Halfway up a gentle slope, a koba poked around for food. It looked up, alarmed, as a wheezing, groaning sound filled the air, rising and falling. It got louder with every wave of noise, and before its eyes, a blue box with a flashing light on top shimmered into existence in the meadow. It became completely solid as the wheezing ground to a final thud.

The koba tilted its head, watching. Being a simple animal, it didn't worry about how impossible this was. It was just curious as to what would happen next.

One side of the box opened, and a creature stepped out.

The koba's eyes grew wide, and its head tilted back the other way. Friend or foe? it thought. It might have food, it thought. It might want me for food, it thought.

The Doctor spotted the koba, and smiled. "Oh, how do you do?" He reached up to doff his hat and found he wasn't wearing one.

His hat. Yes, of course. That was how his seventh self had greeted everyone. But he wasn't wearing a hat, and had no intention of doing so. He shook his head. Personalities were still switching places inside him. He would get over it.

"Well, little friend," he continued softly, locking the TARDIS door. "Are you intelligent? My instinct says you're not, simply by the size of your cranium and the fact that you seem to be feeding like an animal rather than most intelligent species. However, I have been wrong before, so allow me to introduce myself. I'm the Doctor." He smiled.

The koba stared back, fascinated.

"Ah. Well, I seem to be right on target this time. Which is good. Solitude is really what I wanted, after all." His gaze ran over the hills around him, and the large, thin, circular clouds which stretched on over the horizon, like pancakes flipped from a spatula onto some impossibly huge blue ceiling. He took a deep breath. "Ah, wonderful! Open sky, open land, good gravity, good air!" He patted the TARDIS. "That's my girl. Just what the Doctor ordered!"

The TARDIS ignored the pun, waiting dutifully.

The Doctor could tell his ship was ignoring the jest. He had a rapport with his time machine, and owed his life to her several times over. In his hearts, he told her to rest easy. He turned and walked up the hillside.

The koba made a little purr of interest and ran after him.

"Excellent!" the Doctor cried when he reached the top. Down the opposite slope was a stream, about 30 feet wide, with trees lining both sides of it. Shielding his eyes from the sun, he turned in all directions. No people, very few animals, or even signs of animals. A mountain range rose behind him, spanning the horizon, curving a little bit westward far to the north.

Glancing around for the creature he'd met, he found it at his feet imitating him, with its hand over its eyes, surveying the land.

He laughed, and the koba put down its hand, looked up, and laughed also. It had already decided upon friend – there was something about the stranger's eyes which said that right away – and was having no difficulty at all making the jump from there to maybe it will feed me.

"Come on, little one," the Doctor said, and made his way to the water. After a few minutes he found an exposed tree root at the water's edge which was sturdy enough to sit on, and positioned just well enough to lean back against the tree trunk. He took off his shoes and socks and soaked his feet in the cool water, feeling it rush past and tickle him. He hoped vaguely that no killer fish, plants, algae, trees, grass, or cute little killer creatures were nearby.

He closed his eyes. He felt the tree at his back, felt the sunlight sparkling through the shade, saw it dance redly through his eyelids, felt the wind when it blew, felt the stillness of everything when it didn't, like a whole continent asleep on a lazy afternoon.

He felt the world.

Slowly, his heart rate dropped. The sunlight on his eyelids faded away, and his body went into a deep rhythm, starting with the brain waves, cycling in time to his double heartbeat, even taking into account the water running past and over his feet, into the future.

The koba watched the Doctor slip into a deep, recuperative coma. After a while, it became obvious the stranger was not going to give it any food. It started nosing for insects in the mud.

There was a familiar rustle, and the koba looked up at a Terrian on the opposite bank. It was quickly joined by two more, popping straight out of the ground.

The Terrians stood, observing the stranger, their heads slowly tilting from side to side. One of them made a light, musical noise, like a soft howl, not loud enough to disturb him. Then they trilled and gurgled to each other. But what they decided, the koba did not know.

As one, they dropped back into the earth.

And something nudged the Doctor awake.

He couldn't tell what it was. He wanted to wave the person away. Couldn't whoever it was see he was meditating?

But it was important. Life-threatening, even. Threatening to the world. Threatening to everyone, to the tree he was sitting on, and to his newfound little friend. He must get up. He was in danger, too.

The Doctor's eyes drifted open. He reluctantly pulled himself out of the trance and wearily rubbed his face. He wasn't finished. He started to tell whomever had woken him this when he gradually realized no one was there.

The koba was a few feet away, looking expectantly, almost as if it was waiting for him to do something so it could follow.

The Doctor groggily reached out a hand, as if to ask the koba if it had woken him, but he knew it hadn't been the animal. No, some intelligence – some vast intelligence, with a healthy dose of wisdom on the side – had just contacted him mentally. It hadn't exactly been asking for help, yet it was trying to warn him of immense danger.

