"Over here!" Rory yelled, he waved to the others.

The Doctor was lying half twisted in the wheat about 20 feet from the edge of the field.

Rory looked around quickly, but there wasn't any other depressions in the field. Unbroken wheat stalks rose tall all around the Doctor in a perfect outline. If Rory hadn't noticed the strange bald spot in the field he'd never have found him.

The Doctor looked defenselessly young lying there, his hair flopping over his face. Rory knelt down to examine him, careful not to touch.

"Doctor!" Amy yelled. She charged into the field and dropped down beside the Time Lord. She looked up at Rory. "What happened?"

"I don't know, I found him like this."

Dutch walked up, pushing through the chest-high wheat, waving his scanner. "He's not registering as human," he observed.

"That's because he's not," Rory said. "Amy, help me turn him over."

They carefully rolled the Doctor over, crushing more wheat in the process, releasing a sweet husky scent. The ground was cool, humid and springy under their knees. The sky was clear blue, the wind was sweet, the birdsong pleasant.

Yet Amy felt her heart knocking against her ribs. The Doctor's hair was silky under her hand, but he was as heavy and flaccid as a sack of sand.

"He seems to be breathing," Rory said. He laid his ear to the Doctor's chest. "Both hearts are beating."

"Was he shot?" Jeff asked. He and Dutch had formed a perimeter around them, both facing outward, weapons up, scanning the fields, looking for assailants. The tripods were standing quietly among the stalks, looking anxious to help.

"I don't think so." Rory gave the Doctor a quick once over. "I don't see any blood."

"Doctor," Amy said urgently, "Doctor, wake up!" she gave him a little shake.

Rory caught her arm. "Don't, Amy, we don't know how he's hurt." He ran his hands over skull, arms, back, and legs. "No broken bones, no bumps, no bruises, no bites or scratches that I can see."

He checked the Doctor's eyes. It was odd seeing that mobile face so still. Rory even smelled his breath. He sat back on his heels. He shook his head. "I'm not getting anything."

"So, what, he just passed out from hay fever?" Amy said sarcastically.

"How should I know?" Rory demanded. "Who knows what kind of hay fever he gets!" He suddenly stopped with a horrified look on his face. "Horses," he said dreadfully. He stared around at the wheat field.

"What?" Amy asked, she was patting the Doctor's face, trying to rouse him.

"Before he sent me to find you we were investigating the stables, there was something wrong with the horses, for some reason they'd all laid down. I found some more of those scratches, like in the house. When I showed the Doctor he got nervous, started looking around like he expected to find someone watching us. He actually shoved me to go find you." He looked nervously around the wheat field.

"You think he was attacked?" Dutch asked.

"I don't know," Rory said. "But the Doctor doesn't get nervous easily. Who knows what could be hiding in these fields?" he waved at the endless sea of wheat.

"That's it," Amy declared. "I don't like this place. We're getting him back to the ATV."

"Right," Dutch holstered his sidearm. "Jeff, keep an eye out. Toftoc," he addressed one of the tripods. "Go get us a sheet from the house. I doubt the ATV's stretcher is long enough for him. Then, I think it's time we call in some reinforcements."

With all of them helping (the Doctor was heavy for such a skinny guy) they got him transferred onto the sheet. Each of the humans took a corner, and two of the tripods slowly crabwalked underneath the sling, supporting his back in case anyone lost their grip.

Very slowly, keeping an eye out all the time, they carried the Doctor back to the ATV.

"Doctor."

The Doctor felt something wet slide across his face. He grumbled irritably at being awakened and rolled over on his side, pouting in his sleep. Amy grinned. For such an annoying man he could be unexpectedly cute.

"Come on, Doctor." Rory insisted, putting aside the grain-dusty towel he'd been washing the Doctor's face with. "Wake up!"

"Don't wanto," Doctor grumbled back.

"Doctor," Amy said sternly.

With an aggrieved sigh he opened his eyes, instantly completely awake in that way he had. He stared at Amy disgustedly for a minute then his eyes flickered beyond her, taking in the interior of the ATV.

"How did I get here?" he asked.

"You passed out," Rory said.

"Nonsense!" the Doctor said, sitting up abruptly. "I never pass out." His eyes whirled with the sudden movement and he wavered. Putting a hand to his head, he looked up at Rory in surprise. "I must've passed out."

