Mother
2
"This isn't right, none of this is right," the Doctor complained, pulling out a long spool of ticker tape covered in symbols and numbers from a machine. "Do you see anything out there?"
"Not yet," said Romana, watching the TARDIS monitor as it panned aimlessly around that corner of E-Space.
"Is it supposed to be green?" asked Jenny, squinting at it, "Is the screen broken?"
"Space is green here," said Romana.
"How does that work? Space is empty, there's nothing in it to reflect green wavelengths of light, it should be uniformly black," she said.
"I thought the same thing at first," said Romana, "But things work differently here. Eventually, you start to wonder, why oughtn't it be green?"
"Because it's an absence of atomic material that makes it look like that," said Jenny.
"And absence looks green here," said Romana. Jenny gave up. The Doctor made a noise, frustrated.
"There must be something. We're sitting alongside a huge centre of mass; we should be able to see it."
"Dormant black hole, maybe?" said Jenny, "A black hole with no accretion disc would be invisible."
"It's a lot of mass, but not enough for a black hole. Are you using the x-ray scanner?"
"Infrared," said Romana. The Doctor stared at her. "You said infrared." Now she looked to Jenny.
"You did say infrared," said Jenny.
"Well – switch to x-ray. Hopefully we don't have to activate the array and see if the neutrinos are in an energetic mood – that would be embarrassing. There's something out there spitting out temporal radiation like there's no tomorrow."
"Ah-ha!" said Romana. A sphere appeared on screen. "A star."
"An invisible star?" said Jenny.
"Not invisible, obscured," she said, "Do you see this pattern?" It looked as if a grid was superimposed on the star, which appeared remarkably faint.
"Are you sure the screen isn't broken? I can look at the wiring," Jenny offered. The Doctor brought her big trail of ticker tape over to the other side of the console to see what they were looking at.
"I don't believe it," she said, "That's a Dyson sphere."
Romana laughed a little, "An Earth name for a concept that humans have never done anything with."
"What can I say? I'm a naturalised Earthling. I've never seen one that size, though; three million miles across? On a star estimated to be," she paused to refer back to her ticker tape, lifting it up, "at least ten times bigger than the sun?"
Without warning, a blot of light appeared on the screen.
"Brace, brace!" the Doctor ordered.
They grabbed the console just as a massive wave of space wind hit the outside of the ship, rocking it and plunging everything into darkness. K-9 slid across the floor and the TARDIS rolled, systems all offline and battered by radiation. After about ten seconds the wind passed, and the TARDIS reorganised itself. One-by-one, everything switched back on, and the central column thrummed up and down in anguish.
"I know, I know," said the Doctor softly, "You'll be okay."
"Solar storms don't usually touch the TARDIS like that," said Romana.
"That was no solar storm," said the Doctor, "It's a rift storm."
"But the sunspot-"
"There was solar radiation in that, sure, but there's a rift down there somewhere," she said, "Tearing the star apart… god, this isn't…" Her machine was clicking again, pumping out more paper. "The Tharils were right, it's bleeding. That whole star. This is wrong, all wrong – you can't box in a star like that, and certainly not one sitting on a rift. It's suicide."
"Who do you think built it, then?" asked Romana.
"I don't know," said the Doctor, "But I'd like to talk to them, at length – though, I'm not sure that star will allow it, it looks… let's just say none of us should stray too far from the TARDIS."
At that, the phone started to ring.
"Strange," said the Doctor, "Nobody here has that number."
"People call the TARDIS all the time," said Jenny.
"Not between E-Space and N-Space they don't," said the Doctor, walking around the console. "Did you give my number to anyone?" she asked Romana, "Tharils, maybe?"
"No."
Carefully, as if it might explode, she picked up the old rotary handset.
"Hello?" But no voice answered. Instead, she just heard a rumble and a very low beeping sound, which she listened to carefully.
"Who is it?" asked Jenny.
