Disclaimer: In some parallel universe, somewhere in the infinity of the multiverse, I probably do own them. But as I'm in this universe, they all belong to the BBC.

Author's Note: Well, now the Doctor and Donna are officially a couple. Yay! But what's going to happen now that they're taking the Bus Ride of Doom?

Science facts of the chapter: Quartz(silica) + iron(Fe3) = amethyst. And, being no expert in chemistry, I'm still trying to find an 'ask a question' thing on the 'Net so I can figure out what could make a compound silicate blue when iron's added. Then again, maybe it is the X-tonic sunlight after all. And yes, when glaciers reach the edge of land and chunks fall off, it really is called calving.

Chapter 16 - A world of diamonds and monsters

"C'mon Mum, it'll be fun!" Jenny was nearly driven to bouncing off the walls of their two-bedroom suite in her frustration. "You and me and Dad, off to see a marvel of the universe!"

"But Jenny," Donna almost whined as she spoke, knowing that unless she could come up with a really, really good reason she'd be stuck with going, because the next step was probably gonna be both of them hitting her with flippin' irresistible puppy eyes. "It's like a school trip - four hours there and four hours back! I can't imagine how you can even think about being in a small space that long!"

"Because we'll be going somewhere to see something really brilliant, that's why!" Jenny turned to her dad and looked up at him. "Daaad, you tell her! You're better at it than me!"

"Oh?" He raised his eyebrow at his daughter - he thought she'd done quite well in talking up the sapphire waterfall, really. Still, he'd give it a go because he'd rather not be separated from Donna for eight hours. So he turned to his lovely ginger with a charming grin and full-on shining eager-eyes.

"Waterfall made of sapphires, Donna! Enormous jewel, size of a glacier, moves along as glaciers do all the way to the Cliffs of Oblivion where it shatters at the edge - if it really was a glacier it'd be called calving but since it's a gemstone it shatters - and the sapphires fall a hundred thousand feet into a crystal ravine. It's supposed to be one of the most spectacular sights ever...won't you please come see it with us?"

Here, he let the grin fall, and hit her with puppy-eyes supported by a wistful smile. "Please? We won't be back until dinner, and that's a very long time to be apart."

Donna tried to hold out, she really did. But her Spaceman was really, really good at the puppy-eyes, and so, after all that effort of protesting, she caved in with a sigh. Mostly because he was right - that really was a very long time to be apart. "Fine. I'll go - but we're doing that anti-gravity restaurant for dinner! And if you get too lecturish, Sunshine, I reserve the right to ignore you for a good book!"

"Bibs and everything - that's a date!" He grinned, stooped to kiss his Donna firmly, with gratitude for coming with them, then bounded to the door. "Well, what are you waiting for? They're boarding in fifteen minutes!"

"Dad, you could let Mum get some shoes on." Jenny giggled from between them.

"Yeah, could do with shoes. And a book and handbag. You'd just both better be really glad you caught me before I changed for the pool," Donna groused as she slid her feet into sandals, tightened the buckles, then glanced in her handbag. TARDIS must have packed her some Christies, cos she didn't remember stuffing them in there. But that meant she was all set. "All right, all right, settle down you lot," she said as she joined the two bouncing Time Lords. "Honestly, keep acting like that and anyone will think I'm the mother of two hyperactive kids."

Jenny grinned at her mum's fond smile and ignored the not-really-complaint, except for trying to restrain her bouncing. "Sorry. Got all this energy from Dad, and it just begs to be expressed in moving." She looked up at her dad. "Can we run there? We haven't run anywhere for ages!"

"It's been barely two days since we last ran for our lives, Jenny. That's not ages," he said with a fond smile. "We're supposed to be here so we don't have to run for a bit. You know, relaxing family thing like we did on Katta Go Flo."

"And that's why we're here on Midnight, because those nitwits on Luradi IV were trying to kill Mum cos she's ginger, so Mum needs the relaxation the most." Jenny scowled at the memory, then continued with a bit of a pout. "But Midnight is a lot more boring than Katta Go Flo. No beaches, no frisbee games..." No teasing you about you and Mum...

"S'pose you are just a bit young to appreciate a spa day," Donna acknowledged, and ignored her love's sputtering. Jenny had probably zinged him again...and for the hundredth time, Donna wished she was one of the rare humans born telepathic and not just a bit psychic - it'd be lots of fun to know just what that girl of theirs kept saying to make him sputter like that. Not to mention it'd be wonderful to talk to him in their heads without him having to initiate the link all the time.

That's because we're together in very nearly every sense, so now you can't tease me about getting with her. He ruffled his daughter's hair fondly, then grinned at her squawk of protest and offered his arm to Donna as they walked.

