Chapter 2
"I can't believe it!" Clara exclaimed, acting out her "first reaction" to seeing the interior of the TARDIS with enchanting aplomb, she felt.
Though surely he hadn't detected any artifice on her part, the Doctor looked unimpressed by her performance.
"Yes, it's bigger on the inside, blah-blah-blah," He put in dismissively before she could elaborate. "Let's see now…" He adjusted their course to bring them back to the correct time to avert the mass murder of the Ruillians.
Clara asked, "Doctor, just how big is this TARDIS on the inside?"
"Pretty big," he answered distractingly, tinkering with the controls.
"Lots of rooms, then," she continued blithely.
"Yeah, you can go and look around if you like," he invited, as if he just wanted to give her something to do so that he could think.
"Do you have a room? With a bed in it?" Clara asked, putting coy emphasis on the word "bed."
"Excuse me?" The Doctor looked up finally, perturbed. Ha! She'd gotten his attention now.
"Well, do you?" Clara repeated, sidling up to him until they were very nearly touching.
"Em, eh, uh, yes, I mean, of course, everyone does, right? Except for this one group of aliens I met, they actually sleep in their swimming pools; advantageous to have gills, you know." He looked left, right, anywhere but at Clara, covering his confusion with nervous chit-chat. She laughed warmly.
"I was only thinking that perhaps you should get a bit of sleep before we get to Ruille," Clara explained, and he released a deep breath, relieved.
"I don't need to sleep," he countered, released from the terrifying suggestion of her flirtation back to his duties.
Clara slipped her arm through his. "Don't you think you'll be a more successful savior of a whole planet's worth of aliens if you rest first? Now, which way to your room?"
"I don't know why I keep listening to you, but I can't seem to help it," The Doctor surrendered. "I guess that proves that I am overtired. I've lost my common sense." He nodded in the direction of his room and she dropped him off there.
"Do you ever let your friends, or visitors, or whoever, see your room?" Clara asked, curious. He'd never shown it to her, and in fact, he seemed to have perfected a method of tricking her every time she'd tried to pinpoint its exact location. She wouldn't be surprised if he switched to another room after this. Then she remembered that they would not be traveling together beyond this mission, so he wouldn't need to bother. Sadness tainted her thoughts. She missed his games, even the ones that hurt her. It was just his same old self-defense that made him hide from her so habitually.
"Nooot really," The Doctor replied, raising an eyebrow as if the question perplexed him. She realized that he was waiting for her to leave and nodded, turning neatly on her heels.
"Goodnight then, Doctor," Clara called over her shoulder. "Sweet dreams."
"Goodnight," she caught his simple, quiet reply before she rounded the corner. She knew the tension between them had to be one-sided now, so why did it still seem to be so tangibly there? Like that phantom heartbeat of hers.
He woke soon after they arrived at Ruille and came into the control room stretching and yawning. "Tea?" Clara offered.
"Ah, how thoughtful. I'd love a cup," The Doctor said, rubbing his hands together.
"Great. Then how about you show me where you get tea around here," Clara laughed.
"Oh, dear, I did forget to tell you all about that," The Doctor said apologetically. "You can just ask the TARDIS for whatever you need. You must have been starving, thirsty?"
"I'm fine," Clara smoothed it over. He opened a random cabinet and pulled out a steaming cup of tea.
"Okay then!" He said with renewed exuberance, accepting her convenient reply as if he suspected nothing unusual. "What's our plan?"
"Our…plan?" Clara repeated.
"Yes, of course, Maureen, our plan to save the Ruillians. Surely, given that this whole adventure was your grand idea, you must have a brilliant scheme cooked up, right?"
He sat down and set his teacup on the console, looking over at her expectantly. Was he being snarky, or did he actually have that much faith in her based on this new, brief acquaintance?
"Well, I have a part of a plan," She offered.
"Wonderful! Let's hear it, then." His eagerness seemed sincere and it spurred her on with confidence.
"Okay, so I think what we need to do is interrogate the Ruillians until we can figure out which of them are the spies. I mean, if we root out all of the spies, then we can eliminate the threat of them killing the Ruillians on the new planet, right?" Clara watched him consider her proposal, the wheels turning in his mind.
"Except," he finally replied, "We don't know how many spies there are. The Ruillians are a small race on a tiny world, but there are thousands of them in the capital city and thousands more spread out in villages all over the place. How could we possibly find every spy within the time we have left?"
"That's what I was going to ask you," Clara admitted. "It's the only part of my idea I can't quite seem to figure out." In order to preserve her act, she had to feign ignorance of the sonic sunglasses. They obviously would be able to detect any spies hidden among the population if they could replicate enough of them. It was almost as if he was testing her to see if she was really as new to all of this as she said. How odd.
"Well, I'll tell you what, Maureen, all we really need is a lot more of something we already have," The Doctor explained. "Come on, let's go and tell the Ruillians." They headed into the capital, where the highest ranking government officials and scientists were in a continual council trying to head off the impending crisis.
"Doctor!" One of the scientists, a female with pretty orange skin that flushed bright pink, came rushing over to him. "What are you doing here?"
Another scientist came running up to meet him. The man was so astonished to see the Doctor that he spluttered nonsense for several syllables before becoming intelligible. "But- I mean - how - what - why?"
