The Doctor backed away, babbling defensively as Ch'pok advanced on him with a line of rope, all under the cover of the Princess' squareness gun.
"Now look, I know it probably doesn't seem this way, but drugging the entire population of the ship and then dragging them into a quarantined radiation zone known for its unpredictable plasma bursts is not really such a good idea. What if we get hit by plasma, and the shields go down? Well, alright, we'll all probably be vaporized instantly, but what if the shields only start to fail, and you've already neutralized all of the crew? I doubt Tiny here knows how to re-modulate a failing shield. That's an awfully big risk to take."
"I'm afraid you're just going to have to live with that risk, Doctor," she said. "The passengers and crew outnumber us greatly, and I would rather not get into a situation where we are forced to use deadly weapons to proceed with our plan."
"That's all well and good, but I'm afraid that squareness gun isn't exactly built for laser tag."
"I don't want to hurt you, Doctor, but let me be quite clear. I will kill you in a heartbeat if you become too much trouble to deal with. Now quit retreating towards that door and allow yourself to be tied up, or I will end you right here."
"Princess," said Aktuh in a hissed whisper. "I cannot raise K'tal on the comms."
"The old fool probably got himself caught out in the chemical spray," she sneered. "We'll carry on without him."
A low-pitched rumble suddenly vibrated through the ship as if something very huge had hit the shields from outside. The Princess shot her henchmen a sharp look.
"What was that?"
"Looks like we're entering the planet's rings," the Doctor said cheerfully. "The shields are starting to take some direct hits. That grinding noise would be the larger chunks of rocks in the dust burning off when they hit the outer forcefield. The computer will automatically compensate for the increase in radiation and meteoric density by adjusting the shield's harmonic frequency. Speaking of which, you might want to take your biodampers off now, by the way."
"Why?"
"Certain harmonic frequencies don't react well with biodampers. Didn't the vender tell you?"
The princess scoffed at him. "The shield's frequency has no effect on them."
"No, but I've been fiddling with a sonic screwdriver in my pocket this whole time, and I've finally found the frequency that does."
He switched the sonic on and a high pitched whirring noise echoed through the room. The Draconians all yelled and grasped their forearms where their biodamper braces had suddenly sent a mild electric shock through their systems. Rose gasped and swore as the one on her arm did so too, but the Doctor was already changing settings and sonicked the bracer and her handcuffs off in a second and a half flat.
"Sorry about that!" he yelped, ducking a stun-gun blast from Aktuh, who was already disentangling the brace from his arm and advancing on the two escapees. "Best I could come up with in the spur of the moment. Run?"
Throwing off the loosened bonds, Rose grabbed his hand and shoved herself out of the chair. "Run!" she agreed.
The two of them ducked their heads and bolted out of the room under heavy stunner fire.
…
"We've got to turn off the water!" Donna repeated herself, holding up one end of the table as a shield against the sprinkler.
"C-C-Can't," Lee stammered. "No v-valve!"
"Stop it at the source, then!"
Lee looked around desperately, saw a large-sized rubbish bin in the corner, and had an idea.
"One sec'," he said. He grabbed the bin and pulled out the clear plastic liner inside, turned it inside out, dumping rubbish all over the corridor floor, and pulled the bag over himself like a sort of rain poncho. Then he ducked round the table and out into the spray. Donna gaped after him anxiously.
He made his way through the torrents of sprinkler water to a smallish glass window set into the wall with a fire axe behind it – Break Glass In Case Of Emergency.
He smashed the glass and took the axe, then ran over to where the water pipe leading to the dining room crossed the ceiling by the stairs. Raising the axe above his head, he chopped into the water pipe. He was immediately doused by high pressure water pouring out of the pipe and pushing him against the wall, but he somehow kept the bag on over his head, shoulders, and upper torso, and fumbled his way out of the torrent and back down the hall towards the wedged up table.
The flow of water to the sprinklers at the end of the corridor and in the dining hall now interrupted, the spray over Donna's table and the dining hall scaled back to a simple steady drip while the broken pipe by the stairs flooded the aft corridor with litres of water, most of which ran down the stairs in a sort of soggy-carpeted, artificial waterfall. Donna shoved the table off sideways against the wall, and Lee yanked the rubbish bag off his upper body and head, grinning and out of breath.
Donna ran to him.
