"Still in the Vortex," the Doctor repeated under his breath. "We're still in the Vortex. Oh! Oh, of course!" He whipped out the sonic screwdriver. He'd scanned the console room but not the rest of the TARDIS. "If this is just a simple planal distortion, there has to be a weak spot!" he exclaimed.

He retraced his earlier progress through the ship, carefully scanning every corner of the TARDIS. The weak spot could be anywhere, but it was more likely to be somewhere a lot of activity was concentrated.

After nearly an hour of scanning, he found himself in the bedroom, standing on the bed. There. Right above the bed was the weak spot in the planal field. Very carefully, he hooked the sonic screwdriver into the hole and yanked.

**

Scowling, Jack hurled Rose's cell phone onto the bed and sat down. No signal. To his knowledge, they'd never gone anywhere where Rose hadn't been able to get a signal on her phone.

He kicked off his boots and lay down. According to the TARDIS, it was still in the Time Vortex. His vortex manipulator confirmed this. So either something was interfering with their instruments or the TARDIS was still in the Vortex–and the cornfield wasn't. That was a theory he'd have to test. In a bit. He hadn't yet worked up the courage to step outside the TARDIS; he didn't know how to use the ship's scanners to tell if it was safe outside.

He felt his eyes drooping. Maybe this was all a dream. Yes, that was it. It had all been a dream and he'd wake up in the console room with the Doctor… pull him out from under the console and snog him silly, make a nice surprise for Rose when she got out of her shower…

Jack felt his eyelids flutter. He knew he should investigate the field outside the TARDIS, but he had to admit he was liking this fantasy. It was vivid, too. He could practically feel the Doctor on top of him…

Jack's eyes snapped open.

"Hello!" said the Doctor brightly. "Did you miss me?"

The Doctor had come out of thin air and was sprawled on top of Jack, grinning triumphantly.

"Where did you come from?" asked Jack, sitting up and shoving the Doctor off him.

"Oh, that's a nice welcome," the Doctor muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. "I climb through two planes of existence to find you and this is the thanks I get."

Jack grinned. "How's this?" He yanked the Doctor to him and kissed him deeply.

"Well, now that's more like it," said the Doctor, looping his arms around Jack's neck and kissing him back. "That's exhausting work, tearing holes in the fabric of the universe. Where's Rose? Did she notice I was gone? Did you have any strange console readings?" He disentangled himself from Jack's embrace and rolled off the bed.

Jack stared at him, open-mouthed.

The Doctor turned. "What?"

"She's not here," said Jack quietly. "Rose. She's gone, too."

The Doctor's face fell. He closed his eyes. "No," he said. "No. That's not possible. We're still in the Vortex."

"I know," said Jack, standing up and putting his boots back on. "I looked. She's not here."

"But where can she have gone?" The Doctor looked at him, eyes wide. "It was just a planal distortion… two separate planes of existence in the TARDIS. I was separated from the two of you."

Jack crossed to the Doctor and placed his hands on his shoulders. "She's not here," he repeated. "But we'll find her. Maybe the distortion extended to three planes. How did you find me?"

The Doctor frowned. "I scanned the entire TARDIS! There was only one hole in the distortion. It was here and it brought me to you."

"Then maybe it's not in the TARDIS." Jack grabbed his overcoat from the hook by the door and shrugged it on. "Maybe it's out in the cornfield." He headed for the door.

"Cornfield?" The Doctor blinked. "You've got a cornfield? I had a house!"

**

Wherever it was, Dårlig Ulv Stranden didn't seem to attract a lot of visitors. Rose had been walking for what felt like miles, but she hadn't seen a single other living thing, not even a fly or a bird.

Part of her worried about straying too far from the TARDIS, but she knew she was just as helpless there as she was out on the beach. She did get a bit nervous when it started to get dark, especially since there didn't seem to be any buildings she could take shelter in, but at least there wasn't anything that could harm her, if she was the only living soul for miles.

Dusk fell around three o'clock, according to the time on her mobile, though she could never tell if that was accurate to where they landed. She was beginning to give up, and considered trying to make it back to the TARDIS before full night fell when she saw shapes in the distance. She squinted into the dim light, trying to make them out. She couldn't tell whether they were signs of life, or simply rocks, but she headed toward them anyway.

It took another twenty minutes of walking and by the time she got closer, complete darkness had fallen. And there were lights. Rose began to run. Lights meant people. Maybe not Earth people, but she had reached the point where she wasn't very picky. Anything she could talk to would do.

As she got closer, she could see that the lights were of a campfire. She could smell food, something like baked beans, which was definitely an indication that she was dealing with humans. The Doctor had said before that no other race in the universe would subject themselves to baked beans.

She approached the camp cautiously, not wanting to startle whoever occupied it.

"Hello," she called softly. "Is anybody there?" Suddenly, she felt something metal press against the back of her head.

"No sudden movements," said a man's voice in her ear. "Just get down, nice and slow."

**

The Doctor's house appeared to have followed him into Jack's plane of existence.

"Or they've just collapsed on each other," the Doctor mused as they stepped out of the TARDIS. "If we've crossed into a distortion field, the walls between the realities should be very fragile. See, look, it's just as I left it." He indicated the newspaper he'd tossed onto the table after checking the date. Jack picked it up.

"1930," he said, beginning to flip through it. "I've never been. Nothing significant in the news. Advertisements. Crossword puzzle."

The Doctor began scanning the room with the sonic screwdriver, hoping to find another snag in reality that could reunite them with Rose.

