When the engines were silent and the central column was still, Kaylee looked to the Doctor and asked, "Have we landed? Can I see it?"
"Not yet", the Doctor smiled. "We're in orbit. You've got to see this for yourself." He raced over and stood by the door. "You've got maps, and stuff, globes, yeah? You know what Earth-That-Was looked like, right?"
Kaylee nodded and walked to stand with the Doctor at the door. "Of course. Any school child knows what it looks like. There's even a picture of it on the back of the older 10 credit coins."
The Doctor pulled the door open. "Go on, have a look."
Kaylee stepped hesitantly forward and peeked outside. They were in space, with the door open! She held out a hand in front of her, but it really didn't look like there was any glass... Then she saw the Earth hanging there, and she froze. There it was. It wasn't quite like the coin though; that was taken from a different angle. But there was Australia and India, and that little island off its coast, used to be called Serendib. In that moment, her mind made a connection between that island and the name of her ship, and she wondered why it took seeing it here in person before she realized it.
Her eyes darted back and forth over all of it, focusing on one spot, then another, wishing it would move faster so she could see what was over the horizon, but it moved so tantalizingly slowly. She thought she could just see Africa coming up...
She realized that the Doctor was watching her with a smile on his face. She wondered how long she'd been standing there. She made a conscious decision not to be embarrassed and instead said, "It's a lot greener than in the pictures."
"Well, it would be, wouldn't it?" the Doctor replied. "The pictures you've seen were of a dying world some 300 years ago, give or take. It's had all this time without humans to do what life does best", he waved his hands around vaguely, "It finds a way."
"Can we land now? I want to see if it still has apples."
The Doctor clicked his tongue and sucked in breath. "Not quite yet. I haven't left yet."
Kaylee snorted. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"Time traveler, remember? A long time ago, I was here, repairing transmat amplifiers for incoming colonists. That's happening right now. But don't worry. In a few minutes I'll be teleporting out of there, and we'll be able to land just in time to meet the first wave of colonists. Imagine that. You've spent your whole life thinking that one system held all of humanity, and in a few minutes, you are going to get to meet people that lived their entire lives in another system with no Alliance, no Unification War. Just all the other little wars and conflicts that seem so important to them." He sighed. "Makes you think, eh?"
"I'll say. It's a lot to take in. Time travel, teleportation, transmat amplifiers - whatever those are, and now alien folks."
"Oh, there are aliens out there too, lots of them. But I thought I'd start you off slow", the Doctor said cheekily.
Kaylee looked at him sideways. She wasn't sure if he was having a go with her, but she decided to disregard this and concentrate on the concept-shattering revelations she already had for now.
Something that looked like an egg timer, shoved between two levers on the console, dinged loudly just then, and the Doctor sprang into action. "There we go", he said and slammed the door. He paused for a moment to wink at her before running back to the console. "We can land now", he said. He twisted a knob, punched a couple buttons, and threw the big lever again. Moments later, he pulled back on it and ran back to the door, pausing to throw on his coat. "Well, what are you waiting for?", he asked as he threw open the door and plunged headlong into the lush green environment.
He didn't have to ask twice, and Kaylee ran quickly after him, but stopped just outside the door. They were on a softly sloping hill amongst many others that stretched out into the distance in one direction toward a wide river, and rose into craggier hills too small to be called mountains in the other. There was a cool dampness to the air that couldn't quite be called rain or even fog, and the sky was a uniform grey from horizon to horizon, though the bright sun could be seen mid-way up to its zenith, breaking the monotony. Kaylee turned slowly soaking it all in. There were small bushes in clumps dotting the hillside, and two flocks of sheep, one off in the distance, but one quite close by, unfazed by the landing of the Tardis or by its two passengers.
She stopped turning and faced the Doctor. "No city? No... buildings even. Are you sure this is the right place?"
"Yup", he said, then jumped in place a couple times. "You are currently standing in Trafalgar Square, amid the busy streets of London, England (a personal favorite of mine) some 300 years too late for the bus to Piccadilly." He smiled, proud of his own wittiness. "But the buildings are long gone. Really, they weren't built to stand the weather forever and people always figured someone would be around to fix the odd crack. Water widens that crack, and seeds get in to widen it further. Before long, geologically speaking, it won't support its own weight against a stiff wind and the whole thing comes down, sometimes onto the building next to it." He pulled a face and said quietly, "Amazing how fragile it all really is."
They stood in silence for a minute before Kaylee spoke. "Really not much to look at is there?"
"Hmm", the Doctor said, noncommittally. "A bit featureless, I'll grant you. But there is something just over this hill here that I think will spark your interest. Come along." He shoved his hands in his coat pockets and headed up over the rise with Kaylee just a few steps behind him. When he got to the crest, he gestured down into the shallow valley below. "Now, what do you think of those?"
Kaylee was puzzled to see a dozen metallic spheres about 1/2 meter across laying in the middle of the field in a circle 50 meters across. "What are they?", Kaylee asked as she headed down into the valley.
"Transmat beacons I was telling you about. If you'd been here just a few minutes ago, you'd have seen me leave through that circle with a couple of my friends." He shrugged a bit as they walked. "Well, you would have seen somebody leave, and I would have explained that that was me, but how I've changed and what-not, and that would have just been another thing on your list of stuff you don't understand yet, but will have to accept. So, all in all, it's a good thing we waited."
Kaylee decided to ignore these comments. "So, how do they work?"
"Well they're a sort of receiver. If you are going to be converted to energy and beamed half-way across the galaxy, you want to be sure of where you are landing. Otherwise, you could end up rematerializing a mile underground. The math required to even reliably hit a planet travelling at 67,000 miles an hour in an elliptical orbit around a distant sun... well, it's staggering. Most current computers would burn up trying it. It's far easier if there's a device at the other end saying, "I'm right here!"
