Doctor Who_ Deep Blue - Mark Morris [90]
Mike caught only a glimpse of them before the Doctor closed them again in a slow blink. When he re-opened them a moment later they had returned to normal. The damage had been done, however. Stumbling back a few paces, Max pointed a fat, rigid finger at the Doctor. Fresh sweat bursting from his cheeks, making them shine like mahogany, he cried,
‘He’s one of them!’
Before Max could say anything else, Mike strode forward and grabbed his arm, screening the Doctor from the others in the room.
‘Keep your voice down. Do you want to upset everyone?’ he hissed.
Max turned on him, furiously. ‘You knew he was turning into one of them things! You knew it and you still brought him in here. You’ve put us all in danger.’
‘This is probably the only man in the entire world who can help us get out of this mess,’ Mike said calmly.
‘But he’s not a man any more. He’s one of those freaks!’
‘No, he isn’t.’
‘Don’t pull my cord, man!’ Max said. ‘I saw his eyes. We all did.’
‘Look at his eyes now,’ Mike replied reasonably. ‘They’re fine. He’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with him.’
‘Oh, I’m afraid there is,’ the Doctor muttered.
Max and Mike stopped and stared at the Doctor as if he was a chimpanzee who had just displayed an astounding aptitude for human speech.
It was Mike who found his voice first. ‘Are you... all right, Doctor?’ he asked.
‘Not entirely,’ said the Doctor, and raised a hand in Max’s direction. ‘The gentleman here is right. I’m metamorphosing.’
‘See!’ Max said, thrusting his chin aggressively at Mike.
‘The guy admits it. We should never have let you in.’
Before Mike could respond, the Doctor said almost heartily
‘Quite right. In fact, I suggest you let me out of here before I lose control and kill you all.’
Tegan, who had not spoken a word since they had entered the R and D unit, suddenly said in an anguished voice, ‘You can’t go, Doctor. We need you. You re our last hope.’
The Doctor flashed her a reassuring smile. ‘Believe me, I’ll serve you better on the outside.’
‘They’ll find you,’ Mike said. ‘There’s too many of them.
They’ll use what’s in your head and turn you into one of them.’
‘That’ll happen anyway if I stay here,’ the Doctor said, and suddenly, to Mike’s astonishment, he was holding Mike’s gun in his hand, pointing it at his own head. ‘Now,’ he said almost cheerfully, ‘are you going to let me out or do I have to kill myself so that I don’t kill you all later?’
For every second of the three minutes it took Turlough to climb up on to the hotel roof, he was petrified. Petrified of being shot at; petrified of the hotel’s old but stout metal drainpipe giving way; petrified that one of the fully grown Xaranti patrolling the streets below would spot him and scuttle up the wall after him like a spider.
The ledge below his window, along which he had shuffled to the drainpipe, had been just about wide enough, but old and a little crumbly. He sidestepped along it with his back to the sun-baked wall of the hotel, trying not to look down, trying not to rush, trying not to panic, and in the event probably doing all three.
When he reached the drainpipe, he swivelled at the hips, taking care to keep his feet firmly planted on the ledge, and grasped it gratefully with both hands. He would have liked to have rested there for a few moments, but he was afraid that if he stopped he might never start again. He was grateful that the drainpipe was sturdy and not one of the flimsy plastic variety that humans seemed to favour on their buildings in this time period. It was attached to the wall by stolid, chunky brackets which would serve as precarious foot-and handholds.
Turlough manoeuvred himself carefully round, his heart pumping fast as his left leg swung out over empty space before clanging against the pipe. He looked up