Thank you: I've gotten 136 comments on this story, and I've replied to almost every one of them individually. But sometimes I can't-when they're left by a guest, or when the commenter has private messages turned off. So I wanted to take just a moment to thank every of you for the wonderful messages you leave every week. Hearing that Tuesday has become the highlight of your week has made Tuesday the highlight of mine, and I'm so grateful for your generosity.
AN: This was a fun episode to work with. In general, my approach to working Rose into a story is to have her either do something with the Doctor or Martha, or instead of one of them. So the Racnoss took her along with Donna, and Milo and Cheen took her instead of Martha.
But sometimes, having a third person is a real bonus. When Rose was able to fly the TARDIS while the Doctor rescued Donna from the cab driving Santa, for instance, or when she could stand off to the side and observe the locals when the witches killed Lynley.
Now, finally, she gets to do something entirely new.
Chapter 23: Here Comes the Sun
Rose linked her arm with Martha's the next morning as they walked down the ramp to the console room. "So, have we shown you that travelling through time and space isn't all about finding trouble?" she asked as she took her place beside the Doctor.
The TARDIS shimmied wildly before Martha could answer, and they all grabbed onto the closest solid thing. The Doctor looked up at the monitor and winced. Rose peered over his shoulder and laughed quietly.
"What was that?" Martha asked breathlessly.
"Trouble," Rose said, deadpan.
"Distress signal," the Doctor elaborated. "Lock onto it, Rose. Might be a bit of turbulence," he said, and on cue, they were knocked to the floor. "Sorry." He jumped to his feet and pushed the door open, letting a wave of hot air into the TARDIS. "Come on, ladies. Let's take a look."
A vague sense of wrongness settled on Rose as she followed the Doctor and Martha out of the TARDIS, and she tried to pinpoint its source. It would have been easy to assume it was just the heat and steam that had hit her in the face, but there was something else…
"Oof, it's like a sauna in here." Martha quickly peeled off her sweater, leaving her in just jeans and a red sleeveless top. "Quite the temperature difference from yesterday."
Rose shook her head and started to walk towards the Doctor, but with every step she took, the feeling that she was doing something wrong intensified. She turned back around and stared at the TARDIS while the Doctor rambled about venting systems.
What is it, Rose?
She looked over her shoulder at the Doctor, standing by the door.I just have a bad feeling that we're leaving her behind when we're gonna need her.
The Doctor looked at their trusty ship and for a moment, she could feel his hesitation. The call for help pulled at him though, and he shook his head and turned back to the door.
Rose looked at the TARDIS, then at her bond mate. He and Martha were already stepping through the door, and she followed slowly.
"Oi, you lot!" someone yelled, then someone else said, "Seal that door, now!" and the door slammed shut in her face.
Doctor! Rose called out.
She felt his panic and knew he was working on getting the door open again, but she finally knew what she was supposed to be doing.
I'll stay in the TARDIS. I'm supposed to be in the TARDIS, I think.
She was inside their ship before he could argue. I'm already here, and you know that room is getting too hot for me to walk through again. Maybe you'll need access to the scanner or something, and I can help from here.
oOoOoOoOo
The Doctor spun around when he heard the door clang shut. "What are you doing?" he demanded as he grabbed the handle and tried to pull the door open. "My wife is still in there!"
Before the stranger could answer, Rose reached out to calm him down. I'll stay in the TARDIS, she told him. I'm supposed to be in the TARDIS, I think.
He tried to argue with her, but Rose wouldn't let him. When she pointed out that the room was already unsafe to walk through, he let go of the handle and took a step back.
The Doctor ran his hand through his hair. Rose was safe in the TARDIS, but Rose wasn't with him. He took a breath and reminded himself that he trusted both her and their ship. Having them together was far from a worst-case scenario.
Feeling a little calmer, he looked around at the new faces for the first time—two men and a woman, all looking overheated and frazzled.
"Who are you?" the woman asked. "What are you doing on my ship?"
"Are you police?" the younger of the two men asked.
The Doctor blinked. "Why would we be police?"
"We got your distress signal," Martha said.
And the Doctor thought he'd figured out what the signal was for. "If this is a ship, why can't I hear any engines?"
