Trisk leaned back against the wall.  The airlock door between the auxiliary cargo bays and the main access tunnels was sealed.   She had watched as Yordin sealed the door with an ion binder and liquid titanium.  They had taken the children down four levels and over two miles of corridors and catwalks.   This portion of the station, and the project if the complete truth were to be told, had not been touched or inhabited since it had come online five years previously.  There just had not been enough money to bring all of it online.  The only sections where people existed were the personnel, communications, security, main docking, main cargo and the bridge.  But here…here…

In the bowels.

They were hundreds of yards, and several levels away from the rest of the station.  There had been enough room here for them to sneak on board.  This was their destiny.  This was their cause.   This had to occur had to happen.  Further in the room several of the children were whimpering. 

Children.

That was their mission…this Genesis Project.  The first mission by the united Terran government to conquer the skies.  To conquer the heavens.  To conquer space.

If children could be conceived and born in zero gravity and be raised without injury, without imperfections and the very solar system, the very heavens could be conquered.  There would be no need for Earth any longer.  Whole generations would know nothing of their home planet. 

She had heard this since a child.  But her heart had heard otherwise.

To conceive, to grow, to bear and to mature in space, in the heavens would bring humans that much closer to God.  It would make humans non-reliant on the home of the Garden: the original garden.  Humans would fall away from God.

It had been foreseen.  She had felt this, known this.  And joined the Great Plan…the Light of the Eternal Church.  The Genesis Project aimed to throw humans away from God and the Great Plan would eradicate the Project and save mankind.  After all, how close could humans evolve to God…how arrogant could a species become before God would smite it down?

So she had joined and six years later had ended up here.  Part of the Blessed Twenty, she stood here next to the chattel and was awarded the chance of becoming humanity's savior.

They needed to only create a special place to enact the situation that was needed for the eradication of the problem…it was only a matter of time, she thought.

**

"Well this is a fine kettle of fish," the Doctor said, slapping his hands against the cool metal of the door.  He bit his lip and slid his hands in his pockets and turned to face the other Doctor.  The older looking man had his hands folded over his chest and he was leaning back against the wall.  Turlough was seated similarly against the opposite wall on a similar cot.  Tegan was standing near the front of the room with the Doctor, her Doctor as she called him, with her arms crossed over her chest. 

"Can't you do anything?" she demanded quietly.  When she didn't receive an answer immediately, she leaned a little more toward him.  "Well?"

"Not without a sonic screwdriver…"

"…and an ion bonder," the eighth Doctor answered, lifting his chin.  "I have the sonic screwdriver, but I know you don't have the ionic bonder."

"And you are correct," the fifth Doctor muttered and turned back toward the eighth Doctor with a wry smile.  "You know, I have always hated meeting future selves, they always know a little more about me than I feel comfortable with.  By the way, which regeneration are you?"

"Seventh."

"Good grief…eight?"

"Well," the eighth Doctor leaned forward, his brown curly hair falling into his eyes.  "If we had listened a little closer to Borusa, you would realize that there is always and will always and…" he sighed.  "…was always 13 of us.  To say that I am the last to our knowledge at this time would be to deny the…"

"Interrelationship of time…yes yes…" the fifth Doctor waved a single hand in the air.  "But all that doesn't answer why you are here…"

"Yes…" the eighth Doctor answered, shaking his head.  "And right at this moment, I can't tell you."

Tegan started at the wording.  "Can't…or won't."

"Can't, Tegan," the Eighth Doctor answered, his voice low and barely audible. 

"He knows no more than us, Tegan," the fifth Doctor said, walking to the cot and moving Turlough's legs out of the way to sit down.  "Interlacing of time streams…he won't know any more than us if he has just happened here."

"Gallifreyan mumbo-gumbo," Tegan groused, sitting down with a flop next to the Eighth Doctor.   He looked sideways at her and smiled slightly.  "What?"

"You are the same way I remember you," he said quietly.  "Give or take a laugh line or two around the eyes."

Tegan opened her mouth, but decided against the urge to ask a question.   "Never mind.  But I do need to ask one thing.  If the end of the universe always follows around him," she began pointing at the fifth Doctor, "what do you suppose awaits us with two of you around?"

"Death and doom."  Turlough offered.

"Yes…" the fifth Doctor drew out.  "Turlough.  That's enough.   We should put our energy to figuring out what is going on outside."

The eighth Doctor elbowed Tegan lightly and commented:  "I always was a tad bit tetchy wasn't I ..as him, I mean."   As Tegan gave a small smile, and the fifth Doctor showed his exasperation with a sigh, he continued:  "What is happening out there, old chap, is that several people's children have been absconded with and there is mass hysteria occurring…quite understandably.  I would react the same way."

"Would you?" the fifth Doctor asked and then unfolded his arms.  "Interesting.   I suppose they have already assumed that you are responsible.  It would be the usual for us.   And where exactly is here."

