Doctor Who_ Earthworld - Jacqueline Rayner [75]
may have locked the door – after the attraction closed for the night? – out of habit, just like she double-locked her front door before bed and hung the key on a hook next to it. . .
She began to feel her way around the door frame. Just a chance, but. . .
yes! Her fingers grasped a hook, and on it hung a large key. She grabbed the cold metal, and jammed it into the keyhole, struggling to turn it as the knights rounded the corner and began to move inexorably towards them, as fast as their armour would let them.
It wouldn’t turn! ‘Xernic! Fitz!’ she cried in desperation, and other hands grabbed hers, adding more weight to the key. With a screech of metal, it clicked round. They dived through the door, and slammed it behind them. Then Fitz hurriedly opened it again, retrieved the key, shut the door and locked it from their side. There was a metal thunk, which Anji presumed was an android knight thumping the door in electronic frustration.
They looked around them. They were in a small – well, call it a gatehouse, although it was like no part of any tourist-friendly castle Anji had visited back on Earth. In front of them was an iron portcullis, and on the other side of that a slab of wood with chains hanging down – presumably the drawbridge. And on the other side of the drawbridge, presumably the moat.
Nights at the Round Table
137
‘We’ll never get through this lot in time!’ said Anji. ‘We’ll have to keep running. Find our way to the exit we used before somehow.’
‘Are you joking?’ cried Fitz, rattling the portcullis. ‘There’s a horde of killer knights gaining on us with every step. Our best bet is to hold them off in here for now. We’ll have to get this metal thing up somehow.’
Anji glanced round to find some sort of leverage to pull up the portcullis.
There was nothing. What there was. . .
was a push-button, control panel.
Damn.
‘I don’t suppose you have a sonic screwdriver?’ she said to Fitz.
‘No,’ he said shortly.
‘Xernic, you wouldn’t happen to know the code, would you?’
Silence.
‘Xernic?’ Anji looked right round. ‘Fitz! We’ve lost Xernic!’
‘Yes, I know!’ said Fitz. ‘He wasn’t with us out in the corridor.’
Anji stared. ‘And you didn’t think to mention it?’
‘Well, I rather assumed that you’d noticed it too! It’s not my fault! He’s your little camp-follower.’
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’
Fitz gazed at the ceiling. ‘Oh nothing, nothing. Come on, we’ve got to move this gate.’
‘We’ve got to go back for Xernic!’
Fitz seemed irritatingly unconcerned. ‘Well, we can’t. Let’s concentrate on getting us out of here right now. He’ll probably find his way out the way you came.’
‘But he’s only a kid! What if the knights have caught him?’
Fitz sighed, and spoke to her as if she were only a kid too. Patronising git.
‘Once we’re out of here, we can get backup and go and look for him. If the knights have caught him he’s either dead or locked up, so we either can’t help or will do better when we’ve found the Doctor. If not, he’ll probably find his own way out. There are knights right outside the door, so if we try to go back we’ll definitely be killed or captured, neither of which is going to help him.’
Anji wanted to hit him. She probably would have, if he hadn’t been completely right. Wasn’t she supposed to be the logical one? Logic didn’t seem nearly as attractive when other people used it.
‘There’s only ten buttons,’ said Fitz. ‘Perhaps we could work out the code.’
Anji’s turn to be patronising. ‘If it were only a two-digit code, there’d still be ten to the power two possible combinations. That’s one hundred variations,’
she added, because someone who thought they could easily crack an unknown 138
EarthWorld
numerical combination probably wouldn’t understand such technical terms. ‘If it’s a three-digit code, that’s another ten to the power three – that’s one thousand – combinations. And the