"Eww. I saw you in the middle of your 'spa day' Mum...how can you call having all that glop on you a good thing? That was more appealing-looking sludge we were covered with on Merkatri! At least it was smoother and didn't look so...so...blergh." Jenny pulled a face for multiple reasons, then dithered a bit because she wanted to forge on ahead and find a good seat on the bus, but she didn't want to be that far from her parents and be stuck waiting till they caught up. Yeah, and I'm thrilled. But I can still tease you...I just have to tease about making sure doors are locked, or when you're going to formalise it. And don't ruffle my hair or I'll never wear it down again!

"Cos unlike that sludge - which did horrible things to my skin by the way, and your dad still owes me a shopping trip for a new outfit! - the gunk you saw on me was specifically good for me. Or my skin, rather...probably wouldn't be good if I tried to eat it, even if it was all seaweeds and stuff." Donna tucked her arm into his, then grinned at their daughter, now walking backward.

"But Donna, I took you shopping the day after, remember?" The Doctor whinged a bit even as he was keeping an eye out behind Jenny to make sure she didn't run into anything. I'm sure you'll come up with something to make me sputter, Little Star - and go left a bit, you're about to miss the doorway.

"Yeah, and then we had to interrupt that cos somebody wanted to kidnap our little girl." She gently elbowed him in the ribs and marvelled at how good Jenny was at walking backwards. "Still don't have a new outfit, do I?"

"Well yes, we did get interrupted. Fine," he grumbled. "Next time we're visiting your family, I'll take you shopping for a new outfit. At least it's quiet when we visit them." He watched Jenny turn around, then wondered what her attention was caught by - probably the shuttle, since they were finally at the boarding area.

"At Harrods, mind, not some hole in the wall store. If I'm going to get a new outfit, I want it to be quality!" The teasing grin she gave him offset the sting of her sharp tone, then she turned to watch their daughter start walking face-forward and nodded in approval. It'd be difficult to board the shuttle walking backwards, no matter how good their girl was at the trick.

After standing in the queue a few minutes, Donna watched as the Doctor pulled three tickets from his jacket and handed them to the hostess. Once they were inside, she murmured. "I'm impressed. I expected you to use the psychic paper."

"Yeah, well," he said as he corralled Jenny to come sit in their row of seats, then grinned at his Donna. "Got a good teacher for how little things like this work in you, don't I? And since we're all registered, guest-like people, it'd actually be more bother to get us this trip with the psychic paper then to just get tickets."

"Oh, I'm good all right," she snarked and sat down at the window seat. They'd let Jenny have the aisle seat in case she had the fidgets. Or, rather, for when she couldn't contain her fidgets. "Only took me what, six months to get something like that through your head?"

"Eh, if you count the few efforts you made before we got Jenny, then possibly. Otherwise it's only taken me four. Or maybe five." He grinned, squeezed her hand, then turned to be surprised by the Hostess handing them each an armload of stuff.

After the Doctor had a bit of chat with the Hostess, Donna waved one particular item at him. "Complimentary slippers? Really?"

"Yeah Dad, what are we going to do with complimentary slippers?" Jenny asked, eyeing the objects in crinkly plastic-ish wrappings, then stuffed them in the pouch in the back of the seat in front of her. "I mean, the headphones might be useful, the modem link too. And the snacks are going to be handy. But earplugs and slippers?"

"It's four hours there and four hours back, sweetheart. Some people probably sleep on either the way up or the way back. Earplugs would block out the sound of the other passengers and allow for peaceful sleeping. Still don't get the slippers though."

"Aww, who cares?" he asked and, like his daughter, shoved the slippers in the seat-pouch - then the rest of his plunder went there too as he heard someone behind them talking about their destination. He knelt on his seat and looked over the back of it with a smile. "Compound silica with iron pigmentation usually results in amethysts though."

The older man blinked up at him, then glanced to his right and left, where a blonde girl and ginger woman had peeked over as well. "Yes, well, that's not really a compound silicate except when discussing the iron, not to mention we're talking about a compound silicate plus iron pigmentation under an Xtonic sun when discussing the Sapphire Waterfall. Hobbes, by the way. Professor Winfold Hobbes."

The Doctor shook the offered hand with a grin. "I'm the Doctor, this is Donna," he bobbed his head left, and then right when he continued. "And this is our daughter Jenny. Hello!"

"It's my fourteenth time," Hobbes said with a bit of pride.

"Ooh. Our first," the Doctor replied, grinning - which he turned on the young lady sitting next to Professor Hobbes and offered her his hand as well. "Hallo!"

