Rating: PG
Beta: hhertzof and Julia
Spoilers: None
Summary: Just for a change, it’s up to the Fourth Doctor, Sarah and Harry to save the world from the monster.

Sarah frowned as she stepped out of the TARDIS. The Doctor had landed them in all sorts of exotic places before: space stations, war zones, the distant past, but this was something different. It was dark here, with coloured lights flickering on the walls. The ground moved slowly from side to side and there was a distant droning sound. She jumped as she heard a loud voice and gunshots from behind her, convinced they were about to be killed or captured. Her heart was still beating fast when she turned and realised where they were. However, she didn’t have a chance to get a word out before she was pushed to the floor.

“Stay down, old girl,” a voice whispered in her ear.

Sarah rolled her eyes, conveniently forgetting that she’d come to the same conclusion only a moment ago.

“It’s a cinema, Harry,” she hissed back.

“Oh.” Then his weight was off her, so she stood up and dusted herself down.

From behind her she heard a clunk that was the TARDIS door closing, then the Doctor’s voice cut across a quiet moment in the film. “Well, now, didn’t I say…” He didn’t get to finish his sentence before he was shushed by the people in the seats closest to the police box.

“I don’t think this is Scotland, Doctor,” Harry pointed out before she could.

“Well, I must admit this wasn’t exactly what I expected,” the Doctor said, and at least he whispered it this time.

Sarah sighed. Why she’d thought the Doctor would get them to where they were meant to be she didn’t know. “We’re in a cinema,” she told him, just in case he hadn’t worked that out for himself.

“On a ship,” Harry put in.

Sarah looked over at him. It made sense of the way the floor moved, but why hadn’t he said something sooner? “I think we should find the exit,” she whispered to them both.

“Good idea, old girl.”

Sarah rolled her eyes again, not that it did her much good in here. “Don’t call me old girl.”

“Ah, there’s the exit.” The Doctor pointed towards the green illuminated sign on the other side of the cinema from where they stood. He was shushed again, but ignored them to stride across the room, apologising to people on the way. Sarah and Harry hurried in his wake, Harry with a muffled “Ow” as he walked into a row of seats. Sarah decided that was only fair. All the same, she was relived to get through the cinema without doing it herself.

“Now, where do you suppose we are, Harry?” the Doctor asked.

Harry frowned and looked round. From here they could see out of the windows on one side at a sea that looked more brown than Sarah had ever seen on Earth. Or it could have been that the windows were dirty. The only other thing to give them any clues to their location was the corridor they were in and that looked like any old ship as far as Sarah could tell, from her limited experience.

“I don’t know,” Harry replied. “It’s rather hard to say. All oceans look the same when you can’t see any land. Don’t you know?”

“Of course I do.” He slung his scarf over his shoulder and started off down the corridor in a huff.

“Don’t antagonise him,” Sarah said to Harry as they struggled to keep up with the Doctor.

“Don’t antagonise him, I like that. What about him antagonising me?”

Sarah thought that it was quite reasonable asking a sailor where they were when they were clearly at sea, but decided it was probably best to drop the subject. Harry was prevented from saying more when the Doctor stopped suddenly.

“Oh, look, they have a shop! I do like a good gift shop.” And then the Doctor was off again, poking at the racks of keyrings, pens and various other tat.

“It would be nice to at least know what planet we’re on, at least.” Sarah sighed as she leant back against the wall. She hoped they were on Earth as she was worried at the idea that other planets had the sort of tat you got in gift shops. She’d long outgrown the need for brightly-coloured rubbers and oversized pencils, so this one held no charm for her.

“Somewhere in the English Channel, I’d say.” Harry had a suspicious-looking glint in his eye.

Sarah frowned. “How do you know that?” He sounded very smug for someone who had professed to know nothing a few minutes ago.

He pointed at a sign. “Cross-channel ferry. All the signs are in English and French.”

