Rose lay back on the cool grass and looked up into the beautiful blue sky of Zavoran III. She was enchanted by this lovely planet and its great big moon – actually a twin planet sharing an orbit with it - which could be seen both night and day. She thought it was one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen.

“How is it,” she asked. “That most of the planets we have visited have blue skies and green grass? I’d have thought the universe would have more variety.”

“Well,” The Doctor said, lounging comfortably beside her in the same leather jacket and jumper he always wore no matter what the weather. “Because – obviously – the planets we’ve visited have fairly similar oxygen/nitrogen/carbon atmospheres. I don’t know about you, but I LIKE to be able to breathe, so we avoided the hydrogen and acid planets. The elements that make up the atmosphere dictate colours. And plant life everywhere tends to be mainly green.”

“So… was your planet the same then?” She asked the question tentatively, since it was always difficult to draw him out about Gallifrey.

“It was one of the exceptions,” The Doctor said. “The sky was a sort of orange colour. But everything else was more or less as you’d expect. There was less water on it than Earth… and more areas of desert, with very red sand. But we had green, verdant places too, with waterfalls and forests. Mountains….” His voice trailed off for a moment, then came back with “Pazithi Gallifreya.”

“Come again?”

“That was the name of our moon. It was like the one here… bright by day and night.”

“I never thought of a moon with a name. Ours is just the moon.”

“Humans, no imagination,” The Doctor responded, but he was only teasing, and then mostly so that he could hide the pain he still felt when he talked about Gallifrey. He looked at Rose and then reached out and touched her forehead.

“Don’t be afraid. I just want to show you a couple of pictures.” He closed his eyes and focussed his mind on the beauty spots of his home planet and allowed them to pass telepathically to her. It was easier than trying to describe them, but when he stopped, he saw that Rose was actually crying softly. Without meaning to, he had passed on his feelings as well as the pictures. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped her tears. “You’re more receptive than I expected. You shouldn’t have felt so much. I think it must be a long term effect of the blood transfusion.”

“I like feeling that close to you,” she said. “Even if it WAS sad.”

“Not too often, though,” The Doctor told her. “You could end up downloading nine hundred and forty nine years of Time Lord experiences into your own head. You’d either die of the chemical overload it would cause – or boredom reliving my student years.” He made light of it, but he made a note to remember that her receptiveness DID make it too easy to pass on more than he should.

“Where is Jack,” Rose asked, moving the subject on quickly.

“Flirting by the bathing lake.”

“The women of Zavoran III are in big trouble.”

“And the men.”

They both laughed.

“I often wondered,” Rose went on. “Which one of us he fancies the most.”

“Sadly, I think it’s me,” The Doctor said. They both laughed at that, too. “You’re not bored with all these tame, quiet planets are you?” he said after a while. “It’s been a month since anything tried to stun, bite or blast us to smithereens.”

“That’s what’s so nice about it,” Rose said. “I was starting to think you lived like that all the time.”

“No. In centuries of intergalactic travel I have had a few brief intervals before something managed to put a spanner in the works. Don’t get too used to the peace. It won’t last. There’s a whole universe out there with something going wrong as we speak!”

As if fate was just waiting for the opportune moment to spring it on him, the sonic screwdriver vibrated urgently in his pocket.

“No!” he exclaimed as he pulled it out and looked at the reading. “No WAY! That’s NOT fair! I resign! Let somebody ELSE save the universe this time.” But he was already scrambling to his feet and striding towards the TARDIS, which was incongruously parked in the middle of the grassy lawn they had been resting on. Rose followed him a little more slowly. Yes, the holiday had been good while it lasted. But despite The Doctor’s protests she was sure getting his teeth into some new mischief somewhere in the universe would be good for him.

“You’re not going to believe this!” The Doctor said when she stepped aboard the TARDIS. “Of all the planets in the universe, guess which one has a problem that only I am skilled to sort out.”

“Earth?”

“Got it in one.” He pushed a button that would alert Jack that he was required back in the TARDIS. He came running a few minutes later complaining that, as usual, his pulling style was being cramped.

“So,” Jack asked as they dematerialised and left the garden planet of Zavoran III behind. “Where exactly are we headed?”

“North America,” The Doctor answered. “Specifically California… specifically.…” He stopped and an anguished expression crossed his face. “Not there,” he whispered. “Any city in the world but that one.”

“Sunnydale?” Rose guessed.

“San Francisco.”

“What’s wrong with San Francisco?” Rose asked. “Sounds exciting.”

The Doctor became annoyingly deaf as he bent over the TARDIS controls.

“If I didn’t know better I’d say they’re after him for child maintenance in San Francisco,” Jack said. “I know there are one or two places I’d be very unwelcome in.…” The Doctor’s expression looked so pained that Jack and Rose both looked at him in wonder. “Good God. Don’t tell me you ARE….”

“Don’t be silly,” The Doctor replied. But he would not be drawn further. Rose got the strange impression, though, that a woman was involved in his reasons for not going to San Francisco. She was curiously unsurprised. But Jack was enjoying The Doctor’s discomfort too much.

“I never figured Time Lords as competition in the romantic stakes,” he said. “I always thought they were a frigid race. But you seem to have a woman in every port.”

