CHAPTER 26

"THERE'S ALMOST NOTHING LEFT."

"I went to the hangar at NASA while you were both sleeping," the Doctor informed. He threw a quick glance in the direction Jason had taken. "He's angry with me about that. I wanted to see how work was progressing on the wreckage before he saw it. I also managed to access the ship's computer using a few knick-knacks from the TARDIS. It yielded some very interesting information."

Mel's eyebrows went up. She knew that at least part of what the Doctor was telling her was true, having noticed that after he mentioned going to NASA he purposely rubbed his hands together to avoid making the truth sign any longer. "Are we going straight there this morning?" she asked, her eyes moving quickly from his hands to his face.

The Time Lord's eyes flickered approvingly. "As soon as you're ready."

"Just give me half an hour." With that Mel went into her room to finish repacking her bags.

The Doctor gave an approving grunt. He pulled the box from his pocket, seeing its red light blinking in a regular pattern. Looking up, he saw Jason standing in the shade of a large tree several metres away. He was leaning back against the trunk staring blankly into space. The Doctor crossed to him, the light on the box turning green when he was within arm's length.

"All clear," the Time Lord announced. Noticing his friend's troubled expression, he asked concernedly, "Jason, you are strong enough to proceed, aren't you? We can delay if you still need time to recharge."

Jason returned to reality with a shudder, turning to his friend with a haunted look in his eyes. "No, it's not that. I was telling Mel about the energy tube and how I got it. And all of a sudden …I…I couldn't talk." Looking down, he asked fearfully, "Will it ever go away? This…this…"

"Guilt?" the Doctor said mildly, causing the Alterran to look up sharply. "You can blame yourself or second guess your actions for the next hundred years, it won't change what happened. But it will tear you apart."

"Doctor, I can't do it anymore."

"What?"

"I can't carry on the illusion—any illusion—anymore." Jason shook his head, looking off into the distance. "I don't...I just don't I have it in me anymore."

The Doctor tried unsuccessfully to stifle a laugh. "My dear Jason, don't confuse fatigue with fallibility. This little deception is as natural as breathing to you. You've even gotten ahead of me once or twice, and that's no small accomplishment."

"No, that's an impossibility." The Alterran ran a hand through his hair, turning back to face him. "Doctor, even if I do go on, I'm no good to you like this. I'm an emotional mess."

"You have also been carrying on a nearly non-stop energy conversion for close to three days," the Doctor pointed out. "Heightened emotions are a normal side-effect of—"

"I know that!" Jason snapped. "This goes further back than the last few days. That's why my Uncle gave me this boring summit in the first place. After what happened on Aegis, I can't…" He shook his head, admitting, "Every year it seems to get worse instead of better."

"Rubbish! You have to stop looking back, stop second guessing yourself and look ahead." The Doctor paused, his voice going from chastising to soothing. "You are a survivor, Jason. You will get through this. But you have to stop blaming yourself for the past."

Jason gave a derisive snort. "Oh? And how do you know? Have you already been to my future, Doctor?" he spat sarcastically. Seeing a guilty look come to the Time Lord's face, he stiffened involuntarily. "You have, haven't you?" he gasped in disbelief. "You've already been there?"

"Let's just say I wouldn't want to talk out of turn again," came the evasively reply.

"Oh great. That's all I need."

The Doctor cleared his throat and immediately changed the subject. "Actually, I came to tell you what Mel knows."

"Not a lot, I imagine. I know I've been getting ahead of her."

"Well, she doesn't have the benefit of your decades of experience or your natural gift for misdirection."

"Deception, you mean."

"Just so. She's learning though. Such as the sign for truth." The Doctor held up a hand in way of demonstration. "It will help her from getting lost. I was able to tell her the truth about the energy tube after you went to sleep. That was after I put on a little performance for our observers and told her it only works temporarily. That you shouldn't be agitated unduly or you run the risk of depleting your energy reserves too quickly."

"So you can't accuse me openly for awhile and I have the opportunity to incriminate myself. Makes things rather neat," Jason said approvingly.

"As I said, keeps more doors open. Now, please get your head on straight. Like it or not, our observers have targeted the both of us, and I need you to help me get these pieces sorted out. We'll be leaving as soon as Mel's ready." The Doctor started back toward the room and stopped, turning back. "You did leave room for breakfast, I hope."

After a quick breakfast, the time travelers made the relatively short journey to the hangar where the wreckage of the once proud SILVER TRIUMPH lay in pieces. The Doctor led the way in, crossing to the area where the dismantled sections of the spacecraft had been laid out on a grid similar to the one that held the pieces recovered from the crash site. "They have been busy," he remarked. An apprehensive Jason followed, this being the first time he had seen the exterior of the ship since he boarded it more than a week—nearly six hundred years in the future—before.

"Where is everyone?" Mel wanted to know, looking around the deserted room.

"Ah," the Doctor said in a self-satisfied tone. "Now that UNIT has pulled everyone from the Base they're coordinating operations here. There's a meeting of the minds, as it were, this morning. Supposed to go on for several hours."

"How very convenient," his companion observed blandly.

"Your suggestion?" Jason asked. He received a glowing smile from the Doctor who replied, "Gives us a bit of time to poke about."

Jason took in the items on the floor in a mixture of awe and sorrow. Turning, he looked at what was left of the ship itself, his eyes growing wide as he realized just how lucky he had been to survive. "My Lord," he whispered. "There's almost nothing left."

The Doctor and Mel exchanged a quick concerned glance before turning to the Alterran who seemed mesmerized by the tangled wreckage.

"Just how big was that thing to begin with?" Mel asked quietly.

