It took him a bit longer than he had anticipated to get the door open, but after about twenty seconds the lock gave way. The door opened outward, so it went without saying that he pulled the door open while River stood right in front of it looking impressive with her gun in hand. He wasn't quite sure how he felt about that yet, but at least she had more or less promised not to shoot on sight. Under the given circumstances that was probably the best thing he could hope for. It didn't mean he liked it.

As confrontations went, this one was rather unspectacular. He pulled the door open and River stood there, looking definitely impressive – which he really shouldn't like all that much – pointing her gun at absolutely nothing except a wall of shelves filled with more nothing.

'Nobody here,' he said. He'd really thought he'd found something. That was a bit of a disappointment.

'I can see that,' River remarked dryly. She put the gun back and took out the scanner instead. 'But now that this door is out of the way, I could get some readings from this space. I wonder what they're keeping here that is worth overriding the deadlock for.'

She and him both. This door would have opened – should have opened? – when all the other doors did, so someone must have gone to the trouble to close it after the crash. And why would someone do that only to guard a room filled with nothing? It didn't make sense.

'It's bigger than it looks,' River reported. 'And I'm picking up life signs just around the corner over there.'

So there were people here after all.

'Hello!' the Doctor yelled into the freezer that wasn't being a freezer at the moment.

'I don't think that's going to convince them to come out, Doctor,' River said. 'They're hiding for a good reason. I'm the Doctor, I'm here to help is probably not going to cut it.'

He glared at her. 'What would you say then?' He had the unpleasant feeling it would run along the lines of hands up or I'll shoot.

River shrugged. 'Not that.'

That was not an answer in the Doctor's opinion, and really there was only one thing to be done in this case: go in and see what was out there. In the meantime he'd better keep his fingers crossed that no one would feel the need to shoot him; he was running a bit low on regeneration energy.

Behind him River muttered something about how she wondered how he had even survived this long, had he no sense of self-preservation at all? The Doctor rather thought that he just had an awful lot of luck. Thus far no one had tried to shoot him, and the would-be freezer was rather too quiet. He kept the sonic in front of him, scanning for life signs, while River with her scanner was doing the same thing.

'Three life signs ahead,' the Doctor reported.

'And two somewhere to your left,' River added. 'Definitely human, going by the signals.'

Small surprise, that. He'd more or less known that since they had seen the main control room, that clearly had been designed for human use. Still, it was nice to know that there wasn't a big wolf thingy around the corner waiting to rip his throat out. Not that he had expected it; wolf thingies didn't know how to lock doors. He doubted they had the self-restraint to wait either. No, that would not be the problem. The human trouble was often a bit more complicated.

Speaking of which. 'Stop right there!' a male voice shouted. 'Drop your weapons!'

The next second he was experiencing the very unpleasant sensation of a gun against the side of his head, coming from the left, where River had said that she had detected two life signs. It was one of those days that the Doctor realised he should have paid better attention to his surroundings. Unfortunately he usually had those bright notions when it was already too late.

Reluctantly he dropped the sonic. Not that the screwdriver was a weapon, but people with guns had that annoying habit to shoot first and ask questions later.

'We're here to help!' he protested.

He wanted to look back to see how River was doing, but moving sounded like a very bad idea right about now. But he was the Doctor; he could get out of any impossible situation. Today was not going to be an exception.

'Who are you?' the voice demanded.

'You've stranded here,' he pointed out. 'We can help you get off-planet.' That was not strictly speaking a lie; the TARDIS was out there somewhere, provided he could reach it before he was ripped apart by the wolf thingies. But that was a concern for later. Point number one was to get that gun away from him. Humans and their love of weapons. Some things really never changed.

'Your names!' the voice repeated, a little more irritated this time.

'The Doctor,' he replied. As long as that weapon was trained at his head it seemed like a much better plan to comply. He'd figure out what was going on here, but for the moment this man sounded like a frightened refugee who knew full well that he had done something he shouldn't have. 'And my friend here is Dr River Song. We're from the Intergalactic Crash Emergency Corporation.' The name was not actually made up. This corporation actually existed, just not until the eighty-ninth century. 'We got your message.'

'Prove it,' the man said. If he was trying to sound tough and unyielding, he failed.

'My credentials are in my pocket,' he said.

Why hadn't he heard from River yet? Normally she was the first in line to get involved, but now he didn't even hear a sound. She had to be up to something. She was River Song; it was what she did. Not that he always agreed with her plans – kissing Romans exactly in order to trick them into believing she was Cleopatra, graffiti the oldest cliff in the universe, jump out of spaceships… - but they had the tendency to work, which was fine by him as long as there were please no guns involved. But he hadn't heard someone demanding of her to drop her weapon. Had she managed to get away?

But then, River Song was not the kind of woman to run away from anything.

The best he could do was to buy them a little bit of time. Surely River would have come up with a plan of some kind by now. He rather hoped she had.

