1x09: The Embers of Alexandria (4/7)
Title: The Embers of Alexandria (4/7)
Author: principia_coh
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Rose/Ten II
Summary: Waylaid en route to a holiday, the Doctor and Rose encounter unexpected wonders... and new dangers.
Author’s notes: Thanks to ginamak and leighleighla for their excellent and patient beta work!
Episode 9 of a virtual series at the_altverse, following The Wretched Hive last week.
Virtual Series Masterlist
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
------------------------------------------------------------------
Rose’s eyes flew to the Doctor. His lips had tightened into a thin, hard line, and she could feel the effort of keeping his temper in check radiating off of him. Even to her it seemed like the temperature in the lab had dropped 10 degrees. So much for their ready offer of assistance.
“I beg your pardon?” the Doctor asked icily.
“B-burn the Library,” Miðlara repeated, squirming uncomfortably. To be fair to the man, he hardly looked pleased with the idea.
The Doctor’s gaze shifted to Miðlara, and he swallowed hard, clearly unnerved by the Doctor’s steely scrutiny.
Lén looked slightly embarrassed. “We would have to use accelerants that generate far higher temperatures than could be achieved with the materials available to us here, and to be honest, we’re not exactly-”
“Arsonists?” the Doctor retorted.
“If we don’t find what we came here to remove, then it all must go,” Miðlara answered tonelessly.
“All must go? This isn’t some kind of fire sale-okay, poor choice of words-but you, you can’t just destroy the Great Library of Alexandria!”
Lén and Miðlara both shifted back from the Doctor; Rose wondered if they were even aware they’d done it. Rose relaxed and leaned back against the table, arms at her sides.
“What, exactly, is it you two need to find here? What could be so terrible that it’s worth even thinking about burning this place down to get rid of it?” Rose asked sternly.
“The Kutoka’nje have planted something here that’s going to totally screw up the course of human history if we can’t find it or destroy it,” Len answered.
“Something?” Rose barked.
“We’re looking for a book, or books, or perhaps even just part of a book, we’re not quite sure,” Miðlara admitted.
“Certainly narrows it down,” Rose muttered.
“You have succinctly summarised our difficulty, madam,” Miðlara chirped primly.
The Doctor turned his glare from Lén to Miðlara.
“We do know it’s probably not anything like our comm rolls,” Lén remarked, pointing at the papyrus scrolls on the table. “Picoink isn’t designed to be that long-lived. Besides, the power would run down within a few decades, even faster without solar exposure. That’s no good to an archaeologist a thousand or so years from now.”
“So what you’re looking for is something that’s pretending to be a papyrus scroll,” Rose offered.
“Or a stone tablet, or perhaps even a parchment,” Miðlara replied.
“That may qualify as the what,” the Doctor countered angrily, “but not the why, or even the how. And who are these Kutoka’nje you’re fighting?”
“Hey, just a minute ago you were all set to help us out!” Lén protested.
“You’d rather failed to mention how prominently fire-raising figured into your plans,” the Doctor ground out.
Lén snapped, “That isn’t exactly our ideal outcome, but we don’t have a whole hell of a lot of options here.”
“Options? I would hardly describe burning down one of the greatest centres of learning in humanity’s early history as an ‘option’!” the Doctor roared.
Rose stepped between the Doctor and Lén. Someone needed to be the voice of reason here.
“If you want our help, you either take the fireworks off the table-”
The Doctor was less than pleased with that.
“-or you make us understand what’s going on.”
Lén seemed thrown, and the air went out of his sails. All three men clammed up, retreating to their respective corners and eyeing one another warily.
“That’s better. Why don’t we start with the war?”
Lén rubbed his forehead. “Great, we’ve gotta catch you two up on the past few kajillion years of intergalactic history?”
“I think you better had, yeah.”
“The Kutoka’nje started it all by attempting to compete with the Unified Astral Caliphate over development of the Edmondson Cluster,” Miðlara said.
“Oh, well, that explains everything,” Rose said, deadpan.
“You gonna take our word on the short version or you want the full lecture from the professor here?” Lén drawled.
“Somewhere in between ought to do it.”
“The Kutoka’nje are one of the most unpleasant Nationalised Trade Combines to be born out of the Great Expansion period,” Miðlara began, “But just as with traditional political entities, there are some ethical, well-run NTCs, and then there are the others.”