“I do not,” he protested, and Rose, even with her limited experience of relationships knew that Jack was one step away from going too far. She hoped Jack would realise it too.

He didn’t.

“I know a couple of really happening bars in San Francisco,” he said. “We could make a threesome.…”

“Love is just a game to you,” The Doctor snapped at him. “For me… it has never been that. The price was too high.” He looked back down on the console and Rose was SURE this time that he was only faking what he was doing to avoid eye contact with either of them.

“I’d better see if I can trace the source of the transmission,” Jack said. “See what we’re dealing with.”

“What is the transmission anyway,” Rose asked. “And how come it reached us out in space?”

“The TARDIS has a connection to Earth’s defence systems,” The Doctor explained. “It has had it since I was attached to U.N.I.T. in the 1970s. If Earth has a problem that isn’t of its own making, I get to know about it.”

“But the USA isn’t in U.N.I.T.,” Jack pointed out. “They wouldn’t join an organisation whose HQ was in Europe.”

“Yes,” The Doctor sighed “It took a good part of the twenty-first century before the ‘superpowers’ realised that Humanity needed to stick together. We’re heading for… 2005.” He groaned. “Paranoia, suspicion, and the American lot don’t know who I am.”

“We don’t have to go,” Jack suggested. “We could just turn around and go sunbathing.”

“Of course we have to go,” Rose said. “If Earth has trouble…. Even in San Francisco… it could be in London next and….”

“Of course we’re going.” The Doctor settled the discussion. “But I just wonder sometimes why I have so much trouble with Earth. Is there a big sign just outside the solar system saying ‘defenceless victims - third planet from the sun.’ Or does it say ‘If you want to spoil The Doctor’s peace and quiet come and invade this planet….’”

“Maybe there’s something in that,” Rose said. “You’ve made enough enemies out there that might want to use your fondness for Earth.”

The Doctor looked at her for a moment, wondering if she might actually have something. Then he shook his head. “No, I leave paranoia to the Americans.” He pushed a final button on the console and they felt the change in the TARDIS’s engines as it materialised. “Speaking of which… here we are.”

------------

“Oh, wow, that is beautiful,” Rose said as they stepped out of the TARDIS and she gazed at the view of the Golden Gate Bridge in a truly golden sunset. The Doctor looked at it in similar appreciation. Earth sunsets, he thought, looked a lot like Gallifreyan ones, with all the red and gold in the sky. Jack was the only one of them who didn’t take a moment to reflect upon the view.

“The signal originated that way,” he said. “I can triangulate it in a second or two.”

“Don’t bother,” The Doctor told him. “I know where we are. This is the Presidio – an entire town based around military life - barracks, officers quarters, training grounds, military hospital, research centre. The research centre will be where the A.D.F. are. American Defence Force… U.N.I.T.’s opposite numbers.” He turned to Jack and Rose. “I’m going to get in there. But I’d better do it alone. Jack, take Rose and show her a bit of the Bay Area until I get back.”

“I know a couple of good bars,” Jack began, but The Doctor cut him off.

“According to the TARDIS clock this is November 2005. Rose’s ID makes her 19 still. You keep her away from American bars, especially Bay Area ones. Go to Starbucks or something and behave yourself.”

Jack grimaced at the thought of such a PG-rated way of spending an evening, but clearly regarded Rose’s company as compensation. The Doctor almost changed his mind and brought her with him, but he was planning on infiltrating a top security US Army facility and they would not be polite if he was caught.

The guards at the gate of the Letterman Army Institute of Research gripped their sub-machine guns as they watched the strange civilian approaching. There was something odd about the way he walked, with the air of somebody with authority, who had a perfect right to be there, but dressed in a shabby leather jacket and slacks like some sort of drifter.

“I am The Doctor,” he said, and the guards were again impressed by the air of authority as he held up his ID. “I’m here to help you out of your crisis.” They clicked to attention as they let The Doctor pass. It was about ten minutes later that they realised that there was something VERY odd about The Doctor, his ID, and the whole darn situation, and called their superiors.

The Doctor had reached the main building and was using his sonic screwdriver to open a locked side entrance when he heard the predictable order to ‘freeze’ and turned to face seven guards all armed to the teeth. Typical American overkill, he thought. In England it would be two or three and he could leave them all sleeping it off peacefully while he got on with what he was doing. But seven… that still left four capable of turning him into a bullet filled sieve.

He surrendered.

Rose sipped a cappuccino and looked out of the café window at a moonlit San Francisco Bay while half listening to a tall story from Jack that she expected to turn x-rated any minute. It was a beautiful view, and she would have been quite content walking down there on the Bayside promenade with The Doctor. It had been quite nice with Jack. He could be charming when he chose, and they probably looked a perfect couple to any casual eye. But The Doctor was her man. Even a full on personality like Jack paled beside him.

Maybe it was because she was already thinking about him, that she felt the telepathic wave so forcefully. She dropped the coffee cup down with such a crash that Jack stopped in mid-sentence.

“He’s being hurt,” Rose said getting up from the table and rushing out of the café. Jack followed quickly.

