Fortunately, it wasn't that far of all fall, but I wasn't known for my coordination so when my bad knee (I was still banged up from track) gave way, I landed rather hard on my tailbone.
"Ow!" I yelped as I hit the floor.
It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the dim lighting, and as they did I saw that the Doctor and Jeni where already thirty or so feet down the corridor in front of me. Jeni didn't bother to look back to see what had made all the noise, but she'd known me long enough to know exactly how accident prone I was. The Doctor turned around, however, and asked, "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," I replied as I picked myself back up. Quietly to myself I murmured: "Just tried to bust my tailbone, again."
I broke into a jog to catch up with them.
Jeni grinned at me after I slowed to a walk at her side: "You are in a spaceship, Liz, and you're not freaking out. That's surprising."
"I'll freak out later, I promise," I assured her. It was an unusual quirk of my personality that I tended to freak out after the fact. "I just hope that my sugar doesn't bottom out on me."
Jeni glanced around about then and seemed to spot something. I figured out what it was about four seconds after she poked a button on the panel she'd found.
"Jeni!" I snapped in frustration. Why was it that I hung out with people that liked to poke random buttons?
"What?" Jeni asked looking confused with my outburst. "It said: 'lights'."
As if on cue, the corridor flooded with light.
"Really?" I asked. Curiosity overrode my natural skittishness and I hurried to look at the panel.
Each button on it was clearly labeled in English.
"That is really weird," I muttered as I ran my fingertips over the slightly raised lettering.
"What's weird about English?" Jeni asked giving me her infamous what-are-you-an-idiot look.
"It doesn't feel like English," I said, completely ignoring Jeni's glare, as I traced shapes with my fingers that did not correspond with the letters I saw.
"The TARDIS is translating for you," the Doctor explained. "It's not really written in English."
"So I see English, but it's not really English. Kind of like…"
"I'll see and hear every language as English?" Jeni interrupted in a tone that could only be described as one of immense relief.
"Yep," the Doctor confirmed.
The look of relief on Jeni's face intensified and I knew why: Jeni had trouble with English, never mind other human languages, so it was an immense relief to know that she did not have to try and understand a bunch of alien languages.
"Gift of tongues," I muttered to no one in particular.
Jeni tapped me on the shoulder: "So? How are you holding up?"
"Great," I answered as I grinned widely. "So what now? Do we go find whatever passes for a black box on a spaceship?"
Both Jeni and the Doctor looked taken aback by my sudden change in attitude.
"What?" I asked, a tad bit annoyed that they weren't as excited as I was.
"Now you want to go and explore?" Jeni asked. "I am still speaking to Elisabeth?"
"Hey!" I said, offended. "Like I'm going to pass up the chance to read and speak any language I happen to come across? Not going to happen."
The Doctor shrugged, probably because he had absolutely no idea what to make of that, and led the way deeper into the ship.
My head was spinning. On the one hand, I was terrified of aliens killing me at some point in the near future, but at the same time the idea of being able to read and speak any language I could ever hope to encounter was a dream come true.
Of course, the confirmation that humanity was not alone was something that couldn't be ignored.
Then there was the fact that here I was, Elisabeth the bookworm, having an honest-to-God adventure exploring a crashed alien spaceship. That was something that I had only ever daydreamed about and, well, once you got past the shock of it all, this wasn't so bad.
Despite the outward damage to the ship, there was little to no damage that I could see to the corridors we'd wandered through. The corridors were not the boxy rectangular sort that you would find in most buildings either. These corridors had curved walls that merged seamlessly in the center of the ceiling. For a ridiculous moment, I imagined that I was walking down the cardboard core of a paper towel roll that some little kid had cut in two lengthwise and then pasted on a flat piece of paper to serve as a floor.
The walls were an unfamiliar silver-white color that seemed to give off light. We passed by doors, although it took me a while to realize that they were there. The doors were exactly the same as the walls around them except for the fact that next to each one was a small panel, not unlike the one Jeni had found earlier.
The Doctor either did not see the doors we passed by or ignored them completely. I was inclined to believe the latter, as the Doctor did not seem the sort that would fail to notice something like that.
It seemed like a long time before we came to a halt in front of a dead end. My first assumption was that the Doctor had taken a wrong turn somewhere, but after a few seconds, I noticed that the dead end was not a dead end at all – it was a door.
This one was slightly different from the others because I could actually see the outline to it. However, the seams were dark black and the door seemed to be slightly bulged outwards, as if something from within had struck it with a large amount of force.
The Doctor didn't acknowledge this as he tapped away on the panel located on the wall next to the door.
There was slight hiss as the door unsealed and moved aside to admit us into the room beyond. The smell of burnt plastic assaulted me and I shoved my nose into the crook of my elbow to muffle the unpleasant odor.
Author's Note: Yet another cliff hanger, I hope.
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