The Eye of God

o :: o :: o

Episode One: Death Moss

It seemed silly for the TARDIS to flash the word "WARNING" over and over. He knew he was in danger. The primary engines were cycling down to zero, the back-up engines were gone, the modulation matrix was shot…

Also the console was on fire.

He flipped a switch and it didn't help. In fact, it caused the entire ship to rock to one side, and he grabbed hold of the zigzag plotter for dear life. As the TARDIS swayed and shook and tumbled through space, the front doors clattered open. He could hear running water outside, but he had more pressing issues on his mind than what planet and time period he happened to have fallen into.

The Doctor was dangling sideways off the console, both hands still gripping the zigzag plotter. If he could just reach the emergency stabilizers, he might be able to at least not fall to his death in his own space ship.

Clong. Crack!

Right at that moment, two men plummeted through the open doors and went hurtling past the console into the back hallway.

There was a splash. The Doctor supposed that they must have landed in the swimming pool, wherever that had gotten to.

The TARDIS suddenly righted itself again as the emergency stabilizers began to take effect. He landed, with precious little dignity, on his face on the floor of the console room. It was still on fire, but at least the threat of falling had been taken care of. He scrambled back up to his feet.

"Emergency landing!" he screamed at the console, hoping that it might help somehow as he smacked wildly at buttons and yanked blindly at levers. "Emergency landing!"

The engines groaned and wheezed. The doors slammed shut again. They took off through time and space, and the TARDIS didn't seem to like it all that much.

"Yes!" he said. "Good!"

He ran down to the swimming pool, but it was empty. He followed the water down another hallway. The two gentlemen who'd so rudely fallen into his TARDIS were both splayed out on the floor of the library, sopping wet. The pool must have buggered off somewhere else.

"Hello," the Doctor said as the engines' roaring got louder and louder. "Not that I want to alarm you more than you've already been alarmed, but we have about thirty-six seconds before the inside of this ship reaches twenty thousand degrees."

One of the men lifted his head and spat out a mouthful of water. The other one appeared to be unconscious.

"I know what you're thinking," the Doctor said, "why would the inside of an otherwise habitable machine become twenty thousand degrees hotter? The truth is that it's a very old model and internal self-repair uses the slightly outdated method of pressure reorganization. Suffice to say that if we don't get out very soon we're all going to be cooked."

The one who was still conscious looked around. "Right," he said after a moment.

"Who's your friend?" the Doctor asked, perhaps a bit too conversationally.

"He's dead," he answered as he slowly pulled himself to his feet. He was in a black frock, waistcoat, and trousers with a gray cravat.

"Funny sort of name," mused the Doctor. "Oh, you mean dead. Like the adjective."

"Yes." He stumbled forward, pushing his wet black hair out of his face. "I've lost my hat."

The Doctor very seriously considered spending the remaining twenty-four seconds in search of it, because a good and cool hat was hard to come by. But after a moment of consideration, he shook his head.

"I'll get you a new one. How's that? We really should go. Come along."

He grabbed him by the shoulders and steered him out of the TARDIS, which was still on fire and now making even more strange and upsetting noises. The Doctor had to kick open the door, but they managed to stumble out just as the console room was filling with smoke.

They both stepped back and watched the windows on the blue box glow bright golden. Neither of them said anything for a little while.

"Hello, I'm the Doctor."

"Charmed, I'm sure," answered the wet, skinny fellow in the waistcoat.

"Did the fall kill your friend?"

"He wasn't my friend," he replied, "and no. He was dead before we fell."

"Oh," the Doctor said, "I see."

Another lapse of silence. Smoke was curling out from the cracks in the TARDIS door.

"Is your race hostile?" the wet, skinny one asked suddenly.

The Doctor studied his unexpected guest. Aside from the obvious facts that he was wet, skinny, and probably from 19th century England, the Doctor couldn't tell much about him.

"No," the Doctor said slowly. "Well, not usually. Although if we were, I don't think asking whether or not we were hostile would be to much benefit."

"I thought it would be more polite to ask. You were, after all, good enough to catch me from what certainly would have been a fatal plummet." Then he sneezed into his sleeve. "What was that pool full of?"

