The Doctor and Lee worked frantically to keep the shields up, but layer after layer of the Doctor's makeshift defenses buckled under the pressure and fell under the onslaught of the increasingly powerful plasma waves.
They knew there was no point in prolonging the inevitable, but some stray speck of irrepressible hope kept the Doctor from just sitting back and letting it happen. Oh, he was certain he was about to die, and regeneration at this temperature under 27 quadrillion psi wasn't going to do him any good, but he was going to go down fighting. It was the principle of the thing.
"I t-think that's the end of the d-dispersal pulse generator." Lee dropped the now useless touchscreen and stepped away from his post.
"Well, it was a job well done," said the Doctor, re-modulating the shields against yet another new plasma signature and throwing up an extra layer for the pressure shield beyond that. "What got it in the end? Pressure or plasma?"
"Pressure."
Lee walked over to the starboard windows and gazed out at the rainbow of colors fracturing through the shields with every plasma wave.
The Doctor's eyes followed him and then moved up to the dirty orange light that flickered back into place between bursts. He tapped the screen and submitted another shield strengthening subroutine without looking. That was his last trick, too.
"I just wanted to say… Ship wouldn't have held together this long without your help. That last transmat team owes their lives to you."
Lee half-turned and smiled in amusement. "L-liar. But b-better to have c-company at the end, either way."
The Doctor eyed him softly, appraisingly. "I didn't ask. Was anyone with you at the library? Anyone you knew from before?"
"Nah." Lee looked back out the window again. "All dead and gone. My f-family. Friends. There was a n-n-niece… baby when I left. Old woman now. S-saw her in a rest home. D-d-didn't know me."
"I'm sorry."
"Not your f-fault."
The Doctor looked at him with sadness in his eyes.
"'S pretty," Lee said after a pause. The Doctor drew in a sharp breath and turned to look out the window as well.
"Yeah."
They stood gazing out the window together for a few more minutes, waiting for the end, and then the Doctor squinted into the flashing plasma and mist.
"Wait a minute, what's—"
A dark rectangular shape appeared momentarily in the mist and then faded away again. The Doctor, eyes growing wide as saucers, suddenly broke into a wild laugh, holding his sides with one arm and supporting himself with the other hand against the windowpane.
"Oh, I don't believe it!" he whooped.
Lee blinked in confusion. "What is it?"
The rectangle came back into view and solidified into what was clearly, but impossibly, a big blue box. A big blue box that was wobbling a lot and rapidly getting closer. A big blue box that said "police box" at the top, and had a very impossible Donna Noble hanging out the open door in half a spacesuit, hair flying in the wind, shouting as usual.
Lee turned to the Doctor as much as he could without tearing his eyes away from the magical dream box floating outside and asked, "What's she saying?"
"She's saying," said the Doctor, "'a little to the left!'"
…
Donna leaned back inside the TARDIS and shouted at Rose. "We can't go any farther! We've reached it!"
Flustered and scrambling all around the console, Rose called back, "Great! Now what?!"
"It's about four meters that way! We'll have to do one of those jumps! Rematerialize inside!"
"I can't rematerialize!" Rose shouted at Donna like she'd just suggested they jump off a building and fly. "I don't know what the hell I'm doing! I don't know what to enter! We could end up hundreds of years in the future, or on the other side of the galaxy!"
"We're just gonna have to risk it!"
"I don't know how!"
Donna turned back outside to see the Doctor banging on the glass and moving his mouth like he was shouting. Once he saw he had her attention, he opened his jacket and pretended to reach inside and pull something out. Donna frowned at him.
"You got an itch? What?"
He mouthed something exaggeratedly and made a small, wallet-sized square with his hands.
"It's a square. How many words?"
He flapped his hands open and shut like he was reading a book and showing it to people.
"I can't understand you, you big dumbo! Get a bloody sheet of paper to write on!" Donna yelled back, mimicking his over-enunciation.
"Paper!" shouted Rose. "He's saying psychic paper! Gimme his coat, quick!"
They fumbled through the pockets of the trench coat he'd left draped over its usual railing inside and found the psychic paper. On it were coordinates that fit the TARDIS' materialization input field. Rose punched them in and hauled back on a large red lever with all her weight.
The TARDIS lurched and the time rotor began its usual screeching, malfunctioning robot-whale sound that indicated they were moving someplace. Then a massive jolt threw them both to the ground and before they could even get back to their feet, the door slammed open to admit a very happy, smiling Time Lord pushing a confusedly happy, otherwise awestruck human.
"Thanks for the lift, you two. Cutting it a bit close, weren't we?"