All things considered, the hipocrae were remarkably gracious hosts. With help from the nanotechnology that formed the basis of all their more, er, visible technology, they had quickly adapted to Harry’s nourishment and toilet needs, along with sleep cycles, and provided quite comfortably for them.
Nor need he fear boredom, as his days were occupied with learning about his remarkable new friends and tending to the health of the other members of Flight 19 who still remained aboard the vessel: both their physical health and, well, to a degree mental as well. It could hardly come as anything less than a shock to discover one had been missing for over sixty years.
The one thing he had not yet managed to do, however, was the one thing they had really asked of him: find a way to peaceably resolve the imprisonment of their comrade. Perhaps if he’d some idea where the captured hipocra was being held, he might be able to orchestrate some variety of jail break and advise his new friends to simply erase the entire incident from memory as they’d done with his escort. However, considering he had been brought to the country under false pretenses–he suspected he would have been asked to examine the alien only once the Americans had deemed him trustworthy–and even Lieutenant Sawyer had not known, he felt disappointingly helpless to provide any true assistance.
So it was with no little relief–and some small amusement as well–that he greeted the familiar wheezing sound that suddenly echoed through the cobalt crystalline corridors of the hipocra vessel. That relief faded somewhat when the TARDIS materialized and not one but three strangers stepped out, with the Doctor nowhere to be seen.
Then he remembered what Sarah had told him once: that when she’d first met the Doctor, he’d had an entirely different aspect, which was why the one he was familiar with had been placed in his care in the first place. The only question that remained was…which of the two men (or the woman, though that seemed less likely) was the Doctor?
The silver-haired one had a distinct air of authority about him, which made him the most likely candidate. But no, Harry reminded himself from past experience with the Doctor, that very likely was what disqualified him. The other…
Harry smiled. The second man was wearing a blue suit with a wine coloured tie and a brown coat that didn’t match in the least. And when he glanced down at the newcomer’s feet…surely only the Doctor would wear trainers with business attire.
He stepped forward, the nanites parting to let him through, and said pleasantly, “Hello, Doctor. I must say, old chap, I’m dashed pleased to see you.”
“Harry!” the man he’d correctly identified as the Doctor exclaimed, his face splitting into an ear-to-ear smile. He bounded across the chamber, pulling the startled Harry into a bear hug before pulling back and grinning at him yet again. “Can’t take you anywhere without getting into trouble–really, abducted by aliens? Making rather a habit of this, aren’t you?”
Harry frowned at him with as much wounded dignity as he could muster. “I’ll have you know, Doctor, that the last alien who abducted me was you.”
“Alien?” the authoritative one echoed, giving the Doctor a wary look.
“Abducted?” This from the young woman in black pigtails and a style of dress that he believed the youngsters called “punk”. She folded her arms across her chest and pinned the Doctor with a look that demanded explanation.
“It was a joke!” he defended himself. “As for everything that followed, well, you might say the Time Lords abducted all of us. Hardly something you can lay at my door.” The Doctor turned back to Harry. “Besides which, this is hardly the time or the place: we’ve an abducted alien of our own to see safely home. Don’t suppose you could call one of our hosts, could you?”
Harry more sensed than saw one of the hipocra come up behind them as soon as its presence was requested. It merged through the sometimes-permeable wall as easily as he himself had done a moment before. Glancing back, he had no trouble determining which of them had joined them: while the hipocra were so alien to the human experience as to defy description, each one was in their own way as unique and distinctive as any human being. This was the one he’d dubbed in his mind “the Captain”.
“You are the Doctor?” the Captain asked.
The Doctor’s mood changed at once as he turned his attention to the alien. “Yes, I am. And I want you to know, your pilot is safe. It’s resting comfortably in the TARDIS infirmary.”
“Infirmary?” Harry asked, suddenly worried. “Oh dear. May I examine it?”
“Not to worry, Harry,” the Doctor promised him. “My companion, Martha, has got him well in hand. She’s not a doctor just yet, but she’s in training.”
Harry felt momentarily disoriented. “Then this young lady…?”
That young lady smiled pertly. “Oh, I’m with him,” she stated, hooking a thumb in the direction of the other man. “I used to hang out with the Doctor, but at least a face or two ago.”
“Ah.” Harry couldn’t help but smile even though he was only slightly less confused. “You have my sympathies, my dear. However, I’m afraid I still don’t quite understand…”
The grey-haired man stepped forward, extending a hand. “Special Agent Jethro Gibbs, US Naval Criminal Investigative Service. My team and I were assigned to find you. This is Abby.”
“To find me? Oh dear,” Harry stated gravely, accepting the offered hand. “That can’t have been an easy task, given the circumstances.”
Miss Sciuto grinned. “Lucky we got mixed up with the Doctor, then, isn’t it?”
Harry chuckled under his breath. “Young lady, I am never quite sure which direction to assume my fortune has taken when my path crosses with the Doctor.”
Eyes sparkling, the young woman nodded. “Well, duh! That’s half the fun.”
He couldn’t help but laugh at that, for in spite of everything, she was quite right. It was almost a pity he’d grown far too old to be doing this sort of thing regularly any longer. Thank heaven for small favours.
