Doctor Who_ Corpse Marker - Chris Boucher [22]
They were all young adults, slightly older than Leela and not quite as tall as the Doctor himself. They all had brown hair and were dressed in plain smocks and leggings. If the Doctor had been looking for a phrase to sum them up it would have been
‘average and unthreatening’. They could have been designed to be average and unthreatening, assuming of course that the rest of this world was not completely bizarre.
Then as he made his way through them he noticed the slight jaw motions and realised that they were all chewing. He stopped pushing his way through and asked one of them directly, ‘What are you eating?’
‘Jelly babies are extremely good,’ the young man answered politely and without emphasis as though it was something he had learned off by heart.
The Doctor didn’t know whether to be pleased that there was an answer or dismayed at what the answer was. ‘I see,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘And what flavour is it? What does it taste of exactly?’
The young man waited, expressionless. Finally he said, ‘What flavour is it? What does it taste of exactly?’
‘Open your mouth,’ the Doctor said, ‘open wide,’ opening his own mouth to demonstrate.
The young man opened his mouth and all round everyone else did too. The Doctor peered into the open mouth. As he expected it was empty. He took a jelly baby from his pocket and put it in the open mouth and gently pushed the jaws closed.
‘That is a jelly baby and the flavour is blackcurrant,’ he said.
The young man stood for a moment with his mouth closed and then he spat the sweet on to the floor.
‘All right, everybody,’ the Doctor said loudly. ‘You can stop chewing now I don’t think you like jelly babies.’ He moved on back to the airlock, opened the doors and went on through the small group that was waiting in the airlock itself. Coming out through the other side, he moved on through the crowd that was waiting there. As he walked into the main hall they all turned and seemed to be preparing to follow him again. ‘Wait here,’ he commanded. ‘All of you please stay precisely where you are.’
Obediently they made no attempt to follow the Doctor and he hurried into the TARDIS to get the copper wire that he needed. When he emerged again no one had moved an inch as far as he could tell. He made a mental note to be careful what he told these people to do and not to do.
Back at the blast shutters, the Doctor was surprised to find them partially raised. He examined them and found that they had been pushed up from the centre and in the process had been severely bent and warped. It was clear that whatever device had been used to lift them upwards was extremely powerful. It was also clear that his plan to use a small electrical charge to open them was no longer going to work: the shutters and their operating mechanisms were altogether too damaged for that. It looked as though an explosive force had been involved but there were none of the residues you would expect from an actual explosion.
‘I don’t suppose there’s much point in asking you what happened?’ he said to the people standing closest, shaking his head as he said it. They all shook their heads in response. He nodded. They nodded.
The gap between the shutters and the floor was perhaps two feet at its widest. The Doctor lay down and looked underneath.
He could see a paved walkway immediately in front and he had glimpses of other dome-shaped buildings further away. There didn’t seem to be anyone around and there was no sign of the machine that had been used on the shutters. He eased himself into the gap but it was too narrow to squeeze through. He wriggled and twisted and was conscious that he was very close to jamming himself in place and becoming thoroughly stuck.
Grunting, he pushed at the bottom of the shutters in an effort to get them to go up just a little more. It was a waste of time and energy. He lay for a moment breathing normally and relaxing.
Now that the thought of getting stuck had occurred to him he could not dismiss it entirely from his mind and he knew there was the remote possibility of an instinctive panic.