“Very good, Sherlock.” It explained why it looked a little familiar at least – she remembered going from Dover to Calais once when she was younger. “How about the date?”

“A little way into your future,” the Doctor put in, passing her a newspaper.

She had a quick look at the date at the top and then realised a short, balding man nearby looked upset, so she smiled and handed the newspaper back. He snatched it off her and stalked off without saying a word. So far it was going typically not well.

“Please don’t antagonise the natives, Doctor.” Even if the natives were English or French.

“Why don’t we go up on deck and get some fresh air?” Harry suggested before the Doctor could answer that and antagonise Sarah.

“Good idea, Harry.” The Doctor smiled broadly and Sarah gave a sigh of relief.

~*~*~

Out on deck the Doctor took his yo-yo out. Harry took a deep breath and smiled. “Smell that sea air.”

Sarah wasn’t convinced about that; it smelt a little like a sewage plant to her. She decided to ignore the Doctor as he probably wanted someone to ask him what he was doing, and she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. He’d tell them eventually. She smiled at Harry instead. “Do you miss it?”

“Now and then.” He wondered over to the side to lean against the barrier and peer down at the sea.

“Only now and then,” she teased as she followed him, hoping he might admit to more than that, given the expression she’d briefly seen on his face before he’d spoken. However, she forgot all about that when she looked over the side. “What’s that?” She pointed at what looked like a few white tentacles appearing out of the water.

“I don’t know. I can’t think of anything that looks like that that lives in the English Channel.” He sounded worried. Sarah couldn’t blame him. They never could go anywhere nice without something bad happening.

They both turned to ask the Doctor, who was still playing with his yo-yo with a hurt expression on his face and didn’t look up at all. Before they could say anything the ferry gave a sudden lurch. Sarah and Harry were thrown against the railing. Sarah grimaced as the breath was knocked out of her. Harry grabbed her arm, although as he had also lost his footing that wasn’t very helpful and it was only her instinctive hold on the railing that prevented them both from falling.

The Doctor slid over to them and peered over the side. “Oh dear,” he said, in a masterful understatement.

Sarah turned to look back at the sea and noticed the thing with tentacles had an awful lot of tentacles and it was climbing up the side of the ferry. “What is it, Doctor?” She couldn’t tell whether it was something he’d come across before, or he was just as confused as they were.

The ferry tilted even further, as if it were determined never to let the Doctor answer their question, regardless of whether they’d had the chance to ask it. Harry had a worried expression on this face as people who had just picked themselves up were thrown to the floor again. One man screamed as he fell over the side. The scream abruptly cut off as he fell into the tentacled beast. The only noise that came after was a glugging sound.

Sarah put her hand over her mouth and looked away. Harry let go of her and put his arm loosely round her shoulders. She wanted to tell him she was all right, but she couldn’t help thinking of just how close the creature was and how she and Harry might have gone the same way, had the railing been less secure where they were standing.

The Doctor’s eyes were boggling. “It looks like a Lepas anatifera. They usually eat plankton, though.”

By this time it was well out of the water, and it was safe to say there were no plankton on the side of the ferry. Besides, that man had definitely been far bigger than plankton and the creature hadn’t even paused. She had another quick look and discovered it was moving up the side of the ferry faster than she thought something that size could move. It was all the tentacles, she supposed. “Um, Doctor. Unless you have a way of sending it back into the sea, I think we’d better get further away from it.”

“What, do nothing and let it attack another ship after it’s finished with this one?”

He had a point, which meant it would be harder to stop than she thought, but now really wasn’t the time or place to debate it. Since the Doctor showed no signs of moving, she grabbed his hand and forced him to run with her, down the stairs and back inside. Not that she thought it would hold the creature off for long, but it was a start.

Once inside and a little safer, Sarah looked around and frowned at what she saw – or rather what shedidn’t see. “Where’s Harry?” She had been so sure he wanted to be away from it just as much as she did that she’d just assumed he was following.