“Where?” He didn’t even bother to ask how she knew. Rose was about the only person, male or female, he had tried to seduce and been rejected. The Doctor’s influence on her beat the full-on Captain Jack Harkness and that had to be respected. Besides, he liked The Doctor too. He owed him his life more than once. If somebody was hurting him, Jack was ready to repay the debt.

“I don’t know,” Rose said, panicking slightly. “I just know he is in pain. Somebody is hurting him, and I have to help.”

The Doctor WAS in pain. Knelt on the floor of the detention cell, his hands plasi-cuffed behind his head, he was as helpless as any prisoner. His advantages over Humans in hand-to-hand fighting rather depended on him being able to use his hands. Besides, there was a kind of unwritten law that when you are in this situation you take what’s coming to you and roll with it. He wasn’t sure why – since laws – not even important ones like the laws of gravity, time, physics, tended to apply to him – but he seemed to have little control over this one.

“Are you ready to talk now?” The officer in charge of the ‘good kicking’ he had just received spoke to him through the cell bars. “What are you? We know you’re not Human. Your alien DNA has been scanned.”

“Clever boys,” The Doctor said in reply. “But if you’d asked I’d have told you that.” His response earned him another steel-toed boot in the region of the liver. He wondered if they knew he had a redundant organ that would come into operation if they managed to burst the currently functioning one or if they were just hoping to kill him slowly.

“What the hell is going on here?” The officer jumped visibly as his superior entered the detention area followed by two S.O.s. All the soldiers suddenly stood to attention. The Doctor looked up at the man who dismissed the soldiers and then stepped into the cell.

“I am Lieutenant-Colonel Simon Gray, Commanding Officer of this facility. You may be assured that those who assaulted you will be dealt with, but the restraint is necessary until we are sure you are no danger to national security.” Gray looked down at The Doctor’s face and was startled to see in those piercing slate-grey eyes not a defeated prisoner, but an indefinable yet unmistakeable mark of authority that somehow made HIM feel like the prisoner. “What are you?” he asked, uncertainly. “What sort of man… if you ARE a man…are you?”

“Don’t be stupid,” The Doctor said. “Of course I’m a man. Just because I don’t come from Earth doesn’t make me any less of a man. But what use would it be if I told you my planet? You won’t find it in any star chart or reference you have.”

“I’m trying to make this easy,” Gray said. “You have to understand our position. You turn up here…” He stopped and stared at The Doctor. A moment ago he was bruised and cut all over his torso and a large abrasion covered one side of his face. But as he spoke, the cuts and bruises seemed to be mending. “WHAT are you?” he said again.

The Doctor just stared at him in a way that made him feel very uneasy. He decided to change tactic. He reached into his pocket. “Do you… want a cigarette?” he asked. “Do they smoke on your planet?” Something fell from his pocket. The Doctor looked down at the photograph of Gray arm in arm with a very attractive woman who, against all odds, stirred a memory in him that he hoped he WOULDN’T pass onto Rose along with the information about his situation. He wasn’t sure if he was able to keep it up at this distance. It was a wonder he could do it at all, but he had felt her soft, sweet mind almost as a soothing balm on his bruised body and knew she was trying to reach him, both physically and mentally. He looked at the picture again. His hearts felt like a knife had been thrust into them. He didn’t want to use HER, but it was looking like the only way he was ever going to get out of that cell.

Rose and Jack ran into the Letterman Army Medical Centre. Jack had used the TARDIS’s databanks to trace the information Rose had given him to that location. But a military hospital was not the sort of place that was going to let either of them in easily.

“I need to speak to Dr Grace Holloway urgently,” Rose told the receptionist. “Please can you page her or call her or whatever it is you do.”

“Dr. Holloway doesn’t see anyone without an appointment,” the receptionist said icily. “And it IS seven-thirty in the evening.”

“This is a matter of life and death,” Rose said. “At least pass on a message to her. The Doctor needs her…”

“What doctor?” the receptionist said, this time pressing the silent alarm that summoned security. A moment later Rose and Jack found themselves surrounded. Jack pulled his psychic paper and held it over his head.

“I’m Captain Jack Harkness of Homeland Security. So back off all of you.” He turned to the receptionist. “Get Dr. Grace Holloway on the phone right now and tell her we have a message from The Doctor, or you’ll be looking for a new job tomorrow.”

“Tell her….” Rose said, quickly, repeating the message she was feeling in her head, “Tell her the doctor who knows about binary-cardio vascular functions needs her help.” The receptionist did so.

Grace Holloway, her mind spinning with the startling message she had received tore into the reception and stopped when she saw the security and the young blonde female who immediately approached her.

“You’re Grace?” the blonde asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I was told there was a message from.…”

“Your….” Rose tried to concentrate harder. “Your boyfriend... has The Doctor and he is hurting him… and you are the only person who can stop it.” Grace stared at her in disbelief. “He…” She again tried to fix on the message to get it right. “He… wants to know if you’re still tired of life.” At that cryptic message, Grace finally seemed to believe her.

“Come on,” she said to Rose, hurrying past her. Jack followed. “Who did you say YOU were?” she asked. Jack showed her his psychic paper identifying him as Homeland Security but she frowned and looked at him. “That says you think I’m the cutest cardiologist you ever met.” Jack was taken aback. Rose looked at Grace and made a guess.

