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It was Maria who decided that the sound had to be a spaceship landing.
"And it sounds like it's having engine problems. Let's go and see if we can help."
"Shouldn't we get mum first?"
"Naw, we can solve this one ourselves." Clyde slapped Luke on the back, causing the other boy to look at him thoughtfully, even though he said nothing. "Besides didn't she say she had to finish that article she was working on? Don't worry. If it looks like there will be trouble, we can fetch Sarah Jane."
Luke nodded, reassured for the moment. "I think it came from this direction." He led them down a shady street, totally oblivious to the blue box on the corner that hadn't been there a moment ago.
###
The Doctor emerged from the TARDIS shortly after the three teenagers had disappeared round a corner.
"I think this is the place."
"It looks like Earth. Again." Donna glared.
The Doctor ignored the glare. "It is Earth. Twenty-first century even. It will just be a moment whilst I find the part I need...."
"And they're going to have parts for a di-whos-a-whatsie on twenty-first century Earth? Are there TARDIS shops I've missed or something?" Donna didn't look forward to waiting for him whilst he rummaged in a shop.
He blinked at her. "Dichromatic cyclotron. I haven't a clue why there would be one here, but the TARDIS computer said that it was the closest place to find one." After a moment's consideration, he started striding off, only to bring himself up short after taking three steps and make a one-eighty turn and continue in the opposite direction.
"Meanwhile those huge lizard-elephant things are furious with us for breaking it." Donna scanned the streets as though she expected one to pop out at them at any minute. "Slow down, Martian Boy, not everyone has legs as long as yours."
The Doctor ignored her. "Bannerman Road." He read from a sign as he consulted the scanning gizmo he was holding. "I think we're getting close." He raised it as he walked down the street, moving it from right to left and then left to right. He paused in front of a driveway. "Number 13. I think this is the place."
"It looks perfectly ordinary to me." But then, so did the Doctor, and he wasn't at all. "Are we going to break in?"
"I think we'll try asking nicely first." He walked down the driveway admiring the style of the small green car, and pasting on a bright grin, he rapped briskly on the door.
###
"I wonder what happened to it?" They had been searching for about fifteen minutes and hadn't found anything.
"It was probably a lorry or something. Not everything is aliens, Maria."
Maria glared at Clyde, wondering why he was so determined to prove that there was to find a non-alien explanation for the sound.
Luke was ignoring the both of them, as they had been sniping at each other for at least ten minutes now. They had finally agreed to return to the place they had originally heard the noise and consider their options. Noticing something, he interrupted their sparring match to ask "What's a police box?"
"What?" both of the other two asked at once.
"A police box." He gestured at the blue box right in front of them and started to read the plaque on the front.
"Maybe it's something new they're trying." Maria picked up the phone. "No dial tone. I bet dad will know something about it. And there are tarts for tea."
"Why didn't you say so sooner?" Clyde immediately started walking towards Maria's house. "Tarts are much better than hunting aliens."
Maria wasn't sure she agreed, and Luke's mind was on the blue box which he was certain hadn't been there when they had walked to school earlier, but they followed along.
###
There was no answer to the Doctor's knock, so he tried again before pulling out his sonic screwdriver. "Now we break in."
"Are you sure this is the right place, Doctor?" Donna didn't want to deal with strange looks from the owners. "They must be here, their car is still in the driveway."
"Unless they walked somewhere, or got a lift or a bus. Don't worry about it." He took the stairs two or three at a time, occasionally glancing at the scanner.
Donna sighed and followed him up, wishing there was a lift.
When they reached the top floor he gently pushed open the door. He was greeted by a woman aiming what he suspected was a thirty-second century taslar rifle.
Donna started composing "I told you so" speeches in her head.
But to her surprise, the Doctor broke into a grin. "Sarah Jane Smith."
"Doctor." The voice held a combination of annoyance and wry acceptance. "You could have called first."
"I didn't know it would be you. Sarah, this is Donna Noble." He had a sudden memory of Sarah and Rose laughing at him, and had to hide a wince.
"Pleased to meet you." Donna meant it. Judging by the other woman's demeanour, Sarah had more than a passing familiarity with the Doctor's more exasperating qualities.
"Likewise." Sarah turned to the Doctor, who had started rummaging through her boxes of spare parts and alien tech. "And what do you think you're doing?"