The Doctor started to get up when a whining, buzzing sound rapidly filled his ears, and with a sharp crack, a bullet hit the ground on the opposite side of the stream, ricocheting off into the hills beyond.

He blinked, and whipped his head around to see who had fired.

No one.

The koba was purring loudly in alarm, its eyes wide. The Doctor raised himself from the bank, cautiously peering around a tree. The koba did the same.

The Doctor tried to make note of any place a sniper could wait, hidden by the grass or by an outcropping of rock, but quickly realized that would take all day. He needed to try another approach.

So he asked himself, Why? Why would someone shoot at him? Why only one shot? Why from a distance, hiding? And why was it such a poor shot? Why-

Wait a minute, he thought. From a distance...perhaps the bullet came from a great distance, indeed.

It was possible an Earth settlement was relatively close, perhaps within ten or twenty miles, and an automated sentry had fired a long-range weapon upon detecting him. That might explain the poor marksmanship, and would certainly explain why no follow-up attack was happening. Or, it might have been a warning.

The Doctor thought for a moment. If a sniper was waiting nearby with his head in the crosshairs, he would have fired again by now. He quickly pulled his shoes and socks back on and ran back to the TARDIS. The koba followed. No one shot at him.

He entered, crossed the console room, and started digging madly through a closet, throwing out notebooks, diaries, an old bottle, a box of diamonds, fishing equipment, a picture of Romana (he glanced at it, stuffed it in his pocket), a cardboard box full of broken watches, a bag of marbles, a deck of cards (which he also pocketed), a kite, a winning lottery ticket from Angarius IV – ah, the electron magnet! He pulled out an electronic device which resembled a cross between an iron and a trowel, with two mesh straps looped to one side of it. He ran back outside.

While he was doing this, the koba had stood in the doorway, looking inside with wonder. The box was very small – it could have run around it in about three seconds – but inside, it was enormous! The koba thought it must have been a cave, but it didn't slope into the ground. Still, it didn't worry about it too much. It was just happy to see the friendly creature come back out.

The Doctor strode back to the top of the hill, examining the device as he went. "Let's see. I don't want to pull any metal from the ground, and I don't want to kill anything. How about a range of one-half kilometer, mass of five grams, power setting medium." He looked at the land beyond the stream. "And an extremely narrow height, but with a wide field, because it will be at ground level." He pulled out his sonic screwdriver, a small cylinder about six inches long. It trilled briefly, and the machine was calibrated the way he needed it.

"There. That should do it." He pocketed the sonic screwdriver, put his arm through the straps, and held the electron magnet out in front of him, with the flat side facing away. He braced one leg behind him, took aim, and pressed a button.

For a second, nothing happened. Then, from beyond the stream, several objects flew right at him with amazing speed and rattle-slammed into the plate, shoving him back with a grunt. He turned it off, and nine items fell to the ground – eight small stones with a slightly metallic content, and one bullet.

He picked it up, his face hardening. The bullet was still warm, and he could see the scratches from the gun from which it had been fired, and from its impact with the ground. But what really bothered him were two things. The first was that it was an incredibly sturdy bullet, having survived its colossal impact with the rocky bank completely intact. The second was that it was moving.

He pursed his lips, feeling his insides clutching up. This did not bode well at all. He'd never seen its like before, but it didn't take much to realize that this bullet was no ordinary piece of weaponry, certainly nothing a colonist, or even a hunter, would ever use. It had nothing to do with defense, or survival. It was downright cold-blooded and malicious.

He looked back over the stream, where the sun was turning the sky the first shades of orange. Rays of light beamed down from behind a cloud, and some of the waving fields on the hillsides seemed to be glowing. He looked in the other direction, where a beautiful double-moon was rising over the mountains, large enough that he felt he could reach up and touch them, each tinged with red from the sun. A star or two had begun to appear in the sky behind them. The sweet fragrance of some alien flower was borne on the cool breeze, blowing over the land.

He shook his head. This was no place for a bullet such as this.

No place at all.

He looked at the koba, which was eyeing him with interest. "Well, my little friend. Something is definitely wrong here."

His only reply was an inquisitive purr.

Then the Doctor saw it. He hadn't noticed before while running back and forth, but about a mile to the south was a small caravan. He pulled a telescope out of his inside coat pocket and peered through it. He saw two vehicles and a handful of people, some of whom carried large guns.

But something made him doubt they were the ones who had fired. They just weren't acting like it. Even after so many centuries, he was willing to admit he had trouble reading humans – and these were definitely humans, probably a new colony from Earth. But the way they casually strolled along suggested no tension. As he watched, they joined a third vehicle by the stream and began to set up camp.

He closed the telescope and looked at them thoughtfully. They would be suspicious at first of a stranger out of nowhere, but that couldn't be helped. One had to say Hello the first time somehow.

He looked at the koba. "Would you like to come along? They might not be so nervous if I have a native of the planet accompanying me. I'm sure none of your kind have ever given them any trouble, eh?"

The koba just grinned, and set off after the strange creature from the blue cave.