“Psychic paper doesn’t work on anyone who has ever been exposed to the TARDIS’s psychic. It cancels it out.”

Grace looked at her and redoubled her pace. “So, what are you to The Doctor then?” She looked at Rose and guessed her age, maybe seventeen, eighteen? “You’re not his daughter are you?”

“No,” she said forcefully. Grace looked at her, and seemed about to question her further, but decided there were more important things.

At the research centre she was known to the receptionist who put a call straight through to Simon Gray, her fiancée, head of the A.D.F. – American Defence Force, - the small, barely known military section in charge of alien threats to American soil.

Half an hour later, they were all in Simon’s office. The Doctor was making a point of rubbing his wrists where the cuffs had chafed him, even though his regenerative properties meant that the deep wheals had already mended. Simon had made a formal apology for his treatment, but it was still not good enough for Rose. She had shouted at him for a good ten minutes about the Geneva Convention and humane treatment of prisoners.

It wasn’t good enough for Grace, either.

“Simon,” she said. “When you first told me what you did for a job – that you worked for an agency that monitored extra-terrestrial incursions on Earth – I didn’t laugh. I told you I once met an alien and he was a wonderful man.”

“I thought you were kidding,” Simon admitted.

“I wasn’t,” she said. “HE… The Doctor…. is THAT man…. that alien. And if the thing going on here right now is extra-terrestrial – you NEED him.”

Lieutenant-Colonel Simon Gray looked at The Doctor then back at Grace, and back to The Doctor again. “I can’t clear you until I know who and what you are, DOCTOR,” he said. “So you really need to start talking.”

“We’ve wasted enough time talking about me.” The Doctor stood up and asserted his own unmistakeable authority over the situation. “I want to know what exactly is going on here that triggered a full Mauve Alert in my TARDIS and brought me back here to this planet. And let’s not have any rubbish about national security.” Rose watched his soft slate-grey eyes harden to a graphite consistency as he stared down the usually self-assured officer. She had seen THAT trick many a time. Better men than the Lieutenant-Colonel crumbled.

Simon sighed and took a file from his desk and passed it to The Doctor. It was quite a thick one, but he was done with it in less than a minute. Rose watched his eyes, the pupils dilating rapidly as he flicked through the closely typed pages. She knew he would have memorised every page by the end.

“Show me the bodies,” he said.

“Fine, but they don’t have clearance.” He pointed at Rose and Jack. “And neither do you, Grace…”

“Doctor!” Rose stood up and put herself between him and Simon. “Why are we trusting these people? HE was torturing you for the past two hours and SHE thinks I’m your… daughter.”

The Doctor looked at her, then put his arms about her. “I’m all right,” he said. “And… would being my daughter be such a terrible thing? But this is bigger than personal issues. Something is happening here that I have to deal with – for everyone’s sake.”

“Ok. But I’m coming with you. Look what happened when I let you go it alone.”

“This is not something she ought to see,” Simon protested.

“SHE has seen more weird stuff than you’ve had hot dinners, mate,” Rose said, rounding on him. “So stuff your security and don’t pretend you’re worried about me. The Doctor said this is urgent so get to it.”

“Look,” Grace said to The Doctor, as they walked down a long series of corridors and stairwells that were bringing them down into the basement of the building, “I’m sorry if I misunderstood anything about you and….”

“Her name is Rose,” The Doctor said, and his hand tightened around Rose’s as he spoke. “And she is the world to me, Grace. That’s all that matters.”

“It’s just that I didn’t think teenagers were quite your style,”

“That was uncalled for,” he said. “I asked Rose to come with me, and…SHE did.”

“And I didn’t?”

“Exactly.”

Rose glanced at Grace. She was a very attractive woman, very sophisticated, a very highly qualified woman. A DOCTOR. She was the sort of woman who could be an intellectual match for HER Doctor. And yet, SHE was the one whose hand he was holding. SHE had won.

And Grace knew it.

“I still don’t think this is a good idea,” Simon said as they approached a frightening looking door with a hermetic seal and dire warnings about security clearance. The Doctor gave him a hard stare and he turned and punched in his security code. The door opened slowly and they stepped inside.

Inside, was what could only be described as a giant mortuary. There were cold cabinets for keeping bodies stored down three long aisles and at the far end, The Doctor saw with his superior eyesight, a full autopsy suite.

“Good Lord!” It was Jack who expressed the feelings of all of them. “How many are there?”

“1,500,” The Doctor said, before Simon could speak. He crossed the floor and opened the first drawer. He pulled back the sheet that covered the body and looked at it dispassionately. “These are from the cruise liner?” he asked Simon, noting as he opened several other drawers that they were male and female, old and young.

“Yes. Then that aisle is from the merchant vessel and the most recent, the victims from Fort Baker. They’re all the same.”

“One thousand, five hundred bodies all like THAT?” Rose said with a shudder. Although she was determined not to be left out, she was feeling more than a little grossed out at what she was seeing.

“Yes.”

“All with their organs missing?” Jack queried.

“Yes.”

“What did that?” Grace asked.

“Is everyone finished asking questions?” The Doctor sounded slightly irritated. “You said you had some evidence.”