"Galactic Coordinates 56.902by 78 by 9-"

"87…yes yes…"

"Commonly known as the Genesis Project," the eighth Doctor answered.

"Of course…" the fifth Doctor spun around, pinching the bridge of his nose.  "I've been silly."

Tegan rolled her eyes.  "Silly about what, Doctor?  And what is the Genesis Project?"

"A project from early twenty second century Earth…a project to test child conceiving, bearing and rearing in space.  It is the way that your people were finally able to make the final jump to interstellar/generational travel," the fifth Doctor answered.

"They named it right," Tegan answered.

With a grunt, Turlough rose and adjusted his school uniform.  "Interesting.  To have reached as far as Terran have by the 22^th century, they would have a learning curve close to exponential."

"Exponential exactly," the eighth Doctor agreed with a nod.  "Very good, Turlough."

The fifth Doctor rocked forward on his toes and nodded toward his older self. "I don't recall any mention of mass kidnapping or a wrench in the works of the Genesis Project.  It was pronounced a success."

"Again, correct," the eighth Doctor answered. 

"So…we have missing children, hysterical parents and another force that is working against the children, the parents and/or the project," the fifth Doctor answered, nodded, but the rest of their conversation was cut off as the door slid open to admit the Captain.

**

Georgie Trenton shook her head for the fifth time and nearly shouted at her husband.  Her blond hair was out of its usual knot, wild and her blue eyes were tearing.  It was more in frustration than in anger or sadness.  "Captain Ternell…I'm telling you for the umpteenth time…this man was not involved.  The men and women who were in the corridor wore black clothes…completely.  Even their face masks were black, frosted.  They were military.  This man was not…"

Trenton reached in to comfort his wife and to try and pull her out.

"Stop it, George, leave me be.  I'm telling you, Captain…this was not the man.  And don't tell me that I don't know military; I married one.  I had heard voices in the hallway and I looked out thinking I could tell which way they went…they didn't hit me that hard.  I saw this man crumpling to the floor.  The others fled.  He was not one of them."

"Fine, fine, Mrs. Trenton, and the others?  These three?"

She lifted her chin defiantly.  "No.  No.  They are not part of the group that took the children."

The eighth Doctor smiled, winked and agreed.  "As I told you, I am not one of the 'bad guys' here, as you American's so glibly put it."

Sarah Markham was loud, however, as she put in her voice.  The rest of the guards, as their own children had been kidnapped, were unwilling and unable to keep the other wives out.  "But if they didn't do it, who did?  We have had no dockings, no words, no boardings in a month.  Is there someone out there who we don't know about?  And how did these people get on board?"

"Ah…" the fifth Doctor answered from where he was tied to a chair.   "..with that question, I might be of some assistance.  You see we travel in a rather unconventional way…"

Smith turned and clipped the fifth Doctor on his shoulder.  "We didn't ask you anything yet.  You'll get your chance."

Tegan flinched with the hit and shouted out a:  "No."

"I'm okay, Tegan."

"Touching, very touching…now…if you showed the same feeling…"

"Look…we don't know where your children are," Tegan leaned as forward in the chair as her binds allowed.  "If we did, we would tell you."

"Quiet."

"All this arguing, aside from giving me a headache, is not getting us anywhere.  The longer we converse, the longer time it will take for us to find the children," the Eighth Doctor said, flipping his curls back out of his eyes.  "Your lovely wife has said that I am not one of the wrong crowd, untie me and we'll get down to work on what is truly important here."

The fifth Doctor nodded, wincing with his shoulders.  "Untie us and we can clarify most of the issues…how we came aboard, what we are doing here and maybe we can help you find out where your children are."

"Maybe?" the Eighth Doctor asked, glancing over his shoulders.   "Really."

"We will," the Fifth Doctor answered, decidedly.   His blue eyes widened and he said the rest with a little breathless quality that betrayed a level of earnestness.  Tegan recognized that look.  She had received it often enough when he had failed to return her to Heathrow her first year with him.  It made her forgive him, she wondered if it would work on them. "Untie us."

The Captain looked down at the man he had clipped on the shoulder and at his accomplice in the other chair.  These two seemed strange enough that it seemed that they might actually be telling the truth.  He had a witness that said that they were not involved.  However…

"The question still remains about how you came onboard, you are still stowaways and/or terrorists in your own right.  I'll release you.  However, you will be under constant watch.  I don't trust anyone until I am given reason to.  You will show us your method of transports.  And then, you will help us find the children.  Are there any questions?"

"One, sir…Captain is it?"  the fifth Doctor asked, tilting his head back to train his eyes on the solider.  "If we fail at any point in the process?"

"Doctor…" Turlough hissed.

"Well…it's always nice to know the alternative."

"The alternative, sir…is that you will be shot and spaced."  With a waved arm, the ropes fell away.