Rory rolled his eyes. He gripped the Doctor's wrist and timed it by the Doctor's own watch. "I'm making your pulse out at 120 per minute, is that right for you?"

The Doctor stared down blearily at his hand. "Pretty much, yeah. What happened?"

"You tell us," Rory said.

"The last thing I remember, I was in the wheat field. I picked a head of wheat and smelled it..." The Doctor abruptly jumped to his feet, ducking at the last minute to avoid hitting his head on the low ceiling. He looked down at himself and quickly shrugged out of his jacket, he turned it inside out, and shoved it at Rory. Then he jumped out of the ATV, strode across to the farmyard compound, turned on the outside pump, and doused himself, fully clothed, head to toe in water.

Amy stared, "What's he doing?"

Rory shrugged.

The Doctor came sloshing back, bowtie drooping, looking like a drowned hound dog. Rory held out his jacket.

"Keep it. Keep it folded up. I'll need to analyze it later."

Amy suddenly crossed her arms, "Hormones. You're susceptible to the Feyanoran plants," she accused. Glaring.

"No," the Doctor said, "I'm not. That's the weird thing. Feyanoran hormonal inhibitors don't affect Time Lords."

Amy and Rory shared an uncomfortable look.

The sheriff was on his cellphone outside the ship pacing, one hand over his ear, as he arranged for reinforcements.

"Janine? We need a search team out here. I'm sending back Jeff, the Doctor, and his lot to pick them up. We'll need a scanner crew, search personnel, medical team, and forensics. See if you can peel Clarke away from the city police, he's the best in forensics and I can trust him to handle the publicity when this gets out. What? No, no public statement yet, we still don't know what we're dealing with." He saw the Doctor walking up, he'd seen his exhibition earlier. "But I want you to make sure the Doctor sees a medic before you let him come back. Okay? Good." Dutch flipped shut his cell and looked up at the Time Lord.

"Glad to see you up and about, Doctor," he said.

"So I hear," the Doctor grinned back. "Your doctors won't know what to make of me, but I always travel with diagnostic equipment. If your deputy can give me a lift back to our transport I can check myself out there."

"Good enough," the sheriff nodded. "Any idea what we're up against here?"

The Doctor ran his hand through his wet hair. He sighed. "Not yet. I'll know more when we get back."

The Doctor came out of the TARDIS, in the alleyway where they had landed, and locked the door behind him. He was clean, dry, and wearing his spare suit. Rory and Amy were standing outside waiting for him.

"So, why did the wheat affect you and not us?" Rory asked.

"Different species have different tolerances," the Doctor said. He opened his hand to reveal two curved half disks about an inch in diameter. They were transparent but swirled with an energy like oil on water, they looked more like force fields than contact lenses.

The Doctor pulled his lower eyelid down and slid one of the contacts into place, grunting a little at the contact. Unexpectedly gracefully (he didn't drop either one) he slid the other shield in. He blinked his eyes and stared at them.

"That is so creepy," Amy said. His eyes swirled and sparkled, unnaturally bright and electric. He blinked a few times and rubbed his eyes and the shields seated properly and became transparent, invisible. His blue-green eyes stared back at her, watering slightly.

"Better?" he asked.

"Much," she agreed.

He dipped a hand in the other pocket and pulled out two white Styrofoam bullets the size of the end of his pinky. He shoved them ruthlessly up his nose. One in each nostril.

"Eww!" Rory said, shaking his head at the Doctor's brutal efficiency.

The Doctor wiggled his nose and stretched his face. "I always hate this part," he said, sounding like his nose was stopped up.

He put a finger to each side of his nose and snorted out, like an old man blowing a booger, but the nose plugs stayed in.

He took a deep breath. "Ah, that's better. Now, what were you saying, Rory?"

Rory grimaced at him. "Why is all this necessary? What was it? Why did that stuff affect you and not us? You said the hormone stuff here affected humans."

"No, it wasn't the wheat. It was something on the wheat. Some sort of herbicide or fertilizer I expect. Different lifeforms have different tolerances. Time lords are sensitive to certain substances in the Praxis range. They don't normally affect humans. Still, if there is a lot of it about..." He pulled a stick of celery out of his pocket and slapped it on his lapel, like a boutineer.

