by Doctor Who
‘Call an ambulance!’ shouted Rose.
The driver got out his mobile and started dialling.
Rose knelt by the young woman and took her hand. The woman’s eyelids were fluttering. There might still be a chance. She remembered watching a first aid video from her old job; after an accident, you have to keep the person talking. ‘Listen! Talk to me. My name’s Rose Tyler. What’s your name?’
The woman said faintly, ‘Kate. . . ’
‘What’s your second name? Kate, what’s your surname? Talk to me!
Everything’s gonna be fine. There’s an ambulance coming.’
Rose clenched the hand in hers, but the middle of Kate’s body was horribly twisted, and a deep purple stain of blood was colouring her 8
blouse.
Rose squeezed her hand hard, so hard it hurt. ‘Kate!’
Her eyes rolled. ‘Yates. . . I’m Kate Yates. . . ’ Then Rose saw the light go out of her eyes.
Suddenly something stung Rose’s hand. She flinched and drew it back. At the same time, Kate’s body twitched and shook. Her back arched. A green aura spread out from the wound, rolling out to cover her whole body. Rose swallowed. The air around Kate had the tang of a thunderstorm; she was crackling with power.
The aura disappeared as quickly as it had come, as if flicked off by a switch.
Kate’s red hair was now blonde.
Rose leaned forward. ‘Kate?’
Her blouse still stained, Kate calmly stood and picked up her bag.
Rose looked down at where she’d lain, at the pool of fresh blood.
‘It’s all right, thanks. I’m fine,’ said Kate.
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CHAPTER THREE
THE DOCTOR LOOKED UP at the grinding central column of the TARDIS. As soon as he’d touched the controls, the doors had shut and the craft had decided to take off. ‘Hello! There should be two passengers on this ship!’ he cried.
He crossed to the scanner screen, which was filled with a strange set of symbols he hadn’t seen before. He knew one thing for sure, though: the TARDIS was not under the control of an outside influence. It had changed course from the moon and brought them to Earth. Now it was taking him somewhere else. Even after nine centuries of travel through space and time, it could still surprise him.
‘What are you trying to tell me? Don’t go all cryptic. Can’t you just say? And where are we going now – Northampton?’ He flicked a few buttons with no result. ‘Stop, stop!’
A second later the column shuddered to a halt, the big room tilting and knocking him off his feet. He switched the screen to an outside view of his new location. It showed a dark, empty concrete chamber.
He stripped off his spacesuit and took his pinstripe suit jacket from a peg. Putting it on, he grabbed a torch from a locker, then swung the doors open and strode out. Wherever the TARDIS had taken him, and for whatever reason, it had only been in flight for a few seconds. He couldn’t be very far from where he’d left Rose.
It certainly looked and smelt very different from the last stop. The air was damp and decayed, with that special flat coolness you only find underground. The beam of his torch pierced through the pitch blackness. It passed over bare concrete pillars to settle on a metal sign with AREA 3 written on it in stark, official lettering. Next to it was a bracket where a fire extinguisher would once have fitted.
Beside that was a huge studded dark green metal door, swung wide open. He walked through it into a long, bare corridor. ‘Hello. Any-11
one about?’ he called, not expecting an answer. The place seemed deserted, abandoned.
He walked a little further down the corridor and turned into another room. The torch lit up two lines of old, rusting iron beds. On the wall by the door was a phone; the Doctor lifted it and listened.
It was dead. The sole of his shoe scuffed against something on the floor. He knelt down and picked up a tattered booklet with the title
‘Protect and Survive’ and a date of 1980. ‘“Eat only tinned food,”’ he read from it.
‘“If you live in a caravan or other similar accommodation which provides very little protection against fall-out, your local authority will be able to advise you on what to do.”’ He laughed to himself.
‘Hello. It’s the council and we advise you to run like hell.’
So he was in a nuclear bunker, a disused one by the look of it. But why had the TARDIS brought him here?
Before he had time to think about it any further, he heard something he was not expecting. He strained to listen. Yes, he was right.
