Doctor Who_ Last Man Running - Chris Boucher [1]
Long dark hair fell back from a handsome face deliberately set to be expressionless but still dominated by bright brown eyes. She was reacting to the situation like the warrior she had been brought up to be. Any threat was to be fought. The response to danger was immediate and unthinking aggression. But then before he could point this out to her she relaxed abruptly and sheathed the knife and smiled.
‘The TARDIS is stopping. It startled me.’
‘No need to apologise,’ he said grudgingly. ‘It’s frightened people from societies far in advance of your own.’
She frowned. ‘I was not apologising. And I was not afraid.’
Leela’s problem – at least as far as the Doctor was concerned – was that her quick and inquiring mind was coupled with an uncertain temper and a youthful, edgy pride.
While an intelligent young primitive was potentially a delightful companion with whom to share the wonders the TARDIS could offer, an opinionated savage who could not recognise her own shortcomings was less appealing. ‘What about the Bloodswimmer?’ he asked. ‘You seem to have forgotten the Bloodswimmer.’
Leela recognised the undertone of petulance. For a powerful shaman the Doctor could be quite childish sometimes. ‘You can smell acid?’ she prompted.
‘No.’
Wheezily the TARDIS flexed and moaned through its last checks and balances and gradually fell silent.
‘Neither can I. So I was wrong. I am sorry if I frightened you.’
The Doctor ignored the jibe. ‘My theory would be that the third needle is probably to disconnect the segments when it swarms,’ he said. ‘That would explain why no first-hand evidence survived.’
Leela was almost impressed.
‘Didn’t you hear it? Quiet. Listen. Listen!’ Sozerdor held up his hand and for the second time in as many minutes the patrol stopped in its tracks and listened. ‘An eerie, wheezing, moaning sort of noise?’ He looked around at the other six, who in their different ways were showing signs of increasing tension.
Kley, the ranking officer and Chief Investigator, glared at him. Sozerdor was the oldest and most experienced member of the team and was supposed to be a steadying influence on the rest of them. He was not supposed to behave like some gibbering hysteric every time something rustled in the undergrowth. Second planet second class. She should have insisted on an all-firster team. Even the best of the toodies were useless.
‘One of you must have heard it,’ Sozerdor insisted, ‘or is it just me?’
‘Wheezing and moaning?’ Pertanor was grinning. ‘It’s just you, you useless toody. You should have taken that base job.
You’re getting too old and fat for the field.’ Everyone breathed a little easier without really knowing why. Pertanor seemed to have that effect.
‘You can mock me, son,’ Sozerdor said, and in truth it was only Pertanor who could have got away with the insult, ‘but you’ll be an old fat toody yourself one day.’
‘And we’ll still be stumbling around this unexpected jungle when he is if we stop every time some rodent breaks wind.’
Monly’s comment was also made smiling but it was pointedly directed at Kley and made the others uncomfortable. The criticism that the word ‘unexpected’ clearly implied was a matter for her and the pushy young second in command.
Monly was ten years Kley’s junior and a star of the rapid-promotion programme so he would probably outrank her within a year unless he did something seriously indiscreet.
But in the meantime he seemed to be missing no opportunity to undermine her, apparently hoping she would make a mistake serious enough to justify his taking over command.
Under normal circumstances this too would have been of concern only to the Chief Investigator and the Assistant Chief Investigator, a question of the ambition that drove them both.
The trouble was that these were not normal circumstances –
in fact this team had been selected precisely because these were not normal circumstances. On this mission any mistake could