The captain's shoulders stiffened and the lines around her mouth tightened. "It went dead four minutes ago."
"So maybe we should stop chatting and get to engineering, Captain," the older man said, almost insolently.
Before the captain could answer, the computer announced that secure closure was active. Another crew member came running towards them, with bulkhead doors closing automatically on her heels.
"What?" the captain asked.
"The ship's gone mad," the younger man said.
"Who activated secure closure?" the new arrival said as she burst through a door marked Area 30. "I nearly got locked into Area 27." She stared at the Doctor. "Who are you?" she asked as the last door slammed shut.
Martha beat him to the introductions. "He's the Doctor, I'm Martha. Hello," she said, almost absently as she walked towards the porthole.
"Impact projection forty two minutes twenty seven seconds," the computer warned them.
Impact projection sounded a bit more serious than an average distress signal. The captain looked at her crew, then at the Doctor. "We'll get out of this. I promise."
"Doctor."
The Doctor ignored Martha, focusing on the captain. "Forty two minutes until what?"
"Doctor!" Martha shouted, and he finally joined her at the porthole. "Look."
What he was seeing was impossible, but the captain confirmed it. "Forty two minutes until we crash into the sun."
This was why Rose hadn't wanted to leave the TARDIS. The Doctor ran back to the captain and grabbed her by the shoulders. "How many crew members on board?"
"Seven, including us."
"We transport cargo across the galaxy," the older man explained. "Everything's automated. We just keep the ship space-worthy."
"Call the others, I'll get you out," the Doctor called back to them as he darted to the door between them and the TARDIS.
He ignored the cries and exclamations from the crew and swung the door open. A blast of heat knocked him flat, and he watched in stunned silence as the female crew member grabbed a welder's mask and closed the door again.
"But my ship's in there!" he protested, even though he knew there was no way even he could survive that heat long enough to get to the TARDIS.
"In the vent chamber?" the younger man asked, his eyes darting between the door and the Doctor incredulously.
The Doctor jumped to his feet and turned on him. "It's our lifeboat."
"It's lava," the older, sullen man said flatly.
The stark declaration shook the Doctor, and he reached out for Rose. Everything all right in there, love?
Just as it should be, she reassured him. Why?
The Doctor quickly filled Rose in on the situation on board ship, including the fact that there was no way he could get to her. You were right about leaving the TARDIS behind.
Rose picked up on his guilt. But you were right about wanting to help them. She paused, then said, Couldn't I just move the TARDIS to the other side of the door?
The Doctor shook his head and chuckled—yet again, Rose saw the obvious answer that he missed. He spun on his heel to look at the captain. "Captain, if I told you I had a way to get you and your crew to safety, would you be interested?"
She was shaking her head before he finished the sentence. "This is my ship," she said, and he understood the feeling behind those words. "My husband and I picked her out together; we've lived here for ten years. I'm not leaving."
"Captain, I understand. Believe me, I do. But you've got no engines and you're falling into a sun. I think you're running out of options."
She pressed her lips into a thin line and tilted her head, considering him. "This lifeboat you were talking about," she said after a moment, "will it still be available in say… twenty minutes?"
The Doctor nodded slowly. It was a compromise he could live with. "Can we have some names, if we're going to be working together for the next twenty minutes?" he asked.
The younger man stepped forward, his hand out. "Sorry. Riley Vashti," he said as the Doctor shook his hand. "The one grumbling behind you is Scannell, that's Erina by the door, and our captain's name is McDonnell."
"Nice to meet you," the Doctor said, bouncing on his toes. "So, we fix the engines, we steer the ship away from the sun. Simple." He ran through the crowd in the direction of engineering. "Engineering down here, is it?"
Hold tight, Rose, he told her as he ran. The captain wants to take a shot at repairing the ship first, but if we can't, we'll need you to come pick us up in twenty minutes.
All right, Doctor, but don't let them wait too long.
The Doctor's eyes widened when he entered the engine room. "Blimey, do you always leave things in such a mess?"
"Oh, my God," McDonnell said.
"What the hell happened?" Scannell groaned when he saw the state of the engines.
"Oh, it's wrecked," Riley said, taking in the disarray of parts lying all over the floor. The engine had been almost completely dismantled, and not carefully. Several of the pieces were broken beyond repair, and unless they had replacements, fixing this engine wouldn't be as simple as he'd hoped.