Somebody, somewhere in this bunker, was listening to the radio.
He set off in search of that person.
Frank Openshaw sat back proudly in his chair, watching the dig, tapping his toes to the song on the radio. The slow, patient business of his greatest project yet was spread out before him. Volunteers, mostly students from the local farming college, were working carefully down in the pit, which was lit by several huge lamps. He took a swig of coffee from the cup of his thermos flask, feeling secure and successful.
This site was going to make his name. He didn’t care too much about the fame, but the security of guaranteed work was another matter.
He’d never let Sandra down again.
Somebody tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Excuse me, can I borrow your phone?’ asked a voice in a slightly odd, London-but-not-quite-London accent.
Frank looked up. The owner of the voice was too old to be a student; he was tall and very thin, dark-haired, dressed in a slightly scruffy suit. Frank blinked. It was as if someone had switched on 12
a bright light. The stranger shone with confidence and enthusiasm, and he found himself handing over his mobile phone without even thinking about it.
‘You won’t get a signal down here,’ Frank warned him.
‘Bet I will,’ said the stranger. He took a slender metal tube from his pocket, flicked a switch on its side and held its tip to the side of the phone. Then he dialled.
Frank looked on fascinated.
He heard a woman’s voice on the phone. ‘OK, what happened?’
‘I’m blaming the TARDIS,’ said the stranger.
‘Yeah, it’s all the
TARDIS’s fault. It’s got all these emergency systems. I turned them all off years ago. They kept going off and I couldn’t hear myself think.
Must have come back on. I’m at –’ he looked at Frank – ‘Where am I?’
‘Crediton Vale,’ said Frank.
‘Crediton Vale, disused bunker, must be about a mile and a half away. Lovely walk for you. I’m jealous. See you in a bit.’
‘Hold on, Doctor,’ said the woman’s voice urgently. ‘Something really weird and important. Two things actually. First, there’s this dig, and they’ve –’
‘Yeah, I’m there now. See you later. I can’t talk because I’m on someone else’s phone.’ He snapped the phone shut and handed it back to Frank. Then he rubbed his hands and looked down into the pit. ‘Digging,’ he said. ‘Don’t know if I like digging. Digging can be good, digging can be bad. Depending on what the diggers are digging up.’ He turned to Frank and gave a wide, wide smile. ‘I know. Shall I stop talking for a bit?’
Frank was looking at his phone’s screen. No bars. ‘The signal’s gone,’ he said.
‘Has it?’ replied the stranger innocently.
Frank pointed to the metal tube in the stranger’s hand. ‘What’s that? How did it do that?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ said the stranger. ‘Birthday present from my sister-in-law. I wanted a tie.’ He pointed over Frank’s shoulder to a long piece of rotted wood, one of their biggest finds so far, which was tagged and laid out on a long work table. ‘That’s the turning spike 13
from a Roman well, about AD 70. Tie your horse there, round and round it goes. Five minutes later one nice bucket of water, one very dizzy horse.’
Frank got up and followed him to the table, scratching his head.
‘I thought it was a suppor
ting beam,’ he said. Something about this bloke made him feel like a beginner.
‘No, look at the edges. Too smooth for that.’ He reached out and shook Frank’s hand very tightly. ‘I’m the Doctor, by the way.’
‘Frank Openshaw. They said someone was coming down from London. . . ’
‘Did they?’ The Doctor saw another find on the table, a worn Roman coin. ’Ah, look at that. Nero. Takes me back.’ He knelt, slipped on a pair of glasses and chuckled at the man’s profile on the coin. ‘He was fatter than that.’ He pointed upwards. ’So, there was a Roman town there, right? And it went up in the revolt of Boudicca. The Britons chucked everything down into these caves. About 1950 the British government builds a great big bunker in the caves: centre of regional government. Looks like a bungalow up top, very secret. When the Cold War ends, someone goes to fill this place in and build some flats on the surface. Then they find this stuff and call you in. Am I right or what?’,
Frank swallowed. ‘Pretty much. OK, come and have a look at this.’
