The movement ceased as quickly as it had come, the sudden silence more ominous than it was comforting; something deeply unnerving in the casual way they had just been plucked from the surface to be deposited absolutely anywhere. Cat lifted her head up carefully, peering over the edge, wanting answers, the simple reassurance that came from being something less than blind, something less than lost. That he might not have these answers immediately, that there might be things that he couldn't just explain away and make ok did not occur to her, and would only have made things worse if it had.

Thankfully, if that time was to come, it was not now. He had gotten up faster than the rest of them, somewhat more used to the graceless departures, hands moving over controls with a slightly desperate quickness as he reassured himself that his TARDIS, that his machine, his impossible world, his home, as much as he had one at all, was unharmed. Relaxing slightly, he looked up, catching her questioning gaze with eyes too dark to read, giving her nothing but a lack of alarm; a quick nod of acknowledgement, the barest sort of comfort.

But it was all she needed, didn't need to know that they were safe, because they never really were, and she had all she needed in that quick little nod, in the steady way he went about figuring it out. Slightly unsteady on her feet after the shock of their controls being overridden (had it ever occurred to her that that was possible? Had he ever said that it wasn't?), she joined him, taking a certain amount of security from the nearness.

He didn't need her to ask the obvious question, seeing it clear enough in the tilt of her head as she looked at him. "We are… exactly 35,786 kilometers above the surface of the earth." He gave her a quick moment to process, waited for the realization to dawn on her face. "Yes, we're in orbit. Whatever we're on seems fairly stationary; they only needed to bring us up to their level."

"Spaceships over London?" There was a certain amusement to the twist of her lips, in spite of the seriousness of the situation, somewhat because of the seriousness.

There was an answering something in his own face, though bolder there. "It wouldn't be the first time."

"What?" It was Andy's voice, though it had lost what officious tone it had had left, with an undercurrent of that unfamiliar waver of fear. "Can you repeat that?" He wasn't dumb, had heard everything they had said, but he needed to hear it again, needed it confirmed to some degree before he could process. It was just so much, so much in one day, however long the foundation had been laid.

"They've been stationary over London, as best I can tell from here." He was leaning over screens on which a language no one else understood scrolled, though it was obvious from the furrow in his brow that there was a great deal more he wanted to know that it was not answering. "But there's something wrong with that."

"What do you mean?" Cat caught on fairly quickly, having had ample time to learn to read his face.

"The engines. I'm getting some abnormal signaling here, but nothing definitive." There was something there, something that for the briefest moment suggested that he knew more than he was willing to say, but it passed quickly enough. "But we don't have the time."

"What are we doing, then? Do you have some sort of plan?" Andy helped Margaret to her feet, her obvious shakiness adding to the grave lines on his face. It was unusual for him to look for such direction, but at the moment, he was more than over his head, so completely out of his league he wasn't quite sure where he stood any more (though, somewhat literally, he did have no idea where he was – 'in orbit' meant nothing to him, not in a concrete sense, they might as well have said the moon for all it resonated. The fact that they could very well be on the moon did not occur to him, and it would not have helped if it had).

Now that he knew that his machine was all right, and that his companion (and etcetera) were fine, there was something more of a bounce (if it could be called that) to the Doctor's step – after all, rightly or wrongly, this was what he thrived on, that sense of adventure. So he only looked over his shoulder at the group of them, having safely tucked away the glasses and flattened his hair just enough, and gave them one of those edged half-smiles that only served to remind them how very alien he really was. "No."

Cat found something of an answering twitch to her own lips as she looked back at him, edging out the fear. It was probably sick, it was probably the sort of thing that had anyone else seen, they would have wanted her checked out for- but the fact was, she couldn't help but feel it too, if only just a little, that sudden rush, that thrill, about being about to walk out, having no idea what could be waiting for them; despite the quiet sort of fear that curled around underneath, that wormed its way across the bottom.

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It was almost a little disappointing how much the room that waited them looked like her idea of a spaceship, all chrome and smooth white walls, nearly empty except for a small control set over to the side, a low wall in that same smooth, unbroken white hiding any occupant (but it had to be empty, should be empty- the room was too quiet, far too still, for anyone alive to have been sharing it with them). Cat pressed close behind the Doctor, unease setting in stronger than she might have expected. She'd been prepared for squads of angry aliens, for some sort of military or hostile presence, had almost welcomed the idea of getting it all out there, in the open like that - but this? This was wrong. Who would bother putting so much effort into calling them there, not to bother seeing who they were? The room was too clean, too connected, for it to have been a prison…

He didn't speak for another moment, taking the chance to run the screwdriver across the expanse of room, his own private suspicions only further confirmed by their lack of a greeting. Pausing for a moment over the readings from the console set, he frowned, glancing quickly over to Cat, to make sure she was still paying attention, before warily moving closer.