"I broke this." He seemed a little sheepish as he took the weather regulator out of his pocket. "Burned it out saving the planet, actually, but the natives were furious. I need a dichromatic cyclotron to fix it." She was going to be stubborn about this, he could tell, so he quickly added, "Please. They're hot on our trail and they're capable of destroying the Earth to get to me."
Sarah sighed. "It's bad enough picking up after Torchwood Three, now I have to pick up after you, too."
The Doctor made puppy-dog eyes at her. "Saving the world. You're good at it."
"I know. Give it here. No, I'm not going to trust you to fix it. You'll probably have it singing "Hallelujah" and knitting scarves instead of doing what it's supposed to." She fished the dichromatic cyclotron out of a pile of odds and sods on the table and set to work with her sonic lipstick. It didn't take long to replace it. "There, good as new."
###
Alan discovered the three teenagers in the kitchen, drinking lemonade and eating tarts.
"I'm sure it was a spaceship." Maria and Clyde hadn't stopped arguing, and Luke was starting to get bored with them both.
"Probably just a lorry or something. I doubt spaceships would make such a grindy sound." Clyde reached over and took another tart.
"Oi! You've had three already." Maria glared at him. Two packages of tarts hadn't gone far with teenage boys for tea. She looked up to see her father framed in the doorway. "Dad, just the person we wanted to see."
"I find that very hard to believe." Alan reached over their heads and grabbed the last tart.
"What's a police box?" Luke asked seriously, before the other two started sniping again.
"They used to use them to hold supplies or prisoners, I think. Not for a long time, though. Modern methods and all." Alan poured himself a cup of tea and leaned against the counter. "I suspect we'll be able to find pictures on the internet."
"There was one on the corner of Price and Hempstead. It was never there before." Luke said determinedly.
"Maybe they're bringing them back into service." Clyde was scornful.
"Maybe it's something artsy, like those cows they had in London." Maria considered, then added, "After tea, we can look it up on the internet."
###
"We still need to reprogram the meteorological sensor. Outside. I'll take the readings and you'll have to calculate the variables and input the information." The Doctor jotted down a complex formula on the back of a piece of paper he found on the table.
Sarah studied the theorem for a moment. "It makes sense, but I can't do that maths in my head and we won't be able to link to Mr. Smith in the garden," she said.
"Don't look at me, Martian Boy. It all looks like gibberish. You can't possibly understand that, Sarah." Donna had become bored very quickly with the technical talk and was wandering around the attic examining things instead.
"I've picked up a thing or two over the years." She paused, considering. "I bet Luke could do the calculations on the fly. Just a sec." She picked up her mobile and hit a speed dial button. "Luke, it's me. Can you come home now? No, I'll explain when you get here. Well, after you finish your tea will be fine. Ten minutes? Good. Meet me in the garden." Closing the mobile, she said, "That should give us enough time to get set up."
As they headed down the stairs, the Doctor let Donna go ahead and held back to ask Sarah in a carefully casual fashion, "And who is this Luke chap? Boyfriend?"
"Adopted son. It's a long story." Sarah reconsidered. "Cloned human created by the Bane in an attempt to take over the Earth. We defeated them and I brought him home." She grinned at him cheekily. "I think you've infected me with your habit of picking up strays."
"Oi!" Donna stopped short and turned to protest. "Not a stray."
"Apprentices, then." Sarah replied with a grin. "Doctor, why don't you go outside and get started? Donna and I can bring out the supplies from the kitchen."
###
"I knew it was aliens."
The four of them stared down the street at the advancing horde of purple and green lizard-elephants, before Alan grabbed two random shoulders and pushed them towards Sarah Jane's house, saying, "I hope Sarah will know how to deal with this."
"Of course she will, dad," Maria shouted reassuringly, as she took to her heels with the others following.
The four of them burst into the back garden all talking at once. The Doctor looked up from the setting he was adjusting on the gadget in his hands and grinned at them.
"You must be Luke...and these are your friends?" Sarah's words about apprentices (plural) suddenly came back to him.
"Clyde, Maria and Mr. Jackson," Luke said automatically. "Where's mum? And who are you?"
"This is the Doctor and Donna." Sarah emerged from the house carrying a pot of water, with Donna right behind her.
Donna dropped her load on the table. "Shouldn't we get a move on? Those things could get here any moment.
"What things? We saw a half a dozen aliens marching up the street as we crossed."
Sarah and the Doctor were already assembling the mechanism for calibrating the device.