"I'm not entirely sure," the Doctor answered honestly. "At any rate, it shouldn't be very deadly. Not for humans at least. You are a human, right?"

"Yes," he confirmed. "And yourself?"

"Time Lord."

"I see." He sniffed and batted away a wet bit of hair from his eyes. "That's a bit pretentious-sounding. No offense."

"None taken." And then, something suddenly occurred to the Doctor and it was very important. "How did you know I was an alien?"

"It's obvious, isn't it?" the skinny, wet one returned. "Your eyes are permanently dilated, but you don't squint. No matter your environment you always take in the maximum amount of light without any apparent damage. Not a human characteristic."

"Humans evolve," the Doctor reminded him.

"Not away from things that help preserve us." He sneezed again. "Might I accost you for a handkerchief? My own is of little use to me when it's wet."

The Doctor rummaged through his pockets, past the baseball bat and the trombone and the crown jewels of the Sixth Emperor of Norgannon-6, and found a monogrammed kerchief with the initials S.V.L. At one point it had belonged to a lovely young heiress in the year three million. The skinny, wet one nodded his thanks and blew his nose.

"Not many people notice that," the Doctor said. "Who are you?"

He didn't answer immediately. He turned away from the TARDIS and looked up and around. The Doctor had almost forgotten about the emergency landing. They could be anywhere.

"I'm on a different planet with an alien and his time-travelling blue box that's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside," said the skinny, wet one, in a very British keep-calm-and-carry-on sort of way. "All right."

The Doctor was about to ask how he knew they were on a different planet, but then he noticed that the sky was violet.

"Who are you?" the Doctor asked again, more gravely. "This is important."

The skinny, wet one looked back at the Doctor, his gray eyes smart and shining. "My name is Sherlock Holmes," he said. "Now where are we?"

"Sherlock Holmes?" He couldn't believe his luck. He'd run into all sorts of interesting people in his time, but never before by having them literally fall into his TARDIS. "What, really? You're not having a go?"

"You're the one with the time machine and it's I that's lying?"

The Doctor could see it now: tall, graceful, aquiline, and so very, very British. All he was missing was the pipe and deerstalker cap. Apparently the latter had been his fault. He hoped that it wouldn't be incinerated by the TARDIS during reconstruction.

He smiled and it nearly split his face in two. "I'll be damned!" he said, reaching out and grabbing one of his hands with both of his own. "Sherlock Holmes! What an honor!"

The Doctor shook his hand so vigorously that Holmes looked a bit nauseous.

"Yes," Holmes said unsteadily. "Now if I may be so forward as to ask again: where are we?"

"Ehm." The Doctor looked around. Purple sky, white grass, clear mountains, and the air smelled a bit like day-old anchovies. That narrowed it down to 619 different planets at various points in time. "No idea. Sorry."

Holmes looked a bit off-put. "And how long till it's safe to reenter your time machine?"

The Doctor scratched the crux of his jaw. "An hour or two at the very most."

"That would make us stranded, then," Holmes said, looking out at the glass mountains again.

"No, no, no," the Doctor said, with a dismissive gesture of his hand, "not stranded, just… inconveniently and temporarily displaced!"

"Ergo, stranded," Holmes summarized.

"Yes, okay. But only for a little while." The Doctor pointed at him for emphasis. "Besides, look around! You're standing on an alien planet! I know you're curious."

Holmes looked out again at the horizon. In the distance, trees with white leaves swayed in the wind, and there was hollow, haunting music coming from somewhere far away.

"I'm on an alien planet," Holmes said again, as if trying to acclimate himself to the idea. "I can't see any immediate signs of sentient life, can you?"

"No," the Doctor admitted, somewhat reluctantly, "but that doesn't mean there isn't any. There might be yet."

Right at that moment, an enormous silver space ship came roaring across the sky. Sherlock Holmes and the Doctor watched in astonishment as it crashed a few miles off, with such force that the ground beneath their feet trembled.

"Well," said the Doctor.

"Well," said Sherlock Holmes.

"I don't suppose you want to go—"

But he was already sprinting towards the trees. The Doctor smiled madly to himself.