He led the Doctor to the pile of most recent finds and handed him a metal triangle. ‘Gardening tool?’
The Doctor shook his head sadly. ‘No, handle’s wrong. That’s a pizza slice. Except they didn’t have tomatoes then. It was more like herby cheese on toast. Cheesy naan actually. Yum.’ He took off his glasses, put them away and looked right at Frank. ‘Sorry. Am I being annoying?’
‘Didn’t catch your name,’ said Frank.
‘Just the Doctor. The. Doctor.’ He scratched the back of his neck.
‘Now, would I be wrong to think you’ve dug something up that you really, really don’t understand?’
Frank sighed. ‘And I suppose you’ll know just what it is.’.
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The Doctor shrugged. ‘Might do. Sorry. Everybody loves a smar-tarse. . . ’
Frank pointed down a narrow corridor that led off the main dig.
‘Image on the right of the mosaic. Down there. Follow the lights.’
The Doctor gave him a thumbs-up and walked off. Frank stared after him and wondered. And the more he wondered, the odder the thoughts that came into his head.
One of the students broke into his thinking. ‘Frank!’ he called from the pit. ‘There’s something metal down here. Dead weird it is!’
The Doctor sauntered along the corridor. A standard lamp shone down on to a display case with a large, rough-edged mosaic inside.
The Doctor guessed that when the Britons had looted the Roman town above, they’d tossed it down into the caves too.
He saw what was depicted there and felt his hearts skip a beat. At the same moment he heard cries of excitement and surprise from the main dig. The radio was switched off.
He ran back. ‘Frank! Mr Openshaw!’
He emerged into the huge hollowed-out room and jumped down into the pit, striding over to where Openshaw and his workers were gathered in a far corner.
‘Get away from it!’ he called, pushing a couple of the students aside.
And found himself facing a Dalek.
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CHAPTER FOUR
‘LOOKS LIKE A ROBOT,’ said Frank.
The thing had been unearthed hurriedly by the students. In their excitement they had forgotten that the first rule of archaeology was patience. Its base was still covered in earth and its sides were caked in lumps of dirt. It looked exactly like the thing in the mosaic. Its golden casing had lost its colour but it remained whole. Eye-stalk, sucker and stubby gun were lifted arrogantly. The Doctor waved a hand over the eyepiece. No reaction.
He seemed to consider for a second. Then, as Frank moved to touch it, he cried, ‘It’s a bomb! Step back from it, Frank!’
Frank pulled his hand back. One of the students looked the Doctor up and down, then asked, ‘Who’s this?’
Frank and the Doctor looked at each other. Somehow, Frank trusted this odd young stranger. ‘It’s the bloke from London,’ he heard himself saying, though he knew it wasn’t true.
The Doctor slapped the student’s arm down as he lifted it towards the gun stick. ‘And the bloke from London says get back!’ Then he grabbed a loud hailer from the floor of the pit and called, ‘Evacuate the area! I have authority from London and all that! Get up to the surface now!’
Frank wasn’t surprised when the students obeyed. But he found himself remaining.
The museum teashop opened early. Kate, who was the only customer, munched in a daze on a teacake while speaking on the phone to Serena. Getting angry with Serena was pointless – but still, Kate was getting angry. ‘Yes, I was nearly run over. Just now.’
‘Nearly run over running for the late bus, then?’ asked Serena’s dull, flat voice.
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‘The “nearly run over” part of the sentence is the important bit!’
Kate snapped.
She felt a wave of anger rushing up inside her. Why did she have to even pretend to be polite to this idiot? The meaning of the phrase
‘seeing red’ suddenly became clear to her. She felt that if Serena had been there she could have picked up her butter knife and stabbed her.
But she wasn’t, so she flipped her mobile shut and grabbed the café’s copy of the paper from the counter. Idly, she turned to the puzzle page.
She might have a go at the easy crossword to calm herself down.
