Doctor Who_ Last of the Gaderene - Mark Gatiss [40]
The trooper raced past, seemingly tireless, dark eyes fixed ahead.
The Doctor waited until he had gone and then walked back to the front of the old structure. Two massive doors designed for war planes to pass in and out stretched up into the darkness. For the sake of convenience, a smaller, man-sized door had been cut into one of them. The Doctor pushed it and, to his delight, it opened.
He peered through into pitch darkness, then glanced back towards the fence. He should get back to Jo, of course, but he had come to the aerodrome to find some answers. Perhaps this old hangar would provide them.
He stepped through the door and closed it softly behind his back.
Feeling in the pockets of his smoking jacket, he found a thin pencil torch and clicked it on. A narrow shaft of light sprang from it, immediately illuminating a landscape of filthy rags and metal fragments. Oil stained the floor everywhere, the relics of hasty repair jobs on fighter aircraft thirty years previously.
The Doctor swept the beam of the torch around the hangar.
Benches and chairs had been stacked none too carefully against the wall, looking as though they might crash down at any moment. Then he saw why they had been moved out of the way.
There were signs of recent activity. Part of the floor had been scrubbed clean and there were now over a dozen black, leather-upholstered surgical tables arranged in a row, stretching away into the gloom.
The Doctor examined the closest, fingering the heavy-duty straps that were firmly attached to its sides.
He sucked his lower lip thoughtfully then moved deeper into the hangar.
After a while, he came upon another door. This was new and had seemingly been carved from the wall. There were scorch marks around the steel frame and the Doctor examined them closely.
‘High-intensity beam,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Laser?’
The light of the torch showed up what looked like a complex entry-coder but this didn’t seem to be finished. Wires hung from it in a clump, like seaweed.
Shrugging, the Doctor pushed at the door. It swung inwards noiselessly.
The room beyond was vast and brand-new. The Doctor could smell the fresh plastic, even though he could see very little. For a moment he considered risking switching on the lights but decided against it.
‘That’s if there are any lights,’ he said quietly.
Ahead of him, he could make out a semicircle of machinery, divided into sections like metal teeth. There was a swivel chair in front of each section and the Doctor sat down on the nearest one.
He clamped the pencil torch in his mouth and span round twice, then tensed as he heard a noise from the hangar beyond.
Just as he grabbed the torch from his mouth, the metal door sprang open and the trooper threw himself inside.
The Doctor didn’t have time to react and took a direct punch to the side of his face. He crashed to the floor and tried to point the torch at his attacker but it was knocked from his hand, landing on top of the machines and spinning round and round, creating a dizzying halo of light.
The trooper came at him again, slamming a booted foot into his ribs. With a winded groan, the Doctor fell back against the ring of consoles and tried to grab hold of his assailant’s leg.
The trooper was ready for him, though, and as the Doctor managed to haul the man’s leg into the air, kicked savagely.
The Doctor was sent flying. His chest barrelled into the nearest console and suddenly the whole room flickered into life.
The consoles whined and whole banks of lights blinked on. The Doctor saw that the back wall was made of thick plate glass and beyond stretched some kind of tunnel. Lights flickered along its entire length, like a runway.
The trooper stood with legs wide apart and unholstered his machine gun. He levelled the weapon at his opponent and prepared to fire.
The Doctor gazed into his big, dark eyes. An idea flashed into his head and he dived for the torch. He swung the beam directly into the man’s eyes and