"Anyway, just keep watching. You'll see how it works in a moment. The first group should be coming through any second now."
The two of them waited in silence for several minutes while the wind whipped their hair around and the occasional sound of sheep bleating came to them from over the hill.
"Any second now", the Doctor repeated quietly, and continued to wait.
Kaylee saw a blade of grass blowing in the wind that was longer than the rest and was going to seed. She plucked it from the ground and started picking the seeds from it one at a time and watched them get carried away by the wind as she dropped them.
The Doctor started to look a bit embarrassed. "Any... second... n- maybe I should just, you know, go and have a little look."
"You think?", Kaylee suggested with a smile and pushed him in the shoulder. The Doctor headed down into the valley with Kaylee following close behind.
The Doctor crouched over one of the metal spheres and ran his sonic screwdriver over it. "No... nothing wrong here..." He shut off the screwdriver and turned to Kaylee, leaning on the sphere. "See, I told you I fixed it."
"Yeah?", Kaylee responded sarcastically, "If that thing's working, where is everyone?"
The Doctor clicked his tongue and looked around. "Yeah... That's the question." He stood and pointed his sonic up at the sky, then considered it for a moment. "Well, it's the only way to know for sure", he decided. He knelt back down and used the sonic again. There was a click barely audible above the whirring noise of the sonic. He shut it off and pocketed it. Then he reached around the sphere with both arms and stood up holding it.
"Back to the Tardis, Kaylee", he said with a grin. "We'll soon know everything there is to know about this."
Kaylee threw up her hands and followed him, tired of all the walking. "You know what I'm not seeing Doctor? I mean, aside from all the people? Apples. Remember the apples, Doctor? The point of this little jaunt was to get me some apples, not exercise."
"Oh", started the Doctor, looking back over his shoulder as he crested the hill. "You know how it is when you get curious about something. Now I need to know. Just let me figure out this one little thing and I promise you bushels of apples. Pears even. Nectarines, cumquats, kiwi, bananas. Ever had a banana, Kaylee?"
"Dried ones", she responded. "They bake them into chips, then they keep forever. Sometimes that's all the fruit you get out in the depths."
"Then I'll get a banana. You should always have a banana around, just in case."
Kaylee tried to imagine an emergency cropping up that required a banana. "In case of...?"
The Doctor stopped and smiled at her. "You never know when a party is going to break out. Allons-y." He turned and continued on to the Tardis, kicked the doors open and walked in with the sphere.
When Kaylee got inside, he had placed the sphere on the catwalk next to the console. There was a hatch in the catwalk at the base of the console that Kaylee hadn't seen previously, and the Doctor had it open and was rummaging around through it. "Ahh!", he exclaimed and started reeling in what looked like a string of Christmas rope. He slid open a panel on the transmat sphere and plugged one end of the rope into a port underneath, then stood and plugged the other end into the Tardis console. The length of rope lit up and there was an electrical hum.
The Doctor wheeled the monitor around and started typing on a manual typewriter embedded in the console, then stood back and watched the monitor. After a few moments, he pointed at the screen and exclaimed, "Ahh!", but then didn't follow up on it. Shortly thereafter he said, "You see there?", then lapsed back into silence. Kaylee looked over his shoulder at the monitor, but all she could see were a series of inlaid and overlapping circles with lines of various length radiating from their centers. These circles would move about the screen, and the lines would shrink and lengthen and rotate, some fast, some more slowly. Occasionally the circles would grow or shrink, or gain or lose rings. She had absolutely no idea what she was looking at. "Aha!", said the Doctor excitedly and turned to Kaylee. "I told you it was working!"
The Doctor ran around the console again and started turning dials, then ran back around and typed aggressively. "We are definitely getting a signal, but it's weak. Too weak to get a transmat lock. If I can pinpoint the source of the signal - and, you know, I can - I can send them back a targetting signal which should be enough to help them establish a lock. I'll boost the beacon through the Tardis console, and we'll have immigrants before you can say Roberto's your uncle."
He stopped typing and stood back to look at the monitor once more. "Oh, that's not right."
"What?" Kaylee said, confused. "What's not right?"
"Well, see for yourself", the Doctor said, pointing at the gibberish on the monitor. "The signal isn't coming from anywhere near Gal Sec 7. It's not even from Space Station Nerva. Someone else is dialing in." He returned to the console for a moment, flipping switches and standing back again. "The signal is coming from somewhere nearby..."
"Nearby?", Kaylee asked, looking out the open door.
"Well, I say nearby. The transmat beacon is calibrated for immense distances. You could beam here from anywhere in the galaxy. For our purposes 'nearby' means anywhere in the Earth/Moon system. Ohhhh... It's time-shifted though! Very clever! That must be why the signal is so weak. And it's interfering with any other signals from further away! No wonder we are Nervan-free so far!"
"Wait", said Kaylee, her head starting to hurt. "Time-shifted?"
"Yeah, the signal is coming from the near future. Well, I say near... Anyway, I've got the coordinates. Care to see who's knocking?" He smiled broadly, but didn't wait for an answer. He ran around to the far end of the console and turned a large dial that clicked several times with a corresponding increase in the volume of the hum coming from the sphere.
Click. Hum. Click. HUM. Click. HUMMM! Then there was a loud "Voip!", and silence. Suddenly there were five figures standing in a group a few feet from Kaylee, next to the console. They were dressed in silver armor from head to toe with a large circular emblem on their chest and antennae protruding from each earpiece bent at a 90 degree angle and connecting above their head. They turned toward Kaylee with military precision, stomping smartly at attention.
Kaylee took an involuntary step back in surprise and found the Doctor at her side, holding her by both arms. He had a look of terror on his face.
"Cybermen!", the Doctor hissed.