"I think it's a distress call." She kept the phone cradled between her head and shoulder and walked around the console again, trailing wire everywhere now, too, along with the reams of paper. She flicked some switches, pulled a lever. The central column began to rise. "It's just beeping, though. Maybe it's a code. I don't have time to break a code right now… we'll just trace it and hope I'm right."
"What else could it be, if not a distress signal?" asked Jenny.
"You'd be surprised at the kind of junk people broadcast – haven't you ever met those guys who do CB radio?"
"Don't you broadcast on CB radio?" asked Jenny.
"Only when I have to."
"What's your callsign?"
"The Doctor. Obviously. Here we go," she turned a dial, "I think I have a lock." Again, she returned to the monitor, having now circled wire and paper all around the room. The beeping on the phone got louder. "Looks like an average terrestrial planet, but with surface temperatures way below zero."
"Great," Jenny sighed, "Another ice ball. The second I've been to in as many months – there'd better not be a yeti on this one."
"I thought it was a monkey? Oswin said it was a monkey."
"It had four arms."
"I've never met a yeti with four arms, and lemme tell you, I've met a few," she said seriously. "Maybe we should take Adam."
"Why? So he can make it even colder?" said Jenny, "He's not here, anyway, he's in London as well."
"Why is everybody in London all of a sudden?"
"Well, why do you think I chose tonight to bring you that old pinball machine? Because everybody went out and left me on my own."
"Oh, that's charming, isn't it? Me, your own mother, the very last person you want to spend any time with."
"No," Jenny argued, "Because if I'd rather hang out with Adam Mitchell I'd've just gone to London, wouldn't I? But no, I'm here on an ice planet with you, listening to you talk about HAM radio while you fill the entire room with tiny pieces of paper." The Doctor looked back at her tape machine, then leant over and switched it off.
"Are you happy now?"
"Why would I have brought you that pinball machine and offered to fix it up with you if I didn't want to see you? It took me ages to find it without just stealing it from an arcade."
"I'm only kidding. I know I'm your number-one, most-favouritist person to pal around with."
"You aren't, but I'll let you keep thinking that."
"You said the star could explode at any moment, and you're bickering again?" said Romana.
"Listen, you never know when you'll be given an impromptu bonding opportunity with your daughter; I have to seize them all. Hang this – darn it! Why am I all tangled in these wires?" She'd wanted to give Romana the phone to put it down, but she'd exhausted the wire.
"Because you've just been walking around in a circle," said Jenny. "I can put in a phone without wires if you'd rather-"
"No! I like wires. I like their certainty. It won't take me a minute to…" Awkwardly, she stepped around the wires and turned around to unravel them all. Romana took over piloting while the Doctor sorted herself out.
"I'm collecting a lot of heat signatures, certainly a settlement down there," she said.
"Take us as close as you can," said the Doctor. "Pretty psychotic to build a Dyson sphere so big you make the only terrestrial planet nearby almost completely uninhabitable, if you ask me. That's the problem with those things. And who needs the power of an entire star?"
"You need a black hole to power a TARDIS," Romana reminded her, "And we have two stars to work with on Gallifrey."
"But locking either of them in a Dyson sphere would make the planet a tundra at least half the time," said the Doctor, "Which is why even the Time Lords, in their infinite wisdom and pursuit of pseudo-divinity, haven't done it."
The TARDIS rumbled, central column thrumming up and down loudly as it landed. It thumped down and the image on the monitor changed again, feeding them a view of the outside world. Jenny could hardly see a thing for the snowstorm.
"I bet you won't give me enough time to go find my chaps for this, either?" said Jenny.
"You have chaps?"
"Of course I have chaps, you can't live on an ice planet or track people through the Rockies without chaps, can you?" she argued.
"Who were you tracking?"
"Uranium smugglers. It's a long story."
"You… what? When was this?"
"A few decades ago."
"And you never told me?"
"I still won't tell you. I'm going to find some coats for us; I'm sure if it was up to you, we'd just walk out there with no protection."