This would be one to remember.

o :: o :: o

By the time they got to the wreck site, Holmes had dried somewhat, at least to the point that he was no longer dripping.

The immense silver ship lay broken in two, still smoking and, in parts, flaming. The Doctor could tell, even through it was now mostly destroyed, that it had once been a gorgeous ship (not as gorgeous as his TARDIS, of course, but then nothing really was): long and curved with wide external thrusters and two prongs extending from the back on each side.

They stood for a while at the crest of a hill that overlooked the wreckage in silence.

The Doctor looked at Holmes, grinning. "What can you make of it?" he asked.

Holmes glanced back at him with a small frown. "I have no data yet," was his composed response. "It's a mistake to theorize in advance of the data. Insensibly—"

"—one begins twisting facts to suit theories rather than theories to suit facts?" the Doctor finished, giggling stupidly. "This is brilliant. I've always wanted to meet you."

Holmes's frown grew deeper still. "Who are you, really?"

"I told you, I'm the Doct—" He gripped his chest suddenly and fell to his knees, feeling that unpleasant heat in his hearts. Holmes, alarmed, knelt down beside him and put a hand on his back. "Don't worry," the Doctor managed to wheeze, "this is perfectly normal—!"

A plume of swirling golden mist escaped from between his lips and twirled up into the sky. Holmes watched it for a while before returning his attentions to the Doctor, who was now sitting back on his calves and admiring the subtle golden glow around his hands.

"Other than the Doctor, though," he said, "I have no idea who I am. I'm not done yet."

"Will these paroxysms be frequent?" Holmes asked, still eyeing him.

"Shouldn't be!" he answered, using Holmes's shoulder as a grip and pulling himself to his feet. "Wasn't wonky like last time, so I should be quite all right."

He seemed skeptical (and more than a little curious), the Doctor noticed, but unwilling to argue without all the facts at his disposal. "Very well," Holmes said. "Shall we, then?"

Together they skidded down the sharply descending hill towards the wreck of a ship. Chalky white gravel crunched beneath their feet, leaving behind clouds of dust.

"I forgot to ask," the Doctor said as they hit the bottom of the slope, "who was that fellow you fell in with?"

"His name was Moriarty."

The Doctor's eyes widened almost imperceptibly.

"The name is familiar to you," Holmes said, and it wasn't a question.

"Well, what do I know?" he asked carefully, rhetorically. "I'm just a daft old man with a box."

"You don't look old," Holmes pointed out. "Although your eyes do."

"Good," the Doctor said. He was happy with old-looking eyes. They made him seem wiser than he was.

"The air is acrid," said Holmes. They'd come to the edge of the ship and stopped by an opening that had been split open in the side of the hull at impact. "Is it safe to breathe?"

"Probably." The Doctor couldn't detect anything particularly lethal for humans: various compounds of nitrogen, carbon, and neon with just a dash of zinc. There was also the undertone of something that smelled like spoiled lettuce.

"That doesn't instill much faith."

"Very probably?"

Holmes sighed and found a foothold on a twisted piece of sheet metal, pulling himself inside. The Doctor grinned and followed suit.

"What are the odds that any possible survivors will understand English?" Holmes asked, ducking under a broken rafter.

"Don't worry about that. My ship has a telepathic field that translates everything. Or, well, mostly everything. Just speak normally."

"How convenient. In that case – hello! Anyone there?"

His voice echoed endlessly through the twisting metal hallways. It was dark, with only the occasional red-tinted emergency light sputtering on a wall. The Doctor had no problem seeing, but Holmes had to occasionally grope out into the darkness to be sure he wasn't running into anything.

"Hello?" Holmes called again

"There's a door about ten paces in front of you," said the Doctor. "You'll have to hit the button on the side to open it."

He felt around for the button for a while before he found it. The door slid open.

They ducked under the archway and found themselves in what the Doctor measured to be an internal docking bay for smaller cruisers. It was an immense room, with one wall crunched upward at an unnatural angle, most likely from the crash. Most of the docked ships had been destroyed in the wreck, but this room, at least, still had proper lighting. A large pillar of smoke rose upward through a large crack in the ceiling and some of the wires hanging from the ceiling would release the occasional, hazardous spark.