"Pretty efficiently too," the Doctor agreed. "Someone knew what they were doing."
McDonnell looked around the room. "Where's Korwin? Has anyone heard from him or Ashton?"
"No."
"You mean someone did this on purpose?" Martha asked.
The Doctor shook his head as he took in the extent of the damage. His eyebrows rose when he noted they used energy scoops for fusion. Filing that fact away, he made his way over to a computer terminal, putting his glasses on so he could read it more easily.
"Korwin, Ashton? Where are you?" the captain asked over the intercom. "Korwin, can you answer? Where the hell is he?" she demanded when she didn't get an answer. "He should be up here."
"Oh, we're in the Torajii system," the Doctor said when he managed to get into the computer system. "Lovely. You're a long way from home, Martha," he added. "Half a universe away."
"Yeah. Feels it," she said.
But their location made the energy scoops even more anomalous. "And you're still using energy scoops for fusion?" he asked McDonnell. "Hasn't that been outlawed yet?"
The captain shared a glance with Riley—who happened to be the one who'd asked if they were the police. "We're due to upgrade next docking," she said, and the lie was painfully transparent. "Scannell, engine report."
Scannell moved to the same computer terminal the Doctor had just used and ran a diagnostic. "No response."
"What?" McDonnell breathed.
Scannell jogged around to the other side of the engine and inspected it closer with a torch. "They're burnt out. The controls are wrecked. I can't get them back online."
"Oh, come on." The Doctor whipped his glasses off. "Auxiliary engines. Every craft's got auxiliaries."
"We don't have access from here," the captain said. "The auxiliary controls are in the front of the ship."
"Yeah, with twenty nine password sealed doors between us and them," Scannell proclaimed darkly. "You'll never get there in time."
"Can't you override the doors?" Martha asked.
"No. Sealed closure means what it says," Scannell said bluntly. "They're all dead-lock sealed."
The Doctor slid the sonic screwdriver back into his pocket. Well there goes that idea. "So a sonic screwdriver's no use."
Scannell scoffed at him."Nothing's any use. We've got no engines, no time, and no chance."
The Doctor looked at McDonnell. "It might be a good time to call it a day, Captain. Say the word, and I'll have my wife bring our ship here so we can evacuate you and your crew."
She hesitated this time, but in the end, held her ground. "Nothing is going to happen to us in the seventeen minutes we have left," she told him. "Let's give repairing the engines a try."
The Doctor sighed, but didn't argue. "All right. And while we're working on these engines, someone can try to get through the doors between here and the auxiliaries. Who's got the door passwords?"
"They're randomly generated," Riley said. "Reckon I know most of them."
"Then what're you waiting for, Riley Vashti?" the Doctor asked, jerking his head towards the front of the ship. "Get on it."
Riley turned around and pulled a heavy red backpack down from a shelf. "Well, it's a two person job. One, to take this for the questions, and the other to carry this."
He grabbed a clamp with a manual handle, and the Doctor recognised the system. The clamp would fit over the automatic door lock, and when the question was answered correctly, the computer would send a pulse to it, allowing the wheel to turn, opening the door.
Riley slung the backpack over one shoulder and looked at McDonnell. "The oldest and cheapest security system around, eh, Captain?"
"Reliable and simple, just like you, eh, Riley?"
Riley put the backpack containing the computer on, hefting it up on his shoulders. "Try and be helpful, get abuse. Nice."
"I'll help you." Martha grabbed the clamp from him. "Make myself useful."
"It's remotely controlled by the computer panel," Riley said. "That's why it needs two."
"Oi." The Doctor rested a hand on her shoulder. "Be careful."
"You too." She smiled warmly, then followed Riley towards the first sealed door.
The Doctor watched her go, then took a moment to think about their situation. A ship falling into a sun because the engines had been sabotaged. A ship that quite obviously still used illegal energy scoops to get fuel for their fusion engines.
Rose, are you still interested in running some scans?
Tell me what you need and how to set them up.
He quickly ran her through the process to run a scan of the sun they were falling into. It should take ten minutes, maybe a little longer. Let me know as soon as the results come back.
Of course. He sensed Rose hesitating, and waited. Be careful.