The sudoku puzzles caught her eye instead. She’d hardly bothered to look at them before – she’d always been rubbish at maths – but this morning the numbers seemed to dance in the air. Without even thinking about it she filled all the empty boxes in – for all three: the easy, hard and killer sudokus – her fingers whizzing across the page.
Then she looked at the crosswords. She filled in the blanks with letters easily, solving even the hardest clues in fractions of a second.
It was easy. Really easy. Why had she never noticed that before?
She looked around, taking deep breaths. Something in the world had changed – or was it inside her?
She could see the atoms dancing around the room. She knew the exact temperature of her coffee. She saw and understood the chemical processes taking place inside the cup. But this wasn’t like thinking.
She didn’t have to concentrate, or make an effort. It felt as natural as breathing. And with it came a sense of strength and power. Her hand reached for a sachet of sweetener in a bowl. She rubbed it gently between her thumb and finger and watched as it broke apart in a little blizzard of static electricity.
She took another deep breath and looked up. Someone had entered the little shop – the pretty blonde girl who’d held her hand out in the road, Rose. That seemed like a dream. She wanted to sneer. As if a speeding car could stop her!
‘So you’re OK now?’ asked Rose.
Kate smiled. ‘I’m fine, thanks. Just gonna finish this and go to work.
Thanks.’
Rose sat down next to her, leaning close. ‘That car smacked right 18
into you. You were dying. What’s the deal? You can tell me.’
Kate bridled. ‘Sorry. Could you move a bit back? I like my personal space.’
Rose pointed to Kate’s blouse. ‘You’re covered in blood. You should be dead.’
There was something very kind and trusting in the girl’s deep brown eyes. Kate swallowed; a cruel thought came into her mind. Such emotions were weak.
Rose went on, ‘I know what it feels like. Something happens that you can’t explain. You invent any excuse to stop thinking about it.’
‘What’s your name again?’ asked Kate, though she knew.
‘Rose. Rose Tyler.’ She held out her hand.
Kate took it, shook it. Tight. ‘Great. Now then, Rose Tyler, clear off.
I’ve got enough on my plate.’
Rose flinched and pulled her hand away.
Frank watched as the Doctor ran that glowing metal tube of his slowly over the object he’d described as a bomb. Then the Doctor gave a deep sigh. Some of the cheeky light came back into
his eyes. He looked across at Frank. ‘Is there any point me asking you to go home?’
‘None,’ said Frank. He pointed to the section of the bomb where the domed head met a rusty metal grille surrounded by metal slats.
‘Could be a hinge there.’
The Doctor smiled. ‘I like you, Frank Openshaw. You’re clever.’
He applied the tip of the tube to the hinge and then carefully lifted up the dome. Frank came closer. Inside there was a tangle of electronic parts and wires. It looked as if something was missing in this central space, something about the size of a football that would once have sat there. The Doctor reached in and picked up a handful of dust. He sifted it between his fingers and then blew it away.
‘Dead as a doornail,’ he said. He seemed relieved – but also, Frank felt, perhaps a little sad, as if staring into the past.
Frank made a small snorting noise. ‘A bomb? In earth that hasn’t been touched for 2,000 years?’
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The Doctor rubbed the dust from his hands and smiled. ‘OK, clever Frank Openshaw, you’ve got me. It’s not strictly a bomb.’ He pat-ted the casing. ‘It’s all that’s left of the most terrifying thing in the universe.’
‘I’ve never seen one before,’ said Frank.
‘And you don’t how lucky you are.’ He whistled and pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. ‘Now really, hop it.’ He returned to his study of the object.
Frank didn’t move. He considered the Doctor’s words. ‘You said
“universe”.’
‘What about it?’ asked the Doctor.
‘Nobody would say “the most terrifying thing in the universe”. Un-less they were mad, and you’re not mad.’
The Doctor frowned. ‘Go home, Frank. You’ve got a day off. Put your feet up, have sausage and chips, watch Brainteaser. Come back tomorrow.’
‘You’d only say “universe” if you were – I don’t know, from space,’
