Doctor Who BBCN17 - Sick Building (19 page)

The Doctor had his arms right around the sun bed robot. He was just about dancing him round in circles. ‘You were magnificent!’

‘Mind his broken glass, Doctor,’ Barbara advised, as Toaster’s innards shook and clanked.

Toaster graciously accepted all their compliments. ‘I put everything I had into it!’ he told them. ‘Every last iota of my energy.’ He looked a bit tired as a result.

‘Never mind,’ the Doctor said. ‘It was worth it, Toaster! You’re a real hero!’

The sun bed tried to brush this off, but they could all tell that he was really delighted. ‘Who knew?’ he sighed. ‘All those years I spent, just giving people sun tans. And I could have been a hero! A great warrior!’

‘Maybe you still can,’ Barbara said. ‘Our lives are going to start anew, aren’t they? When the Doctor takes us up to Spaceport Antelope Slash Nitelite.’

Now the Doctor was looking serious. The dark and frosty air went still with foreboding. ‘We’d better keep moving,’ he said. ‘Time’s moving on.’

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The rest of the journey was a little less frightening than their encounter with the albino bat-babies. The deeper they travelled into the forest, though, the darker it grew, and the more chilling the air became. The Doctor led the way, advancing with his pen torch held aloft.

Toaster’s lights were feebler now, and only intermittent. The bright-est thing was Barbara’s interior, with her glowing bottles of fizzy pop.

They lent the frosty scene around them a very odd ambience.

Like a bloodhound the Doctor would occasionally sniff the air, and then alter direction slightly. Solin looked worried, as if he thought the Doctor was losing them in the wilderness, but Martha knew better.

She knew the Time Lord had a strange, almost symbiotic relationship with his vessel. It was very mysterious but, if he managed to get them safely aboard again, she wasn’t complaining.

Secretly, Martha was glad it was so dark. When she looked up the trees melted into the night sky. Even if the Voracious Craw had been sweeping overhead they wouldn’t have been able to see it. And that seemed like a mercy.

But how long did they have?

The Doctor pulled a face when she asked him this. ‘I don’t think that we can have more than a couple of hours left. Can’t you feel it in 137

the air? Can’t you smell it?’ Martha sniffed, and shook her head.

‘That tiny vibration in the ground?’ the Doctor said. ‘The woods around us are trembling and groaning. They know they don’t have long left to exist in this world. Everything around us is quivering. . . ’

Now that she concentrated, Martha thought that she could indeed feel the wilderness shivering about her.

Barbara needed to rest again. ‘I’m sorry, Doctor,’ she cried. ‘My joints are freezing up. I’m useless! Hopeless! Just leave me here! If you leave me here to be eaten along with everything else, maybe I’ll stick in the very craw of the Voracious Craw and choke it!’

‘No, no, no, no,’ the Doctor grinned, clapping her on the back. ‘You don’t understand. You’re with us on this trip, Barbara. You’re on our side. And that means we don’t abandon you. You come along with us.

And it all turns out nicely in the end. That’s what’s going to happen.’

In the pen-torch light he winked reassuringly at them all.

Solin, Martha noticed, simply glowered back at the Doctor. She realised what he was thinking. They hadn’t managed to save his mother.

Amanda had died and the Doctor hadn’t been able to prevent it.

Martha shuddered at the memory of Tiermann carrying that wrecked body out of the ship, and then lurching towards the Dreamhome.

I should have insisted on examining her, Martha was thinking, not for the first time. Perhaps I could have done something. . . But, no.

Amanda Tiermann had surely already been dead. And what had she been anyway? A cyborg? A Servo-furnishing herself? Now there was no way of telling, and it was too late to dwell on these things. They had to think of the living.

The Doctor was bouncing around again. He was so springy and tireless! At moments like this, Martha thought he was like Tigger the Tiger or someone. Absurdly, she found herself wanting to laugh at this thought. That was exactly who he was like.

‘Come on! There isn’t far! Just two shakes of a sabre-tooth’s tail!

Really! Come on!’

Martha glanced about at the dark. Luckily, all the animals seemed to be gone. No more tigers or bear-things. It would have been a much more terrible journey had it been watched by livid and hungry animal 138

eyes.

‘This is the clearing!’ the Doctor cried, drawing their attention ahead, to a gap beyond the thick-boled trees.