I will.
During their brief telepathic conversation, McDonnell had gotten a call from the med centre. She ran out of engineering just as he ended the conversation with Rose, and everyone else in the room followed after her. They ran past Riley and Martha, who were getting ready to open the first door.
"Impact in thirty four thirty one," the computer announced, and the Doctor tried to keep his brain from calculating the chances that they could get an engine—any engine—working in that time. If they hadn't made substantial progress when the twenty minutes were up, he would insist that the captain evacuate. There wasn't any point in going down with her ship when there was an escape available.
"Korwin!" McDonnell cried out as she burst into a brightly lit room, the Doctor on her heels. "What's happened? Is he okay?"
The Doctor looked down at Korwin, who was thrashing around on the bed. Another man—presumably Ashton—was helping the crew physician restrain him so they could get him inside what looked like a dated MRIscanner. He ran to the doctor's side to get a closer look at the patient.
"Kath, help me!" Korwin grunted, his eyes screwed shut. "It's burning me!"
"How long's he been like this?" the Doctor asked.
The doctor didn't look away from her patient. "Ashton just brought him in," she told him.
The Doctor scanned Korwin quickly with the sonic screwdriver, and the doctor looked at him, askance. "What are you doing?"
"Don't get too close," the Doctor told the crew, who were all crowding around their friend.
"Don't be so stupid," McDonnell spat out. "That's my husband."
"And he's just sabotaged our ship," Ashton retorted.
"What?" McDonnell asked.
"He went mad," Ashton told her as he fought to hold Korwin's shoulders down. "He put the ship onto secure closure, then he set the heat pulse to melt the controls."
She shook her head. "No way. He wouldn't do that."
"I saw it happen, Captain."
"Korwin?" The Doctor put a hand on the man's shoulder. "Korwin, open your eyes for me a second."
He thrashed around on the bed, his eyes screwed shut. "I can't!"
His refusal tracked with the readings the Doctor had gotten from the sonic. Korwin's brain activity was highly abnormal. Still, he gave it one last shot. There must be something about his eyes that held the answer to the mystery.
"Yeah, course you can," the Doctor said. "Go on."
Korwin's thrashing became more violent."Don't make me look at you, please."
The time for talking was over; Ashton and the doctor were struggling to hold Korwin still. The Doctor grabbed a hypo-gun off the instrument tray. "All right, all right, all right. Just relax." He held the device up to the doctor. "Sedative?"
She nodded. "Yes."
The Doctor pressed the spray to Korwin's neck and sedated him. He convulsed one last time, then fell back limply on the bed.
"What's wrong with him?" McDonnell asked.
"Rising body temperature, unusual energy readings," the Doctor mused. He paused for a moment, then snapped his fingers when he finally realised what Korwin was sitting in front of. "Stasis chamber. I do love a good stasis chamber. Keep him sedated in there. Regulate the body temperature."
The doctor turned around to a computer terminal and started punching in commands.
The Doctor stared at Korwin's sedated body. "And, just for fun, run a bioscan and tissue profile on a metabolic detail."
The doctor looked back at him over her shoulder, her brows drawn together in confusion. "Just doing them now."
"Oh, you're good," the Doctor said. "Anyone else presenting these symptoms?"
"Not so far," she told him.
"Well, that's something."
"Will someone tell me what is the matter with him?" McDonnell entreated.
"Some sort of infection. We'll know more after the test results." He leaned over the bed and looked her in the eye. "Now, allons-y, back downstairs," he told her, pointing towards the door, but she didn't move. "Hey." She looked at Korwin, then back at the Doctor. "See about those engines. Go. Hey. Go," he said, his voice a little softer at the end. With one last fearful glance at her husband, McDonnell left the med centre.
The Doctor stared down at Korwin for a moment longer, then jogged towards the door. "Call us if there's news," he told the doctor. "Any questions?"
"Yeah. Who are you?"
He paused at the door and grinned back at her."I'm the Doctor. And you are?"
"Abi Lerner, ship's physician."
"Good luck, Doctor," he told her, then ran back to engineering.
oOoOoOoOo
Seven minutes after Martha had left the engine room with Riley, they were still waiting at the first door. The computer continued its countdown—heat shields at twenty-five percent, impact in thirty-two fifty—and she looked over at Riley, who was keying something into the computer he'd brought with them.
