AND WE'RE BACK!

THIS PICKS UP WHERE MISS OBENG LEFT OFF: THE DOCTOR AND MARTHA FRESH FROM A TWO-DAY SHAGFEST, NOW COOLING THEIR HEELS ON A BEACH IN TAHITI! THEY WERE HOPING FOR A VACATION, BUT NO SUCH LUCK...

ONE

This was not fair, not fair at all. They had asked for fourteen days, what they'd got was forty-eight hours. They had done their waiting! They had paid their dues! They had endured six weeks in the 1960's through a bitter London winter with aliens trying to eat them and a stubborn fourteen-year-old threatening to turn time on its ear. They had been lost without their vessel, and worse, lost without each other on their way to this holiday. And all they asked in return was two weeks – a fortnight of quiet rest and repose (maybe with some snorkeling and a bit of shagging thrown in) with no planets in peril, no malevolent aliens, no dimensional barriers turning their friends into monsters…

But no. Trouble followed the Doctor, and when that happened, the Doctor followed trouble.

They were just settling into their day on a Tahitian beach with Mai Tais and beautiful bodies emerging from an emerald sea, when across the resort area, a crowd of people began fleeing from the Sofitel Resort hotel, screaming in almighty fear.

Martha and the Doctor looked at each other.

"Well, it was fun while it lasted," he said. They clinked their glasses together, each took a sip, and then, hand-in-hand, they ran toward the screaming.

As different patches of sand momentarily squeezed between their toes, Martha asked, "Have you noticed how often we are running toward the screaming, while everyone else is running away?"

"Going on nine hundred and three years now," he called to her.

"Are we daft or just brave?" she wondered.

"A bit of both, I should think," he answered.

The Doctor held tightly to her hand as he led the way through the crowd, shouldering past the frightened and panicking mob. The lobby was littered with wicker and suede armchairs overturned, matching coffee tables broken and white sofas with all manner of drink spills and footprints. A few people were wandering out of the swimming pool area on the left with their drinks still in hand, watching the chaos confusedly.

"What is go on?" asked one very large man with a heavy Russian accent. "Why the people scream?"

"I don't know," the Doctor told him. "But I'd suggest you all follow them out the door and away from whatever it is that's making them scream."

An Asian man in a flowered shirt appeared from behind the Doctor. "Actually sir," he said. "I am the manager here, and I am advising that all guests stay put."

"Really? Well, that went well, didn't it?" asked the Doctor, indicating the mob of people who had recently left the building in a fit of screaming mayhem.

"All further guests," he corrected, stuttering a bit. "All additional guests, I mean. I'm sorry, who exactly are you?"

The Doctor, though he was currently dressed in brown pin-striped nylon swimming trunks and nothing else, pulled his psychic paper from a pocket. "John Smith, Resort Hotel Safety Inspector," he answered.

The manager lifted one eyebrow. "Shouldn't you be checking the kitchen for salmonella and poisoned blowfish?"

"Sure, if all we had to contend with was contaminated food," the Doctor answered, shoving the paper back in his pocket. "But clearly we have other disasters on our hands, don't we? That's me – I'm in the… disaster division."

The man crossed his arms over his chest and looked at Martha. "And you? Are you in the disaster division as well?"

"Y-yes," she answered, feigning authority. "I'm Mr. Smith's secretary."

"Mmm-hm," the man sniffed, looking her up and down. "You don't exactly dress like the rest of the desk set."

She looked down at her outfit. She was wearing a turquoise bikini with white string trim. The top was little more than two triangles of fabric, and the valley between her breasts was spanned only by an inch's worth of white string. The bottoms were similarly skimpy, held together by two white bows tied at her hip bones. A white hibiscus flower ornamented the backside. When she'd put it on this morning, she had thought it the perfect outfit for a Tahitian romp with the Doctor. Now, their Tahitian romp was shaping up to be more like the rest of their romps, and she was regretting her decision not to grab at least a sarong before leaving their hotel room.

"Oi!" she shot back. "You're dressed like Magnum P.I., not a hotel manager, so let's not cast stones, eh?"

"Right then," the Doctor said, trying hard to change the subject. "That's out of the way, now, so why don't you tell us your name and what's happened?"

"Fine," the man said grudgingly. "My name is Teina Puaki. And this? This started a couple minutes ago in the Oh Bar."

"The Oh Bar?" asked the Doctor.

"Yes, the oxygen bar."

"People still do that?" asked Martha. "I thought that had gone out of style."

"No, not here," Teina responded scornfully. "Here, people still understand the benefits of pure oxygen to the body."

"Yeah, it gets you high," she answered.

"Anyway," he said. "I didn't see what happened inside, but suddenly, people started screaming and running out of there. And then, people started running of the wet bar area, which is out back…"

"And that's when you locked down and advised everyone else not to move?" asked the Doctor.

"Yes," Teina said.

"All right," the Doctor said. "Fair enough. Although, this lot, I think they should leave." He indicated the Russian man and the others who were still standing in the doorway to the pool area. Teina Puaki simply nodded and gestured for his guests to file out the front door of the hotel. Some of the guests nodded and/or said thanks as they passed.

"What do you think, Mr. Smith?" asked Teina. "What should we do?"

"My assistant and I are going into the Oh Bar," the Doctor told him. "You are going to stay here in the lobby and direct traffic. Send any stragglers outside, send anyone who's seen anything to me."

"Okay. The Oh Bar is down that hall to the left," Teina said, indicating a long hallway across the lobby. "The door at the back connects with the wet bar. I assume that whatever it is came through that door at some point."