"Hello. I'm Dee Dee. Dee Dee Blasco." She smiled at the trio peeking over their seats and shook the Doctor's hand, but immediately thereafter had to rummage for a water bottle.

The Doctor and Donna sat back down, but Jenny watched the family she'd seen while they were boarding finally get settled, after a bit of fuss about the boy not wanting to sit with his parents. We-ell, maybe he had a point - they did seem a bit silly and not at all like her parents. But still, he shouldn't be so sulky about time with his family...right?

"About time," Donna murmured as the Hostess finally stopped with the passing out of complimentary everything and came to the front. "I was starting to think the four hours there was going to really be two, with the other half all this passing out of complimentary whatnots."

"Aww, but it was fun! We got to meet a couple of people too," he said, then tugged Jenny back around to sit down when the Hostess started talking about fastening seatbelts and so on.

They got to hear all about what should've been their route, except for a rockfall - oh, they'd called it a diamond-fall, but blimey, call a spade a spade! - and then the nightmare began. As the music and cartoons and art show collided in a mind-boggling cacophony, Donna leant in as close as possible to the Doctor so there'd be a hope of him hearing her. "Now I really get the complimentary earplugs!"

The Doctor winced at the noise, glanced around and saw not only his daughter also wincing but also one of the other passengers, then discretely pulled out his sonic and zapped the entertainment system, making it all fold right back up where it had come from. He got a raised eyebrow from the other passenger who'd noticed, but she went right back to her book so that was all right. Meanwhile some of the rest of the passengers were complaining about what to do for four hours, so of course he suggested everyone talk to each other.

Donna gave him a fond smile as all the passengers looked at him in confusion.

First, Jenny had gone to talk to the nearest passenger, but Ms. Silvestri didn't want to talk. Oh, she was nice about it, but Jenny could tell she just wanted to read, so she wandered back to her parents to listen to the other set of parents talk about a silly thing that had happened to them. But honestly, why advertise a pool if it was only abstract?

A little later, while her dad was talking to Dee Dee back in the galley about the Lost Moon of Poosh, Jenny stopped by Professor Hobbes to get him to expand on what he'd said about the sapphire waterfall. After the fascinating lecture, she dropped in on Jethro, determined to find out why he was so sulky.

When she heard what his reason was, she just stared at him for a minute in disbelief. "You have got to be kidding me," she finally said. "You're sulking because you didn't get any say in where your family went on holiday?"

"It's been the most boring holiday ever," was his reply, although his sulks were melting away some. Any teenage boy talking to a pretty girl would have some of the mopes vanish.

"Well, yeah, I'll admit that Midnight probably wasn't the best place to take a kid - there's nearly no activities that aren't for adults, and we can't go outside for a wander. Bor-ring. But still," she continued, frowning at him. "They're your parents, and they obviously love you enough to want you with them instead of stuck with relatives or in some boarding place...don't you think you could show a little appreciation of that?"

"They don't understand me," he replied, back to his sulks. Pretty girl or not, his parents were such a downer.

"Well, what don't they understand? I mean, if it's the teenage condition, you've got to give them some leeway cos it's been ages since they've been one." Jenny thought that was perfectly reasonable.

"They don't understand the way I think," he replied. "They...well, you heard their stories. They're boring, and they never ask why about anything. Me, I wanted to know why they advertised a pool if it was only abstract. And they hate that I like to think about possibilities. Like this planet. Nobody can go out on it, we can only look at it through special glass and travel in armoured transport. Even that professor you were talking to earlier has never been able to go out there...how do we know what's out there besides rocks?"

That wasn't what she was expecting to hear, and she tilted her head at Jethro curiously. "What, you think there might be some form of life that isn't carbon-based out there, something that can not only survive, but thrive in Xtonic sunlight?"

"It's a possibility, isn't it?" He was defensive, and ready to stuff his ear buds back in his ears at the first sign of mockery. He got enough of that from his parents.

"Yeah," Jenny grinned. "I'll admit it's not the likeliest, cos if I remember right, even the known silicon-based life-forms would fry in this sunlight, but nobody knows everything that exists in the universe. We - my mum, dad and I - wouldn't travel if we knew everything. Love finding out new stuff, we do. But if there was some kind of life out there that could thrive on an airless planet constantly bathed in X-tonic sunlight, it'd be hard to detect cos it'd be totally outside known experience and nobody'd be looking for it."

"I suppose," he allowed with reluctance. "But seriously, there could be anything out there. Could be stalking us now, for all we know..." He lowered his voice and continued. "It just seems really weird to me that a diamond-fall blocked our planned route just as we were setting out." He glanced around to make sure the Hostess was nowhere near them, then continued. "They have boring games on the modem link, so I used it and my pocket computer to hack into the computer that's actually driving this bus."