"Hurry up, will you?"
"All right." He continued typing, then looked at her and pointed at the door. "Fix the clamp on."
As she did, she realised Riley had gone back to typing on the computer. "What are you typing?"
"Each door's trip code is the answer to a random question set by the crew." He shot her a grin. "Nine tours back, we got drunk, thought them up. Reckoning was, if we're hijacked, we're the only ones who know all the answers."
Martha was starting to understand exactly how the system worked. "So you type in the right answer…"
Riley patted the top of the computer. "This sends an unlock pulse to the clamp. But we only get one chance per door. Get it wrong, the whole system freezes."
Privately, Martha thought that sounded like a rubbish security system—what happened if the crew changed, or if one of them were injured? To Riley, she only said, "Better not get it wrong then."
"Okay. Date of SS Pentallian's first flight. That's all right." He pointed at Martha. "Go!"
She looked down at the clamp, and the lights turned green. "Yes!" she exclaimed as the door swung open.
"Twenty eight more to go!" Riley reminded her as they passed through it.
Running through the corridor, Martha remembered again that part of what she loved about travelling with Rose and the Doctor was the adrenaline rush. Here she was, racing against the clock to save a ship from falling into a sun. It was terrifying, but it was also fantastic.
The Doctor's voice came over the intercom just as they reached door twenty-eight. "Martha? Riley? How're you doing?"
"Area 29 at the door to 28," she told him.
"Yeah, you've got to move faster."
She pulled a face at his impatience. "We're doing our best."
Riley pulled up the next question while she slammed the clamp onto the door. "Find the next number in the sequence 313, 331, 367." He stared blankly at the monitor. "What?"
His confusion threw Martha, and she looked at him over her shoulder. "You said the crew knew all the answers."
He shrugged sheepishly. "The crew's changed since we set the questions."
"You're joking." Definitely rubbish.
The Doctor broke in over the intercom. "379."
"What?" Martha asked, both a little surprised that the rest of the crew was apparently listening to everything they were saying, and confused by his answer.
"It's a sequence of happy primes. 379."
"Happy what?" Martha mumbled.
"Just enter it!" he ordered.
Martha and Riley exchanged a worried look, and Riley asked, "Are you sure? We only get one chance."
"Any number that reduces to one when you take the sum of the square of its digits and you continue iterating until it yields one is a happy number. Any number that doesn't, isn't. A happy prime is a number that is both happy and prime. Now type it in!" he ordered. "I don't know, talk about dumbing down! Don't they teach recreational mathematics any more?" he muttered.
The door opened, and in Martha's elation, she let his insult slide. "We're through!"
"Keep moving, fast as you can," the Doctor told her. "And, Martha, be careful. There may be something else on board this ship."
"Any time you want to unnerve me, feel free."
"Will do, thanks."
Martha rolled her eyes at his blasé answer, then pushed aside the idea that there was something on board. According to the computer, two minutes had passed since they'd stood outside door 29, which meant they were moving at a rate of a door per minute. The Doctor might think they needed to move faster, but all things considered, that didn't seem like too bad a pace.
The way they got through the doors, on the other hand… When they reached door 27, she stood with Riley while he pulled up the question. "I can't believe our lives depend on some stupid pub quiz. Is that the next one?"
He wiped the sweat off his brow. "Oh, this is a nightmare. Classical music. Who had the most pre-download number ones, Elvis Presley or The Be-a-tles? How are we supposed to know that?"
"Doctor?" Martha asked.
"What is it now?" he snapped.
"Who had the most number ones, Elvis or the Beatles? That's pre-download."
"Elvis. No, the Beatles. No, wait." There was a pause, and Martha had a feeling he was asking Rose.
"It's Elvis," he said a moment later, his voice confident.
"Thank you, Doctor. And thank Rose for us too," she said, fancying she could detect his surprise over the intercom.
Riley looked at her as he typed it in. "Who's Rose?"
"Rose is his wife—you know, the one he yelled at you to let out of the venting chamber, only you didn't open the door in time?" He winced, and she felt bad. "Sorry. Just be glad it was simple enough for her to get back into our ship, or he would have shoved you out of the way and gone back in for her, no matter how dangerous it was."