“So they’re a kind of... corporation that got turned into a country?” Rose asked.
Lén nodded. “Pretty much. None of the NTCs were ever supposed to be in the business of having control over people, so they don’t have all the same rules as real governments. Which is great so long as you can count on everyone not being a fáviti. And we all know how well that usually works out.”
“After a lengthy period of their extremely aggressive competitive behaviour was, shall we say, brought to a halt,” Miðlara continued, “they petitioned the Temporal Control Council for permission to time travel. The Combine claimed they wanted to send personnel back in time to do things like mining or harvesting medicinal plants in areas of Earth or other locations that were known to have suffered disasters in a near-to-arrival timeframe.”
“I’m hoping they weren’t granted that permission.” Rose said grimly.
“Oh hell no,” Lén snorted.
The Doctor’s brows raised far into his fringe. “Pre-emptive graverobbing,” he spat. Now that he’d rejoined the conversation, Lén and Miðlara turned towards him.
“Quite. That’s precisely why they'd been turned down in no uncertain terms. Moral objections aside, any actions that would have the potential to change the conditions surrounding a known event were regarded as inherently too dangerous to attempt. Not to mention the direct hazards to any personnel who might be sent back into such a situation.”
“Sounds like a perfectly reasonable, sound judgment to me,” the Doctor offered cautiously.
“But not to the Kutoka’nje,” Rose ventured.
“No. At first they conducted themselves as if they’d discarded the notion and moved on. But they’d really decided to do an end run around the decision.”
The Doctor was obviously calculating what could’ve tipped off this lot. His shoulders tightened, and Rose could see that his hands had balled into fists; he wore the expression of someone who was about to have his worst fears confirmed.
“How did you find out?” he asked hollowly.
Lén answered, “One of the few NTCs who would still trade with these jokers was making their regular rotation and found the K’Ns were all of a sudden up to their eyeballs in human workers.”
“And what’s so alarming about that?” Rose queried.
“Any human workers below management level would’ve been weird for the K’Ns. They were specialised in having an all-robotic workforce; that used to be one of their big selling points for their terraforming contracts.”
Lén looked from Rose to the Doctor patiently, as though he were waiting for the penny to drop.
“The Kutoka’nje were kidnapping people from those disasters they'd been so interested in ‘exploring’,” the Doctor said bleakly.
“Exactly. The TCC confronted them and, of course, they lied their asses off. But because the Combine weren’t supposed to be time travelling in the first place, the Time Agency was allowed to intervene.”
Oh bloody blue f-
“Or at least they tried to,” Miðlara added, “Most of their investigators were killed. But they did catch the K’Ns trying to go back and alter events so they’d never been found out. And then when that didn’t work, trying to make it so they’d never been turned down by the TCC in the first place. And then when that didn’t work...”
“They’ve kept going further and further back in time,” the Doctor breathed, “and now they’re here. Or at least they were.” Rose watched him considering his next words carefully.
The Doctor cleared his throat. “Whatever’s been left here is meant to be found, or at least deciphered first, by the ancestors of the Kutoka’nje’s founders, am I right? Am I close?”
“We don’t even think they’d have left it that much to chance-odds are they’ve placed agents somewhere in the relevant centuries to make use of a conveniently-timed ‘discovery’ or two,” Miðlara answered.
“So you’re telling us that not only have we got to worry about the planted materials here, but that there’s probably somebody or somebodies in place who have extratemporal knowledge and the means to implement it?” Rose asked.
“Good point,” the Doctor agreed. “How do you lot know this isn’t one big MacGuffin, keeping you from finding whomever it is that might have been sent back?”
“Mack what?”
“Never mind. If you’re not right on the heels of the Kutoka’nje agents, and clearly, you aren’t, how did you know this was their latest attack, specifically?”
Lén and Miðlara hesitated. It didn’t seem like either of them wanted to be the first to offer up anything that wouldn’t have been public knowledge in their era.
“Okay, fine, don’t tell us,” Rose exclaimed, throwing up her hands and sending the folds of her cloak flying.
“The temporally disruptive event cascade starts from this precise time period.”
“And you would be getting your information from...?” the Doctor led.
“The Dimensionial Polybolos,” Miðlara answered matter-of-factly.
“The what?”
“How can you be a time traveller and not know what the DPB is?” Lén scoffed. “It’s the temporal resilience verification system.”