“Oh, he found someone who’d been knocked out. He was putting them in the recovery position. Although he really needs to be more up-to-date with that,” the Doctor replied, idly.

Sarah, feeling guilty for not paying enough attention, just shook her head and started back towards the stairs.

“Where are you going?” the Doctor called after her.

She didn’t slow down as she called back, “To get Harry.” Rescue might well be a better word, although she hoped that wouldn’t be necessary.

“No, you’re not, it’s far too dangerous.” He caught up with her and took hold of her arm.

She was forced to stop and tug her arm out of his grasp. At least he let her, and in return she stayed where she was for the time being. “We can’t just leave him there.”

“No, of course not,” he said as if it had been his idea in the first place. “I’ll go.”

“What difference does it make?” She was frustrated now at the Doctor treating her like, well, like a girl. She expected this from Harry, not him.

“Because I have a way of stopping it.” He grinned at her. She sighed and let him go past her and back out on deck. After he was gone she looked around the room and frowned. The sign on the door had said ‘Family Lounge’, but now it was full of frightened people cowering in their seats. A baby was crying somewhere near the back. As much as she wanted to reassure them everything would be all right, she didn’t have anything concrete, beyond knowing that with the Doctor around, it usually was. Besides, she didn’t want to miss out on all the action.

~*~*~

The Doctor turned out to be easy to find, since the deck was empty of people except for him. Sarah hoped that meant Harry was somewhere safer, along with whatever casualties he’d found. The Doctor was leaning over the rail at the creature, holding one arm out and looking pensive.

“Doctor,” Sarah called out, and he turned to face her.

He frowned at her. “I thought I told you to stay inside.”

She shook her head. “No, you didn’t.” He might have implied it, but he didn’t actually say it. Not that she would have listened anyway. “Do you know how to stop it?”

He straightened his hat on his head with one hand. “I think I can hold it off for a while with the sonic screwdriver.”

That explained why his arm was still over the side. Sarah cautiously went closer to find he had the sonic screwdriver in his hand and, although the creature wobbled slightly, it wasn’t coming any closer. Which explained why the ferry had stopped tilting so violently. “And then what?” She tried not to sound too worried, since this was all in a day’s work these days, but she didn’t succeed.

The Doctor smiled at her. “Phosphoric acid.”

She frowned. “What?”

“Phosphoric acid is well known for poisoning goose barnacles.”

Was that what the Latin term meant? She supposed that now he mentioned it, the tentacles did look a bit like the necks of geese.

“Quickly, Sarah,” he added, when she didn’t say anything.

Sarah went back downstairs, trying to think of where on a ferry there might be a source of phosphoric acid. The Doctor sounded confident that there would be, but surely there wasn’t a science lab on board. The name sounded familiar for some reason, but she couldn’t say why. There wasn’t time to be delving into the depths of the TARDIS to find the library. She should have asked the Doctor really, but she didn’t want to appear ignorant by going back now.

When she ran through the Family Lounge she ignored the shouts in her direction. She had more important things to do and they’d be safe soon enough anyway. She hoped. A few corridors along and somewhere in the vicinity of the shop the Doctor had been so enamoured she ran into Harry. Literally.

“Careful, old girl,” he said, offering her a hand up even as he stood himself.

She took it. “The Doctor’s holding it off, but it’s nearly on him and I need your help.”

“Well, I have rather a lot to do here.” He waved a hand to indicate the injured people around him that he had somehow managed to collect in one place. Sarah didn’t know how he’d done it in the time. He’d even found a first aid box and a stretcher.

“If we don’t stop it you’ll have more to do,” she pointed out. “And you can’t be the only doctor on board.”

Harry looked torn and Sarah decided the Doctor could wait a little longer. “I’ll find one.” She went off back the way she came.

She opened the door to the room full of people and seats and shouted, “Is anyone a doctor?”

