Doctor Who_ Just War - Lance Parkin [103]
The central column rose and fell, rose and fell. Everything seemed to be progressing normally. Bernice was a little annoyed that after several years travelling with the Doctor she couldn’t remember any of the routine that he went through when the TARDIS was in flight. She’d been content to watch him fuss around the console, press a button here, pull a lever there. It was a good job that he’d shown her how to open the door, or she’d be stuck inside forever.
Benny was too tired to feel any panic — whatever else was about to happen, she personally was in no immediate danger inside the TARDIS. There were so many safety systems that she felt quite safe, and anything capable of destroying the ship would be either a) so devastatingly awful that it would be mercifully quick or b) so incomprehensible that she’d be too fascinated by what was going on to worry about it. That was the plan, anyway.
The scanner had turned itself off, and Benny was unable to interpret the navigational data flowing across the readouts. Every so often the console would make a reassuring beeping noise. Benny stepped back for a moment. Was it her imagination or was the column slowing down? Before her eyes it ground to a halt, and there was a resonant chime deep beneath the floor. The TARDIS had landed. The whole journey had taken a little under three minutes.
Benny ran her eyes over the instruments. The environment outside was cool, there was atmospheric moisture, but the gravity and radiation readings were perfectly acceptable. She thought she remembered the Doctor saying once that if it wasn’t safe to go outside, then the TARDIS wouldn’t let them open the door. Or was she making that up? It was the sort of thing he said, anyway. If it wasn’t true, it jolly well ought to be. Benny crossed her fingers and pulled down on the door lever. The heavy double-doors swung open.
She stepped out into the gloom and onto wet grass.
There were church bells ringing in the distance, from every direction. The TARDIS had landed in a public park, flat grassland with trees screening off the city. The odd statue was dotted here and there. Ducks bobbed up and down on an expanse of lake. The London skyline was silhouetted by searchlight beams across the sky. The TARDIS had moved across the city, and it looked as though it was still 1941.
Benny knew enough about London to be able to work out where she was by finding a couple of landmarks. She began to triangulate her position. If that building behind her and to the right was Admiralty Arch, then...
Something huge, silent and almost invisible loomed ten feet overhead, swooping low, coming in to land. Instinctively, Benny pulled back, bumping into the side of the TARDIS
which disorientated her for a second or two. When she recovered, she tried to make sense of the shape. This would be a tricky task — in normal circumstances, there wouldn’t be any giant bats flying over London in 1941, but with the Doctor around there might well be. There was a disc of fire — an afterburner or an eye? Great black, flat wings. Tyres ploughed into the soft mud, churning it up. The evil-looking object skidded slightly, but ground to a halt not fifty yards away. It was a plane, almost invisible in the twilight. There was something spooky about it — the way the light fell on it perhaps, the eerie lack of sound. Benny wasn’t really an expert on the war planes of the period, but it looked oddly out of place. She realized she had seen something like it before, glimpsed for a second before it exploded over St Jaonnet. If this was the TARDIS’s idea of safety, than it really needed its Dictionary Disk looking at.
This plane hadn’t exploded. The cockpit canopy was pulling back. Benny thought about getting back inside the TARDIS, but decided against it. She needed to find out what was going on.
A huge figure in military uniform came bounding over.
Before she had time to panic, she realized that it was Chris Cwej dressed in Nazi uniform. One of her more lurid dreams come true, she mused.
‘Benny!’ he whooped, lifting her up and hugging her.