"Oh, look, you're soaked! Your trousers look like you've been wading, AND your sleeves! How's your memory? Do you feel confused? Who am I?" She grabbed his face in both hands and searched his eyes worriedly.
"D, D, D, D, D," he answered, still grinning.
"Good, you're fine, then," she said, releasing him with a sigh of relief.
She turned back to Shaun and the dining hall. Lee peeled off his jacket with the sopping arm and came back with his shirt sleeves pushed up to his elbows to crouch with them in the doorway.
The Draconian was still in the room firing at the walls at random intervals and muttering to himself about defending this station to the end. Most of the conscious passengers had fled away down the halls already, but there were quite a few stunned ones still lying around in the danger zone. Fortunately, everything in the room was now too wet to burn when hit by blaster fire, but it was still leaving disturbing scorch marks wherever it hit, and some of the fallen people looked like they were sporting third-degree burns.
"We have to do something to get those people out of there," Donna whispered.
"Barricade," Lee suggested.
The went back for the table they'd carried into the corridor with them, and, turning it sideways, set it up as a sort of wall sticking halfway into the dining room.
The Draconian fired at them when he saw the movement of the table, but then got distracted by a pile of K'draxian sea sprouts and grumbled something about not defending to the end on an empty stomach. He started eating with one hand, only occasionally waving the gun around to fire with the other at the overturned tables where civilians still cowered and whimpered, cut off from the exits.
Donna crept into the dining room on her hands and knees, staying low behind the cover of the overturned table, peered around the edge at the Draconian's back, and then reached out for a fallen Vinvocci who was lying unconscious a few feet away. She got hold of his pants leg and then pulled him back behind the table as quickly and quietly as she could. Lee was right behind her and helped drag the man to the relative safety of the corridor. They dumped him gently in the corridor on the floor next to Shaun, who drew up his feet in revulsion to avoid touching the strange green cactus man.
Donna turned back to the dining hall, made eye contact with a group of terrified survivors huddling behind the bar, and waved encouragingly.
"We'll see if we can extend the barricade close enough to get those people across," she whispered to Lee.
"Are you crazy!?" hissed Shaun. "You can't go back out there! You'll draw his attention over to us! There's nothin' stopping him from walking over here with his gun and shootin' us all in the face!"
"I'm not leavin' those people in there," Donna snapped back impatiently. "They don't even know what's going on! What chance have they got of getting out on their own?"
Lee moved past her to pick up the table legs of the end sticking farthest into the room. Donna turned back to help him. Shaun lunged for her, grabbing her ankle.
"Wait! Let's go back to the TARDIS! The Doctor will sort things out!"
She ignored him, pulled her ankle away and moved to pick up the near-end table legs. "Ready," she said to Lee. They hoisted the table an inch off the ground and moved it forward a few feet. The Draconian instantly whirled at the sound, sea sprouts sticking out of his mouth, and fired off several scorching blaster shots at them which hit the damp table with a fizzling noise. Donna and Lee dropped it to the floor and hit the deck, covering their heads. The Draconian laughed and swirled a glass of wine before taking a long drink.
"At least toss me the TARDIS key!" Shaun complained from the corridor. "We don't BOTH need to die!"
Donna stretched for another fallen passenger who was now within reach and dragged him back to safety, furious but too pressed for time to argue. She was gonna kill Shaun as soon as this was done. She was getting fed up with his self-centred cowardice and his species-centric bias. She was going to give him a piece of her mind just as soon as the Doctor arrived and got them all out of this mess. In the meantime, she had a job to do.
Shaun sat hunched up as far down the corridor as he could get from the shooting and the limp, stunned cactus mutant freak without getting sprayed by amnesia water. He was trapped, and it wasn't even any of his business! He'd never wanted to be here in the first place. He wished he were on some kind of bender paid for with his newly acquired millions of lotto winnings, rather than on some freakish alien spaceship in the distant future, his only way out dependent on some insane alien "doctor" who was clearly either stupid or suicidal, constantly plunging them into danger and dragging his innocent human victims out with him on these mad missions. This was insanity. The man was dangerous. He was going to get them all killed. Shaun had known that from the first moment he saw him. The freak probably had some kind of mind control, too, the way the others reacted to him. The girls followed him like he was some kind of cult leader. God only knew how Donna had got mixed up in all of this.