A young blonde woman stood up. “Me.” Sarah wondered at that because she didn’t even look old enough to be out of medical school yet. Some of that must have shown on her face because the woman added, “Well, I’m in my final year.”

“You’ll do,” Sarah decided. Besides, she was curious to see what reaction Harry would have to a female doctor. She was pretty enough that he’d probably be flustered, but he was busy enough that he might not notice. “We really need you outside.”

The woman nodded. “I’m Catherine,” she said, as she followed Sarah’s fast walk.

“Sarah,” she replied, although now wasn’t the best time for introductions.

“Harry,” she called, once they were there. “Here’s your doctor.” She decided not to mention the final year medical student bit.

Sarah didn’t have a chance to introduce her, though, because as soon as Harry stood back up the woman dropped to her knees, pulling out a pen light and looking into one of the patients’ eyes.

“Um,” Harry said.

Sarah bit back a smile. “We’re in the future, remember?” she whispered, wondering if he was complaining about Catherine’s technique and hoping it wasn’t about her gender because otherwise he’d have Sarah to answer to.

Harry sighed. “All right. What do you need?”

“Phosphoric acid,” Sarah said, triumphantly.

“Why on earth didn’t you say before?”

She gave him a look because she couldn’t see any way she was in the wrong here. “Where are we going to get that from on a ferry?”

“It’s in soft drinks.”

Sarah’s mouth fell open. Then she realised Harry had already run off, probably towards the bar. She hadn’t known that, but she wondered if the Doctor did and had assumed she had too. Or just hoped she’d magic a source of it out of thin air. Now she came to think of it, she’d seen a variety of drinks in the TARDIS kitchen, but it was hard to think clearly when your best friend looked as if he was about to be eaten.

Fortunately, there was no one behind the bar to explain themselves to. The crew probably had more important things to do than serve drinks and no one was asking for any. Harry was already pulling cans out of one of the fridges and he passed her a load, saying, “Here.” They were cold and slippery, but she had them up to her chin before he gathered some in his arms, emptying the small fridge.

It was difficult to run with their loads, so a few cans escaped from each of them and Sarah nearly tripped over Harry’s spills. They got confused looks from everyone they passed, which helped when Harry shouted for them to open the door. Although they’d probably have done it anyway – it wasn’t a tone of voice she’d heard on Harry before and she almost itched to follow his orders too.

Once they made it back onto the deck, the Doctor wasn’t where Sarah had left him. She could only think the worst when she saw the ripped railing where he had been standing. “Oh, no!” She nearly dropped her armful of cans. “The Doctor was standing right there.” She stared at the spot where he had been.

“I’m sure he’s fine. He always is.”

Sarah swallowed and nodded, but she was less sure about that than Harry sounded.

“First we need to deal with the creature. Then we can worry about the Doctor.”

Knowing he was right, Sarah pulled herself together. The goose barnacle wasn’t hard to track, given the trail of destruction it had left in its wake. Along with the sea water, which was definitely brown. It had gone across the deck, going higher all the time, which didn’t make sense to Sarah, but at least it meant the people she’d left were still safe, at least for now.

“Sarah! Harry!” They looked up to find the Doctor perched on the top of the driver’s cabin. It probably wasn’t called that, Sarah thought, but she’d never really needed to look at a ferry this closely before. The goose barnacle wasn’t far below him and a few of the tentacles nearly made contact with the end of his scarf.

“Doctor,” Harry called back. “Do you need any of these?”

“Yes, please, Harry.”

He must have been worried, Sarah thought, given that his answer to such an obvious question hadn’t been sarcastic at all. Harry dropped most of his armful of cans, but when he threw a couple to the Doctor he did at least have perfect aim, so Sarah wasn’t going to fault him for the cans rolling around their feet.