The Doctor himself looked pained by their merriment. “Well, now that we’re all acquainted…” He turned to the captain. “Martha and Agent Gibbs’ man, DiNozzo, are waiting just inside the TARDIS with your pilot. I just felt it wise to offer up a word of warning first–it’s…not well.”
The Captain nodded its extraordinary head, seeming subdued and almost resigned. “May I see?”
The Doctor nodded and stepped back, opening the door and calling out, “Martha?”
A moment later, two more people emerged from the TARDIS–Harry’d never seen it so crowded, for all its infinite space. The first was a petite young woman who reminded him instantly of Lieutenant Sawyer not only in looks, but also in the proud, practical way she carried herself. Behind her was a young man about the age the Doctor currently appeared, carrying the hipocra pilot in his arms.
Harry got his first good look at the creature, and promptly felt all the colour drain from his face. “Oh dear.”
“Oh dear” was probably a vast understatement. Compared with the other hipocrae he’d seen on the ship, this creature had lost near a quarter of its total body mass, and the cool silver bioluminescence that typified its comrades had, in this individual, faded almost entirely.
“I did what I could for it,” Martha confessed. “But I’m afraid I don’t know very much about hipocra physiology.”
The Captain approached. As unfamiliar as Harry himself was with this race, he couldn’t help but think the being looked very tired. “I have already sent for one of our own physicians,” it answered. “Thank you for…trying.”
“I’m a doctor…or, well, nearly,” she protested with a weak smile. “That’s what we do.”
Harry found himself suddenly, irrationally very proud of this unknown girl. Perhaps she reminded him of another young woman the Doctor had taken under his wing…or even a certain young Navy Lieutenant who, for all his own medical training, had still been very naïve about the ways of the universe.
“I know,” the Captain said. “We know little about your culture, but we do know of the oath your…doctors take. That is how we knew Admiral Sullivan could be trusted.”
“Yes, about that…” the Doctor interrupted with a slight frown. “Something’s been puzzling me nearly since this whole business began, or at the least since we used your nanotechnology to remove your pilot from the facility where he was being held. Why didn’t you simply transport him out and go about your business? Why get Admiral Sullivan involved at all?”
“For the sake of the humans,” the hipocra answered as if it were a matter of course. “Because we did not contact your people to let them know we were returning them, they fired upon our ship. We feared that if we were to act once more arbitrarily, the same might happen to any ships bearing the others, even if they were unmanned by our own people. Is the one human, at the least, safely home?”
The five humans, Harry included, exchanged discomfited glances.
“He’s home…” the one called DiNozzo finally answered. “I don’t know about safe.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Flight 19 has been missing for sixty years,” Abby explained. “If you hadn’t taken them…they’d all be in their eighties or nineties by now, if not dead. Humans don’t tend to live all that long. So when some guy who went missing in 1945 reappears in an alien spaceship, not looking a day older…well, even if he did have a family to go home to, he might not get the chance. He’ll probably spend the rest of his life being poked and prodded by the same people who starved your pilot.”
For the first time since he’d met them, the hipocra Captain seemed to grow angry. “Your people would do such things to one of their own?”
“Wait a second,” Martha interrupted. “How is it possible that makes you angrier than what was done to Madison?” When nearly everyone looked puzzled, she clarified: “Your pilot. Why aren’t you up in arms over that as well?”
The Doctor answered for them, his own voice subdued. “The hipocrae have been around the universe long enough to know that most species tend to fear the unknown, the alien.”
“We have grown…resigned to it,” the Captain agreed. “And besides…unless we were to go against our very nature to make war on other races, there is little we could do about it. But this human…”
“How did you get tangled up with ‘this human’ anyway?” This time the question came from Gibbs.
“We had just discovered your world. Our ship was flying over one of your oceans, collecting data, when it encountered Lieutenant Taylor and its people in their smaller ships. We did not mean to, but our technology interfered with their instruments and they became lost…finally running out of fuel and crashing. When we realized what we had done, we retrieved the humans and hurried them to our physicians. But…” Here its face twisted into something that might be the hipocra’ equivalent of a smile. “…like you, Martha, with our physiology, we were unfamiliar with yours. It took us this long to understand and repair the damage. We did not realize time was against us.”
“So what do we do?” Abby asked. “If they can’t go home and they can’t stay here…”
Harry stepped forward, absurdly grateful to finally have something to do. “I suspect UNIT might be able to lend a hand with that. I’m sure a word or two in the right ear might see the gentlemen safely relocated somewhere they can start new lives, without the pall of the past hanging over them.”
“Great,” Agent DiNozzo added in a voice that was not quite enthusiastic. “Somebody wanna tell me how we get in and out with Taylor without Stockton having us arrested the second we walk through the door?”
“Oh, God, I didn’t even think of that,” Martha exclaimed. “You three, you’re likely to lose your jobs over this, aren’t you? Or worse?”
“And we’d do it again in a heartbeat,” Abby declared.
Agent DiNozzo didn’t look so certain of that and Agent Gibbs’ expression was indiscernable.
“Well, we can’t have that,” the Doctor decided. “Hardly seems fair to lose one’s job for doing the right thing, helping out a fellow denizen of the universe. As it happens…I’ve an idea how we might be able to avoid it.” He turned to the captain of the hipocra ship. “Just how selectively can you lot edit human memories?”