Doctor Who_ Halflife - Mark Michalowski [70]
‘No, no thanks. Had a nap earlier – oh, I see what you. . . No.’ He rubbed his forehead as if he’d suddenly remembered that he’d forgotten what he was looking for. ‘Dimensionalism. Transcendent. Something like that.’
‘Right.’
‘Bigger inside,’ he muttered. ‘Pocket universes. Plasmic shells.’ He wiggled his fingers vaguely. ‘Bibblybobblybo.’
‘OK,’ said Calamee with a deep breath. ‘A spaceship powered by technobabble. So where’s this Fitz and Trix, then?’ She glanced round, wondering if they slept in the comfy armchairs that she could see in one of the alcoves.
‘Fitz!’ the Doctor called, crossing to a doorway that Calamee hadn’t seen before. He leaned through it before shrugging and disappearing. She could hear him calling their names. Nessus gave a squeak, jumped down from her arms, and went scampering after him.
Calamee shook her head, and wandered almost nervously over to the control console, glancing up at the ‘sky’, just to check it was still there. She’d assumed that this single room was all there was, but from the Doctor’s disappearance, she figured out there was more. As her eyes played over the little brass buttons and quaintly retro displays in front of her, it suddenly hit her: 127
this was real. This was really real. The Doctor was from outer space, and – if she was a very, very good girl – maybe she could go there with him when he left. Her heart danced in her chest at the thought of it.
‘What d’you think, Nessus?’ she whispered. ‘Fancy travelling around the universe in this, then?’ Her eyes roved hungrily over the tempting rows of buttons and switches.
‘I’ll be ten minutes,’ came the Doctor’s voice, floating through the corridors of the TARDIS like a lost ghost. She nodded to herself and reached out to the antiquated controls. ‘And don’t touch anything!’ Calamee jerked her hand back and looked around to see if she was being watched. Just in case she was, she pulled a face into the empty air and wandered off after him.
The TARDIS, as she’d half expected, was considerably bigger than even the control room had suggested. Leading off from the alcoves that lay around the edge of the control room were several doorways. She took the one that the Doctor had taken, and after following a blood-red corridor, hung with really old oil-paintings of people who looked a bit like the Doctor but with huge, stupid-looking wigs on, she found him pressing buttons in a room so white and clean and cold that it could have been the inside of a fridge. She squinted as she stepped in. Something invisible faintly resisted her, like thick cobwebs, but she pushed on through.
‘What are you doing?’
He waved at the squat, white machine in front of him. Nessus sat on the top, gazing around in stupid fascination.
‘Analysing the DNA we got from the night beast. He seemed to suddenly remember something, and jammed his hand into his trouser pockets to bring out the other sample jar, the one he had filled with the goo from the barn. To the surprise of both of them, instead of the grey slime that they’d expected, the jar was half-filled with bits of straw and grass and weeds.
‘Remarkable,’ said the Doctor, cautiously unscrewing the top.
Calamee backed away.
‘Should you be doing that?’
‘Shouldn’t I? Oh, I see what you mean.’
He crossed to a large, open-fronted cabinet – white again – against a wall and stuck his hands and the jar into it.
‘Bio-containment field,’ he explained. ‘Like on the door back there. Should keep it –’
‘– away from your hands?’ Calamee finished dubiously. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘But we’ve already worked out that it doesn’t seem to affect me.’
It was too late, anyway: by the time he’d finished the sentence, the top was off the jar, and the Doctor was sprinkling the contents into the tray at the bottom of the cabinet. He pulled a face and poked at them disconsolately 128
before scraping some of them back into the jar, putting the top back on, and bringing it back to the DNA analyser. A ping sounded incongruously and with an alarmingly loud chattering noise, a stream of paper tape spewed from a little slot in