Doctor Who_ Just War - Lance Parkin [102]
Benny slammed her fist down on the console. Just as Roz was opening her mouth to speak, the scanner shutters opened and the screen flickered into life. It was a map of the south coast, running up to London. A green dot was hurtling across the image. A single word flashed red at the bottom of the screen.
INCOMING
Benny’s jaw had dropped.
‘It’s travelling at just over seven hundred miles an hour.’
That was roughly twice as fast as the typical aircraft of the period. A stream of weird alien script ran across the screen, and the scale of the map increased. Now they were looking at southern England, northern France and the Channel Islands. Benny could read the symbols.
‘The incoming object was launched from a site just outside Granville.’ As she said the name, the town’s location flashed on the map and a flightpath began filling itself in. ‘An extrapolation of its current trajectory suggests that it will hit Whitehall in about sixteen minutes.’
Roz remained calm. ‘Why is the TARDIS telling us all this?’
‘I think she’s trying to warn us about the bomber.’ Benny reached across and flicked a switch. I’ve set it to automatic flight and put the ship on second-stage defensive alert. If the TARDIS is about to be destroyed she’ll dematerialize and land somewhere safe.’ Roz looked worried until Benny assured her, ‘The ship returns when the danger has passed.’
Forrester had pulled down the door lever and hoisted the holdall over her shoulder.
‘Where are you going?’ Benny demanded.
‘We’ve got a quarter of an hour. I’ve got to warn them.’
‘If that’s what it looks like... Stay here — you’ll be safe.’
But Roz didn’t look back and the door closed behind her, shutting her out. It was dark outside, colder than she had been expecting. Church bells were ringing all over London: the signal that the invasion had begun. She needed to find a phone.
There was an unearthly grinding, surging sound behind her. Roz turned.
The TARDIS had dematerialized.
13 Ground Zero
Chris couldn’t read German, but he didn’t need to: the needle on the temperature gauge was quivering up past the orange zone and into the red. On a more optimistic note, everything else was fine: there was still plenty of fuel, and Munin was a beautiful plane to fly. Chris had even got used to the bone-jarring vibrations that pulsed through the fuselage. It was a pity that the plane was only minutes away from exploding, really.
‘We haven’t got much longer, Doctor,’ Chris told him, as calmly as he could.
The Doctor had been mulling over the problem for the last couple of minutes. He had ordered Chris to keep the plane in the air while he considered their options. They hadn’t got parachutes (and they couldn’t leave the plane anyway, not now it was flying over London); a mid-air repair job was out of the question.
‘Doctor, we could eject the fuel,’ Chris declared. He was already reaching for the control.
The Doctor’s face lit up. ‘That’s it! No, not ejecting it. Just the opposite.’
Chris’s hand hovered over the control panel. ‘We can’t refuel, and why would we want to? Surely the more fuel there was on board, the more there was to explode?’
‘Pump fuel into the reserve tank from the main tank — I’ll explain, but we haven’t got time,’ the Doctor insisted.
‘But the problem’s in the reserve tank —’
‘Do it!’ the Doctor shouted. Chris began flicking switches.
Behind them, the rhythmic oscillation of the fuel pump started up, and they could even hear the fuel as it began sloshing around.
‘It takes two things to start a fire,’ the Doctor noted sagely. ‘You need an inflammable material — and the jet fuel is certainly that — but you also need oxygen. Filling up the tank with fuel forces out all the oxygen. No oxygen, no fire.’
‘That’s brilliant,’ Chris declared.
‘We can’t push our luck as we’re over London now so we’ll have to —’
‘— Land in the nearest available open space. There are plenty of parks. If all else fails, we can ditch into the Thames.
Don’t worry, Doctor, I’ve done this sort of thing before.’
Chris was already scanning the