Chapter Three:

Steam rose from three cups of tea as Jack and the Doctor entered the kitchen. The Doctor couldn't help but notice the cups were made of a steel compound. He sat down with a polite nod to the scrap trader's wife and took a sip of the tea.
"Thank you for your patience, ma'am," The Doctor said. "My colleague and I were just comparing notes."
"What was it you wanted to know?" the woman asked. She turned off the stove and sat down across from them.
"Well..." The Doctor leaned his crossed arms on the table. "We've noticed that on most scrap-trading planets, they use tractor beams and other such devices to gather and maintain metals, but you don't seem to do that here. You only have a single transmat to pull stray valuables from orbit. Do you know why?"
"There's no need for any others. Metal comes 'round all the time, falling through the atmosphere. Most of it lands in a valley just south of here, so the traders go there to pick things up."
"Does anything else ever fall through the atmosphere?" Jack asked. "Like rocks and planetary debri?"
The woman shrugged. "Not that I know of. We only get what we need on this planet, and we get it in abundance." She smiled peculiarly as she spoke and the Doctor decided it was time to leave.
"Well, that'll be all for now," the Doctor said, jumping out of his chair. "Thank you for your tremendous help." He walked out the front door with a nod and a wave.
Jack ran to catch up with him, the cup of tea still in his hands. "Doctor..." he said quietly. "What about the moons? And I haven't finished my tea!" He held up his cup to further his point.
The Doctor grabbed the mug from his hands and spilled the contents onto the ground. "That could have mind-control properties for all we know," he said as he laid the cup on a table just inside the door. "Come on. We can find out about the moons in the Tardis."
The temperature was gradually rising during their walk to the Tardis. By the time they reached it, they had both removed their coats. Jack draped his coat over his arm, and the Doctor tossed his own coat to Jack when he noticed. "I'm not a baggage mule," Jack protested, but the Doctor just smirked and walked ahead.
Outside the Tardis, a group of Plevnians had gathered. They were inspecting the machine with handheld devices and putting their ears to the exterior to listen to it's thrum. At first the Doctor and Jack watched them with bemused expressions- it was funny to them that the aliens were so fascinated by the box- but then one of them attempted to kick the door down, and the Doctor had to intervene.
"Whoa, hold on there!" he said as he put himself between the Plevnians and the door. "This is my ship you're tinkering with. She's not your property, so please be civil with her."
When the Plevnians looked at eachother with confused expressions the Doctor beckoned Jack, and the two entered the Tardis, carefully locking the door behind them.
"It's unusual of them to treat the Tardis like that. Normally Plevnians are very polite," the Doctor commented.
"That hasn't been my experience with them. They greeted us with guns, remember?"
"Hmm. Good point." The Doctor stepped up to the console and turned on the monitor. "Now if we can just scan these moons..." he mumbled.
He paced around the console, waiting for the scan to complete, and Jack made himself comfortable in one of the leather seats after draping their coats over the railing.
"It seems like forever since I travelled with you," he said. "And nothing has changed. This room is just as desperately in need of a cleaning as ever."
"Oi!"
"Oi, yourself."
Moments later a faint beep came from the console and the scan results appeared on the screen. The Doctor's mouth fell open and Jack jumped up to see why.
The results were impossible. Not only were the moons made entirely of metallic elements, but so was Plevny. The seemingly organic composition of the exterior was no more than a thin layer of rocks, dirt, sand, and water. Everything below the surface was metal. The kinds of metal that were used for spaceships.
"Plevny's not a natural planet," the Doctor gasped. "It's a gigantic spaceship that just looks like a planet!"
"Does this mean that whatever is affecting the villagers' perceptions is inside of Plevny?" Jack asked.
"Almost certainly. Strange signals are coming from the core, and no perception filter could stop villagers from noticing a machine that large. It would be blatantly visible; the controller would need to stay out of sight."
The console beeped again and a notice appeared on the screen. The scan had detected something new.
"What? No! Come on," Jack groaned. "Now we have a time limit to solve this thing? I hate countdowns."
The Doctor's expression quickly changed from one of deep thought to one of horror. According to the scan, Plevny was gradually moving out of orbit, and its surrounding 'moons' were drifting away- into the sun!
"Why is this only happening just now? Is the magnetic shield deteriorating?"
"Possibly," the Doctor mused. "If Plevny really is some sort of strange... huge ship, it would require a large amount of energy to create a magnetic atmosphere around itself. After all these centuries it would begin to lose power, like a draining battery. It's causing it to drift out of orbit and lose
ozone stability. The whole ship will boil as it gets closer to the sun!"
"What should we do? We'll have to evacuate everyone for certain, but what about the signal coming from the core?"
Jack and the Doctor stood staring at the screen in puzzlement, arms crossed and brows furrowed. After a long silence Jack asked, "You don't suppose the original captain could still be alive after all these years, do you? He might be the one sending us the signal."
"That could be," the Doctor agreed. "He might not be human, so he very well could have lived this long. We should go and warn the locals first thing, then investigate."
"But they won't believe us because of the mind-containing machine," Jack pointed out.
"Well then I guess we'll have to find that first, turn it off, then warn the locals and investigate."
"Or we can just go around punching all of them like you did with me."