“Let’s assume I’m a complete idiot and I have no idea what this DPB is,” Rose responded. “Why don’t you enlighten me?”
“The earliest versions of the DPB were copied directly from a prototype first developed by Great Britain’s Torchwood Archives in the early twenty-first century-”
Rose supposed she oughtn't be surprised, but she could feel the blood draining from her face just the same.
“-there were occasional mentions of it here and there in the historical record, always rumours, but it had been lost for millennia until it was, erm, rediscovered a few hundred years ago,” Miðlara answered.
She looked to her fingernails, quickly covering her astonishment. In her own shock, she'd failed to note the Doctor's reaction. When she looked now, he was studiously examining the ceiling.
“Go on,” the Doctor encouraged, looking back to Miðlara.
Lén piped up. “All sanctioned time travel institutions use a version of the DPB. Every time travel treaty from over the past century has required using 'em. Hell, even the K’Ns must’ve gotten their hands on a DPB-they’d never be able to plan something this elaborate without one.”
“What are they trying to change from all the way back here?” the Doctor asked.
“They’re trying to accelerate the birth of human spaceflight,” Lén explained.
“What, everyone’s?”
“Yep. The DPB projects it will lead to development of regular human spaceflight by about the seventeenth century, Local Reckoning.”
A cold dread settled into the pit of Rose’s stomach.
“And yet randomly picking a date to cause a monumental event in early Earth history is peachy keen with your DPB?” the Doctor asked.
“We’re not talking about the sacking of Rome,” Lén said reassuringly, “There don’t appear to be any long-lasting repercussions to the timeline if the date of the Library’s destruction moves a few years, decades, or even centuries.”
After a long moment’s lingering silence, Rose ventured back into the conversation. “How can you be so sure if your readings have gone out of whack?”
Lén and Miðlara gaped at her.
“How could you possibly know that?” Miðlara asked softly, as Lén continued staring at her in stunned silence.
“Lucky guess,” the Doctor said lightly.
Lén shook it off. “I wish we could get a better read, but the further a timeline wanders from the universal norm, the less precise the readings are-and if the disruptions get too bad, we can’t take any readings at all.”
Miðlara spoke up. “We think if the DPB or a version of it ceases to exist in heavily altered timelines, that’s when we would lose touch completely. The stories say that the original prototype had the ability to read timelines from other universes, but our scientists haven’t been able to recreate that. There’s all sorts of myth and hyperbole surrounding the original, including claims it was used to travel between universes.”
“Oh, come on, Mið, they don’t want to hear about that,” Lén muttered.
“And that it was used to save our and who knows how many other realities from a pan-universal extinction event,” Miðlara continued enthusiastically.
“Hmm. Fancy that,” the Doctor murmured, his voice tinged with pride. He shared a long look with Rose.
“Anyway,” Lén grumbled, frowning at Miðlara, “We started with spectral scans of the whole place and didn’t get any exact matches. We’ve been using Stemkowski readers to hand-scan the contents of any stacks the sniffers got a hit on, but there’s something like three-quarters of a million manuscripts here.”
“That’s weeks of direct searching,” Miðlara added, “Every day we spend here is a day the timeline spends ossifying. We have to act before it petrifies completely and our original timeline, this universe’s proper timeline, disappears forever.”
If that was true, then they were right-they weren’t left with much of a choice. It looked like the Doctor knew it too. But just then, she saw a glimmer in his eye. He’d thought of something.
“I don’t think you lot really want to burn this Library. I think you know we don’t want to burn this Library. So what do you want?
“Best case? To find any evidence we can of the incursion and take it back with us. If we can give the Shadow Proclamation sufficient evidence of Level 3 or worse temporal interference, they will intervene.”
“And then they put a stop to that lot stomping all over human history with their size 10 Chukka boots?” Rose asked.
“That’s the plan, for what it’s worth.” Lén admitted.
Finally, we’re getting somewhere. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s get to it!”
The Doctor sprang into action, leaping towards the nearest machine and whipping out his specs.
“Now if I’m not mistaken, what you’ve got right here is the parent array for your Stemkowskis, the bank of blue lights over there is the readout for a phase resonance detector, and your molecular stasis baffle is just thataway. Your rationer ought to be able to make me a proper cup of tea, yes?”
Lén and Miðlara blinked. “Yes, that’s right.”
Rose grinned, rubbed her hands, and joined the Doctor at the array.
