Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [150]
The last thing he did on the hilltop was throw a handful of blue dirt down onto the top of the casket. The casket stopped glowing as soon as the soil hit it, though that could have been coincidence. Suddenly, it was dull, lifeless, just a box in the ground. Just a box, thought the Doctor. Nothing special.
He hadn’t expected it to be like this. He’d thought about his funeral, more than once, and he’d always imagined his grave-side being surrounded by people. Old friends come to pay their last respects, old enemies come to gloat, only to find that there was something missing from their lives all of a sudden. But he hadn’t expected this. No, nothing like this.
He didn’t hurry on his way back to the TARDIS. There was no need to. He’d set the bomb quite carefully, he knew how much time he had before the blast.
As it happened, the device detonated when he was at the bottom of the hill, much sooner than he’d expected. Faulty timing mechanism; he’d been lucky not to get caught in the implosion. Still, he’d always been lucky. Behind him, there was the sound of collapsing space-time, as the bomb turned a ten-foot-wide area of the planet’s surface into a small, and carefully contained, neutron star.
The Doctor imagined all the things that had ceased to be, up on the hilltop. The casket, the tombstone, the remains of a small Russian dog. And more, of course.
But he didn’t turn around.
He stepped into the TARDIS, closed the doors behind him, and pressed the dematerialisation switch before he’d even bothered to lay in a new course. The ship slid away from the planet, leaving behind nothing but silence and a few loose pebbles.
Another hundred million nights passed on Quiescia. Nothing changed, and no one else came.
On an island in the East Indies, in a lost city buried
deep in the heart of the rainforest, agents of the most formidable
powers in the galaxy are gathering. They have been invited there
to bid for what could turn out to be the deadliest weapon
ever created.
When the Doctor and Sam arrive in the city, the Time Lord
soon realises they’ve walked into the middle of the strangest
auction in history – and what’s on sale to the highest bidder is
something more horrifying than even the Doctor could have
imagined, something that could change his life forever.
And just when it seems things can’t get any worse,
the Doctor finds out who else is on the guest list...
This book is another in the series
of adventures featuring the Eighth Doctor and Sam.
ISBN 0-563-40577-5
9 780563 405771 >
£4.99
Doctor Who and TARDIS
are trademarks of the BBC.
Table of Contents
Prologue: Last Rites
1 Dramatis Personae
Homunculette’s Story
2 Strange Men and Their Companions
3 Loathing the Alien
UNISYC’S Story
4 Death, Death, and – Good Grief – More Death
5 The Continuity Bomb
The Faction’s Story
6 The Bodysnatchers (Reprise)
7 Surprised?
Mr Qixotl’s Story
8
The Body Politic
9
Enfant Terrible
E-Kobalt’s
Story
10 What is an Identity Crisis,
Anyway?
11 Mind Mush
The Shift’s Story
12 Shiftwork
13 A-Les-son-in-An-a-to-my
The Dead Man’s Story
14 Final Offer
Epilogue: Last Rites