“This way.” Simon strode off down the aisle towards the autopsy suite. The Doctor walked astride with him. Everyone else followed along because nobody gave them any other instructions. Rose thought all three of them looked surplus to requirements for the moment. They were only there out of stubbornness. The Doctor was the only one who had any purpose. But she was not going to leave him alone here, where people researched aliens. She still didn’t entirely trust the people he was with. She had felt not only the pain of the physical hurt they had inflicted on him, but also his terrible knowledge that they were doing it to him because he was alien, and because they hated him for it.

“There isn’t much,” Simon said. “The bodies in each of the locations were just literally disembowelled – ripped open and the organs scooped out. Our pathologists concluded that some kind of very sharp weapon was used to slit the bodies. We were thinking on the lines of knives until we found this…” He passed The Doctor a sealed evidence bag with a long knife like talon attached to what was unmistakeably a finger, though far from a Human finger. “That’s why it fell to the A.D.F., because this is clearly the work of aliens.”

“Good guess, Simon.” The Doctor took the talon over to the scrubbed metal workstation by the autopsy table. He carefully took a sample of the tissue and prepared a slide to examine.

“You had that,” Rose said as The Doctor worked quietly, humming to himself. “You KNEW that the alien you were looking for had scales and foot long toenails. And yet you put HIM in a cell and beat him up because you thought he was the alien you were looking for.”

“The possibility had to be investigated,” Simon said. “At the very least he was a security risk.” The Doctor looked at him and made a tutting noise that indicated what he thought of security around there.

“And what,” Rose continued. “What did you think… He was a scaly thing inside a Human skin or something? I mean… ok… that can happen. Been there, done that. But he’s not one of them.”

“I think I’d have noticed,” Grace pointed out.

“Yeah well, we’re not going down that road,” Rose snapped back. “Anyway, look at him. He looks perfectly normal… Human normal. I bet he’s not the only one on this planet. There are probably hundreds. Not Time Lords, because we know The Doctor is the only one. But others must have come here.”

“Millions,” The Doctor corrected her. “All over the world. They’ve been coming for centuries and living among you.”

“Michael Jackson?” Grace asked. Rose laughed despite being determined to dislike her predecessor for The Doctor’s affections.

“Not that I know of,” The Doctor answered. “Mostly they avoid the limelight, live quiet lives, are buried in your cemeteries and you never know. They come here because your petty little wars are less deadly than the interstellar ones they’ve escaped from, or because they like your fruit and veg, or are just researching you. And neither U.N.I.T. nor the A.D.F., nor anyone else has a clue about them. And that’s the way it ought to be. Humans are so paranoid. If more than a few of them DID have a clue, they’d be tying each other to burning stakes on the pretext that they are aliens. And by the way, just because my bruises heal doesn’t mean I don’t still ache for hours after. I won’t forget my welcome to San Francisco in a hurry. But it doesn’t mean I won’t help save San Francisco from this HOSTILE alien threat. So aren’t you glad your boys didn’t kick me to death back there.”

“Do you know what it is?” Simon asked.

“Of course I do,” The Doctor said. “There actually aren’t many species in the universe I haven’t met before. But this is one of them. People with two hearts, four kidneys and two livers tend to want to avoid the Agron quadrant of Omnias. That’s why I’ve never actually met one up close. But its one of them all right - a Koi’hu. They specialise in spare part surgery at a price. Humanoid organs are especially valuable because they wear out so fast. They hate to have waiting lists though, so they have to stockpile. Earth has been designated their wholesale market.” He reached into his pocket for the TARDIS key. “I really have to stop doing this. Cold starts over short distance are bad for the circuits, but we haven’t got time to mess about.”

He pressed the key and a moment later the TARDIS began to materialise in the autopsy room. He opened the door and went in. Rose and Jack went to follow, Grace a few paces behind. The Doctor looked back at Simon who was still staring. “Well, come on then, don’t tell me a genuine piece of alien technology doesn’t excite you.”

Simon followed.

“Where to, Doctor?” Jack asked. “Is there a ship in orbit or what?”

“Oh, yes.” The Doctor said. “And no, Simon, NONE of your defences will have spotted it, because you never asked me how to phase them so that they can pick up the warp shunt technology the Koi’hu use. Ask me nicely and I’ll tell you later, then next time you don’t have to ruin my holidays to sort it out. But I’m guessing they’re somewhere near here.”

“Doctor,” Rose said. “You said Earth was their wholesale market. One thousand five hundred dead already. How long before….”

“They reach London?” The Doctor finished her sentence without needing any telepathic link. “With two hundred and ninety five million seven hundrued and thirty four thousand one hundred and thirty four Americans to pick on first, it would be decades. But don’t worry. Your mum will be safe. And Mickey, and your nymphomaniac friend Shireen who tried to get off with me under the table at your birthday party and everyone else you know, because I’m going to blow the aliens out of the sky in a few minutes. They won’t take another Human victim if I have any say in the matter.”

He set the TARDIS control and they all felt it dematerialising. It was only a matter of minutes before they were in orbit and The Doctor turned on the viewscreen to show them high above Earth. Simon, the only one among them who had never seen this view from the TARDIS, was astounded, but The Doctor was not letting anyone stand around sight-seeing.