"I feel as if I've stepped into an H. G. Wells novel," Holmes said, though his sarcasm was softened by reverence of his surroundings.

"You'll soon get used to that," the Doctor replied as he grinned wildly and patted him on the back. "Do you smell that?"

"I smell naught but cinder."

"It smells familiar," the Doctor said as he racked his brain for the origin of that spoiled lettuce scent, which was getting stronger. "Where have I smelled it before?"

"Aaaaah!" cried a voice from behind. Someone was coming at them with a five-foot length of metal piping held aloft like a bludgeon, straight at Holmes.

Holmes, reacting in a manner that the Doctor thought was nothing short of exquisite, caught the pipe with both hands, wrenched it around and gave it a jerk forward. The end of the pipe hit his assailant square in the gut and sent her tumbling onto the ground. Then he flipped the pipe around in his hands and pointed it at her neck.

"Oh, Mr. Holmes!" the Doctor gushed. "I like you. You're hired!"

"Who are you?" Holmes demanded, his gray eyes sharp as razors and watching the stranger, who was quite short and had bright blue skin, black hair and black eyes, but who otherwise was a basic humanoid. She was in a white uniform and large boots.

"Who am I?" she returned, sounding offended. "Who are you?"

"I'm the one with the pipe, madam," Holmes reminded her, giving her a prod in the sternum with it. "It would therefore be advisable to answer my question first."

She glowered at him. "My name is Third Lieutenant Aurelia," she said. "Are you the ones that brought our ship down?"

"No," the Doctor said soothingly. "We're just here to help. I'm the Doctor and he's Sherlock Holmes."

"How can I trust you to that?" asked Third Lieutenant Aurelia, looking between the two of them with nothing but suspicion in her beady black eyes.

"Because of this," Holmes said, casting away the pipe and extending a hand towards her to help her up. After a moment of trepidation, she took it and used the leverage to pull herself to her feet.

"Smart, quick, fighting fit, but not without compassion!" the Doctor said. What a brilliant companion he'd make, he thought. "Exquisite!"

"Tell us everything that happened," said Holmes, soft and urgent, "and do not leave out a single detail. It may be more vital than you realize."

The Doctor giggled stupidly again.

She looked over her shoulder at the ships, which looked like giant, sleeping metal birds, and began:

"We were on our way back to Fiarrazin from Tetchiop-3," she said, "with our shipment in tow. Everything had gone well enough picking it up, and we were about halfway back when suddenly there was a fault in the power lines that ran through the cargo bay. We didn't think of it at the time – we sent a tech down to deal with it, but we didn't hear back from her. A while later, the main power core went dead."

Holmes looked to the Doctor with a questioning gaze, as if wondering whether or not he was following the technical details. The Doctor nodded.

"Was it a quasar pulse?" the Doctor asked.

"That's what we thought at first, but we couldn't start the core back up again. We thought it might have been a major system failure that started in the cargo bay, but when we got down there—"

Aurelia broke off. She looked a bit nauseous, going so far as to cover her mouth with one hand.

"The tech was…"

She was verging on inarticulacy. Her entire body was shaking when Holmes reached out and put a hand on her shoulder.

"The tech was what? Dead?"

Aurelia opened her mouth to answer but suddenly the lights in the large bay went out, one by one, until there was nothing but the dull red emergency lights. The Doctor straightened up and looked around, but could see nothing.

"Oh, God," Aurelia said faintly. "They're coming."

"Right, Holmes," the Doctor said as he scrambled over to his side. "Have I told you the rules about travelling with me yet?"

"You have not, no," Holmes answered.

"Do everything I say, don't ask stupid questions, and don't wander off. I think they're about to come in handy."

"And what are the rules pertaining to the undead?"

"The—?"

And then he saw: a tall, spindly creature, vaguely humanoid but with a long head, wide black eyes and fin-like hands was coming towards them. He – and the Doctor could tell it was a he – was shuffling towards them, movements jerky and uneven. A luminous green moss was growing all along the side of his head and down his left shoulder. He had an enormous, fatal gash running up his side.

