During his time working as a doctor Stanley has never had to deal with any decompression cases. Not all hospitals have hyperbaric chambers and he usually works in the epidemiology section, an unrelated department. On top of that, it has been a while since he last read about the matter. This all means that talking to the USN officers and going over the equipment and procedures with them is really informative. Between the necessary swimming and diving practice, he practices and reads as much as he can about the medical issues that can arise when diving. He specifically focuses on the practical things he could do when they are on the other side of the anomaly, nowhere near a hyperbaric chamber.

The TARDIS is indeed down on station, a few miles underwater away from the last reported position of the anomaly. Trav is being very careful to make sure that the 11th dimensional nature of the TARDIS is not disturbing the anomaly. The scene opens with the control room set up as an evacuation triage and command center - any medical equipment that Stanley needs has been brought up, the aquacycles are ready to go, Speizo and the Osgoods have been introduced to Chibi who has been instructed to assist them with the various sensory equipment, and the scutters move to and fro with equipment. A full crafts services table with hot food, coffee and the works that Trav has cooked herself is ready. Trav has also brought up repair and scientific equipment on moveable racks as needed.

Trav, in prep, has modified her turbopistols for underwater use. SHe muses that the last time she ever did this was when she escorted Henry Gloval and his UN party down into the bowels of the wreckage of the SDF-1, right before her 1st regeneration. She also sets up 3 pre-programmed emergency transits for the TARDIS - the Tower of London, 10 miles outside of Dallas, and behind the Moon, for the use of her team or the Osgoods and Speizo, in case they need to get Sweet Boy away from the anomaly, fast. Trav has of course modified the standard UNIT wetsuits so that it will fit Sereth's body comfortably.

Trav herself has enabled a linkup to UNIT command at London, repeating to Dallas. "Greyhound, this is Trillby, also repeating to Longhorn. We're ready to commence the operation on your go. Taking initially telemetry on the anomaly and forwarding." This is as she's taking passive readings on the anomaly.

Trav is rather oblivious to how rather casually hot she looks in her skintight UNIT wetsuit, her hair in ponytails, pistols at her hips, looking determined as she taps keys and reads from the console.

OOC: Ingenuity+Science+Research Capsule?

As Smoke Alarm wanders into the control room, studying the blue Loyal ball cap that one of the ship's petty officers had given her as a prezzie, Trav is getting a fix on the anomaly, with the assistance of the scientific crew from UNIT.

(At some point over the last week, it has come out that only one of the Osgoods is a human, the other being a Zygon who imprinted on her body pattern during a -- poorly explained -- conflict between UNIT and a Zygon invasion contingent.  The duplicate Osgood seems to have picked up a particularly strong psychic imprint from her primary, and following the cessation of hostilities, volunteered to stay on Earth under UNIT supervision as a cultural liaison.  By this point, hardly anyone from UNIT can tell the difference between the two without scanning equipment, but it seems not to be an issue.)

Readings on the anomaly show that it is projected to reach a locally stable diameter of 21 meters.  The transition conduit has a length of 312 meters: within this conduit, attempting to physically penetrate the interface area -- the "walls" of the "tunnel" -- is likely to lead to rapid stability complications.  The TARDIS sensors are reading a negative flow through the channel, carrying water, flotsam and small life forms from the far side into the Earthside ocean: the implication is that the far side of the rift is at a greater pressure and therefore depth.

Boyle's voice comes over the comm link.  "We have a monitor rota in place here and in Dallas, and we've given our regular stable of scientific consultants a standby notice, in case you need some specialized knowledge they can provide.  We are go for start, Trillby."

"Longhorn is go for start," comes the answer from Captain Luisa Ramirez, the operation office in Dallas.

OOC: Not sure what you wanted from the roll, so if there's something obvious I haven't reported above let me know.

What's the actual scheme now?   Is the TARDIS being used to affect the rift at all?  In all likelihood that would become an Ingenuity + Technology + Research Capsule.

With the cap on her head over her blue hair, Smoke Alarm crouched in front of a roundel which she'd prised open. She outlooked over her shoulder at Traveller and all the visitors loitering about, then back into the hole. 'Lots of visitors today.' she whispered to the three twitchy Us inside, who were trying to outlook around Smoke Alarm. 'Us will have to 'ware them and loiter in hide-ins. And if water leaks in the talkiphone box, outgo to upper floors. Be sound and safe. Build high for happiness.' The Us squeaked out the farewell and repeated the building gesture with their paws. 'I'll bring you back some she-sells.' With another furtive outlook back, Smoke Alarm refitted the roundel and scampered away.

