Doctor Who (12 page)

And they ran for their lives, beams shooting past them as every Dalek in the squad opened fire. Impacts seared across the landing pad, ruptured the concrete surface, sent chunks of dust and debris into the air. Direct hits to the saucer tore open the outer plating of its hull, ripping the ship apart.

The Doctor and the children rolled and scrambled their way to safety. All the while, the thought pounded through the Doctor’s mind … Have I miscalculated this time? Is this how it ends? A stupid bit of over-confidence on some depressing human colony planet where everyone thought the Daleks were the good guys?

Miraculously, they made it to the TARDIS and slammed themselves against it, hiding from the barrage of Dalek fire. The police box shuddered and shook as beams impacted on the other side of it, crackling and spitting like a collision of iced water and white hot larva, the sharp smell of relentless combustion stinging the nostrils.

The children got their breath back, but then all three of them looked confused.

‘How come the Dalek guns aren’t affecting your crate?’ asked Sabel, straining to be heard over the terrible noise.

‘She’s indestructible!’ said the Doctor, patting the TARDIS … which shuddered again as another eardrum-splitting impact slammed into it. ‘Well, more or less.’

The trouble was, they couldn’t stay hidden here indefinitely, reasoned the Doctor, because the Daleks were getting closer and closer. The angle of their fire
was getting wider and wider and soon the beams would reach them, even on this side of the TARDIS. Worse still …

‘Oh great! The doors are on the other side!’ shouted the Doctor. He was, of course, referring to the side that was currently being blasted.

Suddenly having an idea, the Doctor fixed all three children in turn with the sternest look he could muster. ‘Stay here!’ he said. ‘You understand me?’

They all nodded.

‘No matter what happens … 
you – don’t – move!
Understand?’

They all nodded again.

‘Right,’ he said, and crouched down, daring to poke his head around to the side of the TARDIS that was being bombarded with deadly rays. He immediately ducked back to the safe side, as several blasts impacted close enough to singe his eyebrows.

‘Ow!’ he cried out, more for effect than anything else. ‘When I need my eyebrows trimming,’ he shouted out to the Daleks, ‘I’ll let you know!’ He bit his thumbnail and slapped his hand against the shell of the TARDIS in frustration.

‘Are you going to have another plan?’ asked Ollus’s little voice, barely audible above the screaming Dalek onslaught.

Of course he was going to have another plan. That’s what he did! And what’s more, thought the Doctor, all of a sudden, it was going to be the
same
plan.

‘Give me your spaceship again, please, Ollus,’ asked the Doctor, holding out his hand.

Ollus shook his head.

Sabel gave him a sharp look. ‘Ollus, be a good boy! The Doctor is having a plan!’

‘I let him have my spaceship already today, I did!’ protested Ollus. ‘He can’t have it again. He might break it!’

‘Ah, but you didn’t see what I did with it, did you?’ asked the Doctor, trying to sound as tantalisingly interesting as possible.

‘No,’ said Ollus and turned his back on the Doctor, folding his arms, keeping the little toy inside his jumper.

‘You just fiddled with it and your magic wand and then did a clever thing to the skimmer controls,’ offered Jenibeth.

‘Er … yes, that’s right,’ said the Doctor, slightly wrong-footed. ‘But wouldn’t you like to know exactly what that clever thing was?’

The three children all turned and faced the Doctor. Ollus was considering, his nose wrinkled and his mouth squidging from side to side. Sabel was anxious, clearly aware of the encroaching beams. Jenibeth was full of enthusiasm.

‘Oooh, yes please,’ said Jenibeth, as if she were volunteering for an extra piece of birthday cake. ‘Go on, Ollus, give the Doctor your spaceship again.’

Ollus was still considering.

The searing beams were getting closer. Sabel edged away from the blasts. The Doctor ran his fingers through his hair, trying not to look tense, starting to worry that they might all be fried alive by deadly Dalek death-rays simply because a 4-year-old boy had got into a mood!
Not exactly the least humiliating thing to have on your tombstone, he thought …

‘Tell me the clever thing you did before,’ said Ollus, coming to a conclusion.

‘And then will you give me your spaceship?’ asked the Doctor, now really trying his utmost not to sound cross or scared.

‘Er … probably,’ said Ollus, giving a little shrug.

‘Oh, Ollus! We’re going to d—’ Sabel screamed.

