Donna pushed through the crowds of evacuees to get to the transmat pad where the last group had ported in. A sinking feeling hit her in the stomach when she scanned the faces there and didn't see the two she was looking for.

"Oh, heaven help them," said a once-posh, now bedraggled old insectoid-woman who saw Donna looking and recognized her as one of the Doctor's friends. She shuffled over to the former temp and reached out to offer a consoling hug. "Those fine young men gave their lives so the rest of us would live."

Donna glared at her and pushed her outstretched arms away.

"What the hell are you talking about? They're still coming."

"They can't," said the captain, stepping out from behind the evacuees he had stayed to help. "We're out of transmat range. The last of us barely made it through."

"So? The Doctor will upgrade it or something."

The captain shook his head sadly.

"Oh, don't be stupid! Of course he will!" Donna snapped at him. She reached for the comm. link on the belt of the spacesuit she still partially wore. "Doctor! Doctor, can you hear me? Doctor, answer me!"

Only static filled the line. Captain Manning stepped over and pushed her transceiver down. "The radiation's grown too strong for the comm. link to work. You'll have to use the subspace communicator. Come on."

He led her to the bridge where the Hindenburg crew had mostly cleaned and rebooted all the pre-existing Draconian hardware.

"Are you still in communication with the Doctor?" Manning asked them. They nodded their affirmation. "Good. Go ahead," he said to Donna. "It's voice to text."

"Doctor?" Donna said experimentally. "It's Donna. Can you read me?"

A message appeared a second later on a dashboard viewscreen: [Hello, Donna! How's everything on the new ship?]

"Well, it ain't exactly sunshine and roses, is it? Where the hell are you?"

[Very sorry. Can't come up.]

"What d'you mean, can't?"

[Transmat's out of range. These things have a fixed physical limit to the distance they traverse.]

"So we'll fly closer! We've got the Draconians' engines running again. Where do you need us to pick you up?"

[You can't. I'm serious, you really, really, really can't. That ship won't survive another plasma strike.]

"Then what's the plan?"

[Sorry]

"Sorry? Is that it? Just 'sorry'?"

[Really sorry. So sorry. Didn't mean to strand you there. Time agency might be able to take you back, but I don't recommend it. Talk it out with Rose before you do anything.]

"What the hell is that supposed to mean? You're not coming back!?"

There was a long wait before the next message came, so long Donna feared for a moment that they might have already imploded down there. Then the screen finally popped up a new message.

[Tell Rose that I—]

"Oh bloody hell, I'm telling Rose all right. This is ridiculous. We'll just see what she has to say about it."

Donna turned and shoved two crewmen out of her way who were behind her by the bridge door, and stormed up the ship to the makeshift infirmary where she'd left Rose sleeping earlier.

"Rose!"

At the shrill, ear-piercing sound of her name, Rose mmph'd and rolled to smoosh her face further into the wadded up jacket she was using as a pillow.

"ROSE! Get up! That sorry excuse for an alien boyfriend you have is trying to get himself killed again!"

Rose lifted her head, now mostly awake. "Wha'?" She winced, the headache from earlier now fully established and pounding away. "Where's the Doctor? What's he done now?"

Donna set her hands on her hips, still fuming. "He's stranded himself on some great flippin' cruise liner in the middle of crashin' into a planet, that's what!"

Rose squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head, trying to clear it. What? How'd she get here? That didn't sound familiar. Well, okay, the Doctor doing something reckless and about to get himself killed sounded very familiar, but the cruise liner part was just… Ahhh, now it was coming back to her. The Hindenburg. Safest ship in the universe, her foot. That idiot.

"Where are we?" she breathed, staggering to her feet and shielding the light from her still-sensitive eyes with one hand. "This isn't the TARDIS."

"The TARDIS is out there floating around in space," Donna said with disgust. "If we get to it, can you fly it?"

"Errrrrrr," Rose hedged. "Sort of? Maybe? I learned how to put her into the vortex, but I haven't quite got the hang of materializing yet."

"Works for me. Come on!"

