explained politely, then got a little offended, 'Didn't you read my bio-data?'

'Only sufficient to know you aren't a predator. Put the gun down Dosa.'

The one called Dosa obeyed and lowered her gun. The one who gave the command was called Hoxasi, she stepped forward and held her hand out.

'I think this is a traditional Terra Novan gesture believed as hand shaking?'

'Yes, yes, it is,' said the Doctor with a childish grin as he took the latex hand and brought it up and down. It seemed a far more fluid and lively motion than Hoxasi was expecting. She was thinking of a more mechanical, stiff movement.

'Forward Leader Hoxasi, this is my second, Second Forward Dosa. Our transport officer is Various Hadji. Please get encased. Encased. Enveloped. In.'

'Buggy translator?' asked the Doctor, peering up at the silver line on her abdomen.

'Ha ha. False. My language pattern is alien for the translator.'

'Mm, strange. My ship usually deals with translation for us, but I suppose it's doubling up the problem,' said the Doctor as he climbed up on to the step for the back seat. It was like behind a child. He helped Amy and Rory who declined Dosa's assistance.

'I was going to say your language is very fluent,' said Dosa.

'Collective wondered if you were a part of a governance,' said Hoxasi.

Sitting in the back seat that was not designed for humans was unusual, but not uncomfortable. The two humans felt like children again, small in the car seat.

'Doctor, what's with the outfits? Is that their skin?' asked Amy, vaguely remembering old sci-fi films where the super-advanced race of aliens looks like blank humanoid canvases.

'No, no. It's a compression suit, I think. They aren't just big; they are enormous like—'

The Doctor stopped; he suddenly had an idea. He tried to cross his legs like he was about to say something cool, but it didn't really work in these big seats, he just looked a toddler who needed to use the bathroom. 'This ship isn't that old, is it? But it's also not very this year, is it?'

The driver, Various Hadji stopped the car, breaking hard. They turned around, 'You mean you're not here... for us?' the voice modulator was much higher, it was like a screech then a dejected dying radio.

'I'm afraid not, no. This is just a chance encounter. We were passing when my ship picked up some signals that suggested tech that shouldn't be here,' explained the Doctor, he glanced at Amy and Rory to make sure they went along with this story. They figured knowing about what the Doctor's TARDIS could do might be dangerous.

Moxasi shifted and Hadji registered this before they began driving off again, from the translator came 'Sigh'.

'I take it you've been waiting for a while?' asked the Doctor.

Each of them sounded off: 'Ha ha.'

'Roughly six hundred and thirty-nine thousand, one hundred and seventy-four years, or three months, two weeks, six days and... four hours, thirty-two minutes,' said Dosa.

The Doctor nodded, 'I see. Time travel.'

'Your noun phrase suggests dominance. Collective were thrown. Schedule pilot test, merely a two-week jump. And here we are.'

The Doctor nodded gravely. 'I'm so sorry.'

'But we can fix that, can't we Doctor?' asked Amy, feeling the mood was getting too grim for her.

Hadji kept their sensors on the corridor ahead, but their movements gave the impression they wanted to look back, Dosa seemed to be looking back at them, Amy and Rory couldn't tell with the latex suits being human-like but having no face.

Hoxasi did turn to look and ask, 'Can you?'

The Doctor wobbled his head, 'Hopefully.'