SPACEMAN AND THE MOON ― doctor who

thirty-four: daleks in manhattan part two

"Come on," she said gently, turning and following everyone else. The Doctor fell in stride behind her.

"We just got to stick together," the young man was telling Martha, "it's easy to get lost. It's like a huge rabbit warren. You could hide an army down here."

"So what about you, Frank?" Martha asked him. "You're not from around these parts, are you?"

"Oh, you could talk. No, I'm Tennessee born and bred."

"A Southern boy after my own heart," Luna teased, and he turned his head back, smiling at her.

"I heard what people were saying up in Hooverville. You can't listen to 'em. My girl back in Tennessee was Korean. Light of my life," he smiled, eyes twinkling against the dark tunnels. "You're not the reason for all this, I'm sorry people think so."

"Thanks," Luna smiled shyly, touched by his words. "So how come you're here?"

"Oh, my daddy died. Mama couldn't afford to feed us all. So, I'm the oldest, up to me to feed myself. So I put on my coat, hitched up here on the railroads. There's a whole lot of runaways in the camp, younger than me, from all over. Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas. Solomon keeps a lookout for us. So, what about you two? You're a long way from home."

"Yeah, I'm just a hitcher too," Martha said, glancing at the Doctor who'd moved in front of the pair to speak with Solomon. Luna trailed behind everyone in the rear.

"You stick with me, you'll be alright."

"So this Diagoras bloke, who is he then?" The Doctor asked Solomon.

"A couple of months ago, he was just another foreman. Now, it seems like he's running most of Manhattan."

"How'd he manage that then?"

"These are strange times. A man can go from being King of the Hill to the lowest of the low overnight. It's just for some folks it works the other way round."

"Woah!" The Doctor exclaimed, pointing his light to the ground where a strange glowing blob reminiscent of a jellyfish sat in the ground. Luna moved ahead of Martha and Frank, standing in between the Doctor and Solomon. She and the Doctor leaned down to examine the creature, and Martha moved up on the Doctor's other side.

"Is it radioactive or something?" She asked, gagging a moment later. "It's gone off, whatever it is."

Luna coughed. "Yeah, that's horrible. No wonder this sewer stinks. But where'd it come from?"

"That's the question," the Doctor agreed quietly, putting on his glasses. Luna tried to ignore the skip in her heart at how attractive he looked with them on -- but the attraction faded a fraction when he picked up the blob.

"And you've got to pick it up," Martha frowned.

The Doctor brought it close to his face, smelling it and Luna grimaced. "Shine your torch through it," he said to Martha. "Composite organic matter. Martha, medical opinion?"

"It's not human, I know that."

"No, it's not," the Doctor agreed. "Any ideas, Luna?"

Luna shook her head, eyes narrowing, ignoring the butterflies in her stomach at the sound of her name from his lips. Something about it seemed familiar, scraping in the back of her mind, as though she'd read about it and completely forgotten, but she couldn't remember. "Not that I can think of, no."

"And I'll tell you something else," the Doctor stood up, looking at Solomon and Frank. "We must be at least half a mile in, I don't see any sign of a collapse, do you? So why did Mister Diagoras send us down here?"