The shuffling sounds got louder and louder as they got closer. John bit his lip, starting to crawl backwards, but the Doctor grabbed his arm, stopping John.
"What are you doing?" John hissed.
"Just trust me."
"Like hell-"
Suddenly, one of the orange elephants came into view, moving very slowly. It was smaller than the other ones, even smaller than John, and it's ears were huge.
"Don't move," the Doctor told John, raising his sonic screwdriver and pointing it down.
"Are you going to kill it?"
"Of course not! That's barbaric! Why would you say that?"
"I wasn't suggesting it!"
The Fremde elephant shuffled closer and closer while they were arguing. Finally, when he was almost to them, the Doctor used his sonic screwdriver to make the part he was on fall off. The Fremde fell down, his big ears flapping around widely as he did.
"Oh," John said, his eyes wide. "You killed him."
"No, no!" the Doctor argued. "He's fine! Look! He landed on all the other ones!"
"Oh," John said back, looking down. The Fremde actually didn't land on anyone, he was on the floor, but he was moving, so John decided to just not tell the Doctor. What he didn't know wouldn't hurt him.
"So, what do we do now?"
"Well, any second now, Sherlock will," the Doctor started, just as the door closed and locked itself. "That, and soon he'll close off the vent."
John gave the Doctor an odd look, confused. "But we're still in the vent."
"Yeah, well we'll get out," the Doctor told him, cheerfully, still not realizing the problem.
"But what about the big gaping hole in the way?" John asked, a little impatiently.
The Doctor looked down, just now seeming to realize the problem. "Oh... well we'll think of something. Just a minute."
"We don't have a minute!"
------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------------------------------------
Sherlock was looking through the book, repeating looking from it to the control panel. Suddenly, he noticed a bright red triangle blinking on the corner of a screen he had put up of the holding bay, where John and the Doctor were. He clicked it, and saw a map of the vents, with two red dots, presumably John and the Doctor near a big red space that said: Need Repairs Immediately. Sherlock rolled his eyes, wondering what the Doctor did this time. He wondered if he should fix it for a second, but figured closing the chamber off first was more important. Sherlock continued his pattern of looking from the control panel to the booklet.
Eventually, Sherlock found what he was looking for and pressed a button. He nodded in satisfaction when the door in the holding bay shut and locked itself. Now to help out John and the Doctor. What would they do without him?
He flipped through the manual, trying to find the correct page. Finally, he found it, and he skimmed the page, looking for the correct information. When he found it (with surprise that he didn't see it earlier. It was in gigantic red words, that took up half the page) he pressed the correct buttons, and the red space disappeared, with the two dots moving forward hesitantly soon after. Satisfied, Sherlock waited until they were out, and them looked over the page again, figuring out how to seal the vents.
He clicked the buttons once more and saw the words: 'Vents Sealed' flashed across the screen. Then Sherlock turned around and was surprised to also see red text on the door. He was even more surprised when it read: Unauthorized Personnel Detected. Please Enter Pass code:.
Sherlock sighed. 'This isn't going to go well,' he thought grumpily.