…

After a lot of bullying and basically commandeering the ship, they were able to get the crew to fly the Draconian royal cruiser as close as possible to where the TARDIS was drifting with the other debris in the planet's rings.

They couldn't exactly dock with it, since the TARDIS didn't have a standard docking port – didn't need one, usually – so Rose and Donna were at a loss until Rose realized Donna was still wearing most of her suit.

"That's it!" Rose shouted gleefully.

"What?"

"You do a spacewalk!"

"Oh," Donna said with an appalling lack of enthusiasm. "No. No. Just no. You can do the spacewalk. Here. I'm getting out of this." She bent and tried to find some way to unbuckle the waist, even though an earlier failed attempt to figure that out was the reason she was still in the damn thing at this point anyway.

Rose grabbed her hands to stop her. "No, we haven't got the time! Donna, you can do this! It's gonna feel amazing, yeah? Flying through space?" She grinned and nodded encouragingly.

Donna shook her head in horror. "I'll 'ave a heart attack first! Teleportin' over to a dead ship's one thing, you're all… enclosed in something! I'm not walkin' out there with nothin' to hold onto!"

"It'll be fine! We'll get you a cable or something. Captain! Captain Manning!" Rose called out and ran down the corridor for help.

Finally, they got Donna fully re-suited again and triple-tied somewhat over-cautiously to the interior of the Draconian ship's airlock. Trembling more than a little, Donna waited out the decompression and the opening of the airlock's outer doors.

Suddenly, she could see space with nothing between her and the cosmos. Just stars and planets and great big ring rocks and rivulets of dust all floating everywhere in harmony with each other, and it reminded her of the first time she had seen it like this – not even a helmet that time, just a wedding veil, a dress, and an open wooden door. It put the universe in perspective.

Breathing steadily, she placed one foot in front of the other and pushed off.

The TARDIS was there, centered conveniently in front of the airlock, only twenty feet or so away. She flew slowly, propelled by her own initial momentum, and held her hands out to grab onto it as she passed. She ended up missing the door by a bit and crashing into the light that sat on the roof.

"Oh dear god! Oh god, oh god, oh god," she babbled loudly into the suit's in-helmet comm.

"You're doing fine, Donna," came Rose's voice over the speaker. "Just work your way down to the door. One hand at a time, that's it!"

Donna clung to the sides with both arms out like she was hugging the damn thing, and inched her way down with her fingers. It took a painfully long time, and she ended up upside down in front of the door.

"Now what?" she cried. "I can't let go to get into my pocket!"

"Yes, you can." That was Captain Manning's voice taking over. "Just be careful not to push away from it. As long as you don't knock into the… the thing," (he still wasn't completely convinced it was a ship, but it had been a hell of a day) "there's no reason you should drift away. Just let go with both your hands at the same time, and be careful not to move around too much and kick into it."

"That's easy for you to say!"

"There's a handle, Donna," piped Rose. "Just hook onto that with your cable or something."

Donna closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. Then she opened them, carefully let go of both sides of the TARDIS, and reached into the little zip pocket on the side of her suit to remove the key. Shaking, she inserted it into the lock and the door fell open inwardly.

Still upside down in relation to the TARDIS, Donna reached inside and pulled herself in by bracing against the door frame, and then was abruptly affected by the artificial gravity inside. She ended up falling headfirst into a tangle of spacesuit and cable on the grating ramp that led up from the door to the center console. She groaned.

"Donna! Is everything okay?"

"I'm fine. Dunno about the suit. Good thing it doesn't matter if it's airtight in here. I'm in the TARDIS. I'm gonna start reeling us in."

She got up and dragged the cable around the center console a few times for security, and then went back to the door, braced herself, and started pulling. The TARDIS and the open airlock slowly drifted closer together, until finally one was inside the other and the airlock bay doors closed.

Rose barely held it together waiting for the airlock to re-pressurize, and then threw open the door and rushed inside.

Donna stood inside the open door of the TARDIS in her suit with her helmet already off, grinning.

"Let's go get our Time Lord back!"