He played his narrow torch beam into the gloom. ‘I knew it! We’ve done it!’

Barbara struggled back to her feet. Toaster had to help her and, to Martha’s eyes, they looked like a couple of old pensioners tottering about. ‘Your ship?’ Barbara raised her voice hopefully, brightly. ‘We’ve really reached your ship!?’

The Doctor’s voice came back to them full blast. He was bellowing with joy. ‘YYYEEEEESSSSSS!!!’ he shouted, and the frigid air seemed to shiver. ‘We’ve made it! There it is!!’

His small party struggled up to stand by him and he trained his light beam straight onto the tall blue box at the furthest edge of the glade.

Martha sighed with pleasure and relief. There it stood: reassuring and solid and bright blue. Its windows were glowing a minty blue-white, very welcomingly, and Martha knew that, inside, the TARDIS would be warm and comforting and utterly safe. She grinned at the Doctor and hugged him, and almost kissed him.

‘That,’ Toaster said, frowning crossly, ‘isn’t what I would call a decent-sized ship. That’s hardly bigger than a linen closet.’

‘Aha!’ the Doctor said gleefully. ‘Just you wait, Toaster! Just you wait!’ He could hardly contain himself. He led them across the forest clearing at a tremendous pace, with his door key held aloft.

The TARDIS door swung open and a steady humming emerged from within, along with a warm, yolky light.

‘Is this really it, Doctor?’ Barbara asked. She was trying to keep the disappointment out of her voice. ‘Is this really your spaceship?’

The Doctor nodded manically. ‘It’s better than that, it’s the TARDIS!

Come along! Get inside!’

The robots and Solin shuffled through the doorway, which almost wasn’t wide enough. Their concerned expressions melted away into slack-jawed astonishment and murmurs of awe. The interior was huge, and contained a weird mixture of high-tech futuristic and organic devices. It looked, at first glance, like a ship found lost at the 139

bottom of an alien sea, fitted and kitted out with a plethora of unfath-omable gizmos. Wires hung in festoons like Christmas tinsel and the walls and girders themselves seemed to be made out of some strange material, more like coral than metal.

Proudly the Doctor skipped past them up the clanking gangway to the six-sided console in the centre of the vast chamber. ‘Welcome to the TARDIS!’ he said, and patted the controls happily. The very air around them was chittering and burbling with the minute, mysterious calibrations of a million sensitive instruments.

‘But this is impossible, Doctor!’ Barbara gasped. ‘It’s. . . ’

‘I know, I had the same thing,’ Martha laughed. ‘It’s a lot to take in at first. But he means what he promised. He can get us all away from this planet. Before the Voracious Craw comes down. We’ve made it!’

Toaster’s voice sounded hollow. The ancient sun bed seemed deeply impressed with the TARDIS. ‘Why, this makes the Dreamhome look like somebody’s garden shed. . . ’ he said.

The Doctor shrugged carelessly. ‘Now. We’d better get on.’ He flicked a few switches and rubbed at his tousled hair. ‘What do you reckon? Should we just go, eh?’

The others looked at him. ‘Go?’ said Martha. ‘Just. . . leave the planet, you mean?’

His hands hovered above the controls. He was like a great pianist, poised before tossing off a tour-de-force. ‘We could, you know. We could just shoot off right now without a backward glance. And leave the Voracious Craw to all its spoils.’

‘But,’ Solin burst out, ‘what about Father?’

‘And. . . ’ Barbara perked up. ‘If we’ve time. . . I don’t know. . . there might be other Servo-furnishings in the Dreamhome. . . perhaps ones who can think for themselves, like we can. . . who aren’t utterly under the control of the Domovoi. . . ’

‘Can’t we make a short trip, Doctor?’ Martha asked. ‘Back to the Dreamhome, before we leave?’

The Doctor pulled a face. ‘It would be a shame to just let the Dreamhome be sucked up like so much pizza topping.’ He sighed.

‘Tiermann, too, I suppose. He might be crackers, but he’s quite clever, 140

as well. The human race out here in this benighted part of the galaxy still needs a man like him.’

Solin nodded. ‘It was when he turned his back on the rest of the human race. That was when things went to the bad. I can see that now.’ He looked shyly at the Doctor. He seemed to be in awe of him, now that he was aboard his ship. ‘Will you make the attempt to save him?’