She was encased in a squeaky black wetsuit, which somehow gave Smoke Alarm curves she didn't otherwise have. She'd scrawled it and the air-tanks with blue spraypaint to personalise it, but thoughtfully added some splashes of white to be more easily eyespyable under the pool. She had her arrowgun and grappler on a belt; one advantage was that they worked underwater with no adjustments needed. They were not as fast or as strong underwater, but Smoke Alarm had been doing some target practice in the pools as well.

She footed up to one of the Osgoods, whom she not had much of a chance to be talky with yet. 'How you do?' she greeted brightly. She didn't perform the how-you-do, of course, which was more of a formal greeting. 'Is all ready-steady to go under the great pool in the ground?'
This message was last edited by the player at 06:08, Sun 24 May 2015.

OOC: Nope, that's about what Trav was expecting. She doesn't want the TARDIS to disrupt the anomaly and is presuming the UNIT operation is to manually send a team in and disrupt the channel as little as possible. A roll is to try to figure out what might be on the other side, stability of the channel, and how much time they have. Presumably, Sweet Boy's sensor palette is better than anything UNIT has, and I presume that the Osgoods and Peizo are staying back here. Trav is also trying to do some back of the napkin math to predict the effect of 4 people on aquacycles on the rift, and then double that weight on the way back.

Trav creates a 3D image of this data. "Thank you, Chibi." If Kate Stewart was cool with a Zygon on her staff, then Trav was, although she found it kind of funny that a Zygon was cosplaying one of her older selves, since she has been imitated by Zygons in both incarnations, to varying degrees of hilarity (Al Capone drilled a room full of 1st Traveller Zygons with his Tommy Gun, Abe Lincoln got one roaring drunk and made it lose its stolen form.) "Just running some final numbers before we begin. Yeah, Smoke, the place is practically as full as a shopping mall during a Tiffany show. Sereth, Stan, look alive, this isn't an episode of SeaQuest DSV and I'm not Roy Schneider."

"Beginning full scanning rotation. Osgoods, Peizo, repeating to your tablets.  Everything from my sonic and Ipad will go back to Sweet Boy's main console which will then be repeated back to Greyhound and Longhorn. However, if this is indeed beyond the void and into another dimension, as opposed to inside of some spatial pocket, then we may be cut off. Until then, well transmit across my special network for as long as we can. Captain Ramirez, pleased to be working with you. Tell the boys and girls Travelina gives her love and will bring Josh home and to have pitchers of sangria ready." She uses the old nick name which embarrassed her so badly back in the 70s back when she had her big adventure with the dinosaur rodeo and when the Daleks assaulted the Alamo.

OOC:00:35, Today: The Traveller rolled 24 using 2d6+16 with rolls of 4,4. Trav scans the anomaly - Ingenuity 8+Science 6+Research Capsule 2.

Trav looks back at the team. "I think using Sweet Boy to mess with this rift at all would be a bad idea, except maybe to stabilize it and get us more time. Osgoods, Peizo, your opinion? I want to take as light a touch as possible."
This message was last edited by the player at 05:04, Sun 24 May 2015.

Osgood smiles.  "Everything looks to be good... though only the Traveller knows for sure.  I just hope, since you are all going through the rift with her, that we're able to take care of any problems that come up."

She looks at Smoke Alarm curiously.  "I never did get a good chance to ask you about Kangs.  You're just a sort of human subculture, right?  How does one get to be a Kang?  And why are you named after a fire safety device?"



"I had a thought," Spiezo says.  "I definitely agree that tampering with the rift as little as possible should be the safest way to go.  What about a contingency plan?"  He indicates Chibi-Trav.  "Your AI is very helpful, but if it looks like the connection is going to go, and you and the others are on the wrong side of it, it could be better to attempt something desperate than just let it happen."

"Only," one of the Osgoods adds, "I'm pretty sure that we don't have a fraction of the background with the TARDIS systems and capabilities to know what would be safe to improvise.  I've read the UNIT events of situations like the Kronos Manifestation, which note such cheerful notions as 'the denaturing of interstitial time' and that is above our pay grade.  If you could lay out a couple of emergency scenarios and procedures, we'd feel a lot better about back-stopping you here...."