He noticed a wine bottle that had fallen off one of the overturned tables and rolled into the corridor, and picked it up, morosely recalling the Donna Noble he'd first met. She had flirted with him rather aggressively and practically forced him to start dating her. When they'd met, she'd been nothing but a silly life-long temp who only ever prattled on about weight loss plans and local scandals and whatever celebrity gossip she'd read in the tabloids that day. He'd felt rather flattered by the way she followed him around, demanding his attention. He'd liked being the center of someone's universe. He'd liked knowing that he was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to a woman. But that woman was not the woman who sat hunched over behind a table some twelve or fifteen feet away from him now, building a barricade against laser blasts while she listened to some dumb, stuttering blighter who couldn't even get a sentence out properly. His Donna never would've reacted like this. His Donna didn't run from vampires with a witty little quip and a laugh like it was all just crazy hilarious fun. And quite frankly, his Donna was not the woman who'd introduced him to an alien and then invited said alien to their wedding a week after that. He hadn't seen his Donna (the proper Donna) since before Christmas. Bitterly, Shaun fumbled with the bottle, got the top off and took another drink.
…
Rose and the Doctor ran hand in hand down a corridor and round a corner into a room full of large-scale pistons that helped power the shield generators. The Doctor slammed a button next to the door once they were through, causing a metal door to slide down from inside the top of the door frame and close the room off from the pursuit behind them.
A metal grating on the floor with steel pipe safety railings sticking up on either side created a walkway down the center of the room designed to prevent workers from wandering off the safe path into a deadly piston and getting snagged and crushed into a pulpy mess. At the far end of the walkway, the floor grating ran through an open door into another room, and the two time travelers sprinted straight down the middle of the room and dove through the door just as the lizard people behind them caught up to the entrance of the piston room. There was a voop sound as the princess shot her squareness gun through the door, creating a 4-foot by 4-foot square opening.
On the other side of the open door at the far end of the piston room, Rose and the Doctor found themselves in a big open space dedicated to large crate storage and heavy mid-sized forklifts and machinery for moving said crates on pallets. The floor to ceiling space took up the vertical span of two decks, and the room was about as wide as it was tall. They'd come out about halfway up the wall on a catwalk that circled the interior of the storage hold about 8 or 9 feet above the standard carbon paneling which made up the base flooring, and a set of stairs made of steel grating provided a way down to the bottom of the hold.
Rose and the Doctor ran straight forward into the room and slammed into the catwalk's safety railing at waist height, grabbing hold tightly to prevent their momentum from carrying them over the railing to the floor one deck below. They leaned over the open space below, caught their breaths and looked around for another exit. In the room behind them, the Princess shouted.
"Doctor! You will surrender or I will be forced to disintegrate you where you stand!"
The Doctor and Rose glanced behind them through the open door in unison, and then leapt away out of the Draconian's visual range in opposite directions. The Doctor grabbed the catwalk railing and vaulted over it in one smooth leap onto a stack of crates four or five feet below, and leapt down again from there to the bottom level of the storage hold.
Rose dove back against the wall they had just passed through, and flattened herself against it next to the piston room door, hoping to avoid immediate notice by the lizard princess when she stepped through.
The Doctor, suddenly realizing Rose was not right behind him on the floor level of the room, spun round and opened his mouth in dismay. But he had to immediately close it again and dive under the catwalk and behind a stack of crates for cover as the Princess stepped through with the squareness gun and immediately started shooting at him.
As soon as the princess had stepped through, Rose slammed the red button on the door's control panel in the wall next to the door, causing the metal slab to slide down from above and block off the two Draconian henchmen trailing behind in the piston room. In the same movement, she leapt onto the Princess's back from behind and grappled with her for the gun.
The Princess snarled in surprise and anger, and hurled herself backwards against the wall, slamming Rose into the doorframe. Keeping her grip around the Draconian's throat with one elbow, Rose held resolutely onto the wrist of the arm with the gun, and kicked off the wall behind her, throwing the Princess (with Rose still on her back) front-forward against the catwalk safety railing. The Princess had to flail and then grab at the railing with her left hand to prevent them both from toppling over the railing and onto the floor nine feet below.
Alarmed, the Doctor dashed out from the cover of the crates with his arms out to catch Rose if she fell.
Clinging with her knees and one elbow to her piggyback position on the Princess's back, Rose worked both hands up to the Draconian's arm holding the gun, and squeezed the Princess's fingers until the weapon dropped over the rail and clattered to the ground beside the Doctor feet. The Doctor ignored it, still focused anxiously on the wrestling match above his head.
