Doctor Who_ Dinosaur Invasion - Malcolm Hulke [51]
Being a Time Lord, the reversal of Time did not completely affect the Doctor. As though swimming through a sea of oil, the Doctor forced himself forward towards the lever of the Timescoop. As his hand reached out to touch it, he saw that Professor Whitaker and Grover—who stood nearest to the Timescoop —were already dematerialising. The Time eddy swirled all around the Doctor, its great force seeking to drive him back into the corridor from which he had come, but he struggled forward. His fingers reached the lever, touched it, curled round it. Exerting himself to the utmost, he pushed the lever slowly back into position.
Instantly Time moved forward again. The group from the space ship trooped back into the control room, followed by the Brigadier and Sergeant Benton and the UNIT soldiers.
‘No one is to move,’ commanded the Brigadier. He looked across to where Professor Whitaker had been standing. ‘Kindly stand away from those controls...’ His voice trailed off. He turned to the Doctor. ‘Where’s Whitaker?’
‘I imagine he and Sir Charles Grover have returned to their Golden Age,’ replied the Doctor. ‘Perhaps they will be happier there.’
The Doctor started up the jeep which he had borrowed from the Brigadier, and drove Sarah away from Westminster Underground Station. Slowly, thoughtfully, he turned it into a deserted Whitehall. It was not until they neared Trafalgar Square that either of them spoke.
‘If Sir Charles Grover and Professor Whitaker really travelled back in Time,’ said Sarah, ‘it means they were in our past. But that’s impossible.’
‘Is it? Why?’
‘Well, we’d have heard of them.’
‘Surely that depends at what point in the past they arrived.’ The Doctor turned the jeep into Charing Cross Road. A flock of pigeons, unaccustomed to traffic for the past fortnight, flew up from the road as the vehicle approached.
‘It would have changed our history,’ continued Sarah.
‘Not if they were already there.’
She ran her hands through her hair. The bump was going down. ‘I find it very confusing.’
‘Only because you think of Time as one continuous process. But what if Time goes backwards and forward, or round in big circles?’
‘If people from the future turned up in the past,’ she said, emphatically, ‘we’d know about it!’
‘Perhaps we do.’ The Doctor drove the jeep slowly round Cambridge Circus. ‘You know, there’s a book you might try reading sometime.’
‘What’s that?’
The Doctor stopped the jeep and looked up and down Charing Cross Road, London’s centre of bookshops. ‘Well, let’s see what we can find.’ He drove on a little further and stopped the jeep outside Foyle’s. The front doors had been battered in by the swish of a monster’s tail. ‘We might find it in here.’
He strode into the deserted bookshop. Sarah followed him, calling, ‘We could be shot as looters!’
‘We’re not going to take anything,’ said the Doctor, ‘just browse a little. Ah!’ He saw a sign reading RELIGIOUS DEPARTMENT and went towards it. By the time Sarah caught up, the Doctor was looking into a copy of The Holy Bible .
‘Read that,’ he said, pointing to a page. ‘It’s Ezekiel, Chapter 1 verse 5-6.’
Sarah read: ‘Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance; they had the likeness of a man. And every one had four faces, and every one had four wings.’
She looked up at the Doctor. ‘Who were these creatures?’
The Doctor shrugged. ‘Perhaps they were from another planet, or from the future of this planet.’ He replaced the book on its shelf.
They got back into the jeep and turned north towards UNIT’s temporary Headquarters. ‘There are so many mysteries,’ said the Doctor as they headed up the Tottenham Court Road. ‘Remember what I told you about the Marie Celeste ? The whole Universe is full of mysteries. The important thing is to keep an open mind.’
Table of Contents
1 London Alert!
3 The Time Eddy
4 The Timescoop
5 Monster in Chains
6 The Space Ship
7 The Reminder Room
9 Operation Golden Age
10 The Final Count Down