"Well, I – I'm naturally very warm," said the Doctor, but Jenny had already left the console room.
"Do you know, I'm not sure I've met any of your children before," said Romana.
"Reproduction is a tricky business back home. It's not like any of them were…" She paused, then sighed. "She reminds me of Susan, sometimes. But Susan left Gallifrey before you were born, didn't she?"
"Yes, I believe so."
"Stubborn," said the Doctor, "Very stubborn."
"Indeed."
"Tracking uranium smugglers through the mountains… and she used to be a pirate, you know, in space."
"Sounds just like the Corsair."
The Doctor laughed, "Maybe. Thankfully, they've never met."
"So," Romana stood up straight, "How do you suppose they're powering this device?" She went back over to the clockwork time scoop, sitting on a chair.
"I don't think it's too dissimilar from a vortex manipulator," said the Doctor, "Tacky, but dolled up. As far as I can see, the clockwork is ornamental."
"And you said something about clockwork droids?"
"Yes. I've seen them before, but those ones – I don't think they came out of E-Space, they were human designs from the fifty-first century. Humans like clockwork novelties almost as much as we do."
"But I've never seen a vortex manipulator used remotely like that, to pull people towards it." The Doctor paused, thinking. Her instinct was to let Oswin take a look at it, but Oswin wasn't there. "They had these mirrors, though," she remembered, "Windows."
"Where to?"
"The ship was the SS Madame de Pompadour, and they thought they needed her brain to repair the ship properly," she explained, "They brought France to them, they didn't go there. They went through the rift they made, sure, but the ship stayed where it was."
"There's more to this than any of us can see, isn't there?" said Romana.
The Doctor shrugged, "Isn't there always?"
Jenny returned shortly, wearing one winter coat with two more bundled in her arms. All of them were rather upmarket, dark and lined with real fur and leather.
"Where did you get these?" asked the Doctor.
"My collection," she said, "You know where I get them from." The O'Haras.
"Right…" she nodded. But she wasn't one to argue.
After a few stern words with K-9 that he was to stay behind in the snowstorm, they left the TARDIS.
Immediately, the Doctor thought Jenny and Clara were right; she shouldn't have gone out that day at all. It was one of the most absolute colds she had ever felt, chillier than the darkest night in Antarctica, battered by a heavy storm that was less snow and more solid balls of ice. There was no visibility, either. Jenny had brought a light (sensible), but it didn't reach very far. The Doctor relied on the sonic screwdriver for direction, pinning it to the distress call to try and guide their way.
"I thought you landed the TARDIS close to the settlement!" the Doctor shouted over the wind.
"I did!" said Romana, "We must be near, there must be something!"
They trudged forwards, following the screwdriver, very rapidly getting too cold to even speak. Looking backwards, the Doctor saw their footsteps were already obscured by the poor weather. This was no good for making a quick getaway. The storm was so heavy that they couldn't see the sky at all; more than a few feet away was a blinding, grey sheet.
Eventually, though, something emerged. A great, dark shape that, the closer they got, the Doctor recognised as a large spaceship. It was the source of the distress call but didn't look like it had moved in some time, coated with layers of white frost.
And then: a light. Figures. Humanoid, two of them, with a lantern, approaching. Jenny held up their light as high as she could, but the strong winds had already made it difficult to keep it upright. Better equipped in suits with proper snowshoes, the figures were faring much better than the Doctor and her ilk.
"Who goes there?" the figure in front called out, barely audible.
"We heard your distress call!" the Doctor shouted, "We're here to help!"
"Are you from the Frame?"
"The what!? Never heard of it! We're travellers, from another star system!" said the Doctor. They turned to each other to speak, still too far away and wrapped up against the cold for the Doctor to hear what they were saying. It looked like a row, though.