Trav realizes that the Osgoods are right about that -- applying too much relative dimensional pressure to the rift could cause a cascading breakdown in the fabric of local 4-space.  With the new information she has been able to collect, this close to the rift, it does seem likely that the conduit is a passage into an adjacent universe, and that means that a breakdown could have repercussions for two worlds.

But too conservative a play could be almost as bad, if it ended up isolating her and her friends on the far side of the rift with little in the way of tools to do anything about it.

Trav, having been exiled in an alternate dimension for over a century, knows this all too well. "OK, this is the play, then. I'm setting up Sweet Boy here to act as a dimensional anchor to keep that Rift open and act as a baffle - as the rift cycles, Sweet Boy will expand and contract the local 4-space so that the corridor and the gateway remain stable, sort of how a respirator works. If there's a catastrophic collapse, Sweet Boy will follow us in, with a 3 minute warning - you guys can either get out in scuba gear and head up to the US Navy Vessel waiting on station up above, of stay board and follow us in. I'm sorry, but Sweet Boy is the best chance for their being a plug to any disastrous leak to this universe, and our best shot of getting home - this ship has traveled other universes before. You may want to monitor from the Loyal instead. Your thoughts?" Trav's expertise from Rifts Earth and M-Space is now coming into play, where she dealt with scenarios like this constantly working with the Atlanteans and against the Coalition and the Splugorth.

Trav is all seriousness now, as she's already working at the block transfer calculations at the TARDIS console. This was possible an unstable charged vacuum emboitment, and she had to carefully balance power to equalize pressure between universes, long enough to keep open a stable gateway to get Rayburn and his team home. Even worse, the rift was naturally sealing on it's own, like what happened with rifts naturally on Rifts Earth. This was normally a good thing. If it was kept open too long, bad things could happen. She had to balance the safety of N-Space against rescuing the UNIT team.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:18, Mon 25 May 2015.

Smoke Alarm outlooked all confused at the Osgood. Human subculture? 'Because it's my name. Why are you named after an Osgood?' she answered a question with a question, rather cleverly, she thought. 'You don't get to be a Kang. You just... be a Kang. But to be a Blue Kang or a Red Kang or a Yellow Kang, there's the Games and the Knowhow and the Picking.' she counted off on her fingers, remembering she'd been through to join the Blues. The Picking had been hardest. 'Then you get a colour, blue or red or yellow. Then there's a fancy How-You-Do. Then you're a Blue Kang or a Red Kang or a Yellow Kang... But there's no yellows, they're all unalive now.' she noted sadly.

"Oh, well, that's simple enough.  My parents were Osgoods.  But then there are other ways for people who aren't Osgoods to become Osgoods."  Osgood points at the other Osgood.  "She decided she wanted to be an Osgood.  Even though she wasn't actually a human person to start with.  She didn't have the best reasons for doing it to start with, but we've worked that out.  And it turned out she liked being an Osgood.  It's terribly flattering, I have to tell you."


"So because there aren't any Yellows, there can't be any more Yellows now?  Is that how that works?  Or could there be a Picking where someone turned up to be a Yellow anyway?"

"Well, the Loyal is kitted out pretty well, but its equipment can't tell us half of what your ship can.  The telemetry link is up and running, but links do go down."  The UNIT team trade looks among themselves.  "As long as you don't mind us being here, I think we'd rather monitor your progress from the TARDIS."

'Oh.' Smoke Alarm said, outlooking at the other Osgood, wondering how exactly one became an Osgood. 'Fardreen became a Kang. Traveller wants to be a Kang.'

She thought about the Yellow issue. 'Well, mayhaps, but there's no Yellows to Pick new Yellows. So there can't be new Yellows. And also we need another colour to be Picked with the Yellows. Mayhaps Pink. This Way Up, Pink Kang the Last from Tower 3, could Pick new Pink Kangs... It was a big to-do between the Kangs before I was taken away...' The question of whether to re-found the Yellows or not was a controversy that had rocked Kang society before she'd left Paradise Towers.

The elegant circles of Gallifreyan script float in 3D. The Us chatter excitedly - they remember the Demon Times with the Shedraya, the horrid time demons that infested the TARDIS at one point and were held at bay by their own sacred places deep inside the TARDIS. They may be world travelling again. The Transversal Power System console comes to life, engaging in checkouts not activated since the war against the Time Demons when Trav was in R-Space.  "So noted. Just so long as you guys understand how horribly dangerous this is. If things go south, Sweet Boy here may be your home for a very, very long time. Sereth, Smoke, Stanley, that goes for you guys too. This is entirely volunteer, even moreso than our usual shenanigans. You may never see your mom, your Emperor, or any another Blue Kang, ever again." She dramatically throws down a  lever for emphasis, KA-CHUNK, as error-correction starts to commence. The Transversal console starts to interact with the main flight panel, as the TARDIS compiles the several programs that Trav has just written.