They might just be able to get this sorted after all.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Part 5
Author: principia_coh
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Rose/Ten II
Summary: Waylaid en route to a holiday, the Doctor and Rose encounter unexpected wonders... and new dangers.
Author’s notes: Thanks to ginamak and leighleighla for their excellent and patient beta work!
Episode 9 of a virtual series at the_altverse, following The Wretched Hive last week.
Virtual Series Masterlist
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
------------------------------------------------------------------
Rose’s eyes flew to the Doctor. His lips had tightened into a thin, hard line, and she could feel the effort of keeping his temper in check radiating off of him. Even to her it seemed like the temperature in the lab had dropped 10 degrees. So much for their ready offer of assistance.
“I beg your pardon?” the Doctor asked icily.
“B-burn the Library,” Miðlara repeated, squirming uncomfortably. To be fair to the man, he hardly looked pleased with the idea.
The Doctor’s gaze shifted to Miðlara, and he swallowed hard, clearly unnerved by the Doctor’s steely scrutiny.
Lén looked slightly embarrassed. “We would have to use accelerants that generate far higher temperatures than could be achieved with the materials available to us here, and to be honest, we’re not exactly-”
“Arsonists?” the Doctor retorted.
“If we don’t find what we came here to remove, then it all must go,” Miðlara answered tonelessly.
“All must go? This isn’t some kind of fire sale-okay, poor choice of words-but you, you can’t just destroy the Great Library of Alexandria!”
Lén and Miðlara both shifted back from the Doctor; Rose wondered if they were even aware they’d done it. Rose relaxed and leaned back against the table, arms at her sides.
“What, exactly, is it you two need to find here? What could be so terrible that it’s worth even thinking about burning this place down to get rid of it?” Rose asked sternly.
“The Kutoka’nje have planted something here that’s going to totally screw up the course of human history if we can’t find it or destroy it,” Len answered.
“Something?” Rose barked.
“We’re looking for a book, or books, or perhaps even just part of a book, we’re not quite sure,” Miðlara admitted.
“Certainly narrows it down,” Rose muttered.
“You have succinctly summarised our difficulty, madam,” Miðlara chirped primly.
The Doctor turned his glare from Lén to Miðlara.
“We do know it’s probably not anything like our comm rolls,” Lén remarked, pointing at the papyrus scrolls on the table. “Picoink isn’t designed to be that long-lived. Besides, the power would run down within a few decades, even faster without solar exposure. That’s no good to an archaeologist a thousand or so years from now.”
“So what you’re looking for is something that’s pretending to be a papyrus scroll,” Rose offered.
“Or a stone tablet, or perhaps even a parchment,” Miðlara replied.
“That may qualify as the what,” the Doctor countered angrily, “but not the why, or even the how. And who are these Kutoka’nje you’re fighting?”
“Hey, just a minute ago you were all set to help us out!” Lén protested.
“You’d rather failed to mention how prominently fire-raising figured into your plans,” the Doctor ground out.
Lén snapped, “That isn’t exactly our ideal outcome, but we don’t have a whole hell of a lot of options here.”
“Options? I would hardly describe burning down one of the greatest centres of learning in humanity’s early history as an ‘option’!” the Doctor roared.
Rose stepped between the Doctor and Lén. Someone needed to be the voice of reason here.
“If you want our help, you either take the fireworks off the table-”
The Doctor was less than pleased with that.
“-or you make us understand what’s going on.”
Lén seemed thrown, and the air went out of his sails. All three men clammed up, retreating to their respective corners and eyeing one another warily.
“That’s better. Why don’t we start with the war?”
Lén rubbed his forehead. “Great, we’ve gotta catch you two up on the past few kajillion years of intergalactic history?”
“I think you better had, yeah.”
“The Kutoka’nje started it all by attempting to compete with the Unified Astral Caliphate over development of the Edmondson Cluster,” Miðlara said.
“Oh, well, that explains everything,” Rose said, deadpan.
“You gonna take our word on the short version or you want the full lecture from the professor here?” Lén drawled.
“Somewhere in between ought to do it.”
“The Kutoka’nje are one of the most unpleasant Nationalised Trade Combines to be born out of the Great Expansion period,” Miðlara began, “But just as with traditional political entities, there are some ethical, well-run NTCs, and then there are the others.”
“So they’re a kind of... corporation that got turned into a country?” Rose asked.