"Come on, then," one of them said, "It's this way." The other didn't look happy if body language was anything to go by, but the Doctor hastened to go after them. Without trying to talk anymore, the pair led them underneath the ship. One of them lifted a metal pipe and rapped it against the hull, at which point a hatched opened and a ladder was dropped down. They climbed up first.
"I'll go last," said Jenny. She was the best at dealing with extreme, cold temperatures, which the Doctor knew and did not argue against. She let Romana go up first, then she went second, hardly able to move. The two snowpeople helped pull them up through the hatch and they were finally out of the wind and the snow. The hatch was quickly closed behind them, but they could still hear the wind.
"You're envoys? From Iavai Supreme?" said one of the two figures, who took off their masks now. A young man and a young woman, the former wearing glasses with one of the arms glued on.
"Where? No," said the Doctor, teeth chattering, "We're not from around here, we were flying by from another galaxy, and picked up your distress call."
"But it seems we were the ones in distress, just there," said Romana, "A few more minutes-"
"We'd have been fine," said Jenny, "I could've dragged the both of you back to the TARDIS if needs be."
"I can't feel my feet," said the Doctor, looking down.
"Because you just walked through all that in Converse," Jenny told her off, "What do you expect? At least we're both wearing boots. You'll be lucky you don't have frostbite already."
"I'm sure the numbness will go away soon."
"You said you heard our distress call?" asked the man.
"Yes, from our ship, which we thought we parked a whole lot closer to the signal source," said the Doctor, "We were just caught in that solar storm, and then we heard your signal."
"The storm's done some damage," the young man admitted, "We weren't expecting anybody to answer. We send out calls all the time, it's procedure."
"Well, we're here now." She finally looked around and saw they were in a large docking bay, but there weren't any other ships in it, only a little shuttle. "I'm the Doctor. This is Jenny and Romana," she pointed them out, "We're not really used to cold climates like this."
"Nobody is," said the girl, "This planet isn't fit for life."
"What she means, is that her name is Shomny," said the man, "And I'm Anzuro. We're the scouts."
"And what do you scout?"
"Materials, food. Bring in lumps of ice to turn into water."
"It's a hell of a frontier," said Jenny.
"Just our luck to have first contact and for them to be useless," said Shomny.
"We don't know they're useless," said Anzuro.
"I daresay we're not useless at all," said the Doctor, "We're all physicists, engineers, travellers. Very good at fixing spaceships – in fact, this'll be the second we fix today, we just came from another distress call and a repair job."
"How do we know you're not spies, from the Frame?" said Shomny.
"Come on. Why would they send anybody to spy on us?" said Anzuro, "You're giving them too much credit. They don't care about us here, that's why they left. And these people don't look like Temporites, anyway."
"Like what? Did you say 'Temporite'?" asked the Doctor, suddenly feeling even colder than she had been since they landed on the planet. Anzuro and Shomny continued to argue in lowered voices, though.
"Interesting for radiation like that to penetrate through the sphere and then through the atmosphere of this planet," said Romana quietly, "What do you imagine the strength of the magnetosphere here is?"
"I told you, it's rift energy, it's powerful," said the Doctor, "And maybe it didn't do all that much damage; the heating's still on, and the lights."
"Not that much damage?" Shomny interrupted, "Blew out our life support rig and the field generators. We can't launch without those."
"Look, who's in charge here?" said the Doctor, "Take me to your leader."
"Eurgh," Romana rolled her eyes, "Did you have to?"
"I can never resist."
"We have to take them," said Anzuro, "Nikomar will want to talk to them."
"He has enough on his mind."
"If they can help us, we can leave even sooner," he argued, "It's alright for you, on your own – I have a wife, and a daughter, and we need to get far away."
"How dare you – you accuse me of not caring enough about our people?"
"That isn't what I meant, but you don't have children. You don't understand, I'd die before I let Merena come to any harm."
"Please," Jenny cut them both off and spoke very seriously, "We want to help. You only have to let us." At that, Shomny finally gave up her attempts to refuse them deeper entry to the ship. They left the loading bay, into a series of corridors, tight and lined with creaking pipes and hissing valves.