"Allright. I'm compiling the stabilization sequence now. My TARDIS is going to very carefully integrate elements of it's block-transfer field into the anomaly, and act as, for lack of a better term, a respirator. Once it's set, we're going to be at the long end of the stable tunnel. The TARDIS will make the tunnel more stable and lengthen the time it should remain manifest, as well as lengthen the time window by feeding the anomaly power. But it won't be indefinite, and we will be working against the clock. Once I throw down this lever, the clock will start to tick. When the bar on the screen reaches the red zone, the equations will safely collapse the tunnel and the TARDIS *will* safely follow us through. You'll be given hour, half hour, 15, 10, 5 and 3 minute evac warnings. Once I start it, only I will be able to stop it, of, if I'm knocked, out, a member of the rescue team being present on board the TARDIS will stop the countdown, hitting this lever. Understood?"

Trav looks around. "Everyone ask your questions, make your decisions, get suited up. I start this show in 10 minutes."

OOC - I'm gonna drop a story point and make a 2d6+Ingenuity+Technology+Research Capsule+SP roll, and I'm lobbying for an additional +2 for Transversal Power System, because Trav has dealt with crap like this a few times back in actual Rifts game play in other campaigns. I'd like to make my roll now and get an estimate of how much time we have to make our rescue attempt, from Trav's initial calculations.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:05, Thu 28 May 2015.

Smoke Alarm eyespied the lever carefully, but was alarmed by Traveller's warning, eyes going wide in dismay. Trav's speech was hardly inspirational. 'Wait. "Ever?" Forever ever? Never ever?' Suddenly tootling under the pool on pool-bikes didn't seem so icehot. Smoke Alarm had been happy to fly in the talkiphone box when she had the promise of going home-sweet-home back with her sisters, but never ever was a long time, the longest. Never ever going back seemed a lot like being unalive, without even the Great Pool in the Sky to outlook forward to. Just this great pool in the ground.

As Trav works her calculations, she says gravely, "This isn't all games and fun, Smoke Alarm. It's also big risk, to protect people. That's what I do. If it's too much, it's not unbrave to say no. But those are good friends of mine down there, and I need to get them home. They have friends and families who need them. They'd do the same for me. That's the promise I made when I took the name of The Traveller. That's what the Doctor reminded me when he sent me away to safety, at the end of the War. So, I need to keep the promise I made to him. No one else here did, so it's OK if you if you don't want to. You've more than proven your braveness and boldness." She smiles at the blue Kang as she looks up from her panel, the green light shining up into her features.

09:35, Today: The Traveller rolled 27 using 4d6+18 with rolls of 4,1,2,2. 2d6+Ingenuity+Science+Research Capsule+Transversal Power System+2d6 - Stabilize conduit/rescue time.
This message was last edited by the player at 13:36, Tue 26 May 2015.

Smoke Alarm thought of the horrible brain-thing that had nearly gobbled her up, because she'd loitered to outlook too long. It seemed the price, mayhaps, for being curious as a mouse, for being brave and bold. She shuffled, unwilling to admit that the risk made her feel so very unbrave and unbold. 'I'm brave and bold as a Kang could be!' she retorted hotly, show-and-telling more to the brain-thing and the dark not-knowing. The strain was clear on her small face, so desperately unable to choose whether to loiter in the brainquarters or outgo, to choose old friends or new. Never ever. 'Home-sweet-home to sisters and brothers and friends and families? I'm outgoing with you, Traveller. Coz if I let a friend outgo alone through some hazardous carrydoor, I wouldn't be a Kang no more.' she declared, serious and certain.

'More, I will make safe-and-sure we all comeout and track back too.'


OOC: I decided to roll. Beats a 12, so away I go.
23:11, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 13 using 2d6+8 with rolls of 3,2. ingenuity(3) + resolve(3) + brave(2).
This message was last edited by the player at 15:56, Tue 26 May 2015.

Trav beams brightly. "Someone said that a person could be measured by the quality of their enemies, but I say that they're measured more by the quality of their friends. BLUE KANGS ARE BEST! BLUE KANGS ARE BEST!"
This message was last edited by the player at 17:57, Tue 26 May 2015.

