Doctor Who: Shining Darkness (3 page)

DONNA WAS STARTING
to get worried. Seriously worried. Fair enough, travelling with the Doctor had its share of troubles. Getting separated from him on this scale wasn’t usually one: normally, she had a fair idea of where she was, where he was. And she could usually rely on him finding her pretty quickly.

But this felt different.

She had no idea where she was. Heck, she had no idea where the
planet
was. The Andromeda galaxy, the Doctor had said. Twumpty billion light years from Earth, or something.

Most of the other places that she’d been since she’d teamed up, again, with the Doctor had felt vaguely familiar: Pompeii had been a bit like a theme park, the Ood-Sphere had just been a wintry planet. Granted, the Ood had been a bit strange at first, but the humans there had given the place a sense of familiarity and, in the end, the Ood had been more human than most of the humans. This planet,
Uhlala
(if that really
was
its name: she wasn’t convinced that the Doctor had understood what the young woman he’d asked was saying), felt unearthly in a way that nowhere else had done: the smells, the sounds, the sights – all of them shrieked ‘Alien!’ The people walking the streets were bizarre, many of them not looking the least bit like
real
people. And the robots…

Donna’s only real experiences with robots had been the robot Santas and the ones on Planet 1. And they were hardly poster children for cuddly, friendly machines. If the ones around here had
looked
like robots – big, googly eyes like headlamps, hissing steam and the like, or cutesy little things like she’d seen on TV – then maybe she’d have felt more comfortable around them. But too many of them looked like living things or weird bits of modern art – or like bronze Greek gods grafted onto construction machinery. There wasn’t enough shiny chrome and rust for her to think of them as machines, and, quite frankly, they creeped her out. Especially the supermodels, who, now she’d had time to think about it, were probably robots too. No one that thin and that beautiful had any right to be that strong. And silent. No one that thin in
Heat
was ever that silent. Bimbots – that’s what they were: bimbo robots.

They’d dumped her in what was evidently an unused bedroom on the
Dark Light
: all minimal lines, spartan décor (grey and silver – very chic!) and a toilet that had taken her twenty minutes to figure out how it flushed. And they’d locked the door and left her. No amount of banging on it and threatening the little fat guy with what she’d do to him
when
she got her hands on him had made the slightest difference. She moped around the room, annoyed by the lack of a window (cheapskates, putting her in an inside room), pressed all the buttons on the intercom thing by the bed (no one answered, if it was even working), had a quick wash in the shiny black bathroom, and then flumped down on the bed, all out of ideas.

What would the Doctor do?

Assuming he didn’t have his sonic screwdriver (which, of course, Donna didn’t), he’d probably rummage around in his pockets, cobble something together out of fluff, string and an old beer mat, and be out of the room in seconds. Donna didn’t have any string or beer mats in her pockets (although there was a depressing amount of fluff) and the room was empty of anything that could have stood in for them. She began a careful, inch-by-inch search of the place, just in case someone had dropped a keycard, or there was a whopping great ventilation duct or exposed wires or something. Not that she’d have known what to do with them, but it would have been
something
. She wondered, briefly, if the Doctor’s previous travelling companions had ever sat him down and got him to teach them ‘Breaking Out of Locked Rooms For Beginners’. She suspected not. It wasn’t like they had hours and hours of down-time in the TARDIS. Recently, it seemed like they’d been catapulted from one adventure to another with barely a moment to breathe and get her hair washed. She looked down and plucked at the fur trim of her coat, realising how manky it was starting to look, and wondering whether, by the time the Doctor took her back to Earth, she’d be hopelessly out-of-fashion
and
everyone would laugh at her in the street. She wondered, idly, if they did dry cleaning in space.

Oh, for god’s sake!
she thought, launching herself up off the bed. Locked in a room on an alien spaceship on the other side of the universe, and all she could do was worry about her clothes!

‘Get a grip!’ she told herself, crossing to the door and banging on it so hard that she hurt her hand.

To her surprise – surprise that must have shown on her face, judging by Garaman’s (was it Garaman? Garroway? Garibaldi?) expression – the door opened almost instantly, revealing the little man, looking all smug and unctuous. Behind him stood one of the bimbots. For the first time, she could see its cold, unblinking expression clearly and she shivered.