"How many people are on here?" the Doctor asked, "Are you running out of air, with life support down?"
"No," said Anzuro, "We can pump it in from outside, just needs to be heated up first. But obviously, if we're in space – as we intend – we can't do that. We were all set to leave today, too."
"You know, we detected your ship landing," said Shomny, "Gave off a lot of energy. When did you enter the system, exactly?"
"The TARDIS didn't cause your systems to malfunction," said the Doctor, annoyed, "We were caught in that storm out there, and we didn't have an atmosphere."
"The atmosphere here is almost useless," said Anzuro, "If we weren't spinning so fast, it would disappear completely. It's been worn away by those storms for so long."
"How long, exactly?"
"Since they built that thing and left us here," said Shomny. "They'll kill us all if they have their way."
"Is that what they're trying to do?"
"Nobody knows anymore," said Anzuro, "I don't think they know anymore. But they decided to build it and then they left us here to fend for ourselves. I'm no historian, though, it's more Nikomar's territory."
"And how many of you are there? On this planet?" asked Romana.
"It's just us. Close to two-hundred, and we're packed in as it is," he sighed, "But we've been living on this ship for a long time. All that'll change is we'll be putting some distance between us and that thing in the sky." They passed through the corridors, many of which were lined with beds and other soft furnishings – though all unoccupied at the moment – and into a mess hall.
During her time with the Homeworld Alliance, and later her own time in charge of the Comet, Jenny had spent many hours in various mess halls. They had a miraculous gift, like all canteens, to produce comradery, and this one was no exception. Even on a desperately cold planet with a volatile star and a broken life support system, people were enjoying each other's company.
And it wasn't just people. It was a menagerie. At least a dozen alien species in her peripheral vision alone, either roaming around with the people or kept in tanks and cages, stacked one on top of the other against the walls and strapped down firmly. They paused upon entering the hall, and then something bumped against Jenny's leg. It was, for all intents and purposes, a penguin, only with dark red plumage and a black beak, a little under two feet tall.
"Oh, hello," she said automatically, smiling when she saw it. It made a chirping noise. "I don't have any food for you, I'm sorry." Another noise. "You know, I was changing crawfish water this morning; I bet you can smell that, can't you?" She crouched down to pet its head. It was very appreciative.
"Crawfish water?" asked the Doctor.
"For the breeding pools, I did them earlier," she explained.
"You're breeding crawfish now, on my TARDIS?"
"I'm breeding all sorts," she said, cryptic as ever.
People in the mess hall were beginning to notice the interlopers, but Jenny was still preoccupied with the animals – she'd spotted a tank full of some very, very tiny toads, about half of them with bioluminescent eyes. This attracted her attention more than the penguin, though it kept following her.
"She likes animals more than people," the Doctor told Romana.
"Most of them have never been outside," said Shomny, "Too cold for them now."
"This ship's a regular Noah's Ark then, huh?" said the Doctor. Shomny looked at her blankly. "Sorry. Alien cultural reference. I mean, you're going to take them all with you? The planet's wildlife?"
"They certainly didn't take any of them to the Frame," she said, bitter.
"Temporites?" somebody said loudly, across the room, "Here?" That got everybody's attention, and they weren't happy.
"They're not Temporites," said Anzuro, "They're aliens, they're from-" But it wasn't enough. His voice didn't carry very well, and he wasn't able to command the authority of the room. "This isn't good." A frenzy started, not helped by Shomny trying to distance herself from the whole situation, leaving just the three of them and Anzuro against a whole room.
"I'm here to help, I'm the Doctor," she began, but there was a crowd gathering, angry hecklers who thought they were to blame for creating an icy hell-world.
"Doctor…" Romana began. The attention was mostly on them, Jenny still distracted by the toads.
"It's fine, I'm sure it'll be fine – I told you all, we're not these Temporites, we're travellers, we were only passing through!" she continued to argue fruitlessly.