The Doctor opened one of the cans and threw one onto the goose barnacle. It immediately writhed and let go of the wall with most of its tentacles. The second can made it fall to the deck with a squelch. It wasn’t dead, though, because it still slithered and Sarah took an involuntary step backwards when it headed towards her. Harry plucked a can from her arms, opened it and threw it at the goose barnacle. She took a deep breath and held her ground. Although that turned out to be difficult once a couple more cans hit it and it waved its tentacles even more. The ferry tilted further and Sarah fell over with an “Oof,” and dropped the rest of her cans as she put her hands out to break her fall.

From here, however, she could easily pick up the cans rolling around. Harry had managed to keep his feet, so she kept passing him cans and he kept throwing them like a production line. Behind the goose barnacle she could see the Doctor making his way down from his perch, but the creature was between them and he had no cans.

The writhing gradually slowed down and stopped, then the goose barnacle started frothing. Sarah, worried that it might explode, quickly got up, but the Doctor seemed unconcerned and inspected it.

“Don’t get too close, Doctor,” Harry warned him. He seemed just as happy as Sarah to keep his distance.

“Oh, it’s perfectly safe. Just a common or garden goose barnacle, mutated by the pollution in the sea.”

Sarah frowned. She’d heard of mutations caused by radiation and such like, but turning a harmless creature into a cold-blooded monster sounded more like something that belonged in a book like Frankenstein. “There’s not that much, surely?”

“We’re in the future, Sarah, remember?” he called back.

She had remembered, especially given that the sea wasn’t a normal colour, as much as its proximity made Harry happy. She worried a little about what had been going on in the world and said nothing.

“How about a drink?” The Doctor grinned at them.

“Shouldn’t we do something about the goose barnacle?” Sarah pointed to it.

The Doctor shook his head. “Nothing we can do until we reach land.”

“And how long’s that?”

It was Harry who answered. “I don’t think it’ll be very long at all.”

Sarah turned to see where he was looking and saw the coast of France. Or was it England? It all looked the same from this distance.

“Right, then, Harry, off you go.”

Harry frowned at the Doctor. “Where?”

“Well, to drive the boat, of course,” he said, as if everyone should automatically know what he was talking about, which was quite often untrue.

He shook his head. “I don’t know how to steer a ferry. Why can’t the captain do it?”

“He’s dead. The goose barnacle ate him.”

Sarah bit her lip wondering how close the Doctor had come to being eaten and just how many other people had been.

“And you’re a sailor, aren’t you?” the Doctor continued.

“Yes, but I’m a doctor, not a ferry captain. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Neither do I. So perhaps we’ll just crash instead.” The Doctor grinned.

Harry sighed.

“Maybe you should have a look and see if there’s anything you can do,” Sarah suggested, trying to appease both of them since they did need someone to drive and the Doctor seemed unlikely to back down.

“All right,” Harry said. He didn’t sound happy about it, but he headed up there anyway.

“Right, well, let’s go and have that drink, shall we?” The Doctor smiled at Sarah.

“Actually, I think I might see if I can help Harry,” she said apologetically. She was feeling a bit guilty about leaving him alone up there if he really didn’t know what to do. To say nothing of how she’d treated him the whole time since they landed here.

The Doctor gave her a look and then shrugged. “Off you go then.”

She did, and when she got up into the cabin she found Harry frowning at the controls. There were so many buttons and switches and dials and read-outs that she wasn’t surprised.

“Any ideas?” she asked him.

“Just one. I don’t dare touch any of these in case it doesn’t do what I think it will. But the radio I can operate.” He smiled at her and reached for the radio. The conversation that followed involved a lot of jargon and an explanation of what had happened that the person on the other end couldn’t make sense of, which didn’t surprise Sarah. If she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes she might not have believed it. At last Harry signed off and smiled at her again.

“So what’s happening?” It had almost been like they’d been speaking a different language and she hadn’t been able to make head or tail of most of the conversation.

“They’re sending a pilot out to guide the ferry into port.”

“Oh, that’s clever.” Sarah did feel much better that someone who knew what they were doing would be in charge of not crashing into the coast.

