Doctor Who_ Earthworld - Jacqueline Rayner [6]
(Ha! – velocity, not drugs.)
Again, discounting phantasms or figments of the imagination, however they were formed, she knew that aliens existed. After all, she’d not only met some, she’d pretty much killed a whole race of them (slight exaggeration for dramatic effect).
Aliens existed, and they had wanted to invade Earth. Therefore they didn’t come from Earth. Therefore there were inhabited planets other than Earth (so far making sense – well, logic, possibly not sense).
Technology therefore existed that was capable of transporting people from one inhabited world to another. So. . . it was possible that she was on another planet.
However just how far was parallel evolution likely? Would there be dinosaurs on another planet that looked just like those out of picture books? Would there be such stereotypical cavemen? And, if dinosaurs and cavemen had survived, how had the civilisation reached the level that enabled it to build energy barriers, holographic skies (that was what the Doctor had guessed when she pointed out her frog) and robots with guns?
Probable conclusion. . . they hadn’t. Somehow, this was a fake. If the technology existed to build spaceships like the ones she’d seen, then it existed to The Fluffy Frog in the Sky
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build robots and guns, and, oh, to clone Neanderthals, that sort of thing. After all, they were talking about cloning dodos back home, and they’d already done some extinct cow or something. And that was just what the public were told about. So there was no reason at all to suppose she was on an alien planet in the far future (or distant past). The Doctor’s ship may just have zapped back to another bit of Earth, say a developmental complex in America. Maybe she was in Area 51!
And then she thought of how Dave would react if he found out that Area 51
was actually a prehistoric theme park, which took her mind into those places she didn’t want to go again, and she forgot about trying to rationalise things away.
In the end, they’d come to a part of the rocky plain that looked just like the rest of the rocky plain, but there the golden robot had finally stopped. Anji resisted the huge temptation to take her shoes off and air her blisters, because she knew that she’d never be able to put them back on again and presumably there was still more walking ahead of them. There was an electronic hum from the robot’s head, and suddenly Anji could see the barrier just a couple of feet in front of them – nothing like before, with the sonic screwdriver: this was more like a sheet of rippling water that had suddenly become suspended somehow in the air. Rocky plain with added water feature. Tasteful. The robot had begun to move forward again, shepherding the Doctor and Anji in front of it. The Doctor had smiled encouragingly at her, and stepped through the watery wall without hesitation. Screwing up her courage – she didn’t know what was on the other side, after all – Anji had followed.
It wasn’t like she’d imagined. She’d expected to step straight through to the other side, but there didn’t seem to be another side. It was – oh, she wasn’t sure what it was like, sort of a cross between walking against the wind and forcing herself through a waterfall. The barrier pressed down on her, and she couldn’t see anything but bright shimmering water stuff ahead. For an instant a dart of claustrophobia stabbed through her and she almost screamed. Then, as if sensing her panic, a hand came back through the translucence and unerringly found hers. A fraction of a second of further panic, and then she saw the distinctive blue gemstone ring on one of the fingers and recognised it as the Doctor’s. Calmer, she let him lead her forward.
In the end, Anji had no idea how long it took them to walk through the barrier, though