Jason came out of his daze and looked around the hangar a moment to gauge its size. "The SILVER TRIUMPH would've easily filled this hangar. The Captain was so proud of her." He shook his head sadly. "She was a real beauty."

"This ship was the SILVER TRIUMPH?" the Doctor asked, a hint of surprise in his voice.

His friend nodded absently as he started towards the wreck. He stopped when the Doctor touched his arm.

"You sure you're ready for this?" he asked in genuine concern.

Jason squeezed his hand to indicate he understood the underlying meaning before flashing an angry look and thrusting the Doctor's hand away. "Afraid I might try to destroy some evidence?" he snapped. Not waiting for a reply, he continued across the hangar, stopping in front of what was left of the passenger cabin, and placing a hand on the scorched hull. He circled around and scrutinized it closely, scanning it at the same time. Once he completed his examination of the exterior, he made his way inside.

The Doctor turned to his companion as Jason vanished behind the sheet covering the hatch. "Perhaps you might keep an eye on him for me," he suggested quietly. "I'm not sure he's emotionally ready for this. I'd rather he weren't alone in there."

Seeing the sign for truth, Mel nodded, going quickly to the entry hatch. She found the Alterran standing motionless inside the stripped passenger cabin. He threw a quick glance back when she appeared in the doorway, relaxing visibly when he saw who it was. "I should not have survived. No wonder the Doctor was…" He held out a hand to take in the room. "Why did this section of the ship survive intact and the rest disintegrate on impact? Triple plating or not, it should've popped like a melon. The exterior hull is aging beyond belief." Jason wondered if the youths he had seen at the other end of the time aura had protected him somehow. Why should they if it was the Doctor they were after? Had they saved him in order to use him as bait?

Now it was Mel's turn to shudder. "Are you saying you'd rather you'd been killed?" she asked practically.

"No. I just… I would've preferred I wasn't the only one who survived—again." Seeing Mel's anguished expression, Jason shook himself out of his dark thoughts. "Sorry. I have a tendency to get morose without warning. Like I said, bad experience." He turned his attention to the interior bulkhead. Putting his hands on it, he scanned it, hoping it might yield some clue as to how he had been protected during the crash. What he found was so startling he gave an involuntary cry of alarm.

"You two alright in there?" the Doctor's concerned voice called from the hangar, pulling Jason back to reality at the same time.

"Yes, we're fine," Mel called back over her shoulder.

"Well, when you're done in there, come take a look at this."

Intrigued, Jason turned. "Now what's he found?" he muttered, heading for the exit.

K'ell'k awoke to find his brother already back at the computer, the globe glowing gently in the darkened room. "Well?" he asked as he went to his own place in the opposite corner.

"I think we're making progress. The Doctor is examining the wreckage. If he finds the transmitter—"

"What transmitter?" K'ell'k asked sharply.

"The one I used so the Ambassador's ship would be pulled into the temporal disturbance. How else do you think I could make certain the correct ship went through?"

"I don't know. You never told me about it. In fact, you haven't told me much about anything, Lix."

His brother gave him a steady look. "You're the one who was worried about being caught. You can't give away what you don't know."

Jason found the Doctor crouched in front of a crushed chunk of plastic, and instantly saw why it had attracted his attention. Unlike the vast majority of the items that littered the floor, it was not a melted, fused mass. As he drew nearer, he realized it was the monitor he had used to keep tabs on the bridge. It had also been what had crushed his right leg to a pulp. "What have you found now that has you so excited?" he asked in as casual a tone a possible.

"You recognize this?" the Time Lord asked without looking up, pointing at the object.

"It's the monitor from the passenger cabin," came the noncommittal reply. "What about it?"

"Incase I miss my guess, this particular model has its own internal memory recorder. The backup black box, I think they used to call it." The Doctor was attacking the back of the monitor, pulling off the casing and hunting through its innards until he found what he was looking for. A cry of triumph escaped him as he pulled out the memory core with a flourish, slipping it into a pocket. He quickly replaced the casing and rose to his feet.

While this was going on, Jason was taking in the items around him and suddenly gave an involuntary cry, having seen what was left of some of his personal belongings. One object in particular grabbed his attention. It appeared to be just a battered metal container but was actually the case containing all the official documentation for the summit. He crossed to it, carefully lifting it from the floor.

"I don't think we should be taking anything so…obvious," the Doctor pointed out.

"Doctor, this box contains everything pertaining to the summit and is vital to my mission," Jason said firmly. "A lot of work went into collecting all this. I thought it was lost in the crash. I'm not losing it again."

The Time Lord cleared his throat. "I don't know if I mentioned this or not, but everything connected with this ship has been slowly disintegrating."

"Everything but me, you mean?"

The Doctor met Jason's challenging gaze, saying nothing.

"I just scanned the interior and exterior of the passenger cabin," Jason informed. "I think it might be best if I take my personal belonging with me. You know they're six hundred years out of time."

The Doctor scowled. His former companion had just informed him that what he needed to do was important but could not be revealed openly. "Alright," he said at last, looking around the room. "But only personal belongings. I can only turn a blind eye for so long."

The Alterran looked around, having to scan the objects too badly damaged to identify visually. The Doctor sent Mel to the TARDIS to retrieve the cart she had used for her luggage and Jason placed his personal possessions on it as he went. He wavered a few times as he examined the items littering the floor, waving off any attempts to assist him, stating that he was simply tired. After nearly half an hour he had examined every item on the floor of the building and crossed to the table that had all the smaller objects laid out on it. With a small squeak of delight, Jason produced his wedding ring and immediately returned to his left hand.

"Now I have everything," he announced.

The Doctor nodded approvingly. "Excellent. Now to the TARDIS."