"Zombies," the Doctor said as he took stock of the situation. "Space zombies. Okay. I hope the general rules still apply."

"That's Jakko," Aurelia squeaked. "Oh, God, they got him, too!"

Holmes picked up the pipe that Aurelia had tried to attack him with and held it out, assuming a defensive stance. Aurelia was quick to hide behind him.

"Can you understand me?" Holmes asked of the zombie.

But the zombie kept coming.

"We don't have to fight you. We can settle this diplomatically," Holmes said.

But the zombie kept coming.

"What is it you want from us?" demanded Holmes, his voice louder.

But the zombie kept coming.

Holmes steeled himself. "Suit yourself," he said, and with a spin on the ball of his foot he landed the pipe in the side of the zombie's chest. The force of it was hard enough to knock him to the ground several feet away.

"Run!" the Doctor volunteered, shooing them back into the corridor from whence they'd come.

They wound their way blindly through the darkened corridors.

"Which way to the cargo bay?" the Doctor asked as they ran.

"Why d'you want to go to the cargo bay?" Aurelia riposted.

"Because the problem started in the cargo bay," Holmes said as if it were perfectly obvious. "Not to mention that everything was fine until you picked up your shipment."

"Down this way," Aurelia said, taking a sharp right turn.

The path was blocked by another zombie, this time a blue-skinned being rather like Aurelia, but taller and male.

"Nolt!" Aurelia cried. Nolt's entire right side was covered in the same green moss, and he was lumbering towards them in the same manner as the first one.

"Alternate route!" Holmes said, keeping the pipe between them and the oncoming zombie. They ducked into another hallway.

"But that's Nolt," said Aurelia, who couldn't stop looking over her shoulder. "I saw him just a few minutes ago; he's my friend!"

"Somehow I don't think that's the case anymore," Holmes said, just before they stumbled through a doorway into the cargo bay. Holmes slammed it shut and put all his weight against it just before Nolt the zombie crashed against it in an attempt to get it open.

"Lumber?" the Doctor said as he looked around the cargo bay. "You transport lumber?"

Stocked from floor to ceiling were trunks of trees. They were immense in both girth and length, with the longer trunks extending the whole length of the already very long cargo bay. They'd been largely stripped of bark and branches. The Doctor could barely make out anything, though, as the whole room was lit only by scattered, red emergency lights.

"Tetchiop-3 is a forest planet," Aurelia said, her voice high and breathless and slightly whining from fear. "The trees there grow rapidly and immensely. It's the most popular spot in the galaxy for lumber."

Nolt the zombie crashed into the door again, but Holmes managed to hold it shut.

"We need something heavy to weigh against the door," he said. "Aurelia, any ideas?"

"We— we could use some of the barrels of bark!"

"Good. Go get some of those."

As Aurelia and Holmes worked together to weigh the door shut, the Doctor was looking around. The familiar spoiled lettuce smell was almost overpowering in this room. It was like a word hanging on the tip of his tongue, so painfully familiar but just out of reach.

"Nrgh!" the Doctor said. "Stupid head! Brand new brain and everything's not working. I'm missing something!"

Clang went the door as Nolt the zombie gave a particularly dramatic effort to crash through it.

"Did anyone else notice the moss?" Holmes said as he carried a large, heavy barrel in front of the door. "It was growing all over them."

"The moss?" said Aurelia.

"The moss!" said the Doctor, and he took off running.

"Doctor? Doctor!" Holmes called. He swore colorfully and took off after him. "What about the moss?" he cried as he followed him through the narrow pathway created between piles of lumber.

"I'm stupid! I'm thick and stupid! I should have known the minute I saw," the Doctor said.

"If you'd be so kind as to save the self-deprecation for when we aren't in mortal peril," Holmes snapped. "What did you miss?"

"It shouldn't be far," said the Doctor, who was scanning the trees carefully. He turned off around a corner and gave a start. "There! No, stay back! Don't get too close!"

They both stopped. A large swatch of luminous green moss was growing along the trunk of one of the trees in the stack. It stunk of spoiled lettuce and was right by an open switchbox. It must have been the one that shorted out originally, the Doctor thought.