The Princess, still in a choke hold, pushed back from the railing, grabbed Rose's arm with both hands and bit into it with her sharp teeth.
"Agh!" Rose cried out, and released her hold on the Princess. Before the Draconian could recover her balance, however, Rose punched her in the face. All that Torchwood training in Pete's World had left her pretty skilled at this, after all. The Princess recoiled, releasing Rose's bitten arm, and Rose kicked her in the stomach, knocking the Draconian away against the back wall and pushing herself back against the railing in the process. The railing gave way and dumped her backwards off the catwalk, right on top of the Doctor, who was still dancing about below with big worried eyes and his arms out.
Rose landed on top of him, and they both ended up on the floor in a tumble, Rose lying lengthwise across his upper torso in a tangle of arms and legs.
"Ahhh!" Rose shrieked, and broke into a laugh at the same time as she pulled her face up off his chest and pushed her hair out of her eyes. "Thanks for that! Good catch!"
The Doctor winced and disentangled their legs, half sitting up on his elbows. "You nearly gave me a heart attack!" he complained a little breathlessly. "Two heart attacks!"
"Aw," Rose smiled and kissed him cheekily on the mouth, still lying on top of him. "Poor baby."
He glared at her as best he could without actually moving her off him and getting up from the floor. "Don't do things like that. Imagine how I'd feel if you got shot and killed? You're still human! You can only heal from so much!"
Rose laughed teasingly at him with her tongue pressed against her teeth. "You know, that warning loses something coming from someone who's regenerated three times in the few short years I've known him."
"Almost regenerated," he grumbled. "I only completed the process once."
"Still counts," she argued.
Above them, the Princess staggered to her feet and hit the door control button, letting her henchmen into the room.
"Bloody hell, back-up's arrived," Rose groaned, rolling off him.
"Time for another dramatic escape," the Doctor agreed, and picked himself up hurriedly off the floor, sweeping the squareness gun up with him in the same movement.
Grabbing Rose's hand with his left and aiming the squareness gun with his right, the Doctor dashed through the renewed stunner fire and shot a square hole in the wall ahead of them just in time for him and Rose to leap through into the next room, part of the propulsion section.
"Good one," Rose panted as they ran, grinning ear to ear, straight across to the other side.
"Well, it worked last time," the Doctor agreed, matching her smile of exhilaration.
"You mean the hospital in the Blitz? Ah, good old Jack and the weapons of Villengard!" She shot him another tongue-in-teeth smile and bumped his shoulder with hers without missing a step. "Brings back memories!"
They shot another hole in the wall ahead of them without breaking their pace and leapt through again, cutting a straight line across compartments, but this time when they burst out of their improvised doorway, they were met with a shocking faceful of cold water.
Both of them gasped and squeaked as they were immediately drenched by the still-active sprinklers, and they stumbled to a halt, mouths open, wet hair plastered to their faces and dripping down their foreheads, temples, and necks in small torrents.
"Oh! Oh my god!" Rose sputtered, backing up automatically from the sudden chill. "What the hell?!"
"Damn, forgot about the sprinklers," the Doctor said, shaking his head and wiping his face ineffectively with his soaking wet sleeve to try to get the water out of his eyes.
"What the hell is going on? Why am I standing in a sprinkler in my clothes?"
The Doctor glanced behind them through the open hole in the wall and saw the Draconians climbing clumsily through the squareness hole before that.
"Rose, come on," he grabbed her shoulders and half-pushed, half-guided her away from the opening to hide behind a large vat of hydrogen fuel that was connected to the still-damaged maneuvering thrusters on the hull just beyond the outer wall. He knew where they were now. This was the propulsion section, and messing about in here with the squareness gun would be very not-good. The sprinklers were dumping buckets of water everywhere, and puddles had built up around some very sensitive equipment connected to massive canisters of gas and other components of rocket fuel, all interconnected by pipes the diameter of a Judoon's spacesuit collar and only half as easy to fracture. This was not the place for a blaster fight.
"Where am I?" Rose asked, not keeping nearly quiet enough for a person in hiding. "How did I get here? And who are you?"
The Doctor turned away from his intense focus on the squareness door to look at her in sudden alarm. "What do you mean, who am I?"
"I mean, who are you? And what are we doing behind this… whatever it is, with all these sprinklers going off?"