The door swung open and they packed up the gear to go on to the next one. "So if she's on your ship, how come you're thanking her?"
Martha hesitated; Rose hadn't strictly told her not to tell anyone they were telepathic, but it wasn't something they broadcasted either. "The Doctor and Rose have a personal communication device," she said.
"That's convenient," Riley said as they jogged down the corridor.
"Very."
oOoOoOoOo
Rose tapped her fingers again the console, and the TARDIS zapped her lightly. I'm sorry, dear, she said, patting a strut affectionately. I just want to know what's going on, and why it was so important for me to stay in here.
The moment she'd stepped back into the TARDIS, that sense of wrongness had disappeared. Something was happening here, something they could change, and she could do more from here than she could out on the ship with the Doctor.
At first, she'd thought her presence in the TARDIS would allow them to rescue the crew. She understood why the captain had asked for time to save her ship, but she wished they'd just agreed to leave right away.
Rose had been grateful when the Doctor had asked her to set up the scan, both because it validated the need for her to be here, and because it gave her something to do. Watching spy movies with the Doctor, she'd always wondered if the person who stayed in the van got bored, waiting to be needed. Well, now she knew the answer.
Rose, who had more number ones, pre-download: Elvis, or the Beatles?
The question came out of the blue, but thanks to dating a wannabe rockstar, Rose knew the answer. Elvis.
You're sure?
Remember, the Beatles weren't even available to download the last time I would have looked up Earth statistics.
Thank you.
The TARDIS beeped, and Rose hopped off the jump seat. Pulling the monitor around, she frowned. There was something about the rhythm of the solar flares that seemed familiar…
Can you pull up a saved scan on a similar sun and put them side by side? she asked the ship. A moment later, she was looking at a split screen, and her jaw dropped. These readings were wildly different from what a sun should normally show. When compared to the arhythmic behaviour of a typical sun, she recognised the pattern that had struck her—it was like breaths, or heartbeats.
Doctor! She sensed that she immediately had his attention, and she continued. These results…
His focus shifted abruptly. Something was happening onboard ship that required his full concentration, and she paced the console room.
It only took a moment for him to come back to her. What's happening? she asked.
Something's wrong in the med centre. The captain's husband has been taken over by a parasite, and I think it's causing him to threaten the doctor. Show me the results.
Rose stared at the screen and then closed her eyes, focusing on sending the picture over their bond. The Doctor swore in Gallifreyan when he got it, and she winced.
Is it what I think it is?
If you think that sun is alive, then yes. And I think I might know what's causing everything on this ship, but—
He pulled back from their connection so abruptly it gave Rose a mild headache. "Oh, I hate this," she muttered, sitting on the jump seat and rubbing at her temple. "You'd better be careful out there."
oOoOoOoOo
After passing the answer on to Martha, the Doctor turned back to the engine problem—they needed a backup in case Martha and Riley didn't reach the auxiliary engines in time.
"Now, where was I?" he asked. "Here comes the sun. No, resources." It struck him like lightning, and he pointed to the generator in the back of engineering. "So, the power's still working, the generator's going. If we can harness that. Ah!"
McDonnell's eyes showed hope for the first time since he and Martha had arrived onboard. "Use the generator to jump-start the ship."
"Exactly. At the very least, it'll buy us some more time," he said pointedly. They barely had ten minutes left before evacuation became necessary.
She nodded quickly. "That is brilliant."
The Doctor grinned and looked around the room. "I know. See? Tiny glimmer of hope."
"If it works," Scannell said pessimistically.
McDonnell looked at him, her eyes hard. "Oh, believe me. You're going to make it work."
He glowered at her, but turned around to get to work. The Doctor looked back at McDonnell, a triumphant grin on his face."That told him."
The mood in engineering had just turned around when Abi called over the intercom. "Doctor, these readings are starting to scare me."
"What do you mean?" the Doctor asked.
"Well, Korwin's body's changing. His whole biological make-up. It's impossible."
The Doctor rubbed at his forehead. This was the news he'd been fearing ever since he'd read the scans on the sonic. The readings had matched those of someone who was being taken over by an aggressive parasite. That's why he'd wanted him sedated and kept in the stasis chamber—to keep the parasite from spreading.