"Thanks," the Doctor said, taking Martha's hand. "We'll let you know what we find."

As they walked away, Martha whispered, "We will?"

"If it suits us, sure," he answered. "Oh, and by the way… my secretary?" He grinned giddily.

"Well," she shrugged. "Perhaps your personal secretary."

"Yeah, that covers it."

They found a long fogged glass wall, in the middle of which was a sliding glass door labeled "Oh Bar" in a plain blue font. They walked inside a huge white room with five long counters. The place was meant to be soft, clean and inviting, the bars curved and flowing, the stools cushioned with microfibre. There wasn't a right angle in the entire place. In front of each stool, there was an oxygen mask emerging from the counter by clear tubes.

Martha fingered one of the masks and sighed, "This is so weird."

"Mm," the Doctor answered, looking around.

"Do you see anything out of place?" she asked.

"Not yet," he said. "But the day is still young."

He moved round to the back side of one of the bars. Each one had three panels. He opened one of them. He extracted a large, round tank. He ran his fingers over a label, and reading the label, whispered the words "Oxygène purifié à Papeete."

"What did you say?" Martha asked, absently moving to put one of the masks over her face.

"Don't do that," he said. "We don't know anything about this situation. I don't think it's wise to be breathing the drug in the very place where the trouble started."

"Sorry," she said, eyes wide, setting the mask down and exaggeratedly backing away.

"Still," he mused. "This says the oxygene gets distilled in Papeete, which is just up the coast a bit. It's probably safe if they're bottling it in Tahiti for distribution in Tahiti. But, it wouldn't hurt to have a look."

He set the tank on the counter and extracted the sonic.

"You brought that, and the psychic paper, to the beach with you?" she asked.

"Aren't you glad?"

"Yeah, but what did you think was going to happen?" she wondered.

"Nothing. But it's good to be prepared." He disconnected the tubing from the tank and held the sonic over the valve as pure oxygen escaped from the tank. "It's contaminated."

"By what?" she asked.

"I can't tell," he said.

"Something extraterrestrial?"

"Probably," he said. "Unfortunately, I don't have anything to trap a sample in. But the big question is, what happened to whoever was in here while it was happening?" He put the sonic back in his pocket and looked about, hands on hips.

"Well, he said something about that door there," she told him. "Shall we check?"

He nodded and began to walk toward another fogged sliding glass door. The words "Oh Bar" were on that door as well, though from the inside, they looked backwards. They stepped outside into the humid sunlight again.

What they found was a narrow tributary of blue ocean, curving into a canopied area of the hotel. Their bare feet protested against the red-hot concrete. On their right, there was a bar built into the pool, the full array of alcoholic beverages climbing up an artificial rock wall beneath a separate wooden canopy. Across the wet area, there was another bar, identical. To the right of that second bar, another kind of service alcove loomed, bigger, up higher and out of the water.

When Martha looked closely, she could see a man behind the opposite bar. He was wearing a panama hat and no shirt. He was pressing his back up against one of the artificial rock walls inside the bar, and she could just barely hear him making frightened noises as he stared at the bigger counter.

"Doctor," she whispered, gesturing toward him.

As they walked toward him, they could hear noises coming from the direction where he was looking. They ran out of concrete, and Martha lowered herself into the water, and the Doctor followed suit. The water was chest-high to her, and they made their way, half-walking, half-swimming, toward the man.

"Oi," Martha whispered. "What's going on over there?"

The man was surprised to see them, but then went back to staring at where the noises came from. "I don't know." His voice conveyed fright. "I just heard screaming coming from the oxygen bar, and then these… things came out of there and headed straight over to the sushi counter, and everyone ran screaming from here as well."

"Why didn't you?" asked the Doctor.

"Too stunned."

"Right, well, shall we get you out of here?"

The man nodded subtly. He came around to the outside where Martha and the Doctor were standing.

Martha whispered, "Whatever they are, we'll hold them off until you get out. Go through the Oh Bar – we've already checked it, and it's clean."

The man nodded again and climbed out of the water where the cement began. He ran into the building and disappeared. He hadn't bothered to ask who they were, what they were doing, how they expected to get past whatever awful things were making the racket in the sushi bar. He'd just wanted to get the hell away.

They made their way through the water to the bottom of some stairs. The Doctor climbed them first, emerging from the water once more, with Martha following. They went up about ten steps, and found themselves on a dry wooden floor under a canopy, with chairs and tables overturned all around. Behind the sushi bar, the noises were quite loud. They sounded like snarling, smacking.

The Doctor approached the counter and peeked over. All at once, the noises of snarling and smacking stopped, and the sounds of anger began. He retreated from the counter, careful not to trip over any chairs or tables. A man crawled over the counter on all-fours, scratching at the air, hissing at the Doctor and Martha. He was wearing blue and black swimming trunks and a pair of rubber sandals. A second person came over the counter, a blonde woman in a pink two-piece bathing costume, and then a third. And then a fourth. In all, twelve people crawled over the bar, some of them in swimwear, some of them in sundresses or flowered shirts or Ralph Lauren gear – all of them dressed for Tahiti, but all of them vicious and advancing.

And something else. They all had plasticky-red faces and their eyes had gone completely black – no whites, no irises, no pupils. A few of them had food dangling from their mouths, mostly raw fish, but some of them had got into the vinegared rice.

"Martha?" the Doctor said, walking slowly backward.

"Yes?" she said, following. She fumbled for his hand, and they enlaced their fingers and grasped each other for life.

"Run!"