Horrified, the Doctor stuck out his tongue and licked a trickling stream of water that was dribbling down from his temple and analyzed the chemical ingredients. Realizing what was in it, he grabbed Rose by the shoulders.
"Rose! What's the last thing you remember?" he asked urgently.
"Wha'? I dunno… why? Why is my head so fuzzy?"
"Oh blimey, this is not good," he breathed out.
"Wow… Listen, mate," she said, started to sound more relaxed and a little giggly, "I think I've had a few too many, actually. Look, have you seen Shareen? I think I need to head home."
Around the other side of the chemical tank, a reptilian head poked out just enough to get a lay of the land without getting wet.
"Damn," the Princess said. "Ch'pok! Aktuh! Turn those blasted sprinklers off and get me the other squareness gun!"
"Bugger," said the Doctor, taking Rose's hand and pulling her along deeper into the machinery after him. "Yes, you know what, I have seen Shareen, I think she was over this way, in fact. Let's go find her, and keep our heads down as we go."
"Oi!" Rose protested, as she was dragged along. "Watch it, mate!"
The sprinklers were finally shut off, much to the Doctor's relief, and the voices of the Draconians grew louder as they re-approached the hole in the wall. The Doctor pulled up behind a set of chemical mixing chambers and ducked down, pulling a perplexed Rose down next to him.
"They're coming, shh!" he warned.
"Don't shush me," Rose glared, yanking her hand back from his and rubbing it. "Who's coming? And what the hell is going on? What is this place?"
A stunner blast hit the wall above them, just over their heads, and Rose dropped to the floor and gaped at it. "Wha'?! What was that?!"
"Run!" the Doctor said, and grabbed her hand. The two of them bolted from the chemical mixing chambers to a sturdier, less chemically volatile computer bank where they could duck for cover.
"Oh, my god!" Rose shouted as they ran. "Why are they shooting at us?!"
The Draconians marched closer as they ran, firing shot after shot at them from the stun-guns. Rose dove behind the terminal with the Doctor, barely missing a stunner blast to the leg.
The Princess, having already acquired a second squareness gun from some hidden stash back in the water filtration room, now retrieved the first one from the floor where the Doctor had dropped it and passed it over to Ch'pok.
"Oh, Doctor," the Draconian crooned. "Why don't you quit playing games and come out? There's no escape for you from here."
Rose was peering around the base of the computer bank with shock and disbelief written all over her face.
"Oh my god," she whispered furiously. "They're lizard people!"
"Yeah," the Doctor breathed out mildly, looking stressed. This wasn't a good room for a firefight. They were right next to the outer hull, and too many of the canisters in here contained explosive gas. This was really not good.
"What do they want?" asked Rose, sensible as usual but decidedly behind the rest of the class at the moment.
"Oh, to kill us, mostly," the Doctor answered with a sigh.
"Why? What did we do?"
"Eh…"
He stuck his head up from behind the computer bank to attempt a little negotiation.
"Listen–AUGH!" As soon as he was visible, Ch'pok nearly took his skull off with a squareness gun blast, and he had to duck down again. Stunner blast filled the air above them in a torrent of noise and sparks, bouncing heatedly off the massive thruster fuel tank beyond. The thick steel beam behind them had been acting as a barrier between the gunfire and the volatile fuel tank, but the squareness gun had taken care of that.
"I wouldn't keep shooting if I were you," the Doctor called to the Princess from behind the console.
"The coward's way is never to fight," the Princess sneered back.
Another blast hit the tank behind them, and there was a clinking noise followed by a hiss. The Doctor blanched, his freckles standing out sharply against his skin.
"Rose, grab hold of this bar, quick!" He wrapped her hands around a railing that stuck up from the floor, then grabbed it himself with one hand and wrapped the other around her waist. "Don't let go!"
Ch'pok fired again with the squareness gun, aiming at the computer console, but missed and grazed the side of the tank before hitting the inner wall connected to the outside hull.
Two things happened at once. The tank exploded, blowing superheated gas and large twisted chunks of metal over half of the room, and the outer hull buckled and tore, explosively depressurizing the room and sucking that same heated gas out into the vacuum of space. There was a loud rush of air and metal debris hitting the edges of the newly gaping hole in the outer wall, followed by an eerie silence as the air grew too thin to carry sound vibrations.
Rose and the Doctor held on for dear life as Ch'pok flew past them, bounced off the broken tank with a horrified expression, and shot out into space where he promptly froze and died. Aktuh and the Princess held on desperately to the computer console and a metal chemical canister that was bolted to the floor.