She stuck closer still, not wanting to step on him or get in the way, but at the same time, not about to let him get any further away than he had to. Those extra feet weren't about to make any real difference if anything should happen, but she felt better, knowing he was there. She wanted to speak, wanted to ask him what was going on, what was with the lack of anything, but didn't dare break the silence until he did, that brief thrill from stepping out onto a proper spaceship (because the TARDIS wasn't, as beautiful as she was, a real spaceship) quickly dissipating in the oppressive gloom. It reminded her far too much of that projection room, of those few moments of building dread before everything that she'd thought she'd known had gone straight to hell, and she didn't like it at all.

The console was set out rather like a dashboard, stretching in a gentle curve around the seating, still in that almost funereal unbroken white, only those small, flickering lights to cut the oppressiveness. The only sound was a white noise from what was clearly a speaker system, the soft crackling doing nothing at all to lessen the atmosphere, only serving to remind her of every movie she'd ever seen with taglines about no one being able to hear you scream in space-

He reached out towards the seat that had been turned with its back to them, needing no more than the gentlest touch to set it turning back around-

Cat let out a sigh of relief when it continued to spin. Though it wasn't quite as empty as the room it sat in, the chair was marked only with a smear of something colored and dust-like, and she assumed it fairly harmless. Something in her had been convinced that there would be something so much worse there, whether it was a body or… well, she didn't want to complete that thought.

When he started to turn to look at her over his shoulder, she hid the rest of it in a discreet sort of cough, not wanting to look like the sort of person who would get all weirded out and hysterical over an empty room. But then, she couldn't help but be reminded of the last room she'd thought was empty, and whether or not this was only another game of cat and mouse-

"What's going on?" It was somehow easier to have it be Andy's voice that broke that silence, something so very rough and ordinary about it, however obviously uneasy he might have been. He hadn't needed police instincts to tell him that the silence was wrong, standing there in the TARDIS doorway, unconsciously posed to run the minute something happened, very deliberately keeping his body between Margaret and the room.

"Where are they?" There was something sharp, if brittle, in her voice as she pushed past Andy to stare those faded eyes right through the Doctor. "Where are they that took my son?"

The Doctor didn't have a chance to respond when the speaker system, so quietly crackling, burst into life.

"Welcome, transport bay twelve." The voice, there was something off about the voice, just as there had been something off about the room – something far too strong, something undiluted and harsh, but hidden under a perfectly pleasant sort of female voice. "We apologize for the delay and any inconvenience it may have caused. Please hold."

Margaret looked like she might have wanted to say something more directly to what seemed to be the source of all her pain, having been slapped in the face by the alien equivalent of a recorded message, but the Doctor cut her off with a warning look.

"Seems like a lot of trouble you went through to bring us here just to stick us in a transport bay." His voice was that iron-control sort of casual that Cat had come to know so very well, something in the way he leaned against the console to return the page managing to convey that he was only so very offhand because he was more than capable of handling whatever was going to be thrown at him. "Not even going to bother to meet us?"

There was the briefest of pauses, as though the voice hadn't quite expected the reply to be so nonchalant. "We can assure you that your visit is our highest priority." There was something that had Cat's teeth clenched in the way that was phrased, the contrast between the flight-attendant speeches and that cold, hard edge.

"Did that mean something?" Margaret had turned to the only one who seemed to know anything at all, with that hard edge to her voice doing its best to cover the sorrow that threatened to overwhelm her. Nothing had changed, despite all the running and the questions, nothing that really meant anything, at least. It had almost been enough distraction; as much as anything could have been distracting enough to forget what she was missing, the way it ached like a phantom limb, a hole rent straight through her entire self. But here it was too much, here she couldn't ignore the fact that she would know, soon enough, know if he was still- She couldn't complete the thought, shied away as though if she didn't think it, it couldn't be true.

The Doctor looked up at her, unreadable as he ran the streak of dust through his fingers. "Yes, it meant quite a bit." What, exactly, he did not elaborate, only turning towards the doors to the transport bay expectantly.

They didn't have to wait long.

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AN: I had intended this episode to be a little bit longer, to sort of make up for the delay, but its turning out rather longer than I'd intended. Hopefully no one minds!