by BBC
Athrocite was now walking towards the farmhouse. His heavy tread shook the ground as he approached the door.
‘He’s going to turn us to stone now,’ Jess realised.
‘Not if I can help it,’ said Chris. He picked up a kitchen chair. ‘The Doctor said we mustn’t let him back into the farmhouse. We may have to fight.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ said Jess miserably. ‘How can we hold off a thing like that?’
‘We have to try,’ Amy said.
Athrocite loomed in the doorway. The black holes of his eyes bored pitilessly into the farmhouse, looking for the human beings cowering inside.
‘To think I almost felt sorry for him,’ said Amy. Her heart was banging away inside her chest, full of fear. She knew that Jess was probably right – there was no way they could stop the Rock Man now.
‘I’ll fight if I have to,’ Chris said, raising the chair, as he stepped bravely towards the creature.
‘And I’ll fight with you,’ said Ralph Conway.
The farmer stepped up alongside Chris. He was completely back to normal – full of his original health and colour, with not a shred of moon stone about him apart from a thin layer of lunar dust. In his hand he gripped a stout wooden stick.
‘Dad!’ cried Jess in sheer delight. She put a hand to her mouth as tears of happiness sprang into her eyes.
Mr Hogget had also been restored. ‘What the–’
But Ralph Conway turned and pointed at Hoggett and said, very firmly, ‘Not. One. More. Word.’
And Mr Hoggett fell silent.
‘The Doctor did it!’ Jess said. She gave Amy a hug. ‘He did it!’
‘It’s not over yet,’ warned Amy.
Athrocite snarled in the doorway, advancing another step towards Chris and Ralph. The humans looked puny and soft in his presence.
‘Keep back,’ ordered Chris.
There was a moment’s pause – and then Athrocite roared and attacked.
CHAPTER 31
THE ACTUAL MOON
Rory stood in the open doorway of the TARDIS and blinked.
‘We’re on the moon,’ he said. ‘The actual moon.’
‘The actual moon,’ confirmed the Doctor, joining him.
The Doctor was completely restored – full of health and vigour, tugging his bow tie carefully back into shape. His tweed jacket looked none the worse for wear – although there were a couple of small scratches visible on the Doctor’s face and hands.
There was a plaster on the tip of one of his fingers too. ‘Chipped a fragment off when I fell in the yard,’ he explained to Rory.
Rory was still staring at the airless grey landscape outside. For as far as he could see, there was nothing but grey dust and craters. The surface of the moon.
The sky was utterly black, but dotted with stars and one large, cloudy blue sphere: Earth.
‘Wow,’ Rory said. He’d been to fifteenth century Venice, met many kinds of alien and seen all sorts of wonders with the Doctor. But there was something special about this. Perhaps it was because it was just him and the Doctor alone. It was a private viewing of his own planet’s only natural satellite.
‘Can we go out?’ Rory asked. ‘One small step for man, one giant leap for Rory Williams?’
The Doctor smiled but shook his head. ‘Best not. The force field is keeping the air inside the TARDIS. Step out there and it’s nothing but a cold, airless vacuum. You’d need a spacesuit.’
‘You must have spacesuits on the TARDIS.’
‘But not enough time.’ The Doctor patted Rory on the shoulder. ‘I know that sounds a bit ironic, with this being a time machine and everything, but we ought to get on with what we came here for.’
Rory looked down at the meteorite in his hand. The strange alien ball from the dawn of the universe that had landed on the moon nearly four billion years ago. The tiny meteorite that had been found by the Apollo astronauts and brought back to Earth for study. The meteorite that had caused all the trouble in the first place.
‘Back where it belongs,’ Rory said, and hurled the ball far out onto the surface of the moon. It bounced a couple of times, lazily in the lighter gravity, and then settled in a dust mound.
‘It doesn’t really belong anywhere,’ said the Doctor. ‘But it will be safe up here.’
Rory took one last look out of the police box. ‘Wow,’ he said again.
Back on Earth, in the Conway farmhouse, Athrocite roared in anger.
And then roared in pain.
He stiffened, shot through with a terrible agony. The sound that emerged from his stone lips was one that Amy would have nightmares about for a long time afterwards: a strange, awful cry, like the noise of rocks breaking but slowed down into one long, agonisingly drawn-out crack.
Splits in the surface of the Rock Man’s body spread like roadways across a map, weaving in and out of the lumps and bumps of his craggy skin. Dust poured from the cracks as they widened and extended.
‘Omigosh, what’s happening to him?’ Jess wondered, appalled.
They all stepped back sharply as the Rock Man crumbled in front of them.
The splits joined together in a sudden, massive, breakdown. The creature broke up into pieces, chunks falling away as he stumbled forward.
The giant head split from the body and then that too crumbled into fragments.
Before long, there was nothing more than a pile of broken rock and dust on the floor.
Completely inanimate.
Dead.
A breeze lifted the dust away in a grey cloud and a loud wheezing and groaning noise filled the farmhouse.