Just as she was trying to plan a quick getaway and straining to remember if she had her emergency teleporter to hand (which she didn't, incidentally), a booming voice cut through the noise and rendered everybody silent.
"Hey! What's going on, what's all this?"
"There are some Temporites-" a stranger in the crowd began.
"They're not Temporites," said Anzuro, finally able to be heard, "I'm telling you. They're not. They say they can help us." The crowd began to part around them, dissipating slowly, as a man came through, holding what the Doctor briefly believed was some sort of weapon. Then she realised it was nothing of the sort; he had a garment and a large, curved sewing needle in his hands.
"You must be Nikomar," she said, holding out her hand. He stared at it.
"What are you doing?"
"I was going to shake your hand."
"Why? That's very familiar." Was he offended? She clenched her fist and withdrew it.
"Sorry. Alien custom. It's a form of greeting, it's polite."
"If you try the universal greeting again-" Jenny warned.
"Of course I'm not going to do that again!" the Doctor said indignantly, "Not after we got kidnapped by those mole people."
"Isn't it offensive to call them mole people?" asked Romana.
"What else would you call a race of sentient moles?" said the Doctor. Romana had no response. She turned back to Nikomar, "I'm the Doctor. This is my good friend, Romana, and my daughter, Jenny," she pointed them both out.
"Hello," Jenny smiled, "I like these toads you have. Very colourful." The penguin chirped again. "You know what…" she thought to herself, then went about searching her pockets. At once, there were weapons drawn and pointed right at them, but Jenny was oblivious to this. She took out a plastic bag full of cheese chunks, dropping one into the penguin's mouth as it flapped its arms. "I knew I'd worn this coat fishing. Old bait."
"Between stinky cheese and the crawfish water, it's a wonder anybody comes near you," said the Doctor, unhappy with Jenny getting guns pulled on them.
"Well," said Nikomar, aware of everybody else listening, "If Floog likes these strangers, that's good enough for me."
"Is that your name? Floog?" Jenny fawned over the penguin some more.
"Let's go into the bridge, we can talk properly there," said Nikomar, then he whistled. Floog abandoned Jenny to go after Nikomar, following him along.
"Maybe I should get some penguins for the TARDIS," Jenny mused as they also followed, in the wake of the little, waddling bird.
"What do you mean, 'get some penguins'? You can't keep a penguin colony on there."
"I could get a shrink ray?" she suggested.
"No shrink rays. They always cause chaos. One minute you're building a miniature zoo, the next you're an inch tall trying to fight off rats with a toothpick while some maniac tries to douse you with insecticide – trust me, I've been there," she said, shivering at the memory. What an awful day that had been.
"You're not thinking this through properly," said Jenny.
"Thinking what through?"
"Tiny penguins! Lots of them! Wouldn't it be great?" she beamed, something she didn't do often. The Doctor softened.
"I… well, it… I'll think about it, alright?"
"I rather like the idea," said Romana, "Miniature penguins. It's funny, you have all that room, and so few animals."
"I have animals!" she argued right back, "There's Captain Nemo – the lobster – and chickens, soon."
"Chickens? On the TARDIS?" asked Romana.
"Spaceships aren't the best environment for animals," said Nikomar, listening to their conversation. They had left the mess hall, climbing a narrow staircase to a balcony and then passing through another door into the bridge, Anzuro and Shomny following. "The smell alone…"
"Yes, it's certainly pungent," said Romana.
"But we couldn't just let them all die," he sighed, "We've been living with them on here for… well, a long time. And there are only a few dozen species. Nearly everything else is extinct now." There was a gust of wind; something flapped overhead. Automatically, Romana and the Doctor ducked, though Jenny had seen it first: a bird.
Except, upon closer inspection when it landed on the back of a large chair, it wasn't a bird at all, it looked like a tiny pterodactyl, the size of a parrot, though it had blue scales rather than feathers. Jenny, of course, fell in love with this on first sight as well.
