Doctor Who_ Father Time - Lance Parkin [98]
‘Why Flo‐’
‘Because the saucer’s in space. Because my daughter’s up there, but only until they’ve repaired their time engines. We’ve got three days to get to them. The Atlantis is due to launch tomorrow evening, and it’s the only way I can reach her in time.’
‘The space shuttle?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Doctor, they won’t just let us hitch a ride on the space shuttle.’
The Doctor smiled, and slammed his foot on the Trabant’s accelerator, astonishing the owners of the Audi he cruised past.
‘Then we’ll just have to steal it.’
* * *
Chapter Twenty-two
Today America, Tomorrow the World
Debbie had accompanied the Doctor on American business trips a few times: a couple of trips to Berkeley, a weekend in New York, a week in Texas. But it was still enough of a novelty to have some value. She was never going to persuade the Doctor to give up his window seat, but she got occasional glimpses of the sea beneath them, patches of land that may – or, indeed, may not – have been the coast of Greenland or Newfoundland.
The Doctor kept asking for napkins. It had got to the stage where the stewardess had one in her hand as she came over, instead of having to ask what he wanted.
Concorde was far smaller than Debbie had expected, and – in first class at least – rather overcrowded with all the stewardesses and their trolleys. But it was phenomenally fast. They would be in New York in less time than it took getting from the Doctor’s house to Greyfrith by British Rail. There was no sense of that in the plane itself: they weren’t pinned to their seats, despite the fact they could outrun a bullet, despite the fact that no air force in the world had an interceptor fast enough to intercept them.
Their problem was not of this world, anyway. Neither was their eventual destination.
‘How much faster is the space shuttle than Concorde?’ she asked the Doctor.
He smiled and, without hesitating, replied. ‘Concorde can cross the Atlantic in three hours; the shuttle orbits the Earth in ninety minutes. Concorde can fly just over twice the speed of sound –’ He pointed at the digital display at the front of the first-class compartment, which indicated that was precisely what they were doing – ‘during launch, the shuttle peaks at about Mach fifteen.’
‘We’re really going to steal it?’
‘Borrow it,’ he assured her. The Doctor handed her one of the napkins, with his spidery handwriting and incomprehensible doodles over it. At the top of the napkin, neatly underlined, was HOW TO STEAL A SPACE SHUTTLE: PART 1. ‘Tell me when you’ve read it. I’ll hand you the rest.’
Around then, the stewardesses brought round the customs forms and immigration cards. Debbie leaned over to see what the Doctor was putting under ‘Purpose of Visit’.
‘Family Reunion’, he’d written.
She began studying her napkin.
* * *
Ferran looked at the hologlobe, leaned forward, peered through the steam coming from his bathwater, watched Miranda pacing around her stateroom.
‘She’s magnificent. Like her father. They are like the tigers of Earth... superb creatures, beautiful and powerful. But when man came along, they were suddenly nothing but trophies for hunters.’
‘Do you love her?’ Cate asked, leaning over, sloshing water, but not daring to block his view.
Ferran looked his Deputy in the eye.
‘Once I did. But now I have you.’ He sponged her collarbone.
‘She doesn’t suspect, does she?’
‘About us?’
Cate was suddenly self-conscious, almost shy. ‘About me.’
Ferran dabbed at her neck. His hand was lobster-red, almost scalded by the hot water. Cate’s skin stayed as milky-pale as ever, just as it had been designed to.
‘No.’
She stood, let the water run off her, then stepped from the bath.
As she started to towel herself down. Ferran turned back to the hologlobe. He leaned back, letting the hot water soak away the pain in his shoulder and into the welts on his back.
‘Will you marry her?’
He smiled. ‘I thought you were above jealousy, my dear.’
‘And when you need an heir?’
Ferran looked into the globe.