In reply to The Traveller (msg # 75):

Stanley has already made his decision and he doesn't have any questions, so he suits up and prepares himself for the upcoming mission. To be honest, Stanley has a lot of questions about the anomaly and what Trav is using the Tardis for, but he leaves all that for the professionals. He checks his diving gear again, as he was taught during training.

"Everything is working...I am ready." He says to Trav.

Trav looks at Stanley, and notices herself looking at him in a way that she never, ever look at him before, in the few years they traveled together.

She kisses him on the cheek, tippy toeing up.

"I'm sorry," she says, blushing a little, "For not taking you as seriously as perhaps I should have, Doctor Stanley Newton. You are an immensely brave man, running as you have with me. I have to reconsider a few things, now. Also, you don't look have bad, in a wetsuit."

"Now, let's get going, hero." She wheels an aquacycle towards the TARDIS door, smiling at him in a way she never quite has before.

She aims her sonic at the TARDIS central column. It starts to move, and breathe, like a gigantic set of lungs, ancient and mighty.

Spiezo and Osgood and Osgood all watch their consoles as the TARDIS peels away layers of its plasmic shell, transmuting a fraction of the outward form of the blue police box into essential Number and Structure.  That Structure extrudes smoothly toward the dimensional conduit, weaving itself into the pattern of energy currently bridging Earth's dimension to another.  It makes no attempt to alter or expand that pattern: it builds along and through it.  The engines of the TARDIS speak and tells the natural equilibria of the universe that would tend to crush the aperture down to a singularity No, there are forces in the universe that can stand against entropy, at least for a while.  And you ain't going nowhere.

Then, the transversal power system engages, for the first time since the TARDIS first launched Trav back out of R-Space into the post-Time War continuum.  And the sound is like the roar of a power chord straight out of Valhalla.

"Look," Spiezo says.  "Perfect phase inversion."  When Trav checks the display that he's indicating, she sees the result that she'd been hoping for: the projections show that the stability curve has normalized to be uniform along the full period of the anomaly's cycle.  Barring any new crisis, the conduit will hold until the full cycle is up.  The clock is running at 173 hours, seven minutes, forty-seven seconds.

Forty-six.

Forty-five.

Forty-four.

....

'Blue Kangs, Blue Kangs, Blue Kangs are best!' Smoke Alarm cheered the sing-song, the proper way. She checked her wetsuit: straps, air conditioners, breath pipes. All sound and safe. She was uncomfortably reminded of the gestures for farewelling the unalive, themselves the echo of a spacesuit check routine. She hoped it wouldn't comeout the same.

Smoke had put Puddy and her other not-for-getting-wet things in a sound-and-safe place in the talkiphone box. She checked her arrowgun and grappler were hitched righty-tighty to her belt. Shape-ship and sound.

She climbed on a pool bike, ready-steady but she would still be the last out.

Sereth waited.

And waited.

He was patient as a rock.

He spoke quietly.

"Forward, Smoke. I have your back."

He hadn't even thought to not go forth. He didn't switch from fun and games to serious - he was always serious.

Trav allows herself a small smirk. Her one small unique contribution to her people's corpus of scientific knowledge was practical dimensional travel. If she knew anything better than the Doctor, the Master or the Rani, it was Rifts. Other dimensions and universes were foreign to them, they were familiar to her.

"Ok, we're on the clock. Let's move."

Trav gives snugs to the Osgoods and to Speizo, to her team, pulls down her mask, and then head to the TARDIS door. Water shimmers vertically at the door. The pushes the aquacycle in, and with a smooth insertion, the aquacycle skims into the blue depths, heading towards the strange light of the anomaly as she leads her companions in.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:10, Wed 27 May 2015.

Smoke Alarm outlooked back at Sereth, realising she wouldn't be last one outgoing after all. She nodded, then motored her pool-bike forward, with a bit of a stop-start, stop-start approach as she tried to get the hang of it. She approached the wall of water, fairly sure water shouldn't stand up like that, and nudged her way in like someone carefully stepping into a pool. Then she disappeared, into the blue.

"I wouldn't call myself a hero..." Stanley mutters, unsure how to react to Trav's praise. He moves his aquacycle close to the door, takes a deep breath and moves into the wall of water.

When the travellers have left the TARDIS and the doors shut behind them, Spiezo trades a look with the Osgoods, as their watch begins.

The UNIT soldier shrugs.  "Heroes never do," he observes.