"You're not wearing that?" Amy said in disbelief.

"Always be prepared!" the Doctor said, wagging a finger in the air. He strode off down the alleyway.

"How is celery, being prepared?" Amy demanded, following.

"Why do we need a scanner technician?" Rory asked, back at the airfield as they watched the ATV being loaded. "The Doctor already scanned for tracers."

Jeff was checking off equipment and personnel as they arrived. The Doctor and Amy were off trying to convince Janine that the sheriff really had said the Doctor didn't need to see a medic after all.

"No offense," Jeff said, "But with a case like this we're going to have to go by the book. We have no way of knowing how sensitive or reliable your Doctor's equipment is. So we need to use our own. That's the most sophisticated tracking system on the planet, if we can't find them with that, it won't be for lack of trying."

Rory nodded and watched as the teamsters loaded the equipment into the ATV.

They returned to the farm with a full load, the Doctor, Amy, and Rory were crammed on the benches with two dozen kids of all sizes and colors. The Doctor, of course, thought this was absolutely marvelous, and proceeded to get the names and life histories of everyone on board.

One of the searchers was a skinny, red-headed boy with freckles and attitude.

He introduced himself as Stanley, apparently he was the tracking technician, some kind of whiz kid.

Back at the farm, as the Doctor, Rory, and the sheriff briefed the searchers on what they'd found and what to look for, Amy watched in fascination as Stanley set up his tracking equipment at the corner of the farm airfield.

Stanley himself was more than a little interesting. There was something strange about him. She couldn't put her finger on what it was, but he was different to the other Feyanorans she'd met.

Like all of them, he looked 12 years old, he wore a T-shirt with some sort of Rock band logo on it, jeans, and sneakers. He was confident, cocky, and slouched.

He bent over his equipment doing a final check that it was all connected properly. It looked like a really high-tech stereo system with five foot tall speakers aimed to each compass point.

Amy leaned over his shoulder, half watching what he was doing, half staring at him in fascination.

He stood up abruptly and Amy stepped back with surprise.

"Look," he said, turning to her, "I'm sure you're very good looking for a grown-up. But you're not my type."

Amy's jaw sagged open. "What?" she said, flummoxed.

"No offense. But it's not going to happen," he said, completely serious, and a bit supercilious.

That's when the penny dropped. Amy stared at him, suddenly realizing why he was different. "How old are you?"

"I'm seventeen. And I don't go for older women."

Rory heard that last remark and stomped up, his face like thunder. He loomed over the boy.

The teenager looked up at him with complete unconcern.

Amy put her hand over her mouth, grinning. She looked at the man and boy glaring at each other and suddenly realized, if she and Rory ever had kids, they'd probably look a lot like Stanley.

"What were you saying?" Rory ground out.

"She's yours then?" the teen asked, with a flick of his red hair toward Amy. "You ought to keep her on a leash."

Amy broke out into peals of laughter.

"Come on." The Doctor swooped down on them in a rush. "The sheriff's got everything under control here. There's something I want to check out."

The Doctor dragged them back up to the house and around to the kitchen. He pulled out a device that looked like an old war surplus walkie-talkie from the 1950's, it had a little round screen where the speaker grill should be.

"What's that?" Amy asked.

"Why are we going through here again?" Rory asked at the same time. "We already looked in here."

"But not with this, " the Doctor waggled his device. "It's a portable time-space visualizer." He pulled out the long antenna and swept it around the kitchen, scanning. "With a bit of luck, this will show us what happened here. Save a lot of time."

A snowy, indistinct picture formed on the screen, there was no sound. The Doctor whacked it on the side, "Unfortunately, the reception is rubbish."

Amy and Rory crowded over his shoulder to get a look. Slowly the scene resolved slightly. They could just make out the outline of the kitchen and the child's high chair that stood before them - the mother and baby moved like blobs in the static. It was like watching an old-fashioned black and white TV broadcast from the very edge of the transmission field.

The mother fed the baby with no sign of alarm. Then the image got blurrier - nearly washing out, the Doctor fast forwarded it, trying to get past the distortion. Something big moved across the screen.

Amy gasped.

The Doctor rewound and played it back. Amid the general blurriness - a large form crossed the scene - something much larger than the Feyanorans. Looming. Oddly shaped. It wasn't human.


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