"Yes, and also where, and of course, Who," The Doctor finished drily. "I know you two are very confused by my arrival, seeing as you were about to leave to kidnap me and my TARDIS and bring me back here to save your people. I decided to save you a trip."
The two aliens looked at each other in shock as The Doctor introduced them cordially to Clara. "Maureen, I'd like you to meet two of the planet's foremost experts in bioscience and weapons technology. Claxmis and her partner, Raddal."
"It's lovely to meet you," Clara assured them pleasantly. "The Doctor and I have an idea about how we can save everyone on Ruille. But we have to move very fast."
They gathered everyone around a large table so that the Doctor and Clara could pitch the idea of trying to find the traitors in their midst, then relocating the Ruillians to another world.
"I see!" Claxmis exclaimed, thrilled to hear of a feasible solution. "But how can we identify the Orison spies quickly enough to stop them coming along on the voyage to the new planet?"
The Doctor held up his sonic sunglasses and told the scientists how they worked. "I'll replicate some more so that we can begin a large-scale investigation. Like a really, really speedy one. But it only stands to reason that the vast majority of the spies would be based here in the capital, so close to the site of the bomb. If we can find even one or two, we may be able to find out their whole plan, and that will save us a lot of trouble trying to find an unknown quantity of agents elsewhere."
"True," Raddal answered respectfully, "But even if we find some of them, they'll never tell us their plans. They would die first."
"Oh, don't be absurd," The Doctor said breezily. "We just have to trick them."
Clara followed his line of reasoning to its indubitable conclusion.
"Using the same tricks they used on you," She told the Ruillians excitedly.
They got to work straight away. As they had suspected, an Orison spy had ingrained himself into the uppermost government council, and had replaced the second-in-command to the capital's leader. The spy was seized, but upon awakening in captivity, he found himself being questioned not by Ruillians but by his own superior officers.
Decked out in full Orison disguises, with blue make-up and yellow contact lenses to create the appearance of the correct features, their antennae carefully concealed beneath the waves of white hair that were another necessity of their disguise, it was the high Rullian Council leader Zotos and his newly promoted, former third-in-command Leta that carried out the interrogation of this prisoner.
The spy gave Zotos and Leta's high-rank-indicating uniforms a nervous once-over and gulped. "My lieges, I see that I am in the presence of those whose authority I must ever respect, but I confess that I do not know who you are."
"That doesn't matter," Zotos retorted in a harsh tone. "What does matter is that you have been compromised. The Ruillians know who you are and what you have done."
"Impossible!" The spy protested. "I've taken every precaution—"
"Still your tongue until it becomes useful again," Leta interrupted. "How can we hope to keep the other agents in play if only one — the most important one — has made himself so pathetically obvious as to be found out within weeks? We'll need a full report of everything you know about the current status of the mission."
The enemy agent frowned, confused and newly suspicious. "Why should I tell you anything? How do I know you are truly who you claim to be? Perhaps you are imposters attempting to trick me."
"Would you like to test that theory back on Oris?" Zotos suggested icily. "I'm sure my superiors would be even more interested to hear your tale of complete failure. "
"That won't be necessary," The spy answered, terrified, seeming to shrink in posture.
"Can you imagine what he'd be in for, what it is that has him so scared?" Clara murmured, shuddering at the brutality at which the Orisons seemed to excel. Watching the whole scene on viewscreen with the Doctor and the rest of the council, she was impressed with Zotos and Leta's progress. Could this be the breakthrough they needed?
It was obvious enough that the spy never would have revealed a thing to any Ruillian who interrogated him with his knowledge. But faced with the threat of torture by his own people, he gave in at once. After all, he had nothing to lose but his dignity.
Soon enough, with more insinuations of the consequences if he didn't talk, the spy had been pressured into revealing plenty of key details to the Orisons' plans.
There were one hundred Orison agents woven into Rullian society. And as the man in charge of the whole operation, this spy knew every one of those names and who they were impersonating. After the interrogation, Zotos sent agents to each place known to harbor a spy so that they could be taken out of play, freeing the Ruillians to escape before the explosion. They had to be deft and swift to prevent the only Orison spies still left active, the ones in charge of setting off the weapon, from finding out that their plot to prevent any Ruillians from fleeing had been foiled. It was easy, now that the Ruillians knew exactly who was who.
"It's happening, Doctor," Clara enthused, grabbing his arm in anxious hope. "It's going to work."
They were back on the TARDIS, waiting to hear from Zotos on the results of the mission to ferret out the spies, and preparing to once again attempt transporting the Ruillians to their new home.
The Doctor collapsed into a chair and dropped his head into his hands. "I can't let myself think that, Maureen," he admitted. "I'm too afraid to believe it after what happened the last time."
She knelt before him and pulled his hands gently from his eyes. "This has to make a difference," she assured him softly.
"Yes," he agreed, oceans of ghosts swirling in his eyes, "but is it going to be enough?"
"It's never enough, Doctor," Clara said a little too knowingly. "It's a start, and that will do."
He looked down at their joined hands and back up at her. Analytically. "Thank you, Maureen."
"Don't thank me yet," Clara replied, trying not be be laid bare by the effect of his gaze.
"You're not in charge of deciding that," The Doctor smiled so genuinely that the answering happiness she felt actually hurt. There was no pleasure in this brief reunion with him that came without pain.