‘I think,’ said Garaman, entering the room without so much as a by-your-leave, ‘we need to talk.’ He twirled on the spot and looked up at her. ‘Don’t you?’

‘—ain!’ finished the Doctor as his atoms fuzzled themselves back into existence. He turned sharply to the boy and the robot, reassured that the TARDIS had come along with him. ‘What is it with you people and transmats? What’s wrong with a good, old-fashioned shuttle? I could tell you some stories about transmats, you know.’ He stopped and fished the sonic screwdriver from his pocket. ‘Now…’ He paused and shifted his weight from one foot to the other, narrowing his eyes, before pulling a yoyo from his pocket and experimentally bouncing it a couple of times. ‘Spaceship.’ He looked at the boy who was eyeing him
curiously
. ‘In orbit? Thought so. Right – where are your sensor controls?’

‘Sensor controls?’

The Doctor brandished the sonic screwdriver in his face. ‘I need to plug this in before the trace goes cold.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘And if you’re half as interested in what was stolen from the art gallery as I think you are, if you lead me to Donna, then
I’ll
lead you to
that
. Deal?’

The boy considered the Doctor’s words for a few moments before pursing his lips and nodding.

The ship, the Doctor noted as the boy led him through the corridors (with the silent robot right behind him) had seen better days. The walls were a dull, steel colour, although half-hearted patches of green and orange paint occasionally shone through the grime and the rust. There was a smell of oil and heat in the air, and every now and again the floor would shudder as though the ship were turning over in its sleep. Or having a nightmare.

‘So,’ said the Doctor conversationally, over his shoulder, as they trotted down the passage, ‘been together long?’

There was no answer from the hulking great machine. For something so big, thought the Doctor, it was surprisingly quiet in its movements. Its face – a broad v-shape of dull metal with no mouth and two eyes that burned like hot coals – looked down at him impassively.

‘Mother doesn’t speak,’ said the boy.

The Doctor pulled a face.

‘Not like most mothers I’ve met, then. Not
your
mother, I take it? What
is
your name, by the way?’

‘Boonie,’ answered the boy as the door through which they were passing jammed half open and had to be shouldered aside. ‘And no, not my mother. It’s what she’s called.’

They were in the control room: the Doctor appraised it with a quick glance. Shabby, grubby, noisy – but somehow welcoming. A lived-in control room. Not like some of the swanky show-control rooms he’d seen.

‘Nice!’ he approved as he headed for what were undoubtedly the sensor and scanning controls. A middle-aged woman with cropped, black hair, wearing a stiff, grey uniform stepped forwards, a look of alarm and confusion on her face.

‘It’s OK,’ Boonie said, and the woman dropped back, still not sure.

‘I’m the Doctor,’ said the Doctor brightly, sticking the sonic in his mouth to shake her hand whilst he used the other to fiddle with the sensors.

‘Kellique,’ the woman said, throwing another glance at Boonie. ‘What’s this about?’

‘The Doctor is helping us search for…’ Boonie broke off, briefly. ‘For the exhibit.’

‘That what?’

‘The
exhibit
,’ said Boonie pointedly. ‘From the gallery.’

‘Oh,’ said Kellique, sounding relieved – and a little pleased with herself. ‘That. We’ve got it covered.’

The Doctor’s face fell.

‘You have? Well, you know how to make a man feel redundant. Where is it, then?’ He peered at the display set into the sensor controls and jabbed a finger at it. ‘Is that
it?
Ahhh… so that would put it…’ He straightened up, whirled round a couple of times before pointing towards one of the walls. ‘About eleven thousand kilometres that way.’

‘Give or take,’ said Kellique, still trying to work him out.

‘And what are we doing about it?’ asked the Doctor.

‘We’re going to follow it,’ said Boonie, striding towards a big, raggedy chair in the centre of the room and dropping himself into it. Stuffing was leaking out of the arms, and the Doctor noticed how much of the rest of it was held together with wire and sticky tape.

‘Really? Why don’t we just use your magic transmat and beam it back out? Along with Donna,’ he added.

Kellique crossed to Boonie.

‘Who’s Donna? Who
is
this man?’

Boonie looked up, his eyes grim and hard.