"That's Geb," said Nikomar, "Watch he doesn't bite you."
"You wouldn't bite me, would you?" she said, scratching its head. She still had the penguin knocking around her legs, too. "No, I don't think so." The Doctor didn't know what she had expected from a woman who had never been fazed by the fact her wife could turn into a bat on command.
"…So, what's the problem with your ship? Life support?" asked the Doctor, wanting to steer the conversation away from the animals.
"It's the power generator that manages the life support and the shields," he explained, "This ship is old, the electronics can only withstand so much radiation. We thought we'd be able to get away in time, but-"
"Probably best it happens now," said the Doctor, cutting right across him as he sat down in the captain's chair and resumed carefully sewing whatever he had in his hands. "What if you'd launched already and got caught in that thing in space?"
"We have no way to predict the storms, and they've been getting worse," said Anzuro.
"And your shields-"
"Not built for that," said Nikomar.
"Even the TARDIS was affected," Romana reminded her, "We lost power for a moment."
"Well, who's fixing it? Anybody?"
"Engineers are down there, but I haven't heard anything," said Nikomar, "Which is bad news. We're running low on materials, is the problem. No way to access the old mines here, and they've been exhausted, anyway, to build the Frame."
"Yes," the Doctor nodded, "Tell me about that – the Frame, and these Temporites."
"I thought you came here to help? Now you want a history lesson?"
"I can help, let's get that out of the way first," said the Doctor seriously, "We just need to move the TARDIS on board here, I'm sure it will have whatever we need."
"And the TARDIS is?"
"My ship," said the Doctor, "Out there, in the snow. But let me be honest with you. We're interested in that star and those people on there, these 'Temporites'. I'll help you get off this rock if you tell me everything you know about them, quicker the better."
"You haven't even taken a look at the generator yet. How do I know you're not lying, and you're just going to leave when we're done? Say you're fetching materials and disappear on us?" he challenged, pausing his sewing. The Doctor narrowed her eyes, thinking, and he stared right back.
"Jenny and Romana here will go and get the TARDIS and take a look at your generators," she decided.
"Back out there?" Romana whispered, "In that snow?"
"Yes, in that snow – one of the scouts will tag along," said the Doctor, waving a hand dismissively at Anzuro and Shomny, "They'll see that you're alright. And the two of you don't need me there to move the TARDIS two hundred feet over. Meanwhile, I'll stay here and talk to Nikomar."
"Shouldn't Romana do that?" said Jenny, "The whole reason we brought her is that she knows more about Gallifreyan history than you and has been in E-Space for years."
The Doctor then looked at Romana for her opinion on the matter.
"Well, I'll tag along with Jenny, if it's all the same to you," she smiled, "I'm sure you'll ask all the right questions without me. And I have questions of my own." Now, the Doctor regretted this course of action; Jenny and Romana? Alone?
"Actually, maybe we should-"
"Let's go, then," Jenny left the pterodactyl, "TARDIS first, then we'll come back."
"Shomny, go with them," said Nikomar.
"Do I have to?"
"I can't send Anzuro, if he goes and they try to pull anything, he'll… well, you're not a fighter, it's not your strong point," he told this to Anzuro directly, who did not argue.
"If you need my help at all-" the Doctor began.
"I'm sure we'll be fine," said Jenny as they started to leave, "I think I know how to fix a generator."
"Be careful out there!" she called, "It's cold, don't…" but the doors closed. She sighed. "Kids."
"Don't worry, Shomny will look after them, as long as you're telling the truth," said Nikomar, "She might be prickly, but she cares about our people too much to jeopardise it."
"I'm telling the truth," she assured him again, "Those are my people, and I wouldn't put them at risk. Especially not my only daughter." And while she cared dearly for Romana, Romana's role in Gallifrey's future was all fixed. "Now," she began, sitting down in one of the bridge's many chairs, "Tell me everything you know about these Temporites."
