Doctor Who Fan Fiction ❯ Dr Who – Martha and Ten The Inbetweens and Backstories ❯ Chapter Fifteen ( Chapter 15 )

“To be capable of love, nine times out of ten . . . someone needs to love us first”, the Doctor's words echoed in her mind as Martha made a cup of tea in the kitchen. She knew someone who loved her; unconditionally and with out question, although sometimes her manner and tone of voice would indicate the opposite.

She went to her room with her cuppa, and fifteen minutes later returned the console room, dressed in black trousers, purple vest top and a black cardigan. She noticed that the Doctor had changed into a blue pin striped suit with a purple shirt and dark T-shirt.

'Do you have some sort of communicator, like they do on Star Trek?' she asked him, fiddling with her mobile phone. 'I was going to phone home and see how everyone is.'

'I have got a phone here,' he said, nodding at the trim phone on the console. 'But let me have a look at your mobile,' he said, taking it off her as he took out his sonic screwdriver.

After a few seconds of fiddling, and wandering around the console . . .'There we go! Universal Roaming . . . never have to worry about a signal again,' he said, as he tossed the phone back to her.

'No way! But it's . . . too mad! You're telling me I can call anyone, anywhere in Space and Time on my mobile?!'

'Long as you know the area code . . . frequent Fliers' privilege,' he told her with a smile. 'Go on . . . try it.'

Martha started to dial home, when the TARDIS suddenly jerked sideways, throwing Martha to the floor. The Doctor managed to hold on to the console, and studied the monitor.

'Distress signal! Locking on!' His red converse flicked a lever on the console. 'Might be a bit of . . .' he started to say, as the TARDIS gave another jolt, throwing them around again. ' . . . Turbulence.' He popped his head above the console to see if she was alright. 'Sorry!'

They both climbed to their feet. 'Come on Martha! Let's take a look!'

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'This is never your ship!' Orin Scannell said, as he walked up to the blue wooden box. He was a crewman on the SS Pentallian, which used energy scoops to gather fuel from the atmosphere of a star. Unfortunately the star Torajii, wasn't just a star, it was a sentient being, and it had defended itself.

'Compact! Eh!' he said as he walked around from behind the TARDIS. 'And another good word, robust . . . ! Barely a scorch mark on her,' he said with pride.

'We can't just leave them drifting with no fuel,' Martha said with concern. They'd had to dump the fuel that they had scooped from Torajii, so that the Doctor could live, and the ship would be allowed to leave.

'We've sent out an official mayday. The authorities will pick us up soon enough,' Riley Vashtee, the only other surviving crew member told them.

'Though how we explain what happened,' Scannell started to say.

'Just tell them,' The Doctor interrupted. 'That sun needs care and protection, just like any other living thing.' Scannell nodded in agreement, five of their friends had died learning that lesson.

The Doctor stepped inside the TARDIS, and Martha started to follow, when Riley rushed forwards, and gently held her elbow. 'So . . . uh, you're off then,' he said, and Martha nodded. They had shared a tender moment when they had been trapped in an escape pod and jettisoned towards the star.

'No chance I'll see you again?' he asked hopefully.

'Not really,' she replied, and saw the disappointment on his face. 'It was nice . . . not dying with you.' They both gave an unenthusiastic laugh. 'I reckon you'll find someone worth believing in.'

He looked her in the eyes. 'I think I already did.'

Martha returned the look, and something passed between them. She grabbed him into a passionate, post adrenalin kiss. 'Well done,' she said, backing into the TARDIS. 'Very hot.'

She stepped inside, and walked up the ramp towards the Doctor. 'So! Didn't really need you in the end, did we?!' she said jokingly, but when she saw his face, he was deep in thought, his face an impassive mask.

It was a cheap wisecrack and now she felt awful for saying it. Without him, she would have burned up in the escape pod along with crewman Riley. 'Sorry . . . how're you doing?'

He looked at her for a long while, before suddenly snapping out of his reflective mood, in that mercurial way of his. 'Now! What do you say? Ice skating on the mineral lakes of Cuhlhan, fancy it?'

'Whatever you like,' she said in a quiet, subdued voice. She thought he was going to open up to her, but he'd completely deflected the question of how he was feeling . . . again.

He gave a concerned glance in her direction, and saw that she was upset by his reluctance to discuss their near demise. 'By the way.' He reached into his inside pocket, 'you'll be needing this,' and pulled out a key, on a chain.

'Really?!' she asked in disbelief.

'Frequent Flier's Privilege,' he told her, as he lowered the key into her cupped hands. 'Thank you,' he said solemnly.

'Don't mention it,' she replied with a weak smile, and then remembered that she'd had a final farewell phone call with her mum, when she thought she was going to die in that escape pod.

'Oh no, Mum,' she said, as she reached her phone out of her pocket and selected her mum's number.

'Hello?' her mum said.

'Me again!' she said in a light hearted tone.