"Nice room," Jack continued. "Ugly painting, though." He pointed.

The Doctor laughed. "Oh, you don't like abstract art?"

Jack leaned in closer. "You know, I can never tell what these are supposed to be. I always think it looks like something else. I mean, if I didn't know any better, I'd say it kind of looks like us."

"Like us?" The Doctor was moving into the hall, still scanning.

"Yeah. Like us, only boxier. I mean, there's the TARDIS. And there's you and there's me."

The Doctor flicked his gaze to the painting. Sure, there was a big blue box and it might have had squares that looked like windows, and there was a blue blob but it wasn't Jack–his coat had buttons, and the blob… well, it did have little dots. He shook his head. "Oh, just do your crossword. I'm going upstairs."

He'd gotten halfway up the stairs when Jack came into the foyer. "Doctor," he said in a shaky voice. "You better come see this."

"What, the crossword?" The Doctor pulled his glasses out of his pocket and slipped them on, leaping down the stairs. "What's wrong with it? Are you stuck?"

Jack just pointed.

"Twenty-four across?" The Doctor took the newspaper from him. "Blank-of-all-trades? Well, that's jack, Jack. What's wrong? It's a common expression."

"Look at the C in jack."

"The C? Nineteen down… healer." The Doctor paused. "Why, that's… That's just a coincidence, I mean." He took Jack's pen from him and scribbled DOTOR around the C Jack had filled in.

"And the R in doctor."

"The R…" The Doctor froze. The clue for twenty-eight across was thorny flower.

**

"Rose. It's Rose." Rose dropped to her knees on the sand. "Rose Tyler. I don't know how I got here. I'm lost. I don't know where I am or where my friends are. They just disappeared." She blinked back tears.

The man stepped back and Rose got a good look at him. He was tall and good-looking, with blond hair and blue eyes, though her attention was more drawn to the large gun he was holding. It looked like a toy to Rose, but she didn't doubt that it was genuine, considering she had no way of knowing that she wasn't on some alien planet a million years in the future.

"I figured that," he said, holstering his gun. Rose couldn't place his accent–it almost sounded Australian. "I'm stuck here–this definitely isn't where I'd planned to jump to, but it's no ordinary planal distortion either."

"Yeah," said Rose thoughtfully. "It definitely isn't."

The man held out his wrist, upon which he wore a thing that looked just like Jack's, and began punching buttons. "Coordinates still at triple zero. I thought it was a malfunction at first, but if you're here, it's got to be something else." He looked her up and down. "What kind of ship did you have?"

Rose opened her mouth and then closed it again. "It's just a ship," she said finally, unsure of how much she wanted to divulge to this stranger. "I don't really know much about it, I'm just… traveling with some mates. My friends, they're the ones who know how it all works."

He nodded. "Forgive me, I'm being rude." He thrust out his hand. "Lieutenant Robert Valeri. Rest assured, miss, you're in good hands. As a galactic civilian, you can now consider yourself officially under Time Agency protection."

**

The Doctor stood in the master bedroom, gazing out at the lawn, bathed in the light of the full moon. He could tell Jack was asleep downstairs; he could hear that his breathing had settled. Before him on the window seat lay the completed crossword puzzle. At first, he had thought the intersection of the clues doctor, jack and rose was just a coincidence, and in fact, many of the words on the puzzle had been meaningless to him (noble, for one, and drums) but the answer to little pig's nemesis had convinced him otherwise.

He sighed and rumpled his hair. It was becoming clear that this wasn't a simple planal distortion. The TARDIS hadn't run into a distortion field, as he'd first thought. Something larger was at work here, and he had no idea what it could be. He had scanned every inch of the house and had found no weak spot.

Rose. They had to find Rose. They had nearly lost her once, had lost her, until their brilliant, brilliant Rose had come back to save them. He closed his eyes. They couldn't let her down again. He turned and headed for the stairs. He'd get some supplies from the TARDIS. In the morning, they'd set out, they could use the car, and they would find the weak spot and get back to her.

He headed down the stairs. He didn't want to wake Jack, but he could work quietly. The Doctor's eyes adjusted to the dim light of the sitting room. There was Jack, sprawled on the couch, and the fireplace against the opposite wall. Suddenly he froze.

"Jack!" he shouted. "The TARDIS!"

Jack started and fell off the couch. "What?" he asked. "Oh no." He swore.

The TARDIS was gone.

**

Rose stared at the stranger, open-mouthed.

"What?" Robert asked.

She shook her head. "It's nothing. I was just... surprised."

He beamed, in a way that reminded her a bit of Jack. Maybe they taught that at the Time Agency, she mused. "No trouble," he said. "It's my duty to attend to citizens in need."

"So," she said slowly. "Where exactly are we?"

Robert sat back down in front of his campfire and picked up his pan of beans. Rose joined him. "According to my vortex manipulator, we're still in the Time Vortex." He paused. "However, we currently sit on a distorted copy of Dårlig Ulv Stranden. That's on Old Earth, in a country called Norway. Heard of it?"

Rose shook her head. "I mean, I've heard of Norway," she assured him.

"Geography buff." Robert tapped a few more buttons on his wrist strap. "It translates roughly as 'Bad Wolf Bay.'"

Rose gave an involuntary shudder. "Did you say 'bad wolf'?"

He nodded and extended his arm so she could see the readout. "Does that mean anything to you?" he asked.

Rose swallowed hard and nodded. "Yeah. It does." A thrill of hope washed through her. "It means a lot."