Doctor! He turned inward and focused on Rose. These results…
"This is med centre," Abi said, and when he heard the panic in her voice, he turned all his attention towards her. "Urgent assistance requested. Urgent assistance!"
Her voice was high and shaky, and the Doctor raced out of the room with McDonnell on his heels. "Stay here! Keep working!" he ordered as he ran by Scannell.
"Korwin, what's happened to you?" Abi asked.
A hoarse voice came over the intercom. "Burn with me."
What's happening? Rose asked.
Something's wrong in the med centre. The captain's husband has been taken over by a parasite, and I think it's causing him to threaten the doctor. Show me the results.
A moment later, she sent him a picture of the scan results. He saw the truth immediately and swore silently in Gallifreyan. So that's what had infected Korwin.
Is it what I think it is? Rose asked.
This was even worse than the Doctor had anticipated. A living sun wasn't something he'd ever encountered before. If you think that sun is alive, then yes. And I think I might know what's causing everything on this ship, but—
"Captain?" Scannell said.
The Doctor wheeled around after turning a corner, cutting off his conversation with Rose as he turned. "I told you to stay in engineering."
"I only take orders from one person round here," he said flatly.
"Oh, is he always this cheery?" the Doctor groused, put out that Scannell hadn't done what he said.
The eerie conversation in the med centre was still being broadcast over the comms.
"Burn with me," Korwin repeated.
"Korwin, you're sick," Abi pleaded.
"Burn. With. Me."
They hadn't yet reached the med centre when Abi's screams pierced the air over the intercom. McDonnell froze for an instant, horror and disbelief on her face, and then she started running again.
"Doctor, what were those screams?" Martha asked.
The Doctor ran up the stairs. "Concentrate on those doors. You've got to keep moving forward."
The med centre was empty when they finally reached it. "Korwin's gone," McDonnell said, staring at the empty stasis chamber.
"Oh, my God."
The Doctor turned and followed Scannell's gaze, his hearts dropping when he saw what had drawn that reaction from the man. Burned into the radiation shield was a silhouette of a woman, cringing in fear.
"Tell me that's not Lerner," Scannell pleaded, the first time he'd shown an emotion besides resentment since they'd arrived.
The Doctor touched the pattern and realised it wasn't a silhouette at all—it was burn residue. "Endothermic vaporisation. I've never seen one this ferocious." It clicked then, Korwin's words and the living sun. "Burn with me."
"That's what we heard Korwin say," Scannell said.
The words startled McDonnell out of her horrified daze. "What? Do you think…?" She stepped forward, shaking her head. "No way. Scannell, tell him. Korwin is not a killer. He can't vaporise people. He's human!"
The Doctor picked up the test results that had concerned Abi. "His bioscan results. Internal temperature, one hundred degrees! Body oxygen replaced by hydrogen. Your husband hasn't been infected; he's been overwhelmed."
McDonnell snatched it out of his hand. "The test results are wrong."
For the Doctor, the pieces had all fallen into place. He crossed his arms and stared at the captain. "You use an energy scoop. Did you refuel from that sun?"
She was silent, but the way her eyes wouldn't meet his told him the truth.
He shoved his hands through his hair. "You should have scanned for life!"
"I don't understand," McDonnell said, blinking up at him.
"That sun is alive. A living organism. You scooped out its heart, used it for fuel, and now it's screaming!"
McDonnell shook her head. "What do you mean? How can a sun be alive? Why are you saying that?
"Because it's living in Korwin," he said bluntly. "I told you he'd been infected, taken over by another organism. It's the sun, the sun you wounded that's now trying to take back its own."
"How can you possibly know that?" Scannell demanded. "You can't know that."
The Doctor glared at the engineer who'd been nothing but a pain in the arse from the moment they'd met. "One, I'm very clever. Two, my wife, who is also very clever, scanned the sun from our ship and sent me the results." He waved his sonic screwdriver at them, fudging the truth slightly. "Three, didn't I mention the oxygen in Korwin's body had been replaced by hydrogen? Which happens to be one of the key elements in a star?"
"Oh, my God." McDonnell leaned against the wall, staring blankly into space. "This is all my fault. I did this—I brought this thing onto our ship and now it's in Korwin."