Lén nodded. “Pretty much. None of the NTCs were ever supposed to be in the business of having control over people, so they don’t have all the same rules as real governments. Which is great so long as you can count on everyone not being a fáviti. And we all know how well that usually works out.”
“After a lengthy period of their extremely aggressive competitive behaviour was, shall we say, brought to a halt,” Miðlara continued, “they petitioned the Temporal Control Council for permission to time travel. The Combine claimed they wanted to send personnel back in time to do things like mining or harvesting medicinal plants in areas of Earth or other locations that were known to have suffered disasters in a near-to-arrival timeframe.”
“I’m hoping they weren’t granted that permission.” Rose said grimly.
“Oh hell no,” Lén snorted.
The Doctor’s brows raised far into his fringe. “Pre-emptive graverobbing,” he spat. Now that he’d rejoined the conversation, Lén and Miðlara turned towards him.
“Quite. That’s precisely why they'd been turned down in no uncertain terms. Moral objections aside, any actions that would have the potential to change the conditions surrounding a known event were regarded as inherently too dangerous to attempt. Not to mention the direct hazards to any personnel who might be sent back into such a situation.”
“Sounds like a perfectly reasonable, sound judgment to me,” the Doctor offered cautiously.
“But not to the Kutoka’nje,” Rose ventured.
“No. At first they conducted themselves as if they’d discarded the notion and moved on. But they’d really decided to do an end run around the decision.”
The Doctor was obviously calculating what could’ve tipped off this lot. His shoulders tightened, and Rose could see that his hands had balled into fists; he wore the expression of someone who was about to have his worst fears confirmed.
“How did you find out?” he asked hollowly.
Lén answered, “One of the few NTCs who would still trade with these jokers was making their regular rotation and found the K’Ns were all of a sudden up to their eyeballs in human workers.”
“And what’s so alarming about that?” Rose queried.
“Any human workers below management level would’ve been weird for the K’Ns. They were specialised in having an all-robotic workforce; that used to be one of their big selling points for their terraforming contracts.”
Lén looked from Rose to the Doctor patiently, as though he were waiting for the penny to drop.
“The Kutoka’nje were kidnapping people from those disasters they'd been so interested in ‘exploring’,” the Doctor said bleakly.
“Exactly. The TCC confronted them and, of course, they lied their asses off. But because the Combine weren’t supposed to be time travelling in the first place, the Time Agency was allowed to intervene.”
Oh bloody blue f-
“Or at least they tried to,” Miðlara added, “Most of their investigators were killed. But they did catch the K’Ns trying to go back and alter events so they’d never been found out. And then when that didn’t work, trying to make it so they’d never been turned down by the TCC in the first place. And then when that didn’t work...”
“They’ve kept going further and further back in time,” the Doctor breathed, “and now they’re here. Or at least they were.” Rose watched him considering his next words carefully.
The Doctor cleared his throat. “Whatever’s been left here is meant to be found, or at least deciphered first, by the ancestors of the Kutoka’nje’s founders, am I right? Am I close?”
“We don’t even think they’d have left it that much to chance-odds are they’ve placed agents somewhere in the relevant centuries to make use of a conveniently-timed ‘discovery’ or two,” Miðlara answered.
“So you’re telling us that not only have we got to worry about the planted materials here, but that there’s probably somebody or somebodies in place who have extratemporal knowledge and the means to implement it?” Rose asked.
“Good point,” the Doctor agreed. “How do you lot know this isn’t one big MacGuffin, keeping you from finding whomever it is that might have been sent back?”
“Mack what?”
“Never mind. If you’re not right on the heels of the Kutoka’nje agents, and clearly, you aren’t, how did you know this was their latest attack, specifically?”
Lén and Miðlara hesitated. It didn’t seem like either of them wanted to be the first to offer up anything that wouldn’t have been public knowledge in their era.
“Okay, fine, don’t tell us,” Rose exclaimed, throwing up her hands and sending the folds of her cloak flying.
“The temporally disruptive event cascade starts from this precise time period.”
“And you would be getting your information from...?” the Doctor led.
“The Dimensionial Polybolos,” Miðlara answered matter-of-factly.
“The what?”
“How can you be a time traveller and not know what the DPB is?” Lén scoffed. “It’s the temporal resilience verification system.”
“Let’s assume I’m a complete idiot and I have no idea what this DPB is,” Rose responded. “Why don’t you enlighten me?”
