Doctor Who_ Last Man Running - Chris Boucher [22]
‘I know what you meant,’ she said. ‘I was planning not to think about it until I absolutely had to.’
‘I think you have to.’
‘We could climb a tree,’ she said.
‘You can barely walk.’
‘I can climb if I’m frightened enough.’
Pertanor shivered involuntarily. ‘It’s getting colder, isn’t it?’
he said.
‘Are you sure you’re not frightened?’
‘Me?’ he said. ‘Frightened?’ He giggled. ‘I’m scared spitless. I’m this close –’ he pinched his thumb and forefinger together – ‘to screaming my lungs out.’
She stopped and turned to face him again. This time she put her arms round him and pulled herself against him. She rubbed her face against his. ‘I could really get very fond of you,’ she murmured.
Pertanor put his arms around her. The touch of her cheek against his was vivid, electric and feverish. He said, ‘A fire.’
‘Me too,’ she whispered.
‘I meant...’ He hesitated.
‘You meant?’
‘I meant I’m afire,’ he said.
She smirked. ‘You’re so easy to tease.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘But I think we should light a fire anyway, don’t you?’
The Doctor was almost sure that this was the place where the TARDIS should be. Leela was adamant about it and he had no reason to doubt her skills as a tracker. So the TARDIS had been moved. But where to? And by whom?
‘I left the door open,’ Leela admitted, finding the only explanation she could think of that fitted. ‘Someone must have got in and taken it.’
Recent events had made her cocky and the Doctor was inclined to let her feel the discomfort of failure, but since the failure was not hers he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it.
‘No, that’s not it,’ he said. ‘It’s been hauled away.’
Leela examined the area. It was getting dark now but any sign of the TARDIS being dragged off would be obvious. ‘I don’t see how that could be,’ she said.
‘Logically,’ the Doctor said, ‘it was taken straight down or straight up.’
Reflexively Leela looked up into the air and then, embarrassed, said, ‘There might be marks on the trees,’ by way of explanation. ‘From...’
‘From whatever lifting vehicle was used,’ the Doctor agreed without looking up. He scraped at the soil with his foot in the place where Leela said the TARDIS had been standing. There was no recognisable impression that he could see but the soil had been disturbed. ‘I’m inclined to think it went down.’
‘How are we going to get it back?’
‘We start by finding it.’
Distantly, among the trees, something grunted and howled.
‘We had better find somewhere to shelter for the night,’
Leela said.
The Doctor continued to examine the ground.
The howling was taken up by other animals. It sounded as though a pack was gathering.
‘Time to climb another tree, perhaps,’ the Doctor said.
‘Somewhere well away from this spot, I think. Come on.’ He began to stride away, but this time he checked to make sure she was keeping up with him.
‘Do you think they will come back then?’ she asked.
‘Who?’
‘Whoever took the TARDIS,’ Leela said, just stopping herself from the further embarrassment of calling it the TARDIS hut.
‘If they do, it won’t be to apologise for the inconvenience,’
he said.
‘Does that mean you know who they are?’
‘I don’t know who they are, or what they are, or what it is they are doing,’ the Doctor said. ‘What I do know is that there will be a rational explanation for all this and if we live long enough we shall find out what it is.’
‘You always think that,’ Leela said. ‘What would happen if you found something you simply could not explain?’
‘There are a lot of things I can’t explain,’ the Doctor said.
‘As I’ve told you, that does not make them inexplicable, merely unexplained.’
‘But what would happen,’ Leela persisted, ‘if you were convinced that something was beyond all understanding?
That it did not have an explanation.’
‘Then I should know it did not exist. Can you track those two people you found? What were they called... um?’
‘Pe-pertanor and Ri-rinandor. Yes I can track them.’
It was not bragging but a straightforward expression of fact. One of the things the Doctor had liked about Leela from their first