“You think you have sensors down there, Simon,” he said, turning a few apparently random knobs on the TARDIS console. “Watch this.” Despite the seriousness of the situation he was enjoying just a little bit of showing off as he banked the TARDIS around to reveal, gleaming in the reflected Earthlight, the alien ship. “Needless to say, IT can’t see us. Because the TARDIS is way superior technology. But that’s what we’re dealing with.”

“Well, let’s get on with it.”

“I am getting on with it,” The Doctor said. He was pulling panels in the TARDIS wall open to reveal what looked like a bomb-maker’s wildest dreams. Rose moved closer and watched him working to construct small, compact, but very spectacularly powerful, bombs.

“You blew up my job with one of those,” she said.

“Well remembered. We’ve kicked around the universe a bit since then. Any regrets?”

“None whatsoever. You?”

“No.”

“Not even.…” She nodded her head towards Grace, who was in conversation with Simon.

“Rose….” The Doctor sighed gently and looked at Grace, then back at Rose. “I met Grace on December 31st, 1999. She was with me until just after midnight. I suppose you could say we had a whirlwind romance. She WAS the first woman I had kissed in about three hundred years. Then she got her mind taken over by my mortal enemy and tried to murder me. That kind of cramped things. Of course, I sorted it all out in the end. Saved the world – watched the fireworks over the bay at midnight with her. Then I asked her if she would come with me, but she said no. And that was ok, because she had her work to go back to, and I had plenty to do. I never regretted it. If she did… well, I am sorry for that. But I can’t turn the clock back. And I wouldn’t if I could. But… well… maybe that’s the reason when you said no the first time… I gave you a second chance.”

“I was daft to even think of saying no,” she said. “I WOULD have regretted it every day.”

The Doctor said nothing but he smiled warmly at her. Then he collected the three bombs he had made and threw one of them to Jack and one to Simon. Both looked a little disturbed at having to catch a bomb.

“They’re safe until we set the detonators,” he assured them. Then he turned to the console and set co-ordinates for inside the Koi’hu ship. He turned to Rose and Grace. “You two are staying on board the TARDIS. Call me a male chauvinist pig if you like, but planting bombs is men’s work.” Before he went out the door, though, he had one more word for the women.

“If we get this wrong - and we shouldn’t, because this is my plan and I’m brilliant - but we could blow the ship before we get back to the TARDIS. The TARDIS WILL survive. So will you. Rose, press THIS button to return to Earth. Grace, since it will go back to San Francisco, I will trust YOU to help Rose get back to England and her family.” Rose looked on the point of protest, but he put the arm that wasn’t holding a bomb around her waist and kissed her before joining Jack and Simon at the door.

“So, what’s the plan,” Jack asked as they slipped along the corridor of the alien ship. “You have a plan, right?”

“Of course I have a plan.” He pulled a set of printouts from his pocket. “The vulnerable points of this ship… here, here, and here…. Jack, Simon, you go to these two locations and I’m heading this way. I’ve set the timers to explode in 20 minutes. So no hanging about. And nobody get caught.”

“You’re not even going to try negotiating with these things?”

“These are parasites. They can’t be asked nicely. They don’t want to negotiate. They want Human body parts to sell to the highest bidder. They’ve already murdered thousands. They have to be stopped. Now stop asking stupid questions and go.”

The Doctor watched for a moment as Jack and Simon both took different routes to strategic parts of the ship. That had been a valid question. He wasn’t a cold-blooded killer. He didn’t cut off life without a word of warning. But these creatures did. He thought of the reports Simon had of ships found drifting with all hands dead, passed off to the public as accidents at sea, of course. He thought of the Fort where soldiers had died with their hands still on the safety catches of their weapons, cut down before they had a chance to fight back; taken in the middle of their meals; or in their barrack beds. They were taken, not because Earth was at war with this race of beings, but because their organs were valuable to the economy of the Koi'hu.

Greed. The one thing that really made him despair of the whole universe. It was the motive for so much evil. Well, not this time. Earth belonged to Humans – and those aliens who chose it as a place of relative peace. And he was there to make sure they had that peace.

By doing something that went against the grain? Yes. Because sometimes that was the only thing he could do.

He reached the spot he had chosen to plant his own device. The anti-matter injection chamber. The devices Jack and Simon were planting were less strategic than the one he had to deal with. They would prevent the Koi'hu taking any kind of preventative action once they knew their ship was dying. Jack was blowing up their matter transference control, preventing them from either escaping to Earth or getting into the chamber in the few minutes it would take for the anti-matter build up to reach critical mass. Simon was sabotaging their life-support and gravitational controls.

As he stepped into the chamber he felt the radiation wash over him. If he stayed in there for long even he would be in trouble as his body died at cellular level, but the few minutes it took to attach his device was nothing to a Time Lord. He could force his body to expel the radioactive particles with a short period of deep meditation.