‘They were in the gallery when it was beamed out, according to our agent. They took his friend – Donna.’

‘Excuse me,’ interrupted the Doctor, joining Kellique at Boonie’s side. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Mother shift slightly. ‘But who exactly are “they”? And why did they steal that thing?’

Boonie’s glance connected with Kellique’s for a moment.

‘I mean,’ continued the Doctor, beginning a leisurely stroll around the room, ‘it’s obvious that if a rather sophisticated piece of equipment, posing as a bit of modern art, gets lifted by a spaceship in orbit, then someone would know about it. Are you art police? Is that it? Whizzing
around
the galaxy foiling art thieves?’ He looked around the room. ‘A bit
Scooby Doo
, isn’t it? And I don’t mean to be rude, but you don’t exactly look like art police? Not,’ he added awkwardly, ‘that I’d know what art police look like. But whatever they look like, it’s not you lot, is it?’

He stopped. All eyes were on him.

‘OK, so now I’m just babbling. But it has given me the chance to examine your control room and to work out that, if you
are
the art police, then art crimes aren’t at the top of the local police force’s list of priorities. This ship is ancient and falling apart,’ he continued, despite the frowns and looks from Boonie and Kellique, ‘and is clearly more of a private venture. And, financially, not a very successful one.’

He slapped his palm against his forehead.

‘Of course! You’re art
thieves
, aren’t you? You were casing the gallery when someone slipped in before you and lifted it. That’s how you knew what had happened, and how you were waiting for me at the TARDIS.’

‘Would it shut you up,’ Boonie said, ‘if I told you that no, we’re not art thieves?’

‘It might,’ replied the Doctor cautiously. ‘Of course, it might just throw up more questions. And if there’s one thing I like, it’s questions. Prefer answers, mind you, but questions’ll do for starters. Like… shouldn’t you be
following that ship
?’

The sudden urgency in the Doctor’s voice made the two of them turn sharply to the screen set into the arm of Boonie’s chair to which the Doctor had pointed.

The moment their attention was off him, the Doctor
was
sprinting towards the door and past Mother – but the door had barely begun to scrape open when Mother’s huge mechanical hand had grabbed his collar and lifted him off his feet. He swung there for a few moments as Mother turned him round to face Boonie.

‘Nice try, Doctor,’ the boy almost grinned.

‘Well,’ sighed the Doctor. ‘You know what they say: you don’t try, you don’t win.’

‘And where were you planning to go?’ asked Kellique.

The Doctor waved feebly and awkwardly, still dangling from Mother’s hand.

‘Oh, you know… back to my ship. Out into space. To find Donna.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Boonie, getting out of his seat. ‘Not yet, at any rate. Mother, have his ship – the blue box thing – locked in the hold where he can’t get at it. And if he tries anything, hit him. Until he stops.’

Mother lowered him gently to the floor and the Doctor straightened out his crumpled suit.

‘Good!’ he said, mustering as much dignity as he could. ‘Glad we’ve got that one sorted out.’

‘You kidnap me, lock me up in a room without a window – without even a TV! – and now you expect me to have a cosy little chat, do you?’ Donna stood with her hands on her hips, glaring at Garaman. ‘You heard of psychological abuse?’

Garaman had turned his back on Donna and was strolling around the room, trying to act all cool and casual.

‘The Doctor,’ he cut in. ‘This friend of yours. Tell me about him.’

‘I’ll tell you about him,’ said Donna, ‘when you tell me exactly when you’re going to put me back where you found me.’

Garaman looked over his shoulder at her and made a sucking noise with his teeth.

‘That might be a bit of a problem.’

‘What kind of a problem?’

‘Well… seeing as we’re now heading out of the system and I can’t imagine any reason why we’d come ba—’

‘Sorry,’ interrupted Donna, jabbing a finger at him and wiggling it, pointedly. ‘Heading out of the what?’

‘The system – we’ve got what we need from there and now we’re—’

‘No, no. You’re not listening: heading out of the
what
? The system?’

‘The planetary system. We’ve broken orbit and now the
Dark Light
is en route to… to our next port of call.’

Donna took a couple of steps closer to him and drew herself up to her full height, which made Garaman look like a Munchkin.