Doctor Who_ Father Time - Lance Parkin [19]
The Doctor smiled. ‘So cold that the air itself becomes as hard as metal.’
‘Is that why the UFOs are coming here? Because the space creatures want to get warm?’
‘Possibly,’ he said, and the way he said it made it impossible for Miranda to tell if he was being serious or not.
‘My daddy and Mrs Castle told me that there’s no such thing as space creatures.’
‘Did they indeed? I wonder how they know.’
‘Well,’ Miranda said impatiently, stamping her feet a little to stay warm, ‘are there or aren’t there?’
The Doctor looked out into the night sky, lost in the stars and planets and constellations. He stood there for what seemed like several minutes, then squeezed his eyes shut.
‘Doctor?’
‘I don’t know,’ the Doctor said, his eyes still shut fast. ‘I don’t know, and I should, and –’
Miranda offered him her handkerchief, because he had started to cry. She didn’t know why.
‘Do you know the planets?’ she asked him.
‘Yes. There’s Mercury, and Venus, and Earth, and the moon, and –’ The Doctor counted them off on his fingers.
‘The moon isn’t a planet, it’s a moon,’ Miranda said primly. ‘It’s Earth’s moon. Jupiter has twelve moons.’
‘Thirteen, including Neophobus,’ the Doctor said absently.
‘They are discovering new moons all the time,’ Miranda said. ‘They sent a probe called Voyager and it took photographs.’
‘Why don’t you carry on with the list?’ the Doctor suggested. ‘After Earth and the moon...’
‘Mars. Then the asteroid belt.’
‘Which is?’
‘Lumps of rock.’
‘That’s right, the remains of a planet that was pulled apart.’
Miranda shook her head. ‘I’ve got a book at home that says that’s wrong: it says some people used to think that, but the asteroid belt is really just what was left over when the planets had been made.’
The Doctor smiled benignly. ‘I stand corrected. Then Jupiter.’
‘Let me! Jupiter, then Saturn, then Uranus and Neptune and Pluto.’
‘Very good. Now, point to Mars.’
Miranda looked up, then pointed.
‘Don’t guess,’ the Doctor chided her. He held her wrist, moved it down until she was nearly pointing at the horizon.
‘Which one’s Mars?’ she said. ‘They all look like stars.’
‘On a clear night like this, you can just about tell because it’s red. If we stayed out here long enough, you’d be able to see it move across the sky. That’s how people first saw there were planets out there. Stars stay fixed in place; the planets move.’
‘I see Mars now.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘No,’ Miranda admitted. ‘Do you think the flying saucers come from Mars? What do you think Martians look like?’
The Doctor was rubbing his fingers together, trying to remember.
‘Do you think they are green?’ Miranda asked.
He glared at her, making her take a step back.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, but she didn’t understand what she had done to upset him.
‘I thought I had it, then,’ the Doctor said, not really talking to her at all. ‘I’m sure I could remember. Dass hunnar, ssli hoossurr.’ It was a strange, hissing sound, like gurgling pipes.
‘Have you met a Martian?’ Miranda asked. The Doctor was the only person she knew who might have done.
‘Yes, yes, I feel sure of it. I’ve met lots of them.’
‘What were their names?’ said Miranda, giggling.
‘I... can’t really remember their names. I’m not very good with names. I can’t even remember my own. Miranda means “to be wondered about”, I know that. It was a Latin name originally.’
‘There’s a play by Shakespeare with a girl called Miranda,’ she told him.
‘Oh yes. The Tempest. She was the daughter of a powerful magician.’
‘My dad’s not a magician. He’s an electrician.’
‘Is he?’
‘Here’s my mum!’ Miranda exclaimed. Her mother was walking over the ice towards them, desperately trying not to fall over.
The Doctor caught her just as she was about to slip. Miranda laughed out loud.
‘Thank you,’ her mum said and asked Miranda to introduce them.
‘This is the Doctor,’ Miranda said. ‘He visited the chess club. He played us all, and he beat us. Even Mrs Castle.’
Her mum looked at the Doctor, and shared a smile with him. ‘Did you really? He sounds like a clever man.’
‘Oh, he is. He knows all about the stars