“The earliest versions of the DPB were copied directly from a prototype first developed by Great Britain’s Torchwood Archives in the early twenty-first century-”
Rose supposed she oughtn't be surprised, but she could feel the blood draining from her face just the same.
“-there were occasional mentions of it here and there in the historical record, always rumours, but it had been lost for millennia until it was, erm, rediscovered a few hundred years ago,” Miðlara answered.
She looked to her fingernails, quickly covering her astonishment. In her own shock, she'd failed to note the Doctor's reaction. When she looked now, he was studiously examining the ceiling.
“Go on,” the Doctor encouraged, looking back to Miðlara.
Lén piped up. “All sanctioned time travel institutions use a version of the DPB. Every time travel treaty from over the past century has required using 'em. Hell, even the K’Ns must’ve gotten their hands on a DPB-they’d never be able to plan something this elaborate without one.”
“What are they trying to change from all the way back here?” the Doctor asked.
“They’re trying to accelerate the birth of human spaceflight,” Lén explained.
“What, everyone’s?”
“Yep. The DPB projects it will lead to development of regular human spaceflight by about the seventeenth century, Local Reckoning.”
A cold dread settled into the pit of Rose’s stomach.
“And yet randomly picking a date to cause a monumental event in early Earth history is peachy keen with your DPB?” the Doctor asked.
“We’re not talking about the sacking of Rome,” Lén said reassuringly, “There don’t appear to be any long-lasting repercussions to the timeline if the date of the Library’s destruction moves a few years, decades, or even centuries.”
After a long moment’s lingering silence, Rose ventured back into the conversation. “How can you be so sure if your readings have gone out of whack?”
Lén and Miðlara gaped at her.
“How could you possibly know that?” Miðlara asked softly, as Lén continued staring at her in stunned silence.
“Lucky guess,” the Doctor said lightly.
Lén shook it off. “I wish we could get a better read, but the further a timeline wanders from the universal norm, the less precise the readings are-and if the disruptions get too bad, we can’t take any readings at all.”
Miðlara spoke up. “We think if the DPB or a version of it ceases to exist in heavily altered timelines, that’s when we would lose touch completely. The stories say that the original prototype had the ability to read timelines from other universes, but our scientists haven’t been able to recreate that. There’s all sorts of myth and hyperbole surrounding the original, including claims it was used to travel between universes.”
“Oh, come on, Mið, they don’t want to hear about that,” Lén muttered.
“And that it was used to save our and who knows how many other realities from a pan-universal extinction event,” Miðlara continued enthusiastically.
“Hmm. Fancy that,” the Doctor murmured, his voice tinged with pride. He shared a long look with Rose.
“Anyway,” Lén grumbled, frowning at Miðlara, “We started with spectral scans of the whole place and didn’t get any exact matches. We’ve been using Stemkowski readers to hand-scan the contents of any stacks the sniffers got a hit on, but there’s something like three-quarters of a million manuscripts here.”
“That’s weeks of direct searching,” Miðlara added, “Every day we spend here is a day the timeline spends ossifying. We have to act before it petrifies completely and our original timeline, this universe’s proper timeline, disappears forever.”
If that was true, then they were right-they weren’t left with much of a choice. It looked like the Doctor knew it too. But just then, she saw a glimmer in his eye. He’d thought of something.
“I don’t think you lot really want to burn this Library. I think you know we don’t want to burn this Library. So what do you want?
“Best case? To find any evidence we can of the incursion and take it back with us. If we can give the Shadow Proclamation sufficient evidence of Level 3 or worse temporal interference, they will intervene.”
“And then they put a stop to that lot stomping all over human history with their size 10 Chukka boots?” Rose asked.
“That’s the plan, for what it’s worth.” Lén admitted.
Finally, we’re getting somewhere. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s get to it!”
The Doctor sprang into action, leaping towards the nearest machine and whipping out his specs.
“Now if I’m not mistaken, what you’ve got right here is the parent array for your Stemkowskis, the bank of blue lights over there is the readout for a phase resonance detector, and your molecular stasis baffle is just thataway. Your rationer ought to be able to make me a proper cup of tea, yes?”
Lén and Miðlara blinked. “Yes, that’s right.”
Rose grinned, rubbed her hands, and joined the Doctor at the array.
They might just be able to get this sorted after all.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Part 5