Jenny opened her mouth to protest that what he'd done was dangerous, but he continued before she could. "I didn't mess with the navigation or anything, I just wanted to see the records, because I was curious. And before today, all the rockfalls happened at night and only the biggest ones weren't cleared up before a bus set out. It's the temperature differential, see, between the X-tonic daytime and the freezing night. So...what made the rocks fall in the daytime?"

Jenny fought off a shiver at his entirely too-spooky theory, but she couldn't let him assume there was rock-manipulating life on the planet just because before this all the rockfalls had happened in the night. "We-ell, it could be caused by some unknown form of life. But it could also be because the fractures weren't quite solidly through from the night freeze, and the heat made them expand and shatter off."

Jethro looked sulky again, then sighed and nodded because she was right - it could have happened that way. "I guess it could have happened like that. But you just came up with that because you didn't want to think about something that could live out there, didn't you?"

"Maybe a little," Jenny admitted as the Hostess came around with dinners. "But a good part of it is because of Occam's Razor."

"The simplest explanation is usually the right one, right?" Jethro smiled a little, then pulled the foil off his meal. "Huh. Wonder what this is?"

Jenny peeled the foil off her own meal and frowned. "Looks like it wants to be mashed potatoes, some kind of vegetable and...well, I think it's meat."

"Looks like meat, anyway," he agreed, then stabbed a piece with his fork and brought it up to eye level, nearly going cross-eyed from the examination. "Suppose it's chicken, or beef?"

Jenny likewise examined a piece of her meat, then popped it in her mouth and chewed. Once she swallowed, she analysed the taste and frowned in confusion. "I...well, I think it's both."

She glanced around to see her dad eating with Professor Hobbes and Dee Dee, and her mum eating with Ms. Silvestri, then returned to talking to Jethro. Only this time she asked him what living a life of mostly not travelling was like, because she didn't want to talk about his creepy theory anymore.

During the meal, Donna was sat with Skye. She felt a little guilty about abandoning Dee Dee and the Professor to her beloved alien, but she wasn't in the mood for all the science the three were babbling about.

"So, got anyone waiting for you back at the Leisure Palace?" She asked after a few bites. Wasn't bad for a pre-packaged meal, but she preferred her own potatoes.

"No, it's just me," Skye replied after a bite of what was passing for the vegetable portion of the meal.

"I've done that. It can be a blast, if you don't get stuck with tight-scheduled outings and 'don't drink the water'." Donna smiled at the woman and ate a few more bites.

"I'm still getting used to it. I've found myself single rather recently, not by choice." For a moment, Skye stopped eating altogether.

"What happened?" Donna sympathetically rested a hand on the other woman's.

"Oh, the usual." Skye's lips curled in a bitter smile. "She needed her own space, as they say. A different galaxy, in fact. I reckon that's enough space, don't you?"

"Blimey," Donna breathed, then shook her head. She'd heard enough variations on that one and lived through something that could even be called worse. "Y'know, you're not alone in that. I had a fiance once. He tried to feed me to a giant spider to get rid of me. My sweetheart over there," she paused and waved her empty fork at the Doctor. "he had a girl leave him for another universe." She gave Skye a sad smile. "It hurts for a real long time, when you love someone and they leave you. But it really does get better with time...you just have to keep on living. S'pose that's the hard part, going on when you don't really want to."

"I suppose she'd have fed me to a giant spider if she could have. It wasn't...wasn't..." Skye trailed off, almost in tears.

"Shhh. Some people are just cruel that way. She'll get her comeuppance eventually...after all, my ex-fiance ended up being the one fed to the spider. Wasn't on purpose mind, but that's how he went. You just keep on living, Skye. Keep on living and don't let her hold you back."

"It's just so hard," Skye kept her lips pressed tight for a moment.

"Oh I know," Donna nodded, understanding perfectly. "You give your heart to someone, then they trample it with malice aforethought. I cried for weeks over Lance - that was his name, Lance - but I couldn't just stop living, either. This's a good start, going on holiday, getting your head together. You'll get there in time, Skye, trust me."

"Oh, I suppose," Skye sniffed, then smiled wanly. "I won't be looking for anyone anytime soon though."

"Nah. Didn't start looking myself till it'd been a year. Then after a while, I found my darling and his little girl and we all just clicked." That wasn't quite the way it had happened, Donna mused as they finally got back to their meals, but it wasn't as though she could tell the woman the truth about falling for the last of the Time Lords, was it?

