Doctor Who_ Last Man Running - Chris Boucher [28]
‘Is that what was making all the noise?’ the Doctor asked.
‘Or is it just supper?’
‘Both,’ Leela said and settled down to skinning and gutting it.
‘It doesn’t seem to be adapted to run long distances,’ the Doctor said.
‘They jump,’ she said. ‘Very aggressive.’
‘The eyes, the ears and the markings suggest it’s almost exclusively a night predator,’ the Doctor went on. ‘I wonder what it normally feeds on.’
‘I wondered about that too. There does not seem to be anything else out there. Nothing moving. Nothing alive.
These things could have frightened everything off, I suppose.’
‘It sounded like there were hundreds of them.’ Pertanor couldn’t keep the admiration out of his voice as he watched Leela chop off the animal’s head and feet, cut sinews and rip off the thick pelt.
‘Well, several anyway,’ Rinandor said.
‘It is another pack runner,’ Leela said, carving chunks of meat from the carcass, skewering them on sharpened sticks and positioning them over the fire. ‘This time there was one lead animal. It did the thinking for the others. When I killed it they gave up and scattered.’
‘The lead animal was obvious?’ The Doctor asked.
‘Bigger than the rest.’
The smoke from the fat dripping into the flames was acrid but when the meat began to roast the smell of it reminded Pertanor and Rinandor of how long it was since they had eaten and how hungry they had become. They both inhaled the aroma with half closed eyes and small smiles on their plump faces.
The Doctor was examining the animal’s skin. ‘Is this the summer?’ he asked no one in particular.
‘Climate data wasn’t featured in any of our briefings,’
Pertanor said, staring intensely at the cooking meat. ‘Except to say that it wouldn’t be a problem for us given the time scale of the mission.’
Before the Doctor could prompt further information from him Rinandor interrupted her partner. ‘You expect us to believe that you came here,’ she sneered at the Doctor, ‘not knowing what season it was and what the weather conditions were going to be like?’
‘Why not?’ Pertanor remarked, not taking his eyes off the food. ‘We did.’
‘That’s different,’ she said.
‘We weren’t as well prepared as they were,’ Pertanor said.
‘Or as well equipped. Is that what you mean?’
‘I mean we had a job to do. A confidential job.’
Now it was the Doctor’s turn to try to distract Pertanor. He was not sure how committed the young man was to his service, presumably some sort of police group, and the mission that had brought him here, but confidentiality was not a concept the Doctor wanted him to dwell on. ‘This animal,’
he said, ‘seems to be equipped for a climate that’s a good deal colder than the one in which we find ourselves.’
‘Maybe there is a cold area,’ Leela said. ‘Separate like the jungle is.’
‘That’s a good thought,’ the Doctor said. ‘It would fit the hypothesis. Though if that is how it all works the tests should not stray far from their base zones, not if they are going to be fully effective.’
‘Are we supposed to know what you are talking about, Doctor?’ Leela asked.
‘I was thinking aloud,’ he said. ‘It’s a bad habit of mine.
And you can call me The again, by the way.’
‘The?’
The Doctor nodded vigorously. ‘The,’ he beamed. ‘Our secret is out, I’m afraid. But we are among friends.’
‘I don’t remember saying that you were among friends,’
Rinandor remarked. ‘Did we say you were among friends?’
Leela checked the meat. ‘Are you hungry?’ she asked.
‘What do you mean by that exactly?’
‘I mean the meat is cooked enough to be eaten,’ Leela said, offering her a piece of the browned flesh on its charred stick. Rinandor accepted it with a show of suspicious reluctance.
Pertanor didn’t wait to be served. He grabbed a stick and began eating the meat ravenously.
Leela gave the Doctor some. ‘Why should I call you The?’
she whispered.
‘It’s short