They slept in shifts over the next few hours, alternately checking on the Ecosians and the Doctor who looked more like his normal self all the time as he laid in Tegan's bed, now breathing so rarely that they knew the coma was almost what he could have achieved in a Zero Room. He'd almost finished building a new one but it remained unfinished six corridors down and two turns left as the TARDIS was configured now. For the three Ecosians, things were different, they showed signs of agitation as soon as the first hints of consciousness stirred within them, their breathing disturbed, their eyes moving quickly back and forth behind the closed lids. One of the children woke first, raging and screaming, his hands clawing and reaching as Nyssa and Tegan bound him to the small bed to protect him and themselves then did the same to his mother and brother. It took the most powerful sedative Nyssa could synthesize to keep them unconscious. The temporal grace of the TARDIS prevented the weapons Miros had left them from even stunning them.
A full day went by before the TARDIS communication console bleeped a single long note and a solitary set of coordinates flashed on the screen. Nyssa entered them in with a slow hand and Tegan set the time rotor into motion. They materialized in the stateroom of a ship, a large one with an interior that was blue and lined by large windows overlooking Ecosia. Knowing it wouldn't work, but knowing Acquintal Miros wouldn't know that either, Tegan took the weapon he had left them in her hand and watched him on the monitor, standing outside the door of the TARDIS, hands raised, his arms spread. Alone.
He walked in slowly when Nyssa opened the doors and looked square into the barrel of the weapon in Tegan's hand. "There's no need. I'm unarmed." He wasn't; Nyssa made sure of it but the gun he didn't know was useless never wavered. He was dressed in loose black trousers, a long blue tunic, and a black robe of obvious quality.
Tegan didn't speak for the first few minutes, too angry for words. She got control of her temper with an effort and drew a long, slow breath. "Well, since you're unarmed, maybe we should throw you back down in that madhouse you've made. Those poor people, the Doctor, your whole planet in danger… What kind of a monster are you? Just who do you think you---!"
"Tegan."
Both women and the Ecosian turned and watched the Doctor walk slowly into the room, wearing his shirt and trousers only. He placed himself between Tegan and Nyssa and let his hands slide into his pockets, a familiar gesture that made both women smile. He smiled at them both in return before addressing Miros, every inch himself again. 'You've come to see your wife, your children. Fine, but why the delay? I'll tell you, shall I? You were afraid of what you would find, and rightly so." He stepped back, gesturing through the interior doors of the TARDIS, knowing the time ship would lead Miros where he needed to go.
Miros hesitated but moved toward the open doors with halting steps and then stopped himself against the cool, white frame. "You knew?"
"I knew there was a very good chance. They're mad. The organic body might survive for a time but the mind is not designed to be ripped back and forth through time, to evolve and devolve, to know life and death in the space of moments over and over again. I also knew I had no hope of convincing you otherwise until you learned for yourself. If you knew the others were mad, how could you doubt the effects of continual time displacement on those exposed so directly?"
"I thought there was a chance because they were being drawn back and forth through time, that the moment of their entry would still exist." Miros answered, somewhat defiantly but it was obvious he had hoped against the truth all along.
Unmoved, the Doctor resumed his lecture. "Without chronomitic particles built up in the correct manner, living tissue cannot survive time travel intact, but that was something your primitive experiments had yet to uncover."
Miros started to turn but then his head spun back at the sound of a woman's twisting scream as the sedative Nyssa had made lost the battle with the deranged Ecosian. She drew her breath for the next and it came muffled through the heavy doors. "For what it's worth, Doctor. The RNA inhibitor was flawed, intentionally. You would have ultimately survived regeneration."
"Oh, how kind of you," Tegan spat, and the Doctor looked on without comment, content to let her speak. "He could go through dying just so you would have a bit of revenge if he failed? And now what about the planet? If that thing in there isn't collapsed right, you'll kill everyone on your world."
Miros shrugged feebly, his eyes on the floor of the time-ship. "That's been done now. Ecosia is safe."
The Doctor moved at once to the console of the TARDIS and stabbed impatiently at a few controls, rocking back on his bare heels with a sigh. "He's right. It's been diffused, lapsed out in a cloud of chronomitic particles that in their current concentration are lethal. That should dissipate in a few hours, and harm no one else." He walked around the console, looking down at Miros with a cold, slow stare. "Send a medical team back for your wife and children, then use that knowledge of medicine to try and help those people trapped down there, and your family. What knowledge they have of chronomitic poisoning, I will order Gallifrey to transmit here inside the twelve hours.
"In the meantime, Mr. Miros, get the hell off my TARDIS."