Then one of the ship's renowned safety features kicked in and a forcefield triggered by the depressurization sensors automatically flickered over the gap, closing off the vacuum and allowing the life support system to pump air back into the room at the safest speed possible.
The Doctor, gifted as he was with a respiratory bypass system, was up on his feet the instant the forcefield was secure, running over to the Draconians to yank the remaining weapons out of their weakened grasps and drag them over to a steel support beam.
Rose's vision had temporarily blacked out as a result of oxygen loss, but she hadn't quite passed out and was able to get up again after only a few seconds with nothing more than the beginnings of a massive headache and a little dizziness to show for it. She stumbled to her feet in time to see the Doctor using duct tape to secure the captured Draconians to the support beam. Baffled but no longer in any apparent immediate danger, she turned around to stare at the big gaping hole in the hull, a massive gash that comprised most of the side of the room and part of the ceiling and the room above them as well. The hole was completely covered by the transparent force field, giving a perfect, unobstructed view directly out into the vastness of space.
A million tiny filaments in the walls started to produce a yellow-white foam at the edges of the tear, foam that solidified slowly into a waxy substance that layered onto itself and started to gradually grow inward at a snail's pace like a scab growing over a bleeding wound, one inch at a time.
The Doctor finished his trussing and came over to stand next to the awestruck pink and yellow human staring out into the unfiltered stars.
"We're in space!" she exclaimed quietly before he could ask if she was alright.
"Yeah," he said, sounding amused and a little tired.
"I can't believe it! That's amazing!" She turned to him, joy and bewilderment lighting up her face in equal portions. "What did I have to drink last night?" she laughed. "And how did I get out here? Who are you?"
The Doctor took a breath and put his hands on both her shoulders. "I'm the Doctor, you're Rose Tyler, and we travel together in time and space on a ship called the TARDIS."
Rose met his earnest gaze with a half smile, waiting a beat to see if he was joking. He didn't flinch.
"…No way," she said after a minute, staring at him.
"Yes way."
Her gaze shifted searchingly between his eyes, and whatever she saw there, she must have liked because a moment later she smiled with that same look of intrigue and excitement that had originally won his hearts. "And, and this – this is the TARDIS, is it?" she asked, biting her lip coyly.
"Nope, 'fraid not," he replied. "This is just an interstellar luxury cruise ship we happened to land on in the Ariadne planetary system. It's called the Hindenburg."
"The Hindenburg? Oh, that's comforting," Rose joked.
A smile cracked his solemn face and he smiled at her. "Rose Tyler, that is exactly what you said to me this afternoon!"
"Why can't I remember?"
"Lethe Mnemosynate. It's a chemical compound in the sprinkler water. Blocks memories, but doesn't erase them. The amount you remember depends on the amount of the chemical you ingest. We'll get you an antidote, though, fix you right up."
She nodded, laughed nervously again, and rubbed her hands over her arms, shivering. "I feel all tingly!"
"That's the adrenaline," he explained.
"I think I like the adrenaline."
They grinned at each other. He was holding eye contact in a way that made her feel all warm and which agreed very well with the adrenaline pumping through her veins.
They both leaned forward spontaneously, he looked like he was going to kiss her, and then Rose hesitated and pulled back a little. She bit her lip. The Doctor also paused and raised his eyebrows.
"Um, I… Sorry, I just, er, kind of have a boyfriend."
The smile returned to his face, this time sort of mischievous. "Yeah, you do," he said, without missing a beat. "And his name's not Mickey Smith."
Rose stared at him in renewed shock, and then started to really laugh. He reached out, took her hand, and threaded her fingers through his own. She smiled down at their joined hands, and then turned to look back out through the huge gash in the wall at the stars and empty void, releasing some of the tension.
"Wow, so… we're really in space. I haven't been in space before. Or have I?"
"You have, actually," he said, eyes still on her. "You'll remember soon enough. And besides, the Earth's in space. You were born in space."
"Yeah, but that doesn't count. Hey, isn't that weird? What is that?" she pointed. "It says 'police box' on it."
Smile suddenly gone, the Doctor whipped around to stare horrified out the open hole at the TARDIS drifting slowly away off into the distance with a bunch of other debris from the explosion. Storage C must have been the room above them, right on top of the gas canister.
"Not very Spock, is it?" Rose said, and laughed.