A second later, a large blue police box materialised in the middle of the kitchen.
The TARDIS door opened and the Doctor and Rory emerged. Amy ran over and clipped her husband lightly on the arm. ‘Hey! You! Where’ve you been?’
Rory smiled at her. ‘I’ve been to the moon, Amy!’
‘Wow, yeah, great – been there, done that,’ Amy said. Then she laughed and gave him a quick, embarrassed hug. ‘Don’t look so hurt. It’s good to have you back, you big lump – I missed you.’
‘And here’s one big lump that we won’t miss,’ said the Doctor, poking the pile of rocks on the floor with the toe of his boot. ‘All that remains of Athrocite, I presume?’
‘He just went to pieces,’ said Chris. ‘Literally.’
‘We threw the meteorite back where it came from,’ explained the Doctor. He knelt down and rubbed some of the moon dust between his fingers. ‘It reversed the molecular reconfiguration that Athrocite started – and not a moment too soon.’
‘Everything’s back to normal outside, too,’ said Jess.
The farmyard and the surrounding countryside were back to their usual muddy state. The Land Rover, the tractor and the barn were all back. Even the farmyard wall that Ralph had struggled to repair the night before had been restored. There wasn’t a trace of moon rock anywhere.
‘But what about all this?’ asked Mr Hoggett grumpily, indicating the pile of rubble on the floor. ‘The remains of Athrocite – or whatever its name was.’
‘Here, have a bit,’ the Doctor chucked a piece of the moon rock to Hoggett. ‘As a souvenir.’
‘A souvenir?’ Hoggett looked down at the small stone in his hand – and watched in surprise as it crumbled into dust and then faded from view.
The rest of the rock disappeared too.
‘What happened to it?’
The Doctor shrugged. ‘Athrocite was an artificial being in many ways – constructed out of nothing but moon dust by the meteorite. It’s no surprise that he’s returned to his original state.’
Mr Hoggett brushed his hands clean. ‘Some souvenir! I might have known. It’s high time I left, anyway – it looks like you’ve all got a lot of tidying up to do!’
CHAPTER 32
A WIN - WIN SITUATION
A little later, after they had helped tidy the place up yet again and enjoyed a long-overdue cup of tea, everyone stood by the TARD
IS.
The Doctor had his key out – now back to its original shiny brass – and was eager to go. He hated long goodbyes.
‘It’s been … interesting,’ Jess said with a smile. ‘I’ll be sorry to see you go.’
‘But go we must,’ said the Doctor. He unlocked the TARDIS door.
‘Wait a second,’ said Rory. ‘What about Percy the pregnant pig? Is she OK?’
‘She’s fine,’ Jess laughed. ‘We should see a big litter of piglets any day soon.’
‘And what about Chris?’ asked Amy. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m fine too,’ Chris said. He put an arm around Jess. ‘No piglets on the way though. At least, not yet.’
‘Don’t be too long about it,’ grumbled Ralph Conway. ‘We could do with plenty more help around here.’
‘I’ve agreed to come and live on the farm,’ Chris explained with a smile. ‘Do some real work for a change.’
‘He’s more than welcome,’ Ralph said. ‘So long as he pulls his weight with the chores.’
‘What about your work at the research centre?’ asked the Doctor. ‘Won’t they mind?’
‘I’ve been in touch with them,’ Chris said. ‘They’re too busy trying to work out what went wrong and why their top secret lab has been reduced to a mangled heap of spare parts.’
‘Ah – awkward questions,’ nodded the Doctor, as if he was more than familiar with those. ‘Best keep out of it.’
‘I intend to.’
‘And what about Mr Hoggett?’ asked Rory.
‘He’s offered to pay for a lot of the rebuilding work on the farm,’ said Jess. ‘It came as a bit of a surprise – but apparently he’s willing to pay anything so long as he never has to come here or see any of us again.’
‘Sounds like a win-win situation,’ Rory laughed.
‘And they’re just the kind I like,’ said the Doctor.
They said their goodbyes and then disappeared inside the TARDIS. Moments later, Jess, Chris and Ralph watched as the police box faded from sight.
The Doctor, Amy and Rory were on their way again – to amazing new adventures.
The End
Also available:
The Good the Bad and the Alien by Colin Brake
System Wipe by Oli Smith
Coming soon:
Rain of Terror by Mike Tucker
Extra Time by Richard Dungworth
The Underwater War by Richard Dinnick
Terminal of Despair by Steve Lyons
BBC Children’s Books
Published by the Penguin Group
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Published by BBC Children’s Books, 2011
Text and design © Children’s Character Books
Heart of Stone written by Trevor Baxendale
Death Riders written by Justin Richards
Covers illustrated by Paul Campbell
BBC logo © BBC 1996. Doctor Who logo © BBC 2009. TARDIS image © BBC 1963.
Licensed by BBC Worldwide Limited
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ISBN: 978-1-40-590809-2