‘Well, yes. But in a roundabout sort of a way,’ the Doctor shouted, and started pelting around the console at full tilt, flipping switches and levers as he went. ‘Actually, I’ve been thinking up a fantastic plan, the whole time. I’ve got a brilliant idea! An absolute humdinger!

Really! I think we can have a little go at distracting the Voracious Craw. . . ’

‘Distracting?’ Martha asked. ‘How are we going to do that?’

‘All right, let’s think. It’s hungry, right?’

She nodded. ‘It’s Voracious. That’s the point.’

‘Top marks,’ he nodded. ‘OK. So it wants to eat the whole of this world, bit by bit, munch, munch, chew, chew, slurp, slurp, all the way round the world. And the Dreamhome, the Domovoi, Tiermann and us, we’re all next. Right?’ He was doing an absurd little mime of the Craw eating everyone up. His companions all nodded. ‘Now,’ he went on. ‘The Voracious Craw has a brain about the size of a Volkswagen.

Which, in relative terms, is very, very small. But still big enough to know temptation when it sees it.’

Solin frowned. ‘So?’

‘Where’s this leading, Doctor?’ Barbara asked.

The Doctor blinked at her. ‘I’ve got a raging thirst on, Barbara.

Would you give me a bottle of your fizziest pop? And Martha and Solin, they want one too.’

‘Of course, Doctor,’ Barbara said, jumbling about her insides and sending the bottles shooting out. ‘But. . . ’

‘Aaaahhh!’ the Doctor gasped, slurping up pop. ‘Nothing like or-angeade! Come on, Solin, Martha, drink up! Now, where was I? Oh yes, outlining my fantastic plan! Do you think Dandelion and Burdock is made out of real dandelions, by the way?’

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Martha sipped at her drink. ‘Tell us your plan!!’ she said, impatiently.

‘Don’t sip it! Glug it! Like me! Give yourself wind!’ urged the Doctor.

Martha did as she was told. She was quite used to the Doctor’s behaviour. And his sometimes rather strange plans.

‘Now, where was I? Ah yes!’ he gasped, and suppressed a burp.

‘Now what if we lured the Voracious Craw away from its set course of destruction, eh? What if we came up with something more delicious and more tempting than the Dreamhome? What if he suddenly saw this more deliciously tempting thing and went, “Aha! I’d much rather have that than what I’ve got!"?’

‘But what is it?’ Martha asked. ‘What’s more tempting than what it’s got?’

‘Infinity,’ said the Doctor simply, and swigged on his pop.

They all stared at him. He boggled his eyes, as if his meaning was plain.

‘He’s hungry, right?’ he said. ‘And he wants to fill his big fat belly, right? So, what’s more tempting than a whole load of infinity?’

They were still confused. ‘Uh, right,’ Martha said, and drank more pop. ‘So where are you going to get a whole load of infinity?’

The Doctor threw up his arms. ‘Here! The TARDIS! It’s full of it! It’s colossal! It’s amazing! You said so yourself!’ He whirled around and shouted: ‘It’s dimensionally transcendental! Now, that’s just gotta be a temptation to the Voracious Craw, hasn’t it? That has just got to be worth a nibble, eh?’ He was looking very pleased with his idea.

‘You are going to feed your ship to the Voracious Craw?’ Barbara said, looking shocked.

‘No, no, no,’ said the Doctor, rolling his eyes. ‘But I’m going to use it as bait. We’re going to materialise somewhere – I don’t know – up in the sky somewhere, and lure the big nasty thing off course. And then, when it comes after us, we’ll just. . . I don’t know. . . nick off.’

Martha said, ‘It doesn’t sound very foolproof.’

He looked crestfallen. ‘I thought it was a great idea!’

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‘What if it doesn’t come after us?’ Barbara said. ‘What if it isn’t tempted?’

‘It will be,’ the Doctor said. ‘We’ll open the doors and shout yoo-hoo, or something. Look, there’s lots of lovely infinite interior dimensions in here! Or, look! Endless interiority-is-us!’

‘Hmmm,’ said Martha. ‘I don’t like the sound of it much.’

‘And the thing might still gobble up the Dreamhome and Father,’

Solin said. ‘And then gobble up the rest of us. And the TARDIS.’