'Show me,' the man said. The Doctor noted with interest that this one was the only one who had spoken so far, even though he was quite sure there had been five life signs present. Only one of those was moving and talking.

Obediently he slipped his hand into the pocket of his jacket and produced the psychic paper, that would now be proclaiming River and himself high-ranking officials from the Intergalactic Emergency Cooperation. He handed it over.

From the corner of his eyes he could see the man – tall, muscled, brown hair, mid-thirties – take a good look at it while also keeping a very close eye on the Doctor himself. 'If that is true, Mr Doctor,' he began, scepticism colouring his every word, 'then where has your "colleague" disappeared off to?'

'Ah. She's doing a… thing,' he said, but trailed off when he realised how pathetic an excuse that was. 'A very important thing,' he carried on. He was improvising; he was good at improvising. He lived most of his life making it up as he went along, and it tended to work. It'd better work; he didn't think he'd have enough regeneration energy left to fix a sixty-eighth century bullet to the head.

The man shuddered, although the Doctor could not see the cause for that. Well, not right away at least. But suddenly the gun was lowered and the man swivelled around. Curious as to what could have caused such a change in behaviour, the Doctor did the same.

He shouldn't have surprised to see River standing there.

His attacker's eyes were roughly the size of saucers. 'Mother?' he asked incredulously.

The Doctor blinked, and when asked about it later, he would violently deny his jaw had dropped. What?

Then he saw the traces of lipstick on the man's cheek. And not just any lipstick. River's lipstick. River's hallucinogenic lipstick.

Oh.

Now it all made sense.

River should not have been surprise to find that the Doctor had completely forgotten about the two life forms that she had mentioned to his left, busy as he was to work out why a group of five people would choose to hide out in a freezer when their ship had crashed and all the cargo had escaped to go on a killing rampage around the crash site. Bless.

Fortunately there were some perks to being a trained assassin, even if she could not possibly recall most of the training. But that was something to think about some other time, preferably when there wasn't someone holding a gun against the Doctor's head.

She flicked off her torch and scanner disappeared between to stacks of shelves, trying to think of a better way to get the Doctor out of trouble than in a shoot-out that would doubtlessly bring his wrath down on her. He was at that age when he still had to find his appreciation for occasionally shooting things and besides, killing the attackers might be counterproductive. You couldn't ask questions of dead people.

And there was something wrong here. There were five life signs, all of them humanoid. But there was only one attacker. Where were the other four and why were they not pointing guns at her husband? Not that she was complaining, mind, but it was strange. And strange had the annoying tendency to be suspicious.

She had diverted to the left, so she was very close to where her scanner had indicated one of the life forms. She might as well go and take a peek, see what was happening. Knowing the Doctor, his chatter would keep his attacker plenty occupied until she had worked out just what was going on here.

As it turned out, the mystery didn't take much effort to solve. In fact, it was a rather easy one as mysteries went. There was indeed someone there, but he – human male, late twenties – was unconscious, lying on a makeshift bed of blankets with half the supplies from the ship's med bay spread out around him. The bandages around head and right arm were proof enough that he needed the medical care Mr Attacker-with-gun had been giving him, although it seemed like his knowledge of the art he had been trying to practise were rudimentary at best. Ten to one that the other three people present here were not exactly in better condition.

Of course the Doctor had to run into the only one capable of handling a gun. He attracted trouble like a magnet. But then, so did she.

Well, they wouldn't have anything to fear from this man in the foreseeable future, so she'd risk it to turn her back on him while she went to deal with the man who held a gun to her husband's head. The temptation to shoot him and have done with it was certainly very much present, but all things considered, still counterproductive. There had to be other ways, and so she cast her mind back to the time not all that long ago when he had so seemingly carelessly dropped spoilers about this outing.

Don't forget to bring your lipstick, good rope and Jammie Dodgers.

She had already used the rope to get them into the ship and she had fed enough Jammie Dodgers to the wolves to feed a very large orphanage, so that only left the lipstick. Hallucinogenic lipstick.

There were days when there were far too many risks involved in one of the Doctor's schemes for even River, and this was one of those days. She wasn't opposed to taking risks, but she'd rather not gamble with the Doctor's life. If that man over there killed him, her entire life would be rewritten – fortunately they'd now passed the point where it would be unwritten, but that would only be a very small consolation – and River was not planning on letting that ever happen.

Nevertheless, lipstick was what the future Doctor remembered, which left her no choice in the matter. Her only luck was that the Doctor was still chattering on about the Intergalactic Crash Emergency Corporation – it made her smile; for a Time Lord he had remarkable bad memory when it came to dates, because as far as River was aware that corporation would not exist for three thousand years – keeping his attacker plenty occupied. Bless. The one trait he never lacked was the chattering.

She applied the lipstick and studied the situation just as the Doctor handed over the psychic paper for the man to look at. He had just realised that there should be another person here, and the Doctor informed him that she was doing a thing, a very important thing.

River stifled her laughter.