"You should have scanned," the Doctor told her quietly.
McDonnell turned around, her face in her hands. Scannell looked at her, then back at the Doctor. "Doctor, if you give her a minute." He put a comforting hand on her elbow, but she shook her head and spun away from him.
"I'm fine. I need to warn the crew." She took a deep breath, then walked to the comms station and pressed the button. "Everybody, listen to me. Something has infected Korwin. We think…" She paused, and her pain-filled eyes met the Doctor's. "He killed Abi Lerner," she finished. "None of you must go anywhere near him, is that clear?"
McDonnell took her finger off the comms button and pressed her forehead to the wall, gathering her strength. After a moment, she sat down on the steps and looked up at the Doctor.
"Is the infection permanent?" she asked. "Can you cure him?"
The Doctor could see the desperate longing in her eyes, so he lied. "I don't know."
She sucked in a breath, seeing through the Doctor's bad poker face. "Don't lie to me, Doctor. Eleven years we've been married. We chose this ship together. He keeps me honest, so I don't want false hope," she said emphatically.
The Doctor clenched his jaw. "The parasite's too aggressive. Your husband's gone. There's no way back. I'm sorry."
McDonnell nodded a few times. "Thank you," she said, then pressed her lips together to keep from crying.
He sighed and sat down on the bed. "The thing is, knowing what's infected Korwin, knowing what's going on, that doesn't change our current situation at all. We need to dump the fuel, obviously, but I'm guessing the controls to do that are in the front of the ship?"
The captain nodded. "But we can tell Riley now, so he does it as soon as he gets there," she pointed out.
"True, we can." He paused. "Although it might be time to admit defeat," he suggested. "There's only four minutes left in your twenty, and Rose could have the TARDIS here in less than a minute." Her hands clenched into fists, and the Doctor pressed his advantage. "You need to think of the safety of your remaining crew. That sun is angry. He will be looking for…" McDonnell flinched, and he let the sentence trail off.
There was a tense silence in the med centre, then McDonnell let out a long breath. "You're right, Doctor."
oOoOoOoOo
The announcement that Korwin was infected and a crew member was dead lit a fire under Martha and Riley. They blazed through the next five doors, then Martha chanced contacting the Doctor on the comms.
"Doctor, we're through to Area 16."
"Change of plans," he told her. "We're evacuating the ship. Come back to Area 30; Rose will have the TARDIS there by the time you arrive."
Martha couldn't help the loud sigh of relief that whooshed out of her lungs. "Best news I've heard all day," she said honestly.
Riley put the computer back in the backpack and zipped it shut. "Well, we had a good run at least, didn't we?" he asked as he shouldered the bag.
The door behind them opened, cutting off Martha's response. Steam billowed into Area 17, and she strained to see who was coming through.
"Who's there?" Riley asked.
Martha couldn't make out the face of the hazy figure that appeared in the steam, and she didn't know the crew well enough to know who was who without seeing their features.
"Is that Korwin?" she asked nervously.
"No, wait a minute," Riley said, taking a few steps towards the door.
The figure stepped into the room, wearing a welding helmet over his face.
Riley's shoulders raised in a sigh of relief. "Oh, Ashton, what're you doing?"
"Burn with me," Ashton said.
Martha froze. That was what Korwin had said in the med centre; they'd all heard it. She started looking around the room frantically for a way out while Riley kept talking to his friend, unaware of the truth.
"Well, if you want to help—"
"Burn with me. Burn with me." Ashton raised his hand to the visor.
Martha smacked the control she'd spotted. "Move!" A door opened, and she slipped through it. "Come on!"
They were in a small room, empty except for a control panel and a hatch on the opposite wall. She leaned back against the wall, breathing heavily, but Ashton appeared in the door's window, and she realised they weren't safe quiteyet.
Riley turned to the panel and quickly opened the hatch to the tiny chamber. Martha climbed in first, and Riley shut the door behind him.
Ashton turned his head to look at something on his right, and Riley shook his head in disbelief. "What is happening on this ship?"
"Never mind that, where are we?" Martha asked.
"Airlock sealed. Jettison escape pod."
Martha looked at Riley. "That doesn't mean us?" The look on his face told her all she needed to know.