He was almost back to the TARDIS when he heard Jack racing towards him. He turned and saw that the Captain was being pursued by several of the Koi'hu. They were squat creatures, about five foot in height, with limbs making up much of their length. Their right arms were frightening, the limb ending in a ‘hand’ of seven fingers, three of which had six inch long knife-like talons that could tear with surgical precision through Human flesh. Jack drew level with The Doctor just as they heard Simon coming from the side corridor. The only one of them with a weapon, he drew it and fired as he ran. One Koi'hu fell from a headshot that was either pure luck or great marksmanship at a run. The others drew back momentarily, allowing Simon to reach The Doctor and Jack, but then they pressed forward again. Simon kept shooting as he stood between the enemy and his unarmed comrades in retreat back to the TARDIS. He brought several of them down, but they kept on coming.

They were within feet of the TARDIS when he had counted down to the last round. He worked quickly, skilfully, changing the clip, but those seconds counted against him. One of the Koi'hu sprang forward, its deadly hand outstretched and Simon gave a startled cry as the talon ripped into his chest. The Doctor caught him as he keeled backwards. Jack grabbed his pistol before it fell and covered them in the final retreat into the TARDIS.

“Simon!” Grace screamed as The Doctor fell back into the TARDIS with Simon in his arms. Jack closed the door then went to the console and put them into a new orbit. On the viewscreen the Koi'hu ship exploded as The Doctor’s brilliant plan worked perfectly, but nobody noticed. Grace tried to help her stricken fiancée, but The Doctor told her to step away. She watched in astonished silence as he put his hands on Simon’s forehead and closed his eyes in deep concentration. When he stood up and moved away, Grace took his place at her lover’s side. He was very still, and she couldn’t feel a pulse, but he didn’t look dead.

“What have you done to him?” she asked looking around at The Doctor.

“He’s in a slow meditation phase,” he said as he went to the controls and set the co-ordinates for the Letterman Medical centre. “I put him into it. The heart needs to beat only once an hour… which means you have about 40 minutes to get him into theatre - because his heart is so badly damaged it will explode when it does. Get him on life support, then get him ready for surgery. You need to do a transplant.”

“What?” Grace said. “How? We haven’t got a donor.”

“Yes you have,” The Doctor said. “Me.”

“What?” Rose cried. “No! You can’t.”

“Yes, I can,” he insisted. “Grace… you know I have two hearts. What you don’t know is that I can live with just one until a second one grows back. It takes about a month.”

“Good God!” Grace exclaimed. “My job would be meaningless if people could….”

“I’m the last of my kind and I’m not sure how OFTEN I can do that,” he said. “So don’t imagine I’m here as a permanent spare part donor . But Simon covered me and Jack. He is hurt because he tried to save us. I have to do what I can for him.”

The TARDIS materialised in the ante-room of the cardio theatre. Grace began paging her medical team as soon as she stepped out into the room. Within minutes they were assembling. Simon was put on life support. They had bought a little time. Time enough for The Doctor to explain a few things. “Rose needs to be prepped to be in there with me,” he said. “I need her. I can’t go under anaesthetic. You killed me the last time. I’ll be in a deep meditation. Rose will be my monitor. I can connect with her telepathically. She will be able to tell you when it’s safe.”

“What?” Grace stared at him. “You want me to crack your chest and remove one of your hearts and you won’t even be under anaesthetic?”

“Won’t that hurt?” Rose asked, feeling not at all certain about her own part in this.

“Yes, probably,” he said. “But what’s the alternative? Grace, are you going to stand there and let a man die when we can save him?”

“No,” she decided. “Rose… you come with me. Doctor….” She leaned towards him and kissed him gently on the cheek. “In case it doesn’t work… in case… because you were willing to try….”

“It will work,” he assured her. “I believe in you.” Grace nodded and called for one of the nurses to “prep” him for surgery. The nurse looked at him oddly. In her experience people didn’t walk into cardio-theatres on their own two feet, but she did what she was told. Grace steered Rose into the prep room where she was shown how to scrub up and get into sterile surgical gown and mask.

It felt surreal, Rose thought as she was finally allowed into the theatre. Two tables were set side by side. Simon was connected to life support that bleeped and beeped away monitoring his condition. The Doctor, beside him, lay quietly. Rose went to his side. He was breathing very slowly, preparing for his deep meditative state that would allow the operation to go ahead. She took his hand in hers and at once she felt the presence of his mind inside her brain. “Don’t be afraid,” he heard him say to her.

“I’m not,” she said. But she was, and he knew it. He reached out again and she felt a soothing calm wash over her. She wasn’t sure what he had done, but she felt much less scared. Then she felt him enter the meditation. She looked down at him. His soft slate-grey eyes were open, but they were vacant, empty, unblinking. His mind felt empty and quiet. She looked at Grace and nodded. “He’s ready.”

She turned away her face. She looked into his eyes again. She wasn’t sure they WERE completely empty. Something was there. She focussed on them, not wanting to look as Grace “cracked” his chest, a process that was exactly as it sounded, involving cutting open the torso from just below the breastbone to the navel and breaking the ribs apart to expose the organs beneath. She was aware, in that part that was telepathically connected, that he COULD feel it; a subdued pain, masked by the meditation, but still somewhere in his being he could feel every incision into his body. He bore it bravely and she was proud of him, so very proud. He had such courage, such generosity of spirit and she loved him for it as she never loved him before. She prayed she would have a chance to tell him so when this was over.

