Doctor Who_ Last Man Running - Chris Boucher [66]
‘There you are,’ the Doctor said.
When she could see more clearly Leela recognised that the room she was being held in was too small for her captor to have hidden in the darkness, so it was just his voice that had been there. The Doctor was standing by a hole in the floor and smiling at her cheerfully. He looked very relaxed and fit. He pointed. ‘This is the way out, he said. ‘Shall we go?’
Leela moved quickly towards the hole. There was something missing, but she was not going to waste time on it.
She drew her knife and dropped two-footed into the hole.
Out in the passageway she said, ‘Where were the ropes?’
‘Ropes?’ the Doctor asked vaguely.
‘I was tied up.’
‘Oh that. It was direct interference with the nervous system. Complete override of muscular control.’
‘How did you untie me?’ Leela said looking up and down the passageway.
‘I switched it off. It was an electrostatic charge. Do you understand what that is?’
‘No,’ Leela said impatiently.
‘Do you want me to explain it to you?’ he asked.
There was no one else in sight, so Leela sheathed her knife. ‘No. Which way do we go now?’
‘Go?’ The Doctor looked puzzled.
Leela’s eyes narrowed slightly. ‘The way out. Which way do we have go to get out of here?’
All doubt vanished and the Doctor said positively, ‘We need the ship. I think I know where it is.’
It was Leela’s turn to be puzzled. ‘What ship?’
‘Our ship. The ship we came in.’
Leela looked at the Doctor. It was definitely him. She moved closer and stared into his face. Yes it was him, of course it was him, but there was something changed about him. He looked much healthier than he did before. His skin was firmer, his eyes were clearer, his ridiculous mop of hair was curlier and shinier and... and he looked younger.
Suddenly she thought of the louse and what the Doctor had said about it – ‘...and apart from what you’ve done to it there are no signs of damage of any kind. It’s perfect’ – and she had said that the reason was because it was young.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked now.
‘You do not remember?’
He scowled. ‘Of course I remember,’ he snapped.
‘Remember what?’
‘We did not come in a ship. We came in the TARDIS hut.’
The Doctor stopped scowling immediately and beamed with delight. ‘We came in the TARDIS hut. That’s what I meant. I know where the TARDIS hut is.’
‘The TARDIS,’ Leela corrected herself yet again, only now she was not as embarrassed about it as she had been. ‘I do not know why you have to keep saying it. Is it important? I know it is not a hut. I know it is just the TARDIS.’
‘And just the TARDIS is?’ the Doctor prompted.
‘Time And Relative Dimension In Space,’ Leela parroted.
‘Time And Relative Dimension In Space,’ the Doctor repeated slowly as though he had never heard of it before.
‘Time And Relative Dimension In Space. What does that mean, exactly?’
Although she was less sensitive about her lack of knowledge now, the Doctor’s teasing was beginning to make Leela angry. ‘You do not know?’ she said coldly.
He thought for a long moment. ‘I don’t seem to. No. It means nothing to me.’ He smiled brightly. ‘I take it you don’t know what it means, either. Is that going to be a problem, do you suppose?’
‘It has not been up to now,’ Leela said. She knew the Doctor’s humour escaped her sometimes and she hoped that this was such an occasion.
The passageway they were in was brightly lit from underneath, but Leela noticed that there were no shadows cast by the light, so that it was hard to judge distances properly. It needed extra concentration to get an exact feeling of where you were standing or how you were walking, and it affected the balance slightly if you were not paying attention.
None of this seemed to bother the Doctor, who had set out boldly and then paused and waited, calm and smiling, to give her time to catch up. He showed none of his normal impatience