"Mind-controlling moss?" Holmes guessed.

"Technically, parasitic moss that takes over the nervous system after death of whatever living host it finds and uses it for locomotion— yes, okay, mind-controlling moss. Spot on, Mr. Holmes."

"Doctor…"

"It's called death moss. Nice and ominous, don't you think? I've seen it before, but only once, and that was a very long time ago."

"Doctor."

"It's native to most of the galaxy, but it usually doesn't grow in such large colonies. It uses the dead hosts to reproduce, of course, by way of creating more dead hosts—"

"Doctor!"

"—yes! What?"

"Where's Aurelia?"

The Doctor spun around, but she was nowhere to be seen. And then, abruptly, there was a scream.

Without another thought, they took off running towards the door they'd entered from, only to find Nolt, glowing green still, kneeling over Aurelia with both hands gripping her throat so tightly that the structural integrity of the skin and muscle and sinew had completely buckled under the force.

"Oh, Aurelia," the Doctor said, feeling his heart drop into his stomach. He shouldn't have run off. He should have made sure she was with them.

Nolt lifted his head and looked at them with shining black eyes. Holmes took a step back, holding out the pipe again.

"More running?" Holmes said, turning on a heel. But by the time the Doctor looked, he knew they were cornered. On one side, blocking the exit, was Nolt. On the other side was a swarm – fifty people at least – all of them with patches of glowing green moss, lumbering towards them.

"Okay," the Doctor said. "Think, think, think. Got to think. Sideways exits gone. Up and down exits?" There were no nearby ventilation shafts, no trapdoor, and the piles of lumber were too steep to climb.

"Do you have anything that generates light?" asked Holmes.

"Yes. Wait, why?"

"I have an idea. It will probably work."

"Probably?"

"Very probably!"

Holmes held out his hand urgently. The Doctor frowned and rummaged past the portable television set, the walking stick from 16th century France, and the container of liquid nitrogen and handed Holmes a torch.

"It grows at the bottom of trees; it's not used to light. And there's no good reason to turn off the lights before they enter unless it harms them." He smacked the button on the side. A flood of white light fell on the lumbering hoard, which caused them to stagger back and shield their eyes.

"Good!" the Doctor said, grinning wildly. "Very good!"

"We need to get out of here," Holmes said.

The Doctor boosted the strength of the torch with his screwdriver, though it sputtered and spat in protest at first. The illumination became three times brighter; enough to send Nolt staggering back far enough to allow them to escape.

They sprinted down the corridor together, with the Doctor guiding them in the general direction of the main bridge, where he knew he'd be able to do something very impressive to save their lives.

"You're good at this," the Doctor remarked as they ran.

"Good at running from hoards of undead?" Holmes asked, casting a glance over his shoulder to check if they were being followed. They were, but they were quite a way off.

"No, I mean this! You know! You go flying into adventure by the seat of your pants and not only do you still remain brilliant, but you come up with a clever way to give us the edge."

"You're talking like you do this often," Holmes said as they skidded around a corner.

"Sort of often, yes. Wait, here!"

They came to an abrupt stop outside a large double-sliding door. It didn't open when Holmes hit the button on the side, and the Doctor surrendered to using his screwdriver, which once again started sputtering and flickering.

"No, no, no!" the Doctor cried. "Why won't you work?"

"What is that thing?"

"It's a screwdriver."

"Oh, yes. Obviously it's a screwdriver. Never saw a screwdriver that didn't glow bright blue."

"It's a sonic screwdriver!" the Doctor said, wounded. "You'd been doing so well up till just now."

"Doctor, they're coming!"

The lumbering dead were stumbling round the corner. Holmes held out the pipe defensively just as the door, at long last, surrendered to the sonic screwdriver and slid open. They tumbled through right before it slammed shut again.

"Right!" the Doctor said, turning to the wide row of controls that gave access to most of the ship's primary functions. "Now's the part where I'm extremely brilliant and a little bit mad."

Holmes looked around the room. "What's the plan?"