Grace was praying much the same thing as she worked to carefully extract The Doctor’s heart from his body. She had done countless heart transplants before, but never under these circumstances. Usually, the donor was already dead and the heart in a sterile container, and she only had one patient to keep alive. Besides, both THESE patients were people she cared for. She was too close to both for it to be strictly ethical but she was the only Cardiologist who had ever dealt with a Time Lord’s physiology before. She tried not to remember that he died on her the last time. She would have a lot of explaining to do with her staff later, too. This procedure was so out of the ordinary in so many ways. But right now saving Simon, keeping The Doctor alive, came first.

Rose looked around despite herself just as Grace took the heart from his chest cavity. Their eyes met briefly before Grace turned away to the other table and Rose realised that all the medical attention was being given to the patient there. Grace’s cardio team treated The Doctor as if he was just a donor cadaver, finished with now.

Rose was alone with him. No… not alone, not quite. HE was with her. His PAIN was with her. She knew that, if he was not in a meditative state, muting his senses, the pain would have seared through her as it surely was searing through his body now. But as well as the pain she was aware of his presence, his essence, concentrating itself. She knew he was healing himself, closing off the arteries that had been severed when his heart was taken out, repairing his ribcage, and slowly, slowly, closing the long open wound in his flesh.

She looked once at the gaping, bloody hole and turned away. She was still holding his hand, though it was limp and unresponsive to her touch. She looked at his eyes again and felt for him in her mind. She still felt the pain, but it was lessening now. Rather, there was a feeling of strain as he forced his body to mend and adapt, and a very slight feeling of panic in case he couldn’t do it.

“You CAN do it,” she told him with her mind. “Yes, yes you can, My Doctor, my brave Doctor.” For a fleeting moment she thought she felt something like gratitude. Then a face floated into her mind, a dark haired girl called Katarina, the name imprinted on her mind with the face, and the sad knowledge that she had died to save The Doctor and others with him a long time ago. Another face, a boy called Adric, and she had a brief flash of memory of a spacecraft exploding and understood that the boy had sacrificed his own life. Then Simon’s face floated into view and she felt his determination that this would not be another Human who had died while he lived. Rose understood now WHY he had put himself through this terrible ordeal. He usually put himself in front in the face of danger. When others protected HIM, he felt guilty.

She forced herself to look again and was relieved to see that he was mending. There was only a thin orange-red line on his chest now, and that, too, was slowly disappearing. His hand tightened on hers and he breathed out suddenly, the first time he had in the course of the surgery. His eyes closed momentarily as he came out of the meditation and then opened wide. She looked down and smiled. He was awake and looking up at her. She felt him withdraw the telepathic connection and felt strangely alone without it. But the last message to her had been unmistakeable.

“Thank you, My Rose.” He squeezed her hand again and softly whispered the same words. She could think of nothing to say. She was just very, very glad he was alive. She had an overwhelming desire, though, to be anywhere but that operating theatre.

“Me too,” he whispered and that surprised her, for she was sure he had cut the telepathic connection. But that made her mind up. She put the sides up on the moveable operating table and kicked the brake off. She slowly backed out into the ante-room and stopped. The Doctor raised himself up to a half sitting position. She reached out to help him and for a moment he clung to her tightly before he recovered himself.

“Can you get my clothes?” he asked. She found them for him then turned away while he dressed. When she turned back she was pleased to see him looking nearly his old self again.

“Are you ok?” she asked. “Really ok?” She pressed herself against his chest and it DID sound different. “Was it true… what you said about the heart regrowing? Or was that a lie to get her to do it?”

“Its true,” he said. “About a month and I’ll be good as new. Feels strange just yet though. I feel….”

“Mortal?”

“I was never immortal. I CAN die, and one day I will. I have to be careful it isn’t in the next month.”

“Oh, come here.” Rose threw her arms around him. “You lied to me. It hurt you a LOT. I could feel it. You knew everything that was happening to you. It must have been awful.”

“If Simon lives, it was worth it.” He thought of Adric and Katarina and knew he would have done as much again to save them. Nobody should have to die to protect him. It was his job to protect everyone else. Especially those he loved, and those they loved.

He remembered the last time he felt as drained as this – literally – when he had given Rose almost all of his blood to save her.

The door opened. Grace was there, pulling off her scrubs. “What the hell are you doing?” she demanded of The Doctor. “You should be in bed. You are recovering from major surgery.”

“I’m recovered,” The Doctor told her. “Good as new. My body repairs itself.”

“I don’t care,” Grace insisted. “You’re not leaving my care for at least twenty-four hours.”

“Is Simon going to make it? Rose asked.

“Yes. The the transplant went fine. He’s on life support, but only as a precaution. I think… I think that’s a strong heart. He’s going to be fine. But….”

“Well, Grace,” The Doctor said. “My part here is done. I need to pop back to the A.D.F. and reset their scanners to detect any Koi'hu in Earth orbit, but after that, Rose and Jack and I have a universe to explore. So.…” He took Grace’s two hands in his and drew her close to him. He kissed her briefly. “Never be tired of life, Grace. It’s the greatest gift anyone has. You and Simon have the best life you can.” Then he took Rose’s hand and they both walked away. Out of her life, for good, she thought.

And that was how it should be.