'Three calls in one day,' Francine said sarcastically, she was lucky if she got one call a month.

'Sorry about earlier . . . over emotional . . . mad day!'

'What are you doing tonight? Why don't you come round? I'll make something nice and we can catch up.'

'Yeah! Tonight. Do my best. Um, just remind me, what day is it again?'

'Election day.'

'Right . . .'course. I'll be round for tea . . . roughly.'

'And what about . . .' Francine was going to ask about the Doctor, when Martha interrupted her.

'Anyway, gotta go! See you later! Love you!' She turned to look at the Doctor, who was looking at her over the console. 'Er, sorry about that . . . I sort of, erm, phoned her when I was stuck in that escape pod, thinking I was going to die.'

'Are you alright?' he asked her in return.

'Yeah, I'm fine now . . . So where were you taking me skating or what?' she asked, changing the mood.

He smiled at her. 'The mineral lakes of Cuhlhan.'

'Sounds great, just what we need, a bit of fun.'

'Right then.' He set the coordinates on the console, and she felt the TARDIS weave its way through the Vortex to its destination. 'Now, let's have a bite to eat and get changed.'

She followed him out of the console room and into the kitchen, where they made some sandwiches.

'Will I need warm clothes, I mean, how cold are these crystal lakes?' she asked him as they sat down to eat.

'It's not cold at all . . . I mean, I know I called it `ice skating', but really, its crystal skating to be precise. I only said ice skating to differentiate it from roller skating . . . and it's more crystal sliding, than skating.'

They finished their sandwiches, and headed for their respective rooms to freshen up and change their clothes. They both reappeared in the console room sometime later. The Doctor was back in his familiar brown suit, and Martha had changed her top for a black vest top with leather jacket, and she'd put her hair into a ponytail. She was starting to get her 'space legs' in the TARDIS, because she could feel it materialise into normal space, and heard the soft 'clomp' as it gently landed.

'There you are then, its evening twilight out there, and I'll let you have the first look,' he said with a knowing smile.

She gave him an uncertain, questioning look, before walking down the ramp and opening the doors. What she saw took her breath away. The TARDIS had landed in a pedestrian area, which curved away to the left and right. Behind them were shops and restaurants, and in front of them . . . well, it was stunning.

A flat sheet of what looked like ice, stretched off into the distance, and it glowed with subtle shades of pinks, greens, blues, yellows and purples, which seemed to light the very air itself.

'Oh . . . my . . . God!' Martha breathed. 'It's . . . it's . . .'

'It's a single crystal, polished over millennia by tiny sand grains until it became a mirror smooth sheet, the size of Lake Windermere.'

'It's . . . it's . . . .' She was still struggling to find words to describe the spectacle in front of her.

'There are powerful lamps buried at the edges that internally illuminate the crystal by refraction,' he said, reducing the breathtaking spectacle into a scientific explanation. 'Come on, let's go, and get some skates on.'

As they walked to the edge of the paved area, Martha noticed that there were people on the crystal lake, zooming around, spinning and dancing as they went. In the distance, she could see a sailing ship on skis, gliding silently into the distance.

At the very edge of the lake, there were bench seats, with foot lockers underneath, that contained self adjusting skating boots, with soft, felt like blades that slipped over the crystal. They sat down and changed their footwear, putting their own shoes in the lockers, before teetering out onto the crystal `ice'.

Martha had been ice skating before, at the Queens Ice Rink and Bowl in Bayswater, with Tish and Leo, and quickly got the hang of this new experience. And the Doctor . . . well, he was just the Doctor, and would claim it was his superior Gallifreyan physiology that made him a natural on skates.

There were children, zooming around them, playing tag, and a version of football that involved a large, soft disc, similar to an ice hockey puck. Martha laughed, when a family pet that resembled a bear cub, tried to follow the family onto the ice, and then tried to work out why it could no longer walk properly.

Martha was skating alone at one point, when the Doctor nonchalantly glided along side her with his hands in his pockets, his body sideways to the direction of travel, grinning at her like an idiot. She burst out laughing, and he slowly started to rotate as he slid along.

'Ah, don't think that was supposed to happen,' he said over his shoulder to her. She scooted up to him and linked arms so that they could skate side by side, their legs moving in unison.

'This is nice,' Martha said, just enjoying the experience of taking part in an activity with him.

There was a pause as the Doctor examined his own feelings on the experience, before he looked at her and gave her a warm smile. 'Yes, it is.'

When they'd had their fill of skating, they returned to the bench to put their shoes back on, before browsing the various shops along the lake front. Eventually, they found themselves back at the TARDIS.

'That was brilliant,' Martha said with a smile. 'Thank you.'

'My pleasure,' he replied, flashing his eyebrows as he opened the door for her.

He started up the Time Rotor, and put the TARDIS into the Vortex, when a gentle beeping came from the console.

