Late night. Sandy beach. Cold water; very cold. The Doctor dragged himself out of the ocean, onto the relatively warm, damp sand. How many miles had it been? Nine and three eighths? Swimming away from the shipwreck with no one to talk to in all this time. An eternity. Muscles burning, he heaved himself another foot up the beach and collapsed.


Icy water lapped at the rubber soles of his shoes. When would the tide come in? He glanced up at the moon. At this altitude, this time of night, the moon’s current distance from the earth, the water temperature...

~at it’s closest the moon can be 363,104 kilometers from the earth~

Frantically he calculated. He had about three hours before he would be underwater. That would never do. The last thing he wanted was to be submerged again.

~wind blowing east, towards the wreck. someone is bound to smell the smoke and launch a rescue..~

He crawled painfully farther up the shore. Were there any caves nearby? He knew of people drowning in caves when the tide came in. It was a horrible situation. He hadn’t been able to save anyone...

~sand to water ratio at this point is 52 percent. gets dryer the farther up shore one goes...~

He flopped down again with a gasp as his arms gave out. They’d be burning like this for... how long?... at least five days.

~lack of oxygen to the muscles. pain would be 4.5 kriks. haven’t been swimming in ages...~

Maybe he could take a trip to OxxxOt 7 for a full body engulfment by the jelly-like xOOx.

~5th planet in the regalias system. warm climate. lack of indigenous humanoid life forms, but there were usually plenty of tourists...~

Did wonders for a body due to the rejuvenating secretions, and once you got over the feeling that you were being eaten (which you weren’t, the xOOx have a clearly defined orifice near the lower end of their bodies that goes nowhere near you even as they engulf you) the whole experience was completely relaxing.

~can’t stand being eaten~

He’d taken a sample of the secretion once. Maybe he’d just use that. The last time he’d been he’d fallen asleep and, upon waking, panicked and lashed out at the xOOx. Proper apologies had been made, of course, but it was still highly embarrassing. Perhaps he could go there before he’d been.

~coordinates something like 5948 by 66772 by 8900 by 6121112.99 by .00047775, perhaps~

That would solve things nicely. He’d just have to act a bit new to the process...

~hi i’m the doctor. and you are? what does this do? are you sure it’s safe?~

Of course, he’d need his TARDIS for that.

~time-and-relative-dimensions-in-space~

Where was it now? He tried to feel around with his mind. The Huon energy was easy to sense.

~the racnoss tried to saturate donna with huon energy once. well, they did, but i kept it from going any further...~

It was on this landmass, about a kilometer away and 3/4 of one up. Clever TARDIS. It had flown itself here to escape the wreck too. In his panic to save everyone he hadn’t had much time to think about the old girl. But after they’d been shoved out on lifeboats and the explosion had thrown him a mile in the opposite direction, he must have been heading for her instinctually. How else could they have both ended up here...

~probability with no connection close to .21156%...~

Where was here? He sniffed the air and licked the sand. Salty, but he’d been smelling salt for hours now.

~remains of crustacean life forms. dead 322 days, give or take. rubber; perhaps human debris. eggs below the surface, would hatch in under a week. nothing alien or out of place~

There was a sort of misty tang to the sand, something like the fog-nuts of Niithin.

~9th moon in the kiro-epsionary cluster. humanoids, but blue. spears. warm and humid climate.~

Those were brilliant, they had a frigid core and absorbed heat from their surroundings, and stored a delicately balanced mist of condensed liquid and spores in the hollow shell.

~core temperature 122 Rs when environmental temperature was 491 Rs provides the balance~

A clever technique for spreading and reproducing, and for centuries had convinced the native Rithl of their magical properties.

~...believed for centuries that they housed the souls of the dead...~

He rather regretted explaining it to them; they hadn’t taken it kindly. Of course, they now had a new food source to pull them out of their disaster. (That’s now as in 78 years from now and several galaxies away).

~trimandos invaded the bowers, rotted them out from the inside. carried by a meteorite. native to enzymas 5, (with similar climate) bowers went nearly extinct before i got there~

Food. He’d need food. What was there to eat here? He wasn’t very experienced at finding food in uninhabited areas of Earth.

~I want fish and chips~

His head rose and he gazed around. those trees looked promising.

~laminar leaves, five to a stalk. seven stalks, no, eight, but that varies for each individual...~

He could go foraging later, when he had the strength. There were bound to be some munchies around.

~bananas. i like bananas. are those banana trees?~

His eyes felt heavy, and his head flopped back onto the wet sand.

~ratio of sand to water is 76 percent and getting dryer~

He should rest. He wasn’t getting any closer to the TARDIS like this. If he could only lapse out of consciousness as easily as some of his companions could.

~rose martha donna jack charley sarah jane jo tegan peri benny adric turlough nyssa ian barbra susan victoria jamie...~

Some of them were quite adept at fainting. His mind became foggy and his eyes closed.

~losing consciousness at a rate of 3.7901 winks a second~

The moon had barely drifted any closer to the horizon. Morning was still a long way off.

~the moon moves at 1.022 kilometers a second. orbits the planet once every 27.3 days...~

The Doctor still had no plans.

~if only i could think...~