The Doctor said, "We're almost done. Luke, I need you to insert the readings I give you into this formula and then give your mother the results so that she can input them into this." He gestured to the device which had been laid on the ground with a probe inserted into the Earth, before passing Luke the paper with the formula on it, now crumpled from being shoved carelessly in a pocket.
"Got it." Luke looked at his mum who had finished what she had been doing and sat herself down cross-legged on the ground and started adjusting the antennae on the device.
"Ready when you are, Doctor." Sarah turned on the weather device and waited for the data.
The Doctor grinned at her and stirred the water in the pan before adding a few drops of vegetable oil. He aimed his sonic screwdriver at it creating a mini waterspout. He started calling out numbers to Luke.
Maria moved over to watch what Sarah was doing, being careful not to touch the device.
The others watched silently as Luke waited for a pause and then started giving his mother the calculations. The whole process didn't take more than a moment, and when Sarah pressed the last button and turned the last dial, she gave a triumphant cry and the whirlwind in the pan disappeared.
"That was anticlimactic," Clyde commented, and he was about to say more when the lizard-elephants appeared at the gate.
"Doctor, you and your associate will submit to arrest on the charge of destruction of public property and theft." Bright reptilian eyes scanned the rest of the group, "And the rest of you will be arrested on a charge of aiding and abetting a known criminal."
"But it's been fixed." The Doctor looked over at Sarah, who was collapsing the antennae and folding them flat into the ridge made to hold them and cleaning off the probe. She handed it to him and he passed it to the leader of the group. "Here. Test it and see."
Donna just glared at the troop that had invaded the garden. "You should be thanking him. It's probably better than new now."
"It's snowing," Clyde yelped as the the lizard-elephant twisted a dial.
It only lasted for a moment, before turning first into a bright, sunshiny day and then reverting to the cold, cloudy state it had been originally.
Ignoring the weather changes, Maria slipped over to Sarah. "That's the Doctor? I expected he'd be...different."
"He is, sometimes." Sarah gave her a cheeky grin and then turned back to watch the lizard-elephant testing the gadget.
"It appears to be in working order." The lizard-elephant turned to the Doctor. "You will be charged 23 carso fine for disturbing the peace and as reparations for the damage you caused."
The Doctor fished a 44 carso coin out of his pocket and gave it to the lizard-elephant. "Keep the change."
However it insisted on giving him change and a receipt. Then it waved its trunk in a dismissive gesture and the group of aliens left the garden, presumably heading to their spaceship.
The Doctor started packing up the equipment and the others moved to help him.
Luke had a sudden thought, and asked Sarah whether she had seen the police box and if she had any idea where it came from. He was taken aback when she, Donna and the Doctor looked at each other and giggled.
"That's the TARDIS," Sarah said, as soon as she caught her breath again. "The Doctor's ship. It's supposed to change shape, but that's never worked as long as I've known him."
The Doctor gave her an insulted look, but didn't comment, choosing instead to carry some of the equipment back into the house.
Sarah followed right after. "You never will stay out of trouble, will you, Doctor?" She dumped the things she had carried in on the kitchen table.
"Said the pot to the kettle," he teased back. "No point to a boring life."
"True enough. Do you have to run off, or can you stay for dinner?"
Maria stood in the doorway and held her breath. This was the alien that Sarah Jane had travelled with all those years ago, but Sarah never really talked about those days, leaving Maria immensely curious. She hoped he would stay and that they would talk about the past.
Donna came up behind Martha. "We better be staying, Martian Boy. It's been at least three planets since I've eaten a proper meal. Indian?" she asked Sarah.
Sarah pulled a menu off the fridge and handed it to her. "Here, go into the lounge and decide what we're eating. I'll make some tea."
"You know me so well." The Doctor picked up Sarah and swung her around. "It's good to see you again, Sarah."
"It's good to see you too. Now put me down so I can get the tea ready."
He pouted at her but did as she asked, then herded whomever was still in the kitchen into the lounge, talking nonsense. He'd had no intention of wandering off so quickly. If nothing else, he was determined to get the details on Sarah's new son and find out why she had disappeared from time. He'd meant to come round sooner, but time had, as usual, got away from him.
Dinner turned out to be a cheerful affair, filled with anecdotes of Sarah's travels with the Doctor and swapping recent stories of their adventures, and Maria couldn't help but be thrilled that it had turned out to be aliens after all.