He looked a little hurt. “Try not to sound too surprised.”

“Sorry.” For all she knew Harry would be a perfectly good driver, she just wouldn’t want to bet her life on it.

“He knows how to operate the controls and where to go. Which is a lot more than I know,” he pointed out.

“The Doctor wouldn’t have thought of that,” she said, trying to atone for her earlier reaction. “He’d have just touched everything and ended up getting us into trouble. Again.”

Harry smiled. “He does have a tendency to do that.”

Sarah smiled back. “And then blame us.” The coastline loomed nearer and Sarah tried not to show Harry how worried she was about that. Presumably the pilot would show up in time, but there was no way to guarantee that. What if Harry had called him too late?

She clearly hadn’t been doing well at hiding her feelings, or else Harry was thinking the same thing, because he pointed at a small boat coming towards them. “There’s the pilot.”

“Oh, good,” she breathed. And then realised how that sounded. “I wasn’t worried.”

“No, of course not,” he said in mock agreement.

She punched him in the arm. He pretended it had hurt.

The pilot, when he arrived, spoke French very fast, which neither Sarah nor Harry understood. But it did at least tell Sarah roughly where they were. In the grand scheme of the things, the French coastline on Earth was really quite specific.

Fortunately, the pilot didn’t seem to care that neither of them answered him and went about doing his job, guiding the ferry into port. Sarah wondered if they should leave him to it, but Harry made no move to go – he was too busy watching the pilot work – and as much as she worried what the Doctor was doing she knew he wouldn’t leave without them, so she didn’t leave Harry, in a show of support. Especially as she’d been particularly unsupportive up until now.

When they arrived, the pilot told them something in French that Sarah didn’t have a hope of catching, then left.

“I did French at school,” Sarah said, “but all I can tell you about what he said was that it was French. Probably.”

“School was a long time ago,” Harry agreed.

“We might not know the language but I think we’ve earned ourselves a trip to France. What do you think?” Sarah smiled, hoping he’d agree. It would be nice to do something pleasant and non-life threatening while they were here. Besides, it had been a while since she’d last been to France.

“I think you might be right, old girl.”

“Don’t call me old girl.”

Even so, she was happy enough to follow all the other people leaving the ferry for the terminal and dry land at last. Even if the ferry had evened out at the end she was glad to be on solid ground that wouldn’t move beneath her feet. Everyone was chattering about what had happened, although none of them really knew. Sarah took Harry’s arm and grinned up at him. Harry grinned back, both of them sharing the secret now they were safe and it was all over.

Their grins disappeared quickly, though, when they reached the front of the queue and a man at a desk who asked for their passports. Harry looked at Sarah in horror, but she couldn’t think of anything. There wasn’t going to be a good excuse for being on a ferry where people had been injured and died and not having a passport. As much as she wanted to see some of France, she’d much rather it wasn’t from a jail cell.

At their hesitation the man at passport control sat up straighter and said something into a walkie-talkie. Sarah turned round, wondering if they’d be able to make a run for it, back to the ferry, but the gates were shut. She was starting to feel slightly panicky when she heard the welcome noise of the TARDIS landing.

The Doctor popped his head out of the door and said, “Would anyone like a lift?” with a big grin on his face.

“Doctor!” Relieved, Sarah ran over to him, Harry right behind her. “Where have you been?”

“Oh, just had a mutated Lepas anatifera to deal with. You know how it is.”

“Oh, I do,” she agreed and they stepped inside to welcome safety, free from the wrath of the French border officials.

Note: Goose barnacles eat plankton and attach themselves to ships in the ocean. Not normally found around England or France, but one washed up recently on a beach in Wales.

Fandom: Doctor Who | Type: Character: Fourth Doctor, Character: Harry Sullivan, Character: Sarah Jane Smith, Length: Short story, Type: Gen, Written for: Sarah & Harry ficathon | Link

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