The Doctor raised a placating hand. ‘No need to frighten anyone, Sabel,’ he said, as calmly as he could. Then he gathered his thoughts for a light-speed explanation of the ‘clever thing’ he had done. ‘OK … Well, it’s like this … I-adjusted-the-hologram-projector-of-your-toy-and-the-radio-wave-transmitter-of-the-skimmer. I-transmitted-the-holograms-from-your-toy-directly-at-that-Dalek-on-its-command-frequency … Which-meant-it-ended-up-thinking-it-could-see-space-warps-and-comets-and-big-colourful-planets. In short, it thought it was under attack from something it couldn’t understand. What do you say to that?’

Ollus nodded, smiling a big smile. He immediately handed over the toy spaceship to the Doctor. ‘That was great,’ he said. ‘Are you going to do it again?’

The Doctor was already at work with his sonic screwdriver, clicking the controls and provoking various buzzes and bleeps. ‘Sort of,’ he said, concentrating hard. He flicked a glance to the edge of the safe side of the TARDIS. It was fizzing with burning energy. The beams were starting to move round the corner. The Daleks would soon be able to get a direct shot at them.

He could see that Sabel was fully aware of this. She stared right into his eyes with a fierce combination of fear and hope that was as tangible as a scream for help. He nodded at her, darting his eyes to Jenibeth and Ollus. Sabel, bright as a button, took the hint and gathered her brother and sister into her little arms, hugged them tight and edged them sideways, as far from danger as she dared.

‘All right!’ said the Doctor, completing his work. ‘Same as before … no matter what happens, you stay here!’

He pointed the little toy up at the light on top of the TARDIS. Activating the spaceship and the sonic screwdriver at the same time, he tensed, hoping that he had got his adjustments right. There would be no time left to readjust anything now.

For several, excruciating moments, nothing seemed to happen. Sabel and the children fixed their eyes on him. The Doctor kept pointing the toy at the TARDIS’s light, willing it to work with all his might. Sabel gave a little, desperate smile of crumbling encouragement.

Then, just when the Doctor was convinced he had failed and tears were starting to flood down Sabel’s face …

A beautiful funnel of compressed, swirling, rainbow light leapt out from the toy towards the top of the TARDIS. As it hit the glass of the TARDIS’s lamp, it blossomed into a plume of burgeoning colour, refracting wildly. Then, with a sparkling, dazzling flash, the sky around them was suddenly filled with a huge, holographic projection of space warps, comets,
planets, all swirling around each other in a giddying, spectacular display.

The approaching Dalek Squad Leader knew now that it would be mere moments before the Doctor and the children would be visible and in range. The squad’s approach had taken them across a vast distance of walkways. They had been under orders to approach at ground level and to maintain a steady, slow course. It did not know why these oddly cautious tactics had been specified, nor did it dare to question. It obeyed. And soon that obedience would be rewarded, it felt sure, with the extermination of the Doctor.

Then …

Nothing seemed to make sense.

Suddenly, a giant space warp was opening up in front of the squad.

A space warp.

Comets thundered towards them.

Gigantic, multi-coloured planets …

For a moment, the Squad Leader and its squad were frozen in indecision. They came to a halt and stopped firing.

All at once, the Doctor suddenly remembered he had succeeded … in the first part of the plan, at least. Now, he, realised, he was wasting precious seconds staring in awe at the beautiful holograms all around.

‘Remember … 
stay
!’ he shouted to the children, as he dashed round the other side of the TARDIS, already brandishing his key.

This side of the TARDIS was still glowing a little from the Dalek gun-blasting it had been receiving. The Doctor noted that the outer shell was even feeling a trifle warm as he thrust the key into the lock and opened the door, dashing inside. Most unusual for the TARDIS. The old girl had really been getting a right pasting, he thought.

The door slammed shut behind him.

Behind the TARDIS, Sabel, Ollus and Jenibeth stayed crouched together.

‘Where’s he gone?’ asked Jenibeth.

‘Sssh,’ said Sabel. ‘Just stay still. You heard what he said.’

‘Is he going to come back?’ asked Ollus.

‘Of course he is!’ said Sabel, perhaps a little more angrily than she had intended. And suddenly she found herself questioning her faith in the Doctor. She didn’t really know him. He was just a strange man who’d told her that her Mummy and Daddy were dead. He may not even really be a nice man. He may really be horrible. Perhaps he was never coming back.