Not that it was entirely untrue, mind. They were on a mission of sorts, but it was more of a mission to get the wolves off-planet than it was to help the crewmembers of the stranded ship, although knowing the Doctor he'd kill two birds with one stone and get them to safety as well.

But she had best distract the attacker first before she started pondering about solutions. No doubt her father and mother would be sorely put out if she brought the Doctor back to them with a bullet hole in his skull.

River had years and years of experience sneaking up to people and past guards. Getting to the member of crew without being seen was a piece of cake. Of course it remained something of a gamble all the same; he'd already realised she was gone and wanted to know where she had gone off to, so it well within the range of possibilities that he would turn around to look for her. And then where would they be?

As luck would have it, he didn't do that until she had pressed her lips against his cheek.

Having said that, it went a little downhill from that. True enough he lowered the gun and swivelled around to look at her, but the reaction she got from him was not exactly what she had intended.

'Mother?'

River would violently deny having been surprised, and she certainly never showed it. It was always something of a surprise what the effect of the lipstick would be. Sometimes the victims suddenly thought they were somewhere else, sometimes they started seeing persons that weren't there and sometimes they thought she was someone she decidedly was not. And River Song was nobody's mother.

But then, she was good at improvising. 'Hello, son.'

The Doctor was still gawping like a fish suddenly deprived of water and she hoped it wouldn't take him too long to catch on. His acting talents varied from quite good to worse than disastrous and his tendency to flap his hands about when he talked had done him no favours in getting taken seriously. Sometimes she wondered whether or not it was inevitable that he acted the age he looked – if going by that standard, she should be glad she ended up looking the way she did – or if it was optional. If the former, she wouldn't have minded an older face – no matter how fond she was of this one – and if the latter, she hoped he would soon get his act together.

He did fortunately the very second the man – the ID card still clipped to his chest proclaimed him to be Terry Hope – turned to look at the Doctor. This time, the gun dropped. 'Father?'

The Doctor met this with his most brilliant smile. 'Well, hello! Long time no see!'

River fought the urge to roll her eyes.

'But…' Terry Hope seemed completely flabbergasted. 'How can you be here?'

'Never mind that,' the Doctor said. 'How did you get here? Lovely freezer, I admit. Doesn't do much freezing, which is fine. Would be a bit humiliating if I were to freeze to death, but still. Why the freezer?'

Of all the things he could have asked, he would of course choose to ask that. River for one was more interested in finding out what the wolves had been meant for. The records of the ship were remarkably silent on the matter. Not that she had much time to look at them, but she couldn't recall any destination. Of course that had not been what she had been looking for at the time. She was a bit more concerned with finding out how the wolves had gotten where they were and, more importantly, how to get them out of here before they ate the rest of the population. Now, however, she wondered.

'Rambling, sweetie,' she reminded him.

'No, very important question,' the Doctor disagreed. 'You've got a whole ship, lots of boltholes, why choose the freezer? And where are the rest of your friends?'

Well, that was one question she could answer for him. 'Injured in the crash,' she said. 'Terry has been playing at being a doctor.' It made sense, too.

The stuttering answer that came out of Terry's mouth more or less confirmed what River already thought herself; that the freezer was the only place he could lock in the ship and in need of a locked room he was with all the wolves roaming around. The last of them had only left the ship about three days past. That was when he had last heard any noise anyway. He had also been the one to switch off the gravity in the hopes of that leading the beasts down, away from his hiding place. A good plan, River admitted in the privacy of her own mind, just not very good for the population of the planet. She doubted Terry had even spared them as much as a thought, though. He had only been trying to save his own skin.

And had left a lot of others to be devoured by his pets.

There was really nothing boyish about the Doctor's features when he realised the same thing. He may look laughable from time to time, but he had no tolerance for people who only thought of themselves. River could see his reasoning, but they could have hidden in the freezer anyway and let the gravity on, keeping the wolves in the ship. Terry admitted that he had sent out a distress signal. He could have waited for back-up.

The Doctor knew this as well as River. She could see a lecture coming on, and so she headed it off. There were wolves out there and this was not the time to frighten the man into shutting up. He did still think they were his parents, and unless he had come from an abusive home, would not expect them to rage at him.

'I understand, dear.' Years of practise made her capable of even sounding understanding. 'But where were you going with this ship?'

All of a sudden Terry seemed very reluctant to talk. He was looking at his boots with an intensity most people reserved for eyeing the person they fancied. It took three more times for him to answer the question and even then it was so soft that River had to take a few seconds to check if she had heard it in truth.

'Delnos Delta.'

As the pieces of the puzzle fell neatly into place, a uncharacteristic cold chill went down her spine.

Apologies for the delay. I'm trying to juggle four stories and a real life, and I was a bit pressed for time lately. Don't worry, this won't be abandoned and I will finish it. Hopefully the next update won't take as long.

Thank you for taking the time to read. If you've got a moment, a review would be very much appreciated.