'What's that?' Martha asked as she saw him frown.

'Some kind of signal.' He started to adjust some of the controls.

'Not another distress signal I hope.' She'd had enough distress with the signal from the SS Pentallian. Why couldn't they get a phone signal or a wi-fi signal now and again?

'Dunno,' he said, still frowning, and then he looked up and grinned. 'Only one way to find out.'

Martha wondered how his shoulder didn't dislocate as he pulled up a lever with a flourish. They hung on to the console as the TARDIS changed direction down another branch of the Vortex before landing.

The Doctor catapulted from the TARDIS, sonic screwdriver held out in front of him. He pivoted on his heels, turning a full circle. `Come on, come on,' he muttered.

Martha stepped out of the TARDIS behind him, a look of gleeful expectation on her face. When she saw she was in a backyard between a couple of smelly bins, rather than on some alien planet with pink skies and purple grass, she frowned. `Is this where the signal was coming from?' she asked.

`It wasn't a signal,' he said absently, `more a sort of . . . splurge. A big fat splurge of power.'

`But what kind of power? I mean, what made it so special?'

`It was old,' he said, still not looking at her.

`How old?'

`Oh . . . very, very, very, very, very, very old, I'd say. Old enough to make my teeth itch. And my palms.' He examined the palm of his left hand thoughtfully. `Maybe I'm allergic.'

`You'd better avoid Keith Richards then,' said Martha. `He'd bring you out in hives.'

The sonic screwdriver didn't bleep or shine brighter or anything, but suddenly the Doctor shouted, `you beauty! Go on, girl!' Next second, he was running towards a gate in the high fence surrounding the yard, all bony knees and elbows, his spiky, tousled hair seeming to fizz with energy.

Martha ran after him. She both loved and hated it when he was like this. She found it exhilarating and frustrating at the same time. He was a bit like a brilliant but temperamental racehorse. Sometimes all you could do was hang on for dear life and hope you wouldn't fall off and be left on the track, coughing and spluttering in his wake.

`So where are we?' she shouted as he yanked back the bolts on the gate and threw it open.

`Somewhere in New England,' he called over his shoulder.

`Is that New England on New Earth or New England in old America?'

`The second one,' he said.

They followed whatever signals the Doctor was getting from the sonic for maybe fifteen minutes. To Martha's relief they didn't run the whole time. The Doctor alternated his pace between sprinting, jogging and strolling, depending on the strength or accuracy of the signal. A few times he stopped completely and cast about in a circle; on one occasion he even pointed the sonic straight up at the darkening sky before shaking his head.

During their search, Martha looked around as much as she was able, drinking in her surroundings. It turned out they had landed behind an ice cream parlour called Harry Ho's, which was one of numerous stores and eating places fringing the main, tree-lined square of a small, picturesque town called Blackwood Falls.

She got the name of the place from a big banner strung across the main street advertising the Blackwood Falls Halloween Carnival. Even without the banner she would have guessed the time of year, simply from the profusion of window displays featuring carved pumpkins, witches, ghosts, skeletons and the like.

She thought the green mist which began to envelop them as they moved out from the town centre and into the suburbs was taking things a bit too far, though. The mist was odourless but chilly. It felt like someone caressing her cheeks with cold fingers.

`Doctor, what is this stuff?' she asked.

He shrugged. He'd slowed to a walking pace now, which he seemed, for the moment, content to maintain. `One thing it's not is of this earth.'

`It's alien, you mean?' She linked her arm with his. She didn't want him to bolt off again and lose her in the fog. `Is it sentient?'

`Nah. It's just a by-product of the energy . . .'

`Splurge?'

He grinned. `That, yeah.'

`It's not toxic, is it?'

`Don't think so. Least I'm not picking up anything.'

Three minutes later he stopped outside the gate of what appeared to be a big clapboard house with a long front porch. It was hard to tell because the mist seemed to be at its thickest here, reducing the building to a dark blocky haze.

`It's here,' he said.

`In the house?'

`Behind it. Come on.' He vaulted the fence and ran across the lawn and up the side of the house, Martha in tow. She felt a tingle of excitement, wondering what marvels were in store for her this time.

`A dead tree?' she said. `Is that it?'

The Doctor prowled around the base of the tree, his hands in his trouser pockets. He produced a pair of black-rimmed spectacles and slipped them on, then bent over to peer at something. `Ooh, look,' he said, `a hole.'

Martha stood beside him, wrinkling her nose. The mist might not smell of anything, but the tree, or something close to it, did. It was the smell of something dead.

`A burrow?' she ventured.

`I'd say it's more likely someone's been digging,' said the Doctor. `Look how smooth the sides are. I wonder what they found.'

`You think something old and alien was lying dormant under here, and that when it was dug up, it came alive and sent out that . . . power splurge?'

The Doctor gave her one of his heart-melting grins. `That's what I love about you, Martha Jones!' he cried. `You use your brain!'