The Dalek Squad Leader’s internal systems had assessed what was happening.

‘Threat identified as holographic projection!’ it squawked out loud as it transmitted instructions to its fellow Daleks. ‘Advance! Recommence firing!’

Sabel, Ollus and Jenibeth instinctively ducked at the sound of the Dalek guns crackling back into life again.
The blue crate shuddered violently under the multiple impacts and Sabel feared the worst. Where was the Doctor? He had gone around the other side of this strange blue crate, and now it was being roasted by the Daleks.

What if the Doctor hadn’t managed to open the doors of the crate in time? Would she care if he had died? Would it hurt her as much as the news of her parents’ death? Would it even matter? If the Doctor was dead or even just not coming back …

The searing beam impacts fizzed fully round the corner of the TARDIS and started sizzling across the blue, wooden-looking surface.

Sabel immediately dragged Ollus and Jenibeth with her as she struggled to get to safety. But there was nowhere safe to go. There were Dalek beams hitting three sides of this crate, and now they were advancing across the fourth side towards them.

Suddenly, there was another sound. A weird, deep, groaning sound. She remembered she had heard something a bit like it before, when she and her brother and sister had been hiding in the escape pod back on the ship. The sound grew and grew, the groaning roaring into a deep, scraping sound that made her teeth vibrate. It was coming from the blue crate … the Doctor’s TARDIS was making this noise.

Sabel turned to the TARDIS and stared at it. To her horror, for an instant, she was beginning to be able to see right through it. The Doctor had said this was what he had arrived on their ship in. This must be the way it travelled. It disappeared, like magic, then reappeared
somewhere else. And now … he was leaving them. Leaving them to die.

Then, all of a sudden, the groaning sound crashed to a halt in a gigantic thud and the blue crate was solid again.

By now, Sabel realised, Ollus and Jenibeth were staring at the blue crate too.

‘It’s changed,’ said Ollus, simply.

‘What?’ asked Sabel. Ollus was a very clever little boy, but this meant that he often said very silly things.

‘Oh, for goodness sake, Ollus,’ started Sabel – but then she saw what he meant.

The wall of the TARDIS had indeed changed. There were now two circles on it underneath its windows. A small, silver, metal circle and a white, painted, circular symbol.

But before Sabel had a chance to work out what this meant, the blue panelled walls of the TARDIS opened and there stood the Doctor, beaming, arms wide. He had somehow turned this crate around so that the doors were facing them.

The Doctor reached out, grabbed them all and pulled them inside. The doors slammed shut behind them.

The cold, blue light of the Dalek Time Controller’s eye lens stared intently at the shifting images of eternity. With an expertise honed over centuries, through its dark odyssey stretching across the entirety of space and time, it pinpointed the next moment at which intervention into the Doctor’s time stream would be necessary.

Its gunstick twitched, instinctively, as it observed the Doctor pulling the Blakely children inside his TARDIS. It would soon be time …

‘Soon …’ it murmured to itself.

The Doctor dashed up the steps to the TARDIS console, leaving the children standing at the door. They would need time to adjust, he knew that.

As he busied himself at the controls, effecting an immediate dematerialisation, he afforded himself a glance at Sabel, Ollus and Jenibeth. They looked dumbstruck.

Ollus stepped forward, with purpose, walking up the
stairs. The Doctor wondered exactly what penetrating question about the nature of the TARDIS was about to issue forth from this remarkable 4-year-old.

‘Can I have my spaceship back now, please?’ asked Ollus.

‘Ah …’ said the Doctor, plunging a hand into his inside jacket pocket. Ollus looked troubled for a moment or two, until the Doctor produced his spaceship. ‘There we are,’ said the Doctor, depositing the toy into Ollus’s outstretched hands.

Ollus wandered around the console, looking it up and down. The glass spheres inside the central column were now bobbing up and down in time to the grating, scraping sound of the TARDIS engines.

‘What’s that noise?’ asked Ollus. ‘Is something going wrong?’

‘Er, no!’ said the Doctor, defensive and a little hurt. ‘Look, let’s not mess about here … It’s bigger on the inside … much bigger! And it’s a time and space machine, which, yes, does mean that we can travel anywhere in time and space. I think that about covers it.’