Doctor Who_ Earthworld - Jacqueline Rayner [25]
‘Yee-hah!’ cried Beezee. ‘Here we go!’
Anji’s stomach lurched – she really wasn’t looking forward to this. Should she warn them?
‘It might be a good idea to hold hands,’ she said, after a moment’s thought.
‘It’s not pleasant, and if you wander the wrong way you could be in there for ever.’
Beezee gave an incredulous snort. ‘We have done this before, you know. And it’s hardly what I’d call difficult – walking in a straight line for a few metres.’
‘Fine,’ said Anji. ‘You go first, then. OK?’
Beezee shrugged, and knelt down to crawl through the hole. Zequathon followed him.
Anji looked at Xernic, still holding up the device. ‘Are you OK to get through?
You’re not going to get left behind?’
He smiled shyly at her. He was probably unused to people worrying about him specifically, rather than him as representative of an oppressed culture. ‘I’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘The hole’ll hold up for as long as I keep the machine switched on and in range. I can just go through and close it up the other side.’
‘That’s all right, then.’ Anji smiled back at him.
‘But – if you like. . . ’
‘Yes?’
‘Well. . . I’ll hold your hand if you want.’
Anji’s smile got broader. She was pretty sure he needed the reassuring human contact as much as she did, but she was grateful for the offer anyway. ‘Thanks,’
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EarthWorld
she said. ‘Oh – and I won’t tell the others, OK?’
He grinned, and held out his hand.
She’d seen the Prehistoric Zone before, obviously, but there hadn’t been a brachiosaur in her bit of it back then. She was totally taken aback by its size.
Skeletons in museums and giant cinema screens still hadn’t prepared her for this. You stood next to an elephant in a zoo and it was huge, but you could feed it buns and peanuts, and, theoretically, imagine climbing on its back with a bit of help. This thing. . . no way. She’d heard it said that the human brain couldn’t visualise numbers above a hundred. It was now patently obvious that it couldn’t comprehend animals larger than a double-decker bus, either. She just stood and stared, open-mouthed.
‘It’s all right,’ said Xernic reassuringly, coming up from behind her. ‘You don’t have to be scared. As long as you keep out of its way it won’t bother you. I’ve read the guidebook: it’s what’s known as a herbivore. That means it’ll only eat you if your name’s Herb.’
Anji considered several responses to this, and finally decided to hope he was joking and ignore it. ‘How near are we to the border where we lost Fitz?’ she asked.
‘From what you and the Doctor said,’ said Beezee, pointing, ‘it’s a few kilometres over that way.’
A few kilometres! Thank goodness for the Elastoplast.
‘Of course,’ Beezee went on, ‘I’d have more faith in the estimate if either of you had bothered to notice what was on the other side of the barrier there.’
Again, Anji decided that it wasn’t worth the hassle of responding. She set off in the direction he’d indicated – still limping slightly, but nowhere near as badly as before – and the boys followed. The brachiosaur lifted its head from the grass it was munching, and watched their progress.
Fitz was slightly fed up. The robot, obviously not programmed to cope with Fitz’s attempts to lag behind/wander off/stop to smell the roses, was now carrying him over its shoulder. With every clunking step, Fitz’s rather long nose was bumping painfully into the robot’s solid back.
This uncomfortable position also meant that Fitz had been more or less unable to observe exactly where he was being taken. A strange tingly sensation told him they’d crossed a barrier somehow and were in one of the zones, but quite which he didn’t know. There were no motor sounds and he detected a distinct aroma of vinegar, but that could mean anything from the Fish and Chip Killing Queens
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Shop Zone to the land of Pickled Onions. Which reminded him that he was starving. The robot finally came to a halt. Good. Maybe it was tea time. Next time Fitz left the TARDIS, he’d have to remember to bring a packed lunch.