"She calls you Mum, you know." Skye said, then frowned at her meat. "Is this beef or chicken?"

"Yeah. Jenny's never known another mother. Been deprived of mother-daughter stuff, but I'm fixing that." She supposed that might have been considered a lie, but it really was true - Jenny'd never had another mother. At Skye's question, she stabbed a bit of the meat on her fork and eyed it. "Y'know, I've got no idea."

After everyone had eaten, it appeared as though conversational topics were exhausted. So Professor Hobbes took advantage of having a captive audience to lecture about the planet he'd studied for so very long. Donna sat next to the Doctor and made him sit down so Jethro and Jenny who were sat behind them could see easily instead of having to lean.

"So, this is Midnight, do you see, bombarded by the sun. Xtonic rays, raw galvanic radiation." He paused a moment, gesturing at the slide illustrating the planet with arrows indicating the Xtonic rays, then said. "Dee Dee, next slide." He continued as the slide switched over to a series of graphs and pie-charts indicating the composition of the planet. "It's my pet project. Actually, I'm the first person to research this. Because, you see, the history is fascinating...because there is no history! There's no life in this entire system. There couldn't be. Before the Leisure Palace Company moved in, no one had come here in all eternity. No. Living. Thing."

"But how do you know?" Jethro quirked a sardonic smile, and Jenny rolled her eyes at him. Still, if the subject never got raised, it'd never be settled. "I mean, if no one can go outside..."

His mum Val rolled her eyes and rather tiredly said, "Oh, his imagination. Here we go."

"He's got a point, though," the Doctor said, and looked back at his daughter and Jethro with a bit of a smile. "Never can know anything for sure about a planet you can't walk on."

"Exactly!" Professor Hobbes nodded and lightly hit the back of the seat he was sat in for emphasis. "We look upon this world through glass, safe inside our metal box. Even the Leisure Palace was lowered down from orbit. And now here we are, crossing Midnight, but never touching it."

As though his words had been stage direction, the Crusader shook slightly as the engines whined loudly, then made a sort of crunching, rattling, grinding noise as they cycled down rather abruptly. The shuttle thumped as it came to rest on the ground, and everyone looked around in puzzlement.

Jenny was looking around, frowning, as everyone else started talking - Jethro's mum and dad first, asking silly questions, stating the obvious. Then she turned her frown on Jethro and muttered. "You just had to come up with that creepy theory, didn't you?"

"Yeah, but it is kind of cool, isn't it? We're finally going to learn more about what might be out there on the planet." He grinned at her, and she rolled her eyes at him.

"At the risk of everybody but us and my parents panicking, yeah." She huffed and moved a row forward to join her mum - this was just getting too creepy for words. First Jethro had a creepy theory, then something made the bus stop.

"You all right, sweetheart?" Donna asked as their guest lecturer was telling them that the expeditions never stopped, and rolled her eyes as Skye rubbed his nose in the obvious.

"Would be if Jethro didn't have a creepy theory about all this, but good enough." Jenny quirked a bit of a grin. "How about you?"

"Starting to wish I'd stayed behind for my sunbathing, actually," Donna gave her little girl a bit of a grin too, then turned around to give Jethro a mild glower for enjoying the fact they were broken down. "D'you mind? It's weird enough the bus stopping when they never have before. Tone it down, yeah?"

"Thing is, Mum," Jenny said as Jethro's parents took him to task as well. "His creepy theory is that something arranged the rockfall so we'd go in a different direction. And now the bus is stopped." She stared at her dad, gone to investigate the cockpit and talk to the driver, then sighed as he slipped past the Hostess to investigate. "And I don't know anything about micropetrol engines to even figure out how anything but running out of fuel could stop one."

"It didn't run out of fuel. The bus," Dee Dee said, softly, as she joined them. "Dad's a mechanic, I've heard lots of engines growing up. That wasn't the sound of an engine running out of fuel. It was more...well, I'd have said it was an electromagnetic pulse frying the control modules that keep the engine running. But that's impossible, because a pulse of that magnitude would have fried the interior electronics as well, even through these walls."

"Well at least we've got lights still," Donna said, just as softly. "Imagine what this lot would be like if the power went out."

"Rather not, thanks," Dee Dee managed a slightly hysterical laugh, then went to check on her professor.

"Pity Dad's gone to talk to the driver," Jenny said once they were alone again. "I'd love to ask him about it."

"He'll be back soon enough, sweetheart." Donna gave her daughter a reassuring smile, and wondered why Jenny wasn't using her telepathy to talk to her dad. Some sort of etiquette she'd never paid attention to before? Or maybe she was worried she'd distract him...well, she'd find out soon enough, she thought, and watched the door.