![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scifirenegadeAuthor: scifirenegade
Rating: General
Pairing(s) / Character(s): The First Doctor, Barbara Wright, Ian Chesterton
Warnings: Vehicular accidents, but no one gets hurt
Spoilers: Set afer The Dalek Invasion of Earth, but if you haven't seen that one,it should be safe.
Summary: The TARDIS lands on an alien desert, and it appears that someone needs help.
This was not good.
This was not good at all.
Whatever it was that hit them, it hit them hard.
"We're going to crash, Captain!" the navigator yelled. His webbed hands grasped at the control wheel, determined to try and steer the craft.
The medic gave the captain a startled glance. Their features were only visible when the red lights of danger blinked. The captain nodded, and the medic scurried to the lab. She had to make sure none of the researchers had cracked the breathing helmets.
"I'll see if I can land us to safety." the navigator remained calm. The water in his helmet hardly moved.
Having been assured, the captain followed the medic through the narrow corridors. They patted the walls, their eyes hadn't yet grown accustomed to the blinking lights. As the captain reached their destination, they saw a flash and heard a bang. Everything went dark.
On top of a vivid yellow dune, an old police box faded and wheezed into view. The familiarity of the shape was strange in contrast with the alien landscape.
The door opened — without creaking, which was rare — and a white-haired man in an old-fashioned coat emerged. He glanced up at the cloudless, cyan sky, then down at the sand. He tapped his chin and ambled away from the vessel, talking to himself.
As he crouched and examined a patch of fine grass with the aid of a monocle, two other figures came out of the police box — a tall woman, wearing a light-blue turtleneck, and an even taller man in a cardigan, immediately behind her, his hand over her shoulder.
"A bit disappointing, isn't it? Not one camel in sight!"
"Oh, Ian..." the woman rolled her eyes and approached the squatting man. Ian followed suit, an impish smile crossing his face.
"That's some interesting-looking grass, isn't it, Barbara?" Ian crouched beside the man.
Barbara nodded, "So, this isn't Earth, Doctor?"
The Doctor didn't answer and plucked a bit of the grass and rolled it through his fingers. A breeze blew, and the grass flew away. He had been like this for the past few days — more introspective.
Barbara sighed and rolled up her sleeves, "It isn't as hot as the Gobi Desert, but still," she had a closer look at her surroundings, "This place almost looks like a painting."
Before anyone could agree with her, they were startled by the sound of a crash.
"So it's not that bad!" the assistant researcher stood among the crew, throwing his arms up in comedic fashion.
"Nobody is injured, that's nice," the medic had her frog-like hands on her hips. "But the water level on our helmets may get lower depending on how long it takes to find the spares."
The captain nodded, "That won't happen. If two of us can go and find civilisation in time to get those wires, there's no need to worry." They didn't take their eyes off the ship and patted the research assistant on the shoulder.
Before anyone could agree with them, the pilot pointed out that some strange bipedal creatures were approaching. The researcher remembered seeing similar aliens in her books.
"Greetings, Earthlings! We are Watermen from Q20!" A green creature waved her arms.
The three travellers gawped at the fish-frog aliens. All were wearing water-filled helmets, seemingly for breathing purposes. Three were wearing lab coats — the one who finished speaking was one of them —, one had a hat with an emblem propped on top of the helmet, and the last one had something akin to gloves on. Behind the aliens, a battered but elegant small ship was half-buried in the sand.
"Our ship was hit by a meteoroid. From the look of it, we only need to fix the—" the alien stroked her helmet in thought," multiphasic transference engine. My assistant is quite good at mechanics, but we lack the exact wires to replace the broken ones." She continued gesticulating energetically. Her assistant — must've been young — beamed, pleased with the compliment.
"They do seem friendly," Barbara whispered towards her companions. Ian, however, didn't seem convinced.
"Young man, you've indeed been getting quite jumpy! Barbara is right, the Watermen are gentle people." The Doctor moved towards the excited group of aliens, leaving Ian to laugh at the easy joke and Barbara, not wanting to stand there and exasperate, followed him. Naturally, Ian went after her.
"Watermen? So, you've met them before?" she quickened her pace; the old boy — as Barbara occasionally called him in her head, all thanks to a certain science teacher — was surprisingly fast when it suited him.
"Oh, no, no," but the Doctor didn't elaborate. He turned his attention to the Watermen, "I may have what you need in my ship."
"Oh, that's wonderful!" The spokesperson of the aliens clapped her hands together.
The time travellers were caught in a huge group hug.
"This isn't the room either," the Doctor humphed and knitted his eyebrows. Indeed, what appeared to be the chancel of a French Gothic church — it reminded Barbara of Chartres — was not the place one would find spare wires.
According to Ian's watch, the three of them had been looking for the fabled "spare parts room" for over half an hour. Barbara didn't know if she could go back to the console room on her own; all the corridors looked the same, and they took so many turns.
Many mysterious doors were opened. They found the swimming pool again, that was nice; they lost it after their ordeal in France. There was also a forest room, a blank room and— was that a kitchen? An actual kitchen, and the food machine is having issues. Why can't we use the kitchen Doc—
The Doctor closed the door and stomped away further down the corridor, arms behind his back. Ian walked right behind the Doctor and glanced over the older man's shoulder, curiosity in his eyes, "What does a multiphasic transference engine do?"
Barbara tried listening in, even though she knew she couldn't understand such advanced science.
"It's a quite primitive device," she heard the Doctor start.
After a while, when the Doctor's explanation ended, Ian looked back at Barbara, his expression screaming "help". Turns out the device was not that primitive, at least to their 1960s human standards.
Yet another door stood in front of them. The Doctor slid it open. It was the fabled "spare parts room".
"Thank you, Earthlings!" the assistant, having finished the repairs and being the biggest of the Watermen, hugged all three travellers at once. The rest of the alien crew jumped, except for the captain, who simply nodded.
Each of the Watermen waved the "Earthlings" goodbye before disappearing into the ship. The engines powered on, and the vessel flew into the bright sky.
Also on AO3
