Doctor Who_ Interference_ Book Two - Lawrence Miles [26]
They’d been more like sculptures than anything else. Sarah’s favourite had looked like a DNA stream, a double helix of plastic that hadn’t had a hope of getting into any lock in the known universe. Ultimately, the Doctor had told her that the delicate fusion of TARDIS engineering and post-classical design he was after was obviously impossible, with the tools at his disposal. And he’d gone back to using the old Yale-type key, extra grumpy.
Sarah had taken one of those spare keys with her when she’d left the ship. Looking back on it, she couldn’t say exactly why. She’d left in a hurry, after all. No, more than that: she’d left accidentally. She’d packed all her things, but only because she’d thought the Doctor would talk her out of going at the last minute. She could still remember dumping her possessions into the carrying case, taking everything from the clothes she’d brought from home to the stuffed owl the Doctor had bought for her at a jumble sale in Brighton in 1948.
She hadn’t hesitated when she’d picked up the key from its shelf in her quarters. She’d been using it only as a decoration anyway, like one of those ornamental paperweights you bought for your friends when you went on skiing holidays.
But this time the key hadn’t been necessary. The TARDIS doors had been open. Once she and Lost Boy had found their bearings, Sarah had hurried over to the console, and pressed the switch that locked the entrance. Like everything else, the door control had changed since Sarah’s day, but you couldn’t miss it. It was, as it always had been, the most obvious switch on the console.
‘The door was open,’ she told Lost Boy, who was still trying to fit the whole ceiling into his head. ‘Think about it.’
The Ogron did. The results didn’t seem particularly worthwhile.
‘The Doctor can’t have had time to lock the door,’ Sarah pointed out. ‘The Remote must have known someone would come poking their nose in if they gave their technology to the Saudis. They must have passed on some way of detecting the TARDIS. The soldiers must have been waiting for the Doctor even before he stepped out of the ship.’
Lost Boy gave an affirming grunt. ‘Bad weapons,’ he said, whatever that was supposed to mean.
‘But if that’s true, they must know he’s not human,’ Sarah went on. ‘And they must know what the TARDIS is. So why leave it here? Why not cart it off to some defence installation somewhere?’
‘Trap,’ suggested Lost Boy.
‘You mean, leave it where it landed and see who else turned up looking for it?’ She frowned, and made it a big frown, so even the Ogron could read it. ‘It’s possible, I suppose. But the TARDIS must be years ahead of anything the Remote could have sold the Saudis. They’d want to investigate it, wouldn’t they? Try to find out how it worked…’
The obvious conclusion suddenly hit her. As ever, the revelation came about a second too late to be useful.
‘Don’t move,’ said a voice, which somehow managed to sound both hostile and slightly terrified at the same time.
Sarah jumped. Lost Boy grunted. Two figures had appeared in one of the archways on the other side of the console, the way into one of the TARDIS’s posh new vaulted corridors. They were both men, both dressed in black. The uniforms were definitely military: Saudi intelligence, maybe, although the outfits weren’t exactly conventional, so the men were probably attached to one of those special units people weren’t generally supposed to talk about. And, of course, they were both wearing helmets. Shiny and black, Darth Vader-style. There were visors