The Doctor dove toward the console and began working rapidly, interspersing button-pushing and lever-flipping with zaps from his still-reluctant screwdriver. "Well, in a basic double-pronged fission engine ship like this, it's the easiest thing in the world to route the flow of created energy back through the original loop—"

"The point, Doctor! Get to the point!"

"—yes, okay! Reroute power, big boom, zombies gone!" He was already halfway through the process, halting the safety protocols warning him not to do what he was doing.

Holmes looked around the room again, which had no other doors. "And you didn't stop to think of an exit strategy, did you?"

The auxiliary power supply had just enough juice to start a wailing siren.

"Warning, warning, warning," said the emergency system. "Evacuate immediately. Critical system failure."

"Oh," said the Doctor. "Right. An exit strategy. I knew I was forgetting something."

The zombies were beating at the door, causing it to dent and buckle.

"Right. This giant piece of glass – what is it?" Holmes asked, raising his voice to be heard over the thumping and groaning metal.

"Primary external sight screen," the Doctor answered.

Crash!

The end of the pipe broke through the dark tinted glass, and a beam of bright, white sunlight broke through the red, pulsing emergency lighting.

"We're almost twenty meters up!" the Doctor said as Holmes continued to break through the screen.

"Between the impossible and the improbable, I'll always take the improbable," Holmes answered.

Soon he'd broken a decent-sized hole in the screen, large enough to climb through onto a long slope of metal that served as the nose of the ship.

The Doctor followed, pretty sure this was the best day of his life.

"Geronimo!" the Doctor said as he leapt off the edge of the ship and was sent flying forward as it exploded.

o :: o :: o

Sherlock Holmes was no longer wet. He was, however, limping slightly.

"That was fun!" the Doctor said. "That was fun, wasn't it?"

"Running from the mindless undead, watching an innocent woman die, blowing up an enormous spaceship," Holmes recounted as they walked side-by-side back up to the top of the hill. "It's not what I'd call fun in the strictest sense, but it was definitely an experience I will not soon forget."

The TARDIS was sitting right where it had been left. It was no longer smoking. In fact, it smelled rather like lemon, the Doctor thought, which means that it had redecorated. He loved it when it redecorated.

"There you are, beautiful!" he said, fishing the key out from his pocket. He pushed open the door and walked inside. "Oh, you sexy thing. Look at you."

Holmes stepped in behind him and looked around. The interface had changed from curving, willowy lines to hard geometric patterns across the floor and ceiling, and the whole room had a very subtle bronze glow. He watched as the Doctor ran giddily up to the console and began running diagnostics.

"What is it called?" Holmes asked, slowly approaching the edge of the console.

The Doctor looked up at him and smiled. "The TARDIS. Time and Relative Dimension in Space."

Holmes lifted a hand and dragged it appreciatively down the central core.

"Do you like it?" asked the Doctor.

"It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," was Holmes's reverent answer. It only succeeded in making the Doctor smile wider.

"So!" the Doctor said. "I can very easily plot a course back to earth, 1891, dropping you back off in London and letting you get on with your life, or." The word 'or' punctuated his sentence dramatically, like a tease.

"Or?" Holmes returned, one eyebrow lofted higher than the other.

"Or you can come with me."

"Come with you?"

"We're on a planet with glass mountains and mold zombies, and this was just an accident. An emergency landing that was completely random! Imagine where I can take you on purpose."

Holmes looked up at the core as it oscillated slowly, tempting him with the soft whine of the TARDIS engines.

"All of time and space," the Doctor said, leaning on the console next to where Holmes stood staring around the room. "Anything that ever happened or ever will, at your fingertips."

For a very long time, Holmes said nothing. The expression on his face spoke of unrestrained imagination: he was seeing all the places he could go, all the things he could see, everything he could learn.

"I have responsibilities," Holmes said.

"You're London's only consulting detective; of course you do."

"I have Watson," Holmes said.

"An excellent fellow and perfect accomplice."

"I have London," Holmes said.

The Doctor leaned forward. "And I have a time machine."

Holmes's mouth twitched into a smile, then so did the Doctor's.

"What are we waiting for?" Holmes asked.